Richard N. Frye | |
---|---|
Born | Richard Nelson Frye January 10, 1920 Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. |
Died | March 27, 2014 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
(aged 94)
Nationality | American |
Fields | Iranian studies |
Institutions |
Goethe University Frankfurt University of Hamburg Shiraz University Tajik State National University Harvard University |
Alma mater |
University of Illinois Harvard University |
Academic advisors |
Arthur Pope Walter Bruno Henning |
Notable students |
Annemarie Schimmel Oleg Grabar Frank Huddle John Limbert Michael Crichton |
Notable awards |
Farabi International Award Khwarizmi International Award |
Spouse | Eden Naby |
Richard Nelson Frye (January 10, 1920 – March 27, 2014) was an American scholar of Iranian and Central Asian Studies, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Harvard University. His professional areas of interest were Iranian philology and the history of Iran and Central Asia before 1000 CE.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, to a family of immigrants from Sweden, "Freij" had four children, his second marriage being to an Iranian-Assyrian scholar, Eden Naby, from Urmia, Iran who teaches at Columbia University. He spoke fluent Russian, German, Arabic, Persian, Pashto, French, Uzbek, and Turkish, and had extensive knowledge of Avestan, Pahlavi, Sogdian, and other Iranian languages and dialects, both extinct and current.
Although Frye is mostly known for his works about Iran and Iranian Central Asia, but the scope of his studies was much wider and includes Byzantine, Caucasian, and Ottoman history, Eastern Turkistan, ancient and medieval Iranian art, Islamic art, Sufism, Chinese and Japanese archeology, and a variety of Iranian and non-Iranian languages including Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Khotanese, and Bactrian, New Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and even Chinese, beside research languages which include French, German, Italian, and Russian.