Iranian Influential Women: Sakineh Pari Hamedani (1902-1978)

Sakineh Pari Hamedani was the first Iranian woman to become a medical surgeon. She served the Iranian people for more than five decades, yet very little is known about her. Accounts of her life are contradictory, even when it comes to the date and place of her birth. She was born on October 30, 1902, although her gravestone has the year of her birth as 1898.

Pari was the daughter of Nasrollah Hamedani and an Iranian-Armenian woman whose name may have been Reyhaneh. The exact locations of her clinics are unknown. The lack of recognition she has received reflects the prejudices of a traditional, patriarchal society. Some sources say she was born in the Crimean town of Bakhchysarai after her parents moved to Russia. Others say she was born in the Iranian city of Hamadan. They speculate that her parents sympathized with the Bolshevik government that seized power in Russia in 1917.

What is known is that she studied medicine in the Soviet Union and graduated as a surgeon in 1933, specializing in cancer treatment. She worked in Soviet hospitals until her parents died for unknown reasons at around the same time. She then returned to Iran with her sister.

To practice medicine in Iran, Pari had to get her permit from the newly established University of Tehran Medical School. She passed the test in 1934 and opened a clinic in Tehran. There is some disagreement as to whether Pari was the first Iranian woman doctor, or if this distinction goes to Doctor Kahal, who published the first Iranian women’s magazine. What is certain is that Pari was the first female surgeon.

It is not known whether she gave any interviews during her lifetime.

In the 1930s, there was a severe shortage of qualified doctors across Iran, especially in rural areas. When Iran’s state-run Fisheries Company invited Pari to practice in the small town of Ghara Su, near the Caspian Sea, she accepted. She married there, but her marriage lasted only four years. She later established a practice in the Caspian town of Bandar Gaz. She spent the rest of her life there, offering free services to the poor, even though she faced financial difficulties toward the end of her life.

She died in 1978 in Bandar Gaz and was buried there. Like many other things about Sakineh Pari Hamedani, we do not know how she lived the last years of her life or how she died, even though she has been compared to Dr. Albert Schweitzer.