Table of Contents

  • INSECTIVORES

    Steven C. Anderson

    members of the mammalian order, small animals with several conservative anatomical characteristics. They retain five digits on all limbs and walk or run with soles and heels on the ground (plantigrade). Three families are represented in Persia and Afghanistan: hedgehogs, family Erinaceidae; moles, family Talpidae; and shrews, family Soricidae.

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  • INSECTS

    Steven C. Anderson

    The insects of Persia and Afghanistan belong to the Palearctic fauna, although in the eastern and southeastern parts of the region there are representatives of the Oriental fauna characteristic of the Indian subcontinent.

  • INSTITUT PASTEUR

    Amir A. Afkhami

    the institute for bacteriology and vaccination founded by the Persian government in 1921 as a branch of Institut Pasteur of Paris. The idea of establishing an institute for microbiological research and immunology in Iran was conceived in the aftermath of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in Persia.

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  • INSTITUTE FOR IRANIAN PHILOLOGY

    Claus V. Pedersen

    (INSTITUT FOR IRANSK FILOLOGI), University of Copenhagen. i. Forerunners. ii. History. Although the Institute was founded only in 1961, it has a long prehistory, since it is the natural culmination of about 200 years of Iranian studies in the Kingdom of Denmark.

  • INSTITUTE OF ISMAILI STUDIES

    Paul E. Walker

    founded in 1977 by H. H. Prince Karim Aga Khan, a gathering point for the Ismaili community’s interest in its own history and in its relationship with the larger world of Islamic scholarship and contemporary thought.

  • INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES AND RESEARCH

    Kazem Izadi

    (MOʾASSESA-YE MOṬĀLEʿĀT WA TAḤQIQĀT-E EJTEMĀʿI), an academic body established in 1958 at the University of Tehran for research, counseling, education, and publication.

  • INTAPHERNES

    cross-reference

    See VINDAFARNĀ.

  • INTERNATIONAL DUNHUANG PROJECT

    Susan Whitfield

    (IDP), founded in 1994, a collaboration among libraries, museums, and research institutes worldwide to conserve, catalogue, digitize and research archeological artifacts, manuscripts, and archives relating to the archeological sites of Central Asia during the period of the ‘Silk Road.’ 

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  • INVERTEBRATE ANIMALS

    Steven C. Anderson

    IN IRAN, AFGHANISTAN, AND NEIGHBORING CENTRAL ASIA. This category includes all animals without a vertebral column. Thus it is a term of convenience that, though widely used, has little biological meaning.

  • INVESTITURE

    Maria Brosius, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Jenny Rose

    the ceremonies and symbolic actions used to assert the assumption of rulership and to elicit affirmation of it. i. The Achaemenid period. ii. The Parthian period. iii. The Sasanian period.

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  • IONIAN REVOLT

    E. Badian

    the unsuccessful uprising of the Greek cities of Asia Minor against Achaemenid control, 499-493 BCE. The main and almost the only source for the Revolt is Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The revolt of the Ionians and of some Aeolians joining them had clearly not been a spontaneous rising. Dislike of Persian rule does seem, at this time, to have been universal among the western subjects.

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  • IQĀʿ

    Gen'ichi Tsuge

    (pl. iqāʿāt), an Arabic term used in texts on music to denote rhythmic mode (or cycle) or rhythmic pattern.

  • IQĀN

    cross-reference

    See KETĀB-E IQĀN.

  • IQBAL, MUHAMMAD

    Annemarie Schimmel

    spiritual father of Pakistan and leading Persian and Urdu poet of India in the first half of the 20th century (1877-1938). He was well versed in the various fields of European philosophy and thought. He was equally well read in the Eastern tradition, and special mention should be made of his analysis of Persian thought in his thesis of 1907.

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  • IRAJ

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    the youngest son of Ferēdun and the eponymous hero of the Iranians in their traditional history.

  • IRAJ MIRZĀ

    Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari

    (1874-1926), JALĀL-AL-MAMĀLEK, a major Persian poet and satirist of the early 20th century and one of the most popular poets of the late Qajar period.

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  • IRAN

    Multiple Authors

    The following sub-entries will provide an overview of the unifying factors which constitute Iran through time and across space, while also showing the complexity and heterogeneity of the components of Iranian culture.

