Table of Contents

  • ʿAQL-E SORḴ

    H. Corbin

    “The Crimsoned Archangel” (lit., “The Red Intellect”), one of the visionary recitals or treatises on spiritual initiation of Sohravardī (d. 1191)

  • ĀQSŪ (1)

    R. E. Emmerick

    town in eastern Turkestan, modern Chinese Sinkiang, about six km to the north of the river Āqsū. It lies on the caravan route between Maralbāšī and Kučā.

  • ĀQSŪ (2)

    C. Naumann

    a river in the Āmū Daryā system. The upper course, called the Morḡāb in the Soviet Union, finds its source in the Little Pamir, the eastern part of Afghanistan’s Waḵān-Pāmīr mountains.

  • ARA THE BEAUTIFUL

    J. R. Russell

    son of Aram, mythical king of Armenia.  

  • ĀRĀʾ WA’L-DĪĀNĀT

    J. van Ess

    doxographical work, famous especially for its information about non-Islamic religions and Greek philosophy, written by Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbaḵtī (d. between 300/912 and 310/922).

  • ʿARAB

    Multiple Authors

    As two of the most prominent ethnic elements in the Middle East, Arabs and Iranians have been in contact with each other, and at times have had their fortunes intertwined, for some three millennia. 

  • ʿARAB i. Arabs and Iran in the pre-Islamic period

    C. E. Bosworth

    Centuries of contacts between the Arabs and Persians should have left behind some legacy in the fields of thought and culture, but such a legacy is not easy to quantify or to evaluate.

  • ʿARAB ii. Arab conquest of Iran

    M. Morony

    During the first two centuries of the Muslim era (7th-8th centuries A.D.) the Sasanian state and much of the east Iranian region in Central Asia were conquered by the mostly Arab armies of the early Islamic state. 

  • ʿARAB iii. Arab settlements in Iran

    E. L. Daniel

    Arab settlements were critical in making the effects of the conquest long term, rather than transitory, and in facilitating the symbiosis of Iranian and Arab cultures within a mutual Islamic context.

  • ʿARAB iv. Arab tribes of Iran

    P. Oberling and B. Hourcade

    Estimates of the Arabic-speaking population of Iran range from 200,000 (1957) to 650,000 (1960). In present-day Iran there are still many families and tribes whose Arab origin can be traced.

  • ʿARAB v. Arab-Iranian relations in modern times

    R. K. Ramazani

    The military coup of Reżā Khan (1921) and his accession to the throne (1925) resulted in sufficient governmental capacity to conduct foreign affairs effectively. Reżā Shah’s good-neighbor policy addressed three major problems with Iraq.

  • ʿARAB MĪŠMAST

    P. Oberling

    an Arab tribe of Fārs, Tehran, and Khorasan.  

  • ʿARAB MOḤAMMAD B. ḤĀJJĪ

    G. L. Penrose

    khan of Ḵīva 1013-32/1602-23 (?).

  • ARAB-SASANIAN COINS

    M. Bates

    Arab-Sasanian is a term applied to several different coinages of early Islamic Iran which were issued under Arab authority using the design and inscriptions of the preceding Sasanian coinage.

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  • ʿARABESTĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See ḴŪZESTĀN.

  • ARABIA

    Multiple Authors

    i. The Achaemenid province Arabāya. ii. The Sasanians and Arabia.

  • ARABIA i. THE ACHAEMENID PROVINCE ARABĀYA

    M. Dandamayev

    In the Bīsotūn and other Old Persian inscriptions that list provinces of the Achaemenid empire in a geographical sequence, Arabāya is placed after Babylonia and Assyria (i.e., Syria) and before Egypt.

  • ARABIA ii. The Sasanians and Arabia

    Daniel T. Potts

    Within a few years after the commencement of Ardašir I’s (r. ca. 224-242) program of conquest, the Sasanians undertook military engagements in both northeastern Arabia and Oman.

  • ARABIAN NIGHTS

    Cross-Reference

    See ALF LAYLA WA LAYLA.

