Table of Contents

  • GABAE

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    the name of two places in Persia and Sogdiana.

  • GABAIN, ANNEMARIE VON

    Peter Zieme

    Von Gabain was particularly interested in the question of the extent to which the religious ideas of the Central Asian peoples had been influenced by Zoroastrianism or other Iranian beliefs, and this perspective is reflected in several of her publications.

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  • GABBA

    Jean-Pierre Digard and Carol Bier

    a hand-woven pile rug of coarse quality and medium size (90 × 150 cm or larger) characterized by an abstract design that relies upon open fields of color and a playfulness with geometry. This kind of rug is common among the tribes of the Zagros (Kurdish, Lori-speaking ethnic groups, Qašqāʾīs).

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  • GABR

    Mansour Shaki

    a New Persian term used from the earliest period as a technical term synonymous with mōḡ (magus). With the dwindling of the Zoroastrian community,  the term came to have a pejorative implication.

  • GABRA

    Cross-Reference

    See GŌR.

  • GABRI WARE

    Cross-Reference

    See CERAMICS.

  • GABRIEL, ALFONS

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • GABRIELI, FRANCESCO

    Giuliano Lancioni

    The significance of Gabrieli’s contribution was widely recognized. He was a national member of Accademia dei Lincei since 1957 and served as its president in the years 1985-88; from 1968 to 1977 he was president of Istituto per l’Oriente.

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  • GAČ

    Cross-Reference

    See GYPSUM.

  • GAČ-BORĪ

    Sheila S. Blair

    plasterwork or stucco. Gypsum plaster has been used as a building material in Persia for more than 2,500 years. Originally it may have been applied as a rendering to mud brick walls to protect them from the weather, but it was soon exploited for its decorative effects.

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  • GAČSAR

    Minu Yusof Nezhad

    a village in the Karaj district, situated at an altitude of 2,210 m at 110 km northwest of Tehran and 7 km south of the Kandavān Tunnel on the main road to the Caspian coast.

  • GAČSĀRĀN

    Eckart Ehlers

    town and oilfield in the province of Ḵūzestān, southwestern Persia.

  • GADĀʾĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See BEGGING.

  • GÄDIATỊ (SEḰAYỊ FỊRT) COMAQ

    Fridrik Thordarson

    (1883-1931), Ossetic writer.

  • ḠADĪR ḴOMM

    Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi

    lit. “pool of Ḵomm”; the name of a pool near a small oasis along the caravan route between the cities of Mecca and Medina, near an area currently known as Joḥfa.

  • GADŌTU

    Cross-Reference

    a demon. See UDA.

  • ḠAFFĀRI QAZVINI, AḤMAD

    Kioumars Ghereghlou

    (d. 1568), 16th-century Persian scribe and historian who authored two universal histories and dedicated them to Shah Ṭahmāsp Ṣafavi.

  • ḠAFFĀRĪ, ABU’L-ḤASAN

    Cross-Reference

    See ABU’L-ḤASAN KHAN ḠAFFĀRĪ.

  • ḠAFFĀRĪ, FARROḴ KHAN

    Cross-Reference

    See AMĪN-AL-DAWLA, ABŪ ṬĀLEB FARROḴ KHAN ḠAFFĀRĪ.

  • ḠAFFĀRĪ, ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN

    Kambiz Eslami

    Following in the footsteps of his father, he began his career as one of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah’s personal pages. He had already received the title amīn(-e) ḵalwat when he accompanied the shah on his second journey to Khorasan in 1883. His promotion to the position of chief musketeer in 1883-84 was followed by two other appointments.

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  • ḠAFFARĪ, MOḤAMMAD

    Cross-Reference

    a prominent Qajar painter. See KAMĀL-AL-MOLK.

  • ḠAFFĀRĪ, MOḤAMMAD-EBRĀHĪM KHAN

    Kambiz Eslami

    son of Farroḵ Khan Amīn-al-Dawla, a high-ranking Qajar official. He spent his early years in the inner circle of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah’s court and then traveled to Europe to continue his education. In 1891 he received the title Moʿāwen-al-Dawla, and was named the head of the Commerce Court and deputy minister of justice.

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  • ḠAFFĀRĪ, NEẒĀM-AL-DĪN

    Kambiz Eslami

    (1844-1915), Qajar minister and engineer. In his later years, Ḡaffārī held several important positions, including the minister of mines, the minister of public services, and minister of education.

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  • ḠAFFĀRĪ, ṢANĪʿ-AL-MOLK

    Cross-Reference

    See ABU’L-ḤASAN KHAN ḠAFFĀRĪ.

