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.