TEHRAN -- The brilliant Iranian scholar Iraj Afshar did not survive to receive his honorary doctorate in September 2011.

Persian media and agencies announced last week that Iraj Afshar would receive an honorary doctorate in history from the University of Edinburgh this coming September.
Historian scholar, manuscript expert and tourist, Iraj Afshar, died of an infectious disease on Wednesday afternoon that appeared after his recent trip to the United States.
He has been hospitalized in the ICU section of the Jam Hospital from March 3 since his disease damaged his heart and lungs.
Born in 1925 in Tehran, he was the son of the scholar Mahmud Afshar who was one of the founders of Tehran’s Dar-ul-Fonun School.
“Haqani-i Sirvani: Hatm al-Gara’ib”, “Iskandarnamah”, “Saleh’s File”, “Bibliography of Persia”, “Jami’-Al-Tawarikh-I Hasani” and “Zil Tarikh Gozideh” was among his credits.
“Mohammad-Ali Forughi Notes”, is the title of his recently published book and he was compiling the second volume of his Iranian travelogue when the disease afflicted him. Readers warmly welcomed the first volume of the book, “Jaunt to Motherland”.
Some of the memoirs of Afshar will be published in the upcoming edition of the Bokhara magazine.
He was the chief bibliographer of Persian books at Harvard University. Afshar was associated with UNESCO and taught at the University of Bern and Tehran University.
Photo: Friends, relatives and admirer attend a funeral procession for Iranian scholar Iraj Afshar, at the Great Islamic Encyclopedia Center in Tehran on March 11, 2011. (Mehr/Omid Vahabzadeh)