  • GAFUROV, BOBODZHAN GAFUROVICH

    Boris A. Litvinsky

    (1908-1977), Tajik statesman, academician, and historian. His energy and administrative skills were instrumental in establishing Tajikistan’s first State University in 1948, and in inaugurating its national Academy of Sciences in 1951. He published more than 500 works.

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  • GAGIK

    Cross-Reference

    See ARTSRUNI and BAGRATIDS.

  • GĀH

    Mary Boyce

    a Middle Persian, Parthian, and New Persian word meaning either “place” or “time.”

  • GĀH-ŠOMĀRĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See CALENDARS.

  • GĀHAMBĀR

    Cross-Reference

    See GĀHĀNBĀR.

  • GĀHĀNBĀR

    Mary Boyce

    Middle Persian name for the feasts held at the end of each of the six seasons of the Zoroastrian year.

  • GAHĪZ

    Nassereddin Parvin

    weekly newspaper published in Kabul from January 1968 to April 1973, owned, edited, and published by Menhāj-al-Dīn Gahīz (1922-73), who was apparently assassinated by Soviet agents.

  • GAIL, MARZIEH

    Wendy Heller

    (1908-1993), Persian-American Bahaʾi author, essayist, and translator; child of the first Persian-American Bahaʾi marriage, and the first woman to work at a newspaper in Tehran.

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  • GALBANUM

    Hushang Aʿlam

    There has been confusion or uncertainty about the nature (color, taste, odor, medicinal properties) of galbanum, the plants involved, and habitats. The confusion has resulted mainly from the similarity of galbanum to resins yielded by some other umbelliferous plants.

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  • ḠĀLEB DADA, MOḤAMMAD ASʿAD

    Tahsın Yazici

    also known as Mehmed Esad Galib Dede, Shaikh Ḡāleb, or Şeyh Galib (b. Istanbul, 1757; d. Galata, 1799) poet in Turkish and Persian.

  • ḠĀLEB, Mīrzā ASAD-ALLĀH Khan

    Munibur Rahman

    (b. Agra, 1797; d. Delhi, 1869), one of the greatest poets of Muslim India who wrote poems in both Persian and Urdu.

  • GALEN

    Cross-Reference

     See JĀLINUS.

  • GALERIUS

    Cross-Reference

    See NARSEH.

  • GĀLEŠĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See GĪLĀN x. LANGUAGES

  • GALĪN QAYA

    Cross-Reference

    dialect. See HARZANDĪ.

  • GALLIMARD PRESS

    Cross-Reference

    See PUBLISHING HOUSES.

  • ḠALYĀN

    Shahnaz Razpush and EIr

    or QALYĀN (nargileh); a water pipe chiefly used in the Middle East and Central Asia for smoking tobacco. It is composed of several parts: the bādgīr (chimney); sar-e ḡālyān or sarpūš (the top bowl; sar-ḵāna in Afghanistan); tana (the body); mīlāb (the immersion pipe); ney-e pīč (hose); and kūza (the reservoir of water).

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  • ḠALZĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See ḠILZĪ.

  • ḠAMĀM HAMADĀNĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See ḠEMĀM HAMADĀNĪ.

  • GAMASĀB

    Cross-Reference

    See KARḴA RIVER, forthcoming online.

  • GAMBRA

    Cross-Reference

    See BANDAR-e ʿABBĀS(Ī).

  • GAMBRON

    Cross-Reference

    See BANDAR-e ʿABBĀS(Ī).

  • GAMES

    Cross-Reference

    See BĀZĪ.

  • GAN(N)ĀG MĒNŪG

    Cross-Reference

    See AHRIMAN.

  • GANĀVA

    Minu Yusofnezhad

    county (šahrestān) and port city on the Persian Gulf in the province of Būšehr.

  • GANDĀPŪR

    M. Jamil Hanifi

    one of two Šērānī Pashtun/Paxtun tribal segments (the other being the Baḵtīār), who claim origin in southwestern Afghanistan.

  • GANDĀPŪR, ŠĒR MOḤAMMAD KHAN

    M. Jamil Hanifi

    b. Mehrdād Khan b. Āzād Khan, author of the Persian Tawārīḵ-e ḵoršīd-e jahān, an important chronicle containing genealogical accounts and tables of Pashtun/Paxtun tribal groups.

  • GAṆDARƎBA

    Antonio Panaino

    (Mid. Pers. Gandarw/Gandarb), a term attested the Avesta as the name of a monster living in the lake Vourukaṧa.

  • GANDHĀRA

    Willem Vogelsang

    (OPers. Gandāra), a province of the Persian empire under the Achaemenids. The name of Gandhāra or Gandhārī occurs in ancient Indian texts as the name of a people.