  • ARABIAN SEA

    Cross-Reference

    See OMAN, SEA OF.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE

    Multiple Authors

    The profound influence of Arabic in Iran can be traced to its social, religious, and political significance in the wake of the Muslim conquest, when it became the language of the dominant class, the language of religion and government administration, and by extension, the language of science, literature, and Koranic studies.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE i. Arabic elements in Persian

    A. A. Ṣādeqī

    The proportion of Arabic words in Persian was about thirty percent in the 4th/10th century and reached some fifty percent in the 6th/12th. 

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE ii. Iranian loanwords in Arabic

    A.Tafażżolī

    Loanwords in Arabic, traditionally called moʿarrab (arabicized) or daḵīl (foreign words), include a considerable number of Iranian elements.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE iii. Arabic influences in Persian literature

    L. P. Elwell-Sutton

    any inquiry into the early development of Islamic Persian language and literature is faced with the same problem—the absence of contemporary material.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE iv. Arabic literature in Iran

    V. Danner

    comprises the works of the early Arab conquerors and those of the Persians who wrote in Arabic. The latter, by far more numerous, ensured Iran a major role in the development of Arabic letters.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE v. Arabic Elements in Persian

    John R. Perry

    The following will survey the topic under the following rubrics: Lexical statistics; Phonology and orthography; Loanword classes; Grammatical elements; Semantics; History and evolution.

  • ʿARABŠĀH, ʿEMĀD-AL-DĪN

    Z. Safa

    a poet and mystic of the 8th/14th century.

  • ʿARABŠĀHĪ

    Y. Bregel

    a dynasty of Chingisid origin that ruled in Ḵᵛārazm from the beginning of the 10th/16th century.

  • ARACHNIDS

    ʿA, Aḥmadī and R. G. Tuck, Jr.

    or ARACHNIDA, Pers. ʿankabūtīān,  the largest chelicerate class of the invertebrate phylum Arthropoda. Zoogeographically, the Iranian arachnid fauna differs little from that of adjacent regions. General behavior and life history information available from authoritative entomology and invertebrate zoology texts applies to Iranian representatives as well.

  • ARACHOSIA

    R. Schmitt

    province in the eastern part of the Achaemenid empire around modern Kandahār, which was inhabited by the Iranian Arachosians or Arachoti. 

  • ARĀK

    X. de Planhol

    Arāk was originally the popular name of Solṭānābād, a town in western Iran, but is now the official name as well.

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  • ARAK iii. Basic Population Data, 1956-2011

    Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

    population growth from 1956 to 2011, age structure, average household size, literacy rate, and economic activity status for 2006 and/or 2011.

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  • ARAKADRI

    W. Eilers

    name of uncertain meaning given in Darius I’s inscription (DB 1.37) to a mountain in the region of Pišiyāuvādā.

  • AṘAKʿEL OF TABRĪZ

    A. K. Sanjian

     Armenian historian, born at Tabrīz in the 1590s, died at Etchmiadzin in Armenia in 1670.

  • ARAL SEA

    B. Spuler

    Daryā(ča)-ye Ḵᵛārazm, inland sea in western Turkestan, bounded since 1924 and 1936 by Karakalpaqistan (part of the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan) in the south and Kazakhstan in the north.

  • ARAMAIC

    F. Rosenthal, J. C. Greenfield, S. Shaked

    The Arameans, the speakers of all those dialects, are first directly mentioned in cuneiform texts from the end of the twelfth century B. C. where they are said to belong to the Akhlame group of people. In the course of time, various names such as Chaldean, Nabatean, Syrian, and Assyrian, came into use for Aramaic-speaking peoples.

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  • ARAMAZD

    cross-reference

    Armenian form of AHURA MAZDĀ.

  • ARĀN (1)

    cross-reference

    or ALĀN, Inscr. Mid. Pers. ʾlʾn-, Inscr. Parth. ʾrdʾn, ʾln-. See ALANS, ALBANIA, ARRĀN.

  • ARĀN (2)

    cross-reference

    See ḤOLVĀN.

  • ĀRĀN (3)

    ʿA. N. Rażawī

    a small town about 10 km north of Kāšān.

