TEHRAN -- A year after the death of Mousa Asvar, scholars and translators gathered at the Academy of Persian Language and Literature to remember a figure whose work helped sustain one of the most important literary connections in Iran: the dialogue between Persian and Arabic letters.
Asvar, a permanent member of the Academy and former director of its Comparative Literature Group, died on August 26, 2025, aged 72. 
Born in Karbala, he grew up with Arabic as a native language while developing an equally deep command of Persian, a combination that colleagues said gave him an unusual position in Iranian literary culture.
At the memorial, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, president of the Academy, described Asvar as exceptional in his mastery of Arabic language and literature. He said that an understanding of Iranian cultural identity remains incomplete without knowledge of Arabic, which for more than a millennium has been deeply intertwined with the religious, intellectual and literary life of Iran.
Asvar’s particular distinction, Haddad-Adel said, was his command of both classical and modern Arabic literature and his ability to move naturally between Arabic and Persian literary traditions. The Academy had appointed him director of its Comparative Literature Group in 2021.
Hussein Masoumi-Hamadani, a close friend and fellow Academy member, recalled Asvar’s central role in the editorial council of Soroush and his work on language at Iran’s national broadcaster. He also pointed to Asvar’s efforts to introduce contemporary Persian poetry to Arab readers through contacts with Lebanese publications and a special issue devoted to modern Persian and Arabic poetry.
“He did not write with a loose brush,” Masoumi-Hamadani said of his precision as a translator. “It was as though he were writing on a tablet.”
Mortaza Hashemipour, a researcher at the Academy, highlighted the discipline behind Asvar’s work: intellectual rigor, precision in choosing words and an exceptional sensitivity to the demands of translating poetry, from al-Mutanabbi to Adonis. Under Asvar’s editorship, he said, the Academy’s Comparative Literature journal underwent a significant transformation.
For Alvand Bahari, another speaker at the memorial, Asvar’s absence was felt not simply as the loss of a translator but as the disappearance of a particular intellectual temperament—his exacting standards, candor, patience and refusal to compromise over language.
A text read by Asvar’s niece, Sadaf Chizari, described him as more than a translator of words: he was “a translator of the spirit of two cultures.”
The memorial also included video tributes and an exhibition of Asvar’s works organized by the Academy’s Central Library. Earlier Academy commemorations have similarly emphasized his role as one of the leading translators of Arabic literature into Persian.