Table of Contents

  • ḠAZAL

    Multiple Authors

    the most important Persian lyric, adopted also by literatures influenced by the classical Persian tradition, in particular Turkish and Urdu poetry.

  • ḠAZAL i. HISTORY

    J. T. P. de Bruijn

    The basic meaning of the word in Arabic is “spinning.” At a very early stage, the figurative sense of “having amorous talks with women, flirting” must have led to the association with erotic poetry.

  • ḠAZAL ii. CHARACTERISTICS AND CONVENTIONS

    Ehsan Yarshater

    The Persian ḡazal, especially the Hafezian and the post-Hafezian, does not usually follow a sustained narrative, but consists of a number of lines and statements largely independent of each other.

  • ḠAZĀLĪ MAŠHADĪ

    Munibur Rahman

    (b. Mašhad, 1526-27, d. Ahmadabad, 1572), poet laureate in Persian (malek-al-šoʿarāʾ) at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar.

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD

    Multiple Authors

    b. Moḥammad Ṭūsī (1058-1111), one of the greatest systematic Persian thinkers of medieval Islam and a prolific Sunni author on the religious sciences (Islamic law, philosophy, theology, and mysticism) in Saljuq times. Overview of entry: i. Biography, ii. The Eḥyāʾ ʿolum al-dīn, iii. The Kīmīā-ye saʿādat, iv. Minor Persian works, v. As a Faqīh, vi. Ḡazālī and Theology, vii. Ḡazālī and the Bāṭenīs, viii. Impact on Islamic Thought.

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD i

    Gerhard BÖWERING

    (variant name Ḡazzālī; Med. Latin form, Algazel; honorific title, Ḥojjat-al-Eslām"The Proof of Islam”), born at Ṭūs in Khorasan in 450/1058 and grew up as an orphan together with his younger brother Aḥmad Ḡazālī (d. 520/1126; q.v.).

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, ii, iii

    W. Montgomery Watt

    ii. The Eḥyāʾ ʿolum al-dīn, iii. The Kīmīā-ye saʿādat. 

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, iv

    Nasrollah Pourjavady

    iv. Minor Persian works.

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, v

    Wael B. Hallaq

    v. As a Faqīh.

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, vi

    Michael E. Marmura

    vi. Ḡazālī and Theology.

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, vii, viii

    Wilferd Madelung

    vii. Ḡazālī and the Bāṭenīs, viii. Impact on Islamic thought.

  • ḠAZĀLĪ, MAJD-AL-DĪN Abu’l-Fotūḥ AḤMAD

    Nasrollah Pourjavady

    b. Moḥammad b. Aḥmad (ca. 1061-1126), outstanding mystic, writer, and eloquent preacher.

  • ḠĀZĀN KHAN, MAḤMŪD

    R. Amitai-Preiss

    (1271-1304), oldest son of Arḡūn Khan and his eventual successor as the seventh Il-khanid ruler of Persia (r. 1295-1304).

  • ḠĀZĀN-NĀMA

    Charles Melville

    a verse chronicle of the reign of the Il-khan Ḡāzān Khan (1295-1304), by Ḵᵛāja Nūr-al-Dīn b. Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Aždarī.

  • ḠAŻĀYERĪ RĀZĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See ḠAŻĀʾERĪ RĀZĪ.

  • GAŽDAHAM

    Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh

    an Iranian hero of Dež-e Safīd, a fortress near the border seperating Iran from Tūrān, during the reigns of the Kayanid kings Nōḏar and Kay Kāvūs.

  • GAZELLE

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀHŪ, CHINKARA.

  • GAZĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See ISFAHAN xxii.

  • GAZMA

    Cross-Reference

    See CITIES.

  • ḠAZNAVĪ, ABŪ RAJĀʾ

    EIr

    b. Masʿūd III, a poet at the court of the Ghaznavid sultan Bahrāmšāh (r. ca. 1117-1157).

  • ḠAZNĪ

    Xavier de Planhol, Roberta Giunta

    or Ḡazna, Ḡaznīn; province and city in southeastern Afghanistan. The earliest known monuments of Ḡaznī belong to the Ghaznavid period (366-583/977-1187), the best representative of which are the two minarets standing east of the citadel, close to two large mounds resembling mosques.

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  • GAZOPHYLACIUM LINGUAE PERSICAE

    Cross-Reference

    See DICTIONARIES iii.

  • GĀZORGĀH

    Lisa Golombek

    a village approximately 2.5 miles northeast of the city of Herat in present-day northwestern Afghanistan at 34°22′ N and 62°14′ E, situated at an elevation of 4,100 feet.

  • GĀZORGĀHĪ, MĪR KAMĀL-AL-DĪN ḤOSAYN

    Shiro Ando

    b. Šeḥāb-al-Dīn Esmāʿīl Ṭabasī (b. 1469/70), a Timurid ṣadr and author of a collection of biographies of Sufis known as the Majāles al-ʿoššāq.

  • GEBER

    Cross-Reference

    See GABR, MAJŪS.

  • GEDROSIA

    Willem J. Vogelsang

    or Kedrosia; a place-name known only from Classical sources.

  • GEIGER, BERNHARD

    RÜDIGER SCHMITT

    Geiger studied Hebrew and Arabic before being persuaded by Leopold von Schroeder to turn to Indian and Iranian studies. Among his teachers in Vienna, Bonn, Prague, Göttingen, and Heidelberg were the Indologists Leopold von Schroeder, Moriz Winternitz, and Franz Kielhorn and the Iranists Friedrich Carl Andreas (q.v.) and Jacob Wackernagel.