  • ARANG

    C. J. Brunner

    a river in ancient Iranian tradition.

  • ARĀNĪ, TAQĪ

    E. Abrahamian, B. Alavi

    (1902-1940), Iranian Marxist and intellectual initiator of the communist Tudeh Party.

  • ARARAT

    X. de Planhol

    extinct volcano in the northeastern extremity of Turkey close to the Iran-Soviet frontiers.  

  • ARAŠ

    Cross-Reference

    Old Persian arašni-, Avestan araθni-) “cubit.” See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

  • ĀRAŠ

    A. Tafażżolī, W. L. Hanaway, Jr.

    Avestan Ǝrəxša, Middle Persian Ēraš, a heroic archer in Iranian legend. The Avesta (Yašt 8.6) refers to what was apparently a familiar episode in the epic tradition.

  • ĀRAŠ, KAY

    A. Tafażżolī

    Avestan KAVI ARŠAN, a member of the Kayanid dynasty in Iranian legend. 

  • ARASBĀRĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See AHAR.

  • ARAŠK

    Cross-Reference

    or AREŠK (Pahlavi), Avestan araska-, Persian rašk “envy,” in Middle Persian sometimes personified as a demon. See RAŠK (pending).

  • ARAXA

    M. A. Dandamayev

    Old Persian form of the name of a leader of a Babylonian rebellion against Darius I.

  • ARAXES RIVER

    W. B. Fisher, C. E. Bosworth

    The Araxes rises near Erzurum (Turkey) in the Bingöl Dağ region: there is only a low divide separating it from the headwaters of the Euphrates river. The drainage-pattern of the Araxes is complex. Subsidiary downthrow basins open off it, and a system of feeder tributaries occupying broad, flat-floored valleys has developed.

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  • ʿARAŻ

    F. Rahman

    a term of philosophy meaning “accident.” 

  • ARBĀB

    Š. Rāseḵ

    the plural of the Arabic noun rabb “owner, master, the Lord,” used in Persian to signify any sort of owner or master.

  • ARBĀB KAY-ḴOSROW-E ŠĀHROḴ

    Cross-Reference

    See ŠĀHROḴ.

  • ARBĀB ROSTAM GĪV

    Cross-Reference

    See GĪV.

  • ARBĀB, MOḤAMMAD-MAHDĪ

    S. Okazaki

    a prominent merchant and scholar of Isfahan (fl. ca. 1818-1896/97).

  • ARBACES

    M. A. Dandamayev

    Greek form of an Old Iranian proper name.

  • ARBAʿĪN

    M. Ayoub

    40th day after ʿĀšūrāʾ. A day of mourning, preferably at the shrine of Imam Ḥosayn, Arbaʿīn forms part of a cycle of days commemorating the burial of the imam and his companions.

  • ARBĀYISTĀN

    G. Widengren

    name of a Mesopotamian province in the Sasanian empire.

  • ARBELA

    J. F. Hansman

    capital of an ancient northern Mesopotamian province located between the two Zab rivers.  

  • ARBELA, BATTLE OF

    Cross-Reference

    the victory of Alexander the Great over Darius III on 1 October 331 BCE.; see GAUGAMELA.

  • ARBERRY, ARTHUR JOHN

    E. P. Elwell-Sutton

    British orientalist (1905-1969).

  • ARCHELAUS

    M. Tardieu

    the assumed author of a Christian polemic against the Manicheans composed before 348 CE.

  • ARCHEOLOGY

    Multiple Authors

    The history of archeological research in Iran may be divided into two periods, before and after the Second World War. The early period can in turn be subdivided into a first phase of mainly French activity (ca. 1884-1931), and a second phase in which archeology in Iran became a multinational affair (1931-40). The modern period can be subdivided into what might best be called the “quiet phase” (1940-57) and the “explosive phase” (1958-78).

  • ARCHEOLOGY i. Pre-Median

    T. C. Young

    As early as the 17th century, a number of European travelers reported with surprise on the remarkable ancient monuments to be seen throughout the countryside. The first scientific and scholarly attempt to deal with one such monument, however, was Rawlinson’s recording of the Bīsotūn (Behistun) inscription (1836-41). 

