Heydar Abbasi, Polymath of Iranian Arts and Letters, Dies at 83

Date: 29 April 2026 - 22:33

News ID: ۱۴۹۶۶۴

TEHRAN — Heydar Abbasi, the Iranian poet, mystic, painter, sculptor, engraver, translator, and educator known across Iran by his literary name “Baryshmaz,” died on Tuesday at his home in Maragheh, in East Azarbaijan Province. He was 83.
His death was reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). The cause was old age and prolonged illness, according to the report. Only days earlier, on April 22, he had marked his 83rd birthday.
Abbasi was a singular figure in Iranian cultural life — a polymath whose mastery spanned both the arts and letters, as well as Islamic mysticism and scholarship. He was fluent in Arabic, Russian, French, and English, and his intellectual and spiritual depth earned him a devoted following among students, artists, and clerics alike
Born in 1943 in Maragheh, a historic city in northwestern Iran known for its medieval observatory, Abbasi earned a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature. He spent decades as a teacher in the state education system of East Azarbaijan Province, shaping generations of students even as he pursued his own prolific creative and scholarly output.
Abbasi’s most celebrated works were deeply rooted in Islamic scripture and Persian mysticism, but uniquely rendered in the Azerbaijani Turkish language, the mother tongue of Iran’s northwestern region.
His magnum opus was a six-volume translation and commentary on Rumi’s Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, titled Sharh al-Anwar (The Explanation of Lights). He also produced a three-volume translation and exegesis of Nahj al-Balaghah — the revered collection of sermons, letters, and sayings of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shia imam.
What distinguished Abbasi’s work was not merely translation but sustained philosophical and spiritual interpretation, rendered in poetic Azerbaijani Turkish, a language in which classical religious
literature remains comparatively sparse.
Beyond literature, Abbasi practiced and taught visual arts, including painting, sculpture, and engraving — skills that led Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to award him a first-degree certificate in art, the country’s highest artistic credential. That honor was formally conferred on July 11, 2021, following a national congress held in his name in December 2017 in Maragheh.
Despite his erudition and national recognition, Abbasi lived modestly in his hometown. Acquaintances and former students described him as retiring, deeply spiritual, and indifferent to fame — a “wandering mystic,” as one Iranian cultural official put it, whose social conscience and poetic voice were inseparable from his religious practice.
His literary name, Baryshmaz, is believed to derive from a local Azerbaijani Turkish phrase evoking humility and detachment from material wealth.