Shahriar Tabrizi

Mohammad-Hossein Behjat Tabrizi, known by his literary name “Shahriar,” was born in 1906 in Tabriz, Iran. He is one of Iran's most celebrated contemporary poets, and he is recognized for his works in Persian and Azerbaijani Turkish. Shahriar began composing poetry in his youth, deeply influenced by Persian masters such as Hafez and Saʿadi. He pursued medical studies in Tehran but, due to emotional hardships—especially a failed, fiery romance—he abandoned medicine and fully dedicated himself to poetry. His poetry is marked by emotional eruptions, mysticism, his early childhood life, and Shiʿa mystico-theology, reflecting his experiences of love, loss, spiritual realization, and alienation. His Persian Diwan includes lyrical ghazals and odes, while his most famous Azerbaijani Turkish poem, "Heydar Baba", nostalgically recalls his childhood and village life, earning him immense popularity among Azerbaijani and Turkish speakers. Shahriar famously wrote poems honoring Shiʿite Imams: Imam ʿAli, Imam Hussein, and Imam al-Mahdi, blending his signature emotional bursts with spirituality and literary beauty. He passed away in 1988. His resting place is in “Maqbarat al-Shuʿara” in Tabriz, his motherland.