Jean Calmard passed away on 2 May 2017 in Paris, France. He was born on 19 December 1931, and was eighty-six years old. His passing is a great loss for scholars of Iranian history in France and around the world. I offer my deepest condolences to his family.
After graduating from lycée, Calmard entered the French navy, where he served for several years before gaining employment related to international trade. In the early 1960s, Calmard spent three years traveling in Iran, Afghanistan, and India. It was during this time that he developed a strong passion for the culture of the Persian-speaking world and set his sights on pursuing research in this area. Upon returning to Paris, he obtained a diploma in Persian and Urdu at the Ecole Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and spent a year as a student at the University of Tehran from 1967 to 1968. Soon after returning to Paris in 1968, he gained employment as a researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and joined Le Centre d'études islamiques et orientales d'histoire comparée (Center of Islamic and Oriental Studies of Comparative History), then under the leadership of Jean Aubin (1927‒98). In 1975, he received a doctorate from University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle based on his doctoral dissertation titled Le culte de l'Imam Husayn. Etudes sur la commémoration du drame de Karbala dans l'Iran pré-safavide (The Cult of Imam Husayn. Studies on the Commemoration of the Drama of Karbara in Iran before the Safavid Era).
In 1986, Calmard succeeded Aubin as director of the Center of Islamic and Oriental Studies of Comparative History, actively engaging in research both inside and outside France as a leading scholar of Iranian history for over ten years until his retirement from CNRS in 1997.
As is evident from the title of his dissertation, Calmard's academic interest was initially premodern religious cultural history in Iran. In part stimulated by his experiences working alongside diverse researchers in Aubin's research group, the temporal and geographic scope of Calmard's research subsequently expanded to cover diverse areas. The commemorative collection of essays celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday published in 2006 (Eurasian Studies, 2006, vol. 1‒2. Liber Amicorum: Etudes sur l'Iran medieval et modern offertes à Jean Calmard), which included essays by twenty-two scholars from around the world, also contains a list of Calmard's achievements (1971 to 2004) compiled by his wife, Jacqueline Calmard, which provides a bird's-eye view of his research. Based on this list, his research accomplishments can broadly be divided into three areas.
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1. The religious and social history of Iran: This theme, which was the starting point of Calmard's research, continued to be a strong interest throughout his life. Much of his work in this area deals with the relationship between ideology and rites such as ta'ziye of Twelvers and politics and society;
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2. Iranian political history: Calmard investigated the political history of Islamic Iran as the background against which the unique society in area 1 above emerged. Much of his work in this area discusses the characteristics of the political system and social structure from the Mongol period to the Qajar era;
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3. Contact and interaction of Iranian society with Europe: Calmard produced many works on the political and cultural relationships between Iran and Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century using travel accounts and other historical documents written in European languages as sources. These studies are unique in the sense that he does not always rely on historical documents written in European languages and tries to relativize their accounts.
In 1989, Calmard, whose focus had settled on Safavid Iran, which lay at the intersection of the three above research areas, hosted an international roundtable in Paris on research regarding the history of the Safavid period. The reports presented at the roundtable were compiled by Calmard into a book which was later published as Etudes safavides (Actes de la Table ronde international, CNRS/EPHE IVe section). The participants all recognized the significance and importance of the meeting, which led to the regular convening of similar roundtables within the same framework. These meetings resulted in unprecedented sharing among Iranian scholars and scholars around the world of an awareness of issues and information from newly discovered historical documents related to Safavid history. Aided by the spread of the internet, researchers with a new-found sense of comradeship began to engage in lively exchange of ideas. It can be said that the curtains of a new age of research on the history of Safavid Iran were opened, thanks to Calmard's initiative.
This is a personal recollection. I had the opportunity to be mentored by Calmard for a little over two and half years when I was a visiting doctoral student in Paris starting in November 1980. It was just after the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution, and circumstances in Iran were still chaotic. It was a time when various political actions, both in support of and against the revolution, were being fomented in Paris by students with ties to Iran. Calmard, however, distanced himself somewhat from the unsettled surrounding circumstances and spoke lucidly in lectures about solid research findings related to the political history of pre-modern Iran that he had obtained through careful interpretation of historical materials. He was never too busy to instruct his students. He sacrificed his own valuable research time to answer a great variety of questions from his students and generously loaned out books and other references needed for research. I will never forget Calmard's kindness and generosity of spirit, whether he was making astute comments on my doctoral dissertation, editing my writing in French, or even going so far as to help me paginate my dissertation at his house.
Seeing Calmard's devotion as a husband close up was enough to make anyone smile. He was also a wonderful father. I have many memories of Calmard, including him laughing and playing soccer with his two sons at their holiday villa on the outskirts of Paris, his near-bursting smile at Narita Airport when he caught sight of his wife Jacqueline, who had arrived a few days later, and the pride in his voice as he gushed about his wife's delicious cooking and beautiful handicrafts when I visited their home. Some of these events took place more than three decades ago, but my memory of them is as clear as if they had happened yesterday. Undoubtedly, the fact that he found such a wonderful companion in his wife Jacqueline figures largely, but as well as being a great scholar Calmard was also a family man, filled to the brim with human kindness.
According to a colleague of mine, Maria Szuppe, Calmard had been working on a single, very long treatise up to the very end of his life. I eagerly await publication of this posthumous work from Calmard, who remained a dedicated researcher over his entire active career.
