Mirza Jabbar Asgarzadeh ( fa, میرزا جبار عسگرزاده) famously known as Jabbar Baghcheban ( fa, جبار باغچهبان) was an Iranian inventor. He is well known as someone who established the first
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
ian
kindergarten
Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cent ...
and the first deaf school in
Tabriz
Tabriz ( fa, تبریز ; ) is a city in northwestern Iran, serving as the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. It is the List of largest cities of Iran, sixth-most-populous city in Iran. In the Quri Chay, Quru River valley in Iran's historic Aze ...
.
[ Guity, Ardavan (April 2022). Esharani Grammatical Sketch: An Initial Description of the Lexicon and Grammar (PhD thesis). Gallaudet University.] He was also the inventor of
Persian language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and ...
cued speech
Cued speech is a visual system of communication used with and among deaf or deafness, hard-of-hearing people. It is a phonemic-based system which makes traditionally spoken languages accessible by using a small number of handshapes, known as cue ...
. He was the father of the late Iranian composer
Samin Baghcheban. In total he had three children.
Biography
Mirza Jabbar Asgarzadeh was born in
Yerevan
Yerevan ( , , hy, Երևան , sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Y ...
. His grandfather was from
Tabriz
Tabriz ( fa, تبریز ; ) is a city in northwestern Iran, serving as the capital of East Azerbaijan Province. It is the List of largest cities of Iran, sixth-most-populous city in Iran. In the Quri Chay, Quru River valley in Iran's historic Aze ...
or
Urmia
Urmia or Orumiyeh ( fa, ارومیه, Variously transliterated as ''Oroumieh'', ''Oroumiyeh'', ''Orūmīyeh'' and ''Urūmiyeh''.) is the largest city in West Azerbaijan Province of Iran and the capital of Urmia County. It is situated at an alt ...
. The first kindergarten he established was called the () which means 'children's garden'. That is why he was given the nickname () which literally means 'gardener' in the
Persian language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and ...
.
He founded a school for the deaf in 1924, located next to his kindergarten. In 1928 he wrote the first Iranian children's book in Persian. The book was called () which means 'snow father' in Persian.
References
1886 births
1966 deaths
Iranian educators
Language teachers
20th-century Iranian inventors
Writers from Yerevan
People involved with sign language
People from Tabriz
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Iran
Educators of the deaf
{{Iran-bio-stub