Houshang Mahboubian was a prominent Jewish Iranian antiquities dealer. Son of Houshang Mahboubian and grandson of Dr Benjamin Mahboubian (1868-1968) who conducted commercial excavations in Iran during the 1920s and 1930s, including the site of Hasanlu in Azerbaijan, and other sites in Iranian Kurdistan and Luristan; Benjamin 's daughter Fay married another antiquities dealer, Alan Safani. Mehdi Mahboubian ran a gallery in Tehran prior to the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. He opened a London gallery in 1973 and also ran a business in New York.