Table of Contents

  • Great Britain xii. The Persian Community in Britain (2)

    Namdar Baghaei-Yazdi

    The Library for Iranian Studies in London was opened to members on 16 November 1991 and at that time the library consisted of a collection of 2,500 books and other publications.

  • Great Britain xiii. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

    F. Safiri and H. Shahidi

    In the late 1930s, the British Government began to fund BBC broadcasts in languages other than English designed to counter anti-British broadcasts from Germany and Italy. The first were  in Arabic, in January 1938, followed by Spanish and Portuguese to Latin America in March. Persian broadcasts followed  in December 1940.

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  • Great Britain xiv. The British Institute of Persian Studies

    D. Stronach

    was founded in the spring of 1961, thanks to the vision and commitment of a small group of scholars in Britain, each of whom had a special interest in the arts and letters of Persia.

  • Great Britain xv. British Schools in Persia

    Gulnar E. Francis-Dehqani

    This article will outline the major educational efforts of the British missionaries in Persia from 1871. The British schools in Persia were primarily founded by missionary organizations, most notably the Church Missionary Society (CMS).

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  • Greece

    Multiple Authors

    OVERVIEW of the entry.

  • Greece i. Greco-Persian Political Relations

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    After subjugating the Medes, Cyrus II started his first expedition westwards. In 547 B.C.E. he turned against Lydia and its king, Croesus.

  • Greece ii. Greco-Persian Cultural Relations

    Margaret C. Miller

    This article is addresses the evidence for receptivity to Persian culture in Greece, the North Aegean, and West Anatolia, including receptivity on the part of the non-Greek peoples of these regions.

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  • Greece iii. Persian Influence on Greek Thought

    Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin

    The idea of Iranian origins of Greek philosophy had a legendary aura, either by declaring that Pythagoras had been Zoroaster’s pupil in Babylon, or by writing, as did Clement of Alexandria, that Heraclitus had drawn on “the barbarian philosophy.”

  • Greece iv. Greek Influence on Persian Thought

    Mansour Shaki

    After the conquest of Ionia, Lydia, and other regions of Asia Minor by Cyrus II, the Persians came into close contact with the Hellenes, their skilled artisans, renowned physicians, artists, statements, men-of-arms, and the like.

  • Greece vi. The Image of Persia and Persians in Greek Literature

    Reinhold Bichler and Robert Rollinger

    The image of Persia in Greek literature is highly stylized and may not be considered as a reflection of actually experienced cultural contacts.

  • GREECE vii. GREEK ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN IRAN

    Rémy Boucharlat

    The influx of elements of Greek art into Persia during the Achaemenid period was primarily the result of the importation of artists and artisans from Hellenized Asia Minor and rarely due to a direct supply of objects.

  • Greece viii. Greek Art in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Northwest India

    Claude Rapin

    The emergence of Greek art as a phenomenon following the expedition of Alexander the Great was a major cultural event in Central Asia and India. Its effects were felt for almost a thousand years, down to the early Islamic period.

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  • Greece ix. Greek and Persian Romances

    Richard Davis

    Three Persian verse romances of the 11th century stand out as significantly unlike other Persian verse romances, and they share enough features with the Greek Hellenistic Romances to suggest the existence of links between the two sets of tales.

  • GREECE x. GREEK MEDICINE IN PERSIA

    Gül Russell

    The question of Greek medicine in Iran is closely bound up with the history of Greco-Arabic medicine, which developed with the impetus of the “translation movement” between the 8th and the 10th centuries.

  • Greece xii. Persian Loanwords and Names in Greek

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    The Greeks came into direct contact with speakers of Iranian languages when Cyrus II conquered the Lydian empire in 547 B.C.E. However, the possibility of linguistic borrowings in prehistoric times cannot be ruled out.

  • Greece xiii. Greek Loanwords in Middle Iranian Languages

    Philip Huyse

    The number of loanwords borrowed from Greek into the pre-Islamic Iranian languages is far less impressive than the number of borrowings in the other direction.

  • Greece xiv. Greek Loanwords in Medieval New Persian

    Lutz Richter Bernburg and EIr

    In the Islamic period, Persian learned literature was largely modelled upon Arabic antecedents and that these, whether  translations from Greek or Arabic originals, strove to minimize foreign and unfamiliar-sounding vocabulary.

  • GREECE xv. Ancient Greek borrowings of Persian herbs and plants of medicinal value

    Luigi Arata

    It is well attested that the ancient Greek city-states (poleis) and the Persian Empire had continuous commercial contact which influenced the ordinary life of both parties.

  • GREECE xvi. Greek Ideas and Sciences in Sasanian Iran

    Philippe Gignoux

    The arrival of Greek ideas and sciences in Iran have been traced through translated texts.  However, there are allusions and references that we can glean from Pahlavi literature, and on occasion in longer passages where the closely related medical and philosophical theories of the ancient East indicate their origins in Greek or Indian civilization. Some of these references go back as far as the Achaemenid period too.

  • GREEKS IN MODERN IRAN

    Evangelos Venetis

    economic and political trends beginning in the 19th century led to the establishment of a significant Greek community in Iran.

