On April 3, 1920,
Ehsan Yarshater
was born in Hamadan, Iran to a prominent Jewish Bahá'í family. His
family was part of a group of Jewish converts from that city who during
the late 19th century became the largest group of non-Muslim converts to
the Bahá'í Fatih. Ehsan’s father received a tablet from 'Abdu'l-Bahá,
referring to him as "Yarshater" (meaning
"agile friend" which they choose to be their family name.
Ehsan Yarshater had a long and distinguished academic career in the field of Iranian studies. He died on September 1, 2018, in California.
The following biography of PROFESSOR EHSAN YARSHATER
has been taken from his personal home page, originally an account of
his life and career by Professors M. Boyce of London University and G.
Windfuhr of Michigan University in Acta Iranica 30, Papers in Honor of
Professor Ehsan Yarshater, Leiden, Holland, 1990, pp. ix-xxiii.
Professor Ehsan Yarshater
He was born on April 3, 1920 in Hamadan of a family which
originated in Kashan. His father, a businessman, had a bent for
learning, read widely and taught himself Arabic and Esperanto. His
mother, a lady of great refinement, had a deep love of nature
and the fine arts. She herself possessed a beautiful singing voice, and
played the ney; and she inspired in her son a love of music and
literature, and impressed on him also the need to study hard and become a
useful member of society. But she died young,
when he was only eleven, and his father a year later a a heavy double
sorrow. He went then to live in Tehran with his maternal uncle, a
well-known philanthropist whose benefactions included the building and
endowing of the Mithaqiyya Hospital. Ehsan Yarshater's
schooling had been interrupted; but in 1934 he won a scholarship to the
newly opened Normal School (Danesh-sara-ye Moqaddamati). There the
teacher of Persian literature, Mohammad 'Ali 'Ameri, made a deep
impression on him, and by encouraging him to memorize
a great number of passages of excellent Persian poetry and prose,
helped him to form his own pure and elegant style. From there a second
scholarship took him to the Teachers' College, Tehran University, where
he studied Persian language and literature under
such outstanding scholars as Ebrahim Pour-Davud, Mohammad Taqi Bahar,
Ahmad Bahmanyar, Badi' al-Zaman Foruzanfar, Sayyid Kazem 'Assar and
'Abbas Eqbal Ashtiyani. Following their courses gave him a deep
knowledge of Iran's literature and history, although looking
back he came to regret the lack of teaching in other languages and
literatures. This gap he worked hard to fill for himself in later years.
In 1941 he obtained the degree of B.A. (Licence-ès-Lettres),
and began teaching at the 'Elmiyya School in Tehran; and two years later
he was appointed associate director of the Normal School there. While
holding these posts he studied law, obtaining
a second B.A. in that subject in 1944. He then proceeded with his
literary studies under the supervision of 'Ali Asghar Hekmat, and in
1947 was awarded at D. Litt. with distinction for a dissertation on
"Persian poetry in the second half of the ninth century."
(This was published, with some revisions, in 1955 .)
He was then appointed Assistant Professor of Persian in the Faculty of
Theology; but was awarded in the same year a fellowship by the British
Council to study educational methods in England. When in London he
called on W.B. Henning, and, swiftly appreciating
the depth of his learning, resolved to abandon other plans and study
pre-Islamic Iranian languages and culture with him. His interest in this
field had already been awakened by Pour-Davud; but at that time the
teaching available in it in Tehran was at an elementary
level. He enrolled accordingly for one of the courses created by
Henning at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London
University, in Old and Middle Iranian; and years of exacting study
followed, during which he had to add English and German to his
knowledge of French, and to absorb analytic and critical methods of
handling texts. In addition, he set himself, with energy and
discernment, to learn all that he could of Western art and architecture,
painting and music, using part of the vacations to travel
in other European countries for this purpose.
