ABSTRACT

Sadeq Hedayat was born on 17 February 1903 and died on 9 April 1951. He was descended from Rezaqoli Khan Hedayat, a notable nineteenth-century poet, historian and historian of Persian literature, and author of Majm‘ al-Fosaha, Riyaz al-‘Arefin and Rawza al-Safa-e Naseri. Many members of his extended family were important state officials, political leaders and army generals, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Mokhber al-Dawleh, Nayyer alMolk I (Hedayat’s grandfather), Sani‘ al-Dawleh, and Mokhber al-Saltaneh, who was prime minister between 1928 and 1933.