Table of Contents

  • EBRĀHĪM ŠARQĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See ŠARQĪ.

  • EBRĀHĪM SHAH AFŠĀR

    John R. Perry

    nephew of Nāder Shah, claiming the Afsharid throne briefly (1748-49)

  • EBRĀHĪM ŠĪRĀZĪ

    Carl W. Ernst

    historian of the ʿĀdelšāhī dynasty of Bījāpūr (b. 1540-41).

  • EBRĀHĪM SOLṬĀN

    Priscilla P. Soucek

    (1394-35), b. Šāhroḵ, Timurid prince, ruler of Shiraz, military commander, and renowned calligrapher.

  • EBRĀHĪM SOLṬĀN, ABU’L-QĀSEM

    Cross-Reference

    See ABU’L-QĀSEM EBRĀHĪM SOLṬĀN.

  • EBRĀHĪM ṬEHRĀNĪ

    Priscilla P. Soucek

    also known as Mīrzā ʿAmū, a 19th century calligrapher specializing in the nastaʿlīq script.

  • EBRĀHĪMĀBĀDĪ DIALECT

    Cross-Reference

    See RĀMANDĪ.

  • EBRĀHĪMĪ, ʿABD-AL-REŻĀ

    Cross-Reference

    See ʿABD-AL-REŻĀ KHAN EBRĀHĪMĪ.

  • EBRĀHĪMĪ, ABU’L-QĀSEM KHAN

    Cross-Reference

    See ABU’L-QĀSEM KHAN EBRĀHĪMĪ.

  • ʿEBRAT

    EIr

    a monthly magazine first published on 4 February 1956 as the organ of Tūda party prisoners under the auspices and with the facilities of the Office of Tehran’s Military Governor, General Teymūr Baḵtīār.

  • ʿEBRAT, Sayyed MOḤAMMAD-QĀSEM

    Munibur Rahman

    author of ʿEbrat-nāma, a history of the reigns of Awrangzēb’s successors to 1723.

  • ʿEBRĪ

    Cross-Reference

    "hebrew." See under JUDEO-PERSIAN COMMUNITIES.

  • EBTEHAJ, ABOLHASSAN

    Geoffrey Jones

    (1899-1999), prominent banker, economic planner, and one of the most important and powerful figures in the economic history of Iran during the middle decades of the 20th century.

  • ECBATANA

    Stuart C. Brown

    present-day Hamadān, capital of the Median empire, summer capital of the Achaemenids, and satrapal seat of the province of Media from Achaemenid to Sasanian times.

  • ECKMANN, János

    ANDRÁS BODROGLIGETI

    (1905-1971), a Hungarian Professor of Chaghatay.

  • ECOLOGY

    Eckart Ehlers

    the study of organisms, both flora and fauna, in relation to their environments. Five primary ecological regions in Persia each have a characteristic combination of features: Caspian lowlands, Alborz system and mountains in Khorasan, Persian plateau,  Zagros system. Makrān mountains, and the Persian Gulf lowlands.

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  • ECONOMY

    Multiple Authors

    i. Economic geography, ii. In the Pre-Achaemenid period, iii. In the Achaemenid period, iv. In the Sasanian period, v. From the Arab conquest to the end of the Il-khanids, vi. In the Timurid period, vii. From the Safavids through the Zands, viii. In the Qajar period, ix. In the Pahlavi period, x. Under the Islamic Republic, xi. In modern Afghanistan, xii. In Tajikistan.

  • ECONOMY i. ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

    Xavier de Planhol

    The high plateau and its external relations. The heartland of the Iranian world, encompassing both Persia and Afghanistan, is an arid high plateau, from which communication with the outside world is extraordinarily difficult.

  • ECONOMY ii. IN THE PRE-ACHAEMENID PERIOD

    Robert C. Henrickson

    Pre-Median Persia was a crucial economic component of ancient southwest Asia from the earliest times.

  • ECONOMY iii. IN THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD

    Muhammad A. Dandamayev

    The Achaemenid empire, extending from the Indus river to the Aegean sea, comprised such economically developed countries as Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, Babylonia, Elam, and Asia Minor, lands which had their long traditions of social institutions, as well as Sakai, Massagetai, Lycians, Libyans, Nubians and other tribes undergoing the disintegration of the primitive-communal phase.

