Iranian Scholar Mutilates Priceless Books

As reported in the Guardian, a prominent Iranian scholar pleaded guilty to charges of literary mutilation after an investigation discovered that he “took a scalpel to the leaves of 150 books that have been in the [British Library's] collection for centuries.” Farhad Hakimzadeh focused his destruction on “books charting how Europeans traveled to Mesopotamia, Persia and the Mogul empire from the 16th century onwards.” Ironically, Hakimzadeh was chief executive of the Iran Heritage Foundation, a charity “to promote and preserve the history, languages and culture of Iran.”