Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda


Allameh Ali Akbar Dehkhodā was a prominent Iranian linguist. He was also the author of Dehkhoda dictionary, the most extensive dictionary of the Persian language published to date.

Biography

Dehkhoda was born in Tehran to parents from Qazvin. His father, Khan Baba Khan Ghazvini, died when he was only 9 years old. Dehkhoda quickly excelled in Persian literature, Arabic and French. He enrolled at the School of Political Science, which employed, amongst other figures, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and his Secretary as lecturers.
He was also active in politics, and served in the Majles as a Member of Parliament from Kerman and Tehran. He also served as Dean of Tehran School of Political Science and later the School of Law of the University of Tehran.
In 1903, he went to the Balkans as an Iranian embassy employee, but came back to Iran two years later and became involved in the Constitutional Revolution of Iran.
In Iran Dehkhoda, Mirza Jahangir Khan and Ghasem Khan had been publishing the Sur-e Esrafil newspaper for about two years, but the authoritarian king Mohammad Ali Shah disbanded the parliament and banished Dehkhoda and some other liberalists into exile in Europe. There he continued publishing articles and editorials, but when Mohammad Ali Shah was deposed in 1911, he returned to the country and became a member of the new Majles.
He is buried in Ebn-e Babooyeh cemetery in Shahr-e Ray, near Tehran.
In his article "First Iranian Scholar who authored the Most Extensive & Comprehensive Farsi Dictionary," Manouchehr Saadat Noury wrote that,

Works

Dehkhoda translated Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois into Persian. He has also written Amsal o Hekam in four volumes, a French-Persian Dictionary, and other books, but his lexicographic masterpiece is Loghat-nameh-ye Dehkhoda, the largest Persian dictionary ever published, in 15 volumes. Dr. Mohammad Moin accomplished Dehkhoda's unfinished volumes according to Dehkhoda's request after him. Finally the book was published after forty five years of efforts of Dehkhoda.