Buzurg ʿAlavī (1904-97) was a prominent Iranian writer and political intellectual. Born in Tehran in 1904 to a well-to-do merchant family committed to the Constitutional Revolution (1906-11), ʿAlavī was sent to Germany for the purposes of education. Returning to Iran in 1929, he taught German in Shīrāz and Tehran and became a close friend and colleague of the famous writer Ṣādiq Hidāyāt (d. 1951) along with three other young intellectuals. The four intellectuals nicknamed their group as rabʿa (group of four). ʿAlavī also joined the small