Henning himself was deeply interested at this time in the
dialects of north-western Iran. In 1950 he had been able to make brief
notes on one of them, to the south-west of Qazvin, and this, he thought,
might prove to be a link in a long chain of related
dialects, all in imminent danger of dying out . The evidence was too
scanty, however, for this to be then more than a well-reasoned piece of
deduction. With Henning's encouragement, Ehsan Yarshater determined to
undertake the search for such dialects, and
this developed into his scholarly lifework. With it he was to make a
major contribution to Iranian linguistic studies, recording and
analysing dialect after dialect of what he came to term the Tati-Taleshi
groups, and gaining a rich store of knowledge that
fully substantiated Henning's brilliant but tentative surmise. His work
was much appreciated by Henning himself, who over the years provided
Ehsan Yarshater with "enriching advice, friendship and support."
In 1953 Ehsan Yarshater, having obtained the degree of M.A. by
examination, returned to Iran to pursue this research; but there was
much else there to claim his attention. He was at once appointed
lecturer in ancient Iranian languages in the Faculty
of Letters at Tehran University, and assistant to Pour-Davud. Some
excellent students attended his classes, and he is gratefully remembered
by them, as by numerous generations of their successors, for the
clarity and detail of his teaching, his patience and
evenness of temper, and his concern for their progress. (Thus once,
when a strike closed the university, he continuedquietly giving his
courses at his own home rather than let their work be interrupted.)
His standards were exacting; and conscious, with his own phenomenal
memory, of the advantages of storing knowledge in the mind, he required
his students to combine analytical work with some learning by heart,
including passages from Old Persian inscriptions.
Ehsan Yarshater found time nevertheless to embark on the first
of his many field trips to study dialects; and these were to be the
most enjoyable of this many scholarly undertakings, combining as they
did the intellectual pleasure of discovery with
the keen delight of travel to remote parts of Iran and the exploration
of village life and traditions. Such travel involved, however, a
considerable measure of physical hardship and hours of exacting work,
during which his informants were apt to flag long
before he wished to release them. In 1956 the Societé de la
dialectologie iranienne was founded, with G. Redard, G. Morgenstierne
and E. Benveniste as active members; and Ehsan Yarshater, as
vice-president, was made responsible for supervising the recording
of dialects throughout Iran.
This blend of teaching, administrative duties and strenuous
research would for most scholars have made up a full working life; but
during his years in England Ehsan Yarshater had been forming plans to
fill gaps which he had come to perceive in the
cultural life of Iran; and in 1954 he took the major step of founding
the Bong›h-e Tarjoma va Nashr-e Ket›b (Institute for the Translation and
Publication of Books) . Under his direction this was to make a massive
contribution in the following decades to the
intellectual life of the nation. Its primary aim was to have foreign
works of recognized worth translated into Persian by scholars of repute,
the translations to be carefully edited and accurately printed. In the
long run it was hoped that the venture would
be largely self-supporting, but Ehsan Yarshater obtained initial
funding from the Crown Properties. This was the first instance of his
ability, as a practical visionary and skilful, patient diplomat, to
obtain financial support for a nobly conceived plan.
The series of translations was inaugurated with five books published
simultaneously in 1955, and others followed in rapid succession, to be
swiftly bought up by an appreciative readership. Although his own work
lay in higher education, Ehsan Yarshater was
deeply concerned with the intellectual development of children; and a
year later he inaugurated three series of works for different age groups
among the young, some of them translations, some original writings.
These too were eagerly acquired.
In 1957 he persuaded a number of scholars, notably among them Iraj
Afshar, to join him in founding the Anjoman-e Ketab (Book Society) . Its
purpose was to foster interest in good publications, and its main organ
was the Rahnema-ye Ketab (Book Guide), which
was launched by Ehsan Yarshater that same year as a quarterly journal,
with Afshar and M. Moqarrabi as associate editors. From its second year
it became a monthly journal, and was expanded to include as well as book
reviews articles on Persian language and
literature, accounts of rare manuscripts and, latterly, surveys of
current research in Iranian studies. From 1965 Afshar was editor in
charge, and under his direction annual bibliographies were published of
Persian printed books. The Anjoman-e Ketab also organized
annual book exhibitions in Tehran, and sponsored exhibitions of Persian
books abroad.
