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Samad Behrangi
Born	(1939-06-24)June 24, 1939 Tabriz, Iran
Died	August 31, 1967(1967-08-31) (aged 28) Aras River
Cause of death	Drowning
Nationality	Azerbaijani
Occupation(s)	Short story writer, social critic, poet and translator

Samad Behrangi (Template:Lang-fa) June 24, 1939 - August 31, 1967) was an Iranian teacher, social critic, folklorist, translator, and short story writer. He is famous for his children's books, particularly The Little Black Fish. Influenced by predominantly leftist ideologies that were common among the Iranian intelligentsia of his era, his books typically portrayed the lives of the children of the urban poor and encouraged the individual to change his/ her circumstances by her own initiatives.

Life

He was born in Tabriz to a lower-class Iranian Azerbaijani family. Son to Ezzat and Sara, he had two other brothers and three sisters. His father was seasonal worker and his income was never sufficient, who eventually left Iran for the Caucasus and never returned. He finished elementary school and three years of secondary school before enrolling in a teacher training school, finishing the program in 1957. Thus, only receiving few years of education, at the age of 18, he became a teacher, and continued to be so for the rest of his life, in East Azerbaijan. In the next eleven years, while teaching Persian in rural schools of Iranian Azerbaijan, he attained a B.A. degree in English from Tabriz University. He Started publishing stories in 1960, his first being Adat "Custom". He carried on writing stories, along translating from English and Turkish to Persian, and Persian to Turkish. Later, claiming that he was impolite, he was dismissed from his high school teaching post and assigned to an elementary school. Then, as his cultural works increased, he was accused and pursued, and suspended of teaching. After a while his sentence was called off and he returned to schools. Later, he attended student protests.

However, he was not allowed to publish his works in Azeri, so he had to translate them into Persian in order to make them available in Iran.

Apart from children's stories, he wrote many pedagogical essays and collected and published several samples of oral Azerbaijani literature. His folklore studies have usually been done with the help of his colleague Behrooz Dehghani, who helped publish some of Behrangi's works after his early death. Behrangi also has a few Azeri translations from Persian poems by Ahmad Shamlou, Forough Farrokhzad, and Mehdi Akhavan-Sales.

Literary works

Apart from Children's Stories, he wrote many pedagogical essays and collected and published several samples of oral Azerbaijani literature. His folklore studies have usually been done with the help of his colleague Behrooz Dehghani, who helped publish some of Behrangi's works after his early death. Behrangi also has a few Azeri language translations of Persian poems by Ahmad Shamlou, Forough Farrokhzad, and Mehdi Akhavan-Sales.

Death

Behrangi drowned in the Aras river and his death was blamed on the Pahlavi regime. It is believed that an army officer, Hamzeh Farahati, was seen with him when he drowned. Yet the army officer was Samad Behrangi's close friend and shared his Leftist views. Farahati in his book and in an interview with VOA has unequivocally confirmed that Samad drowned and was not killed by SAVAK. Cultural society, people like Al-e Ahmad and Saedi, found it hard to accept his death. But some, in particular Behrouz Dowlat-abadi, also said that Samad did not know how to swim (which was confirmed by a native, Hosein Hosein-zadeh) and that was the cause of his death. This, in turn, brought up the point that everyone was just quoting Behrouz Dowlat-abadi and that no investigation was done.

Some of his works

• The Little Black Fish
• Investigations into the Educational Problems of Iran (کندوکاو در مسائل تربیتی ایران )
• Ulduz and the talking doll
• Ulduz and the crows
• Talkhoon
• One peach and 1000 peaches
• The Complete Stories of Behrang, publishers, Persian Culture & Art Institute, Vancouver and Zagros Publications, Montreal, Canada

Quotations

"so easily can death call on me but I have to keep up living as long as I can. However, if I face the death some day_ that I will_ doesn't matter. What matters is the effect of my life and death on others'."

Photo gallery

See also

• Imamieh
• Tabriz

Sources

1. Hillmann, Michael. "Samad Behrangi". Encyclopaedia Iranica.
2. Hillmann.
3. A Brief Note on Samad Behrangi's Life by Iraj Bashiri
4. Samad Behrangi

• Milani, Abbas. "Samad Behrangi," in Eminent Persians Vol. 2. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008, pp. 838–842
• Preface and backcover text from Samad Behrangi, Talkhoon va Chand Ghesse-ye Digar (Talkhoon and other stories), Behrangi Publishings, Tabriz, 1998, ISBN 964-90517-2-4.
• Sirous Tahbaz, Samad Behrangi va Mahi-e Koochooloo-ye Daanaa (Samad Behrangi and the Wise Little Fish).

External links

• Samad's Stories in English
• Samad Stories: The Little Black Fish
• Samad Stories: 24 Restless Hours
• Samad Stories: The Little Sugar Beet Vendor
• Samad Stories: The Tale of Love
• Samad Stories: Talkhun
• Samad Stories: In Search of Faith
• Samad Behrangi's life. A biography by Professor Iraj Bashiri, University of Minnesota.
• Template:Az icon / Template:Fa icon Samad Site
• Template:De icon / Template:Fa icon Samad's life and the stories
• Template:Fa icon Samad Behrangi's death accident - from Hamzeh Farahati's memoir

• Azerbaijani-language writers
• Iranian Azerbaijani writers
• Iranian children's writers
• Iranian essayists
• People from Tabriz
• 1939 births
• 1967 deaths
• Social critics
• Deaths by drowning
• University of Tabriz alumni
• Poets from Tabriz