Table of Contents

  • TAVERNIER, JEAN-BAPTISTE

    Pierre-François Burger

    merchant, traveler, and author of Les six voyages and other works.

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  • TAʿZIA

    Peter Chelkowski

    a term used for the Shiʿite passion play performed in Persia. It is the sole form of serious drama to have developed in the world of Islam, with the exception of contemporary theater, which was introduced to Islamic countries in the mid-19th century.

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  • TEA

    Cross-Reference

    See ČĀY.

  • TEDESCO, PAUL MAXIMILIAN

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    (1898-1980), Austrian scholar of Indo-Iranian studies.

  • TEHRAN i. A PERSIAN CITY AT THE FOOT OF THE ALBORZ

    Xavier de Planhol

    At the northern borders of Iran’s arid central plateau, the southern foothills of the Alborz chain, which have the advantage of major precipitations, are particularly suitable for human settlements.

  • TEHRĀNI, Ḥosayn

    Morteżā Ḥoseyni Dehkordi

    (1911-1973) well-known master performer of the tonbak.

  • TEKIŠ B. IL ARSLĀN

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    (r. 1172-1200), ʿAlāʾ-al-Donyā wa’l-Din Abu’l-Moẓaffar, a ruler of the branch of Khwarazmshahs who descended from the Great Saljuq slave commander (ḡolām) Anuštigin Ḡarčāʾi.

  • TELEGRAPH i. FIRST TELEGRAPH LINES IN PERSIA

    Soli Shahvar

    The initiator of introducing the electric telegraph in Persia was Mirzā Malkom Khan. In 1858 he carried out two successful telegraphic experiments for Nāṣer-al-Din Shah.

  • TENTS in Iran

    Multiple Authors

    A portable dwelling characteristic of certain nomad groups. It consists of a canopy of cloth or skin supported by upright posts and anchored to the ground by means of pegs and ropes.

  • TENTS i. General Survey

    Jean-Pierre Digard

    The most common type of tent in Iran and Afghani­stan is the “black tent” (constructed of bands of woven goat hair stitched together), which is known from Mauritania to India.

  • TENTS ii. Variety, Construction, and Use

    Peter Alford Andrews

    Both of the basic tent types used by nomads elsewhere in the Middle East are present in Iran and Afghanistan: the black, goat-hair tent and the felt tent.

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  • TEPE HISSAR

    Robert H. Dyson

    Sixteen hundred graves were recorded; of these 782 from 1932 formed the basis of the 1937 tabular presentation of burial data. Generally, bodies were buried on their sides in a flexed position in simple pits. In period II, however, rare brick cist graves appear.

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  • TEPE YAHYA

    D. T. Potts

    (Tappe Yaḥyā), archeological site in the Soḡun valley, Kerman province, ca. 220 km south of Kerman and 130 km north of the Straits of Hormuz.

  • TERKEN ḴĀTUN

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    title of the wife of the Khwarazmshah Tekiš b. Il-Arslān (r. 1172-1200) and mother of ʿAlāʾ-al-Din Moḥammad (r. 1200-20).

  • TETRADRACHM

    Cross-Reference

    “four drachmas,” or stater, a denomination of silver coinage; see DIRHAM.

  • TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN IRAN

    Willem Floor

    Textile production in Iran dates back to the 10th millennium BCE. The first European-style factories in Persia were established in the 1850s and were among the first establishments in the country to use modern technology.

  • THAILAND-IRAN RELATIONS

    M. Ismail Marcinkowski

    Iran’s cultural and trade relations with Southeast Asia date back far into the pre-Islamic period. Official diplomatic relations between the two regions become traceable only during the Safavid period (1501-1722).

  • THEOPHYLACT SIMOCATTA

    Michael Whitby

    Greek historian and author of Histories, a work mainly concerned with late sixth-century Byzantine warfare in the Balkans and against Persia.

  • TIGER

    Cross-Reference

    See BABR.

  • TIGRAN II

    N. Garsoian

    THE GREAT, king of Armenia (r. 95-55 BCE),  the most distinguished member of the so-called Artašēsid/Artaxiad dynasty.

  • TIGRIS RIVER

    Daniel T. Potts

    major river arising in the Taurus mountains of eastern Turkey, fed mainly by snow melt, which flows about 2,032 km through eastern Turkey and Iraq to the Persian Gulf.

  • TILLA BULAK

    Kai Kaniuth

    The site’s stratigraphy is marked by two main building horizons, of which the earlier one was destroyed in a conflagration that apparently engulfed the entire hamlet. From rooms of this phase, complete household inventories have been recovered which will be of enormous help in understanding the rural economic system.

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  • TIŠTRYA

    Antonio Panaino

    (Pahl. Tištar, NPers. Teštar), an important Old Iranian astral divine being (yazata-), to whom the eighth hymn (Tištar Yašt) of the Later Avestan corpus was dedicated (Panaino, 1990).

  • TOBACCO

    Willem Floor

    Modes of use, cultivation, and cultural connotations of Tobacco in Iran. Persian sources imply that the use of tobacco was already known in Persia before its introduction into Europe in the 1550s.

  • TOCHARIAN LANGUAGE

    Michaël Peyrot

    the conventional name for two closely related Indo-European languages that were spoken in northwest China, in the north of the Tarim Basin in present-day Xīnjiāng.

