Iraj Afshar (1925 - 2011), was a renowned bibliographer and eminent expert on medieval and modern Persian manuscripts. He was also one of the most prolific editors of classical and modern Persian texts, as well as a distinguished historian of the early modern period. For 30 years, Afshar served as the editor of Iran's first book review journal, the prominent Rāhnemā-ye Ketāb, which was established by Professor Ehsan Yarshater (emeritus, Columbia University) in 1958. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Rāhnemā-ye Ketāb had to be shut down. But Iraj Afshar revived it under the name Āyandeh, which was originally the title of a literary journal that was launched by his father, Mahmoud Afshar in 1925. He was a Consulting Editor and a frequent contributor to the Encyclopædia Iranica, which was edited by his life-long friend, Ehsan Yarshater, and served on the advisory boards of many prominent Iranian and western scholarly journals. In 2006, Iraj Afshar was the first recipient of the Life Achievement Award of the International Society for Iranian Studies, which is granted to prominent scholars in the field of Iranian Studies who live and work in Iran.