DEFC produces biopic on Persian scholar Jafar Shahidi

TEHRAN – The Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC) has produced a biopic of Jafar Shahidi (1918-2008), an expert on Persian literature and a prominent Islamic historian.

 

Directed by Manuchehr Moshiri, the biopic “And I Am the Diver and the Tavern Is the Sea” was screened at Tehran’s Negarestan Garden on Wednesday, the Persian service of MNA reported on Friday.

 

Shahidi’s daughter Shokufeh Shahidi, the daughter of Persian lexicographer Mohammad Moin (1914-1971), Mahdokht Moin, and a number of other literati attended the ceremony.

 

Mahdokht who was a student of Jafar Shahidi called the biopic useful and impressive for the generation of today.

 

“Master Shahidi did not allow others to make a film about him. I asked his daughter Shokufeh to persuade him to consent. Moshiri was also successful in his production,” Mahdokht said.

 

She added, “Master Shahidi was famous for his moral goodness. He was one of the few scholars who merged knowledge, action and mysticism together.”

 

Mohammad Dehqani, a student of Shahidi, next made a brief speech at the ceremony recalling his memoirs with the master in his classes.

 

“The classes with Shahidi were among the most useful and helpful ones we had during the Ph.D. program. Other students from several other classes also used to attend his classes to make use of his lectures. He was good-tempered and he used to tolerate discussions with his students,” he added.

 

Shahidi was a pupil of lexicographer Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, who wrote the most comprehensive unabridged Persian dictionary. He later became a director of the then Dehkhoda Dictionary Institute, which Dehkhoda had established in 1945 to complete the dictionary.

 

He got a Ph.D. in Persian language and literature from the University of Tehran in 1961 and continued his studies at the Qom and Najaf seminaries, where he received permission to practice ijtihad, the use of reason to arrive at the knowledge of truth in religious matters.

 

His most notable work is the fluent and eloquent translation of Imam Ali’s Nahj-ul-Balagha. He was also the author of “Analytical History of Islam”, which won Iran’s best book of the year award in 2006.

 

RM/YAW

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