In Memoriam

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018): 270-272

The passing of Ehsan Yarshater, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus o f  I r a n i a n  S t u d i e s  a t  C o l u m b i a 
University, on 2 September 2018 in Fresno, 
California, was a tremendous loss not just 
for Iranian studies but for the scholarly 
world.

Yarshater was born in Hamadan, Iran, 
on 3 April 1920. Orphaned at a young 
age, he moved to Tehran to live with a 
maternal uncle. He resumed his education 
in 1934 after obtaining a scholarship to 
attend the newly opened Danesh-sara-ye 
Moqaddamati high school, graduating 
at the top of his class. He went on to 
attend the Teachers Training College  
(Danesh-sara-ye ʿali), later part of the 
Faculty of Letters at the University of 

Tehran, and the Faculty of Law at the 
U n i v e r s i t y  o f  T e h r a n .  H e  r e c e i v e d  a 
D.Litt. degree in 1947 with a dissertation 
on Timurid poetry (published in 1955). 
Yarshater received a fellowship from the 
British Council in 1948 to study educational 
methods, but after arriving in London he 
became a student of Iranian philology with 
Walter Bruno Henning at the School of 
Oriental and African Studies.

Upon his return to Iran in 1953 to 
conduct research for his dissertation on 
southern Tati dialects, which conclusively 
d e m o n s t r a t e d  t h e i r  c o n n e c t i o n s  t o 
M e d i a n ,  h e  t a u g h t  a n c i e n t  I r a n i a n 
languages at the University of Tehran and 
founded or helped found the Institute for 
the Translation and Publication of Books 

Ehsan YarshatEr  
(1920–2018)



271  •  Elton l. DaniEl

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018)

(Bongah-e Tarjoma va Nashr-e Ketab), 
the Book Society (Anjoman-e Ketab), and 
the journal Rahnema-ye Ketab. With the 
recommendation and support of Henning, 
Yarshater received a visiting position at 
Columbia University in 1958, and, in 1961, 
was appointed to the new Kevorkian chair 
in Iranian studies there, which he held 
until his retirement in 1999. In addition 
t o  c h a i r i n g  t h e  M i d d l e  E a s t  S t u d i e s 
department for several years, Yarshater 
also revived the Center for Iranian Studies 
at Columbia in 1968 and served as its 
director until 2016. In recognition of his 
many years of contributions to academic 
life at Columbia, the center was endowed 
and renamed the Ehsan Yarshater Center 
for Iranian Studies in August 2018.

Yarshater’s scholarly interests were 
every bit as diverse and accomplished as 
his life story would suggest. His own books 
and articles included studies not only on 
linguistics, dialectology, and many periods 
of Persian literature but philosophy, 
painting, history, religion, ethnology, 
music, and other topics. Among them 
are many works of significance for the 
membership of Middle East Medievalists, 
notably his edition of volume III of the 
Cambridge History of Iran (including his 
own important entries on Mazdakism, 
the “Iranian World View,” and “Iranian 
National History”) and thought-provoking 
and seminal articles such as “Theme of 
Wine-Drinking and the Concept of the 
Beloved in Early Persian Poetry,” “Textual 
Aspects of the Andarznama,” “Were the 
Sasanians Heirs to the Achaemenids?,” 
and “The Persian Presence in the Islamic 
World.”

Yarshater’s contributions, however, 
go well beyond his own monographs. He 
continued the love of books and talent 

for publication he had shown in Iran 
while at Columbia, even establishing for a 
while his own press (Bibliotheca Persica). 
Under his direction, the Columbia Center 
sponsored six series of publications, 
producing over a hundred titles including 
translations of Persian classics, scholarly 
monographs in Iranian studies, editions of 
texts (including a new edition of the Shah-
nama), and illustrated works on Persian art 
and architecture as well as publication of 
lecture series he had helped found at SOAS, 
Harvard, UCLA, and the Collège de France. 
Yarshater tirelessly promoted the work of 
other scholars by organizing conferences 
and symposia, compiling editing volumes, 
and sponsoring monographs. Moreover, 
h e  w a s  r e s p o n s i b l e  f o r  c r e a t i n g  a n d 
raising funds for two private foundations 
dedicated to the promotion of Iranian 
studies and culture, the Persian Heritage 
Foundation and the Encyclopaedia Iranica 
Foundation, that have the means to carry 
on his work indefinitely. There are few 
scholars in the field who are not in his 
debt directly or indirectly for help with 
publication, letters of recommendation, 
financial support for projects, and the like.

F i n a l l y ,  o n e  m u s t  m a k e  a  s p e c i a l 
acknowledgement of what Mary Boyce 
called Yarshater’s “genius in envisaging 
ends and securing means,” as it applies 
to conceiving, organizing, and producing 
major collaborative scholarly projects. 
Yarshater was not only the principal 
investigator and general editor for the 
longest continually funded NEH project, 
but also the only scholar to supervise three 
major NEH projects simultaneously, all of 
them of particular interest for members of 
MEM: the forty volume Tabari translation 
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985–2007); the 
three volume translation of Bayhaqi’s 



— Elton L. Daniel  
University of Hawaii

(edaniel@hawaii.edu)

In Memoriam: Ehsan Yarshater (1920–2018)  •  272

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018)

History (ILEX/Harvard University Press, 
2011), and the Encyclopaedia Iranica 
(ongoing, London: I.B. Tauris, 2008- ). The 
Encyclopaedia Iranica remains unfinished, 

as does another major project, The History 
of Persian Literature series, but thanks to 
Yarshater’s foresight and planning, they 
can continue to progress.

mailto:edaniel%40hawaii.edu?subject=