Marijan Mole

Marijan Molé (28 July 1924, in Ljubljana – 6 May 1963, in Paris) was a Slovenian-Polish scholar of Middle and Modern Iranian studies, who also contributed to the fields of Islamic and particularly Sufi studies.

Biography His father, Vojeslav Molé (1886-1973), was a Slovenian writer and historian of art who lectured at the University of Ljubljana. In 1925 he moved as a visiting professor to Poland, the native land of Marijan's mother. Molé showed an early interest in linguistics and mathematics. When World War II broke out, his family escaped to Leopoli in Ukraine. Back in Poland, he obtained his doctorate in Iranian philology under the direction of Tadeusz Jan Kowalski at the Jagiellonian University. In 1949 he was invited by the French government to pursue his studies in Paris. There he made the acquaintance of Jean de Menasce, who became an influential figure for him, and of other renowned specialists in Iranian and Islamic studies such as Louis Massignon and Henry Corbin. Molè eventually settled permanently in France, where he married Éliane Janet, and from where he would make study trips to Iran, staying for periods at Tehran's Institut Français d'Iranologie. Molé was found dead in his Paris apartment at the age of 39, when he was already considered one of the most gifted Iranists of his generation. He was survived by his wife and a son.