  • ARCHEOLOGY ii. Median and Achaemenid

    D. Stronach

    The family of ceramics represented in the Median levels at Tepe Nush-i Jan seems to be associated with the moment that the Medes consolidated their power in the vicinity of Hamadān in the second half of the 7th century B.C. 

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  • ARCHEOLOGY iii. SELEUCID AND PARTHIAN

    K. Schippmann

    Very few monuments from the Seleucid period have been discovered in Iran, and probably none from the time of Alexander the Great.

  • ARCHEOLOGY iv. Sasanian

    D. Huff

    Archeological field work has played a comparatively smaller part in forming the image of Sasanian history and culture than the large number of preserved monuments, buildings, and rock reliefs, collections of coins and objects of art.

  • ARCHEOLOGY v. Pre-Islamic Central Asia

    V. M. Masson

    Archeological remains of almost all the major epochs have now been uncovered, and the materials have been obtained that describe comprehensively the ancient civilizations of Central Asia of the pre-Islamic period.

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  • ARCHEOLOGY vi. Islamic Iran

    R. Hillenbrand

    From the outset Islamic archeology in Iran was overshadowed by the numerous and splendid sites of earlier periods, and archeological investigation of Islamic sites began appreciably later in the Iranian world than in western Islam and in the Indian subcontinent.

  • ARCHEOLOGY vii. Islamic Central Asia

    G. A. Pugachenkova and E. V. Rtveladze

    The study of the archeology of the Islamic period was initiated in Central Asia in the late 19th century by Turkestan amateurs and St. Petersburg scholars, and has been carried on with growing intensity since Soviet times. 

  • ARCHEOLOGY viii. REPUBLIC OF AZERBAIJAN

    M. N. Pogrebova

    In the mid-19th century,  European travelers became aware that the area of the republic  abounded in ancient ruins. Since the 1960s and 1970s several scores of archeological expeditions of the Azerbaijanian Academy of Sciences have been active.

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  • ARCHITECTURE

    Multiple Authors

    This series of articles covers architecture in Iran from ancient times to the Pahlavi period. 

  • ARCHITECTURE i. Seleucid Period

    T. S. Kawami

    The Seleucid architecture of Iran encompasses the buildings constructed during the period of Greek power from 330 B.C. through the 2nd century B.C. 

  • ARCHITECTURE ii. Parthian Period

    E. J. Keall

    It seems impossible to use the Iranian homeland of the Parthians as the basis for the definition of Parthian architecture. 

  • ARCHITECTURE iii. Sasanian Period

    D. Huff

    A great number of čahār-ṭāq ruins, surveyed all over Iran and most frequent in Fārs and Kermān, are regarded as fire temples. Nearly all of them were closed to the outside by blocking walls in their bays or the surrounding vaulted corridors.

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  • ARCHITECTURE iv. Central Asian

    G. A. Pugachenkova

    Architecture in Central Asia dates back to the late Neolithic period (6th-5th millennia B.C.).

  • ARCHITECTURE v. Islamic, pre-Safavid

    O. Grabar

    The beginnings of an Islamic architecture in Iran are still almost impossible to identify properly. Remaining monuments are few, most of them are very uncertainly dated, and literary information is scanty or difficult to interpret.

  • ARCHITECTURE vi. Safavid to Qajar Periods

    R. Hillenbrand

    Iranian architecture from the 16th to the 19th centuries is, not surprisingly, dominated by the Safavids. Though no accurate checklist has been drawn up, it is clear that within the present political borders of Iran several hundred buildings datable between 907/1502 and 1138/1725 survive.

  • ARCHITECTURE vii. Pahlavi, before World War II

    D. N. Wilber

    Two features of Reżā Shah’s efforts for the modernization of Iran were related to the architectural construction of the period. One was his reference to the country’s ancient history, which should inspire the present generation to achieve new glories. The other was his desire to adopt aspects of Western civilization in such a fashion that Iran would become equal to the West.

