‏Rukh al-Din Khan Mukhtari

Mukhtari, Rukn al-Din (1892-1971)

Violin instrumentalist and composer of repute in early twentieth century Iran. He was the best student of Husayn Isma‘ilzada and won a name for himself in his youth as a music prodigy. In the field of musical composition, he is judged to be on a par with Darvish Khan. Nonetheless, none of his performances were ever recorded on gramophone records nor is his name as a professional musician recorded anywhere. The reasons lying behind this lack of recognition lie in the untimely administrative positions that he held. His name as a musician was particularly overshadowed by his job a the terrifying police sergeant who was Chief of Police during the reign of Reza Shah (1927-1942), in which he became notorious as “Sarpas Mukhtar.” Following Reza Shah’s deposition in 1942, he was tried, convicted, and no news of him was heard afterwards. That is, until 1955, when he was brought in from the cold and invited by Davud Pirnia to serve as a music advisor on the Golha programmes. His artistic tasteundoubtedly had an impact on many of the Golha-yi javidan and Rangarang programmes and, according to ‘Ali Tajvidi, a number of Mukhtari’s compositions were performed in the Golha, though his name was not ever mentioned by the announcer owing to political reasons. Likewise, Tajvidi makes mention of a song composed by Mukhtari, Mahjubi, and himself which was recorded in the Golha radio studio but never performed. A collection of his works has been released by Arshad Tahmasbi.

Sayyid ‘Ali Riza Mir‘alinaqi