Morteza Kardar, director of Hermes Publishing, in conversation with Mehr News Agency:
Musa Aswar (1953–2025), translator, poet, and editor, was one of the most distinguished mediators between Arabic and Persian literature. Known for his meticulous precision, deep familiarity with both languages, and lifelong dedication to editing and scholarship, Aswar left a body of translations that set a high standard for literary fidelity and linguistic sensitivity. Following his passing, Mehr News Agency spoke with Morteza Kardar, writer, researcher, and director of Hermes Publishing, about Aswar’s unique contribution to the field:
Mr. Aswar possessed a rare set of qualities that made his work stand out in contemporary Persian literature and in the field of literary translation. When we look at translations of contemporary Arabic literature into Persian, most have been produced by people who studied Arabic in seminaries or universities and who turned to translation out of certain preoccupations—often political or social ones.
For instance, in the 1960s, figures such as Firooz Shirvanloo, Alireza Nourizadeh, and Sirous Tahbaz translated works of modern Arabic literature into Persian. Yet they had mostly acquired Arabic out of necessity, driven by concerns such as the question of Palestine, and were eager to bring Palestinian literature into Persian. Their translations, however, fell short of the standards and skills expected of a professional translator.
Exactly. Aswar’s uniqueness lay in the fact that his family lived in Iraq until the 1970s. During the rule of Hassan al-Bakr and later Saddam Hussein, many Iranians were expelled from Iraq, and he too returned to Iran. This gave him an extraordinary command of the Arabic language and vocabulary.
The second point is that once he came to Iran, he also studied Persian in a structured, academic way and gained a profound mastery of standard Persian. Very few individuals can be compared with him in this respect. Azartash Azarnoush, for example, had exceptional knowledge of Arabic; his command was at the highest level. Or Abdolmohammad Ayati, though a prominent Arabist, did not combine, as Aswar did, a deep grasp of both contemporary Arabic literature and the modern spoken language.
When he translated, Aswar combined his lexical precision with a careful, nuanced attention to Persian. Even in recent decades, it is rare to find someone with such mastery of Arabic. We do have other translators from Arabic, such as Musa Bidaj and Abdolreza Rezaeiniya, whose works are sometimes more poetic, but none of them had Aswar’s depth of knowledge, precision, and authority in Arabic.
Indeed. That was one dimension of his distinction. Another is that for decades—especially from the 1980s until the end of his life—he was deeply engaged in editing, encyclopedia writing, and preparing entries for reference works. This further strengthened his command of both Arabic and Persian. For instance, he contributed to the compilation of Farhang-e Asar (Encyclopedia of Works). During the years when Soroush Publishing was active, he worked alongside scholars such as Abdolmohammad Ayati editing texts.
Yes. That translation went through several revisions and remains one of the finest Persian translations of the Qur’an. Later, Aswar served on the Supreme Council of IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting), where he became deeply engaged with the intricacies of Persian and identified emerging linguistic problems. In other words, he analyzed weaknesses in journalistic and broadcast Persian.
The council’s work—which involved leading figures such as Ahmad Samii Gilani, Aswar himself, and the late Esmail Saadat—produced reference guides that were used by newsreaders and staff across radio and television. They were also intended to curb erroneous calques and improper usages. Aswar contributed hours of programming on these issues, which became widely known under the title “Let Us Preserve Persian”.
In the years that followed, he continued his editorial work at the Academy of Persian Language and Literature and elsewhere. This sharpened his precision and sensitivity to the challenges of rendering between Arabic and Persian.
The third key dimension is that he never ceased translating. One can say without exaggeration that his translations rank among the most precise ever made from Arabic into Persian. Much of today’s rigorous standards in Arabic–Persian translation are owed to him. Why? Because in most cases, our engagement with Arabic has been second-hand—learned academically but not lived. Aswar, by contrast, had both.
We can name great translators such as Hossein Khatibi, Abdolmohammad Ayati, and Seyyed Jafar Shahidi. Yet very few of them consistently traced the evolution of meaning in a word from classical to modern Arabic. Aswar was acutely aware of these shifts. He insisted, for example, that a certain word in modern Arabic no longer carried its historical meaning and must be translated accordingly. This attentiveness is something for which we are deeply indebted to him.
From the 1960s to the 1980s and beyond, waves of translation brought Arab poets into Persian, often spurred by the Palestinian issue. Aswar, however, brought an unparalleled depth of knowledge about contemporary Arab poetry—its movements, its relation to Palestinian poetry, and the pioneering poets of modernism, some of whose names are little known in Iran. He conveyed this knowledge through his classes, workshops, lectures, essays, and writings, much of which remains invaluable today.
In his early career, Aswar focused mainly on poetry, translating works by Mahmoud Darwish, Nizar Qabbani, Ali Ahmad Said (Adonis), Gibran Khalil Gibran, and other leading Arab poets. In more recent years—what might be called the mature phase of his career—he turned to fiction. He translated significant works such as Five Voices, Shadows on the Window, and The Palm Tree and the Neighbors by the Iraqi novelist Gaib Tuma Farman; two novels by Abdul Rahman Munif—The Trees and the Assassination of Marzuq and Here (or Once Again the Eastern Mediterranean). His last translation, not yet published, was due to appear at the Tehran Book Fair.
In addition to the titles mentioned, Hermes published his Odes of al-Mutanabbi, selections from Arthur Arberry, and Literature and Historiography by Taha Hussein.
Tags: Hermes, Morteza Kardar, Musa Aswar
