Biography:Samad Behrangi

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Samad Behrangi
صمد بهرنگی
Samad Behrangi.JPG
Born(1939-06-24)June 24, 1939
Tabriz, Imperial State of Iran
DiedAugust 31, 1968(1968-08-31) (aged 29)
Aras River, Iran
Cause of deathDrowning
NationalityIranian
Alma materTabriz University
Occupation
  • Short story writer
  • teacher
  • social critic
  • social activist
  • poet
  • translator

Samad Behrangi (Persian: صمد بهرنگی‎; June 24, 1939 – August 31, 1968)[1] was an Iranian teacher, social activist and critic, folklorist, translator, and short story writer of Azerbaijani descent.[2] He is famous for his children's books, particularly The Little Black Fish.[3][4] Influenced by predominantly leftist ideologies that were common among the intelligentsia of his era‌, which made him popular among the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas, his books typically portrayed the lives of the children of the urban poor and encouraged the individual to change his/ her circumstances by her own initiatives.

Early life

He was born on June 24, 1939 in the neighborhood of Harandab in the city of Tabriz, Imperial State of Iran.[5][6] He was from a working-class family, his parents were Sara and Ezzat, and he had two brothers and three sisters. His father was seasonal worker and his income was never sufficient, his father eventually left Iran like millions of other workers on the move for better life conditions for the Caucasus and never returned.

He finished elementary school and three years of secondary school in Tabriz, before enrolling in a rural teacher training school.[6] He spent two years at the Daneshsarayea-Keshavarzi and finishing the program in 1957.[6] Thus, only receiving few years of education, at the age of 18, he became a teacher, and continued to be so for the rest of his life, in the East Azerbaijan Province of Iran.

Career

In the next eleven years, while teaching Persian in rural schools of Iranian Azerbaijan, he attained a B.A. degree in English from Tabriz University.[2] He started publishing stories in 1960, his first being Adat (English: Habit). He carried on writing stories, along translating from English and Azerbaijani to Farsi, and vice versa. Later, he was dismissed from his high school teaching position, due to a claim that he was impolite, and assigned to an elementary school. Then, as his cultural works increased, he was accused and pursecuted, and suspended of teaching. After a while his sentence was called off and he returned to schools. Later, he attended student protests.[7]

Apart from children's stories, he wrote many pedagogical essays and collected and published several samples of oral Iranian Azerbaijani literature. His folklore studies have usually been done with the help of his colleague Behrooz Dehghani, who helped publish some of Behrangi's works after his early death. Behrangi also has a few Azeri translations from Persian poems by Ahmad Shamlou, Forough Farrokhzad, and Mehdi Akhavan-Sales.

Publications

Apart from children's stories, he wrote many pedagogical essays and collected and published several samples of oral Azerbaijani literature.[6] His folklore studies have usually been done with the help of his colleague Behrooz Dehghani, who helped publish some of Behrangi's works after his early death. Behrangi also has a few Azerbaijani language translations of Persian poems by Ahmad Shamlou, Forough Farrokhzad, and Mehdi Akhavan-Sales.

List of publications

  • Behrangi, Samad (1969) (in Fa). کندوکاو در مسائل تربیتی ایران. 
  • Behrangi, Samad (August 1968) (in fa). ماهی سیاه کوچولو. Farshid Mesghali (illustrations). ISBN 9648037396. 
  • Behrangi, Samad (1968) (in Fa). اولدوز و کلاغ‌ها. 
  • Behrangi, Samad (1967) (in Fa). اولدوز و عروسک سخنگو. ISBN 9645858720. 
  • Behrangi, Samad (1969). One Peach Thousand Peaches. 
  • Behrangi, Samad (April 1, 2014) (in Fa). تلخون: مجموعه قصه. (Amirkabir Publications)انتشارات امیرکبیر. 
  • The Complete Stories of Behrang, publishers, Persian Culture & Art Institute, Vancouver and Zagros Publications, Montreal, Canada

Death

Behrangi drowned on August 31, 1968 in the Aras river and his death was blamed on the Pahlavi government.[8][1] It is believed that an army officer, Hamzeh Farahati, was seen with him when he drowned. Farahati in his book[9] and in an interview with VOA[10] has unequivocally claimed that Samad drowned and was not killed by SAVAK.

He was buried in the Imamieh cemetery (or Emamiyyeh cemetery; Farsi:قبرستان امامیه) in the Imamieh neighborhood of Tabriz.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Panah, Hamid Yazdan (2016-08-31). "Remembering Samad Behrangi, the Writer Who Inspired Countless Iranian Revolutionaries" (in en). https://globalvoices.org/2016/08/31/remembering-samad-behrangi-the-writer-who-inspired-countless-iranian-revolutionaries/. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hillman, Michael C. (December 15, 1989). "Behrangī, Ṣamad". pp. 110–111. https://iranicaonline.org/articles/behrangi-samad-teacher. 
  3. ↑ Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad (1977). "Review of The Little Black Fish and Other Modern Persian Stories". Iranian Studies 10 (3): 216–222. ISSN 0021-0862. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4310272. 
  4. ↑ Hillman, Michael C. (1977). "Review of The Little Black Fish and Other Modern Persian Stories". World Literature Today 51 (4): 673–673. doi:10.2307/40131854. ISSN 0196-3570. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40131854. 
  5. ↑ "Samad Behrangi". Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Gale. 2004. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Fereshteh, M. H. (1995). "Samad Behrangi's Experiences and Thoughts on Rural Teaching and Learning". Journal of Thought 30 (4): 61–74. ISSN 0022-5231. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42589432. 
  7. ↑ A Brief Note on Samad Behrangi's Life by Iraj Bashiri
  8. ↑ "Persian Language & Literature: Samad Behrangi, the best known Iranian writer of children's stories". https://www.iranchamber.com/literature/sbehrangi/samad_behrangi.php. 
  9. ↑ Behnoud, Massoud (November 20, 2006). "خاطرات حمزه فراهتی: از مرگ صمد بهرنگی و سعيد سلطانپور" (in Fa). http://www.bbc.com/persian/arts/story/2006/11/061120_mv-mb-samad-hamze.shtml. 
  10. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "گشودن راز مرگ صمد بهرنگی". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KggJoJ0-Tsw. (video)

Further reading

External links




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