My mother, Shireen Mahdavi Khazeni, who has died aged 87, was an Iranian-born, British-educated intellectual who eventually settled in the US following the Islamic revolution.
But she missed her home country. To nourish her longing, she undertook the study of Iran’s social history. In 1999 she earned her doctorate in Middle East history, jointly awarded by the University of Utah and London School of Economics (where she had completed her degree in the 1960s) under the supervision of Ernest Gellner. Her thesis, a study of one of her ancestors, Haj Muhammad Amin al-Zarb, a 19th-century Persian merchant, was published in 2018 under the title For God, Mammon and Country.
Born in Tehran, to Ebrahim Mahdavi, a civil servant, and Nayer (nee Diba), Shireen had two younger sisters, Leila and Simin. Ebrahim was western-educated, and so the girls were all sent to the UK for secondary schooling.
Shireen was 12 and spoke no English when her father dropped her off at Highgate school in London as a boarder. Her father had met the British architect Jane Drew on the flight home, and she purportedly told him: “I’ll look in on her.” My mother said that one day as she was sitting in the library of the school, there was a racket of clicking heels and jangling bracelets, as a statuesque Drew descended the staircase into the library and told her that going forward she would be her guardian. Shireen spent weekends and holidays at the home of Drew, her husband, Maxwell Fry, and their children, where she encountered many prominent artists and thinkers.
At LSE, she studied social anthropology. In 1960 she married an Iranian architect, Reza Khazeni, and, following her graduation in 1961, the couple moved back to Tehran.
Initially, Shireen taught at the city’s Institute of Social Studies and Research, but from 1963 she began working as a researcher at the Iranian government’s Plan and Budget Organisation, primarily in the field of women’s rights, which led to the founding of the Women’s Organisation of Iran. Towards the end of her time there, before the 1979 revolution, she was responsible for assisting foreigners living in the country, guiding them through legal and social situations.
Following the revolution, the family emigrated to Salt Lake City, Utah, where Reza had completed architecture school. Shireen embraced this new chapter in her life with zeal, raising their three small children while Reza ran an employment business.
Shireen returned to education in the 1980s. After finishing her doctorate, she taught at the University of Utah, and published many articles, including on the position of women in Iran.
A diligent correspondent throughout her life, she stayed in touch with friends she had known as a child in Iran, those in Britain, and others throughout the world.
Her son, Reza Ali, predeceased her, as did her sister Leila. Shireen is survived by her husband, her daughters, Nayer and me, and by Simin.
