Hoshang Ebtehaj Funeral Ceremony – (Extended)

This morning at 8 o’clock Tehran time, the body of Hoshang Ebtahaj, a great Iranian poet, was displayed among his admirers at Vahdat Hall in Tehran. Thousands of Iranians attended a funeral procession in Tehran for prominent poet Houshang Ebtehaj, whose life and work spans many of Iran’s political, cultural, and literary upheavals.

Born in 1928, Ebtehaj, considered by many as the last living old-school Iranian poet, died on August 10 in Germany. According to his daughter Yalda Ebtahaj, the cause of death was kidney failure. Houshang Ebtehaj, a distinguished Iranian poet whose small but influential body of work made him a major figure in his own country and in world literature, died on Wednesday in Cologne, Germany. He was 94.

He was born in 1928 in Iran’s city of Rasht, some 240 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Tehran, the capital. He began writing when he was young and published his first book of poetry when he was just 19. Throughout the 20th century, Ebtehaj contributed to the popularity of the ghazal – a traditional form of Persian poetry set to music that expresses the writer’s feelings, especially about love, with moving intensity.