Aref Qazvini

He was born at Qazvin, his birth year variously given (1880–1882; the museum's record discloses the datings). Trained in calligraphy and traditional music, he sang at the Qajar court but refused a royal stipend, and from 1905 his revolutionary songs spread through Iran and beyond. He travelled with the National Defence Committee in the First World War, mourned Colonel Pessian in famous tasnifs such as "Gerye kon", supported the republican project of 1924, and then, barred from concerts under Reza Shah, withdrew to Hamadan. ¹²

In Hamadan he lived in poverty on a shrinking stipend, visited by figures such as Tagore and Ahmad Kasravi. Ill with heart disease, bronchitis and a cancer that took his voice, he died there on 21 January 1934 — the English article's text leaves open the night of 20/21 January — and was buried at the Avicenna Mausoleum. ¹²

His affiliation is recorded as unknown. The English article gives him Zoroastrian ancestors two generations back — family background — and a youth spent, at his father's insistence, in sermon attendance and mourning recitation, which he abandoned as a young man; Iranica records a takfir issued against him by others and his drinking. None of this attests a personal faith or unbelief, and the Persian article and Wikidata are silent. ¹²³

This entry is built from the cited source records in the museum's source registry (data/source/). Facts are stated only as the cited sources give them; where a source is silent, the entry is silent.