Iraj Afshar (; 8 October 1925 – 9 March 2011) was a bibliographer, historian, scholar, professor, and a figure in the field of Persian studies. Afshar was a professor emeritus of the University of Tehran. He was a consulting editor of Encyclopædia Iranica at Columbia University.
Biography
Iraj Afshar was born on 8 October 1925 in Tehran, Iran to parents Nosrat Barazandeh and . He attended Zoroastrian Shāpour Secondary School and Firouz-Bahrām High School in Tajrish, Tehran. In 1945, he married Shayesteh Afsharieh and together they had four sons.
Iraj Afshar recorded the monuments of Yazd in his three-volume "yādegār-hāye Yazd (Monuments of Yazd)". He was known as, "the doyen of standard Persian language bibliographers". Afshar played a significant role in the development of the field of Iranology in Iran and throughout the world during the second half of the 20th century. He was the editor of Sokhan, a prolific Iranology journal, under the responsibility of Parviz Natel-Khanlari and also the editor of rāhnamāye ketāb (Bibliography Guide), Mehr, farhang-e Iranzamin (Culture of Iran) and Ayandeh.
He was the chief bibliographer of Persian books at Harvard University. Afshar was associated with UNESCO and taught at the University of Bern and University of Tehran.
He was on the advisory council for the Iranian Studies Journal.