Abdollah Anvar
Audio of the Entire Interview
Interview Transcript
Part01
(Ali Dehbashi) The name ‘Abdullah Anvar’ bears excellence and
nobility for all intellectuals and admirers of wisdom and literature
(Kamran Faani) Abdullah Anvar’s Companionship resembles closely
the attending of a sweet and pleasant masterclass
(Ali Dehbashi) Perfectly proficient in his knowledge of Islamic
Sciences, yet a very modern character
(Kamran Faani) He used to walk from his home in Shemiran to The
National Library which at the time used to be in Toopkhaneh.
(Ali Dehbashi) Cataloger of manuscripts, and a unique master
of identifying original manuscripts for at least six decades up to this day
In Conversation With
Seyyed Abdullah Anvar
Part 1: From Childhood to higher Education
My name is Seyyed Abdullah Anvar. I was born in 1924 in Sani-
ol Douleh Street, It is now called Saadi.
I spent my childhood there and stayed there for about 34 years,
until I left my father’s house and moved to Shemiran.
Before the Persian constitutional revolution my father was a clergy and a philosopher
He studied philosophy in Fars (Shiraz) with Hakim Abbas Darabi
who was himself a student of Haj Mulla Hadi Sabzevari (1797-1873)
In Tehran he was a student of Mirza Hassan Ashtiani
(1869-1940) learning Islamic Jurisprudence
Ashtiani himself had had Sheikh Murtadha al-Ansari (1781-1864) as his mentor.
My father studied Studied Physics and theology from ‘the book of healing’ (Shafaa) with Mirza
Hassan Kermanshahi (1871-1956).
He was so hard working and he even studied Transcendent
theosophy of Mulla Sadra with Mirza Ebrahim Eshkevari.
They studied The Bazels of Wisdom by Ibn Arabi which
we are teaching these days; he read so much
in fact he was constantly reading
When Ashtiani died he became a student of Mirza Aboutaleb Zanjani (1880-1950) who used to
read Egyptian Arabic Journals and would talk to his students about freedom
which would have a great impact on them
They became so dominated by these ideas of freedom and democracy that my father later
became a propagandist for the Constitutional movement.
His name is even mentioned in Kasravi’s History of the constitutional revolution,
he served 90 days in BaqerShah prison for his political activities
You’d be surprised if I told you, for 90 days a group of five activists,
my father being one of them were tied with one chain ringed around their necks
He would tell us that the chain started with Yahya Mirza ,
Iraj Eskandari’s father, a really noble man who wasn’t religious at all.
Next to my father was Qazi Ardaqi,
who was poisoned and died there and then.
So when they would want to pray, the non-religious one would sit on the floor and the rest of them
would struggle as the chain would pull the rings around their necks
or when they needed the toilet, they would all have to stick together to make the chain long
enough for one of them to be able to take the call of nature
This prison was far worse than Evin Prison
They were all put on trial later, My father was taken to trial wearing the chain around his neck
so Moayyer ol-Mamalek had told him that it reminded him of Yazid’s Majlis,
He Immediately asked Hajeb ol-Doleh why he was brought to trial chained
and Hajeb had replied that it was Amir Bahador’s strict orders
. He had then asked for my father to be unchained where he would defend himself
He said that he was behind the constitutional movement because the clergies whom he followed
were all for the cause and he had no other choice but to adhere. He was then exiled from Tehran
Later he had gone to Tonekabon to collect a debt, where he got invited to see Mohammad Vali
Khan Tonekaboni (1846- 1926) also known as Sepahsalar.
Together they formed a group to attack Tehran, the attack was successful.
They took over the capital. The Constitutional movement won and my father practically ran it
He served as member of Parliament for 7 terms and died about 10 years later.
The Clergyman in the photo is his father 1938
When he moved from Shiraz to Tehran, he went to Sepahsalar
School (and mosque) at the time Modarres was there as well
He was part of a group of non-Mazandarani
scholars who did not agree with the Mazandarani group’s ideas
Mazandarani scholars were supporters of Sheikh Fazlollah Noori (1843-1909)
Sheikh Fazlollah was not a fan of my father and even organized an uprising against him
My father was close with Agha Mohsen Araghi (1868-1946) and
he had even sent after my father to teach his children
Together they went to visit Sheikh Fazlollah once; when my father
drank his coffee Agha Mohsen picked up the nearly finished cup and
drank the rest saying that drinking from a pious man’s cup is a
blessing to show Sheikh Fazlollah his respect for my father
The day Sheikh Fazlollah was executed my father had no idea,
he was approaching Sepahsalar school when someone forced him into a carriage
when they reached Amirkabir Street he saw the body hanging,
he went up close and got very upset
He started cursing the protagonists and loudly said those who have
committed this crime are now in
the Russian Embassy
So he had no ill feelings towards him and
even though Sheikh had been against him, my father stood up for him.
In 1931 I went to Cyrus Primary School which also had a middle school,
we first went into the old building for a couple of years which was rented,
then we moved to a different building and the old
one was converted into a girl’s school
In 1937 I passed my 6th grade exams with excellence and became top student in the Tehran
I studied there till 1941and finished with two diplomas both in maths and literature
My father cared a lot about our education. Parallel to our studies at school,
he would teach us Islamic seminary studies at home
He made me study all 14 volumes of Jame-ol-Moghaddamaat,
whereas full time students at the Seminaries would only study 3 of them
He told me to read Zamakhshari before reading Samaddieh.
So he had very strict standards
When I went to Alborz Secondary school, it was still run by the Americans,
so all our subjects were taught in English
Morning sessions were all taught in English, Physics, chemistry algebra etc.,
and in the afternoon we would study Farsi, Arabic and Iranian History.
I was in 5th grade when the Americans left Alborz School for good
I later took the entrance exam for law school.
I got accepted and enrolled
But my father insisted I studied mathematics at the same time
, he said it would be a shame not to follow such a rational subject.
The following year I completed a degree in pure mathematics and law at Daneshsaraye Aali
It was around 1946. I must say, at that time when we took the entrance exam for law school,
other schools did not require an entrance exam
The number of Secondary school graduates was so low that
universities tended to take in students more easily
For the law exam there were 1000 candidates, only 30 of us got in.
The exam was in Persian, English and Arabic.
It was quite easy for me as I was good at all three languages
so I passed. We had excellent professors, the best in the country, many of whom had
significant political roles, some were in Dr Mosaddegh’s cabinet.
We were taught Civil Law by Dr. Mousa Ameed
(1907-1963) who had degrees in Islamic Jurisprudence,
philosophy and law, and was also sent to Europe by Reza Khan
where he acquired two phds. Our professors were very strict
There was only 30 of us who started, but only 20 continued on.
Another one of our tutors was Ali Shayegan (1902-1981),
who was one of Mosaddegh’s ministers
Dr Abdullah Moazzami (1909-1971) and Ali Asghar Pour Homayoun (1912-1974)
They were all very strict and very smart. Very strict indeed. I have heard that they’ve eliminated
many of the subjects we used to study from the current curriculum
I got my bachelor’s degree in 1945. I did law in first year and
started Maths in second year and carried on with both of them simultaneously
When I reached the third year of my Law degree I was in the second
year of my maths degree and I used to study it with utmost interest
I was 20 at the time and eligible for military service. Both the departments of Maths
and law asked for my exemption from the service
this is how they found out I was majoring in two subjects. It was right after
Dr. Mosaddegh’s 14th term when he announced the independence of universities
Dr. Siassi (1895-1990) whom I have great respect for was the head of our university,
he was an extremely strict and interested person
very involved. It was right after the 1953 Coup, they had arrested and killed 3 students
Dr. Siassi stood up for them and demanded an explanation,
he said that he would let the world know of this crime
When he heard from the minister of defence that these students had committed
offences he had replied that they had no right whatsoever to kill them
He then made Hossein Alaa the minister of the
Royal Court to console those students’ parents and families
Also after the Coup when the Shah had asked for 11 professors to be expelled
from university, Dr. Siassi had said that he would not do it, not even if they chopped his hand off
They then passed a law that the head of the university must be chosen by parliament. Dr. Iqbal
was therefore introduced and took his place
The 11 professors were removed from the university, one of whom was Dr. Bazargan who I knew;
he said it did not bother him and he started a farming and cattle company.
The university deputy was a man called Dr. Sheybani who was very strict
He called me into his office and had a go at me for studying two subjects.
I told him I thought I should be commended for that but he said
that I was absolutely in the wrong and I had to choose either maths or law or I would be expelled
I consulted Dr Mohsen Hashtroudi (1907-1976) he was very fond of me
He told me that since there was only 3 months left of my law degree
I ought to finish that and then I would be able to go back to them to continue my maths and
they would make the arrangements
There were some disagreements but I managed to go through with it
There was only 5 of us studying maths
It was extremely difficult.
This is how I came about learning French
There were no reference books,
non in FarsiThe University establishment had three major branches at the time
the medical school, the faculty of engineering and the school of Law,
all of three had their many sub branches
Daneshsara (House of Knowledge) was established for the training of
teachers by Mirza Ali-Asghar Khan Hekmat
. All the tutors we had were the best and had all come back from Europe to teach
In the fourteenth term of parliament when Dr. Mosaddegh
proposed the independence of universities
I remember he came to Law School and gave a speech in
person, Dr Moazzemi then asked him that now
that he had graced everyone with his presence would he be so kind
to make a donation to the university
Mossadegh immediately wrote and signed a request addressed to
parliament for his paycheque to go
towards the development of the university library
The University Library after the fire
I have studied all Islamic religious studies that exist.
I will show you, it’s all here. The things I have studied Mullahs themselves haven’t studied
These are really hard books that I have read
I was told that I should also see a teacher of the old traditional sciences sciences
I knew a seminarian by the name of Borghei who told me that he
knew of someone called Morteza Motahhari (1919-1979)
) who had just gotten married and the 45 tomans salary he was
getting in Qom was not enough for him. He wants to move to Tehran
I said I will give him 100. He came and we studied one of Mulla Hadi
Sabzevari’s books in 6 months,
something that usually takes 5 years
Soon he found prominence in Tehran.
From a much unbiased point of view
He was spectacular, very pious and very unique, had he stayed alive
and remained in the post Iranian
revolution process things would have been very different
His frame of thought was very similar to that of Hossein
Montazeri’s, although much stricter
He was very religious. I have very tragic memory of the incident of his passing
I was walking home in Darvazeh Shemiran when
I saw a body being taken to Torfeh Hospital
I followed and saw his face, it was him, he had been shot and was covered in blood,
, I remember that face clearly to this day.
He had been assassinated and died unfortunately
Part02
In Conversation With
Seyyed Abdullah Anvar
Part 2: Endeavours at the National Library
And Publications
At this point, the bank had exams for new employees, which I took and got in.
I felt it really wasn’t suited to me, I would be sent to serve behind a
counter and even so I did it for a year and a half
Fortunately there was the Art school that the Germans had
established in Ghavaam ol-Saltaneh Street, I took their exam
They required Maths and Physics,
I did well and became a teacher at the school
I taught geometry and algebra there for three years
It was the year 1950 when I had to sign up for military service, I enrolled at the Military Academy
and was top of the class there too
So they kept me to serve in Tehran and didn’t send me away
I served another year at Heshmatiyeh Barracks as aid to the interrogator
military courts didn’t partake in political cases at the time,
only crimes such as if a soldier would escape etc.
