Ali Akbar Dehkhoda

Ali Akbar Dekhoda (علی‌اکبر دهخدا in Persian; 1879–March 9 1959) the Iranian linguist, was born in Tehran. His father passed when he was 10 years old. Dehkhoda learned Persian literature, Arabic and French and graduated from College of political science.

In 1903, he went to Balkan Peninsula as an Iranian embassy employee, but came back to Iran two years later and cooperated in the Constitutional Revolution of Iran.

In Iran Dehkhoda, Jahangir Khan and Ghasem Khan had been publishing Soor-e Esrafil newspaper for about two years, but the authoritarian king Mohammad Ali Shah disbanded the parliament and banished Dehkhoda and some other liberalists to Europe. When Mohammad Ali Shah was deposed by people in 1911, he came back to the country and became a member of new parliament.

Books

Dehkhoda translated Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws ) into Persian. He has also written Amsal o Hekam ("Proverbs and Mottos") in four volumes, a French-Persian Dictionary, and other books, but his lexicographic masterpiece is Loghat-naameh-ye Dehkhoda ("Dehkhodas's Dictionary"), the largest Persian dictionary ever published, in 15 volumes. The book was published after forty five years of efforts by Dehkhoda.