In the historic city of Isfahan, almost on the bank of Zayandeh River, there is one small brick building which
houses the tombs of the American scholar, Alexander Upham Pope, and his wife and assistant Dr Phylis Ackerman. It is a simple and humble building, but the resting place of a great man who admired and loved
Persia, its civilization, history and, in particular, its arts.

Pope (1881-1969) spent a half of his long life presenting Persian arts and literature to the world. In a collection of books titled “A Survey of Persian Art”, he offered the world over 3,000 pages of writings and over 5,000 magnificent pictures of Persian works of art and architecture, both in black and white and color.

The last printing of this collection was made in 1977 in Japan by the Asian Institute comprising 15 volumes, covering the following subjects:
• Art in ancient Iran from prehistoric ages down to the era of the Parthians
• Sassanid arts
• Iran’s historic towns, monuments and gardens
• Islamic arts in Iran (pottery, ceramics, calligraphy, illustrated books…)
• Fabrics and textiles in Moslem Iran
• Arts in Moslem Iran
• Carpets, metalworks, woodworks, jewelry, musical instruments
• Pre-Islamic arts
• Post-Islamic arts
• Pottery and ceramics
• Miniatures
• Persian carpets
• Metal & wood works
• And two books of pictures only.

Pope spent 44 years working on Iranian arts and culture. During his first visit to Iran, in 1926, he wrote that he had come to Iran as a pilgrim comes to visit a holy shrine. He had come to see from a close distance the
treasure of Iranian works of art with which he had become acquainted through books and samples in museums.



“I had to see the people who create such marvels”, he wrote. Pope believed that Iranians were greatly talented and had strong imaginative powers: gifted poets and artists with skillful hands and keen eyes. “This is why I
took the pains to travel from San Francisco all the way to Isfahan, a journey that took five weeks” he wrote. He came via Iraq and the moment he set his foot within Iranian territories he was overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of the majestic Zagros mountains crowned with snow. He was determined to show to the world what Iranians truly were and eradicate the impression Westerners had about Iranians as a backward nation.

Therefore, he held impressive exhibitions of Iranian works of art and archeology in many major cities of the world such as Philadelphia (1926), London (1931), Leningrad (1935) and New York (1940). In time he prepared a detailed report of the findings of his surveys of Iranian arts. In another book, titled “The Importance of Iranian Arts”, he writes that throughout the long and eventful history of Iran, with its ups and downs, and defeats followed by victories, this great nation continued to offer the world outstanding works of art. Pope believed that the most significant point about Iranian art was that all Iranian objects of art are related to the life of the people and their emotional needs in seeking their god, trying to appease his wrath, gain his support and attention, and draw from his enormous powers.

Pope believed that in Iran painting was under the influence of poetry and philosophic and religious thinking. Iranians, he thought, were the people most attracted to and gifted for poetry, as their 1000-year old literature
reveals. He maintained that in Iran arts developed gradually with ample time for its rules and principles to be tested and verified over time.

His love for Iran was so intense that he finally decided to spend the last days of his life in this country and to be buried here. Pope was relentless in his efforts to serve the Iranian civilization and was prepared to accept
and bear any and every pain no matter how serious. He was soft-spoken and he enchanted any person who listened to him talking about Iran and its past, about his adventures in Iran, his achievements and his rare
defeats.



Of course during the past two or three centuries there have been many scholars from all across the world who have taken the pains of coming to Iran, many with great difficulties and hardships, to carry out research and archeological explorations etc.

They have honored us Iranians; they have brought us glory and pride; we are forever indebted to these great men and women. But “A Survey of Persian Art” is unique in that it has gathered the results of these scholars’ efforts and united them in one single collection, forever recording the 6,000 years of Iranian history, written or unwritten.

This book also helped to create a link – academic and artistic – that connected all Iranologists of the world turning them all into one large family cooperating with one another towards improving knowledge about Persia, Persian art and Persian civilization.

When one mentions Iran or Persia and its culture and art one is not confining these to the geographic borders of today’s Iran or Iran at any particular time in the past, because the influence of Persian cultureand art stretches from China to Rome, particularly in the regions south, east and west of Asia. As he had demanded in his will, Pope’s body was buried in Isfahan. There are two copper plates fixed on the wall of his tomb, one above another, giving the text of a letter Pope had written to Dr Seddigh, the then Vice-President of the Expertise Committee of the National Heritage Society, about his burial. The upper plate is the text in English and the lower its translation in Persian. The main body of the English text are given in the box (right).

Pope completed his higher education studies at Brown University and later became a lecturer at the university of California. From 1925 onwards he came to Iran 20 times with exploration teams to carry out archeological studies and surveys of Iranian arts and literature.

From 1925 to 1928 he became the honorary advisor to Pennsylvania Museum on Iranian arts. From 1925 to 1935 he was consultant to Chicago Islamic Art Institute. From 1936 he acted as the honorary lecturer on History of Iranian Arts at Tehran University and at the same time he was the director of Iranian Institute of New York City.

From 1947 to 1953 he was the President of the Asian Institute. About the same time he was granted a number of awards by the Iranian government including the highest award for academic work.

1- Initially Pope thought that his ashes would be brought to Iran from the US but later he decided to come back to Iran to live here and teach at Shiraz University. He died in Shiraz on 30th August in 1969.