Ehsan Yarshater ' onMouseout='HidePop("984")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Iran">Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
) is the director of The Center for Iranian Studies and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
.
He is famous for editing the monumental Encyclopedia Iranica along with 40 other editors and 300 authors from various academic institutions throughout the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, and
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
.
Ehsan Yarshater ' onMouseout='HidePop("984")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Iran">Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
) is the director of The Center for Iranian Studies and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
.
He is famous for editing the monumental Encyclopedia Iranica along with 40 other editors and 300 authors from various academic institutions throughout the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
,
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, and
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
. He is also famous for editing the third volume of the Cambridge History of Iran, comprising the history of the Seleucid, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, as well as a volume entitled
Persian Literature. , he is also editing a sixteen-volume series named
History of Persian Literature. He has won several International awards for scholarship, including a
UNESCOThe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945...
award in 1959.
The Yarshater lectureship is considered by some to be the most prestigious honor in the field of Iranology.
Life
Ehsan Yarshater studied
Persian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
and literature at the
University of TehranThe University of Tehran , also known as Tehran University and UT, is the best, oldest and largest university of Iran. Its library is the largest in the country...
and Iran
philologyPhilology considers both form and meaning in linguistic expression, combining linguistics and literary studies.Classical philology is the philology of the Greek, Latin and Sanskrit languages...
(Old and Middle Iranian) at the
School of Oriental and African StudiesThe School of Oriental and African Studies is a constituent college of the University of London, specialising in languages, humanities, economics, law and politics concerning Asia, Africa and the Middle East...
(SOAS),
University of LondonBased primarily in London, England, United Kingdom, the University of London is a federal mega university made up of 31 affiliates: 19 separate university institutions, and 12 research institutes...
with
Walter Bruno HenningWalter Bruno Henning was a scholar of Middle Iranian languages and literature, especially of the corpus discovered by the Turpan expeditions of the early 20th century.-Biography:...
. His Tehran University dissertation dealt with Persian poetry under the
TimuridTimurid may refer to:* Timur* Timurid dynasty * Timurid Emirates...
Shahrukh (15th century). His University of London dissertation, elaborated and published later as
A Grammar of Southern Tati Dialects (Mouton, 1969), describes a series of
TatiTati is a group of northwestern Iranian dialects which are closely related to the Talysh language.Some sources use the term old Azari/Azeri to refer to the Tati language which was spoken in the region before the spread of Turkic languages , and is now only spoken by different rural communities in...
dialects spoken in the southwest of
QazvinQazvin is the largest city and capital of the Province of Qazvin in Iran with an estimated population of 331,409 in 2005...
.
He has published a number of articles on modern western Iranian dialects, notably Tati and
TaleshiThe Talyshi language is a Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the northern regions of the Iranian provinces of Gilan and Ardabil and the southern regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Historically, the language and its people can be traced through the middle Iranian period back to the ancient...
, and the Jewish dialects of Persian (including Lotara'i) and on Persian mythology as well.
Although born into a
Baha'iThe Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in nineteenth-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories.The Bahá'í Faith teaches a doctrine of...
family, he has had no affiliation with the religion as an adult, and has said that he himself is not a Baha'i.
Publications
- Theorems and Remarks* (al-Isharat wa'l-tanbihat) by Avicenna, tr. into Persian in the 13th century; annotated edition. Tehran, National Monuments Society, 1953.
- Five Treaties in Arabic and Persian (Panj Resala) by Ibn Sina, annotated edition. Tehran, National Monuments Society, 1953.
- Persian Poetry under Shah Rokh: The Second Half of the 15th Century (Sher-e parsi dar 'ahd-e Shahrokh). Tehran, the Tehran University Press, 1955.
- Legends of the Epic of Kings (Dastanha-ye Shahnama). Tehran: Iran-American Joint Fund Publications, 1957, 1958, 1964; 2nd ed. 1974, 1982 (awarded a UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on 16 November 1945...
prize in 1959).
- Old Iranian Myths and Legends (Dastanha-ye Iran-e bastan). Tehran: Iran-American Joint Fund Publications, 1957, 1958, 1964 (Royal Award for the best book of the year, 1959).
- With W.B. Henning (eds.). A Locust's Leg: Studies in Honour of S.H. Taqizadeh. London, 1962.
- Modern Painting (Naqqashi-e novin). 2 vols. Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1965-66; 2nd printing, 1975.
- A Grammar of Southern Tati Dialects, Median Dialect Studies I. The Hague and Paris, Mouton and Co., 1969.
- Iran Faces the Seventies (ed.). New York, Praeger Publishers, 1971.
- With D. Bishop (eds.). Biruni Symposium. New York, Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University, 1976.
- Selected Stories from the Shahnama (Bargozida-ye dastanha-ye Shahnama), Vol. I. Tehran, BTNK, 1974; reprint, Washington, D.C., Iranian Cultural Foundation, 1982.
- With David Bivar (eds.). Inscriptions of Eastern Mazandaran, Corpus Inscriptionem Iranicarum. London, Lund and Humphries, 1978.
- With Richard Ettinghausen (eds.). Highlights of Persian Art. New York, Bibliotheca Persica, 1982.
- Sadeq Hedayat: An Anthology (ed.). New York, Bibliotheca Persica, 1979.
- Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. III: Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanian Periods (ed.). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- Persian Literature (ed.). New York, State University of New York Press, 1988.
See also
- Topics
- Iranistics
- Modern Iranian scientists and engineers
- List of Iranian scientists
- Colleagues and scholars
- Richard Nelson Frye
Richard Nelson Frye is an American scholar of Iranian and Central Asian Studies, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Harvard University...
- James R. Russell
James Robert Russell is a scholar and professor in Ancient Near Eastern, Iranian and Armenian Studies. He has published extensively in journals, and has written several books....
External links
- Professor Ehsan Yarshater's Authorized Website
- Encyclopaedia Iranica
- Interview with Iranian.com
- Sohrāb Akhavān, video interview, in Persian, with Professor Ehsān Yārshāter, made in the second half of 2001, revver, (Part 1), (Part 2).
- Farangis Mohebbi, Dr Yarshater: Lambton predicted the Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 or 1979 Islamic Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution...
, An interview with Professor Yarshater concerning the late Professor Ann LambtonAnn Katharine Swynford Lambton, PhD, FBA, OBE was a British historian and leading figure on medieval and early modern Persian history, Persian language, Islamic political theory, and Persian social organisation...
, in Persian, Radio Zamaneh, August 13, 2008, http://radiozamaaneh.com/Mohebbi/2008/08/print_post_82.html. Audio: http://www.zamahang.com/podcast/2008/20080810_London_Magazine.mp3.