Mohammad-Taqi Bahar
محمدتقی بهارThe last great classical poet of Iran: poet laureate, constitutionalist, journalist, politician and the founder of modern Persian stylistics.
- Known for
- Malek-osh-Sho'ara, the last poet laureate
- Forms
- Qasida, Ghazal, Masnavi
- Places
- Razavi Khorasanخراسان رضوی
- Tehranتهران
- Collection
- Contemporary
Bahar was born in Mashhad, the son of the poet laureate of the shrine of Imam Reza, and inherited the title Malek-osh-Sho'ara, king of poets, while still in his teens. He might have stayed a shrine poet; instead the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11 made him a journalist and a politician. He edited the newspaper Nowbahar, sat in several parliaments and was briefly minister of education in 1946.
He wrote mostly in the qasida, the long formal ode of the Ghaznavid and Seljuk masters, and bent that grand, old-fashioned form to modern politics, freedom and the fate of Iran. His ode to Mount Damavand, the Damavandiyeh, is among the best-known Persian poems of the century.
He was also a scholar. As a professor at the University of Tehran he wrote Sabk-shenasi (Stylistics), a history of Persian prose style that is still a standard reference, and edited classical texts. He died of tuberculosis in Tehran in 1951.
His poems are out of copyright in most countries with a life-plus-70 term, but modern English translations usually are not. We publish only translations we have commissioned or have permission to use.
Booksکتابها
The principal works of Mohammad-Taqi Bahar.
Stylistics
سبکشناسیA history of the development of Persian prose from its beginnings to Bahar's own time, tracing how vocabulary, syntax and taste changed from age to age. It founded the academic study of Persian style and remains on university reading lists.
The Divan of Bahar
دیوان بهارThe collected poems, published a few years after his death. Qasidas on liberty, history and current affairs sit beside ghazals, masnavis and occasional verse, a record of half a century of Iranian politics written in the most classical of manners.
Mohammad-Taqi Bahar in Iranian history
Iranian historyAfsharids, Zands and Qajarsافشاریان، زندیان و قاجاریان
A soldier-king who sacked Delhi, a regent who rebuilt Shiraz, and a dynasty that made Tehran the capital and lived through Iran's Constitutional Revolution.