HISTORIANS from Iran

Top 4

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Iranian Historians of all time. This list of famous Iranian Historians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani (897 - 967)

With an HPI of 57.89, Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani is the most famous Iranian Historian.  His biography has been translated into 29 different languages on wikipedia.

Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Iṣfahānī (Arabic: أبو الفرج الأصفهاني), also known as Abul-Faraj, (full form: Abū al-Faraj ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥaytham al-Umawī al-Iṣfahānī) (897–967CE / 284–356AH) was a writer, historian, genealogist, poet, musicologist and scribe. He was of Arab-Quraysh origin and mainly based in Baghdad. He is best known as the author of Kitab al-Aghani ("The Book of Songs"), which includes information about the earliest attested periods of Arabic music (from the seventh to the ninth centuries) and the lives of poets and musicians from the pre-Islamic period to al-Isfahani's time. Given his contribution to the documentation of the history of Arabic music, al-Isfahani is characterised by George Sawa as "a true prophet of modern ethnomusicology".

2. Ibn al-Faqih ( - )

With an HPI of 53.75, Ibn al-Faqih is the 2nd most famous Iranian Historian.  His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadani (Persian: احمد بن محمد ابن الفقيه الهمذانی) (fl. 902) was a 10th-century Persian historian and geographer, famous for his Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan ("Concise Book of Lands") written in Arabic. In the 1870s the Dutch orientalist Michael Jan de Goeje edited a selection of geography works of Arab geographers in an eight-volume series titled Bibliotheca geographorum Arabicorum published by Lugduni-Batavae (Leiden) Brill publishers. Al-Hamadhānī's Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan was published in volume 5 of this series. In 1967 second editions were printed by Dar Sadir (Beirut) and E.J. Brill (Lugduni Batavorum).

3. Ahmad Kasravi (1890 - 1946)

With an HPI of 52.28, Ahmad Kasravi is the 3rd most famous Iranian Historian.  His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Ahmad Hokmabadi Tabrizi (Persian: سید احمد حکم‌آبادی تبریزی, romanized: Ahmad-e Hokmabadi-ye Tabrizi;‎ 29 September 1890 – 11 March 1946), later known as Ahmad Kasravi (Persian: احمد کسروی, romanized: Ahmad-e Kasravi), was a pre-eminent Iranian historian, jurist, linguist, theologian, a staunch secularist and intellectual. He was a professor of law at the University of Tehran, as well as an attorney and judge in Tehran, Iran. Born in Hokmavar (Hokmabad), Tabriz, Iran, Kasravi was an Iranian Azerbaijani. During his early years, Kasravi enrolled in a seminary. Later, he joined the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. He deserted his clerical training after this event and enrolled in the American Memorial School of Tabriz. Thenceforward he became, in Roy Mottahedeh's words, "a true anti-cleric." Kasravi was the founder of a political-social movement whose goal was to build an Iranian secular identity. The movement was formed during the Pahlavi dynasty. Kasravi authored more than 70 books, mostly in the Persian language. The most important works from his body of work are History of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, Azari or the Ancient Language of Azerbaijan and The 18 Year History of Azerbaijan. He was attacked vehemently by the Shi'ite clergy for his secular ideas and by the court for his anti-monarchical statements. In his early period he was linked with the Democrat Party in Iran. In 1941 he established a political party, Azadegan. Kasravi was eventually assassinated by followers of Navvab Safavi, the founder of the Shi'ite fundamentalist Fada'iyan-e Islam group. Many of the prominent members of the then Iranian clergy, including the later Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, supported the act of Kasravi being murdered, and Navvab and the Fada'iyan were proclaimed heroes following the assassination. Kasravi was the first Iranian Azerbaijani intellectual to take a firm position against pan-Turkists from the Ottoman Empire, and authored the most important work on the Iranian identity of the Azerbaijan region and the region's Old Azeri language, an Iranian language. Kasravi is widely despised by pan-Turkists in the Republic of Azerbaijan and Iran, who view him as a "traitor" to Azerbaijanis.

4. Ehsan Yarshater (1920 - 2018)

With an HPI of 46.40, Ehsan Yarshater is the 4th most famous Iranian Historian.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Ehsan Yarshater (Persian: احسان يارشاطر, April 3, 1920 – September 1, 2018) was an Iranian historian and linguist who specialized in Iranology. He was the founder and director of the Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. He was the first Persian full-time professor at a U.S. university since World War II. He was one of the 40 editors of the Encyclopædia Iranica, with articles by 300 authors from various academic institutions. He also edited the third volume of The Cambridge History of Iran, comprising the history of the Seleucids, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, and a volume entitled Persian Literature. He was also an editor of a sixteen-volume series named History of Persian Literature. He had won several international awards for scholarship, including a UNESCO award in 1959, and the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal for Achievement in Islamic Studies from UCLA in 1991. Lecture series in his name have been instituted at the University of London, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in Paris.