My father, MAR Taleghany, who has died aged 82, was a professor of law and a renowned scholar of the work of the 13th-century Persian Sufi Muslim poet, theologian and mystic Rumi. He could recite Rumi’s complete works from memory, and gave lectures and life lessons from Rumi at universities and retreats around the world.
My father expressed the view that “mysticism frees you from all rules so you can be at peace”. He especially believed in the wheel of life continuously turning – “Each time I die, I move up a little. This life is not the end of the game ” – and the idea that life is a circle, so that “part of humanity is elevating all the time”.
Muhammad Ali Rokneddin Taleghany was born in Tehran, son of Fatemah and Abdolhossein Taleghany. His father was a supreme court judge, from a family of lawyers. Ali followed in this tradition and received two degrees in law from the University of Tehran. He continued with his advanced studies at the London School of Economics, where he received another two degrees in law. Between 1968 and 1981 he was a professor of law at Tehran University and Melli University, Iran. In 1985 he returned to London, where he practised as a consultant in international commercial law until 2010.
His mother had encouraged Ali’s love of poetry, and he was familiar with the work of Rumi from a young age. He also studied Hafiz, Saadi and Ferdowsi, other great Farsi literary figures. My father wrote a number of books on law and literature as well as translating books from English into Persian and vice versa. These included a Latin-Persian Dictionary of Legal Terms (1990), The Civil Code of Iran (1995) and a Handbook of Islamic Cultural Terms (1990), a collection of poems, Dawn (2014), and an autobiography, Memoirs of a Persian Childhood (2014).
My father often spoke of “seeing” people. In his view, if you can respect the humanity in everyone and truly see people, then you are at peace with everyone.
He is survived by his wife, Susan Harrison, whom he married in 1965, and by two sons, Robert and me.
