Mirza Muhammad Farrokhi Yazdi suffered a long series of persecutions, imprisonments, and exile during his rather short life (1889-1939). At the age of 16, two years before the Constitutional Revolution, Farrokhi showed his national and Islamic zeal by writing poems against the authorities of the British missionary school at Yazd, where he was a student. Following the circulation of one of these poems, in which he had defended the cause of Islam against the “devilish designs” of the Christians, the headmaster expelled him from school and thereby ended his formal education. This was the first and by far the lightest punishment the poet was to suffer for his beliefs.
As he himself proudly testifies, Farrokhi was a dehqān-zādeh, a peasant's son. When he was forced out of school, the peasant's son became a laborer. His family background and his own experience as a laborer greatly influenced the direction of his thought in later years.