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Amir Kabir (1807 – 10 January 1852) (Persian: امیرکبیر‎), also known as Mirza Taghi Khan Amir-Nezam (Persian: میرزا تقی‌خان امیرنظام‎), also known by the titles of Atabak and Amir-e Nezam; chief minister to Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (Shah of Persia) for the first three years of his reign and one of the most capable and innovative figures to appear in the whole Qajar period.^{[Need quotation to verify]} Amir Kabir served as Prime Minister of Persia (Iran) under Naser al-Din Shah. Born in Hezaveh, a county of Arak and murdered in 1852, he is a controversial historical figure. He is considered by some to be "widely respected by liberal nationalist Iranians" as "Iran's first reformer", a modernizer who was "unjustly struck down" attempted to bring "gradual reform" to Iran.^[1]

Background and achievements[link]

Amir Kabir was born into a lowly household at Hezaveh in the Farahan district, situated in Markazi Province of Iran. His father, Karbalaʾi Mohammad Qorban, entered the service of Mirza Abu'l-Qasim Farahani Qa'im Maqam of Farahan as cook, and when Mirza Bozorg was appointed chief minister to ʿAbbas Mirza, the crown prince, in Tabriz, Karbalaʾi Qorban accompanied him there, taking his son with him. Amir Kabir first assisted his father in performing domestic duties in the household of Mirza Bozorg, who saw signs of unusual talent in him and had him study with his own children. After he had learned reading, writing, and some mathematics, Amir Kabir, still an adolescent, was appointed by Mirza Bozorg to supervise his stables, a function he performed with exemplary efficiency. Mirza Bozorg died in 1237/1822 and was succeeded in the post of minister to the crown prince by his son, Mirza Abu’l-Qasem Qaʾem-maqam. Under his aegis Amir Kabir entered government service, being appointed first to the post of lashkarnevis [military registrar] for the army of Azerbaijan. In 1251/1835, he was promoted to the position of mostofi-ye nezam, becoming responsible for supervising the finances of the army of Azerbaijan; several years later he was put in charge of the same army’s provisions, financing, and organization with the title of vazir-e nezam.

During his tenure, Amir Kabir participated in many missions abroad, he spent almost four years in Erzurum, participating in the work of a commission to delineate the Ottoman-Iranian frontier and settle certain other differences between the two states. He appears to have been the most forceful member of the Iranian negotiating team, resisting attempts to exclude Mohammareh (present-day Khorramshahr) from Iranian sovereignty and to make Iran pay compensation for its military incursions into the area of Solaymaniyeh. In this he acted almost independently of the central government in Tehran, which not only failed to formulate a consistent policy vis-à-vis the Ottomans but also opposed most of Amir Kabir’s initiatives. Although a form of treaty was concluded between Iran and the Ottoman state, the borders had still not been delineated when the Crimean War erupted and the British and Russian mediators found themselves at war and withdrew. Amir Kabir nonetheless acquired first-hand knowledge of the procedures of international diplomacy and of the aims and policies of Britain and Russia with respect to Iran. This helped him in the elaboration of his own distinct policies toward the two powers when he became chief minister.

Moreover, his years in Erzurum fell in the period of the Ottoman military and administrative reforms known as the Tanzimat. Some awareness of these reached Amir Kabir in Erzurum and inspired in him at least one aspect of his policy as chief minister: the elimination of clerical influence upon affairs of state. When explaining to the British consul at Tabriz in 1265/1849 his own determination to make the authority of the state paramount, he said, “The Ottoman government was able to begin reviving its power only after breaking the power of the mullas”.

Amir Kabir returned to Tabriz in 1263/1847. A year later, while retaining the post and title of vazir-e nezam he was appointed lala-bashi or chief tutor to the crown prince Naser-al-din, who was still only fifteen years of age. Soon after, in SHawwal, 1264/September, 1848, Mohammad Shah died, and Naser-al-din had to proceed to Tehran and assume the throne. But his minister, Mirza Fathallah Nasir-al-molk ʿAliabadi, was unable to procure the necessary funds, so Naser-al-din had recourse to Amir Kabir, who made the necessary arrangements. Naser-al-din’s confidence in Amir Kabir increased, and shortly after leaving Tabriz, he awarded him the rank of amir-e nezam, with full responsibility for the whole Iranian army. After arriving in Tehran, he also appointed him chief minister (shakhs-e avval-e Iran), with the supplementary titles of amir-e kabir and atabak (Ḏu’l-qaʿda, 1264/October, 1848). The former title came to be his common designation; the latter, used for the first time since the Saljuq period, referred to the tutorial relationship between the minister and his young master, reflecting, perhaps, Amir Kabir’s view of himself as a semi-independent agent.

