The Sahab Geographic and Drafting Institute was founded in 1935 by Abolghasem Sahab, a renowned Iranian scholar and the author of more than 60 books on history, geography, religion, and culture. When it was founded, the Sahab Institute was the only privately owned cartographic institute in the Middle East, and Sahab Sr. was behind a number of important early modern charts of Iran. It was, however, not until Abolghasem Sahab was succeeded by his son Abbas Sahab (1921-2000), that the institute achieved the recognition and success it was due. 

Often recognized as the ‘father of Iranian cartography’, Abbas Sahab was a pioneering cartographer who himself compiled more than 1500 individual works, including both maps and atlases, as well as scientific and medical illustrations, and globes. Abbas began compiling his own maps from a young age, and many of the maps he later came to publish were initially drafted in hand by Abbas Sahab himself. Despite Abbas Sahab’s death in 2000, the printing house remains in the hands of the Abbas family, with the third generation now running things.