Remembering Dehkhoda


A.A.Dehkhoda, was born in 1879 in Tehran. He was considered by todays standard multilingual and later in life became one of the best known linguists in Iran. Before prominence, he studied political science and was voted into Parliament as a representative of the people of Tehran, later joining the foreign office cadre and serving as an embassy employee . Dehkhoda returned to Iran in 1905 and joined the "Constitutional revolutionaries",at the same time publishing a political column in the "Sur-Esrafil" newspaper . The Ghajar Shah did resist the constitutional movement, mainly relying on the Russians, but the British were promoting the revolutionaries in order to agitate the Russians. However in 1908 the Parliament was dissolved by the Shah so Dehkhoda left Iran and did not return until 1911 when the despotic Shah had left Iran and the Parliament was reinstated, immediately joining the Parliament until the start of the first World War in 1914.

In 1914, Dehkhoda left Tehran and moved to the north of Iran. It is known he only had a French dictionary by him, probably as a mean to preoccupy himself, he decided to find for every French word in that book, a Persian equivalent. This is not proven, but this could have been the start of his passionate pursue of the most efficiently researched and authored dictionary of the Persian language called "Loghat-Nameh", he managed to write this encyclopedia, containing words relating to everything, over every person in every city or village by every river or mountain in Iran. As of 1924, Dehkhoda became a Dean at the University of Tehran, teaching Law and Political science, at the same time strenuously working on his encyclopedia.

In 1951, Dehkhoda having supported Dr M. Mossadegh and the National Front, the parliament thereupon decided to finance the publication of Dehkhoda's encyclopedia,and in 1954, Dehkkhoda wrote a letter to Parliament and dedicated his work to the Iranian nation. Dehkhoda died in March 1956 but his work has been systematically and scientifically pursued to the point that the latest release by the University of Tehran in 2006 consisted of 2300 volumes in different fields of lexicology.

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