  • ARCHITECTURE viii. Pahlavi, after World War II

    N. Ardalān

    Between the close of World War II and the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime in 1979, an ancient and very traditional Iranian culture came fully into contact with contemporary developments, in particular, with the highly scientific and empirical world of the West.

  • ARCHIVES i. Turkish archives concerning Iran

    Osman G. Özgüdenli

    It is evident that the archive material of the Ottoman Empire was very well maintained, already from the early times. However, a number of older documents were destroyed by Timur (d. 1405) during his conquest of Bursa, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire, after the battle of Ankara in 1402.

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  • ARD

    Cross-Reference

    (Pahlavi; Manichean Middle Persian ʾyrd). See AHRIŠWANG, AŠI

  • ARD YAŠT

    P. O. Skjærvø

    Middle Persian name of the Avestan hymn dedicated to Aši.

  • ARDĀ WĪRĀZ

    Ph. Gignoux

    “Wīrāz the just,”  principal character of the Zoroastrian Middle Persian text Ardā Wīrāz-nāmag.

  • ARDABĪL

    C. E. Bosworth, X. de Planhol, M. E. Weaver, M. Medley

    town and district in northeastern Azerbaijan.

  • ARDABIL v. Population, 1956-2011

    Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

    the population growth from 1956 to 2011, age structure, average household size, literacy rate, and economic activity status for 2006 and/or 2011.

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  • ARDABĪL CARPET

    M. Beattie

    a name applied chiefly to a Persian carpet acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1893, which is significant for its outstanding quality of design and weaving and for the precise date it carries. A second, almost identical carpet is less well known; it was presented by the late J. Paul Getty to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1953.

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  • ARDABĪLĪ

    W. Madelung

    known as MOQADDAS and MOḤAQQEQ ARDABĪLĪ, Imamite theologian and jurist of the early Safavid age. 

  • ARDAHANG

    Cross-Reference

    See ARŽANG.

  • ARDAKĀN-E FĀRS

    C. E. Bosworth

    a small upland town of the ostān of Fārs.

  • ARDAKĀN-E YAZD

    C. E. Bosworth

    a town of central Persia on the present Yazd-Ardestān-Kāšān road along the southern edge of the Dašt-e Kavīr, forty miles northwest of Yazd.

  • ARDAKĀNĪ, ABU’L-ḤASAN

    D. MacEoin

    known as Ḥāǰǰī Amīn and Amīn-e Elāhī, one of the four Ayādī-e Amr Allāh appointed by Bahāʾallāh as leaders of the Bahaʾi movement in Iran.

  • ARDALĀN, ABU’L-ḤASAN KHAN

    Cross-Reference

    See ABU’L-ḤASAN KHAN ARDALĀN.

  • ARDAMITRA

    Cross-Reference

    See ARDAŠĪR SAKĀNŠĀH.

  • ARDAŠĪR

    Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

    name of several figures in the Šāh-nāma.

  • ARDAŠĪR B. DAYLAMSOPĀR

    cross-reference

    See ABU’L-ḤAYJĀ NAJMĪ.

  • ARDAŠĪR BĀBAKĀN

    H. Gaube

    Sasanian and early Islamic district (ostān) formed in the early 7th century south of Baghdad and west of the Tigris. Its capital was Weh-Ardašīr (Ar. Bahrasīr).

  • ARDAŠĪR I

    Multiple Authors

    (d. 242 CE), the founder of the Sasanian empire. 

  • ARDAŠĪR I i. History

    Joseph Wiesehöfer

    by 224 extended his sway over Persis and beyond into Elymais (Ḵūzestān) and Kermān, forcing to submission many local kings and vassals of the Parthians. The extent of his original realm cannot be determined precisely.

  • ARDAŠĪR I ii. Rock reliefs

    H. Luschey

    The first Sasanian ruler Ardašīr I established the Sasanian tradition of rock carving, which flourished until the reign of Šāpūr III and made an impressive resurgence under Ḵosrow II. Ardašīr’s rock reliefs differ markedly from the few preserved Parthian specimens (as do his coins) and foreshadow a new monumental form.

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