Table of Contents

  • SE QAṬRA ḴUN

    SOHILA SAREMI

    short story by Ṣādeq Hedāyat in a collection with the same title.

  • SEALS AND SEALINGS

    Pierfrancesco Callieri

    IN THE EASTERN IRANIAN LANDS  The bulk of the material known at present is of antiquarian origin and was gathered between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries when European and Russian scholars and collectors turned their attention to these previously unexplored regions.

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  • SEBEOS

    James Howard-Johnston

    a seventh-century Armenian historian. The Armenian history traditionally attributed to Sebeos is an important source for the history of the Sasanian empire from the last years of Hormozd IV to the death of Yazdegerd III. 

  • SEBÜKTEGIN

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    a slave commander of the Samanids and the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty in eastern Afghanistan.

  • SEFIDRUD

    Cross-Reference

    See Safidrud.

  • ŠEHĀB-AL-DIN ŠĀH ḤOSAYNI

    Farhad Daftary

    the forty-seventh imam of the Nezāri Ismaʿilis was a high dignitary and author in the 19th century.

  • SELEUCIA

    Cross-Reference

    For Seleucia on the Tigris, see  s.v.  CTESIPHON.

  • SELEUCID ECONOMY

    G. G. Aperghis

    Economic activity was based mainly on agriculture. Trade and industry tended to be local. Conversion from commodity-based revenue, as practiced by the Achaemenids, to coin-based was achieved through urbanization.

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  • SELEUCID EMPIRE

    Rolf Strootman

    founded in 312/311 BCE by Seleucus I Nicator, formerly a general in the army of Alexander the Great. Adopting the titles “King of Asia” and “Great King,” the Macedonian rulers of the Seleucid dynasty laid claim to the territory of the former Achaemenid empire. 

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  • SELEUCID ERA

    Rolf Strootman

    the first system of continuous year numbering, introduced in the Middle East by the Seleucids, and the direct forerunner of the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish years. As the formal time reckoning system of the Seleucid empire, the era was adopted throughout the Middle East.

  • SELEUCUS

    Rolf Strootman

    (Greek: Seleukos), name of seven kings of the Seleucid empire. Seleucus I Nicator (r. 312-281 BCE), was founder of the Seleucid empire and succeeded in re-uniting the greater part of the former Achaemenid empire after the death of Alexander the Great.

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  • SEMINO, Barthélémy

    Shireen Mahdavi

    French general, engineer, and linguist in the service of the Qajars in Persia.

  • SEPEHRI, Sohrab

    Houman Sarshar

    (1928-1980), notable Iranian poet and painter.

  • SERĀJ AL-AḴBĀR-E AFḠĀNIYA

    May Schinasi

    “Torch of the news of Afghanistan,” bi-monthly Persian language newspaper published in Kabul during the second decade of the reign of Amir Ḥabib-Allāh (r. 1901-19).

  • ŠERVĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    (ŠIRVĀN, ŠARVĀN), a region of Eastern Transcaucasia, known by this name in both early Islamic and more recent times, and now (since 1994) substantially within the independent Azerbaijan Republic.

  • ŠERVĀNŠAHS

    C. E. Bosworth

    (Šarvānšāhs), the various lines of rulers, originally Arab in ethnos but speedily Persianized within their culturally Persian environment, who ruled in the eastern Caucasian region of Šervān from mid-ʿAbbasid times until the age of the Safavids.

  • SEVRUGUIN, ANTOIN

    Aphrodite Désirée Navab

    (1830-1933), Armenian–Iranian photographer who lived most of his life in Persia. He studied painting and photography in Tbilisi. Sevruguin decided to create a survey of the people, landscape, and architecture of Persia. He had a reputation as a portrait photographer and thus Nāṣer-al-Din Shah appointed him as an official court photographer.

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  • Šeydā

    Margaret Caton

    the pen name of Mirzā ʿAli-Akbar Širāzi (b. Shiraz, 1259/1843; d. Tehran at the Ṣafi ʿAlišāh ḵānaqāh, 1324/1906), a Persian musician regarded as the most important composer of the lyrical popular song (taṣnif) in the late Qajar period.

  • SHADDADIDS

    Andrew Peacock

    Caucasian dynasty of Kurdish origin reigning from about 950 until 1200, first in Dvin and Ganja, later in Ani.

  • SHADMAN, Sayyed Fakhr-al-Din

    Ali Gheissari

    (1907-1967), cultural critic and writer of fiction, professor of history, civil servant, and cabinet minister.