Eighth Annual Bita Prize for Persian Arts: Ehsan Yarshater

Award Recipient: Professor Ehsan Yarshater

Ehsan Yarshater is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University and Director of its Center for Iranian Studies. 

He is the author and editor of a number of highly acclaimed scholarly works.  Among his books are Persian Poetry in the Second Half of the 15th Century (1953) and Southern Tati Dialects (1970). He has edited the third volume of The Cambridge History of Iran, in two parts, covering the Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian periods (1983, 1986), and Persian Literature (1988). His frequently cited and erudite chapter, “The Persian Presence in the Islamic World” is included in a volume with the same title as part of the Levi Della Vida symposia in his honor, edited by Richard Hovannisian and Georges Sabagh (1998).

He is the recipient of several awards including the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal of The Gustave E. von Grunebaum Center, The University of California at Los Angeles (1991); Spirit of Iranian Noted Achievers (SINA, 2013), and Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2015).

He is the Founder and Editor of the Encyclopædia Iranica; the General Editor of the 40-volume Tabari Translation Project; the General Editor of The History of Beyhaqi (3 vols.); the General Editor of A History of Persian Literature (in 22 volumes); and the Founding Editor of the Persian Text Series, the Persian Heritage Series, the Persian Studies Series, the Modern Persian Literature Series, and the Persian Art Series, among others. 

He is an honorary member of Societas Iranologica Europæa and the International Society of Iranian Studies and a life member of the American Institute of Iranian Studies.  Lecture series focused on Iranian studies have been instituted in his name at the following universities in the U.S. and abroad: London (SOAS); Paris; The University of California at Los Angeles, Yale, and Maryland. He has also established Fellowship Funds at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University (2008) and Columbia University (2012).