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  • GRIBOEDOV, ALEXANDER SERGEEVICH

    George Bournoutian

    Griboedov joined the Russian administration in Transcaucasia in early 1819 and was sent by the Chief Administrator, General Ermolov, to Persia to establish the Russian Mission in Tehran.

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  • GRIGORIAN, Marcos

    Hengameh Fouladvand

    (Mārcos [better known as Marco] Grigoriān, b. Kropotkin, Russia, 5 December 1925; d. Yerevan, 27 August 2007), Iranian-Armenian artist, actor, teacher, gallery owner, and collector who played a pioneering role in the development of Iranian modern art.

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  • GRĪW

    Werner Sundermann

    a Middle Iranian word meaning “neck, throat” and “self, soul.”

  • GROTEFEND, GEORG FRIEDRICH

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    (b. Hannoversch-Münden, 1775; d. Hannover, 1853), German philologist and scholar of oriental studies.

  • GROUSSET, RENÉ

    Jacqueline Calmard-Compas

    (b. Aubais, Gard, France, 1885; d. Paris, 1952), French historian who based his wide-ranging research on the studies of the leading French orientalists of his time, and wrote works of synthesis on various aspects of Oriental history and culture.

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  • GRUMBATES

    Cross-Reference

    See CHIONITES.

  • GRUNDRISS DER IRANISCHEN PHILOLOGIE

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    (Encyclopaedia of Iranian Philology; Strassburg, 1895-1904, reprinted Berlin and New York, 1974), the first attempt to summarize the knowledge of all subjects concerning Iran — the languages and literatures, history and culture of Iran and the Iranian peoples — that had been achieved by the end of the 19th century.

  • GRÜNWEDEL, ALBERT

    Werner Sundermann

    (b. Munich, 1856; d. Lenggries, 1935), prominent German Indologist, Tibetologist, art scholar, and archeologist.

  • GRYUNBERG TSVETINOVICH, ALEKSANDR LEONOVICH

    Vladmir Kushev

    (b. St. Petersburg, 1930; d. St. Petersburg, 1995), Russian linguist who specialized in Iranian languages.

  • GUARDIAN COUNCIL

    A. Schirazi

    or Šurā-ye Negahbān; a powerful 12-member council with vast legislative and executive jurisdictions that forms a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution.

  • GUBARU

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Babylonian rendering of the Iranian name Gaub(a)ruva, which is best known in the Greek form Gōbryas.

  • GUDARZ

    Cross-Reference

    See GŌDARZ.

  • GUEVREKIAN, GABRIEL

    Mina Marefat

    (b. Istanbul, 1900; d. 1970), Armenian avant-garde architect, an influential figure in the development of modern architecture in Persia, linking Persian architects with Europe’s pioneers of the modern movement.

  • GUIDI, IGNAZIO

    Erich Kettenhofen

    Guidi’s most valuable discovery,  the Syriac chronicle of an anonymous Nestorian Christian, contains otherwise non-attested details of late Sasanian history. Guidi recognized the significance of the synodal records of the Nestorian church for reconstructing the administration of the empire. 

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  • GUIDI’S CHRONICLE

    Sebastian P. Brock

    an anonymous, 7th-century chronicle of Nestorian Christians, known also as “the Khuzistan Chronicle,” written in Syriac and covering the period from the reign of the Sasanian Hormizd/Hormoz IV (579-89) to the middle of the 7th century and the time of the early Arab conquests.

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  • GUILDS

    Cross-Reference

    See AṢNĀF; CHAMBER OF GUILDS; CHAMBER OF COMMERCE; BĀZĀR iii.

  • GUILLEMIN, MARCELLE

    Anne Draffkorn Kilmer

    One of the early investigators of the reconstruction of ancient Babylonian musical scales and music theory, she was the first scholar to explore and explain the musicological significance of the sequence of number-pairs of musical strings in a cuneiform text of the first millennium B.C.E. excavated at the archaeological site of Nippur in southern Iraq.

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  • GUJARAT

    Gavin R. G. Hambly

    (Skt. Gurjaṛ), a province of India on its northwestern coastline.

  • GUJARATI

    K. M. Jamaspasa

    or Gojarati; the mother tongue of Gujaratis, which has been for centuries a vehicle of thought and expression for Hindus, Parsis, and Muslims of Gu-jarat in western India.

  • GUJASTAG ABĀLIŠ

    Cross-Reference

    See ABĀLIŠ.

  • GUKLĀN

    Pierre Oberling

    Turkmen tribal confederacy of the Gorgān region in northeastern Persia, the district of Qara Qalʿa in Turkmenistan, and the Ḵiva region in Uzbekistan.

  • ḠUL

    Mahmoud and Teresa P. Omidsalar

    designation of a fantastic, frightening creature in the Perso-Arabic lore.

  • GULBARGA

    Gavin R. G. Hambly

    or Golbargā; city and district in the central Deccan, India.

  • GULBENKIAN, CALOUSTE

    Jennifer Manoukian

    (1869-1955), Armenian oil financier, art collector, and philanthropist born in Lisbon.

