Table of Contents

  • GIVA

    Jamshid Sadaqat-Kish

    a traditional footwear in Persia, mainly consisting of an upper part made of twined white cotton thread sewn up on the edges of a cloth and leather or rubber sole. The earliest known mention of the word giva is probably ca. 1333, a reference to the bāzār-e giva-duzān (giva-makers’ market) of Shiraz.

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  • GIYAN TEPE

    Ezat O. Negahban

    or GIĀN TAPPA, Žiān Tappa; a large archeological mound located in Lorestān province in western Persia, about 10 km southeast of Nehāvand and southwest of Giān village in the Ḵāva valley.

  • GLACIERS

    Eckart Ehlers

    and ice fields in Persia. Due to Persia’s location in the very center of the arid dry belt, stretching from North Africa in the west to Central Asia in the east, and also due to its very specific topography, glaciers and/or permanent ice fields are restricted and concentrated in a very few locations.

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  • GLADWIN, FRANCIS

    Parvin Loloi

    (d. ca. 1813), lexicographer and prolific translator of Persian literature into English.

  • GLASS

    Jens Kröger

    Glass blowing was invented in the Syro-Palestinian region during the Parthian period in the mid-first century B.C.E. and quickly spread from there to neighboring regions. Production of glass was much more widely spread within the Sasanian empire; it also became in both shapes and types of decoration independent from Parthian prototypes.

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  • GLASS INDUSTRY

    Willem Floor

    Glass making has been known and practiced in Iran for about 3,500 years. Until about 1930 local glass making was done in small craft workshops. The raw materials needed for glass production abound in Iran except for soda ash, but this input will also soon be entirely domestically produced.

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  • GLOSSAR ZU FIRDOSIS SCHAHNAME

    Cross-reference

    See WOLFF, FRITZ.

  • GLYPTIC

    Cross-Reference

    See CYLINDER SEALS.

  • GNOLI, GHERARDO

    Carlo Cereti

    (1937-2012), an Iranist and historian of religion, combining an extraordinary scientific output with a constant focus on cultural policy.

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  • GNOSTICISM

    Kurt Rudolph

    in Persia. The current academic term gnosticism or gnosis goes back to the early Christian period and has a heresiological background; its representatives were called Gnostics, meaning people who believed in specific “insights” and ways of behavior that deviated from the official church and its teachings and who disseminated their beliefs through their own writings.

  • GOAT

    Cross-Reference

    See BOZ.

  • GŌBADŠĀH

    D. N. Mackenzie

    the name of a mythical ruler first appearing in medieval Zoroastrianism.

  • ḠOBĀRI, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN

    Tahsİn Yazici

    b. ʿAbd-Allāh (d. 1566), Ottoman poet, calligrapher, and Sufi who wrote in both Turkish and Persian.

  • ḠOBAYRĀ

    A. D. H. Bivar

    medieval township in Kermān province, located at 57° 29 E and 47° N, 70 km by road south of Kermān City (historical Bardsir) at the intersection of the medieval eastern highway and the route from Kermān to Bāft, Esfandaqa, and Jiroft.

  • GOBINEAU, Joseph Arthur de

    Jean Calmard

    Gobineau’s father, Louis (1784-1858), a military officer, was for a time retained in Spain (1823-28), and the son’s education was left to his adventurous mother and her lover, Charles Sottin de la Coindière, who was Arthur’s private tutor.

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  • GÖBL, ROBERT

    Michael Alram

    Gobl's mentor in studying numismatics was Karl Pink, whose methodology had a lasting influence on Göbl’s further academic career. One of Göbl’s most pressing aims was to try out Pink’s structural methodology of the minting of coins in the Roman Empire on other well-defined numismatic complexes.

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  • GOBRYAS

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    the most widely known (Greek) form of the Old Persian name Gaub(a)ruva, attested for various officers and officials of the Achaemenid period.

  • GOD

    Cross-Reference

    See AHURA MAZDĀ; BAGA.

  • GODARD, ANDRÉ

    Ève Gran-Aymerich and Mina Marefat

    (b. Chaumont, France, 1881; d. Paris, 1965), French architect, archeologist, art historian, and director of the Archeological Services of Iran (Edāra-ye koll-e ʿatiqāt).

