Mohammad-Taqi Bahar

Mohammad Taqī Bahār

Mohammad-Taqī Bahār (MTB) (محمد تقی بهار in Persian) (December 9 , 1886 - April 22 , 1951), widely known as Malek o-Šo`arā' (ملک‌ الشعراء), is considered as the greatest Twentieth Century Iranian (Persian) poet and scholar, who was also a politician, journalist, professor of literature and historian. Although he was a 20th century poet, his poems were fairly traditional and strongly nationalistic. Bahār is considered by many scholars as the greatest Iranian poet in the past 200 years. Many Iranian Scholars have strongly emphasized and indicated that Bahār's style of writing and the beauty of his poetry, in addition to his deep passion for his country, does indeed place him on the same platform where other famous Iranian poets and writers such as Ferdowsi, Saadi and Hafez have stood for centuries.

Biography

M.T. Bahar was born on December 8, 1886 in Sarshoor District of Mashhad, the capital city of Khorasan (a northeastern province of present-day Iran). Bahar began his primary education when he was 3 years old, and his mentor was his father, Mohammad Kāzem Sabouri. Sabouri was a poet laureate or the official court-poet of Mozzafar-al-Din Shah (the fifth shah of Qajar dynasty, reigned 1896-1907), and he was titled as King of Poets (in Persian: Malek o-Šo`arā').

In addition to that private schooling, Bahar also attended one of the traditional schools (in Persian: Maktab Khaaneh) in Mashhad. It has been documented that Bahar could recite by heart a very good portion of the Koran at a very young age. To complete his knowledge of Persian and Arabic, he also attended the classes of the literary skilled persons such as Adib Naishabouri and Ali Darehgazi for years.

Bahar composed his first poem at age 8, and chose the name of Bahār as his pen name (in Persian: takhallos). In fact, Bahar chose that pen name after the name of Bahar Shirvani, a poet and close friend of his father, after Shirvani died. Shirvani was also a poet who was very famous during Nasser-al-Din Shah, the fourth shah of Qajar dynasty (reigned 1848-1896).

At 14, Bahar could fluently speak Arabic, and later he was able to learn how to speak and write French. At 18, he lost his father and started to work as a Muslim preacher and clergy. At the same time he composed a long ode (in Persian: qasideh), and sent it to Mozzafar-al-Din Shah Qajar. Mozaffar-al-Din Shah was very impressed by that poem and appointed Bahar as his new poet laureate and gave him the title of new King of Poets (Malek o-Šo`arā') upon a royal order.

At the onset of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran (1906-1911), Bahar resigned as the poet laureate to join the movement for the establishment of a parliamentary system in the country. Bahar became an active member of the Mashhad's branch of the Society for Prosperity (in Persian: Anjoman-e Saadat), which was promoting the establishment of parliament in Iran. He published his Journal of Khorasan (with collaboration with Hossein Ardebili), New Spring (in Persian: Nobahaar), and Fresh Spring (in Persian: Taazeh bahaar) respectively first in Mashhad and later in Tehran.

In his journals, he wrote many articles which played very significant roles to encourage the nation to stand up for the establishment of a parliament and for the new institutions, new forms of expression, and a new social and political order. After the triumph of the constitutional revolution, M.T. Bahar was repeatedly elected as a member of the parliament which was named as the National Consultative Assembly of Iran (in Persian: Majless-e Shoraay-e Melli-e Iran).

In 1918 when Ahmad Shah Qajar, the seventh and the last ruler of Qajar dynasty, was in power, Bahar renewed himself. He abandoned the activities as a clergy, he became completely a new man. At the same time, Bahar with the collaboration of writer and poet Saeed Nafisi, poet and historian Gholam-Reza Rashid Ysaemi, and historian Abbas Eghbal Ashtiaani founded the Daneshkadeh Literary Society (in Persian: Anjoman-e Adabi-e Daneshkadeh). Daneshkadeh Magazine (in Persian: Majaleh-e Daneshkadeh) was the monthly publication of that Society, in which besides prose and verses, very informative and useful articles like "Literary Revolution", "How Other Nations View Us" and "The Literary History of Iran" were also published. In fact, that magazine was Bahar's actual mean of publishing the results of his literary research and introducing Western literature to Iranians. The magazine also played a key role in strengthening and developing the contemporary style of the Persian Literature.

During Reza Shah Pahlavi (reigned 1925-1941), and after the establishment of Tehran University (1934), Bahar was appointed as a professor and started to teach Persian Literature at the Faculty of Literature in Tehran University. At the same period, he dedicated most of his times to edit and write various books on Persian Literature and History. Among many great pieces of literary and historical works of Bahar, one can mention

History of Sisstan (in Persian: Tarikh-e Sisstan),
A Short History of the Political Parties in Iran (in Persian: Tarikh-e Mokhtasar-e Ahzab-e Siassi)
Methodology on understanding the various styles and traditions in Persian prose (in Persian: Sabk Shenaasi)
edited version of Histories in Short (in Persian: Mojmalal Tavarikh),
edited version of Anthology of Stories (in Persian: Javameh-ol Hekayaat)
and the two volumes of the collection of his own poems.

During Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (reigned 1941-1979), and in 1945, Bahar was asked by the then Prime Minister, Ahmad Ghavam (also known as Ghavam o-Saltaneh), to serve as the Minister of Culture and Education in his cabinet, which he agreed to but served only for a very short time.

In the last years of his life, Bahar sadly suffered from the communicable disease of Tuberculosis and left Iran to seek medical treatment in Lausanne, a city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva. Bahar stayed in Lausanne for only a few months and returned home soon after. It was not much longer after his return to Tehran that his health status turned from bad to worse. He died shortly after on April 21, 1951. His tomb is in Zahir o-dowleh cemetery in Darband located in Shemiran, north of Tehran.

His Poems

M.T.Bahar was a 20th century poet, but his poems were quite traditional and firmly patriotic. Many scholars have strongly emphasized and documented that Bahar's style of writing and the beauty of his poetry, in addition to his deep passion for Iran and his ongoing challenges against fanaticism, do indeed have made him to be considered as one of the greatest cultural scholars of Iran. Though he worked as a preacher and clergy only in his early career, his first love had been always to compose poetry, to carry out historical researches, to teach, and to write.

Through his literary magazine of Faculty, Bahar had a significant role in the development of modern Persian poetry and literature. It can be argued that almost all advocates of modernism in Persian Poetry and Literature, to varying degrees, were inspired by developments and changes that had occurred in Western literature, and particularly in the European one. Still, such inspirations would not mean blindly copying Western models, but in practice, adoption of aspects of Western Literature which were then modified to fit the needs of the Iranian culture. In Bahar's collection of poems, one can find poems with different traditions. He professionally composed poems in almost every tradition of Persian Poetry namely panegyric (in Persian: Setayeshi or Madiheh), epic (Hemaasi), patriotic (Meehani), mystic (Ramzi or Soophianeh), romantic (Aasheghaneh), ethical (Akhlaaghi), didactic (Aamoozeshi or Pandi), colloquial (Goftogooii), and satirical (Tanzi or Hajvi). Some selected poems composed by Bahar can be viewed at the Poetry House of Mohammad Taqī Bahār.

Original Reference

Mohammad Taqī Bahār: A Reference Article on First Iranians by Manouchehr Saadat Noury.

External link

Bahar: Famous Iranian Poet.

Biography

His Poems

Original Reference

See also

External link