Darvish Moradkhan Nazari Gurajubi

The late Darvish Moradkhan Nazari Gurajubi, son of Darab Khan, was born in 1304 SH (1925/26) and came from the village of Gurehjub-e Moradbeyg of the Guran tribe. From childhood he had a particular passion and gift for religious and artistic matters.

He was one of the scribes of the religious daftars of the Yarsan (daftar: the Yarsan sacred books) and one of the great tanbur masters of the region. Both his copying of the religious daftars and his complete playing of all 72 tanbur maqams (traditional melodic pieces or modes of the tanbur) were fully approved by the sayyids of the region (the hereditary Yarsan spiritual families), especially the great Heydari sayyids of Guran.

According to his own account, one of the great figures of the Yarsan faith inspired him in a dream, and in the dream he was given a volume of a daftar of kalam (the sacred hymns of the Yarsan) as his bash (portion). After that he learned to write without a teacher and to play the tanbur without a master, and he spent his life in the service of the Yarsan people. Several times, on the orders of the family of the Agha (the spiritual leader of the Yarsan), he travelled to most parts of Iran to guide people and teach them daftar recitation and tanbur playing, and day and night, without tiring, he carried out his religious mission until he passed away in 1385 SH (2006/07).

Source: Telegram channel “Navaye Tanbur”, 16 February 2017; written by Alireza Abbasi; the author was himself one of his students.