Amir Kabir in 1848

His appointment as the chief minister aroused resentment in various persons who thought themselves more deserving, particularly the queen mother and other wasteful princes, who evidently resented Amir Kabir’s proud and self-confident bearing and his clamp down on their excess spending and allowances. The intrigues of his opponents resulted in a mutiny of a company of Azerbaijani troops garrisoned in Tehran, demanding his removal and execution; but with the cooperation of Mirza Abu’l-Qasem Emam-e Jomeh of Tehran, who ordered the merchants of Tehran to close the bazaar and arm themselves, the mutiny was soon quelled, and Amir Kabir resumed his duties.

More severe disorder prevailed in a number of provincial cities, especially Mashhad. Toward the end of the reign of Mohammad Shah, Hamza Mirza Heshmat-al-doleh had been appointed governor of Khorasan, but he found his authority disputed by Hasan Khan Salar, who, with the help of some local chieftains, had rebelled against the central government (1262/1846). Hamza Mirza abandoned Mashad to Hasan Khan and fled to Herat. Amir Kabir sent two armies against Hasan Khan, the second of which, commanded by Soltan Morad Mirza, defeated his forces and captured him. Amir Kabir had him executed (1266/1850), together with one of his sons and one of his brothers, a punishment of unprecedented severity for such provincial resistance to central authority, and a clear sign of Amir Kabir’s intention to assert the prerogatives of the state.

A task of equal importance that confronted him in the early days of his ministry was the repression of the Babi insurrections that had coincided with the period of transition between Mohammad Shah and Naser-al-din Shah. Movements of rebellion were led in Mazandaran by Molla Hoseyn Boshruyi and Molla Mohammad Barforushi, in Zanjan by Molla Mohammad Zanjani, and in Nayriz by Seyyed Yahya Darabi. After a series of bloody battles in 1266/1848, all three movements were defeated and their leaders executed. Wishing to prevent further outbreaks of Babi insurrectionary fervor by doing away with the founder of Babism, Amir Kabir gave orders for the execution of Seyyed ʿAli-Mohammad Bab, which took place in Tabriz on 27 Shaʿban 1266/9 July 1850.

With order reestablished in the provinces, Amir Kabir turned to a wide variety of administrative, cultural, and economic reforms that were the major achievement of his brief ministry. His most immediate success was the vaccination of Iranians against smallpox, saving the lives of many thousands if not millions.^[2] Faced with an empty treasury on his arrival in Tehran, he first set about balancing the state budget by attempting to increase the sources of revenue and to decrease state expenditure. To aid him in the task, he set up a budgetary committee headed by Mirza Yusof Mostofi-al-mamalek that estimated the deficiency in the budget at one million Iranian toman. Amir Kabir thereupon decided to reduce drastically the salaries of the civil service, often by half, and to eliminate a large number of stipends paid to pensioners who did little or no governmental work. This measure increased his unpopularity with many influential figures and thus contributed to his ultimate disgrace and death.

At the same time he strove to collect overdue taxes from provincial governors and tribal chieftains by dispatching assessors and collectors to every province of the country. The collection of customs duties, previously farmed out to individuals, was now made the direct responsibility of the central government, and the Caspian fisheries, an important source of revenue, were recovered from a Russian monopoly and contracted out to Iranians.

The administration of the royal lands (khalesajat) came under review, and the income derived from them was more closely supervised than before. Yield and productivity, not area, were established as the basis of tax assessment for other lands, and previously dead lands were brought under cultivation. These various measures for the encouragement of agriculture and industry also benefited the treasury by raising the level of national prosperity and hence taxability.

Of particular interest is the care shown by Amir Kabir for the economic development of Khuzestan (then known as ʿArabestan), identified by him as an area of strategic importance, given its location at the head of the Persian Gulf, and also of potential prosperity. He introduced the planting of sugarcane to the province, built the Naseri dam on the river Karkheh and a bridge at Shushtar, and laid plans for the development of Mohammara. He also took steps to promote the planting of American cotton near Tehran and Urmia.