With all this activity even Ehsan Yarshater was fully
stretched, working as has been his wont through much of his life, a
twelve to fourteen hour day. Yet he managed during these years to write a
number of learned and literary articles for the journals
Yahma, Mehr and Sokhan, as well as for the Bulletin of the Faculty of
Letters of Tehran University. One day, meeting him in the Senate
Library, Habib Yaghma'i pressed him for another article for his journal;
whereupon Ehsan Yarshater, characteristically unable
to refuse a friend, sat down and there and then wrote a piece which he
called "The respected scholar" (Daneshmand-e mohtaram) . This, published
as the leading article in Yaghma, has been twice reprinted in
anthologies, and is often quoted as an admirable piece
of satirical humour. For al his deep seriousness, Ehsan Yarshater has a
rich vein of wit and humour, is quick to make or appreciate a jest, and
breaks readily into warm, delightful laughter.
Another striking facet of Ehsan Yarshater's character is his
apparently effortless calm and self-control, maintained in the teeth of
all the harassments that inevitably beset a man who initiates
far-reaching plans, and who in the course of fulfilling
them has to persuade large numbers of people, with different
temperaments and interests, to cooperate and be reasonable. With this
calmness goes iron resolve, once a goal has been fixed upon, and
enviable powers of concentration. These struck even German scholars
during a visit Ehsan Yarshater paid to Göttingen to study dialect
materials there. While others came and went during the day, seeking
refreshment, fresh air or relaxation, he sat on at his library desk from
early till late, oblivious alike of the outer world
and the inner man, working with total absorption.
During the academic year 1958/59 he visited Columbia
University, New York, as associate professor; and Columbia showed
appreciation of his teaching by extending its invitation for a second
year.
Back in Iran during the summer of 1959 Ehsan Yarshater inspired the
founding of a lending library by the Anjoman-e Ketab. This came to
contain some 3000 books, mostly in the humanities, which people were
actively encouraged to borrow, and for a time small mobile
collections of books were sent to some of the poorer districts of
Tehran, as well as to townships round about.
When Ehsan Yarshater returned from Columbia in the summer of
1960, Pour-Davud had died, and he was appointed to succeed his former
teacher as professor of Old Persian and Avestan. In that year he
attended the International Congress of Orientalists
in Moscow; and the oral examination was held there of his thesis on
"The Tati dialect spoken to the south of Qazvin", for which he was
awarded a Ph.D. by London University. The examiners were W.B. Henning,
E. Benveniste and I. Gershevitch.
In the following year Ehsan Yarshater had the happiness to
marry Latifeh Alvieh. The two had become friends when he returned from
his studies in England in 1953, and had come to discover much in common,
notably a deep devotion to Iran and its culture,
and an interest in education generally. Latifeh Alvieh was then acting
as cultural advisor to the United States Information Agency in Tehran;
and her voluntary work included organizing and directing summer camps
for schools and university students, and the
first youth conference in Iran. She was founder and president of the
Shahnaz Girls' Clubs, and a founding member of the National Council of
the Women of Iran; and had represented various Iranian organizations at
conferences in Germany, India, Ceylon and Turkey,
as well as having studied for a year on a visiting fellowship in the
United States of America. After their marriage she and Ehsan Yarshater,
as well as pursuing their own separate but complementary activities,
created together a gracious and profoundly civilized
home-life, dispensing a generous hospitality which many were to enjoy
over the years.
