Gilbert Lazard: French Linguist who Lived in Persian Poetry

Linguist Gilbert Lazard.
Linguist Gilbert Lazard.
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Gilbert Lazard: French Linguist who Lived in Persian Poetry

Linguist Gilbert Lazard.
Linguist Gilbert Lazard.

“Every man has three homes,” the linguist Gilbert Lazard liked to say. “One home is the city or village where you are born, and another is where fate has landed you in. The third and truest home, however, is poetry.”

With that definition, Lazard, who has just died aged 98, was a Parisian by birth and a Frenchman by nationality, while his third home was Persian poetry which he first encountered through a less than accurate translation of some of Omar Khayyam’s rubaiyat.

In the post-war years when Lazard was looking for “an exciting future” little did he expect to find it in what he called “the Persian past.” And that time European scholarship, in such fields as linguistics and literature, was divided into two camps: the Philhelens, who looked to ancient Greece, and the Persophiles, who favored ancient Iran. Khayyam helped Lazrad choose the pro-Persia camp, a sympathy that was soon to be strengthened with a number of personal friendships, among them that of Sadegh Hedayat, arguably the founder of modern Persian novel, who lived in Paris in exile. Other Iranian friends included the scholar Shahid Nura’i and Fereydon Hoveyda, later to become a prominent diplomat under the Shah.

By the 1950s, the Persophiles had become a major force in France’s academic circles. There was Roman Ghirshman, a Russian-born archaeologist who devoted his life to studying Iran’s pre-Islamic history through a number of on-site projects. There was the Syrian-born Emile (born Ezra) Benveniste, arguably the most important expert on the Indo-Iranian family of languages of his generation. There was also Charles-Henri de Fouchecour, who played a key role in shaping what became modern linguistics with focus on the Indo-European languages.

The French Persophiles were in stiff competition with their British counterparts organized in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. There was, however, an important difference between the two groups. The British saw Iran and all things Iranian as something that belonged to the distant past, a collection of majestic, but dead relics. The French on the other hand regarded Iranology as a dynamic discipline that connects the past to the present and even the future. It was with that conviction that Lazard wouldn’t limit himself to translating classical Persian poets, notably Rudaki and Khayyam. He also translated modern Persian literature, notably two of Hedayat’s novels the satirical “Haji Agha” and the surrealistic “Three drops of Blood.”

The Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages consists of 18 languages some of which, like Parthian and Tati, have all but disappeared. Others like Soghdian survive in remote mountains of Central Asia and the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Others like modern Persian, Kurdish in three slightly different versions, Pushtun, Baluchi, Ossetian and Taleshi have survived and, in some cases, prospered beyond what one might have expected a century ago.

Lazard was at home with almost all those languages, often via their poetry.

His chief concern, however, was to try and find out what the past could do about the present. It was in that spirit that he undertook an almost heroic task by studying the poetic meters of the Parthian, a language that ceased to exist almost 1,500 years ago. You can imagine he surprise that some of Iran’s poets expressed when Lazard showed that the Parthian meters had somehow influenced the prosody of both Arabic and post-Islamic Persian poetry.

As a Professor of Iranian Studies at the prestigious Parisian Sorbonne University, Lazard for almost two decades helped train two generations of Iranologists from all over the world. From the 1960s onwards his classes also attracted many students from Iran itself, as well as Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asian republics where Iranian languages had a home.

Not content with lectures and research papers, Lazard also spent years on compiling a French-Persian dictionary, which many linguists still regard as a major contribution. Another of Lazard’s daring ventures produced a grammar of the Persian language which some of Iran’s own master linguists, notably Abdol-Azim Qarib, praised as a work of high scholarship.

Never shying away from scholarly dispute, Lazrad launched a debate on the origins of what linguists call “modern Persian” that is to say the language that has been in use in Iran, Afghanistan, parts of Central Asia and the Caucasus since the 7th century AD. The oldest Persian poem, believed to be a piece written by Abul-Hofs Soghdi, is dated to almost 1,100 years ago. That makes “modern Persian” one of the only two Indo-European languages in which texts written 11 centuries ago are still accessible to present-day speakers (The other language is Icelandic). Because Soghdi hailed from Central Asia, or the Greater Khorassan, some scholars believe that “modern Persian”, known to linguists as Pahlavi or Farsi-Dari, originated in a region between the Caspian Sea and China. However, other scholars insist that “modern Persian” developed in the southern province of Parsa (Fars) which was the stronghold of the Sassanid Dynasty. Favoring the Khorasani theory, Lazrad spent years trying to establish that “modern Persian” had its origins not in southern Iran, but to the northeast of present-day Iran.

Thanks to mutual friends, notably Maxime Rodinson, an eminent Isalmologist, and Fereydon Hoveyda, I met Lazrad in Paris on a number of occasions in the 1970s and 1980s. One recurring theme in our informal discussions was the concept of “the Persianate”, originally launched by the German Iranologist Anne-Marie Schimmel to describe the vast region where Iranian, specially literature, music and architecture, had a presence dating back to more than two millennia.

“Germans always like to conceptualize things in geopolitical terms,” Lazard once commented. “For me, however, language and literature have no boundaries, especially Persian with the universal message of its poetry.”