Among the various measures enacted by Amir Kabir, the foundation of the Darolfonun,^[2] in Tehran was possibly the most lasting in its effects. Decades later, many parts of this establishment were turned into the University of Tehran,^[3] with the remaining becoming Darolfonun Secondary School. The initial purpose of the institution was to train officers and civil servants to pursue the regeneration of the state that Amir Kabir had begun, but as the first educational institution giving instruction in modern learning, it had far wider impact. Among the subjects taught were medicine, surgery, pharmacology, natural history, mathematics, geology, and natural science. The instructors were for the most part Austrians, recruited in Vienna by Daʾud Khan, an Assyrian who had become acquainted with Amir Kabir during the work of the Ottoman-Iranian border commission. By the time the instructors arrived in Tehran in Moharram, 1268/November, 1851, Amir Kabir had already been dismissed, and it fell to Daʾud Khan to receive them. Mirza Aqa Khan Nuri, Amir Kabir’s successor, sought to persuade Naser-al-din Shah to abrogate the whole project, but the Darolfonun, soon became a posthumous monument to its founder. The Austrian instructors initially knew no Persian, so interpreters had to be employed to assist in the teaching; but some among them soon learned Persian well enough to compose textbooks in the language on various natural sciences. These were to influence the evolution of a more simple and effective prose style in Persian than had previously existed.

Amir Kabir made a second indirect contribution to the elaboration of Persian as a modern medium with his foundation of the newspaper Vaqayeʿ-ye Ettefaqiyeh, which survived under different titles until the reign of Mozaffar-al-din Shah. A minimum circulation was ensured by requiring every official earning more than 2000 rials a year to subscribe. In founding the journal Amir Kabir hoped to give greater effect to government decrees by bringing them to the attention of the public; thus the text of the decree forbidding the levying of soyursat was published in the third tissue of the paper. He also wished to educate its readers in the world’s political and scientific developments; among the items reported in the first year of publication were the struggles of Mazzini against the Habsburg Empire, the drawing up of the Suez Canal project, the invention of the balloon, a census of England, and the doings of cannibals in Borneo.

Painting attributed to Amir Kabir, 19 th century AD, National Museum of Iran.

All of the measures enumerated so far had as their purpose the creation of a well ordered and prosperous country, with undisputed authority exercised by the central government. This purpose was in part frustrated by the Ulema, who throughout the Qajar period disputed the legitimacy of the state and often sought to exercise an independent and rival authority. Amir Kabir took a variety of steps designed to curb their influence, above all in the sphere of law. He sought initially to supersede the sharʿ courts in the capital by sitting in judgment himself on cases brought before him; he abandoned the attempt when he realized that the inadequacy of his juridical knowledge had caused him to pronounce incorrect verdicts. Then he established indirect control over the sharʿ courts by giving prominence to one of them that enjoyed his special favor and by assigning the divan-khana, the highest instance of ʿorf jurisdiction, a more prominent role. All cases were to be referred to it before being passed on to a sharʿ court of the state’s choosing, and any verdict the sharʿ court then reached was valid only if endorsed by the divan-khaneh. In addition, any case involving a member of the non- Muslim minorities belonged exclusively to the jurisdiction of the divan-khana. Not content with thus circumscribing the prerogatives of the sharʿ courts, Amir Kabir took stringent measures against sharʿ judges found guilty of bribery or dishonesty; thus Molla ʿAbd-al-Rahim Borujerdi was expelled from Tehran when he offered to settle a case involving one of Amir Kabir’s servants to the liking of the minister.

Amir Kabir also sought to reduce clerical power by restricting the ability of the ulema to grant refuge (bast), in their residences and the mosques under their control, to criminals and others pursued by the state. In 1266/1850, bast was abolished, for example, at the Masjed-e Shah in Tehran, although it was restored after the downfall of Amir Kabir. In Tabriz, prolonged efforts were made to preserve bast at various mosques in the city, and recourse was even had to the alleged miracle of a cow that twice escaped the slaughterhouse by running into the shrine known as Boqʿa-ye Saheb-al-amr. The immediate instigators of the “miracle” were brought to Tehran, and soon after the emam-e jomʿa and shaykh-al-eslam of Tabriz, who had reduced civil government in the city to virtual impotence, were expelled. Less capable of fulfillment was Amir Kabir’s desire to prohibit the taziyeh, the Shiʿite “passion play” enacted in Moharram, as well as the public self-flagellation that took place during the mourning season. He obtained the support of several ulema in his attempt to prohibit these rites, but was obliged to relent in the face of strong opposition, particularly from Isfahan and Azerbaijan.