Meantime Columbia University was expanding its Middle East
department, and with financial help form Hagop Kevorkian had established
a chair in Iranian Studies, which in 1961 Ehsan Yarshater was invited
to occupy. After much hesitation, and prolonged
discussions with his wife, he accepted and embarked thus on an even
more arduous but richly productive period of his life. During it he
worked immensely hard in New York for three-quarters of the year, and
returned every long vacation to Iran to work immensely
hard there. He retained the directorship of the Bongah-e Tarjoma,
keeping in close touch from the United States with a secession of deputy
directors; and he continued as president of the Anjoman-e Ketab, the
Rahnema-ye Ketab being mainly in charge of Iraj
Afshar. Each summer, after a busy university session, he found awaiting
him in Tehran a quantity of matters - scholarly, administrative and
financial- which demanded his attention; and a press of people impatient
to discuss with him, sometimes at great length,
their own particular problems. Yet even in these circumstances his
first act was always to set in motion arrangements for a field trip to
study yet another dialect which he had identified as little known or
insufficiently explored.
At Columbia University he was deeply engaged in developing
undergraduate and graduate courses, teaching and supervising, and taking
his full part in departmental and university duties. He was also
planning volumes for a projected series of translations of
Persian classical works called Persian Heritage Series. UNESCO had a
similar project in hand, under the title of Persian Representative
Works, but it was making little progress. In 1962 the UNESCO department
concerned proposed that their undertaking should
be merged with Ehsan Yarshater's. This series was funded largely by the
Bongah-e Tarjoma, with smaller contributions by UNESCO; and its agreed
aim was to make "the best of Persian literary, historical and scientific
texts available in the major world languages
... not only to satisfy the needs of the students of Persian history
and culture, but also to respond to the demands of the intelligent
reader who seeks to broaden his intellectual and artistic horizons."
Under Ehsan Yarshater's direction the publication of
volumes in this important new series proceeded apace.
From 1964 to 1966 he was granted extended sabbatical leave,
which he spent in Iran. The royal Pahlavi Foundation was established in
1964, and the prestigious Bongah-e Tarjoma was made one of its
affiliates. "In editorial matters, however, the Institute
continued to maintain essentially an independent stance, with the
director exerting full discretion in the choice of works and the
selection of authors, editors and translators in the series published
under his general editorship."
As well as devoting much time to the Bongah's affairs during
these two years, Ehsan Yarshater brought out in two volumes his own
Naqqashi-e novin (Modern Painting) . This he published under the
pen-name Rahsepar, which he had used as art-critic over
the years for the journal Sokhan (published by his friend P.N.
Khanlari). His reason for seeking anonymity was that he regarded these
writings as the fruit of an amateur interest only; but Naqqashi-e novin,
reprinted in 1975, remains the only substantial work
of recognized merit in Persian devoted to this subject. Chapters from
it have been prescribed for classwork, and others have been included,
for the quality of their writing, in Jalal Matini's Nemunahai az nathr-e
fasih-e mo'aser (An Anthology of Contemporary
Eloquent Persian Prose.)
His dominant professional interest continued to be his dialect
studies, and these two sabbatical years gave him further opportunities
for intensive field work. His researches, which had begun in the 1950's
with southern Tati, had been extended during
the intervening years; and down to 1979 he was able to work
systematically over a wide area, which included Taleshi-speaking
districts on the west Caspian coast, Khalkhal and Tarom in Azerbaijan,
Kho'in and the Zanjan region, Rudbar, Kuhpaya and Alamut to
the east of Qazvin and Ramand to the south of it, with the Sava and
Kashan districts, and regions yet further south where Central dialects
are spoken. In recording many largely unknown or ill-explored village
dialects of this area Ehsan Yarshater has shown
great exactness and analytical skill, and his attention to detail in
both phonology and morphology makes his work outstanding among recent
contributions to Iranian dialectology, setting him in the great
tradition of Andreas and Mann, Zhukovsky, Christensen
and Morgenstierne. He is never a reductionist, nor one to gloss over
problems by superimposing a phoneme where there is variation; and with
his care for detail he truly shows language at work. His descriptions
are full of precise observations about differences
in usage between speakers of different ages, and even between
inhabitants of different quarters of the same village; and where
documents exist he has studied the changes between earlier and modern
speech. He sets this minute recording in a wider context by
consistently noting similarities between dialects and dialect-groups;
and he has traced changes (as for example in postpositional patterns)
which may reflect usages in the Turkish superstratum. He observes
moreover the ways of life and social interactions
which tend to bring about linguistic interference such as by Turkic
with Iranian, or by one form of Iranian with another. No description of
an Iranian dialect offers a more delicate analysis of intricate
relationships (such as morphological case, number and
gender-marking in relation to the scales of animacy, reference and
thematicity) than his study of southern Tati; and this makes it ideal
for use in typological studies and general works on variation and
language change . Nor is there anything comparable to
his study of gender in the dialects of the Kashan area, with its
admirable analysis of the multiple parameters, only a few of which have
ever attracted the attention of researchers. The same precision and
depth characterize his coverage of whole areas and
his attention to minute difference between closely related dialects;
and this has then enabled him to trace the network of linguistic change
on a micro-scale.