  • ECONOMY iv. IN THE SASANIAN PERIOD

    Ryka Gyselen

    The Sasanians, who inherited the economic conditions left by the Parthians, were quick to forge an economic state so powerful and distinctive that its fame spread well beyond their political frontiers and their period.

  • ECONOMY v. FROM THE ARAB CONQUEST TO THE END OF THE IL-KHANIDS (part 1)

    Ann K. S. Lambton

    The economic order in Islamic Persia was in theory, if not always in practice, derived from Islamic norms.

  • ECONOMY v. FROM THE ARAB CONQUEST TO THE END OF THE IL-KHANIDS (part 2)

    Ann K. S. Lambton

    The political breakdown of the caliphate in the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries, although disastrous for the finances of the state and for agriculture in ʿErāq-e ʿArab and, perhaps, also in Ḵūzestān and parts of western Persia, did not have ill effects immediately on the economic life of Persia as a whole.

  • ECONOMY v. FROM THE ARAB CONQUEST TO THE END OF THE IL-KHANIDS (part 3)

    Ann K. S. Lambton

    As the needs of the state grew, there was a constant shortage of specie to meet its expenses. As a result of the devastation and demographic decline brought about by the invasions, there was less land under cultivation and fewer people engaged in agriculture.

  • ECONOMY vi. IN THE TIMURID PERIOD

    Maria E. Subtelny

    The Timurid invasions against the Kartid rulers of Khorasan, which began in 783/1381, caused socioeconomic dislocation and unprecedented wholesale destruction and pillaging of towns, as well as brutal massacres of their populations.

  • ECONOMY vii. FROM THE SAFAVIDS THROUGH THE ZANDS

    Bert Fragner

    The first Safavid king, Esmāʿīl I (907-30/1501-24), initiated a process of political and religious change in Persia that profoundly affected the economic structure.

  • ECONOMY viii. IN THE QAJAR PERIOD

    Hassan Hakimian

    At the outset of the Qajar dynasty, the Persian economy displayed the characteristics of a traditional economy disintegrating under the stress of political anarchy.

  • ECONOMY ix. IN THE PAHLAVI PERIOD

    M. Hashem Pesaran

    Overall, under the Pahlavis the Persian economy made significant advances which compared favorably with the experience of countries such as Turkey and Egypt, which were in a better state of development after the First World War.

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  • ECONOMY x. UNDER THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

    Vahid F. Nowshirvani

    Since 1979 there have been marked changes in the economic policies, institutions, and structure of the country, and major economic dislocation and disruption of production. Not all the changes have resulted directly from the revolution.

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  • ECONOMY xi. IN MODERN AFGHANISTAN

    M. Siddieq Noorzoy

    From 1970 until the coup d’état in April 1978, followed by the Soviet invasion in December 1979, the Afghan economy experienced sustained high economic growth. Gross domestic product rose at a rate of 4.5 percent annually.

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  • ECONOMY xii. IN TAJIKISTAN

    Habib Borjian

    During the seventy years of centralized Soviet administration, the economy of Tajikistan was modernized and integrated into the Soviet economy. The Tajik Soviet Republic exhibited comparatively remarkable growth in the agricultural and industrial sectors.

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  • ʿEDĀLAT, ḤEZB-E

    Fakhreddin Azimi

    (Ar. ʿAdālat “justice”), Persian political party founded by ʿAlī Daštī in December 1941.

  • ʿEDĀLAT-ḴĀNA

    Cross-Reference

    See CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION.

  • EDEB

    Amir Hassanpour

    b. Armanī Bolāḡī (1860-1918), pen name of the Kurdish poet ʿAbd-Allāh Beg b. Aḥmad Beg Bābāmīrī Miṣbāḥ-al-Dīwān.

  • EDESSA

    Samuel Lieu

    now Urfa in southeastern Turkey, former capital of ancient Osrhoene.  Edessa was held successively by the Seleucids, Parthians, and Romans. The fact that coins were minted at Edessa under Antiochus IV suggests a degree of autonomy and importance in the Seleucid period. Greeks were never predominant in the population, however.

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  • EDITING

    Karim Emami

    the techniques of preparing a text for publication, now widely practiced at the major publishing houses in Persia.

