Ashk Dahlén
Ashk Peter Dahlén (born 3 June 1972 in Tafresh, Iran)[1] is a Swedish scholar, linguist, Iranologist, translator, and associate professor (docent) in Persian language at Uppsala University. He is quadrilingual in Swedish, Persian, English, and French. He has published extensively in journals, and has written several books.
Ashk Dahlén
Background[edit]
Ashk Dahlén was adopted at 7 months of age by a Swedish couple after having been living at an orphanage in Narmak, north-east Tehran, Iran. His life story provided inspiration, though fictional, for the IRIB3 Television drama series The Green Journey (Persian: سفر سبز, 2002) directed by Mohammad Hossein Latifi, in which the main character, a young adoptee played by Parsa Pirouzfar, travels to Iran in search for his birth parents.[2][3]
Career[edit]
Ashk Dahlén currently acts as Associate Professor (docent) in Iranian languages at Uppsala University.[4] His thesis Islamic Law, Epistemology and Modernity has been published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. In 2003 he was recognized with the Beskow Award by The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities for the best dissertation in humanities.
Ashk Dahlén is the author of several academic studies on Persian literature, Iranian cultural history, Zoroastrianism, and Sufism.[5] He is also translator of classical Persian literature and of Old Avestan literature. In 2001, he published his first work of translation in Swedish, Vassflöjtens sång, consisting of a selection of poetry written by the Medieval Persian poet Rumi. He has published literary translations of the Divān of Hafez, Chahār maqāla (Four Discourses) of Nizami Aruzi, and Lama'āt (Flashes) of Fakhr od-din Araqi.[6][7] He has also made a Swedish translation of the Gathas of Zarathustra and of Yasna Haptanghaiti from Old Avestan, which was published in 2023.
Ashk Dahlén is a member of the Research Collegium of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul,[8] The Iranian Academy of Philosophy, and the Nathan Söderblom Society. He is the Founding President of the Scandinavian Society for Iranian Studies (2010-2016).[9]