On a larger scale his work has been nothing less than the rediscovery
of the descendants of ancient Median, long thought wholly to have
disappeared. He named his book on southern Tati "Median Dialect Studies
I", and convincingly justified this title by his
masterly summary of what is known of the languages of Azarbaijan in the
Middle Ages and pre-modern times. This study included in fact Greater
Media with Media Atropatene; and in it he showed that it had been wrong
to suppose that the Iranian dialects spoken
within Azarbaijan were immigrant ones from other regions . Instead he
was able to establish that the dialects which he had studied reflect a
linguistic continuum from Azarbaijan southward to where the Taleshi
dialects join the northernmost Tati ones, with
the southernmost Tati ones then linking up in their turn with those of
the central dialects. He also discovered the importance within this
continuum of the Iranian dialects spoken by local Jewish communities,
which he studied extensively in Tehran, Hamadan,
Isfahan, Kashan, Golpayegan and other towns, together with the "secret"
Perso-Aramaic language which some of them used. His conclusion was that
"the Jewish dialects and sub-dialects are the indicators of Median
dialects long forced out from urban centers by
Persian. In other words, whereas Persian is the intruder in Western and
Central Persia (that is, the Median territory) the Jewish dialects are
native." His researches as a whole led him to the major discovery that
some western Iranian dialects are as conservative
as some eastern Iranian ones, and that the traditional perception
(based essentially on Middle Persian, Parthian and modern Persian with
its variants) of a morphologically wanting western Iranian is
misleading, this being in fact by no means typical. It seems
very fitting that an Iranian scholar from Hamadan, once the capital of
Media, should have discovered these remarkable facts, and should by his
labours have thrown so much new light on the linguistic heritage of
western Iran.
This important and prolonged research continued to be
interwoven by Ehsan Yarshater with his work at Columbia University, to
which he returned in the late summer of 1966. Soon afterwards he
established a Center for Iranian Studies there, of which he
continues to be the director; and the next year he organized a major
conference on all aspects of contemporary Iranian life, together with an
exhibition of Persian painting ‹ the most extensive that had then been
held. The conference papers were edited by
him, and were published in 1971 under the title Iran Faces the
Seventies. In 1968, Ehsan Yarshater was elected chairman of the Middle
East department, and served in this capacity until 1973, when he
resigned in order to be able to devote more time to developing
the activities of the Center.
Meantime in Iran the Bongah-e Tarjoma, still under his direction,
continued to be vigorously active. The first "Foreign Literature Series"
(Majmu'a-ye adabiyat-e khareji) was in the end to contain 71 works, and
the various series for children and young readers,
together, 155 titles. To these had been added an "Iranology Series"
(Majmu'a-ye Iran-shenasi), which consisted of translations of works by
Western orientalists and classical writers, and by Muslim historians and
geographers in Arabic. This comprised some 60
volumes. There was also a "Persian Texts Series", devoted to critical
editions of Persian texts which were either unpublished or available
only in uncritical editions. This series, which reached 48 volumes, "
represented the first attempt in Iran to publish
Persian texts systematically. It adopted, under Yarshater's general
editorship, the common method of critical editions in the West, best
exemplified in Iran by M. Qazvivi, with the manuscripts clearly defined
and the significant variants recorded in the footnotes."
