Aziz Daneshrad
Member of the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution
In office
18 August 1979 – 15 November 1979
ConstituencyJewish community
Majority8,927 (99.4%)
Personal details
Born
Aziz Daneshrad-Kiyai

1920
Golpayegan, Iran
Died1991 (aged 70–71)
Political partyTudeh Party of Iran
Alma materUniversity of Tehran
OccupationEngineer

Aziz Daneshrad (Persian: عزیز دانش‌راد; 1920–1991)[1] also known as Gabay (Persian: گبای)[2] and Kiyai (Persian: کیائی)[1] was an Iranian Jewish political activist who represented Jews in the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution. His was a proponent of left-wing politics while also advocating ethnoreligious identity.[3]

Early life and education

Aziz Daneshrad-Kiyai was born in 1920 in Golpayegan, Isfahan Province.[1] His father was a rabbi and a merchant in bazaar.[1] He obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran and then became a civil servant.[1]

Political career

During the rule of Pahlavi dynasty, Daneshrad was a dissident associated with the Tudeh Party of Iran and he was imprisoned in the 1960s and the 1970s.[3][4]

He co-founded the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (Jame‘eh-ye rowshanfekran-e kalimi-ye Iran; abbreviated AJII) in 1978, a revolutionary organization that tried to challenge the old guard leadership of the Jewish community which had royalist and Zionist orientations.[3]

After the Iranian Revolution, he took charge as the interim chairman of the Tehran Jewish Association because the previous officeholder Habib Elghanian was executed.[2] Daneshrad was elected to the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution shortly after.[1] There he was one of the four members who represented religious minorities[5] and he is likely to have sided with opposition to inclusion of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists in the constitution.[6]

Personal life

Daneshrad married his paternal cousin, Aghdas, in 1944. The couple had three sons and two daughters.[2]

Accolades

National

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Boroujerdi, Mehrzad; Rahimkhani, Kourosh (2018). Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook. Syracuse University Press. p. 433. ISBN 9780815654322.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Presidents of the Tehran Jewish Association: Aziz Daneshrad "Gabay"", Research Studies Center of Iranian Jews, archived from the original on 2021-09-28, retrieved 2021-09-28
  3. 1 2 3 Sternfeld, Lior (2014), "The Revolution's Forgotten Sons and Daughters: The Jewish Community in Tehran during the 1979 Revolution", Iranian Studies, 47 (6): 857–869, doi:10.1080/00210862.2014.948744, S2CID 143732194
  4. ↑ Yashayaei, Haroun (12 November 2019), interviewed by Mohammad Mehdi Moosakhan, translated by Ruhollah Golmoradi, "Society of Jewish Intellectuals and Islamic Revolution of Iran: Interview with Haroun Yashayaei, One of the Founders", Iranian Oral History, Resistance Literature and Culture Researches and Studies Center
  5. ↑ Sanasarian, Eliz (2000), "Religious Minorities in Iran", British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge Middle East Studies, Cambridge University Press, 13: 64–82, ISBN 113942985X
  6. ↑ Saffari, Said (1993), "The Legitimation of the Clergy's Right to Rule in the Iranian Constitution of 1979" (PDF), British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Taylor & Francis, 20 (1): 64–82, doi:10.1080/13530199308705571
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