Amir Kabir took a benevolent interest in the non-Muslim minorities of Iran, largely to further his desire of strengthening the state. While in Erzurum he had learned of the fashion in which the European powers intervened in Ottoman affairs on the pretext of “protecting” the Christian minorities, and there were indications that Britain, Russia, and France hoped for similar benefits from the Assyrians and Armenians of Iran. He moved therefore to remove any possible grievances and hence any need for a foreign “protector.” He exempted the priests of all denominations from taxation, and gave material support to Christian schools in Azerbaijan and Isfahan. In addition, he established a close relationship with the Zoroastrians of Yazd, and gave strict orders to the governor of the city that they not be molested or subjected to arbitrary taxes. He also forbade attempts made in Shushtar to convert forcibly the Sabean community to Islam.

The foreign policy of Amir Kabir was as strikingly innovative as his internal policies. He has been credited with originating the policy of “negative equilibrium,” i.e., refusing concessions to both of the rival powers pressing on Iran, Britain and Russia, and avoiding alignment with either of them. He abrogated the agreement whereby the Russians were to operate a trade center and hospital in Astarabad, and attempted to put an end to the Russian occupation of Ashuradeh, an island in the southeastern corner of the Caspian Sea, as well as the anchorage rights enjoyed by Russian ships in the lagoon of Anzali.

In the south of Iran he made similar efforts to restrict British influence in the Persian Gulf, and denied Britain the right to stop Iranian ships in the Gulf on the pretext of looking for slaves. It is not surprising that he frequently clashed with Dolgorukiy and Sheil, the representatives of Russia and Britain in Tehran. In order to counteract British and Russian influence, he sought to establish relations with powers without direct interests in Iran, notably Austria and the United States. It may finally be noted that he set up a counter-espionage organization that had agents in the Russian and British embassies.^[4]

Dismissal and Demise[link]

From the get-go, Amir Kabir’s policies incited animosity within the influential circles of Iranian elite – most notable being the inner circle of the monarchy whose pensions and income were slashed by his financial reforms and policies. He was also later opposed by those who envied for his numerous posts and were backed strongly by foreign powers – whose influence had diminished strongly under his leadership. A coalition was thus formed among this opposition whose prominent members consisted of the Queen Mother, Mahd Ulm, Mirza Aqa Khan Nuri - Amir Kabir’s lieutenant and British subservient - and Mirza Yususf Ashtiyani - the Court’s chief accountant and Russian subservient.^[5]

As the adolescent Nasir al-Din Shah began to exert his own independence in government, he was strongly influenced by his the Queen Mother. Through her influence, Amir Kabir was demoted solely to the chief of the army and replaced by Nuri as the premier. This transition marked a rejection “ of…reformist measures in favor of the traditional practices of government.” ^[5] The power struggle in government finally resulted in his arrest and expulsion from the capital under continued countering Russian and British meddling and involvement. Amir Kabir was sent to Kashan under duress and kept in isolation by the Shah's decree. His execution was ordered six weeks later after the Queen mother and his executioner, Ali Khan Farash-bashi, had convinced the King that Amir Kabir would soon be granted immunity by the Russians – possibly allowing him to make an attempt to regain control of the government with force. The young Shah may have been inclined to believe these accusations because of the certain arrogance and disdain for protocol that Amir Kabir had shown since the beginning of his government career in Tabriz.

In the end, Amir Kabir was murdered in Kashan on January 10, 1852. With him, many believe, died the prospect of an independent Iran lead by meritocracy rather than nepotism.

Legacy[link]

Among his Iranian contemporaries Amir Kabir received praise from several poets of the age, notably Sorush and Qaʾani, but his services to Iran remained generally unappreciated in the Qajar period. Modern Iranian historiography has done him more justice, depicting him as one of the few capable and honest statesmen to emerge in the Qajar period and the progenitor of various political and social changes that came about half a century later.

Contemporary Legacy[link]

• Tehran Polytechnic, established during Pahlavi Dynasty in 1958, was renamed Amirkabir University of Technology after him in 1979.

In fiction[link]

• Amir Kabir Farahani is portrayed by actor Dariush Arjmand in Mohsen Makhmalbaf's movie Nasereddin Shah, Actor-e Cinema.
• He is also portrayed by Saeed Nikpour in the Iranian television series Amir Kabir.

See also[link]

• Prime Minister of Iran
• List of Prime Ministers of Iran
• Military history of Iran

References and notes[link]

'Amir Kabir and Iran' by Fereydun Adamiyat, Tehran, Kharazmi Publishing, 1354/1975.

