Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies Emeritus founded Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies
By Beth Giudicessi, Harvard Correspondent
In the summer of 1948, Richard N. Frye was nearing the end of a postdoctoral fellowship in the Society of Fellows of Harvard University when he traveled to southern Iran, making his way by mule to the village of Sar Mashhad. Frye battled drought and sandstorms but, with the help of native Qashqai people, was able to climb a small cliff to collect an impression of an 800-word stone inscription written in ancient Pahlavi — one of the largest found in the Near East.
The discovery was one of many significant events during the trip. Though Frye fell severely ill from the intense heat of Buzpar, near the Persian Gulf, he also came across the only known replica of the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae. Soon after, he traveled to Tehran, where he encountered scholars, politicians, and literati tasked with developing a modern Iran. One such scholar, linguist Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, gave Frye the title “Irandust,” meaning “Friend of Iran.”
The professor took pride in the designation and sometimes used it as an added surname. Yet as a polyglot who was born in 1920 in Birmingham, Ala., and raised by Swedish parents in Danville, Ill., and whose scholarly career spanned six decades and half as many continents, Frye was in many ways a friend of the world.
Frye, the Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies Emeritus, died March 27. He left behind three sons, one daughter, and his wife, the Iranian-Assyrian scholar and Columbia University Professor Eden Naby.
More Professor Richard N. Frye dies at 94 | Harvard Gazette.
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