  • GŌDARZ

    Mary Boyce, A. D. H. Bivar, A. Shapur Shahbazi

    name of various Iranian historical figures; an Iranian epic hero in wars against the “Turanians” in northeastern Iran; and the scion of a clan of paladins in Iranian traditional history.

  • GODIN TEPE

    T. Cuyler Young, Jr.

    or GOWDIN TEPE; an archeological site in the central Zagros, which was occupied from ca. 5,000 to 500 B.C.E. located at 48° 4′ E and 34° 31′ N in the Kangāvar valley, approximately halfway between Hamadān and Kermānšāh.

  • GOEJE, Michael Jan de

    Cross-Reference

    See DE GOEJE.

  • GOETHE INSTITUTE

    H. E. Chehabi

    in Persia and Afghanistan. Named after the celebrated German poet and writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the Goethe Institute was founded in 1951 in Munich as a non-profit organization for training foreign teachers of the German language.

  • GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG von

    Hamid Tafazoli

    (1749-1832), the most renowned poet of German literature, interested in the East and in Islam.

  • ḠOJDOVĀN

    Habib Borjian

    (also Ḡojdavān, Ḡajdovān), town and district in the oasis of Bukhara.

  • ḠOJDOVĀNI

    Cross-Reference

     See ʿABD-AL-ḴĀLEQ ḠOJDOVĀNI.

  • GÖK TEPE

    Cross-Reference

    See GEOY TEPE.

  • GOKARN

    Cross-Reference

    See HAOMA.

  • GÖKLEN

    Cross-Reference

    See GUKLĀN.

  • GOL

    Hušang Aʿlam

    or gul; rose (Rosa L. spp.) and, by extension, flower, bloom, blossom.

  • GOL ḴĀNĀN MORDA

    Bruno Overlaet

    Three pit graves, of which one was covered with flat stones, were found underneath the Iron Age III tombs. One contained a button base beaker and two comparable beakers were found between the Iron Age III tombs. This indicates the presence of Iron Age I graves at the site.

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  • GOL O BOLBOL

    Layla S. Diba

    lit. “rose and nightingale,” a popular literary and decorative theme. Together, rose and nightingale are the types of beloved and lover par excellence; the rose is beautiful, proud, and often cruel, while the nightingale sings endlessly of his longing and devotion.

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  • GOL-ĀQĀ

    EIr

    a weekly satirical magazine founded by Kayumarṯ Ṣāberi which first began publication on 23 October 1990.

  • GOL-E GĀVZABĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See GĀVZABĀN.

  • GOL-E GOLĀB, ḤOSAYN

    Cross-Reference

    (1895-1985) botanist, musician, poet, scholar, and member of the Farhangestān. See GOL-GOLĀB.

  • GOL-E SORḴI, ḴOSROW

    Cross-Reference

    (1943-1974), poet and revolutionary figure whose defiant stand during his televised show trial, and subsequent execution by firing squad in 1974, enshrined his place in the cultural and political history of modern Persia. See GOLSORḴI.

  • GOL-E ZARD

    Nassereddin Parvin

    literary, socio-satirical newspaper, published 1918-1924.

  • GOL-GOLĀB, ḤOSAYN

    H. Ettehad Baboli

    Among Gol-golāb’s best known songs are “Aḏarābādagān” and “Ey Irān”; the latter has become virtually the national anthem of Persia. Gol-golāb also composed Persian lyrics for the music of Georges Bizet’s Carmen and Charles Gounod’s Faust.

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  • GOLĀB

    Hušang Aʿlam

    rose water, a distillate (ʿaraq) obtained chiefly from the gol-e moḥammadi, the best-known product made from rose petals in Persia, widely used in sherbets, sweetmeats, as a home medicament, and on some religious occasions.

  • GOLĀBI

    Cross-Reference

    See PEAR.

  • ḠOLĀM

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement; on ḡolāms as military slaves, see BARDA AND BARDA-DĀRĪ.

  • ḠOLĀM ʿABD-AL-QĀDER NAẒIR

    Cross-Reference

    author of Golestān-e nasab. See NAẒIR.

  • ḠOLĀM HAMADĀNI

    Cross-Reference

    author of Taḏkera-ye fārsi and other works. See MOṢḤAFI.

