Table of Contents

  • HAFT LANG

    Cross-Reference

    See BAḴTIĀRI TRIBE.

  • HAFT OWRANG

    cross-reference

    See JĀMI.

  • HAFT PEYKAR

    François de Blois

    a famous romantic epic by Neẓāmi Ganjavi from the last decade of the 6th/12th century. The title can be translated literally as “seven portraits,” but also with the figurative meaning of “seven beauties.”

  • HAFT QOLZOM

    Ṣafurā Hušyār

    (lit., The seven seas), the title of a Persian dictionary compiled in India in 1813-18 by Abu’l-Moẓaffar Ḡāzi-al-Din Ḥaydar (d. 1827).

  • HAFT SIN

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    “seven items beginning with the letter sin (S),”  a component of the rituals of the New Year’s Day festival (see NOWRUZ) observed by most Iranians. The items are traditionally displayed on the dining cloth (sofra) that every household spreads out on the floor (or on a table) in a room normally reserved for entertaining guests.

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  • HAFT TEPE

    Ezat O. Negahban

    In the 1950s and 1960s, Haft Tepe became part of a large sugar cane plantation. In the course of leveling the land for planting, some of the archaeological remains were destroyed and others exposed. During the construction of the main road to the plantation, a baked brick wall was uncovered and the discovery reported to the Iranian Archaeological Service.

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  • HAFTA

    Badri Gharib

    (“week”), history of the calendar week in Iran.

  • HAFTĀNBŌXT

    Mansour Shaki

    traditional reading of the name of a legendary warlord in southern Persia, mentioned in the Kār-nāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān (The exploits of Ardašīr son of Pābag).

  • HAFTAVĀN TEPE

    Charles Burney

    one of the three largest settlement mounds in the Urmia basin, Azerbaijan, covering fifty acres and not far from the village of Haftavān, itself barely two miles from the district town of Salmās.

  • HAFTŌRANG

    Antonio Panaino

    the circumpolar constellation Ursa Major (UMa),  known in Young Avestan literature under the appellative of haptōiriṇga- (only pl. with star- “star”).

  • HAFTVĀD

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    (Haftwād), the hero of a legend associated with the rise of the Sasanian Ardašir I (r. 224-39). The Šāh-nāma gives his “strange story” (dāstān-e šegeft).

  • HAGIOGRAPHIC LITERATURE

    Jürgen Paul

    in Persia and Central Asia. Hagiographic literature may be defined broadly as a biographical genre devoted to individuals enjoying an exclusive religious status as “saints” or “holy men” in the eyes of the authors.

  • HAGMATĀNA

    Cross-Reference

    See HAMADĀN.

  • HAIFA

    Hossein Amanat

    a port city in northwestern Israel and the site of a number of significant Bahai holy places, administrative buildings, and historical monuments. Bahais consider it their most sacred location after the shrine of Mirzā Ḥosayn-ʿAli Nuri Bahāʾ-Allāh, the prophet of the Bahai faith, situated across the bay in nearby ʿAkkā.

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  • HAIKU

    Eva Lucie Witte

    a Japanese poetic form adopted and employed by Iranian poets since the second half of the 20th century.

  • ḤAIM, MOREH ḤAḴĀM

    Amnon Netzer

    eminent Jewish scholar (b. Tehran, 1872; d. Tehran, 1942).

  • ḤAIM, ŠEMUʾEL

    Amnon Netzer

    generally known as Monsieur Ḥaim or Mister Ḥaim, journalist and Majles deputy (b. Kermānšāh, 1891; executed Tehran, Dec. 15, 1931).

  • ḤAIM, SOLAYMĀN

    Amnon Netzer

    twentieth-century lexicographer, became known as one of the first serious lexicographers to prepare Persian-language dictionaries into and from English, French and Hebrew (1886-1970).

  • HAJAR

    Cross-Reference

    See BAHRAIN.

  • HAJĀR

    cross-reference

    See ŠARAFKANDI, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN.

  • ḤĀJEB

    C. Edmund Bosworth, Rudi Matthee

    administrative and then military office in the pre-modern Iranian world.

  • ḤĀJEB i. IN THE MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PERIOD

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    The office of ḥājeb, implying military command, appears in the Iranian world with the Samanids, where it probably grew out of the amir’s domestic household.

  • ḤĀJEB ii. IN THE SAFAVID AND QAJAR PERIODS

    Rudi Matthee

    In the Safavid period the ḥājeb, the major domo or master of ceremony, was called the išik-āqāsi-bāši, literally “head of the masters of the threshold.”

  • ḤĀJI ʿALILU

    Pierre Oberling

    a Turkic tribe of Persian Azerbaijan. Its main branch lives north of Varzaqān and Ahar, in Qarājadāḡ (Arasbārān); another branch dwells in the vicinity of Marāḡa.

  • ḤĀJI ĀQĀ

    F. Farzaneh

    a satirical novella by Ṣādeq Hedāyat, published in the journal Soḵan in 1945, followed by a second edition in 1952.

  • ḤĀJI BĀBĀ

    Nasseredin Parvin

    a satirical and politically critical newspaper, published in Tehran, 1949-53.

  • ḤĀJI BĀBĀ AFŠĀR

    Anna Vanzan

    son of an officer in the army of the Crown Prince ʿAbbās Mirzā and one of the first Persian students sent to study in Europe (1811).

