Yussef Etessami Iranian journalist, official, publisher, translator, and writer, was born in 1874 and died in 1938. His father Ebrahim was from Ashtian and the head of finance of the Iranian province of Azerbaijan. He was the elder brother of the architect and painter Abolhassan Etessami

Abolhassan Etessami

Abolhassan Etessami, Iranian architect, calligrapher, painter, and novelist, was born in 1903 and died in 1978. His father Ebrahim Etessami was the head of finance of the Iranian province of Azerbaijan; and his brother Yussef Etessami was the founder of the Bahar journal, and the father of the...

, and the father of the poetess Parvin Etessami.

In the 1890s, Yussef Etessami established the first typographical printing house in Tabriz.
He was member of the Iranian Parliament or Majles in 1909-12, and founded the Bahar journal in 1910. At various junctures he served in the Ministry of Education and headed the Royal and Majles Libraries.

The Bahar journal was a sixty-four-page monthly published in 1910-1 and 1921-2. As noted in the first issue, the purpose of Bahar was “to provide a … forum for various significant topics of scientific, literary, ethical, historical, and artistic interest to people of understanding, and to acquaint the public with valuable information.” Most of the journal's material was written or translated by Yussef Etessami, and large part devoted to Western culture. To Edward Granville Browne

Edward Granville Browne

Edward Granville Browne , born in Stouts Hill, Uley, Gloucestershire, England, was a British orientalist who published numerous articles and books of academic value, mainly in the areas of history and literature...

 (1928, 489) Bahar appeared “very modern and European in tone;” and in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Heshmat Moayyad points out its “liberal and humanistic” orientation.

In addition to his contributions to Bahar, Yussef Etessami's produced about forty volumes of translations, in particular some Persian translations of Qasim Amin

Qasim Amin

Qasim Amin born on 1 December 1863 Alexandria died April 22, 1908 Cairo was an Egyptian jurist and one of the founders of the Egyptian national movement and Cairo University. Qasim Amin was considered by many as the Arab world’s “first feminist”...

's Tahrir al-Mara, Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

's Les Misérables, vol. 1, and Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

's Kabale und Liebe. He is the author also of a commentary in Arabic of Abolqassem al-Zamakhshari

Al-Zamakhshari

Abu al-Qasim Mahmud ibn Umar al-Zamakhshari. Known widely as al-Zamakhshari . Also called Jar Allah was a medieval Muslim scholar of Chorasmian-Iranian origin, who subscribed to the Muʿtazilite theological doctrine, who was born in Khwarezmia, but lived most of his life in Bukhara, Samarkand, and...

's Atwaq ad-Dahab, an a three-volume catalogue of manuscripts in the Majles Library.

Sources

Browne, Edward G. 1928. A literary history of Persia, vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dehkhoda, Ali-Akbar. 1977. Biographical note. In Poems of Parvin Etessami, ed. Abolfath Etessami, p. 342. Tehran: Abolfath Etessami.

Etessami, Abolhassan. 1958. Biographical note. Tehran University News Bulletin 374, pp. 34-7.

Moayyad, Heshmat. Etesami, Mirza Yusof Khan Ashtiani, Etessam-al-molk. In Encyclopædia Iranica online.

Yusofi, G. H. Bahar. In Encyclopædia Iranica online.

External links

Encyclopædia Iranica online