  • ḠOLĀM JILĀNI

    Cross-Reference

    poet and author of Dorr-e manẓum. See RAFʿAT.

  • ḠOLĀM SARVAR

    Arif Naushahi

    b. Mofti Ḡolām Moḥammad LĀHURI (b. Lahore, 1828; d. near Medina, 1890), historian, hagiographer, and poet in Persian and Urdu.

  • ḠOLĀM YAḤYĀ

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • ḠOLĀM-ʿALI

    Cross-Reference

    See NAQŠBANDI ORDER.

  • ḠOLĀM-ʿALI KHAN, AMIR TUMĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See ʿAZĪZ-AL-SOLṬĀN.

  • ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN ṢĀḤEB(-E) EḴTIĀR

    Cross-Reference

    See AMĪN-E ḴALWAT.

  • ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN SEPAHDĀR

    Cross-Reference

    provincial governor and minister of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah. See SEPAHDĀR.

  • ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN ṬABĀṬABĀʾI

    Arif Naushahi

    (b. Delhi, 1727-28, d. after 1781), Sayyed, secretary (monši) by profession, political intermediary, and author of a popular history of India called Siar al-motaʾaḵḵerin.

  • ḠOLĀM-REŻĀ ḴOŠNEVIS

    Maryam Ekhtiar

    Eṣfahāni, Mirzā (b. Tehran, 1829/30; d. Tehran, 1886/87), a calligrapher and epigraphist of late 19th-century Persia.

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  • ḠOLĀMĀN-E ḴAṢṢA-YE ŠARIFA

    Cross-Reference

    See ʿABBĀS IBARDA and BARDADĀRĪ v.

  • ḠOLĀT

    Heinz Halm

    lit. "exaggerators," sing. ḡāli; an Arabic term originally used by Twelver Shiʿite (eṯnā ʿašariya) heresiographers to designate those dissidents who exaggerate the status of the Imams in an undue manner by attributing to them divine qualities.

  • GOLBADAN BĒGOM

    Munibur Rahman

    (ca. 1522/23-1603), daughter of Ẓahir-al-Din Moḥammad Bābor, founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, half sister of Bābor’s successor, Homāyun, and author of Homāyun-nāma, the account of the reign of Homāyun.

  • GOLČIN GILĀNI

    Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Homa Katouzian

    (b. Rašt, 1910; d. London, 1972), pen name of the poet MAJD-AL-DIN MIR-FAḴRĀʾI. Throughout the 1940s, Golčin sent his compositions to Persia for publication; many appeared in the literary journals of the period, such as Soḵan, Yaḡmā, Armaḡān, Foruḡ, Yādgār, and Jahān-e now.

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  • GOLČIN MAʿĀNI, AḤMAD

    Iraj Afshar

    (b. Tehran, 1916; d. Mašhad, 2000), literary scholar, bibliographer, and poet. He held various administrative and judicial posts in the Ministry of Justice (1934-59). His considerable knowledge of literary manuscripts was later put to good use when he was transferred to the Majles Library, where he catalogued the Persian and Arabic manuscripts.

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  • GOLD

    Jennifer C. Ross & James W. Allan

    Persia possesses a number of gold sources—in the northwest (Azerbaijan and Zanjān), near Kāšān at the western edge of the central plateau, and, according to Strabo, in Kermān. Gold sources in Afghanistan are located in Badaḵšān, which is also the source region for lapis lazuli. 

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  • GOLDEN HORDE

    Peter Jackson

    name given to the Mongol Khanate ruled by the descendants of Joči (Juji; d. 1226-27), the eldest son of Čengiz (Genghis) Khan.

  • GOLDSMID, Major-General Sir Fredrick John

    Denis Wright

    (b. Milan, 1818; d. Hammersmith, England, 1909), British scholar, negotiator and arbitrator of Perso-Afghan boundary dispute.

  • GOLESTĀN

    Nassereddin Parvin

    the title of two early 20th-century Persian newspapers.

  • GOLESTĀN PALACE

    Cross-Reference

    See ARG.

  • GOLESTĀN PALACE LIBRARY

    Cross-Reference

    See BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND CATALOGUES; ROYAL LIBRARY.