I taught for about 4 or 5 years
. Then their department of writing and publications was
recruiting a translator so I was transferred there for 2-3 years
At the time the director of the National Library Manuscripts was Mr. Mohaghegh
They were looking for help and so I went to work there
All the books were in our direct supervision. It wasn’t like
nowadays when there is a whole separate section for handwritten manuscripts
I stayed there for 23 years for the full term of my service and
catalogued all the manuscripts in ten volumes
The important thing we did was this cataloguing
When Iraj Afshar (1925-2011), God rest his soul, became
chairman of the library he asked me to do this and
I said to him that it had been on my own mind for a while,
I had been in the library 6 months prior to him
I had noticed there was no proper listing of
the library’s holdings of manuscripts and he agreed with me
So he commissioned a group of us, Mojtaba Minovi, Dr Zaryab Khoei, myself and himself
It was agreed that each of us would come up with 20 items
to discuss over two meetings to come up with a worksheet which we did
The worksheets had physical properties of the manuscripts
on one side and information on their content on the other
My worked continued its path to completion till 1980 when I retired
When I had set off, we were part of the Writing department of the Ministry of Culture
the ministry of culture and art was not yet established
When Mehrdad Pahlbod (1916-2018) who was related to the Pahlavis became minister
the ‘art’ title was added to the culture.
Nevertheless they paid no special attention to the national library
Until Iraj Afshar came and changed things.
Now the National Library is strong government organization
one whose director is almost as important as a minister
For example if I show you the things Alicenna has written in
his time on numbers and maths you would be astonished
He also says himself that he is not trying to portray a mathematician
but the way a philosopher encounters upon numbers and
the way they are seen through his eyes
There are things that have been associated with Descartes for a long time
but really Avicenna was the one to point them out centuries ago
He proposes translating numbers into letters
The manuscripts tell us a lot. Even in Islamic jurisprudence,
you can draw a lot of valuable legislative information from them
All libraries have a section of manuscrpts
The National Library, the Main university library, and most
important of all Malek which you mentioned,
has manuscripts that you cannot find anywhere in the world.
Haj Hossein Malek (1871- 1972) the founder of Malek
Collection was a literary and collector himself
I go there myself a lot and njoy it very much
Mojtaba Miovi (1903-1977) was a true scholar, when I started
cataloguing and listing the manuscripts he became very interested and took part
This wasn’t any normal listing, it was more of an analytical listing
you had to read the whole book with an analytical approach
and provide in depth details on the information sheet
When Minovi would visit he would ask me to show him the listing cards
I would usually try and fit a whole descrption in 5 lines and he would say it is not enough
When I told him there was no space he would tell me to
attach and staple extra notes to the card which I would
But this is where the trajedy was, when it came to
publication the ministry of culture only allocated a 500
Toman budget for it whereas we needed about 10thousand
no inevitably we had to detach the extra notes. The
catalogue that we ended up with is actually a very thorough one
a collection of ten volumes six of which are Farsi and 4 of which are Arabic
Bi Sayeh (without a shadow) documentary by Bahram Ghazanfari
Anvar had dedicated every moment of his life to those old manuscripts
Tocomplete such outstanding work in sucha limited time
with the least of facilities is truly unique
. This shows nothing but a strong personal concern for the work
(Moahammad Miri – Director of the department of handwritten manuscrpts of the National Library)
The first book I had published was a dictionary that
we were releasing regularly a volume per year
This was done under the supervision of the great linguist Dr Mohammad Moin (1918-1971)
It was still before the 1979 revoloution that we decided to celebrate
the 200th anniversary of Nader Shah by publishing two volumes on his life and reign
One was Jahangusha-i Naderi by Astarabadi a historian of
Nader Sahh’s time and the other was Durreh Nadereh
Dr Moin told me to take charge of Jahangosha and allocated Durreh to Jafar Shahidi
I was asked to give geographic descriptions of wherever
Nader Shah had stepped foot, which was very difficult
some were really small villages in Afghanistan. And after the
publication we received acknowledgements from
Afghanistan saying there had been nothing on these locations prior to the book
What really helped us put the pieces together were a few
travelogues we found at the National Library at the time
So if the text said “Nader was in such and such village…”
I would write a description of the village and
explain any difficult vocabulary there was in the text and this
all came in an Appendix which was thicker than the volume itself
We also talked about other historian’s views on Nader
I am particularly anti-tyranny and even though Nader was truly
a war genius and an honour to his empire in his militia manners
he really was a huge tyrant and one must point this out next to his achievements
Avicenna has written two books, one in philosophy which is called Shifa (the book of Healing)
and the other one is Qanun (The Canon of Medicine)
In 1955 the Iranian government set out to celebrate him officially
The Egyptians agreed to the publication of all his Arabic
work and the Iranians set out to publish all the Farsi works
I always wanted to translate Shifa and so after I retired I spent ten years working on it
It was very difficult, just even reading it. The way Avicenna
writes is very complex for example he will say “this is that”
and I had to spend a great deal deciphering what was “this” and what was “that”.
An institute recently approached me and said that they
would like to publish the Farsi and Arabic together in one volume
They also pointed out that there were a lot of mistakes in
the Arabic versions printed by the Egyptians especially in the maths section
In my translation I have offered thorough explanations for the mathematical parts and
have even included the modern formulae for the readers to be able to comprehend it more easily
So Shifa is a book consisting of, logic, natural sciences and mathematics.
The book Dorrat-ol Taaj that I worked on is by Qotb al-Din Shirazi (1236-1311)
agreat philosopher and physician
In fact he became a physician at the age of 14 and served at Fars hospital
He was later drawn more to philosophy
The book has different sections which were worked on by different people
A section on music, as he was a musician himself and used to play, a section on mathematics,
and the section on philosophy which I did a full account on
Asas al-Iqtibas which is a great work on logic
by Khajeh Nasir al-Din al-Tusi,is a book I used to teach that I
later decided to do a full descrption of
the description is just as thick as the original book itself
Bi Sayeh (without a shadow) documentary by Bahram Ghazanfari
…here we are…Issues of mathematical logic
It requires so much patience…Hopefully I can finish this in the time I have left…
Frege first set the basis of the thought that all of maths is indeed logic
Gholamhossein Mosaheb (1910-1979) wrote a good book on this subject and
I told him that I would like to help him publish it
He passed away but I managed to re-write his
7 volumes into two and get it published
Geometry indeed is very interesting, the ‘meter’
measurement first emerged in Euclidean geometry
nowadays great mathematicians have secluded this and
talk using the characteristics of elements such as line
volume, and surface which is rather difficult. For example
two points give us a line, two lines give us a point, and so on.
I have also been very interested in music, I have worked a lot on it.
Not actually playing music but the ancient texts on music
One book I have analysed that is about to be
published is Farabi’s (872AD-950AD) al-Musiqa al-Kabir
The Great Book of Music. I Also published a full narration of
the two works of Abd al-Qadir Maraghi (1360-1435) , Jami
al-alhan (The Encyclopedia of Music) and Maqasid al-alhan (Purpots of Music).
Then there was also the great Safi al-Din al-Urmawi
(1216-1294) whose book was all based on maths,
even the winding of the dutaris explained in mathematical terms
These were all inspired by the musical theory of Avicenna,
who put forward the idea that music is closely intertwined with maths
If You play one note a thousand times it will not make up for a
musical sound but two notes will be the minimum for make for such sound
as soon as you have two notes you will have to speak of
ratios which itself will take music right into mathematics
There were historically 3 ratios that were known audibly
pleasurable, one was the 2/1 or the Zolkol
Avicenna discovered this moving theory for music when he was not a musician himself
Avicenna’s Kitab al-Heywan for example is very drawn from Aristotle
The stories there are much summarised. What I have aimed to do is
reference the writings to Aristotle and include the full accounts
I am halfway through and it would be quite an encouraging reference if I could finish it
Part03
In Conversation With
Seyyed Abdullah Anvar
Part 3: Description of Works
In my opinion, the most important book he has worked on
, annotated and taught is The Shifa (The book of Healing) By Avicenna
Here in this book Avicenna practiced the peripatetic school in philosophy,
which was first founded by Aristotle
When he wanted to make an argument he would walk back and forth.
The Arabs call it Mashye deived from Masha.
During the reign of Mamon in the Abbasid period a lot of
translations were done by the Beyt al-Hikmah (the House of wisdom)
a period when Muslims wanted to discover Greek Philosophy.
Most of the translators were Christian or Jewish.
For example Hunayn Ibn Ishaq or Ishaq Ibn Hunayn. Most of the translations
they did were from the works of Aristotle, not even much from Plato.
The little that there is from Plato is the information that Aristotle had provided in his writing
Even though they had worked very hard, at this point
a superior mind was needed to decipher all of these
and the coming of Avicenna was truly a facilitator in the explanation
and interpretation of the subject. Avicenna has thoroughly
explained the Greek Peripatetic School of philosophy in Shifa
He has done this both in theoretical and practical terms.
In the theoretical section he has described Theology and Mathematics
and has offered a full explanation of Aristotle
He has also pointed out a few times in the text that he has
offered further analysis into the subject
in a separate volume called appendices which has been lost and we do not have access to it.
This might be one of Islamic science’s greatest and most unfortunate losses.
But what we do have access to is its section on theology
maths and natural science. Unfortuanetly
I have heard that they are not teaching these in the Iranian Hawzas these days.
Anvar’s annotations on The book of Healing
You can see this man’s genius so clearly in the logic and Mathematics sections
especially when you look at its Greek counterparts
The Medieval Philosophy demonstrated in the Maths
section of the book is consisted of four sciences:
Arithmetic, Geometry, old astronomy and music
In geometry he demonstrates his masterpiece of a mind
through explaining theorems using a handful
of reasons rather than 20 for example
He says himself that he is offering a summarised reasoning
His approach in theological philosophy also formed the
basis of work in philosophy in the Islamic world.
There were two schools of thought that explored science in Islam, one in the east that included Iran
and one in the west that went as far as Andalucía in Spain
. At the time Ibn Rushd (Averroes) did some work as well,
and in no way do I mean to put his work down but it is far less substantial than
Avicenna’s work and he even makes references to it.
There have been many philosophers
who had wanted to criticise the work of Avicenna
only to find themselves wrong halfway,
This happens for example in Mantiq al-Molakhas.
So he had a truly brilliant mind and way of thinking in the way he saw matters.
He says himself that all of his education was up to the age
of 18, whatever he has done afterwards, he has done through his own observations
So Avicenna’s work, truly Iranian, is really the basis of
Islamic thought and works and even Ibn Khaldun has said at some point that “whatever we have,
we have from the Iranian doctrine, whose excellence has appeared in the work of Avicenna”.
In the natural Sciences section of his book,
we take an object and study it through matter for example
however the power of natural sciences today, which has taken a turn after
renaissance and presented us with things like modern physics which is formed
on the basis of Greek thought, is far more superior
So the sciences that Avicenna talks about is not so much
referable because there has been so much
more experience involved in modern day science that those ancient studies are quite outdated.