A general knowledge series was also launched, which consisted
primarily of works of popular science, and which reached 138 volumes;
but after the early ones had appeared Ehsan Yarshater relinquished its
general editorship to Mohammad Sa'idi.
Another important scholarly series was of bibliographies. This
was initiated in 1958 with the publication of the "Bibliography of
Persian Printed Books" (Fehrest-e ketabha-ye chapi-e farsi) by Khanbaba
Moshar. A second volume appeared in 1961, and
a three-volumed second edition in 1973. There were moreover a number of
other series, for science, art, history and philosophy, which were
begun later and so remained less extensive than the earlier ones.
In 1969 the Bongah adopted a proposal put forward by Ehsan
Yarshater to translate into Persian the second edition of the
"Encyclopaedia of Islam", with supplementary articles to be specially
commissioned to expand the entries on Iran. The first fascicle
of the "Encyclopaedia of Iran and Islam" (Danesh-nama-ye Iran va Eslam)
was published in 1975 with 112 original entries and 99 translated from
the "Encyclopaedia of Islam"'s and eight more fascicles appeared during
the next three years.
Meanwhile, in 1972, Ehsan Yarshater presented to the National
Endowment for the Humanities, an American federal agency, through
Columbia University, a proposal for an "Encyclopaedia Iranica" in the
English language. This he conceived as a research
tool, to meet the needs of scholars and students in Iranian studies and
related fields by providing accurate and up-to-date presentations on
"topics of archaeological,geographic, ethnographic, historical,
artistic, literary, religious, linguistic, philosophical,
scientific and folkloric interest," over a stretch of time extending
from prehistory to the present; and he suggested that it should aim at
setting Iranian culture in a broad context, and showing reciprocal
influences exerted on one another by Iran and its
neighbours.
The plan was a noble one, and its scope so huge that probably no
individual scholar could have won a hearing for it other than Ehsan
Yarshater, who already had so many massive achievements to his credit,
and who was known not only for initiating but also for
carrying through large undertakings. He was also a persuasive advocate;
and not only did the National Endowment for the Humanities provide some
funding but generous support was offered by the Iranian Plan
Organization. Accordingly the great undertaking got
under way, and the first contracts were signed with contributors in
1979.
Two years earlier Ehsan Yarshater and his wife had decided to
use their private means to endow a foundation that would ensure that
work on the Encyclopaedia and other major projects which he had
initiated could continue after him. By 1979 the legal
work had been completed, trustees were appointed, and the foundation
was about to be registered with the Ministry of Justice when revolution
broke out in Iran. The work of the Bongah-e Tarjoma, which was
affiliated with the Pahlavi Foundation, was brought
to an immediate halt.
Subsequently the new government took over the Bongah, and
tacitly acknowledged the admirable work which it had been doing over the
previous quarter of a century by continuing to operate it under its own
name. Some works were published which were already
in the press (including two more fascicles of the "Encyclopaedia of
Iran and Islam"). A fairly large number of the Bongah's publications
were moreover reprinted in the course of time, a further tribute to the
excellence of its work. Its library was also expanded
by the addition of that of the Anjoman-e Ketab, which, with its journal
Rahnema-ye Ketab, was closed down . But in 1981 the Bongah itself was
merged, with some other organizations, in a new "Center for Scientific
and Cultural Organizations," renamed in 1986
the "Scientific and Cultural Publication Company" (Markaz-e
Entesharat-e 'Elmi va Farhangi).
In the very year of the revolution Ehsan Yarshater had convened
a meeting in England of the panel of consulting editors of the
Encyclopaedia Irancia; and he found himself facing this meeting with
funding for the project suddenly and drastically reduced,
while he felt himself still with obligations to staff, printers and
publishers, as well as to the large number of scholars who had been
drawn into the undertaking, some of whom had already written
contributions for it.
