Widengren is a famous Swedish Iranologist. He was born in Stockholm, in 1907, and after spending his life on scientific and academic research on the East (especially the ancient religions and beliefs of this part of the world), he died in 1996 at 89. Some of his books and writings have been translated into Farsi and are known to Iranian scholars.
Wiedengren received his Ph.D. from Uppsala University in Sweden. He studied in the field of history of religions. What attracted Widengren’s attention in this scientific field and led him to fundamental research was the phenomenology of religion. Religious phenomenology is an effort to understand the nature of each religion and to investigate and understand the views and faith of the believers of that religion. Along with such investigations, Wiedengren learned the ancient languages of Iran and conducted extensive studies on Iranian religions. He had learned Avesta, Pahlavi, Persian, and Sanskrit languages and was familiar with Sanskrit, Armenian, and Turkish languages. From this point of view, he should be called “the intelligence of languages”. In addition, he had extensive scientific knowledge in the field of Latin language and literature.
Weidengren’s books that are translated into Farsi, and are among the research sources of Iranian religion and history professors are as follows:
First: his famous book is entitled “The religions of ancient Iran”. This book was translated into Farsi by Manouchehr Farhang in 1377. In this book Weidengren gives extensive knowledge of the ancient religions of Iran. His book has ten chapters in which he talks about the life and philosophy of Ashu Zarathushtra, the first Zoroastrian society, beliefs of the people in the Medes Achaemenid eras.
Another book by Weidengren is entitled “Iranian essence; from the dawn of history upto the Islamic era” and it deals with the ups and downs of Iranian religious beliefs from the dawn of history to the ages and millennia after that and talks about the essences (or: elements) that make up the nature, institution and thought of Iranian people. This book was translated and published by Shahnaz Nasrollahi in 2015. Among the other books of this researcher whose translations are available to Persian speakers, these examples should be mentioned: “Mani and His Teachings” translated by Nezhat Safayi Isfahani (1377); “Manic and Zoroastrian Art” translated by Yacoub Azhend (1383); “Feudalism in Ancient Iran” translated by Houshang Sadeghi (1391) and also a different book titled “Research on Dervish Cloaks and Sufism” translated by Bahare Mokhtarian (1393) in which Wiedengren studied the Iranian religious dervishes and the way of wearing their cloaks.
Widengren’s findings about the ancient religions of Iran show his scientific and extensive knowledge about this. Therefore, his research deserves a lot of attention among Iranologists. In 1940, when he was only 33 years old, Geo Wiedengren became a professor at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. In the ten years from 1960 to 1970, he was the president of that university’s International Society for the History of Religions.