• همنشین بهار، دستخط امیرکبیر

Al-Kabir ("the Great") is also one of the 99 names of God in Islam. For a complete disambiguation page, see Kabir (disambiguation)

Kabir
Kabir with a disciple.
Born	1440
Died	1518
Occupation	Weaver, poet
Known for	influenced the Bhakti movement

Kabīr (also Kabīra) (Hindi: कबीर, Punjabi: ਕਬੀਰ, Urdu: کبير‎) (1440–1518)^[1] was a mystic poet and saint of India, whose writings have greatly influenced the Bhakti movement. The name Kabir comes from Arabic al-Kabīr which means 'The Great' - the 37th name of God in Islam.

Apart from having an important influence on Sikhism, Kabir's legacy is today carried forward by the Kabir Panth ("Path of Kabir"), a religious community that recognizes him as its founder and is one of the Sant Mat sects. Its members, known as Kabir panthis, are estimated to be around 9,600,000. They are spread over north and central India, as well as dispersed with the Indian diaspora across the world, up from 843,171 in the 1901 census.^[2] His writings include Bijak, Sakhi Granth, Kabir Granthawali and Anurag Sagar.^[3]

Early life and background[link]

Not much is known of Kabir's birth parents, but it is known that he was brought up in a family of Muslim weavers. He was found by a Muslim weaver named Niru and his wife, Nima, in Lehartara, situated in Varanasi. They adopted the boy and taught him the weaver's trade.

The story is told that on one particular day of the year, anyone can become a disciple by having a master speak the name of God over him. It is common for those who live near the Ganges to take their morning bath there in the sacred waters. The bhakti saint Ramananda was in the habit of arising before dawn to take his bath. On this special day too, he awoke before dawn and found his way down to the steps of the Ganges. As he was walking down the steps to the waters, a little hand reached out and grabbed the saint's big toe. Ramananda was taken by surprise, and he involuntarily called out the name of God. Looking down, he saw in the early morning light the hand of the young Kabir. After his bath, he noticed that on the back of the little one's hand was written in Arabic the name Kabīr. He adopted him as son and disciple and brought him back to his ashram, much to the consternation of his Hindu students, some of whom left in protest.^{[citation needed]}

Not much is known about what sort of spiritual training Kabir may have received. He did not become a sadhu, nor did he ever abandon worldly life. Kabir chose instead to live the balanced life of a householder and mystic, a tradesman and contemplative.

Kabir's family is believed to have lived in the locality of Kabir Chaura in Varanasi. Kabīr maṭha (कबीरमठ), a maṭha located in the back alleys of Kabir Chaura, celebrates his life and times. Accompanying the property is a house named Nīrūṭīlā (नीरू टीला) which houses Niru and Nima's graves.^[4] The house also accommodates students and scholars who live there and study Kabir's work.

Philosophies[link]

Kabir was influenced by the prevailing religious mood of his times, such as old Brahmanic Hinduism, Tantrism, the teachings of Nath yogis and the personal devotionalism of South India mixed with the imageless God of Islam.^[5] The influence of these various doctrines is clearly evident in Kabir's verses. Eminent historians like R.C. Majumdar, P.N. Chopra, B.N. Puri and M.N. Das have held that Kabir is the first Indian saint to have harmonised Hinduism and Islam by preaching a universal path which both Hindus and Muslims could tread together.^[6] But there are a few critics who contest such claims.^[5]

The basic religious principles he espoused are simple. According to Kabir, all life is an interplay of two spiritual principles. One is the personal soul (Jivatma) and the other is God (Paramatma). It is Kabir's view that salvation is the process of bringing these two divine principles into union. The incorporation of much of his verse in Sikh scripture, and the fact that Kabir was a predecessor of Guru Nanak, have led some western scholars to mistakenly describe him as a forerunner of Sikhism.^[7]

His greatest work is the Bijak (the "Seedling"), an idea of the fundamental one. This collection of poems elucidates Kabir's universal view of spirituality. Though his vocabulary is replete with Hindu spiritual concepts, such as Brahman, karma and reincarnation, he vehemently opposed dogmas, both in Hinduism and in Islam. His Hindi was a vernacular, straightforward kind, much like his philosophies. He often advocated leaving aside the Qur'an and Vedas and simply following Sahaja path, or the Simple/Natural Way to oneness in God. He believed in the Vedantic concept of atman, but unlike earlier orthodox Vedantins, he spurned the Hindu societal caste system and murti-pujan (idol worship), showing clear belief in both bhakti and Sufi ideas. The major part of Kabir's work as a bhagat was collected by the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan Dev, and incorporated into the Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib.