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  • GULF WAR and PERSIA

    Lawrence G. Potter

    the final conflict, which was initiated with United Nations authorization, by a coalition force from 34 nations against Iraq, with the expressed purpose of expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait after its invasion and annexion on 2 August 1990.

  • GUMĒZIŠN

    D. N. Mackenzie

    a Middle Persian noun, spelled gwmycšn in Pahlavi and gwmyzyšn in Manichean script, meaning “mixing, mingling, mixture.”

  • GÜNDÜZLÜ

    Cross-Reference

    See TURKIC TRIBES.

  • GUNPOWDER

    Cross-Reference

    See BĀRUT.

  • GUNS, GUNNERY

    Cross-Reference

    See BĀRUT; FIREARMS.

  • GUR

    Cross-Reference

    See ARDAŠIR ḴORRA, FIRUZĀBĀD.

  • ḠUR

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    a region of central Afghanistan, essentially the modern administrative province (welāyat) of Ḡōrāt.

  • GUR-E AMIR

    Cross-Reference

    See SAMARQAND.

  • GUR-E DOḴTAR

    cross-reference

    See BOZPĀR.

  • GURĀN

    Pierre Oberling

    a tribe dwelling in the dehestān of Gurān, between Qaṣr-e Širin and Kermānšāh (Bāḵtarān), in Kurdistan.

  • GURĀNI

    D. N. Mackenzie

    comprises a group of similar North-west Iranian dialects which includes that of Kandula, 25 miles north-north-west of Kermānšāh, and Bāǰalānī, in the region around Zohāb and Qaṣr-e Šīrīn, with an offshoot among the Šabak, Ṣārlī, and Bāǰalān (Bēǰwān) villages east of the city of Mosul in Iraq.

  • GURDZIECKI, BOGDAN

    Rudi Matthee

    known in Persia as Bohtam Beg; Polish envoy of Georgian-Armenian origin and first permanent Polish resident in Safavid Persia (d. Moscow, 1700).

  • ḠURIĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See FUŠANJ.

  • GURKHAN

    Cross-Reference

    See QARA ḴETĀY; CENTRAL ASIA; TITLE OF RULERS.

  • GURUMU

    Cross-Reference

    See BĒṮ GARMĒ.

  • GUŠA

    Jean During

    lit. "corner" or "part"; a term in Persian music designating a unit of melody of variable importance, which occupies a special place in the development of one of the twelve modal systems (dastgāh or āvāz).

  • GUSAN

    Cross-Reference

    See EPICS.

  • GUSFAND

    Jean-Pierre Digard

    sheep, ovine.

  • GUŠYĀR GILĀNI, ABU’L-ḤASAN B. LABBĀN

    David Pingree

    Arabicized Kušyār; an astronomer and mathematician from Gilān, whence his nesba Jili/Gilāni (fl. late 10th-early 11th cent.).

  • GUTIANS

    Marc Van De Mieroop

    name used in ancient Mesopotamian texts to refer to a variety of people, mostly from the Zagros mountain area.

  • GUTSCHMID, HERMANN ALFRED FREIHERR VON

    Ronald E. Emmerick

    (b. Loschwitz near Dresden, 1831; d. Tübingen, 1887), classical scholar and ancient historian with a special interest in the Ancient Near East.

  • GÜYÜK KHAN

    Peter Jackson

    (r. 1246-48), Mongol great khan (qaḡan), given posthumously the regnal title Ting-tsung.

  • GUZAŠTAG ABĀLIŠ

    Cross-Reference

    See ABĀLIŠ.

  • GUZGĀN

    Cross-Reference

    a district of what was in early Islamic times eastern Khorasan, now roughly corresponding to the northwest of modern Afghanistan, adjacent to the frontier with the southeastern fringe of the Turkmenistan Republic. See JOWZJĀN.

  • GWĀTI

    Cross-Reference

    See BALUCHISTAN.

  • GYMNASTICS IN PERSIA

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • GYPSUM

    Dietrich Huff

    soft mineral produced from natural gypsum rock by firing in kilns or piles and subsequent pulverization by pounding and grinding.

  • GYPSY

    Jean-Pierre Digard, Gernot L. Windfuhr

    generally referred to by the term kowli in Persian, seemingly a distortion of kāboli, that is, coming from Kabol, the capital of Afghanistan. It is not at all certain, however, that all the groups referred to as kowli are authentic gypsies; nor that only the groups referred to as kowli should be considered as gypsies.

  • GYPSY i. Gypsies of Persia

    Jean-Pierre Digard

    Almost everywhere in Persia there are groups with characteristics similar to those of the Gypsies, but they are called by different names, sometimes designating their geographic or ethnic origin, sometimes their social status, and sometimes their profession.

  • GYPSY ii. Gypsy Dialects

    Gernot L. Windfuhr

    The languages and dialects popularly called “Gypsy” (< Egipcien < qebṭi “Coptic, Egyptian”) constitute three major groups: Asiatic or Middle Eastern Domari, Armenian Lomavren, and European Romani.

  • Gurughli

    music sample

  • G~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS

    Cross-Reference

    list of all the figure and plate images in the letter G entries.