Nevertheless, almost anyone else would have given up at this point,
yielding to the force of large and unforeseen events. But for Ehsan
Yarshater great odds seem only a challenge to still greater endeavour,
when the cause is a worthy one; and he resolved to
continue in the hope that he could raise new funding somehow. In this
he was successful, thanks to his own qualities and achievements, and
tenacity of purpose. But it is a continuing struggle, which swallows up
all too much of his time and energy at the expense
of purely scholarly pursuits.
From then on the complex and arduous work of compiling and
producing the Encyclopaedia has been carried on at the Center for
Iranian Studies, Columbia University chiefly with the continued support
of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The first
fascicles were published in 1982, and by the end of 1989 three bound
volumes had come out, with ten more planned to follow over the years.
The undertaking has benefited from unremitting labours of a succession
of assistant editors, notably among them M. Kasheff,
who began working on the "Encyclopaedia of Iran and Islam",
transferring without break to the Encyclopaedia Iranica; and latterly
P.O. Skjaervø; but the driving force and inspiration continues to be
Ehsan Yarshater, who oversees its every aspect. For this,
long experience has uniquely qualified him, both on the practical and
scholarly sides; and his extraordinary width of knowledge is invaluable
for the choice of rubrics and invitation of contributors. There are few
Persian writers and men of learning of the
twentieth century whom he has not known, few Iranists whose work he has
not read and remembered, perhaps no aspect of Iranian history and
culture to which he has not devoted some attention. The usefulness of
the Encyclopaedia is generally recognized; and it
is proving not only an indispensable source of knowledge, but is itself
a stimulus to research and fresh thinking on the part of scholars who
are invited to contribute, and who respond to the opportunities which it
provides. The heavy burdens which it lays
on its chief editor have unfortunately kept his own contributions
relatively few; but they have ranged characteristically widely, with a
number of entries on Iranian dialects, a vivid and sympathetic account
of the village of Abyana, and a meticulously documented
article on Afrasiyab. He has made moreover striking contributions from
his own unique knowledge to articles by others, for example to that on
the great modern Persian singer Banan.
Since all his labours on the Encyclopaedia have been in
addition to his full-time professional work at Columbia Univesity, it
seems incredible that even Ehsan Yarshater should have been engaged at
the same time on another major task; but since the
early 1970s he had been preparing, as general editor and contributor,
the third volume of the Cambridge History of Iran, devoted to the
Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian periods. This massive work, in two
parts, was planned to compass "every aspect of Iranian
civilisation from the death of Alexander in 323 B.C. to the advent of
Islam in the seventh century A.D."
There were 33 contributors, and their contributions came in irregularly
over a number of years, with many delays and difficulties; and as they
were assembled it became clear to Ehsan Yarshater that the enormous time
span and diversity of subject-matter were
going to present problems for the general reader. Accordingly he went
beyond what most would consider to be the call of editorial duty,
providing the work with a long, lucid and deeply perceptive
introduction, in which he provided guidelines to the whole;
and he also set concise introductory pieces before each of the nine
main sections into which it is divided. His own contributions comprised
chapters on "Iranian common beliefs and world-view," "Iranian national
history," and "Mazdakism." The volume appeared
in 1983; and the first print was sold out with the same rapidity that
had marked the purchase of publications of the Bongah-e Tarjoma.
Just a little later yet another massive undertaking, which had
been initiated by Ehsan Yarshater in 1971, began to bear fruit. This was
an annotated English translation of Tabari's "History of Prophets and
Kings" (Tarikh al-rusul wal moluk). Ehsan
Yarshater had suggested this as a desirable enterprise to UNESCO, for
consideration by its Arabic Commission; but since that commission
favored other tasks, he himself undertook it, with UNESCO's approval,
under the auspices of the Bongah. Only a few contracts
had been signed with scholars when the Bongah was closed down, and
funding had again to be sought elsewhere. It came to be provided by the
National Endowment for the Humanities; and publication of the History,
to be in 40 volumes, began in 1985. Seventeen
volumes have by now appeared, with ten in the press. Ehsan Yarshater
sometimes regrets his involvement in this work, more properly the domain
of Arabists; but, again, it is not in his character to abandon a task
once embarked on.