  • IRAN i. LANDS OF IRAN

    Xavier de Planhol

    This article intends to examine the relationship between Iranian culture and its natural environment.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (1) Pre-Islamic Times

    Ehsan Yarshater

    This section provides a concise introduction to the history of Iran from its beginnings to modern times. The generally recognized periods of the country’s history are reviewed, and some of the major motifs or themes in the politics or culture of the various periods are discussed.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period (page 1)

    Ehsan Yarshater

    Iran in the Islamic Period (651-1980s). This section of Persian history begins with the conquest by Muslim Arabs and the introduction of Islam to Persia, the gradual conversion of the Persians to the faith of the conquerors, and some 200 years of Arab rule.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period (page 2)

    Ehsan Yarshater

    Formation of local dynasties. The Taherids (821-73). The first of these dynasties came into being when Ṭāher b. Ḥosayn was appointed the governor of Khorasan with full power.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period (page 3)

    Ehsan Yarshater

    The Saljuqids (1040-1194). The plains of Central Asia, northwestern China, and western Siberia were breeding grounds for nomadic people, who kept multiplying and searching for new pastures.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period (page 4)

    Ehsan Yarshater

    The Safavids (1501-1722). The advent of the Safavids constitutes one of the major turning points in Persian history.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period (page 5)

    Ehsan Yarshater

    The Qajar dynasty (1779-1924). The Qajar were a Turkmen tribe who first settled during the Mongol period in the vicinity of Armenia and were among the seven Qezelbāš tribes that supported the Safavids.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (2) Islamic period (page 6)

    Ehsan Yarshater

    Moḥammad Reza Shah (1941-79). The long history of Russian and British interventions in Persian affairs had fostered widespread resentment against the two great powers.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (3) Chronological Table

    Ehsan Yarshater

    A chronological table of events. This records major happenings of Iranian pre-history and history from the most ancient times to 2005.

  • IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY (4) Index of Proper Names

    Ehsan Yarshater

    Index of proper names that occur in the chronological table.

  • IRAN iii. TRADITIONAL HISTORY

    Ehsan Yarshater

    Before assimilating the results of European research on Persian history, the Iranians were in possession of a historical tradition that combined a mixture of myth, legend, and factual history.

  • IRAN iv. MYTHS AND LEGENDS

    John R. Hinnells

    In the study of religion, myths are seen as narratives which encapsulate fundamental truths about the nature of existence, god(s), God(s), the universe. They explain the origin of the world or of a tribe or of a ritual.

  • IRAN v. PEOPLES OF IRAN (1) A General Survey

    R. N. Frye

    The term “Iranian” may be understood in two ways. It is, first of all, a linguistic classification, intended to designate any society which inherited or adopted, and transmitted, an Iranian language.

  • IRAN v. PEOPLES OF IRAN (2) Pre-Islamic

    C. J. Brunner

    This survey focuses on the early phase of the Iranian-speaking peoples’ presence on the plateau, during the early state-building phase.

  • IRAN v. PEOPLES OF IRAN (3). Islamic Period

    cross-reference

    See Supplement.

  • IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    The term “Iranian language” is applied to any language which is descended from a proto-Iranian parent language (unattested by texts) spoken, presumably, in Central Asia in the late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BCE.

  • IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (1) Earliest Evidence

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    The Indo-Aryan and Iranian tribes separated about 2000 BCE., but attempts to correlate the proto-Indo-Iranians with archeological sites are all problematic.

  • IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (2) Documentation

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    Iranian languages are known from roughly three periods, commonly termed Old, Middle, and New (Modern).

  • IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (3) Writing Systems

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    Writing systems for Iranian languages include cuneiform (Old Persian); scripts descended from “imperial” Aramaic, two Syriac scripts, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian, and Latin.

  • IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (4) Origins Of The Iranian Languages

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    General historical surveys of the Iranian languages.

  • IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (5) Indo-Iranian

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    Several important linguistic changes took place between Indo-European and Indo-Iranian, the reconstructed common ancestor of Iranian and Indian.