But his work in mathematics is still excellent and beautifully illustrated.
Today there is only majorly talk of one type of number, whereas there are 5 types of numbers.
Imaginary numbers, real numbers, transcendental
numbers like Pi, rational and irrational and natural numbers
which Avicenna has explained thoroughly in his book of
arithmetic illustrating the relationship between these numbers as well
There are matters of the subject which we
are teaching in higher arithmetic these days
An example of which is the usage of letters instead of numbers which nowadays is
wrongly attributed to Descartes
So for example he has presented the reader with
a problem and tells the reader not to mistake it for a distinct situation,
, for if you substitute the numbers with letters you will see that I am talking in general terms.
I have fully explained this all and hopefully it will be published.
An example is if we say 5+3=8 this is a special and distinct case
but if we say a+b=c this is a general statement which can include many alternatives
Or even greater than this, one can refer to quadratic
equations where x could represent any number.
This is exactly what Avicenna describes as a general
statement that could be made distinst using numbers
And people know this to have been stated by Descartes these days like I mentioned before.
There are lot of examples of modern discoveries in his text.
Gilson Has rightfully stated that in the
west no one has discovered Essentialism the way Avicenna has.
And I have translated those works of him.
‘Without a Shadow’ documentary by Bahram Ghazanfari
Avicenna’s range of works is so diverse and the person
who gathered the most thorough list of his works
is the late Dr Yahya Mahdavi (1908-2000) who found and
listed 120 papers. Another person who dedicated
the final years of his lifetime to Avicenna was one of his
students named Abu ‘bayd al-Juzjani who documented very valuable details of his mentor’s life
From what we can see, it seems Avicenna was Shiite. And Mahmud Ghazni who
was very anti-Shia was after him just as he was after Abu Rayhan
When he conquered Rey (now in South of Tehran) he burnt all Shia books,
the damage he caused was more than the Mongols in a way
Avicenna spent most of his life travelling to be far away from him
It is known that he spent some time in now what we know as Gorgan
He even wrote the Book of Wisdom for Ala al-Dawla the ruler of Isfahan, providing
the basics of philosophy for his Royal court
Avicenna went to Isfahan and then to
Hamedan from there to stay as far from Mahmud as possible.
He eventually fell ill and passed away in Hamedan at the approximate age of 58.
Juzjani writes that when he took a medicine it didn’t have any effect on him and he knew it
he said that the thing which has to cure the body is already a lost cause
His translation and analysis of Almagest completely corresponds to the latin version.
This is his book of natural sciences.
His medicinal work is outstanding
Some of the work he has done is very Freudian
He says for example that someone was shouting
“I am a cow” and I said to him well it seems you are
, the man said “I am a cow you need to chop my head
off” and I examined him and said, “do you know what?
I think you have become slightly thin, take this medicine and you will be fine”.
So his Psychoanalytic work is very interesting including a lot of which we are seeing today
So there were two Physicians who made significant
difference, one was Muhammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi 854- 925AD
who was a clinical physician,
in the way that he had lots of patients
Avicenna however was very scientific, he knew of all the major branches of medicine
he had excellent knowledge of pharmacology and
has written 4 or 5 books on the subject which will be published soon
I would only point out two problems with him
one is that he assumed everyone understood his ingenuity
so when he makes a statement he does not explain it
and the other is that his language of writing is very
ancient and so quite difficult to comprehend
But he is in fact the first person to write on philosophy in Persian
He says somewhere in his memoirs that “I am now with Ala ud-Daula Simnani and
he has asked me to inscribe a book for his court…” which came to his book of logic
, natural sciences and theology. Avicenna is the first person
to bring Persian words into his literature instead of Arabic
For example instead of Mosallas (Arabic for triangle) he has used Segousheh (3 sided shape).
He was very good at vocabulary
It is worth noting that over most periods in history religious groups were against him
One of the first to write against him with sheer prejudice was Al-Ghazali
which I have explained in the introduction to the book of Arithmatic,
that he didn’t even understand Avicenna’s writing
Part of his disagreement with him was also down to ambition and not of the positive kind
You can find it not just with Avicenna but with Farabi as well,
it is said about them that they commit 30 sins
Part of the programme Shokaran by Payam Fazeli Raad
These people very quickly refuted reason, the first of whom
who had the guts to do so was Ghazali who wrote 20 chapters in his book called
‘The incoherence of the Philosophers’ that Avicenna has gone astray by 17 ways he deemed as sin
And more over in 3 ways that makes him and his followers utterly irreligious
Neither did Ghazali understand philosophy or the works of philosophers,
nor did he really deeply care about religion
Towards the end he even became psychotic and decided to be a Sufi
I will explain his way of Sufism later, but he had this illusion
that he was wiser and above everyone else in every subject
In philosophy he had realized that Farabi and Avicenna were more advanced than him
, and his thirst for fame was so much that while attacking them
in his writing he has even mentioned their names
In the same book he accuses them of disbelief in
God and to prove himself he explains his own work in philosophy
one of which is called ‘The Aims of Philosophers’
which is a literal word for word translation of Avicenna’s Philosophical Book of Wisdom
which he had wrote for Ala al-dawla’s employees of his royal
court, and Ghazali aimed to stand against Avicenna’s Shifa with this book
The Safavid era saw the birth of a type of philosophy
called transcendent Theosophy which has two poles
; Religion and reason which are combined in this school of thought
There is a brilliant 20th century book called The Decline of The
West (1918) by German author Oswald Spengler.
He explains that we have so far gone through two stages of mentality
He refers to the Greek Hellenistic period where all was ruled by reason
meaning that if anything was confirmed and verified by reason everyone was to accept it.
A great example of this was Plato’s Phaedo, in which
we are informed of Socrates’s execution by drinking a poison hemlock
he was told by his followers that they had spoken to the prison warden and
that they could flee him from prison before the sentence
, Socrates had replied “How can I do that when
I have always told everyone that all must abide by the rules of Athens
what will the people think of me when they see
I have broken the law the day it has become against me”.
With this one logical reason his scholars were silenced and accepted his will
Then Spengler explains that later on belief came into the equation alongside reason
This caused a lot of Christian institutions to rise and
go above reason till later when they were weakened again
Only in Islam there came a point where the two
complemented each other and contributed to one another
(belief and reason) which brings us to the amazing Transcendent Theosophy of Mulla Sadra.
Mulla Sadra was an utter theologian, he has tried to talk
about some parts of Avicenna’s Shifa but it seems only the simpler and easier parts
But yes, he did very well demonstrate the synchrony of belief and reason
Avicenna has a simple book called al-Isharaat wa al-Tanbihaat
(Remarks & Admonitions) in which he has explained some philosophical matters
. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi has written a commentary
of this book and mentioned a few problems in his opinion with Avicenna’s work
Sharh al- Isharaat is a philosophical commentary written
by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in defence of Avicenna
This is one of the first books the students of philosophy used to
study by which they would comprehend three frames of mind (that of Tusi, Razi and Ibn Sina)
Now this has been substituted by Mulla Hadi Sabzevari’s Sharh al-Manzumah
I have done a commentary on both Razi and Tusi’s work
and in my opinion Razi’s arguments are sometimes stronger
however in the end they are all disciples of Avicenna
Fakhruddin Razi (Imam Razi) is also known amongst
philosophers as Imam al-Mushakkikin or Imam of the Skeptics
He raises very valuable doubts in almost everything [Fakhr al-Din al-Razi 1150-1210]
He has vast writings on logic and then he has gone
onto writing on philosophy of the peripatetic school
This is all from about 1000 years ago
In Mantiq al-Molakhas he has describedissues to do with Logic from a sceptical perspective
he is mainly under the influence of Avicenna,
and points where he disagrees with him if you dig deep
you will realize that Avicenna is in the right
For example, with the famous sentence that states “human beings are rational animals”
he treats rational as an adjective, whereas it is a differentia.
A differentia in Logic, is a predicable, one can say it is the metaphysical part of an object
if you take it away the object becomes meaningless
It is distinguished against the species by expressing the (specific) essence of the object
only partially and against the genus by expressing the determining rather than
the determined part of the essence
The big mistake that Razi made was that he misinterpreted Nateq or
‘rational’ in that sentence for ‘speech’ or Notq
At one point he says there is a possibility that Notq will no longer exist but the object will
meaning mankind will be alive with no power of speech,
silence; well that is a huge error
Saying that his skeptic account of logic is actually very interesting and is being read up to this day
Mosnefaat by Baba Afzal Kashani
Baba Afzal Kashani (Afdal al-Din-Kashani died 1213/14), was truly one of the grandees of his time
It seems like he belonged to the Ismaili branch of Shi’ism
He wrote approximately ten books, his Mantiq Mobin is full of wisdom and quite short
The late Mojtaba Minovi published his work and I
have done a commentary on all of them which I will show you
A lot of his work includes philosophy
Thinking processes and religious matters but like I said the best of his
work is the Mantiq Mobin which is his very in-depth work on Logic
This is Farabi’s Musiqa al-Kabir, all its pages have been annotated
, and it is truly a masterpiece on Islamic Music.
I have done a fully annotated and commented on this
Interviewer asks: will you publish this?
And Anvaar replies: no I don’t think so unless someone wants to… can you put this book there?..)
Farabi (872-950)- The first book on music in the Islamic world, was written by an Indian
which explained translations of Greek music, it is quite a small book
But then Farabi wrote the brilliant Musiqa al-kabir,
however unfortunately four chapters are completely missing
Dr Khanlari, even though he was not an expert in music but he
agreed to do a Persian translation of it
vast works have also been done on this book in Egypt
I have included all of these in my annotations
which will hopefully be published following the translation
Truly a masterpiece in Islamic culture
As a practicing musician himself, Farabi has explained
the most difficult parts of music, he of undeniable excellence
Amongst those who practiced Radifi Music (Radif meaning order)
we can name Darvish Khan (1872-1926) and because he lived in the Qajar Period
he knew Faraji music as well
His playing of Tar is spectacular.
