Professor Abdul Ghafoor Ravan Farhâdi (born 23 August 1929 in Kabul, Afghanistan) is an Afghan academic and diplomat who served as Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 2006. Early life and education Farhâdi is an ethnic Tajik from Kabul. He graduated from Lycée Esteqlal in 1948. Farhâdi studied at the Institut d'études politiques in Paris, France, achieving a MA degree in 1952. He then earned his Ph.D. at the Sorbonne, in Indo-Iranian Studies, in 1955. His paper was on "le Persan parlé en Afghanistan", later translated to English and Russian. Farhâdi speaks French, English and Persian fluently. Career as diplomat In 1955, Farhadi assumed a position as lecturer in the History of political thought at Kabul University. In 1958, he started his diplomatic career as First Secretary at the Afghan Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan. From 1961 to 1962, he was Director of United Nations Affairs at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following that, he was appointed Counsellor and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C., United States. In 1964, he returned to Kabul to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1964 till 1968, he served as Director-General for Political Affairs at the ministry and then he was Deputy Foreign Minister for 5 years. Between 1965 and 1971 he also was Secretary of the Council of Ministers of the Afghan Government. In 1973, he was appointed Ambassador in Paris. After the coup of Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, Farhadi was recalled to Kabul. He served as a member of the Advisory Commission of the Ministry of Culture (1975–1978) organizing international meetings in cultural fields. Career as professor After the Soviet Invasion in 1979, Farhadi spent two years in Pol-e Charkhi jail as a political prisoner. After that he moved to France again and became Associate Professor in History of Persian Literature at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne/University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle. In summer 1985, he was a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, in Canberra. He was then an associate professor at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he taught subjects ranging from Persian Literature to medieval Islamic mysticism. Professor Farhâdi has written a number of historical texts, including The Quatrains of Rumi, where he translated over 1600 of the quatrains attributed to Rumi, and Abdullah Ansari of Herat (Khajeh Abdollah Ansari),