  • GOLESTĀN PROVINCE

    Cross-Reference

    See GORGĀN.

  • GOLESTĀN TREATY

    Elton L. Daniel

    agreement arranged under British auspices to end the Russo-Persian War of 1804-13. The origins of the war can be traced back to the decision of Tsar Paul to annex Georgia (December 1800) and, after Paul’s assassination (11 March 1801), the activist policy followed by his successor, Alexander I.

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  • GOLESTĀN-E HONAR

    Kambiz Eslami

    a 16th-century treatise on the art of calligraphy, with brief biographical notices on a selection of past and contemporary calligraphers and artists, by the Safavid author and historian Qāżi Aḥmad b. Šaraf-al-Din Ḥosayn Monši Qomi Ebrāhimi.

  • GOLESTĀN-E SAʿDI

    Franklin Lewis

    probably the single most influential work of prose in the Persian tradition, completed in 1258 by Mošarref-al-Din Moṣleḥ, known as Shaikh Saʿdi of Shiraz.

  • GOLESTĀNA, ABU’L-ḤASAN

    Cross-Reference

    See ABU’L-ḤASAN GOLESTĀNA.

  • GOLESTĀNA, ʿAlāʾ-al-Din Mirzā MOḤAMMAD

    Hamid Algar

    b. Šāh Abu Torāb Moḥammad-ʿAli (d. 1698-99), prominent religious scholar of the Safavid period, a scion of the Golestāna family of Ḥosayni sayyeds in Isfahan.

  • GOLESTĀNA, ʿALI-AKBAR

    Maryam Ekhtiar

    (b. 1857-58; d. 1901), calligrapher, scholar, and mystic of late 19th-century Persia.

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  • GOLGUN, FARID-AL-DAWLA Mirzā MOḤAMMAD-ḤASAN KHAN HAMADĀNI

    Parviz AḏkāʾI

    (1877-1937), constitutionalist and journalist.

  • GOLHĀ, BARNĀMA-YE

    Daryush Pirnia with Erik Nakjavani

    lit. “Flowers Program”; a series of radio programs on music and poetry, on the air for almost twenty-three years (March 1956 to February 1979), which aimed at illustrating the perennial thematic and aesthetic relationships between poetry and traditional music in Persian culture.

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  • GOLINDUCH

    Sebastian Brock

    or GOLEN-DOḴT (d. 591), female Christian martyr.

  • GOLIUS, JACOBUS

    J. T. P. de Bruijn

    (b. The Hague, 1596; d. Leiden, 1667), Dutch orientalist who widened the scope of Persian studies, as they had been pursued by Dutch Arabists since the end of the 16th century.

  • GOLḴANI, MOḤAMMAD ŠARIF

    EVELIN GRASSI

    MOḤAMMAD ŠARIF (1770s-1827), poet and satirist from Kokand (Ḵōqand), bilingual in Persian and Chaghatay.

  • GOLKONDA

    Cross-Reference

    See HYDERABAD.

  • GOLPAR

    Hušang Aʿlam

    any of several perennial aromatic herbaceous plants of the genus Heracleum L. (fam. Umbelliferae) growing wild in humid alpine regions in Persia and some adjacent areas.

  • GOLPĀYAGĀN

    Minu Yusofnezhad

    or GOLPĀYEGĀN; a šahrestān (county) and town located in Isfahan province, bordered on the east by the county of Barḵᵛār and Meyma, on the south by Ḵᵛānsār county, on the north by the counties of Maḥallāt and Ḵomeyn (Central province), and on the west by Aligudarz county (province of Lorestān).

  • GOLPĀYAGĀNI, ABU’L-FAŻL

    Cross-Reference

    See ABU’L-FAŻL GOLPĀYEGĀNĪ.

  • GOLPĀYAGĀNI, MOḤAMMAD-REŻĀ

    Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi

    (1899-1993), Ayatollah Sayyed, a chief figure in the contemporary Shiʿite clerical hierarchy, who took a moderate stand in the opposition to what was considered the state’s disregard for Islamic principles in the name of modernization.

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  • GOLPĀYEGĀNI DIALECT

    Cross-Reference

    See CENTRAL DIALECTS.

