Dihkhuda, Mirza Ali Akbar Khan Qazvini

(also Dakhau). Born 1879, in Tehran; died there Feb. 26, 1956. Iranian writer, scholar, and public figure.

During the Iranian Revolution of 1905-11, Dihkhuda took part in the constitutional movement; he was repeatedly elected deputy to the majlis. In 1933 he became a professor at the University of Tehran and in the early 1940’s a member of the Iranian Academy of Language and Literature. In 1906, together with M. J. Shirazi and M. K. Tebrizi, Dihkhuda began editing a satirical magazine in Tehran called Sur Israfil (Trumpet of Esrafil) in which, using the pen name of Dakhau, he published topical satire (a new genre in Persian literature) under the general title of All Sorts of Things, as well as daring satirical stories and poems directed against arbitrary rule and coercion. He was the author of Proverbs and Sayings (vols. 1-4, 1929-31), a book about Abu-al-Rayhan al-Biruni, and a large encyclopedia, Lughatnamah (more than 105 installments were published).