Alfred Jean Baptiste Lemaire

He is known for teaching in the music department of Dar ul-Funun during the reign of King Nasser-al-Din Shah, and for composing the first Iranian national anthem.

On his return to Iran in 1867 the King asked his ambassador to France, Hassan-Ali Garrussi, to hire a French musician to reorganize his military orchestras along Western European lines.

Once in Iran, Lemaire procured western instruments and organized the training of military musicians at the Dar ul-Funun, where his students included was Darvish Khan, and Gholam Reza Minbashian (Salar Mo'azez), a leading pioneer of Western classical music in Iran, as well as his son Nasrollah Minbashian.

[3] Lemaire was to spend the rest of his life in Iran but sent piano arrangements of classical Persian music back to Paris where the vogue for orientalism made them popular.

In November 1906, three months before his death, he became the first Worshipful Master of the Réveil de l'Iran, the first regularly affiliated Masonic Lodge to operate in Iran.