Iran Book News Agency (IBNA) - A Survey of Persian Art belongs to all Iranians

During the unveiling ceremony of 'A Survey of Persian Art', Ali-Akbar Velayati introduced it as an encyclopedia that can be used by all the people interested in Iranian art and culture, and a work that most of any other country belongs to Iranians themselves.

IBNA: During the unveiling session of 'A Survey of Persian Art' held at the Elmi-Farhangi pavilion at Tehran International Book Fair, Dr Ali-Akbar Velayati made a speech on the significance of Iranian Art.

The session began with the introductory speech of Ali Zarei Najafdari manager of Elmi-Farhangi Publications who said: "The book was originally collected by Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman and published some 75 years ago in English. Later on it was translated into Japanese and found its way to Asia. Iranian students have been using its photo archive for more than seven decades without having access to its translation."

"Elmi-Farhangi Publications started the translation project in 1999 but it was left unpublished until the year 2009 when 13 volumes of the series came out."

Then Ali-Akbar Velayati stated that more than 50 persons have made efforts to provide the Persian translation that functions like an encyclopedia for all those interested in Iranian art and culture.

He added: "Isfahan shows the comprehensive aspect of Iranian art and architecture before and through the Islamic era more than any other city."

Bringing the Great Mosque of Isfahan as an example he added: "The building is a collection of Iranian way of arts and architecture, while Naqshe Jahan Mosque manifests all unique urbanization methods of Iranians as a quintessence of developed architecture in Iran."

Velayati added that the evolution of architecture has been time-consuming as it had to first wait for the other sciences such as mathematics to reach perfection.

"When studying the masterpieces of architecture in the world of Islam we come up with four artistic miracles: Taj Mahal in India, Sultan Ahmad Mosque in Ottoman era, Alhamra Palace in Andalusia and Isfahan including a large number of historical monuments. By comparing these masterpieces we would realize the far different state of Iranian art," said Velayati.

He then thanked the whole translation team for having undertaken the hard task.

The collection includes 92 research articles on Iranian arts since prehistoric epoch. The 15-volume series 'A Survey of Persian Art' is written by Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman and translated into Persian under the supervision of Sirous Parham.