I have to say the traditional Persian music we have acquired is one of the highest forms of music
Well it doesn’t have the harmony or the orchestral group performances of western music,
but it is of high mystical significance
Aristotle
Muhammad Hassan Lotfi Tabrizi (1919-1999) has translated Aristotles work from three languages
(French, German and to some extent English) to Persian so not directly from the Greek text
May he rest in peace, he used to ask me to
check his text and I would check it with the English copy
which I have right there on the shelf; a few volumes have been published,
for example his Metaphysics and Ethics
Aristotle says that by writing this book he has gone
beyond the physics (natural science) and maths that he had taught so far
and explored and distinguished it as the contemplative philosophy that explores the divine
This is not the same as the metaphysics texts that
Muslims had in hand later on which was mixed with superstition
this Metaphysics is solely explanatory of whatever that is not physics that he used to teach
And Avicenna has also has a book on this in which he follows Aristotle
Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus by
Wittgenstein (1889-1951) comes in two volumes, it is a
quite recent piece of work done in the 20th century)
Wittgenstein was a young man who goes to England to
pursue work in Engineering, but he gets drawn to the classes of Bertrand Russell
and later he came up with a theory, stating that most of the differences among
philosophers lies within their use of words and language;
that they have misinterpreted each other through the spoken words
The book I mentioned was translated and we used to
teach it all the time but I have no idea how it was lost
His book is divided in two volumes one of which is his
investigations in which he modifies this statement, which in fact is largely true
Now this exact theory was stated by Avicenna 1000 years ago
I will give you an example, when you say large and small are opposites
Avicenna says there is no such thing, if small doesn’t exist large has no meaning
therefore they are part of one another
So as you can see it all lies in the way you explain it
with words. Wittgenstein has argued this very extensively
and he has very high respect amongst philosophers up to this day
Another 20th century book, Evolution de la Vie by Henri Bergson a great
French philosopher who seems to have been Jewish
the book explains the evolution of life and evolution in general,
and states that the time for this evolution which is
spoken of is different to time in its definition in physics
This has also been argued a lot in mystical studies
I translated this book of Bergsonian Evolution about
The translation came out as quite a decent piece of work.
The Critique of Pure Reason (first published in 1781) by Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Kant raised a great theory, Epistemology. What is Epistemology?
It is the process of knowing something, it is the question
of what image do you see in your mind when you physically see something
When your sense comprehension and feeling is activated you are cut from the outside world and
it all becomes a subjective issue of the mind dealing with senses and sensibility
The whole of the outside world becomes merely your knowledge of it
So really, the outside world is an unknown realm that can only be known through the senses
And if someone else sees things another way through
their senses and their understanding of the world
, then it becomes something else altogether.
Like Rumi’s poem “You held a blue glass before your eye
for that reason the world seemed you to be blue”
The main thing that Kant points out is that up to his
time, the senses and the mind would be a subsidiary of the outside world
whereas he states that actually the mind entails all of the outside world and is above it
There is a point when the outside world wants to introduce itself to me
, but there’s also a point at which I want to get to know about the outside world
So just as your heart’s duty is to beat until its alive, your
mind also needs to thrive to know until the end
to gain knowledge and this takes place through various devices or ‘a priori’ as he calls it
This is what Kant states and it is divide into three sections: static,
analytic and dialectic through which he explains his arguments
As a matter of fact the Kantian point of view sits totally against David Hume (1711-1776)
whatever you know is through experience
For example you are asked whether the boiling point of water is 100 degrees
and you say you are not sure, well you can try bringing some water to boil and see if it is
Kemp Smith brings up the question that what happens
after the first second third etc time that you experienced it?
And Hume who is a famous English philosopher known
for his influential system of philosophical empiricism
but in my opinion these are fake attacks, at the end what
he says is closer to Kant which is even if it is all down to experience
, that experience must be caught and stored by the mind; and Kant has truly
made an influence; and we are working on it.
Without a shadow documentary by Bahram Ghazanfari
Who knows Tehran, its streets, back alleys, niches,
microcosm, houses and who they belonged to
who bought them, the stories and history behind them, I they still exist or what was built instead…
who knows this city better than Anvaar?
He knows all the neighbourhoods of this city, even the ones that have been knocked down and
built over with 20 storey buildings
, he knows who owned which houses, who bought or inherited it, how and in
what ration the lands were divided…
Anvaar: this is the map of Tehran from 1891
This map is very significant in explaining the very first
routes of the city and its developments up to this day
We had actually divided this map in many sections,
and we were going through the neighbourhoods one by one
and having it published in a periodical
however once we reached Ghavam ol-Saltaneh Street
unfortunately that Journal stopped being published and
my work was therefore left half done
Part04
In Conversation With Seyyed Abdullah Anvar
Part 4: A Contemporary History of Iran
From The Constitutional Revolution to the 1953 coup d’état
Economic difficulties create substance for revolutions according to philosophers
When a revolution has a constitutional face, it is in my opinion induced by foreigners
Having prepared the masses who were exhausted by poverty, dictatorship, oppression
injustice and promiscuity especially during the reign of Mozaffar al-Din Shah
(Qajar) to begin in uprising
the country was also very much permeated Colonialism at the time
The first sparks of this revolution were caused by the increase in the price of sugar lump
Ala al-Dawla (1904-1950) was the ruler of Tehran, A very oppressive one.
It was a common saying among people that Shemr’s dagger could be found in his house
All this did cause unhappiness in society and formed the basis for
foreign intervention in the people’s movement for justice
This later rose beyond and went on to a quest for democracy which is one of
mankind’s most major achievements
But for a country who had no knowledge of this prior to that time,
one can be sure that the foreigners in fact did have something to do with it
When we read the history of democracy in the world, as Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) puts it
French literature was screaming revolution for 60 years, and a vast
number of scientists and thinkers had
to gather to teach people about law and legislation
nonetheless the French Revolution was still deficient in some aspects
But Iran never had an education of this sort. We took western legislation
templates to write our own
, without having any in-depth knowledge of it. 110 years have
passed and what we are still left with is a constitutional façade
void of any real meaning; just the appearance of it, not the constitution we ultimately want
saying that it is worth mentioning that people are not really even ready or well prepared for that
This is my opinion, some might disagree and some may agree.
Tehran in The Qajar Period (1901)
Mozaffar al-Din Shah touring Europe (1902)
Mozaffar al-Din Shah had vast expenses for his trips
He would take loans from The Imperial Bank of Persia (also known as the
British Bank of the Middle East)
and Accounting and Loan bank of Persia (established by the Russians)
He spent so much loaned money that the British started refusing him loans towards the end
Mahmoud Alamir (Ehtesham ol-Saltaneh 1863-1935) who was Iran’s ambassador to Germany
has written of their shameful behavior on these trips in his diaries
Ehtesham ol-Saltaneh was truly one of Iran’s noblemen who later became
the speaker of the Parliament of Iran
All these fueled the anger of Iranians to rise for the constitutional
revolution, seemingly brought to them by the west
This false democracy, was taken not just to Iran but to any country of the
same caliber with who has a constitution today
With any ideology there exists an opposition, for instance the existing
governing mechanisms who are not in line
with the people’s rights today are even stronger than they were when
the constitutional revolution was formed;
they are and have been in constant dialectic, and will be until one overcomes the other
It is very important that true freedom and democracy must come with the appropriate training
When a society is given freedom without having a clear understanding
of the true definition of freedom
the consequences of this will no doubt be very dire
I believe strongly that freedom should come when there is a tolerance for it
A very small example of this is more and more people living in apartments
without knowing the basics of the culture of this kind of symbiosis
There were no female scientists, and in fact not many male ones either
The issue of hijab and the gender separation in public was very strong
I was reading the diaries of Zahra Taj-ol Saltaneh (1883-1936) daughter of
Naser al-Din Shah who didn’t have a good reputation
It is quite evident that she did not write the book herself
she says in it that all ‘we women’ are constantly fighting for is the right to vote
is the right to a voice; the book is very interesting
Apparently they did also publish bulletins around the time of the revolution,
but the fight for women’s rights at the time wasn’t very profound
Maybe when Islam and its rules first emerged, women’s rights were
practiced with regards and in relation to how things were before that time
and even though it did not immediately negate slavery,
it brought many rules which were against the act of slavery
If we want to refer to the Islam of 1400 years ago, it was not an
atmosphere of women being shoulder to shoulder with men
I was even talking to a very intellectual woman, she said to me “your Quran is very male”
and I think at the time of the constitutional revolution it was the
same, if there are women or in fact men who claim otherwise
it is false as they had no proper understanding of such definitions
The Iranian Constitutionalism was not real, it was brought by the British
they had not the slightest idea what freedom meant
As I said according to Russell it took 70 years for French writers to become
the voice of the revolution, which was led by great individuals
And what happened, it went through with Napoleon Bonaparte whom also
caused the French a great deal of hardship
The great writers and phillosophers behind the French revolution were
the Encyclopedists such as Diderot,
D’Alambert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (etc)
who formed the basis of leading thought in the world with his theories
A significant one is his theory of Social Contract that states law is established by the people
it is; and it should change by people themselves
This is what I also said when I was asked in an interview, so it does not come from a divine source
For example in Nafayes al-Fonoun (Precious Arts) which is an encyclopedia of Islamic science,
is said that Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence) should constantly
change in accordance with the ever changing life of societies
During the process of constitutionalism, only at one point
was it based on people; when the complaints with the sugar lump
tradesman happened and people said they needed a judiciary
So they went into the British embassy and came out with a constitution
A fake and false democracy; we have a parliament, that member of
parliament, is he true representative a true defendant of the right of the people?
Is he really chosen by the people?
Is there a truly democratic ballot box anywhere in the world that one could add fake votes to?
My friend, this is an example of a false democracy
Haj Mohammad Taghi Bonakdar (number 21 in the photo)
was someone who gave money to the protesters on strike in the British embassy
one of the key individuals from the bazaar of Tehran in the constitutional revolution.
He used to visit our house
One day I asked him why it was that they called him haj mohammad taghi
Sefaarati (Sefarat meaning embassy)
he said at the very beginning of the movement I would make a lot of noise and
lead people in the Bazaar to voice their complaints
He said that “Seyyed Abdollah Behbahani (prominent leader and
father of the constitutional movement)
and Seyyed Mohammad Tabatabai) were at the grand mosque and
wanted to go to Shah Abdolazim to sit on strike they sent after me
I went to Shah Mosque, then did a Ghusl at the hamam and asked a
clergy for an Istikhara, to make a decision to see if I should join them
He said that it is good and I should go. I went to the grand mosque,
the room was full of smoke and I was short of breath
I went and told Seyyed Abdollah that the room is suffocating ,
he allowed me to open the openings for fresh air
He called me and said you will go to the British embassy tomorrow with your assistant
I asked him wether they would let me in and he said that they had had a
talk with the embassy and that all seemed fine to proceed.”
He said that the day he went they had not let him in through the main doors
on Naderi street (Ferdowsi) but through a staff entrance at the back
He said they went in and people followed them inside
“However the embassy would not pay for the costs of staying there,
I had a shop that I sold for 39,950 Tomans and spent it on the cause
Later when there was a parliament, I said that I had to give away my main source of income,
so Mokhber ol-Dawla paid me back 10,000 and haj Amin ol-Zarb also
gave me another 10K and like that I made all the money I had spent.”
.”. You see, this is the way our constitutional revolution formed. It wasn’t profound
For a real and successful revolution to take place, fundamental elements are
needed otherwise it is not a revolution it is more like a rebellion
it is not a revolution it is more like a rebellion
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) has a detailed book on this subject called On Revolution (1963),
which must be read, it is a very good book and it has been translated too Farsi
She states that if a revolution does not take place properly through the
right devices then it is just a social mayhem
Although I have to add that nowadays, Economists, Anthropologists and sociologists say
that Revolution is the worst thing that can happen to a society
Maybe one of the reasons why Marx’s theory didn’t succeed is that,
being under the influence of the French revolution
he proposed the Russian revolution which showed a lot of weaknesses,
and which left society with despair,
anger, fights upon different groups of people
poverty, dictatorships, life under the pressure of security agencies and secret services etc
Today Philosophers such as Habermas and for example the Frankfurt School (for social theory which
was also one of the greatest schools for Marxist thinking) are totally against revolution
Instead they propose that change should come gradually, in an evolutionary manner.