The work of the Iranian Center proceeded vigorously meanwhile,
and was diversified. The publication of volumes in the multilingual,
multinational Persian Heritage Series continued steadily; and the
Columbia Iranian Lecture Series, founded and endowed
by Ehsan Yarshater in 1979, brought a succession of Iranists from other
universities in the States and abroad to give an annual set of
lectures. This was fittingly inaugurated by the great Iranist H.W.
Bailey, and his and three other sets of lectures have
so far been published in book form. Subsequently in 1987, Ehsan
Yarshater established an Iranian Seminar, whose meetings are regularly
attended by Iranists from New York's universities and those of
neighbouring states, and often, by invitation or the chance
of travel by others from farther afield. Both lectures and seminars are
occasions for stimulating discussion and the fruitful sharing of
knowledge.
With his capacities and experience, it was inevitable that Ehsan
Yarshater should be elected member of a number of councils and
committees, among them the Council of Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum
(from 1954); the Iranian branch of the International Council
for Philosophy and the Human Sciences (of which he was general
secretary from 1957 to 1961); the National Translation Council, Columbia
University (from 1976); and the American Institute of Iranian Studies
(trustee from 1978).
One of Ehsan Yarshater¹s special gifts was threatened with
total neglect under the huge pressure of professorial, scholarly,
editorial and administrative work, namely his writing of elegant
Persian; but latterly his friend Jalal Matini has persuaded
him to contribute from time to time short notes (yaddashtha) to the
journals Iran Nameh and Iran Shenasi, both edited in the United States;
and these have given much pleasure to its readers.
All this vast amount of achievement could be accomplished only
by long toil; and often after a hard day¹s work Ehsan Yarshater return
in the late evening to his office at the Iran Center (which is
interconnected with his apartment ), to put in more
hours of concentrated work at his desk there. He has been fortunate to
have in his wife a lady who not only understands but supports such
dedication, matching it indeed with hard work and idealism of her own.
Once settled in the United States, she studied
for a B.A. (1975) and M.A. (1981) at Columbia University, published
articles, and applied her knowledge and experience through serving on
numerous councils and committees; and from 1986 she has worked part-time
at the Middle East Institute of Columbia University
as co-ordinator of its Outreach Program, which aims at bringing
accurate knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs to students, teachers and
the general public.
Events in Iran in the past decade have brought deep personal
sorrows to the Yarshaters, as to many other Iranian families. These they
have borne with characteristic courage and dignity. Nor is life for
them ever wholly toil. There is music, poetry
and the visual arts to be enjoyed; and friends and colleagues treasure
memories of their delightful hospitality, with wide-ranging talk, rich
reminiscences, wit and laughter.
He has always been a lover of sport and the open air; and in his student
days he went on long mountain walks with friends in the Alborz, and
later skied there. For a long time it was mainly his dialect studies
which took him from his desk; but latterly a threat
of ill-health from unremitting work has forced him out of doors again
for recreation. He goes regularly on long walks with the Appalachian
Mountain Club, adding enjoyment of American natural beauty to his
recollections of that of his much loved motherland;
and it is to be hoped that with retirement he will take to the mountain
trails more often, thus keeping his health and strength, and being able
to see to completion the formidable enterprises which he has in hand
(notably among them the publication of many
notes and texts gathered during his field-work in Iran, and still to be
edited). He has already made profound contributions to Persian
scholarship and letters, and Iran and Iranian studies owe him immense
debts. May he live to increase that indebtedness, and
to enjoy the satisfaction of large tasks fulfilled and new knowledge
continually gained.
M. Boyce
G. Windfuhr
