A small but attractive gathering of items relating to the life of Mirza Reza Khan Arfa’ (1846-1939), a Persian diplomat who fulfilled a diverse array of roles during the late Qajar period. They exemplify the striking visual legacy he left behind in books, artworks and architecture, often mixing Western and Persianate features.
Reza was born in Tabriz and looked set for training at a religious school when a downturn in his family’s fortunes redirected his path to Istanbul, where his brother-in-law ran a shop. Outside of working hours he studied the manifold languages of the city, soaking up French and Turkish. It was in Tbilisi, on his return journey to Iran, that he took up a humble role at the Persian consulate and began to learn Russian. He was then in the right place at the right time when “the court of Naser al-Din Shah … needed a Russian interpreter for his journey across the Caucasus on the way to Europe” (Sirjani, Encyclopaedia Iranica), thus kick-starting his diplomatic career.
Having given a good account of himself, he was made third secretary at the Tiflis consulate and later won roles on the frontier commission of Khorasan-Ahal and the suite of the Shah for his final trip to Europe (cf. Diba, Tabriz in Monaco). After becoming consul-general in Tiflis, increasingly important roles followed, such as Minister to the Russian Court at St Petersburg (1312/1895), representative of Persia at the first Hague Conference (1899) and Ambassador to the Ottoman court (1317/1900).
Alongside his professional commitments he showed a strong appetite for the arts, not only as a collector but as the author of over a dozen books. Though his output is not of great literary significance — EI describes his poetry as “mediocre” (ibid.) — it stands as a fascinating example of cross-cultural book production at the turn of the century, with works in Farsi, French, Russian and Swedish, published across several cities, including Tehran, Istanbul, St. Petersburg, Paris and Stockholm. The two books here, Muntakhab-i Danish and Divan Gohar Khavari, are examples of his Persian-language poetry, the former printed with moveable type and the latter predominantly with lithography.
Divan Gohar Khavari, in particular, fully embodies his maximalist sensibility and desire to employ aspects of Persian book production. A work of biography in verse, it features typographic page numbers, lithographed text (in nasta’liq script) and chromo-lithographed borders and titles in gold and iridescent inks. All of which is printed on paper so smooth (presumably in imitation of polished paper), that the ink appears to have struggled to set. The illustrations, most of which are photo-engravings, show the author and various scenes from his career, including images of the Russian Court, Nicholas II and the empress consort, Alexandra Feodorovna.
The largest and most conspicuous of Reza’s creations were his houses, in Tabriz, Borjomi and Monaco, which took inspiration from the great masterpieces of Safavid architecture. Each contained large collections of Iranian art and items created by Reza’s family. The needlework sampler and small photographs give a sense of those interiors and though unsigned (apart from one photo-postcard) appear to have been made by his daughter Fatima at their Monaco residence (Villa Daneshgah), where the family lived for much of the time after 1910. The sampler copies Reza’s coat of arms, a beautiful design made in 1320 AH (1902/03 AD), with sewn titles and mottos in French and Farsi. One of the Farsi titles announces him as the ‘Prince of Peace’, and the French motto ‘Paix porte prospérité’ also points to the peacekeeping component of his diplomatic career; not to mention a nod to the wealth that came his way, some of which was gained “reportedly not always through honest means” (ibid.).
The photographs were probably taken at a studio in Monaco, or in Villa Daneshgah. Of small size, they were likely intended as gifts and keepsakes, with one used as a postcard by Fatima (written in Swedish, a language learnt from her Finnish mother, Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette). The two images of her, striking poses in differing dance attire, seem a small but fitting tribute to her father, proudly placing occident and orient side by side.
Both books are rare. Neither are recorded in LibraryHub, and OCLC locates just one copy of Muntakhab-i Danish, at the University of Utah. Divan Gohar Khavari appears to be unrecorded in Western library catalogues, but we have been able to trace a copy in Iran, at the Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi Library in Qom.
References: ‘Ali-Akbar Sa’idi Sirjani, ‘Daneš’ in Encyclopaedia Iranica, 15 December 1993 (accessed 08 March 2022); Farhad Diba, ‘Tabriz in Monaco’ in The Iranian, 12 December 2003, (accessed 10 March 2022).