  • GÖLPINARLI, ABDÜLBAKI

    Tahsin Yazıcı

    (1900-1982), Turkish scholar noted in particular for his studies of the Turkish Sufi orders. He joined many Sufi orders without remaining in any of them for long. His greatest interests were in Shiʿism and the Mevlevi (Mawlawiya) order.

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  • GOLŠAHRI, SOLAYMĀN

    EIr

     or GÜLŞEHRÎ; 13th century Ottoman Sufi and poet who wrote in Persian and Turkish.

  • GOLŠĀʾIĀN, ʿABBĀSQOLI

    Abbas Milani

    After private schooling at home, Golšāʾiān studied at the French-run Alliance Française and at the Dār al-fonun. In 1920, he enrolled in the new law school created by the Ministry of Justice (ʿAdliya). After completing the required courses in two years, he was employed at the same ministry.

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  • GOLŠAN

    Nassereddin Parvin

    cultural magazine published in the early days of 1917 in Tehran by Sayyed Reżā Yazdi “Amir Reżwāni” (d. 1936), first twice a week and from its sixth year three times a week.

  • GOLŠAN ALBUM

    Kambiz Eslami

    or Moraqqaʿ-e golšan; a sumptuous 17th-century album of paintings, drawings, calligraphy, and engravings by Mughal, Persian, Deccani, Turkish, and European artists in the Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.

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  • GOLŠAN DEHLAVI, Shah SAʿD-ALLĀH

    Moinuddin Aqeel

    b. Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad-Saʿid (1664-1728), Naqšbandi Sufi and prolific poet in Persian with the pen name (taḵallosá) Golšan.

  • GOLŠAN-E MORĀD

    John R. Perry

    a history of the Zand Dynasty (1751-94) by Mirzā Moḥammad Abu’l-Ḥasan Ḡaffāri.

  • GOLŠAN-E RĀZ

    Hamid Algar

    lit. "The Rose Garden of Mysteries"; a concise didactic matnawi in a little over a thousand distichs on the key terms and concepts of Sufism, which has for long served as a principal text of theoretical mysticism in the Persian-speaking and Persian-influenced world.

  • GOLŠANI ṢĀRUḴĀNI

    Tahsin Yazici

    a 15th-century Turkish poet who also wrote in Persian.

  • GOLŠANĪ, EBRĀHIM

    Tahsin Yazici

    b. Moḥammad b. Ebrāhim b. Šehāb-al-Din (d. 1534), Sufi poet and the founder of the Golšaniya branch of the Ḵalwati Sufi order.

  • GOLŠANI, MOḤYI MOḤAMMAD

    Tahsin Yazici

    b. Fatḥ-Allāh b. Abi Ṭāleb (1528/29-1606/7), scholar and author in Persian and Turkish and inventor of an artificial language.

  • GOLŠEHRI, SOLAYMĀN

    Cross-Reference

    Sufi and poet in Turkish and Persian. See GÜLŠEHRI.

  • GOLŠIRI, Hušang

    Ḥasan Mirʿābedini and EIr

    (b. Isfahan, 1938; d. Tehran, 2000), novelist who explored new literary techniques. He received the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett award (1997) via the Human Rights Watch Organization and was awarded the Osnabrück Peace prize (1999) from the Erich Maria Remarque Foundation for his defense of freedom of speech.

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  • GOLSORḴI, ḴOSROW

    Maziar Behrooz

    (1943-1974), poet and revolutionary figure whose defiant stand during his televised show trial, and subsequent execution by firing squad in 1974, enshrined his place in the cultural and political history of modern Persia.

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  • GŌMAL

    Shah Mahmoud Hanifi

    or Gōmāl:  a sub-province (woloswāli) and village in Paktiā province, eastern Afghanistan; a river originating in the Ḡazni province and flowing southeast through the Wazirestān tribal agency and  the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan; and a passage linking the eastern foothills of the Solaymān mountain range with the Indus plains.

  • GOMBROON

    Cross-Reference

    See BANDAR-e ʿABBĀS(Ī).

  • GOMBROON WARES

    Cross-Reference

    See CERAMICS; ČĪNĪ.

  • GŌMĒZ

    Mary Boyce

    cow's urine.

  • GOMIŠĀN

    Cross-Reference

    a district in Golestān Province. See GORGĀN.