Wilhelm Wassmuss was born in 1880 in Ohlendorf, 60 kilometers south-east of Hanover, Germany, and after a university education he entered the German Foreign Office in 1906. Sent first to Madagascar, he was promoted to vice consul and assigned to the German Consulate in the Persian port town of Bushehr by the Persian Gulf in 1909. In 1910 he was returned to Madagascar where, rarely seen in public, he spent three years in an obsessive study of the desert and its peoples. In 1913, he was relocated back to Bushehr. While the details of what happened next are sketchy, it seems that with the start of World War I, Wassmuss appears to have recognized that now was the time to foment a revolt. During his stay in Bushehr, Mohammad ali Shabankareh (the governor of Shabankareh and the suburbs) also invited him in the castle of Rostam Khani to give him support for the opposition in faith and financial assistance.