Jaleh Archive

About the Jaleh Archive

Jaleh Esfahani began living in exile from her youth and, as she herself said, moved home five times over the course of approximately forty years: Isfahan and Tehran, Baku, Moscow, Tehran, and finally London. The Jaleh Archive was fully digitised through the voluntary efforts of a group of the Foundation's friends. The original documents were also transferred in 2014 to the National Library and Archives of Iran in Tehran so that they would be accessible to Iranian researchers and students. In the final days of her life, while confined to bed by illness, she said:

"From each home, I carried my archive — which naturally grew larger each time — to the next with great difficulty and determination. My archive now consists of around 60 to 70 binders, and there is no opportunity to move it again. I entrust this archive to you, my friends, so that you may preserve it somewhere and in some form; perhaps one day it may be useful to a young poet or researcher."

Acknowledgements

As Jaleh herself had often said, she collected and preserved her personal archive with great care and meticulous attention. However, organising, digitising, and cataloguing this collection was an extremely time-consuming and detailed task. Several of Jaleh's friends devoted at least four hours every Wednesday evening, after finishing their daily work, to this project for nearly four years. They organised, scanned, and catalogued the documents and recorded the information for each item electronically. The result of this demanding effort was the preservation of Jaleh's archive in both physical and digital form. Today, electronic copies of these documents can be searched and accessed through the Foundation based on the prepared catalogue, thereby fulfilling Jaleh's final wish to preserve her archive and make it accessible. This work would not have been possible without the support of these friends, and the Foundation sincerely thanks them:

The Foundation also extends its sincere gratitude to the National Library and Archives of Iran, which transferred these documents from London to Iran at its own expense, re-catalogued them in accordance with international library and archival standards, and made them available to the public. We also greatly thank Mr Majid Tafreshi, who established the connection between the Foundation and the organisation.