View source for Ali Dashti

{{Short description|Iranian politician (1897–1982)}}
{{about|the Iranian politician|the Iranian footballer|Ali Dashti (footballer)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2024}}
{{one source|date=February 2012}}
[[File:Ali Dashti - 1910s.jpg|150px|right|thumb|Ali Dashti in his youth]]
'''Ali Dashti''' ({{langx|fa|علی دشتی}}, pronounced {{IPA|fa|æˈliː dæʃˈtiː|}}; 31 March 1897 – 16 January 1982) was an Iranian [[writer]] and [[politician]] of the twentieth century. Dashti served as a [[Senate of Iran|senator]] in [[Iran]] during the [[Pahlavi dynasty]].

==Life==
Born into a [[Persian peoples|Persian]] family in [[Dashti County|Dashti]] in [[Bushehr province]], [[Iran]] on 31 March 1897. Ali Dashti received a [[traditional]] [[religious]] [[education]]. He studied Islamic theology, history, [[Arabic]] and [[Persian language|Persian]] grammar, and classical literature in [[madrasas]] in [[Karbala]] and [[Najaf]] (both in [[Iraq]]). He returned to [[Iran]] in 1918 and lived in [[Shiraz, Iran|Shiraz]], [[Isfahan (city)|Isfahan]], and finally in [[Tehran]], where he became involved in [[politics]] of the day.

Rather than becoming a scholar, he became a journalist and published a newspaper (Shafaq-e Sorkh) in [[Tehran]] from 1922 to 1935. He was a member of [[Majlis]]<ref name="Baktiari1996">{{cite book
|author=Bahman Baktiari
|title=Parliamentary politics in revolutionary Iran: the institutionalization of factional politics
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z_jPuuxfIv4C&pg=PA29
|accessdate=25 August 2010
|year=1996
|publisher=University Press of Florida
|isbn=978-0-8130-1461-6
|page=29}}</ref> at various times between 1928 and 1946.
[[File:Ahmad Reza Pahlavi and Ali Dashti.jpg|200px|thumb|Ali Dashti and [[Ahmad Reza Pahlavi|Prince Ahmad Reza Pahlavi]], 1950s.]]

His criticism of allowing the [[Tudeh Party of Iran|Tudeh]] party into the cabinet and concessions to the [[Soviets]] landed him in prison in 1946. He was appointed a [[Senate of Iran|Senator]] in 1954 until the Islamic revolution in 1979.

In 1975, he gave the papers for his book Bist O Seh Sal (Twenty Three Years) to professor of Persian and Arabic Frank RC Bagley and asked him to translate it, but not to publish it until after his death.  He reiterated this request in 1977 and 1978.  Frank RC Bagley kept his promise and, having translated and organised Ali Dashti's papers into a publishable format, the book was printed in 1985.

An Iranian newspaper reported Ali Dashti's death in the month of Dey of the Iranian year 1360, i.e. between 22 December 1981 and 20 January 1982.

==Writing ==
In the book ''[[23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad]]'', Dashti chooses reason over blind faith:
: "Belief can blunt human reason and common sense, even in learned scholars. What is needed is more impartial study."<ref>{{Cite book |title= Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad |last= Dashti |first= Ali |authorlink= Ali Dashti |year= 1985 |publisher= Mazda|isbn= 978-1-568-59029-5 |pages= 228 |url= https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/twenty-three-years-a-study-of-the-prophetic-career-of-mohammad_ali-dashti/1872679/#edition=4658976&idiq=18402036 |accessdate= 1 July 2023}}</ref>

Dashti strongly denied the [[miracle]]s ascribed to Muhammad by the Islamic tradition and rejected the Muslim view that the [[Quran]] is the word of [[God]] himself. Instead, he favors thorough and skeptical examination of all [[Orthodoxy|orthodox]] belief systems. Dashti argues that the Quran contains nothing new in the sense of ideas not already expressed by others. All the moral precepts of the Quran are self-evident and generally acknowledged.

The stories in it are taken in identical or slightly modified forms from the lore of the [[Jews]] and the [[Christians]], whose [[rabbis]] and [[monks]] Muhammad had met and consulted on his journeys to [[Syria]], and from memories conserved by the descendants of the peoples of Ad and [[Thamud]].

Muhammad reiterated principles which mankind had already conceived in earlier [[century|centuries]] and many places.

==Bibliography ==
* '''Dashti on Persian Classics:'''

Naqshi az Hafez (1936), on the poet [[Hafez]] (ca. 1319–1390).

Seyr-i dar Divan-e Shams, on the lyric verse of the poet Mowlavi Jalal od-Din [[Rumi]] (1207–1273).this book has been translated by Sayeh Dashti, Ph.D. from Persian to English in 2003.

Dar Qalamrow-e Sa'di, on the poet and prose-writer [[Saadi (poet)|Sa'di]] (1208?-1292).

Sha'eri dir-ashna (1961), on [[Khaqani]] (1121/22-1190), a particularly difficult but interesting poet.

Dami ba Khayyam (1965), on the quatrain-writer and mathematician [[Omar Khayyam]] (1048?-1131); translated by Laurence P. Elwell Sutton, In Search of Omar Khayyam, London 1971.

Negah-i be Sa'eb (1974), on the poet Sa'eb (1601–1677).