The 21st century is a whole new era for information technology
All these new innovations and the ever developing scope of the internet
have become means to inform
and educate societies and raising their awareness which is truly miraculous and fascinating
I took a taxi the other day and was absoloutely thrilled just looking at the
GPS map displayed omn the screen with all the information attached to it
Well this is a very different time to the time of th great French revolution,
or the Industrial revolution in Britain which came later
Today people have become a lot more aware, but also alongside the
people the policing system has become stronger as well
They can access the type of personal information that neither Teymour nor
Changiz with all their tyranny could not have reached over their reigns
Imagery from approximately 1920
Tehran, used to be a city of ruins, surrounded by a ditch.
It was formed during the reign of Shah Tahmasp
Qazvin used to be the capital city at the time. On his third trip to Emamzadeh Hamzeh,
Tahmasp decided to develop Tehran as a city
It had been on the route of his journeys for a while
At the time, Tehran was bounded by Cheragh Bargh Street on the North, Cyrus Street on the west
Jalil Abaad Street (now called Hafiz) on the east on Mowlavi on the south
It was very small city. In 1868 Naser al-Din Shah went to Toopkhaneh Square and
decided for the limits of the city to be 1500 feet to the North of the square and 1000 feet on east,
west and south, bordered by a ditch and with 12 gates to the city
This was the new Tehran of the old days
Reza Shah made Karim Buzarjomehri (1886-1951) a military general, the mayor of Tehran
He worked well for the city but he made the mistake of filling up the
ditch around the city (which he confessed t o later on), we used to live on Saadi street
and during this process of filling, many houses had to step back and
parts of our home and many other’s was lost
He modernized the streets and the life of the people as much as he
could. He even changed the way people dressed
Tehran during the years 1929-1937
They say very bad things of him, but in Reza Shah’s defense, the modern
city we have today is the result of his
extensive work and the basis he built for it during his years as Shah
In the diaries of Mirza Ali Asghar Hekmat, which is beautifully written
and must be read by our youth, he mentions that Reza Shah had very strict work rules
he would say that you are mandated to work hard from dawn to dusk and
if I find out that you have misplaced even a penny
, I will imprison you like I did with Mansour al-Mulk (Ali Mansur).
He had also ordered the government not to rely on oil income for their budget;
whereas now all our economists our saying that what we have now is a single product economy
Reza Shah is also very often criticized for the issuing and enforcement of
Kashf-i Hijab (the banning of the veil)
but you mustn’t forget, there are vast differences between a developed and undeveloped country.
Jefferson who wrote the constitution of the United States, told
Rochambeau and other advocates of the French Revolution
not to model the revolution they had formed in the States, as he believed
that theirs would become a revolution for the hungry and poor
which it did. So as you can see, a model that works perfectly well for
one country, will not work for another
So hijab should be a matter of choice, but it got out of hand. There was no
way you could take the judiciary system out of the hands of the mullas
My father himself was a member of parliament for 7 terms
He went the Mullas who had striked in Shah Abdolazim with Ayatollah Modarres
(Motamen ol-Molk also known as Hossein Pirnia had tolf them to go
together as representatives of parliament)
He said that Modarres rented a carriage for 5 Tomans and told the
coachman that he could take other passengers on board
the carriage fell over; he said that he had actually landed on top so he
pulled an upset Modarress out
who told the coachman that he hadn’t paid so much money to be fallen over with
a carriage full of people, and the coachman had attacked and hit him
Right at that point Modarress raised his hands to the sky
and prayed “Oh God, will a day come when we will be freed?”
these are his exact words. Which is in fact what Reza Shah did,
he brought security
I am not defending Reza Shah, I am just stating the historical fact, that when he gained power,
if you wanted to travel from Tehran to Isfahan, you would be robbed and
stripped of all your belongings by bandits on the way
for example (Nayeb Hossein Kashi in Kashan was be one of them). He was very powerful,
Nearly all the conquests that Nader Shah had made in his time was made by Reza Shah too
except for a couple of places including India (I published Nader’s book I would know)
He did turn into a dictator towards the end but I also think that had a lot
to do with the people around him and
the extreme flattery he received that is part of Iranian behavioral identity
I always tell my students as well, if you want to live a good life, you have
to read the contemporary history the last 100 years of your country
In Qajar there were periods that the government was truly inadequate, for
example the time when they all came back from their long journey and
Tehran had been hit with Cholera and famine and was left
with 70000 dead just lying around the city
Mirza Hassan Ashtiani (Mostowfi ol-Mamalek) was asked many times to form an army,
but every time he would say that “form it yourself and I can even pay out of my own pocket for it”
As soon as Reza Shah came into power for the first three months
(it was during the 4th term of parliament),
every time he went to parliament he had conquered somewhere,
so much so that they started calling him hojjat ol-Islam and all the
constitutionalists including Modarres where in his favor
At one point Modarres put pressure on Reza Shah to employ Shokrullah
Khan Ghavam ol-Doleh as minister
he was so corrupt that he had been expelled from the royal court of
Mozaffareddin Shah; Reza Shah sent Modarres
At one point Modarres put pressure on Reza Shah to employ Shokrullah
Khan Ghavam ol-Doleh as minister
a message asking rhetorically whether he thought this was a good
idea, and in the end he was forced to appoint him as minister anyway
When the day came when Reza Shah was abdicated, Modarres spoke in
Parliament speaking of the existing incompetence
he stated that the constitution was
against the total elimination the Qajar family
whereas Ahmad Shah himself had left and had said that he never wanted to come back.
The second person was Hossein Ala’ and the third was Dr. Mosaddegh
They were replied to by 3 individuals. Davari answered Taghizadeh, Yasaei replied to Ala’ and
my father answered Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had said that (and his speech still exists)
we all strongly believe that Reza Shah worked tremendously well over the past 4 years
, he has brought security to the country,
he is a man of duty, and you are abdicating a man who has been beneficial to the country;
my father had replied
“well yes I agree, but can you prevent Mohammad Hassan Mirza (crown prince of Qajar)
from the sabotage he has been causing Reza Shah?
Or in fact the whole Qajar family…” and then parliament voted against Reza shah and
the government and administration was changed.
The Last Shah 1982
Reza Shah spent a lot of money on his becoming King; my father never
received a penny and everyone knew
He even became member of parliament I the 12th term and when Reza Shah was gone my father
thought “there is good in what happened”
and believed that indeed he had turned into a dictator
Russia was taken over by communism, and had borders with the Caspian Sea,
it had sent ships towards Iranian waters
; this is before Reza khan became king, the Persian Cossack Brigade was sent by the
government to confront the communists
they were defeated and fleed back to a place near Qazvin
The Iranian troops at the time where under the orders of a Russian commander
since the government had suspected him to have become a communist too and so they
removed him and replaced him by British Field Marshal Edmund Ironside (1880-1959)
He was commander general of the British Army in Egypt in the first world war.
After the war Britain intended to withdraw forces as soon as possible as it was costly
Ironside was preparing to withdraw forces from Iraq when he was made chief
commander of the Persian Cossack Brigade to replace Starosselsky
At the time, they had been defeated by the communist and had set back
The communists had taken over many regions including Rasht
Mirza Kuchak Khan had even written a letter To Lenin criticizing the soviet communism
, which we bought for the national archives
Ironside states in his diary that when he came to Iran he was so busy with work that he asked
the British commander of Qazvin to introduce a military colonel to him
He chose Reza Khan, and was impressed by the fact that despite
having Malaria he was very composed and strong in his appearance
Ironside was also told that Reza Khan also had the best soldiers. He directly says in his diary
and this is his exact words “we told him to orchestrate a coup d’état”,
and interestingly even the British Ambassador didn’t know about the
coup plans which caused him to leave after it
Therefore when Reza khan became Shah he was very well received and warmly
welcomed by many including Seyyed Zia’eddin Tabataba’i (1889-1969)
(he arrested many including my father after the Coup of 1953)
Zia was with the British, although he had had no part in the rising of Reza Khan,
but he was informed by Lord Curzon to join the British
I read in Orang’s Diary that he used to read Ferdowsi in the mornings to Reza Shah
he writes that one day when he went to the Shah, he was very infuriated,
they got in the car as ordered by the Shah when Davar told them that he had sorted
the judicial system for him
but he did not have enough power for the Supreme Court as it was run by
a group of politicians who would start at 11 am
one of whom was Mirza Mahdi Ashtiani, who would read Asfaar for everyone
and just like that the day would end with all the cases piling up
So Davar told Reza Shah “I cannot deal with them”
Orang continues “Reza Shah got angry, we went to parliament,
he was furiously smoking his cigarette until it was about 10:30/ 11
Why aren’t you working? He called Davar forward and told him to fire everyone and
classify all the cases and documents to be attended to as soon as possible…”
He went up the building, faced those men and said, what is this? Ghanbar’s Café?
Why aren’t you working? He called Davar forward and told him to fire everyone and
classify all the cases and documents to be attended to as soon as possible…”
this resulted in an enhanced and efficient Supreme court. Davar even suggested
for a Mulla to sign on his behalf
( I knew his name, he had studied/worked with my father) but he refused,
and Davar used to say that this is the strict system that
I created, it won’t even necessarily listen to me
Reza Shah was slowly bringing in the Germans to get rid of the British, till the summer of 1941
One of Hitler’s mistakes was that he had left Russia in such a state, German commanders were
constantly taking over various Soviet regions
Genral Rommel was one of them. And do you know,
I have so much respect for the Germans
the evolution of modern thought is very much indebted to them
one another, these four were Schopenhauer
Schelling, Fichte and Hegel; the world had never seen such a phenomenon where one
philosopher could totally annihilate the theories of the other
After Calculus, new mathematics which we are teaching today was brought to the
world by Frege, a whole new logic of maths was created by the Germans
They were the same in their military artistry, with their incredible generals
When Rommel used dummy tanks to deceive the British Army,
and the English have confirmed this, he succeeded
The days were so hot that you could fry an egg on these tanks
Churchill had expressed deep disappointment and sadness about the incident and
Roosevelt had told him not to dwell on it so much
and that war has its ups and downs
And they had all turned against Hitler at the time, they wanted to end the war
The British had reached the Crimean Peninsula, they had to send
troops for back up to Russia and the best way was to send them through Iran
(because of its roads and railways) but this was all in the name
of stopping the Germans, really they just intended to invade Iran
(Anglo-Soviet invasion of Ir an- 1941).
After that there was relative freedom in the country for about ten to twelve years,
the newspapers and tabloids had a good amount of freedom and people could talk freely
. The Day Mohammad Reza became Shah I was standing in front of parliament watching
There was that English saying “The Camels must go” (the book), and
I think that the Britons even wanted rid of Mohammad Reza
at the time prime minister Mohammad Ali Foroughi (1877-1942) was the mediator between
Iran and the British diplomats and even though he was ill
he attended all the meetings firmly and told them that they were after their own welfare
in the country and that that should be enough for them
He formed the Constituent Assembly and the Senate
they changed the constitution forming the basis of Mohammad Reza becoming Shah later on
. For two and a half years Dr. Mosaddegh stood up to the Shah and for a period
Ahmad Qavam (Qavam os-Saltaneh) did the same
but when the Shah became empowered by the Americans, intelligence and
security services such as SAVAK were formed who really had their foot on the neck of society.
