Living Arrangements

Shari’ati moved across different neighborhoods as he explored different faces of Paris. Each neighborhood enabled him to develop the different dimensions of his identities. Shari’ati experienced various living arrangements. There were times he shared apartments with different friends and landlords but he also chose to live in solitude before his family joined him from Iran. The apartments were home to Shari’ati’s reflection on his host country, education and educators, new acquaintances and companions, and all his socio-political activities.

Address: 12 Rue Notre Dame des Champs Paris 75006

Upon his arrival in Paris on 25 May 1959, Shariati's first residence in France was at Kazem Rajavi's apartment, an old acquaintance from Mashhad.

Reference: Shari'ati, Soussan. Beresad beh Dast-eh Pūrān-eh Azīzam. Tehran: Ābān, 1394, p. 19.

Address: 15 Rue Gutenberg Paris 75015 (Second floor, door on the left)

In mid-June 1959 Shari’ati moved into this apartment where he lived with Mr. Bodin (landlord), Monsieur Bodin’s wife, their two children and his wife’s sister, Solange. He describes the family as young, educated, Catholic, and French. Shari’ati writes, “I could see the Eiffel Tower every day. In those days, I did not have strong religious feelings, I did not think of the other world nor did I have spiritual thoughts. I was deeply with the world and the people of the world.”

This location serves as a real and fictive address. This is where Shari’ati met Solange Bodin, a real person, from whom Shari‘ati creates a semi-fictive character, a ‘lonely angel’ (play on words Seul Ange = Solange). Solange became an archetype of perfection and purity but also a mystical figure of unwanted exquisiteness who drowns at sea in Tourville.

This apartment was the locus of the mysterious love affair between Shari‘ati and Solange. Solange represented a real person whom Shari‘ati was in love with, in a part worldly and part mystical manner. She also represented that purely mystical genre in Iranian Sufism or Gnosticism that shifts the life of Truth-seeking mortals and puts them on the track of uniting with the Divine. Thus, Shari‘ati considered Solange to be who Shams was to Mowlavi.

Reference: Shari’ati, Ali. Hobūt. Collective Works, Vol. 13, pp. 333-335. / Shari’ati, Ali. Goftegūhay-eh Tanhāī. Collective Work, Vol. 33/1 pp. 226, 228, 297, 302, 304-305, 308-309, 310-311, 434. / Shari’ati, Ali. Goftegūhay-eh Tanhāī. Collective Work, Vol. 33/2 p.980, 1159. / Rahnema, Ali. An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari’ati. I.B. Tauris & Co., 2014, p. 89, 169-170.

Address: 80 Rue Mouffetard Paris 75005

In August 1959, after having left Monsieur Bodin’s apartment, Shari’ati moved into a small room of 4 by 1.5 meter, which Shari’ati called a closet. This room had a window to the street, which usually brought in the sound of music, neighbors laughing or quarreling, and the noise of cars instead of light. The rent was 10,000 francs and the apartment didn’t have a heater. His neighbor was a friendly African man whom he would frequent. The landlady was a kind madam who was loud and loquacious. He attended French courses at Alliance Française and Institute Pantheon while residing at this address.

Reference: Shari'ati, Soussan. Beresad beh Dast-eh Pūrān-eh Azīzam. Tehran: Ābān, 1394, pp. 53-54, 56, 125. / Shari'ati, Soussan. Beresad beh Dast-eh Pūrān-eh Azīzam, Tehran: Ābān, 1394, pp. 53-54.

Address: 235 Boulevard Pereire Paris 75017

Shari’ati moved into an apartment with three large rooms with two of his Iranian friends on September 10, 1959. He writes about three Iranian students who lived in this apartment near Champs-Élysées. One was pseudo-pious (Moqadas-eh moāb) who did not dance, never passed by a cabaret and did not eat meat, as it was not halal. The other was a handsome worldly man. He loved wine, women, and dancing and his nights were like the Thousand and One Nights. His bookshelves were filled with a variety of wine bottles and his agenda was filled with the phone numbers and addresses of women of all human races. The third had neither the religion of the first nor the worldliness of the second. His beloved was a memory that warmed his body. He was deep in thoughts, always had books in hand, and his heart was in love with freedom. The third student was Shari’ati himself.

Reference: Shari’ati, Ali. Goftegūhay-eh Tanhāī. Collective Work, Vol. 33/2, p. 1065-1067. / Shari'ati, Soussan. Beresad beh Dast-eh Pūrān-eh Azīzam, Tehran: Ābān, 1394, pp. 58-60.

Address: 1 Rue Victor Schoelcher Paris 75014

This apartment had a window that opened onto the Montparnasse cemetery, which Shari’ati admired as, “the only pure, uncorrupted and soulful corner in this city of wine, lust, and money.” 

In his book, Kavīr, he explains that Mount Parnassus in Greece is where the daughters of Zeus live. He continues, “Parnassus in Paris is not atop arrogant mountains, but on the wretched grounds of the cemetery. It is not the temple of Zeus’s beautiful daughters, but the resting place of the children of death.”

Reference: Rahnema, Ali. An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari’ati. I.B. Tauris & Co., 2014, p. 92. / Shari’ati. Kavīr. Tūs Publication, p. 278.

Address: 14 Rue Lacroix Paris 75017 (Fifth floor)

Sharia’ti took residence in this apartment when he moved out of his Montparnasse apartment. This apartment served two purposes in Shari‘ati’s writings. First, it was one of the apartments in which Shari‘ati actually lived—he sent a post-card to Akbar Safaviyeh from this address.* The second purpose of this apartment is part fictive and part real. In his psychoanalytical writings, Dialogues of Solitude (Goftegouhāy-eh Tanhāie), he engages in unprecedented self-exposure of his state of mind and feelings in this apartment. Shari‘ati intentionally uses a good dosage of allegory and metaphors to impart to his inquisitive readers what he wishes them to grasp without providing direct information that would implicate him.

*A friend of Shari’ati, Akbar Safaviyeh, showed Rahnema a postcard Shari’ati had sent to him back in April 1960 from Paris, according to which the address was 14 Rue Lacroix, not 15 Rue Lacroix. This is the same apartment mentioned in Chandel’s story. However, Shari’ati wrote that Chanel’s Apartment was at 15 Rue Lacroix.

Reference: Shari’ati, Ali. Hobūt. Collective Work, Vol. 13, p. 483.

Address: 75 Rue Daguerre Paris 75014

Shari’ati moved into this apartment in Fall of 1960 with his family after spending the summer break in Mashhad.*

*In 2015, Rahnema contacted Soussan, Ali Shari’ati’s daughter, to inquire about the building number. Soussan found the address on a letter sent from this address.

Reference: Rahnema, Ali. An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shari’ati. I.B. Tauris & Co., 2014, p. 94.

Address: 5 Rue des Carmes Paris 75005

Many Iranian students from Khorasan lived in this hotel. According to Naser Pakdaman, It was common for students to live in small hotel rooms in the 1950s and 1960s since the monthly rent at a hotel was cheaper than renting an apartment.*

*In January 2018 Pakdaman told Maryam he believes that Shari’ati may have lived here and most likely frequented this hotel.