Source: Farhang Foundation

LOS ANGELES, CA - Farhang Foundation, a recently established non-profit organization focused on celebrating Iranian art and culture in Southern California honored Professor Ehsan Yarshater with the Heritage Award 2009 as part if its Nowruz (Persian New Year) program on Saturday, March 14, 2009 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Professor Ehsan Yarshater

Professor Yarshater is world renowned as the creator and editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica, a work thirty years in the making that is chronicling and preserving Persian Heritage.  He is also the Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University and Director of its Center for Iranian Studies.  He has authored and served as the editor of numerous scholarly works. Among others he has authored Persian Poetry in the Second Half of the 15th Century (1953), Southern Tati Dialects (1970), and has edited the third volume of Cambridge History of Iran, in two parts, covering the Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian periods (1983,1986), and Persian Literature (1988). He is the General Editor of the 40-volume Tabari Translation Project, and the Founding Editor of the Persian Text Series, the Persian Heritage Series and the Persian Studies Series. Lecture series in his name have been instituted at Harvard, the University of London, and the University of California at Los Angeles.

The Farhang Foundation Heritage Award 2009 recognized Professor Yarshater's tremendous contributions to the study of Iranian civilization and the creation of the Encyclopaedia Iranica, a record of Persian Heritage.

"It is significant for us to have one of the foremost scholars of Iranian civilization to be our first recipient of the Farhang Foundation Heritage Award. Professor Yarshater has studied and written about Iran in its various aspects, for the past sixty years; his Encyclopaedia Iranica will ensure the recording of almost every aspect of this rich and ancient civilization.", said Touraj Daryaee, President of Farhang Foundation.

Photo by Banafsheh P. Abadi

The Foundation plans on presenting this award annually to an individual who contributes similarly to the history and culture of Iran. 

Professor Yarshater was presented with an official award certificate and the Farhang Foundation Heritage Medal by the Foundation's Chairman; Ali C. Razi, President; Touraj Daryaee and Board of Trustee member, Darioush Khaledi who chaired this year's Award Committee.

About Farhang Foundation
Farhang Foundation is a non-religious, non-political and not-for-profit foundation established in 2008 to celebrate the art and culture of Iranian-Americans in its widest extent. The foundation supports academic activities in Southern California by funding university programs, publications and conferences. The foundation also supports cultural programs such as celebration of Nowruz and Mehregan, theater, dance performances, films screenings and poetry reading in Southern California. Farhang Foundation, in cooperation with various cultural and academic institutions plans major programs and exhibitions about Iran and its culture. For more info visit: www.farhang.org.