(Newspaper offices of approximately 1931)
At the time there were only two papers, Ettela’aat and Koushesh.
And then other papers started following,
people were not that familiar with freedom of speech.
All the while a paper called Mard-e Emrooz (Man of Today)
also started being published. It wasn’t a daily paper,
it came out every two days, and it would swear at anyone and anything,
and it had lots of buyers. In a society where there is not much social
growth freedom of press can cause the worst of attacks on other sects of society.
Nowadays it is the same if you look on the internet. Although people did slowly
start to become familiar with this notion of freedom.
And then at one point the Tudeh Party of Iran started its propaganda and did what it did.
On Saturday the 21st of Mehr, at the 2nd armored division club,
this is the appeal trial of the first group of officers affiliated with the dismissed Tudeh Party of Iran
whom were sentenced to death at the first district court of law
The hearing started with the leading of Commander in Chief
Mozayyen and Brigadier General Azmoodeh as the prosecuting attorney
The list of of the defendants is as follows:
Colonel Mobasheri, Colonel Siamak, Major Vazirian, First Lieutenant Afraakhteh, Mr. Keyvan
I was familiar with them, we were classmates with Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923-1969),
and we attended the same university. We knew Khalil Maleki, (1901-1969)
and we used to converse and argue with him about different issues and often
we even mentioned criticisms
Anvar Khamei (1917-2018) in his book of The Fifty and Three,
explains how the Tudeh Party went down a wrong path
he expands on how out of a total of 53 of them three people betrayed the group and
gave away their information and caused for them to be imprisoned.
The 53 individuals who were arrested including Dr. Arani had great luck that Reza Shah
bestowed a level of grace upon them,
in a similar incident that took place in Egypt, all the accused were sent to military
court after which they were all sentenced to death and shot dead.
What I am telling you I am sure of as I heard it from an authentic source. When those 53
people were arrested during the Reign of Reza Pahlavi
Ahmad Matin Daftari (1897-1971) was minister of Justice at the time, Matin Daftari
was also our professor at Law School around the years of 1944/1945.
He used to teach us criminal law in fact, and when he was explaining
a few who were associated with the Tudeh Party started complaining, and he said please;
stay calm, I have been at the center of this all, I know the full story
He said that I had to take a list of these 53 individuals to Reza Shah and when
I did, the Shah asked me to check if they had had any sort of affiliation with foreigners
and if not; “just show them a little retribution”.
Anvar Khamei mentions in his book that they were actually quite respected in prison.
He explains that when he was arrested he was taken to Nazmieh (Police) when
the Chief heard him say that he had only just finished his Diploma and
intended to go to Europe for further education before being drawn by Dr. Arani,
he had said that well this place will be like a university for you.
So Reza shah treated them with utmost affection. Anvar told me himself that
if it was now they would have shot them
Remembering A National Leader by Hossein Torabi
The Shah’s stance against Mosaddegh’s intention to monitor the army,
caused Dr Mosaddegh to resign from his role as prime minister
. People joined forces, resisted, and refused let fear defeat them. They
formed the holy national rising of the 30th of tir (1952), forced Ghavam to step down
and made Mosaddegh prime minister again.
I came to Tehran in the morning from my home in Shemiran, I wanted to go to the Parliament library.
I was busy reading when I realized they closed sooner than usual, it was around noon. I came out.
I had a very close friend who was an army general, who later became
one of Iran’s most admired generals; his name was Nasser Farbod (1922-22019).
When you spoke to him you would think that you are talking to a philosopher.
He used to read a lot, I think he has passed away
He had been trained at the war college of America, somewhere that no one had been before.
Early on when he was a lieutenant he participated in many wars including the Iraqi Kurdish Civil war
Later on he was appointed chief commander of the joint
staff of the Islamic Army as he was against the Shah.
He had a certain kind of charisma, all his soldiers, students were fond of him.
I remember one time, an officer came to me at the time when Farbod was a colonel,
he said “I have heard you are close
friends with him, he seems to be upset with me, I am willing to do anything to gain his
reconsideration, please could you have a word with him”.
He was very admired by his inferiors when he was at the army, and he opposed
the Shah, when he became Major General they retired him.
Azhari told him at the time that everyone was upset about this decision,
and that the Shah has said that you can take any other role,
so he consulted me about becoming a minister and I told him not to.
At one point he became the deputy of Hossein Fardoust (1917-1987).
One day I went to his house from work for lunch.
We went out and there was not much going on in the streets.
You could see thugs from southern Tehran around Roosevelt
Street who were paid to go to Mosaddegh’s door
The army was also on standby. We walked through Shah Abaad Avenue and
we didn’t see anything, only a theater that was vandalized
Meanwhile we saw soldiers who were Farbod’s students in Saltanat Abaad
(he used to teach them about war tanks at the time),
they approached each other and Fardoust asked them where they were going.
We realized that the hooligans who had come up from south had caused
for the troops to get involved (we were just driving in our Jeep)
and they had bombarded Mosaddegh’s house.
The house was plundered, even the water pipes were stolen, and
you can’t imagine the state of it when I went the next day.
The night of the coup there was a fight in every household,
some were for and some were against.
Even in my house, there was a big fight among my sisters and
one of our relatives who was the wife of a major
my poor mother; it was so bad that I took Farbod to my own house.
The grief that had emerged everywhere was immense because
Mosaddegh had done very good things and people were upset.
What about Shaban Jafari?
Shaban Jafari started the killings in the afternoon.
Although he wasn’t in the actual attacks to begin with as he was in jail
He was riding on a Jeep shouting and swearing.
There were a group of prostitutes accompanying them too
Part of ‘Shokaran’ by Payam Fazeli Nejad Shaban bimokh broke
Dr Mosaddegh’s door with the utmost vulgarity, he even threw a brick my way.
I ducked down and it hit Jalal’s back, he had to stay in bed rest for three days.
Meanwhile the law students came, general Afshartous arrived and asked for the constables.
They had brought a war tank in front of parliament with its gun so huge it could reach the
other side. A military rule was instantly ordered. They arrested everyone instantly it was all a plot.
General Teymur Bakhtiar (1914-1970) was promoted and sent to the front;
Taghizadeh had written ironically that Shimr could demand a stance for
humanity compared to Ironside
now you cannot imagine the crimes that Bakhtiar committed, the killings,
massacres, imprisonments and unjust court processes.
When they arrested Tudeh Party officers, they put them on trial and killed
24 of them in one shooting. Everyone was upset because these were all young prosperous men.
Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923-1969) was my neighbor at the time.
Before it he came to me and said we need to stop the killings,
he had heard about it on radio London, but the next morning
they were already getting on with the prosecutions.
Dr Mosaddegh (1882-1967) was so honorable and chaste,
even his inferiors and the men who worked for him
you know they took most of them to court on trial.
For example Dr. Gholam Hossein Sadighi (1905-1992) who was his Minister of Interior,
was taken to court which was already incited against Mosaddegh,
when taken to the podium and asked about Dr. Mosaddegh, Sadighi expressed that
“I was a teacher for 24 years, I was a founder of sociology in Iran, but my greatest pride
is that I was this man’s (Dr Mosaddegh’s) minister for 22 months”,
then they brought Dr. Ali Shayegan (1903-1981) he bowed in
front of Mosaddegh and read a poem by Hafiz
‘the space of my Heart became so full of the thought of the friend, that
lost from my mind became the thought of self’- yes Mosaddegh was a very pure person,
maybe he made some political mistakes, but his time in office was the
– most honorable, all his minsters were honorable men.
His Finance Minister Mahmoud Nariman (1893-1961) in my opinion
-is the type of person we need today for this country,
he was so chaste that he was even tight with his own pocket.
We were under US sanctions for a year,
the conditions were very tough, and we even had to pay for the oil company workers.
Statistics show that even so, the economy did not suffer from any inflation at all
I knew Mosaddegh and his men, they were very good men.
Mosaddegh didn’t even use his prime ministerial benefits for his costs
he would pay for them himself. And all the trips abroad he took for Iran, he paid for himself
“My only sin, and my greatest sin is that I nationalized the oil industry of Iran; and I dismissed
this country from the colonialism and extreme political and economic
influence of one of the greatest Empires of the world
My life, yours and any other man’s life will end sooner or later,
but what remains is the life and pride of an oppressed nation”
In Tehran, even some individuals who were against Mosaddegh,
like Seyyed Zia Tabatabaei for instance
had told the Shah to allow for a ceremony after his death, which he didn’t and
this was the kind of mistakes that the Shah kept making
But he has been very highly spoken of in different programs and books up to this day.
The best book about Mosaddegh was the diaries of
Foad Rouhani (1907-2004) who was in the oil administration before
during and after Mosaddegh. He was very well educated, and knew
very good English, I was acquainted with him
When the consortium agreement of 1954 was written, people like Souratgar had not been
able to translate it and it was given to Rouhani to translate.
He was very well read and strong. Another important book about
Mosaddegh is Dr. Mohammad Ali Movahed’s (born 1923) ‘The Disturbed sleep of Oil’.
There are writings by his enemies too which one has to read and compare.
-Khalil Maleki (1901-1969) was one of Mosaddegh’s critics
He was a good friend of mine we used to sit and talk for long hours during the night. He
was a good and pure man, with a unique knowledge of Marxism
When Khalil left the Tudeh Party, the party stirred a lot of hatred towards him;
they even wanted to kill him
He was always held a certain anger towards them. He was close to Mosaddegh and
wrote many insightful articles at the time to my knowledge
I was acquainted with Abol-Ghasem Kashani (1882-1962),
at the onset of the revolution (constitutional) he used to come to Dr Torfeh’s house
whose family I knew; I spoke to Kashani a few times during 1951,
especially when Herriman intended to come to
Iran from the U.S. to act as a mediator between the British Oil administration
and Dr. Mosaddegh’s government.
Kashani was very anti Britain as well. So when he was coming, I spoke to one of the
Torfeh’s whom I used to attend a geometry group with on Fridays
I told him sarcastically I hope Kashani does not think that Herriman is coming for Imam’s rights.
He said to me “you are right”. When people left at 9 pm. We went to see Ayatollah
Kashani (and Torfeh’s father was there too).
Kashani used to call everyone Bisavaat (illiterate)
it was his saying. He said “So Bisavaat what news do you have?”
we said to him that Herriman was coming as one of the greatest politicians and
we needed to train Kashani to be able to speak with him.
So when Herriman finally came, they arranged for a meeting between him and
Ayatollah Kashani in some house, and Kashani had said some very good things.
He had told him that we didn’t have materialistic concerns, but that we had
-issues with British colonialism which had really undermined the pride and honor of the Iranian people
The way the oil workers in the south of the country were being treated was very
improper especially when you compared them to their own way of living (the Britons)
in the same region
So Ayatollah Kashani had been very good to start off with. You know he had 36 children
(it is mentioned in the book ‘The Crisis of Democracy in Iran’),
and you know when someone has 36 children it means that they
will not be able to bring them up appropriately.