Kakh-e ebda', andisheha-ye gunagun-e Hafez, on various ideas expressed by [[Hafez]]

* '''On Ethics, Theology and Philosophy:'''

Parda-ye pendar (1974 and twice reprinted), on [[Sufism]] (Iranian-Islamic [[mysticism]]).

Jabr ya ekhtiyar (anonymous and undated, contents first published in the periodical Vahid in 1971), dialogues with a [[Sufi]] about [[predestination]] and [[free will]].

Takht-e Pulad (anonymous and undated, contents first published in the periodical Khaterat in 1971–72), dialogues in the historic Takht-e Pulad cemetery of [[Esfahan]] with a learned 'alem who sticks to the letter of the [[Qur'an]] and the [[Hadith]].

Oqala bar khelaf-e 'aql (1975 and twice reprinted, revised versions of articles first published in the periodicals Yaghma in 1972 and 1973, Vahid in 1973, and Rahnoma-ye Ketab in 1973, with two additional articles), on logical contradictions in arguments used by [[theologians]], particularly Mohammad ol-[[Al-Ghazali|Ghazzali]] (1058–1111).

Dar diyar-e Sufiyan (1975), on [[Sufism]], a continuation of Parda-ye pendar.

Bist o Se Sal بيست و سه سال [Roman transliteration of and Persian for "twenty-three years"] 
[[23 Years|23 Years, a study of the prophetic career of Mohammad]].

*''' Novels:'''

Ali Dashti sympathized with the desire of educated Iranian women for freedom to use their brains and express their personalities; but he does not present a very favourable picture of them in his collections of novelettes:
* {{Cite book |title= Fetneh: Perspectives on Cosmopolitan Women in 1940S Tehran |last= Dashti |first= Ali |authorlink= Ali Dashti |year= 1943 |publisher= Xlibris US|isbn= 978-1-796-02291-9 |pages= 180 |url= https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/fetneh-perspectives-on-cosmopolitan-women-in-1940s-tehran/21993822/#edition=23498635 |accessdate= 1 July 2023}}
* {{Cite book |title= Jaadoo: Perspectives on Cosmopolitan Women in 1940S Tehran |last= Dashti |first= Ali |authorlink= Ali Dashti |year= 1951 |publisher= Xlibris US|isbn= 978-1-664-15039-3 |pages= 164 |url= https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/jaadoo-perspectives-on-cosmopolitan-women-in-1940s-tehran/28279462/#edition=58954266&idiq=43996278 |accessdate= 1 July 2023}} 
* ''Hendu'' (1955) 
* {{Cite book |title= A Voyage Throug Divan-e Shams: Celebrating Rumi |last= Dashti |first= Ali |date= 2003 |authorlink= Ali Dashti |publisher= Ketab Sara|isbn= 978-9-645-84075-2 |pages= 228 |url= https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/a-voyage-through-divan-e-shams-celebrating-rumi_ali-dashti/19328075/#edition=58121161 |accessdate= 1 July 2023}}

His heroines engage in flirtations and intrigues with no apparent motive except cold calculation. Nevertheless, these stories are very readable, and they provide a vivid, and no doubt partly accurate, record of the social life of the upper classes and the psychological problems of the educated women in Tehran at the time.

*'''Newspapers:'''
He succeeded in establishing his own newspaper at Tehran, Shafaq-e Sorkh (Red Dawn), which lasted from 1 March 1922 until 18 March 1935. He was its editor until 1 March 1931, when Ma'el Tuyserkani took over.

*'''Political Works Collected Articles:'''

Ayyam-e Mahbas (Prison Days) (1922)

Panjah o Panj (Fifty Five) criticism of Islam

*'''Translations into Persian:'''

Edmond Demolins's A quoi tient La superiorite des Anglo-Saxons
[[Samuel Smiles]]'s Self-Help translated into Persian from Arabic

==Criticism==
Criticism on Ali Dashti dates back to the 1940s when [[Gholamhossein Mosaheb]], founder of ''[[The Persian Encyclopedia]]'', wrote a book named ''Ali Dashti's plots''. Mosahab has another note on Dashti which he published as an anonymous author in the Shafagh newspaper around the same time.<ref>The reference for this section of the article is a journal paper published by the Iranian historian, [[Abdollah Shahbazi]] titled "Life and timeline of Ali Dashti" available [http://www.shahbazi.org/pages/Dashti1.htm here] in [[Persian language|Persian]].</ref>

==References and notes==
{{reflist}}
* {{cite journal |last= Farrokh |first= Faridoun |date= 2012 |title= The Emergence of the Salon-society Discourse and the Fiction of Ali Dashti. |journal= Middle Eastern Literatures |url= |volume= 15 |issue= 2 |pages= 153–160 |doi= 10.1080/1475262X.2012.695682 |access-date=}}
* {{cite journal |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |date= 2014 |title= The Realm of Sa'di. |url= |journal= Middle East Journal |volume= 68 |issue= 4 |pages= 667 |doi= 10.3751/68.4.4 |access-date=}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dashti, Ali}}
[[Category:Iranian writers]]
[[Category:Iranian literary critics]]
[[Category:Members of the Senate of Iran]]
[[Category:Iranian Iranologists]]
[[Category:People from Bushehr province]]
[[Category:Members of the 14th Iranian Majlis]]
[[Category:Iranian former Shia Muslims]]
[[Category:Ambassadors of Iran to Egypt]]
[[Category:1897 births]]
[[Category:1982 deaths]]