Lebanese Face Grueling Journeys Home After War Leaves them Stranded Abroad

Travelers track flight changes during Iran-Israel war (Reuters)
Travelers track flight changes during Iran-Israel war (Reuters)
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Lebanese Face Grueling Journeys Home After War Leaves them Stranded Abroad

Travelers track flight changes during Iran-Israel war (Reuters)
Travelers track flight changes during Iran-Israel war (Reuters)

Hundreds of Lebanese citizens stranded abroad during the recent Iran-Israel war hope the declared ceasefire will soon allow them to return home, after spending days or even weeks trapped in airports or foreign cities where they had planned only brief stays.

Others managed to make arduous and costly journeys back to Lebanon, using complex combinations of land, air, and sea travel.

Since the outbreak of the conflict, many Lebanese, especially students and religious pilgrims on summer break, faced major obstacles returning home. International airlines repeatedly canceled or altered flights, and some airports closed, forcing stranded travelers to remain abroad, sometimes overnight in airport terminals.

Nisreen Fatouni, 28, one of those caught outside Lebanon, described her ordeal to Asharq Al-Awsat: “We were heading to Congo’s airport three hours before our Ethiopian Airlines flight to Lebanon on Saturday, June 14, only to be told the flight was canceled because the airline feared flying over Lebanese airspace.”

Fatouni said she then booked another uncertain flight for Sunday, June 16, but it was canceled three times in a row. “To this day, I don’t know if I will be able to return anytime soon. I hope the ceasefire announcement will ease air travel restrictions,” she said.

Currently staying at her sister-in-law’s home, Fatouni fled two months ago with her two young daughters to escape Israeli strikes targeting multiple areas in Lebanon. Fate intervened when war erupted just one day before her scheduled return flight to her hometown of Deir Qanoun Ras Al-Ain in southern Lebanon.

Fatouni expressed deep fears about Lebanon’s security situation. “I feel both helpless and scared. There is no sense of safety in Lebanon. But how long can I keep running?” she said. “I want to go back to my home where I left my husband and extended family... my daughters miss their father too.”

Fatouni, like many Lebanese stranded abroad during the Iran-Israel conflict, now faces a difficult decision: wait for Ethiopian Airlines to resume flights to Lebanon or travel at her own expense to Egypt or Türkiye and then make her way to Beirut.

“I don’t want to risk spending another night in an airport as a woman alone with two children,” she said.

“An emergency could still prevent flights from taking off from Egypt or Türkiye. I hope our return is not delayed further. I’ve booked a new flight, hoping nothing else will change.”

Fatouni is far from alone. Scores of Lebanese across African countries monitor developments anxiously, frustrated by continuous flight cancellations and delays, desperate not to abandon plans to spend the summer in Beirut despite the turmoil at home.

The ceasefire declared Tuesday morning has sparked cautious optimism among many hoping to return soon.

The situation is similar for Lebanese tourists stranded in Europe. Mohammad Dawood recounted his experience: “I flew from Germany, where I live, to Antalya in Türkiye
intending to return to Lebanon. But because of the war, I ended up spending three nights moving between the hotel and airport.”

“My booking was canceled multiple times, and travel dates changed repeatedly. On the fourth day, I decided to return to Germany. I didn’t want to keep trying; it felt hopeless. There just aren’t enough flights for all of us,” he said.

Dawood added that around 70 Lebanese in Antalya chose to return to Europe rather than risk staying amid uncertain conditions and rising costs. “We didn’t want to take chances, especially with things looking bleak.”

While Dawood had a home to return to in Germany, many others remained stuck abroad, lacking the financial means to extend their stays. Videos circulating on social media show travelers sleeping on airport floors, awaiting a chance to book flights.

A Grueling Journey via Iraq and Iran

Conditions are worse for Lebanese stranded in Iraq and Iran, where options dwindle by the day. Iran’s airspace closures have left Lebanese students, religious scholars, businesspeople, and pilgrims trapped in cities including Mashhad, Isfahan, and Qom.

Mustafa, a relative of three stranded students, told Asharq Al-Awsat the young men had to take a costly taxi ride from Mashhad to Qom, then cross into Iraq by land, before flying from Basra airport back to Beirut.

“They were exploited because of their age, paying nearly $800 for the taxi and a similar amount to cross into Iraq. They endured long and exhausting journeys,” Mustafa said.

“We urge authorities to organize evacuations, at least for students living in dire conditions. There are rumors of a black market selling tickets at exorbitant prices.”

Khodr, another Lebanese pilgrim stuck in Iraq, told Asharq Al-Awsat he spent five days in the country before managing to return to Lebanon last Tuesday.

“I was in Najaf on a religious visit and traveled to Basra by taxi, where I secured seats for students I know on the same flight,” he said. “I was lucky, but many others are in a terrible state.”

About 1,120 Lebanese have been repatriated from Iraq via Iraqi Airways, according to official figures.

Khodr described the flight back as unusually long - about four hours compared to the typical hour-and-a-half - due to the altered route.

In the worst-case scenario, Khodr had planned to travel overland from Iraq to Türkiye, then take a ferry from Mersin port to Tripoli, northern Lebanon.

Others have completed similar journeys, with one boat leaving last Wednesday and arriving in Tripoli the following day, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Works and Transport confirmed.