One of his sons by the name of Mostafa was a canon of corruption, he was his father’s
driver, and another son, Seyyed Mohammad was very corrupt as well.
Kashani unfortunately gradually went under their influence and they caused his
relationship with Mosaddegh to become bitter.
The Shah and the foreigners were not saints in the matter either, they had influence on
Mosaddegh and Kashani’s relationship going down as well
After the 28-e Mordad Coup with the incongruous and discordant situation that Mosaddegh was in,
and you know the Coup was totally in the hands of the foreigners
and they even took pride in it, there emerged a certain sense of upset and
disappointment amongst the group of elite whom I was familiar with and the Shah
(the governing body at the time).
It was evident that the establishment had started to get worried about their stance,
and an example of this was the establishment of the SAVAK
(interior intelligence and security and secret police) which was the main suppressing
body that silenced any sort of opposition.
Savak only had power within Iran, so the opposition was free anywhere abroad,
especially with Iranian students studying in foreign countries,
so this was an issue that the secret service of those countries had to deal with if the Shah
was to go on a trip abroad.
And it went on during the uprisings leading to the revolution
A prominent feature of hatred and animosity is that with time it grows stronger,
and so this ever-growing tension existed between the establishment
Those who were left-wing were more under
pressure and had a lot of influence on the youth,
however from 1961 onwards there emerged a certain type of revolutionary Islamicism
which branched amongst a young population,
and had a left wing approach to economics;
this new branch was arrival to the non Islamic left wing group of politicians
In my opinion the new group was even more left wing in its views, and I think the
movement ended up with someone who didn’t go with either of these groups in the end
But you can see that during Mosaddegh’s government, the elite had seen a high level
of freedom (As free as could be at the time),
Mosaddegh had created an anti-oppression and anti-colonialist atmosphere in the country.
The coup was orchestrated largely by the Americans, and even Madeline Albright said
at one point that America regretted the 1953 Coup D’état.
This is was a very dark period in our modern history, and Mosaddegh’s innocence
remained in the subconscious of the elite of the country for a long time
For the 25 years that Pahlavi reigned, and Mohammadreza succeeded it seems he
couldn’t fully win the elite’s approbation. I see the depth of the 1979 revolution in this matter.
Part05
(Keykavous Jahandari, writer and translator)
He is one of the most prominent men in Iran who has a deep knowledge of Rijal Science
(knowledge of the dignitaries).
He knows the family trees of these characters. It is not as hard in other countries as it is in Iran
Because of the titles these individuals were given; there are 4 Moshir ol-Dolehs for example.
In Conversation With
Seyyed Abdullah Anvar
Part 5
Conclusion-Part 1: Dignitaries
When I started working on the Dehkhoda Dictionary, Dehkhoda had passed away.
used to see him before, he was a fine literary man, one of this country’s finest.
(Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda 1879-1956). After the 1953 Coup D’état when Reza Shah fled the country,
it was widely believed that Dehkhoda was supposed to become president.
However this deeply affected the work on the dictionary, he was put through a lot of trouble
the only good thing was that parliament had already agreed to the work but they
lowered the budget to next to none
We wouldn’t even get 5 or 7 tomans for the work we were doing and sometimes he would
say the whole budget has to go towards publishing
I heard Mrs Azmoudeh say once that the dictionary is a book
we use and benefit from in every way and yet criticize it so much
I heard Mrs Azmoudeh say once that the dictionary is a book we use and
benefit from in every way and yet criticize it so much
I used to write the chapter for the letter Kh.
Mohammad Baqer Houshyar (1904- 1957) was a very good professor,
I used to be he is student. He was amongst
a group of scholars who were sent to Germany by Reza Shah for higher education
A very profound and noble person. He was anti-communism and anti
Tudeh Party because he had also experienced fascism in Germany
Every time government forces intended to arrest students he would
get into a fight to try and prevent them
He was also very fond of me. He used to visit us at my father’s house. He was from Shiraz.
He has 2 or 3 publishes books. One is a very prominent piece of work on psychology
he was also a great encourager of one of his students,
Seyyed Ahmad Fradid (1909-1994).
He always spoke highly of Fradid but Fardid would disrespect him which upset us all
He was nonetheless full of wit and very honorable. He passed away quite painfully,
the doctors had made errors in his treatment process.
the doctors had made errors in his treatment process.
He is known as one of the most influential men in the education system of this country
Abbas Zaryab Khoie (1958-1995), was one of Iran’s most learned
and accomplished men, he spoke 4 or 5 languages
He was also a religious scholar before he went onto work in the parliament library
Leter he was sent to Germany where he completed his PhD in History in German
He knew French and Turkish (he was Azeri Turk) and English very well.
In fact he has 2 or 3 books translated from English.
Interviewer: You Knew Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai (1904-1981) as well?
Yes I have huge respect for him. He was one of Motahhari’s students. He was
truly a man of God. Let me tell you a story.
You know Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1933) had found The Iranian Research Institute for
Philosophy (formerly known as The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1974).
Tabatabai used to go there on Thursday afternoons, we didn’t call him Allameh at the time,
and we used to call him Ghazi (judge) Tabatabai.
I went there one day and noticed two American girls,
there was no compulsory Hijab at the time and they were wearing revealing tops
They wanted to talk to him and I was there to translate. One of the girls was talking with a lot of
heat making a lot of hand gestures.
All of a sudden I took my jacket off and told her to wear it, I said “wear this, do you know who he is?
He is a saint…” the girl started apologizing, but Allameh told me there had been no need,
and to let them be the way they are.
I enjoyed his reaction immensely and it was a huge lesson for me. He was very noble.
Someone had asked him about his relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini
and he had said that they were acquainted enough to say hello to
one another. When told that many people had
been martyred after the Iran-Iraq war he had said that the only martyr was Islam itself.
Seyyed Jafar Shahidi (1918-2008)
also worked on the Dehkhoda Dictionary
he was our collegue during the 15 years that I was there and I
wrote the chapter for Kh and the beginnings of K
he would do the administrative works there as well.
Seyyed Jalal-ed-Din Ashtiani (1925-2005) was a close friend,
he moved to Tehran and then to Mashhad to teach.
But he would always stay with us when he was town.
So far as I know he stayed at Mr. Razavi’s house
who was a lawyer and had also been one of my classmates during university.
Ashtiani was very interested in Philosophy especially that of Mulla Sadra
(Sadr ad-Din Muhammad Shirazi).
He did some influential work when he was teaching in Mashhad.
Henri Corbin used to call him the contemporary Mulla Sadra
The explanatory book he published on Ibn Arabi’s ‘The Bezels of Wisdom’ is a prominent
piece of work. After his move to Mashhad he became more well know.
Dr. Nasr always had great respect for him
He was a good man and a witty person. I remember one night he came over for dinner,
another one of his lawyer friends used to live in Shemiran, we went to his place together after dinner.
He had also cooked a stew to eat later and the stew was very watery,
a religious scholar had told him that he wanted to have
I went to the same university as Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923-1969), I studied at the Maths
department and he studied at the department of literature
We attended a Ferdowsi association together at the time which brought us close,
I was very interested and even wrote my own poetry
We were also neighbors in Shemiran. There was a time when his wife had travelled to
Europe and he was alone
I asked him to move into an empty apartment I had till she was back. Their house which
we also helped set the basis of has now been turned into a museum
I hear that the young generations are not that fond him though.
The reason for it is his book called Gharbzadegi (Westernized).
Towards the end of his life Jalal used to say something which is actually quite true
He used to say that “I used be a Tudeh supporter, a Mosaddegh supporter,
but people need to hold on to some sort of faith”.
He used to read all his writings to me, another one of his books is ‘Sangi bar Goori’
(A Stone Upon a Grave)
which was an account of his own feelings about having
children which he really wanted but seemed he couldn’t have.
He also wrote about Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri, another reason why the youth are not a fan of him,
even though I think had he been part of the 1979 revolution he would have lost it,
even though Khomeini was very fond of his work
He died 11 years before the revolution however. He used
to say that he believed that there should happen a great moral and ethical change,
the youth must kill greed within them, to avoid committing such a great level
of crimes for the acquisition of money or status
But ethics alone is not enough, a set of religious beliefs will help.
But I think this is impossible if people are brought up faithless,
they will not suddenly believe in the day of judgement overnight
I do as well believe that there should be some kind of a faith
amongst people to create depth in them
It should be so strong for them to be able to overcome the distractions of our time and
to not be fooled by the junk their mind and soul is being fed
Take the length at which some might go for a job and the wrong doings
they might commit to keep that job.
Khalil Maleki (1901-1969) was not any usual person, his writings in Persian and Turkish
were one of a kind. He was very composed and completely familiar
with the current affairs of the time
Socializing with him was very pleasant
He was very pure and noble. When taken to the Shah,
he had told him that he was a socialist and that he thought that the Shah would
not be interested in the way he saw things.
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131)
has geometrically solved every type of cubic equation and Dr. Gholamhossein Mosaheb
translated and published this
The main thing in geometry is his contribution to the understanding of the parallel axiom.
This is explained in different forms, and one is that the
angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees. Up until the early years of the 18th century,
many had wanted to make this theory their own. It is the notion
when the main gist of a theory is taken,
and there might exist opposing thoughts but so long as you have
that main gist you can form a science base on it.
There were many who wanted to solve this using geometry itself,
and according to history two Islamic scientists have done this as well,
one is Omar Khayyam and the other is Khaje Nasir al-Din Tusi. When studied closely,
you realize that they both expropriated the matter to their desire in the way that
they used Euclidian Geometry that emphasizes on the main route of the subject to explain
the subject itself and this is not right
But Khayyam certainly very well solved cubic equations through geometry.
This equations were solved algebraically later on in Europe
Khayyam is very famous today for his poetry, his Rubáiyát. He
has really turned into a subject of study
It is a skill to be able to tell which poetry is autyhentic to Khayyam as over time
many who would write poetry have tried to connect
their poems falsely to the work of Khayyam for their poem to become eternal.
There are certain notions in his poems that don’t seem to be in line with the teachings of Islam,
for example the denial of the afterlife. Sadegh Hedayat studied the work of Khayyam a lot
and if I remember correctly he wrote that only about 140 poems out of a total of 900-1000
is authenticly by Khayyam
Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) translated the Rubáiyát to English which
was published in 1859, it was translated to other languages as well but FitzGerald’s translation
is not a word for word and literal one
I tried very hard to attribute the original poems with the translation or to see which
poem inspired which of FitzGerald’s translations and it is a very difficult thing to do
But yes Khayyam in well known for his poetry in the west.
Khayyam has been given the title ‘Hakim’, a title given to Islamic Philosophers.
The polemic around when and how this word started being used in philosophy and how it
replaced the word philosopher is interesting.
The reason why they were called Hakim was that they
had a wide range of knowledge and information.
Khayyam has a couple of books that offer a deep view
into existentialism a notion in which everyone is and exists.