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  • GEIGER, WILHELM

    Bernfried Schlerath

    Geiger’s first publication (1877) was an edited version and annotated translation of the Pahlavi version of the first chapter of the Vidēvdād, the first part of which was his doctoral thesis. Later in 1880 he published a translation with commentary of the third chapter.

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  • GĒL

    Cross-Reference

    tribes in the Arsacid and Sasanian periods. See GĪLĀN.

  • GELDNER, KARL FRIEDRICH

    Bernfried Schlerath

    Geldner’s first significant work appeared in 1874 while he was still a student, in the form of an answer to a prize essay question posed by the Philosophical Faculty at Tübingen. The essay was expanded and published in 1877 under the title Über die Metrik des jüngeren Avesta.

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  • GELĪM

    Cross-Reference

    See KELIM; see also CARPETS v. Flat-woven carpets: Techniques and structures; and  vii. Islamic Persia to the Mongols.

  • GELPKE, RUDOLF

    HERMANN LANDOLT

    Rudolf Gelpke was educated at the universities of Basel, Zürich, and Berlin. He became a noted writer in his early twenties, and his novel Holger und Mirjam was published in Zürich in 1951. His interests in the Islamic world began after a visit to Tunisia in 1952.

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  • GELŠĀH

    Cross-Reference

    See GAYŌMART.

  • GEMCUTTING

    Parviz Mohebbi

    (Pers. ḥakkākī); the first-known reference in Persian to gem cutting is found in an anonymous treatise on jewelry, Jowhar-nāma-ye neẓāmī.

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  • GENÇOSMAN, MEHMED NURÎ

    Tahsın Yazici

    (b. Ağın district of Elazığ, 1897; d. Istanbul, 1976), Turkish poet and translator of Persian works.

  • GENDARMERIE

    Stephanie Cronin

    the first modern highway patrol and rural police force in Persia. The Government Gendarmerie (Žāndārmerī-e dawlatī) was established in 1910 by the second Majles and proved the most enduring in a series of official projects for the modernization of the armed forces under the leadership of foreign officers.

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  • GENDER RELATIONS i

    Farzaneh Milani

    Gender relations in Persia.  Overview of article: i. In Modern Persia, ii. In the Islamic Republic.

  • GENDER RELATIONS ii

    Hammed Shahidan

    ii. In the Islamic Republic.

  • GENGHIS KHAN

    Cross-Reference

    See ČENGĪZ KHAN.

  • GENIE

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    name of a category of supernatural beings believed to have been created from smokeless fire and to be living invisibly side-by-side the visible creation.

  • GENOA

    Michele Bernardini

    an important port city in Liguria, in northwestern Italy, which during the Middle Ages played a significant role between Europe and the East, including Persia. Genoa was sacked by Muslim raiders from North Africa in 935 but became an economic and commercial power during the First Crusade (1096-1101).

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  • GEOGRAPHY

    Multiple Authors

    Geography of Persia and Afghanistan. Overview of the entry: i. Evolution of geographical knowledge, ii. Human geography, iii. Political geography, iv. Cartography of Persia.

  • GEOGRAPHY i. Evolution of geographical knowledge

    Xavier de Planhol

    Geography of Persia and Afghanistan. The concept of Iran and ancient Iranian geography (Justi; Spiegel, I, pp. 188-243 and especially pp. 210-12; Herzfeld, pp. 671-720; Gnoli, 1980, 1989).

  • GEOGRAPHY ii. Human geography

    Xavier de Planhol

    The primordial component of the land of Iran, since it was a sedentary world as opposed to the nomadic Tūrān, must have been situated above the level of the internal steppes and deserts, in the highland river valleys having both arable alluvial soils and plenty of water from the rainfall in the mountains.

  • GEOGRAPHY iii. Political Geography

    Xavier de Planhol

    The territory of Tajikistan corresponds with the predominantly Iranian ethnic sector of the mountainous southeastern periphery of the Bukhara emirate, which came under Russian influence at the end of the 19th century. 

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  • GEOGRAPHY iv. Cartography of Persia

    CYRUS ALAI

    The world’s oldest known topographical map is a Babylonian clay tablet (ca. 2300 B.C.E.) found at Nuzi in northeastern Iraq. The site covered by this map may have lain between the Zagros mountains and the hills running through Kirkuk.

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  • GEOLOGY

    Eckart Ehlers

    This article is concerned with those aspects of the geology of Persia that are of immediate economic and cultural significance for the country and its inhabitants, primarily (1) geological structure and orohydrographic differentiation of Persia, (2) geology and natural hazards, and (3) geology and natural resources.

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  • GEOPOTHROS

    Cross-Reference

    See GŌDARZ.

  • GEORGIA

    Multiple Authors

    (Pers. Gorjestān; Ar. al-Korj). This series of entries covers Georgia and its relations with Iran.

  • GEORGIA i. The land and the people

    Keith Hitchins

    At a crossroads of great empires to the east, west, and north throughout their history, the Georgians absorbed and adapted elements from the cultures of diverse peoples, while at the same time defending their political and cultural independence against all comers. The Georgians are today distinguished by a unique cultural heritage.

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