Alī Bolūkbāshī Donates His Personal Library and Archives to the Centre for the Great IslamicEncyclopedia

2/18/2025 08:51

ʿAlī Bolūkbāshī, the director of “Anthropology Department” and member of the supreme scientific council at the CGIE, donated his personal library and a collection of his handwritings and audiovisual materials to this center.

CGIE: ʿAlī Bolūkbāshī, the director of “Anthropology Department” and member of the supreme scientific council at the CGIE, donated his personal library and a collection of his handwritings and audiovisual materials to this center.

In his donation letter, he has compiled a comprehensive list as follows:

1. Approximately 5000 books and magazines in Persian, English and Arabic languages on a variety of subjects including history, literature, art, science and technologies, anthropology and Persian popular culture. They have been the cornerstone of my studies of the Persian culture and the ethnography of the ethnic groups, tribes, villagers and city dwellers in different regions of Iran, and they, undoubtedly, will be of great use to the researchers interested in the culture of Iran.
2. All my published books, either compiled or translated and all my published articles in different magazines.
3. A collection of my field research notes and my unpublished articles on ethnography and culturology, as well as monographs on Buyer Ahmadi tribe, horses and horse-riding, games and entertainment, millers and techniques of flour milling, bread and bakery which are more or less prepared to be published as individual books.
4. My notes on the oral literature and a collection of folk tales, melodies, lullabies, proverbs, riddles, etc. each of which can be published as an individual book.
5. A selection of dialectal words in 10 to 15 local languages of the people in tribes and villages which I have collected during my research trips into different parts of Iran.
6. A collection of notes on the colloquial vocabulary and idioms as well as the terminology of different professions, collected from books and oral resources.
7. A collection of short articles I had written when I was the director and editor-in-chief of “Encyclopedia of Iran” at the Culture and Communications Organization; although this encyclopedia was not published due to the changes in the research management of this organization, eighty percent of my articles on different scientific fields of study were published in the “Encyclopedia of Iran Online” without my written permission.
8. A collection of photographic negatives and photos taken during my ethnographic field research studies as well as photos collected from Persian and non-Persian books and the archives of different scientific and cultural institutes.
9. Cassettes and compact discs containing my conversations with people in my field research studies and the interviews conducted on radio and television about anthropology and the Iranian people’s culture.
10.  Folk music vinyl records and audio cassettes presented to me during the course of years, to be stored and preserved in the library and used in “Anthropology Department” of the CGIE.
11. A collection of newspapers and periodicals published in the early years of the Islamic Revolution.
12. A collection of Xerox printed photos of Persian, English, French and Arabic books and articles on Anthropology, linguistics and the Iranian people’s culture.
13. My notes extracted from Persian and non-Persian books and documents which can be used in compiling the articles and entries of the Great Islamic Encyclopedia or other encyclopedias.