  • GANDHĀRAN ART

    B. A. Litvinsky

    Iranian contribution and Iranian connections. The region of Gandhāra attained its peak of prosperity in the Kushan period (1st to 3rd centuries CE), when it became one of the strongholds of Buddhism.

  • GĀNDHĀRĪ LANGUAGE

    Richard Salomon

    The language of ancient Gandhāra, the area around the Peshawar Valley in the modern North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, lying near the border of the Indian and Iranian linguistic areas.

  • GANDOM

    Daniel Balland and Marcel Bazin

    “wheat,”  both the plant and the grain. Wheat bread has been the staple of local diets throughout Iranian plateau for millennia. A very broad range of bread wheat varieties has traditionally been grown in the Iranian lands, especially in Afghanistan.

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  • GANDOMAK, TREATY OF

    M. Jamil Hanifi

    an agreement between Amir Moḥammad-Yaʿqub of Afghanistan (r. February to October 1879) and Major Pierre Louis Napolıon Cavagnari, representing the British Government of India.

  • GĀNEMĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • GANG DEŽ

    Cross-Reference

    See KANGDEŽ.

  • ḠANĪ (article 1)

    G. L. Tikku and EIr

    Pen name of Mollā MOḤAMMAD-ṬĀHER KAŠMĪRĪ (1630-69), one of the most celebrated poets of Kashmir who wrote in the Indian Style (sabk-e hendī).

  • ḠANI (article 2)

    Prashant Keshavmurthy

    Pen name of Mollā MOḤAMMAD-ṬĀHER KAŠMĪRĪ (1630-69). He practiced the “Speaking Anew” (tāza-guʾyi) stylistics of the ḡazal that had arisen across the Persian world in the early 1500s.

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  • ḠANĪ, QĀSEM

    Abbas Milani

    Qasem Gani was a prolific writer and, during his many years abroad, corresponded with several eminent figures of the time. His diaries, notebooks, and letters have been compiled and edited in twelve volumes under the general supervision of his son, Cyrus Ghani.

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  • ḠANĪMAT KONJĀHĪ

    Arif Naushahi

    Persian poet from the Indian subcontinent, famous for composing Nīrang-e ʿešq (d. ca 1713).

  • ḠANĪZĀDA, MAḤMŪD

    Hassan Javadi

    b. Mīrzā Ḡanī Dīlmaqānī, liberal journalist, historian, and poet (1879-1936).

  • GANJ-ʿALĪ KHAN

    Mohammad-Ebrahim Bastani Parizi

    a military leader and governor of Kermān, Sīstān, and Qandahār under Shah ʿAbbās I (996-1038/1588-1629). 

  • GANJ-E ARŠADĪ

    S. H. Askari

    An Indo-Persian collection of sayings (malfūẓāt) of the Češtī saint of Jaunpour Aršad Badr-al-Ḥaqq (1047-1113/1637-1701).

  • GANJ-E BĀDĀVARD

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    (the treasure brought by the wind), name of one of the eight treasures of the Sasanian Ḵosrow II Parvēz (r. 591-628 C.E.) according to most Persian sources.

  • GANJ-E ŠAKAR, Farid-al-Din Masʿud

    Gerhard Böwering

    Popularly known as Bābā Farid, a major Shaikh of the Češtīya mystic order, born in the last quarter of the 6th/12th century in Kahtwāl near Moltān, Punjab.

  • GANJ-E ŠĀYAGĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement

  • GANJ-NĀMA

    Stuart C. Brown

    (lit. treasure book), location in a pass at an altitude of about 2,000 m across the Alvand Kūh leading westward to Tūyserkān, 12 km southwest of Hamadān.

  • GANJA

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    (Ar. Janza), the Islamic name of a town in the early medieval Islamic province of Arrān (the classical Caucasian Albania, Armenian Alvankʿ).

  • GANJA, TREATY OF

    Cross-Reference

    See NĀDER SHAH.

  • GANJAFA

    Cross-Reference

    See CARD GAMES.

  • GANJAʾĪ, REŻĀ

    Nassereddin Parvin

    Ganjaʾī owes his fame to his publication of the politico-satirical weekly Bābā Šamal in 1943-45 and 1947, which became one of the most popular satirical journals in the history of journalism in Persia. Thereafter, most of his colleagues, journalists, writers, and even public figures addressed him as “Bābā Šamal.”

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  • GANJAK

    Cross-Reference

    See GANZAK.

  • GANJĪNA-YE FONŪN

    Nassereddin Parvin

    a biweekly magazine published in Tabrīz for a year (1903-04). It was the first scholarly Persian periodical published in Persia.