  • ḤĀJI BĀBĀ OF EṢFAHĀN

    cross-reference

    See HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN.

  • ḤĀJI FIRUZ

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    a prominent type of traditional folk entertainer, who appears as a street performer in the days preceding Nowruz. The Ḥāji Firuz entertains passers-by by singing traditional songs and dancing and playing his tambourine for a few coins.

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  • ḤĀJI MIRZĀ ĀQĀSI

    Cross-Reference

    grand vizier of Moḥammad Shah Qāǰār (r. 1250-64/1834-48) between 1251-64/1835-48. See ĀQĀSI, ḤĀJI MIRZĀ.

  • ḤĀJI PIĀDA

    cross-reference

    Mosque of. See ISFAHAN x, MONUMENTS.

  • ḤĀJI PIRZĀDA

    Anna Vanzan

    (d. 1904), Moḥammad ʿAli Nāʾini, Persian sufi and traveler, whose diary follows the convention of the Qajar safar-nāmas in its description of the wonders seen abroad; he expresses a sincere apprehension for those Iranians abroad whom he felt had forgotten their culture and religion.

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  • ḤĀJI VĀŠANGTON

    Hossein Kamaly

    In his dispatches to Persia Ḥāji Vāšangton presented information about the American political system and society. He openly admired the Americans’ disdain for Europeans and regarded Americans as “alert, intelligent, learned, polite, and wealthy.” He stressed that all government dignitaries were “servants of the people.” 

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  • HAJIABAD

    Philippe Gignoux, EIr

    (Ḥājiābād), site of bilingual inscription of Šāpur I on the wall of a cave near Persepolis. OVERVIEW of the entry: i. The Inscriptions. ii. The Texts.

  • HAJIABAD i. INSCRIPTIONS

    Philippe Gignoux

    The Hajiabad inscriptions in Parthian and Middle Persian were discovered in 1818 in a grotto a few kilometers north of Persepolis. This text describes a feat of archery by King Šāpūr I performed in the presence of kings and princes, of the grandees and the nobles.

  • HAJIABAD ii. THE TEXTS

    EIr

    “This (is) the bowshot of me, the Mazda-worshipping god Shapur, king of kings of Eran and Non-Eran ..."

  • ḤĀJIĀNI

    Bruno Nettl

    a guša or subdivision of a mode in the canonic repertory (radif) of Persian classical music.

  • HAJJ

    cross-reference

    See PILGRIMAGE, forthcoming online.

  • ḤĀJJ SAYYĀḤ

    Ali Ferdowsi

    (ca. 1836-1925), constitutionalist and human rights activist who pursued democratic political reforms in Persia; the first modern Persian to tour the world, the first to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, wrote the first modernist Persian book of travels and the first modern prison notebook.

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  • HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN

    Abbas Amanat

    hero of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier (3 vols., London, 1824), the most popular Oriental novel in the English language and a highly influential stereotype of the so-called “Persian national character” in modern times. 

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  • HAJW

    J. T. P. de Bruijn

    and its synonym hejā, two of the many terms which denote types of humorous writing or light verse in Persian.

  • ḤAKAMI

    Mohammad-Mahdi Khalaji

    (ca.1848-1925-6), Mirzā ʿALI-AKBAR, philosopher and theosopher, known in his lifetime as Ḥakim but later referred to as Ḥakami.

  • ḤĀKEM

    cross-reference

    See ADMINISTRATION.

  • ḤĀKEM BE-AMR-ALLĀH

    Farhad Daftary

    ABU ʿALI MANṢUR, the sixth Fatimid caliph and sixteenth Ismaʿili Imam (r. 996-1021), arguably the most controversial member of the Fatimid dynasty.

  • ḤAKIM ʿALAWI KHAN

    Farid Ghassemlou

    an Iranian physician and author in the service of the Mughal Emperor Moḥammad Shah as his chief physician with the title of Moʾtamen-al-Moluk.  

  • ḤAKIM ATĀ

    Devin DeWeese

    a Central Asian Sufi; he is usually named as a direct disciple of Aḥmad Yasavi, and would therefore have lived in the early 13th century.

  • ḤAKIM TERMEḎI

    Bernd Radtke

    (ca. 820-830-ca. 907-12), ABU ʿABD-ALLĀH MOḤAMMAD b. ʿAli, a prolific mystic author, many of whose writings have survived.

  • ḤAKIMI, EBRĀHIM

    Abbas Milani and EIr

    Ḥakimi was born into an old and prominent family of court physicians. The family had been court physicians since the 17th century, starting with the eponym of the family, Moḥammad-Dāwud Khan Ḥakim, a physician at the courts of the Safavid Shah Ṣafi and Shah ʿAbbās II and the founder of the Ḥakim Mosque in Isfahan.

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  • ḤAKIMOVA, MAWJUDA

    Evelin Grassi

    (1932-1993), Soviet Tajik poetess, editor, and dramatist. Her poetry consists mainly of lyric miniatures on the theme of love and all manifestations of the natural world, from the Pamir mountains to the simplest flower plucked in a park in the suburbs of Dushanbe. 

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  • ḤĀL

    Jean During

    (lit. condition, state), an essential notion in Persian arts, especially music, which is supposed to bring about a meditative state.