Sadeq Kia (; 15 May 1920 – 1 March 2002) was an Iranian man of letters, distinguished professor of

Iranian languages The Iranian languages, also called the Iranic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian langu ...

and the president of the second

Academy of Persian Language and Literature The Academy of Persian Language and Literature (APLL) (, ''Farhangestân-e Zabân-o Adab-e Fârsi'') is the regulatory body for the Persian language, headquartered in Tehran, Iran. Formerly known as the Academy of Iran (, ''Farhangestân-e Iran'' ...

Biography

Sadeq Kia was born in

Tehran Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...

, Iran, on 15 May 1920 into one of the oldest families of

Mazandaran Mazandaran Province (; ) is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. Its capital is the city of Sari, Iran, Sari. Located along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea and in the adjacent Central Alborz mountain range and Hyrcanian forests, it is border ...

, which traced its roots to the pre-Islamic dynasties that ruled that province. The family produced a number of prominent government officials, intellectuals, and religious leaders during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Kia studied at Adab and Servat schools before attending Dar ul-Funun. After completing his secondary education, he attended the

University of Tehran The University of Tehran (UT) or Tehran University (, ) is a public collegiate university in Iran, and the oldest and most prominent Iranian university located in Tehran. Based on its historical, socio-cultural, and political pedigree, as well as ...

, where he completed his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

Philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

, with an emphasis on ancient

. After completing his Ph.D., he was recruited as a professor of ancient Iranian languages and linguistics at the University of Tehran. During his tenure there, he mentored a significant number of young Iranian scholars, including Mehrdad Bahar and Ahmad Tafazzoli. Kia also founded the Iranvij Society, in collaboration with Zabih Behruz and Mohammad Moghaddam. Behruz had completed his education under the mentorship of Edward G. Browne at

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and Moghaddam had completed his education at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. The Iranvij Society published a series of books on Iran's pre-Islamic civilization, culture, and languages. Kia served for many years as the deputy secretary at the Ministry of Culture and Arts. When the second Academy of Iranian Languages was established in 1971, he was selected as its first president and served until the

1979 revolution The Iranian Revolution (, ), also known as the 1979 Revolution, or the Islamic Revolution of 1979 (, ) was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979. The revolution led to the replacement of the Impe ...

, when he stepped down. Aside from serving as the president of the academy and teaching at the University of Tehran and other institutions of higher learning, Kia published numerous books and articles. His works on various Iranian languages and dialects spoken both in Iran and beyond, earned him the title of Iran's founding father of

Dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...

or the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a subfield of

Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...

. In 1990, Kia traveled to the United States to visit his two sons. He died in

Missoula, Montana Missoula ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, United States. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence with the Bitterroot and Blackfoot rivers in western Montana and at the convergence of five ...

on March 1, 2002.

Works

Kia published dozens of monographs and articles on various subjects, including

Literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

Lexicology Lexicology is the branch of linguistics that analyzes the lexicon of a specific language. A word is the smallest meaningful unit of a language that can stand on its own, and is made up of small components called morphemes and even smaller elemen ...

, Dialectology,

Folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

, and

History History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

. His expertise in

Middle Persian Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script: , Manichaean script: , Avestan script: ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasania ...

led to the publication of several texts. His major scholarly contribution was in the field of lexicology. He collected and edited the

Mazandarani language Mazandarani (Mazanderani: , ''Mazeruni''; also spelled Mazani () or Tabari (); also called Taveri, Mazeruni, Tati, Geleki and Galeshi) is an Iranian language of the Northwestern branch spoken by the Mazanderani people. , there were 1.35 million ...

fragments from various historical sources and proposed tentative translations. Kia compiled a glossary for the Gorgani dialect used in the

Hurufi Hurufism ( ''ḥurūfiyyah'', Persian: حُروفیان ''horūfiyān'') was a Sufi movement based on the mysticism of letters (''ḥurūf''), which originated in Astrabad and spread to areas of western Iran (Persia) and Anatolia in the late 1 ...

scriptures. Kia's contribution to the history of the Hurufi and

Nuqtavi The Nuqtavi ( Nuqṭawiyyah) movement was founded by Mahmoud Pasikhani () when he proclaimed himself the Mahdi in 1397. The group is an offshoot of Hurufism, from which Pasīkhānī was expelled for arrogance. The group first arose in Anjudan n ...

denominations as well as the Caspian calendar are rated as essential. A selection of Kia's articles is accessible in the portal of the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kia, Sadeq Academic staff of the University of Tehran 1920 births 2002 deaths Iranian emigrants to the United States University of Tehran alumni People from Nur, Iran