Mirza Agha Tabrizi

Mirza Agha Tabrizi was a 19th-century Iranian[1] civil servant and writer. He is noted for being the author of four comedies, which, for a long period of time had erroneously been attributed to the diplomat and advocate of modernization Mirza Malkam Khan (died 1908).[2]

Biography

Not many details are known about Tabrizi's life. According to a letter he wrote in 1871 to the well-known Mirza Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh (died 1878)—who was the source of inspiration for his comedies—Tabrizi states that he was born in Tabriz in northwestern Qajar Iran to a certain Mirza Mahdi Monshi-Bashi. In his city of birth, he acquired an early interest in the French and Russian languages.[2] In the same letter, Tabrizi states that he has worked for several years at the Iranian royal teachers' training college (perhaps referring to the mo'allem-khaneh-ye padeshahi) as well as at Iranian diplomatic posts abroad in Baghdad and Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, and for seven years as first secretary (monshi-e awwal) at the Embassy of France in Tehran.[2]

According to extant information, Tabrizi worked as a civil servant in 1846 in the Khorasan Province in the northeastern part of the country, and in 1853-58 he functioned as an interpreter and instructor in French at the Dar ul-Funun School.[2] His earlier mentioned posts at Baghdad and Constantinople were reportedly in conjunction with the appointment of Mirza Hosein Khan Moshir od-Dowleh as the new ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. At this point, Tabrizi was apparently still inexperienced about European travel; according to Hasan Javadi and Farrokh Gaffary, he would have otherwise "had some understanding of the structure and functioning of a theater, something clearly lacking in his plays".[2]

References
  1. Rice 2020, p. 4, "Akhundzadeh also directly inspired the first Persian-language plays through his correspondences with the Iranian writer Mirza Agha Tabrizi".
  2. Javadi & Gaffary 1986, pp. 182–183.

Sources
  • Javadi, Hasan; Gaffary, Farrokh (1986). "ĀQĀ TABRĪZĪ". Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. II, Fasc. 2. pp. 182–183.
  • Rice, Kelsey (2020). "Emissaries of Enlightenment: Azeri Theater Troupes in Iran and Central Asia, 1906–44". Iranian Studies: 1–25. doi:10.1080/00210862.2020.1753022.
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