  • EDMONDS, C. J

    Yann RICHARD

    The son of a British missionary, Edmonds was born in Japan, where he stayed up to the age of eight. He was educated in England at Bedford and Christ’s Hospital public schools and finally studied oriental languages at Cambridge under the supervision of E. G. Browne for two years.

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  • EDUCATION

    Multiple Authors

    (Pers. āmūzeš o parvareš; earlier Ar. Per. taʿlīm o tarbīat) in Iranian-speaking areas.

  • EDUCATION i. IN THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD

    Muhammad A. Dandamayev

    In two Elamite documents from Persepolis drafted in the 23rd regnal year of Darius I (499 B.C.E.) “Persian boys (who) are copying texts” are mentioned; the texts in question are records of the issue of grain to twenty-nine individuals and wine to sixteen.

  • EDUCATION ii. IN THE PARTHIAN AND SASANIAN PERIODS

    Aḥmad Tafażżolī

    No concrete evidence on education in Parthian times has survived. It may be postulated, however, that it was similar to education in the Sasanian period.

  • EDUCATION iii. THE TRADITIONAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

    Jalīl Dūstḵᵛāh and Eqbāl Yaḡmāʾī

    Before the establishment of a modern educational system in Persia,  children received their early and intermediate education in the maktab (or maktab-ḵāna, lit., “place of writing”) under the tutelage of an āḵūnd, mulla (clerical teacher), or moʿallem (teacher).

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  • EDUCATION iv. THE MEDIEVAL MADRASA

    Christopher Melchert

    lit., “place to study” Ar. darasa “to study”. It was a college for the professional study of the Islamic sciences, particularly jurisprudence (feqh) but also the Koran, Hadith, and such ancillary fields as Arabic grammar and philology, knowledge of which helped in understanding sacred and legal texts.

  • EDUCATION v. THE MADRASA IN SHIʿITE PERSIA

    ʿAbbās Zaryāb

    After the introduction of the institutionalized madrasa by Neẓām-al-Molk in the late 11th century, above) Shiʿite madrasas were also founded in Persia and Iraq. These schools were local efforts, however, and did not constitute a unitary system of education.

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  • EDUCATION vi. THE MADRASA IN SUNNI KURDISTAN

    ʿAbd-Allāh Mardūḵ

    Every mosque also contained a chamber called a ḥojra, where the mulla offered lessons in religion and theology free of charge to Muslim boys. Boys, though very seldom girls, began their studies at the age of seven years.

  • EDUCATION vii. GENERAL SURVEY OF MODERN EDUCATION

    Ahmad Ashraf

    A modern system of national education emerged in Persia in the 1920s and 1930s, after the Pahlavi state had been founded; during this period the influence of the religious establishment was minimized, and the government gained control over schools, expanding enrollment at all levels.

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  • EDUCATION viii. NURSERY SCHOOLS AND KINDERGARTENS

    Tūrān Mīrhādī

    Formalized preschool education in Persia can be traced back to ca. 1891, when Armenians in Jolfā, near Isfahan, founded a kindergarten, which continues today. By 1919 there were a few kindergartens in Tehran and other cities, primarily founded by missionaries and minority groups.

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  • EDUCATION ix. PRIMARY SCHOOLS

    Sayyed ʿAlī Āl-e Dāwūd

    At first primary and secondary schools were not distinct, and the primary levels sometimes consisted of only four grades. There were no general instructional materials and no uniform curriculum, each school being under the direction of its founder or principal.

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  • EDUCATION x. MIDDLE AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS

    Aḥmad Bīrašk

    Modern secondary education in Persia was originally based on the 19th-century European humanistic system, focused on general knowledge and building character rather than on professional or vocational training. This philosophy dominated the Persian system until the 1960s, when reforms were introduced by American advisers.

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  • EDUCATION xi. PRIVATE SCHOOLS AND EDUCATIONAL GROUPS

    Aḥmad Bīrašk

    After the Constitutional Revolution some of these schools were closed, and the others were brought under state management. During the next fifteen years several more private schools were founded.

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  • EDUCATION xii. VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS

    Šahlā Kāẓemīpūr

    In 1958 the General Department of Vocational Training was established in the Ministry of Education. It was responsible for establishing a number of agricultural, industrial, commercial, and secretarial schools. 

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