Saeed Nafisi

Who was Saeed Nafisi?

Saeed Nafisi was an Iranian scholar, fiction writer and poet. He was a prolific writer in Persian.

Nafisi was born in Tehran, where he conducted numerous research projects on Iranian culture, literature and poetry. He first emerged as a serious thinker when he joined Mohammad-Taqi Bahar, Abbas Eqbal Ashtiani, Gholam-Reza Rashid Yasemi and Abdolhossein Teymourtash to found one of the first literary magazines to be published in Iran, called Daneshkade, in 1918. He subsequently published many seminal articles on Iran, Persian literary texts and Sufism and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages worldwide. He died in a Russian hospital in Tehran.

Saeed Nafisi's relatives include Moadeb Naficy, the guardian and doctor of the Shah of Iran; and Moadeb's son Habib Naficy, a senior statesman, founder of Iran's labor laws, U.S.-Iran Attache, and founder of multiple technical universities in Tehran, Siamak Naficy, an Anthropologist, as well as acclaimed author, Azar Nafisi, a niece of his.

Nafisi taught in Tehran University, Kabul University, Cairo University and San José State University.