  • GANZABARA

    Matthew W. Stolper

    (treasurer), title of provincial and sub-provincial financial administrators in the Achaemenid empire, extended to workers attached to Achaemenid treasuries.

  • GANZAK

    Mary Boyce

    a town of Achaemenid foundation in Azerbaijan. The name means “treasury” and is a Median form (against Pers. gazn-), adopted in Persian administrative use.

  • GAOTƎMA

    Bernfried Schlerath

    an Avestan proper name only attested in Yt. 13.16: “An eloquent man will be born, who makes his words heard in verbal contests, ... victorious over the defeated Gaotəma.”

  • ḠĀR

    Ezzat O. Negahban

    (cave) and Stone Age cave dwellers in Iran. Caves and rock shelters were particularly attractive living places for the hunter gatherers of the early Paleolithic period. The geography of the Iranian Plateau with its bordering mountain system meant that there were many cave sites which would have been suitable for early cave dwelling man.

  • GARAMAIOI

    Cross-Reference

    See BĒT GARMĒ.

  • ḠARB-ZADEGĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • ḠARČESTĀN

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    name of a region in early Islamic times, situated to the north of the upper Harīrūd and the Paropamisus range and on the head waters of the Moṟḡāb.

  • GARCIN DE TASSY

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • GARDANE MISSION

    Jean Calmard

    (1807-9), a diplomatic and military project between France and Persia which represented Napoleon’s last attempt to realize his Oriental ambitions. From late 1795, Persia became part of French projects against British India. From the renewal of Franco-Ottoman relations (June 1802), he sought information on Persia.

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  • GARDEN

    Multiple Authors

    referring to a garden estate, intended primarily for pleasure rather than permanent residence or production of crops, formally laid out, usually incorporating architectural elements, such as ornamental pools, gate-houses, and pavilions.

  • GARDEN i. ACHAEMENID PERIOD

    Mehrdad Fakour

    Since the first millenium B.C.E., the garden has been an integral part of Persian architecture, be it imperial or vernacular.

  • GARDEN ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD

    Lisa Golombek

    Donald Wilber’s study of the Persian garden remains the most comprehensive, to which should be added the articles by Ettinghausen and Pinder-Wilson in the proceedings of the Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the Islamic Garden.

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  • GARDEN iii. INFLUENCE OF PERSIAN GARDENS IN INDIA

    Howard Crane

    Traces of Sultanate period gardens in the Persian style survive around Delhi in the citadel (Kōṭlā) of the Tughluqid Fīrūzšāh III (1351-88) and at Vasant Vihar (14th century). 

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  • GARDEN iv. BOTANICAL GARDENS

    Borhan Riazi

    In Persia there are only three botanical gardens (bāḡ-e gīāh-šenāsī) in the exact scientific sense of this term.

  • GARDEN v. In Persian Literature

    Cross-Reference

    See BĀḠ iii.

  • GARDEN vi. IN PERSIAN ART

    Lisa Golombek

    For the decorative arts, the “garden carpet” is the quintessential re-creation of the garden, while paintings depict the garden as a setting for events. Vegetal motifs as ornament may be understood as generic allusions to the garden. In special circumstances, these allusions may be viewed as allusions to paradise themes.

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  • GARDĪZ

    Daniel Balland

    (Gardēz), a city in the Solaymān Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, 122 km south of Kabul. The city is situated at 2,300 m above sea-level, in a large intramountainous depression watered by the upper course of the Rūd-e Gardīz.

  • GARDĪZĪ, ABŪ SAʿĪD ʿABD-al-ḤAYY

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    b. Żaḥḥāk b. Maḥmūd, Persian historian of the early 5th/11th century. He was clearly connected with the Ghaznavid court and administration and close to the sultans.

  • GARDŌY

    Cross-Reference

    sister of Bahrām Čōbīn. See Bahrām VI Čōbīn.

  • GARGAR RIVER

    Cross-Reference

    See KĀRŪN RIVER.

  • GARLIC

    Etrat Elahi

    or allium sativum; a species in the onion family Alliaceae used as an ingredient in a variety of Persian dishes mainly as a condiment.

  • GARMAPADA

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    name of the fourth month (June-July) of the Old Persian calendar.

  • GARMSĀR

    Bernard Hourcade

    a region (Qešlāq and Garmsār) in the province of Semnān situated beyond the Caspian Gates, known particularly as a stopover on the great road to Khorasan.

  • GARMSĪR AND SARDSĪR

    Xavier de Planhol

    lit. "warm zones and cold zones"; two terms identifying regional entities that form a major geographical contrast deeply affecting the popular conscience in Persia.