Art sleuth pips Iranian secret agents to stolen Persian poems
A DUTCHMAN dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the art world” has recovered a famed 15th century Persian book of poems after an “international race against time” in which he allegedly pipped the Iranian secret service to the work.
Arthur Brand said the find sealed a tense denouement to a decade-long hunt for one of the oldest surviving copies of the Divan of Hafez – dubbed “the Prince of Persian poets”.
Worth €1 million (£850,000), the gold-leafed volume was found to be missing from the collection of an Iranian dealer after his death in Germany in 2007. Hafez – Shams al-din Muhammad Hafiz Shirazi – is one of the best known mystical bards.
The family of book dealer Djafar Ghazy discovered the 1462-3 manuscript was missing after his death, along with hundreds of ancient works.
German police recovered 174 of them in a 2011 raid on the home of an Iranian pensioner who befriended Mr Ghazy.
“But the most important piece, one of the earliest and most accurate copies of the famous Divan of Hafez, was still missing,” said Mr Brand, an art detective with an impressive track record in recovering lost masterpieces.
In 2018, by which time Mr Brand said Iran had activated its intelligence networks to track down the work, he received a call from an Iranian dealer, asking him to “urgently” meet him.
“The man told me he was visited by two officials who said they were ‘linked to the Iranian embassy’,” he told AFP.
“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 added.
He flew to London where “an extremely nervous” man said a friend had sold it to a major buyer. Iranian agents were also in London asking questions, said Mr Brand.
“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,” he added. The collector handed over the book via an intermediary in late 2019.
Mr Brand said he would travel to Munich on Wednesday to return the Divan to German police, who were talking to Mr Ghazy’s heirs over “the next steps”.