Poetry[link]

Kabir composed in a pithy and earthy style, replete with surprise and inventive imagery. His poems resonate with praise for the true guru who reveals the divine through direct experience, and denounce more usual ways of attempting god-union such as chanting, austerities, etc. Kabir, being illiterate, expressed his poems orally in vernacular Hindi, borrowing from various dialects including Avadhi, Braj, and Bhojpuri.^[8] His verses often began with some strongly worded insult to get the attention of passers-by. Kabir has enjoyed a revival of popularity over the past half century as arguably the most accessible and understandable of the Indian saints, with a special influence over spiritual traditions such as those of Sant Mat, Garib Das and Radha Soami.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy[link]

A considerable body of poetical work has been attributed to Kabir. And while two of his disciples, Bhāgodās and Dharmadās, did write much of it down, "...there is also much that must have passed, with expected changes and distortions, from mouth to mouth, as part of a well-established oral tradition."^[9]

Poems and songs ascribed to Kabir are available today in several dialects, with varying wordings and spellings as befits an oral tradition. Opinions vary on establishing any given poem's authenticity.^[10] Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the spirit of this mystic comes alive through a "unique forcefulness... vigor of thought and rugged terseness of style."^[11]

Kabir and his followers named his poetic output as ‘bāņīs,’ utterances. These include songs, as above, and couplets, called variously dohe, śalokā (Sanskrit ślokā), or sākhī (Sanskrit sākşī). The latter term, meaning ‘witness,’ best indicates the use that Kabir and his followers envisioned for these poems: “As direct evidence of the Truth, a sākhī is… meant to be memorized… A sākhī is… meant to evoke the highest Truth.” As such, memorizing, reciting, and thus pondering over these utterances constitutes, for Kabir and his followers, a path to spiritual awakening.^[12]

Kabir's poetry today[link]

There are several allusions to Kabir's poetry in mainstream Indian film music. The title song of the Sufi fusion band Indian Ocean's album Jhini is an energetic rendering of Kabir's famous poem "The intricately woven blanket", with influences from Indian folk, Sufi traditions and progressive rock.

Documentary filmmaker Shabnam Virmani, from the Kabir Project, has produced a series of documentaries and books tracing Kabir's philosophy, music and poetry in present day India and Pakistan. The documentaries feature Indian folk singers such as Prahlad Tipanya, Mukhtiyar Ali and the Pakistani Qawwal Fareed Ayaz.

Kabir's poetry has appeared prominently in filmmaker Anand Gandhi's films Right Here Right Now and Continuum.

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Hindi Literature
• Sahaja
• Vedanta
• Sant Mat

References[link]

Further reading[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Kabir

• Bly, Robert, tr. Kabir: Ecstatic Poems. Beacon Press, 2004. (ISBN 0-8070-6384-3)
• Dass, Nirmal, tr. Songs of Kabir from the Adi Granth. SUNY Press, 1991. (ISBN 0-7914-0560-5)
• Kabir. Compilation of Kabir's dohas in Devanagiri. Kabir ke dohey
• Masterman, David, ed/rev. Kabir says... Los Angeles: Three Pigeons Publishing, 2011.
• Tagore, Rabindranath, tr. Songs of Kabir. Forgotten Books, 1985. (ISBN 1-60506-643-5) Songs of Kabir
• Vaudeville, Charlotte. A Weaver Named Kabir: Selected Verses with a Detailed Biographical and Historical Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. (ISBN 0-19-563933-2)
• KavitaKosh.org Compilation of Kabir's dohas in Devanagiri Kabir Page on Kavitakosh

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kabir

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Kabir

• Gutenberg: Songs of Kabir by Rabindranath Tagore
• Poems of Kabir
• Songs of Kabir (tr. Rabindranath Tagore) at sacred-texts.org
• Kabir Association of Canada
• Kabir poems and dohe in Hindi complete list

Shahram Nazeri
Background information
Born	1951 (age 60–61), Kermanshah, Iran
Origin	Kermanshah, Iran
Genres	Kurdish music, Persian music
Occupations	Singer, Composer
Instruments	Setar
Years active	1958–present

Shahram Nazeri (Persian:شهرام ناظری, Kurdish: Şehram Nazirî ) is a contemporary Iranian tenor of Kurdish ancestry who sings classical Kurdish music and Persian music from Kermanshah. He is one of Iran's most respected vocalists. He has been accompanied by some of the authorities of Persian traditional music such as Jalil Shahnaz, Alizadeh, Jalal Zolfonoun, Payvar.