Statues of four Iranian luminaries were unveiled during a ceremony at the United Nations Office at Vienna on Tuesday.
Iran’s
ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali-Asghar Soltanieh, and
several other Iranian and foreign diplomats attended the unveiling ceremony for
the statues of Avicenna, Abu Rayhan Biruni, Zakariya Razi (Rhazes), and Omar
Khayyam.
“The
idea was proposed by Iran’s representative at the UN Office at Vienna and was
realized with the cooperation of Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and
Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO). The process of making the statues began two
years ago,” Soltanieh told the Persian service of IRNA.
“The statues were completed last week and were
transferred to the open space of the UN office. The date for the unveiling was
also discussed with (members of) several organizations, including the United
Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and finally the day June 9 was selected.”
The
four statues are the symbols of Iranians’ adventurous spirit over the centuries
and they are gifts from the Iranian nation to the world, Soltanieh added.
Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina, known as Abu Ali
Sina and commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna was born c.
980 near Bukhara, in contemporary Uzbekistan, and died in 1037 in Hamedan,
Iran. He was a Persian polymath and the foremost physician and philosopher of
his time. He was also an astronomer, chemist, geologist, logician,
paleontologist, mathematician, physicist, poet, psychologist, scientist,
soldier, statesman, and teacher.
The Muslim physician and writer Abu Bakr
Muhammed ibn Zakariya Razi (854?-925?), also known as Rhazes, whose medical
writings greatly influenced the Islamic world and Western Europe in the Middle
Ages, was born and died in Rey. He wrote on almost every aspect of medicine.
Omar Khayyam (1048-1123) is chiefly known to
English-speaking readers through the translation of a collection of his
quatrains in “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” (1859), by the English writer
Edward Fitzgerald.
Abu Rayhan Biruni (973-ca. 1048) was a Muslim
astronomer, mathematician, geographer, and historian.
Source:
MEHR News Agency