Art sleuth finds stolen tome
‘Indiana Jones of art world’ led gruelling quest to recover rare Iranian poetry book, writes Jan Hennop
Astolen 15th-century book by the famed Persian poet Hafez has been recovered by a Dutch art detective after an international “race against time” that drew the alleged interest of Iran’s secret service.
The gold-leafed volume worth around 1 million euros (34 million baht) was found to be missing from the collection of an Iranian antiques dealer after his death in Germany in 2007.
It sparked a decade-long search for one of the oldest surviving copies of the Divan of Hafez — the collected works of the poet who remains extremely popular in Iran and has inspired artists worldwide.
But Arthur Brand, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the art world” for tracing a series of lost works, finally tracked down the tome via the murky stolen arts underworld.
“This is a hugely important find for me, because this is such an important book,” Mr Brand said as he showed AFP the recovered book at an Amsterdam apartment.
Along with Rumi, Hafez — full name Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz Shirazi — is one of the best known mystical bards. American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson called him the “Prince of Persian poets”.
Hafez’s Divan can still be found in most Iranian homes where it is traditionally read out during family celebrations for the Persian New Year.
The theft of the manuscript, which dates from 1462 to 1463, was discovered by the family of book dealer Djafar Ghazy after he died in an old people’s home in Munich in 2007.
While going through Mr Ghazy’s computer, they realised the reclusive pensioner had in fact collected hundreds of ancient manuscripts — but that they were all gone.
In 2011 German police recovered 174 of them raiding the home of another Iranian pensioner who had befriended Ghazy.
“But the most important piece, one of the earliest and most accurate copies of the famous Divan of Hafez, was still missing,” Mr Brand said.
German police announced a 50,000euro reward and issued a flyer describing the book in 2016 but there was still no trace of it, until late 2018.
Mr Brand then received a phone call from an Iranian dealer, asking the Dutchman to “urgently” meet him in Germany.
“The man told me he was visited by two officials who said they were ‘linked to the Iranian embassy’.” The men — alleged by the dealer to be Iranian secret agents — told him to “report any news of the missing Divan”, Mr Brand said.
Iran had already shown an interest in the case, saying it would take “all legal means” to get back the manuscripts that were found in 2011.
“After my informant was contacted, I knew that Iran was also looking for the missing Divan and I started a race against time to see if I could find it first,” Mr Brand said.
The Dutchman then flew to London to meet an unnamed man “who became extremely nervous” when shown the flyer of the missing book, and confessed he had seen it as a friend of his had sold it to a major buyer.
By then Iranian agents were also in London asking questions about the manuscript, Mr Brand said.
“The buyer was shocked and furious. After all, he was sold a stolen book and now everybody including the Iranian government was looking for it,” Mr Brand said.
By now afraid, the buyer flew to Paris to demand his money back from the original seller.
But Mr Brand persuaded him to go back to London and finally the collector handed over the book via an intermediary in late 2019.
Mr Brand said he will travel to Munich next Wednesday to return the Divan to German police. The recovered book is “one of a handful still in existence,” said Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, assistant professor of Persian literature at Oxford University.