September 21, 2018
Ehsan Yarshater, who spent all his life creating his magnum opus, Encyclopedia Iranica, a complete encyclopedia of Iranian culture and history, passed away September 1. He was 98.
He was also a professor and the founder of the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University in New York.
Before his death, he had published 15 of the encyclo-pedia’s planned 45 volumes.
Born in Hamadan in 1920, he earned his doctorate in Persian language and literature at the University of Tehran in 1947. He then moved to England to pursue his studies at London University, where he received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Old and Middle Persian in 1960.
In 1961, he was appointed to the Kevorkian Chair of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. He was the first full-time professor of Persian at an American university. In 1968, he established the Center for Iranian Studies.
He founded Encyclopedia Iranica in 1973 and was the editor-in-chief of the encyclopedia until his death. Yarshater looked for a successor several times, but failed in his attempts to find one.
“He has worked to create the most comprehensive account of several millenniums of Iranian history, language and culture in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia,” The New York Times wrote about the encyclopedia in an article published August 12, 2011.
“There is nothing like it” in scope or quality, said Ali Banuazizi, a professor at Boston College and a former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
Yarshater was the general editor of a 40-volume translation of at-Tabari’s 10th-century history of the world and editor of some of the Cambridge History of Iran.
He married Latifeh Alvieh, a cultural advisor at the Cultural Bureau of the US embassy in Tehran. She died in 1999. The couple had no children.
Although born into a Baha’i family, he aid he had had no affiliation with the religion as an adult.