Mulla Hadi Sabzavari explains it as a simple in meaning but difficult in depth of definition,
something you cannot explain but you have to feel and sense with your whole being.
In defining anything you have to become familiar with
existence, you cannot explain an object using itself.
He also explains the notion with various examples. Existence is the basis of all logic, of being,
when there is talk of Wahda (unity) of existence (Sufi Metaphysics),
some talk about the unity of all creations, the religious oppose, they say that the existence of
God is a totally different phenomena to the existence of human beings.
In Islamic Philosophy also there is a defined line between different types of existence.
it is the essence of being. It is the basis of our philosophy.
When there is talk of Basit ol-Haghigha, that ‘Truth is supreme over all else’,
the truth that is everything, the intangible that exists in all existence there is.
This is one of Mulla Sadra’s theories which was inspired by Ibn Arabi,
who stated that the wholesome being included within it the existence of everything else
and this is the basis of Ibn Arabi’s philosophy.
European existentialists haven’t really known the subject thoroughly,
there is confusion between being through time and existence and the difference is
misunderstood. Being is one of the components of existence, it does not solely define it.
In the book ‘Being and Time’ Heidegger explains the subject
but again he does not completely succeed;
he uses the expression ‘Dasein’ to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human
beings. So western existentialists and Islamic existentialists differ in precision.
Part06
Have you ever worked on poetry?
As in have I written my own poetry?
Have you done commentaries on any divaans (Book of great poets)?
Yes nearly every poet there was, 29 poets in fact which you can find here in my library,
starting with Ferdowsi – I have annotated every single line you see. The writings in ink are my
personal critique.
In Conversation With
Seyyed Abdullah Anvar
Part 6: Translations and Poetry
Nima Youshij, began a modern way of poetry, ‘new poetry’.
It was a poetry that was being emancipated from the rhythmic principles of classical poetry,
and this made it easy for many people to enter the world of writing poetry which is why all
of a sudden you are presented with an escalated quantity of poets
I used to tell Akhavan-Sales, who was one of the pioneers of free verse poetry
and used to work with me at the national library,
about how this freedom from rules was taking poetry to a whole new realm,
that sometimes it was not poetry any more.
In terms of translators, a lot of translations had become available; however,
there used to be a Franklin system which all the
translations would go through and be checked by supervisors.
One of them was Manouchehr Bozorgmehr
(1910-1986) who knew good English,
I used to tell him that I was establishing a particular style in translation for myself,
one similar to that of Attar in his explanations of Sufis in Tazkirat Al-Awiya.
So it wasn’t so bad, translations were being done more and more,
with an acceptable quality of writing
But censorship was intense and I had had to deal with it myself.
Everyone had complaints of the censoring authorities and around 1961-1966 the Society
of Writers including myself elevated the issue and took it to meetings with Hoveyda.
SAVAK (the intelligence) had a lot to do with this and played a great role in locking the minds
of thinkers and writers.
I have to say a lot of what caused regime change at the time was put upon the regime
by itself; for example
unnecessary imprisonments and rigidity, military trials and military officers who would do
anything for a promotion.
So if something like this were to happen in Iran in the future you would need some sort
of a SAVAK not for internal affairs but to prevent foreign intrusion,
this is what Pakravan told me as well; but o have an authority that prevents any
form of human thought in the name of security is wrong and destructive.
And it resulted in immense disagreement and rebellion by those who had gone abroad to study etc.
In my opinion, ‘new poetry’ has used up all the capacity that has been available for it,
and it is being encouraged to return to some of the original values of poetry these days.
In terms of translation today, with generations of Iranians migrating abroad this has
become a lot easier
and most translations are from English, more than any other language.
These days with the ever emerging power of technology, not just here but all around the world,
physical books are becoming less and less a subject of interest but rather becoming
accessible as digital copies.
Pre-requisites of a good piece of translation:
A good translator must always read the text fully first to gather an understanding
and familiarise with the vocabulary
Once that is done, he must re write the text in his own
words. If you don’t comprehend the text and only do a literal word for word translation,
you lose the spirit of the text and sometimes it can be
completely wrong, and this happens a lot these days.
A lot of youth these days know the colloquial aspects of a
foreign language, having been brought up or studied in a foreign country
but that does not suffice for a professional translation
Therefore one must upon all understand the spirit of any
written text as a lot of the time a particular context can change the meaning of a word.
A Translation by Two translators:
A lot of the times, it causes disagreement; sometimes the difference emerges
in connotations, and sometimes it is in literal translations of the words
A word finds a vast range of meanings when it transits from one language to another.
I am reading Maghamaat of Al-Hariri at the moment and I can
tell you that Arabic words have changed many times in meaning throughout the text.
As in a word might mean something but in the style and
context of the writing it is meant to be read and comprehended differently
This is the gift of power that the writer bestows upon a word.
Avicenna for example is the first to ever bring the word
philosophy into Persian writing, in his Book of Knowledge for Ala al-Dawla;
or he calls Mosallas (Arabic for triangle) Seh-Gousheh (3-Cornered), even though one might initially
think that 3-sided may be more accurate but it is not as 3 sides might not co inside but
when a shape has three corners it definitely means that the sides coincided.
So a real translator is one who captures the essence and the
soul of the text, this is what’s important.
So much so that there have been many English translations of Saadi and Hafiz Poetry,
but rarely you find one that captures the heart
Or Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
I tried so hard to link each chapter to its Farsi version
but it is next to impossible as he has truly understood the
soul of the poetry and re-written it in his own way.
Dr. Hassan Emami, a cleric and member of Mohammad Reza Shah’s inner circle,
knew good Arabic and Russian and some French
He said that when he came back to Tehran from France,
a group led by Dr. Fatemi were writing the new civil law
Fatemi was a prominent clergy and member of the Supreme
Court and worked with utmost power.
So Emami said that they had translated and sent a legislative French text to
Fatemi, He sent his commentary saying that two of the paragraphs had been wrongly translated.
Emami had been shocked as he knew that Fatemi did not know French
“we checked with Mr. Matin Daftari
and he had been right, we redid the translation and took
it to him and asked him how he had known
He told us that the person who could write the other
paragraphs the way they did wouldn’t write those two” He had immense insight, a very noble man.
The civil Law was written very well under his supervision and being from Qom,
he spent the money he received for it to build a hospital in Qom.
The Relationship between staying true to the text and textual aesthetics:
Well of course if we end up with a beautiful text that reflects exactly the original
script then even better. The main thing should always be staying true to the original text
Beauty in writing can be sacrificed for conveying the
-intended meaning, but it should never be the other way around.
We are having great issues with the translations of the
work of Kant, some of his work is so complex that turning it into Farsi is almost a mystery,
it is taking up a couple of days a week worth of conversing over at the moment.
When we speak of a proposition it always consists of a subject and a predicate
When you say ‘Hossein is a writer’ Hossein is the subject and writer is the predicate
Kant says sometimes the predicate can be derived and born by the subject itself,
taking ‘Man as a talking animal’ for example,
this is the case where the subject is bearing the predicate
this is an analytical sentence. But when you say ‘this table is
green’, table and green are both independent subjects
you cannot say ‘this table is a wall’, these are synthetic sentences,
which is the basis of human thought
It is interesting how you can juxtapose or combine two subjects but
you cannot necessarily adapt them to each other
This is another thing that Avicenna pointed out in his work a thousand years ago
Another example is that you can say ‘the light is white’ but you cannot say
‘the light is the Alborz Mountain’
you see. This is where matters of philosophy are important and this is where the way you
translate becomes significant.
Translators usually become dominated by the language they are translating from,
whereas while they extract the meaning they should leave the
rest to an editor so that it doesn’t completely take over them,
who can substitute the right words to convey the same
meaning and yet maintain a modern language in writing
The importance of creativity and literary tastefulness:
It is a notion the Arabs call Ihmaaz, it is when a camel eats
a fair amount of sweet grass, it will want to try and find some salty grass.
This is the term the Arabs propose for how a true writer
must be In order to maintain the tastefulness of the flowing text.
The difference between the Old generation of translators and the new generation:
The new generation have hardly been able to
predominate the original classical Persian Language
and not knowing Arabic does not help them as you cannot separate the two
form one another. They haven’t read the old texts either
when I say that texts should be modern, I mean that they
should be dependent on an understanding of the old texts
It is a process that one must attend to, starting later on in the process doesn’t get you far.
The basis of the work would be weak and frail.
The need for translations on critiquing:
The first thing to point out is that it is very difficult to be an honest critic with no bias at all.
And like you said it is very important to learn true critiquing from the works of
western thinkers such as Kant,
with his original text being German and having been commentated and critiqued by many.
So yes a good critic must know the western way of critiquing and in fact undergo a course in
the subject before being able to provide
constructive criticism. It is actually a tradition that our predecessors had;
for explaining matters they would bring quotes of the more wise, especially in
religious matters of Sharia law.
Therefore correct and honest critiquing is very important.
Writing under the influence of the History of Iran:
Historians are not free enough to be able to write the truth about history,
censorship really affects their work.
For example Nasser al-Din Shah killed his chief minister
Amir Kabir, and two prominent historians at the time,
Sepehr and Rawzat al-Safa didn’t write about it out of fear.
One only wrote something on the lines that ‘Amir Kabir passed away’.
There was one that was written 30 years after for the second time during Mozaffar al-Din Shah,
which gave a full account of the murder and is being published up to this day
It is very important how society receives these issues. In this case,
Nasser al-Din Shah regretted the killing of Mirza Taghi Khan Amir Kabir
A book is being published by The Society for The National
Heritage of Iran that explains this fully;
that after 40 years had passed since the killing he had gone to Araak and had asked
Haj Mohsen Araghi to Find Amir Kabir’s Family in Hazaveh the village in which he was born
and tried to give them money and somehow make up for the
terrible crime that he committed, but nothing could take his immense sorrow and regret away.
The reason as to why Persian Literature has not become globalized:
Because our literature is not even Iranianized let alone
globalized. Rousseaux has stated very truly that wherever democracy prevails literature will follow
there is no place for literature where there is no democracy.
At the time of the Tsardom of Russia, as you know they were
very condemned later; a not so famous writer whose
work has also been translated to Persian, had been exiled and imprisoned in Siberia
He kept writing as he continued to be exiled by the Tsar. Finally he said that he will stop writing
and that he had become tired of having to go back and forth in exile
And so you can see that good literature cannot thrive in suppression.
This is a text that bears considerable meaning
Nowadays a lot of work in the field of physics is being sponsored by the militaries
This is one of the main disputes between the United States and Chine.
Trump claims that a lot of the significant American industrial work
formulae is being stolen by the Chinese Military for their own
use which in my opinion is true to some extent.
This prevents the fair and correct distribution of knowledge. And it is not a new phenomenon,
this has been happening since the beginning of time as Hafiz Says poetically
‘ On the pulpit, preachers
goodness display/Yet in private, they have a different way.’ … ‘A different way’
can mean a million things but he doesn’t expand on it.
Historically wherever there emerged an ideology, anything
or any feeling standing against it would be annihilated.
In Islam itself, a lot of unnecessary encouragement of this matter has been done
over time, even the encouragement of Avicenna is something to be considered.