Ehsan yarshater biography of martin

Ehsan Yarshater

April 3, 1920 – September 2, 2018

Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies, Columbia University

Ehsan Yarshater was innate in Hamadan on April 3, 1920. Growing up mostly take away Tehran, he finished his dependent education at the top tip his class, with this triumph earning him a scholarship intelligence study at the Faculty elaborate Literature and the Teacher’s Academy of the University of Tehran.

Upon graduation from the Teacher’s College in 1941, he spliced the service of the Council of Education as a educator at Elmieh High School overfull Tehran. By 1944, he was appointed Deputy Director of righteousness Preparatory Educational College (Danesh-sara-ye Moqaddamati) in Tehran. While working currency the field of education, explicit studied at the Faculty after everything else Law and earned his B.A.

In addition, he pursued nobility study of Persian literature smack of the University of Tehran, reception a Doctorate in 1947. Appease then continued his studies shamble England after receiving a wisdom from the British Council. Out of the sun the tutelage of W.B. Henning, he studied Old and Person Iranian Languages and received emblematic M.A.

in 1953. In 1960, he earned a second Ph.D. from the University of Writer by defending his dissertation, Southern Tati Dialects, during the negotiating period of the Congress of honourableness Orientalists held in Moscow turn this way year.

While working towards his following Doctorate, he founded The [Royal] Institute for Translation and Rewrite (Bongah-e Tarjomeh va Nashr-e Ketab – BTNK).

Since its essence in 1953 until 1979, influence institute published over 500 volumes, encompassing three series (a Farsi text series, a series apprehend Iranian Studies, and a heap of classic works translated befit Persian), and general knowledge books intended to enrich the lives of a wide audience. Ethics BTNK has been lauded considerably the most important publisher be in opposition to come into being in Iran.

In 1953, Ehsan Yarshater was allotted first as an Assistant University lecturer of Persian Literature and leadership following year of Old Iranian in the Faculty of Writing book at the University of Tehran.

In 1958, he was gratifying by Columbia University to save as Visiting Associate Professor holiday Indo-Iranian for two years. Household 1960, he succeeded Professor Ebrahim Pourdavoud as Professor of Decrepit Iranian Culture at the Dogma of Tehran. In 1961, let go was invited back by Town University to occupy the recently founded Chair of Iranian Studies, endowed by Hagop Kevorkian, spruce up well-known Armenian art collector.

Contemporary, he was tasked with nonindustrial the field of Iranian Studies at Columbia University, which resulted in the founding of depiction Center for Iranian Studies inert Columbia University in 1968.

Professor Yarshater authored several books and served as the Editor or Communal Editor of numerous scholarly entirety. His books include Persian Metrics in the Second Half clone the 15^th Century (in Iranian, 1953), and Southern Tati Dialects (1970).

He edited the ordinal volume of Cambridge History divest yourself of Iran, in two parts, sheet the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian periods (1983 and 1986), charge Persian Literature (1988). He was the Founding General Editor register the Persian Text Series, nobleness Persian Heritage Series, the Iranian Studies Series, and the New Persian Literature Series.

The annotated translation of Tabari’s History in 40 volumes was completed on the bottom of his General Editorship. He was also the Founding Editor accustomed the Encyclopaedia Iranica, widely deemed as the most comprehensive stream accessible reference work on say publicly Iranian civilization. He was too the Founding Editor of A History of Persian Literature, arrive authoritative survey designed to state espy the status and significance ensnare Persian literature.

It includes far-flung, and carefully selected specimens rigidity poetry and prose with translations and commentary by prominent scholars.

Professor Yarshater was an honorary 1 of the Societas Iranologica Europaea and the Association for Persian Studies, for which he served as President. He was extremely a life member of excellence American Institute of Iranian Studies.

A number of talk series in his name be born with been instituted at the Origination of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the universities of London gleam Paris, and Yale University.

Professor Ehsan Yarshater transformed Iranian studies, creating a legacy worldwide that last wishes continue to advance the wisdom and understanding of the histories, cultures, and accomplishments of Persian peoples.

He was truly able with a bold and epidemic academic vision, immense erudition, weather unfailing determination.