  • TOḠA TIMUR

    Peter Jackson

    (1336-1353), the last of the Mongol Il-Khans of Iran.

  • TOḤFAT AL-AḤBĀB

    Solomon Bayevsky

    (Gift for friends), a Persian dictionary of the early Safavid period, compiled by Ḥāfeẓ Solṭān-ʿAli Owbahi Heravi in 936/1529-30.

  • TOḤFAT AL-SAʿĀDA

    Solomon Bayevsky

    An early 16th-century Persian dictionary of 14,000 entries by Maḥmud b. Shaikh Żiāʾ-al-Din Moḥammad, a poet of northern India.

  • TONB ISLANDS

    Guive Mirfendereski

    (GREATER and LESSER), two tiny islands of arguable strategic importance in the eastern Persian Gulf, south of the western tip of Qešm island.

  • TOPKAPI PALACE

    Zeren Tanındı

    and its Persian holdings. The Topkapı Palace, which was known as the Yeni Saray (New Palace) until the 19th century, served the Ottoman sultans for almost 380 years as the imperial residence and center of command.

  • TORTURE IN THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD

    Bruno Jacobs

    Torture is here taken as defined in the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), Art. 1.1.

  • TOWFIQ (TAWFIQ) NEWSPAPER

    Hasan Javadi

    a satirical and political weekly newspaper published intermittently in Tehran between 1923 and 1971.

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  • TOYUL

    Cross-Reference

    one of the terms for “land grant.” See EQṬĀʿ.

  • TRAGACANTH

    Cross-reference

    For gum tragacanth, see KATIRĀ.

  • TRAJAN

    Erich Kettenhofen

    Marcus Ulpius Traianus, Roman emperor (98-117 CE), born probably in 53 CE, and died in early August 117. During his reign, the Imperium Romanum stretched to its widest extent, but only for a short period.

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  • TREE

    Cross-Reference

    See DERAḴT.

  • TRIBE

    Cross-Reference

    For the Persian terms used and an overview of tribal groups, see ʿAŠĀYER.

  • ṬUBĀ VA MAʿNĀ-YE ŠAB

    Houra Yavari

    novel (1987) by Shahrnush Parsipur, fiction writer and essayist, generally regarded as one the first instances of magical realism in modern Iran. The novel’s creative use of magical realism is colored by a distinctly mystical tone and has borrowed much of its flavor from Iran’s Illuminationist Philosophy.

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  • TUMANSKIǏ, Aleksandr Grigor’evich

    Jahangir Dorri

    (1861-1920), Russian orientalist, major-general of the Russian Imperial Army. He belonged to an ancient aristocratic family which had originated from the Great Duchy of Lithuania.

  • TUP

    F. Farrokh

    (tr. by Fariydoun Farrokh as The Cannon, Washington D. C., 2009), the first full-length novel by Gholam-Hosayn Sa’edi.

  • ṬURĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    (ṬOVARĀN), the mediaeval Islamic name for the mountainous district of east-central Baluchistan lying to the north of the mediaeval coastal region of Makrān, what was in recent centuries, until 1947, the Aḥmadzay Khanate of Kalat.

  • TURFAN EXPEDITIONS

    Werner Sundermann

    Turfan (also Uigur Turpan, Chin. Tulufan) in Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan) is the largest oasis (ca. 170 square kilometers) on the ancient northern Silk Road.

  • TURKEY

    Cross-Reference

    See BŪQALAMŪN.

  • TURKIC LANGUAGES OF PERSIA: AN OVERVIEW

    Michael Knüppel

    Only in few other regions (Caucasus and Southern Siberia) one can find a nearly comparable diversity of Turkic languages as in Persia. The number of their speakers varies from several thousands to several millions.

  • TURKIC LOANWORDS IN PERSIAN

    Michael Knüppel

    Turkic-Iranian language contacts, as well as reciprocal loaning/borrowing of words, go back to the era of the Old Turkic language. 

  • TURKIC-IRANIAN CONTACTS i. LINGUISTIC CONTACTS

    John R. Perry

    Speakers of Iranian and Turkic languages have been in contact since pre-Islamic times, notably along the Inner Asian commercial corridors known collectively as the Silk Road.

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  • TURKIC-IRANIAN CONTACTS ii. CHAGHATAY

    Andras J. E. Bodrogligeti

    Chaghatay has been strongly influenced by Islamic prestige languages, especially Persian and Arabic, in all segments: phonetics, morphology, syntax, vocabulary, and cultural content. In the hands of the educated elite it became a tool wielded impressively.

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  • TURKMENS OF PERSIA ii. LANGUAGE

    Michael Knüppel

    Geographical location and the “tribal affiliation” of the speakers form the background of the dialectal variety. The dialects of Turkmen are spoken in their respective areas, where the members of the corresponding “tribes” live. 

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  • TURKO-SOGDIAN COINAGE

    Larissa Baratova

    issues of the khaqans (ḵāqāns) of the Western Turkic khanate in Central Asia between the 6th and 8th centuries CE, so called because the Turkic rulers issued them with Sogdian inscriptions.

  • TURNIP

    Shamameh Mohammadifar

    a biennial shrub of the Cruciferae family with edible fleshy thick root, hairy rosette leaves, grape inflorescence and siliques fruits.