  • IRAN vi. IRANIAN LANGUAGES AND SCRIPTS (6) Old Iranian Languages

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    Proto-Iranian split into at least four distinct dialect groups, characterized, among other things, by the typical developments of the palatal affricates and the groups.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (1) Overview

    Gernot Windfuhr

    This entry will discuss the non-Iranian languages spoken in Iran in the course of its history as the result of various peoples settling in parts of Iran and interacting with Iranian-speaking peoples.

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  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (2) In Pre-Islamic Iran

    Gernot Windfuhr

    Of the three known pre-Islamic languages (Urartian, Kassite, and Elamite), only Urartian and Elamite are fairly well known.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (3) Elamite

    Gernot Windfuhr

    Elamite was spoken in the southern Zagros regions, which correspond to the ancient cultural-political entities of Elam and Anshan, and expanded into Akkadian-speaking Susiana.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (4) Urartian

    Gernot Windfuhr

    Urartian was most likely the dominant vernacular around Lake Van and the upper Zab valley. It was written from the late ninth to seventh century BCE in the empire of Urartu.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (5) Kassite

    Gernot Windfuhr

    The Kassites, Akkadian Kaššu, were mountain tribes probably somewhere in the central Zagros who ruled Babylon from the sixteenth to the middle of the twelfth century BCE.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (6) in Islamic Iran

    Gernot Windfuhr

    The non-Iranian languages spoken today in Iran include members of the following language families: (1) Altaic, (2) Afro-Asiatic Semitic, (3) Indo-European, (4) Caucasian (5) Dravidian.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (7) Turkic Languages

    Gernot Windfuhr

    In Iran, there are two distinct branches of Turkic: Oghuz Turkic languages and dialects that represent the southwestern branch of Turkic, and Khalaj, which presents a tiny branch of its own.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (8) Semitic Languages

    Gernot Windfuhr

     First Aramaic and then Arabic had considerable contact with Iranian languages. Their impact differs.

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (9) Arabic

    Gernot Windfuhr

    Most extensive was the Arab settlement in eastern Iran and Greater Khorasan (including northwestern Afghanistan, and Central Asia, including Marv and Bukhara).

  • IRAN vii. NON-IRANIAN LANGUAGES (10). Aramaic

    Gernot Windfuhr

    Speakers of North-Eastern Aramaic have been in contact with Iranian languages in the western regions of the plateau and on the western side of the Zagros for some 3,000 years.

  • IRAN viii. PERSIAN LITERATURE (1) Pre-Islamic

    Philip Huyse

    Iranian “literature” was for a long time essentially of oral nature as far as composition, performance, and transmission are concerned.

  • IRAN viii. PERSIAN LITERATURE (2) Classical

    CHARLES-HENRI DE FOUCHÉCOUR

    We will pay special attention to the early formation and origins of different literary genres in Persian works, even though the very notion of literary genres is somewhat arbitrary and a subject of continuing debate.

  • IRAN viii. PERSIAN LITERATURE (3) Modern

    Cross-Reference

    See FICTION.

  • IRAN ix. RELIGIONS IN IRAN (1) Pre-Islamic (1.1) Overview

    Philip G. Kreyenbroek

    From the 2nd millennium BCE until Islam became dominant in Iran, a remarkable number of religious traditions existed there.

  • IRAN ix. RELIGIONS IN IRAN (1) Pre-Islamic (1.2) Manicheism

    Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst and Philip G. Kreyenbroek

    Called after the founding prophet Mani (216-74 or 277), Manicheism was a syncretistic religion that, combining elements of the various religions current in Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau at the time, claimed to be the ultimate religion.

  • IRAN ix. RELIGIONS IN IRAN (2) Islam in Iran (2.1) The Advent of Islam

    Hamid Algar

    Persian acquaintance with Islam began already in the time of the Prophet. Well known is the case of Salmān-e Fārsi, the Persian companion of the Prophet around whom many legends have been spun.

  • IRAN ix. RELIGIONS IN IRAN (2) Islam in Iran (2.2) Mongol and Timurid Periods

    Hamid Algar

    It is sometimes assumed that the general predominance of Sunnism in Persia was significantly weakened by the destruction of the ʿAbbasid caliphate by the Mongols in 1258.

  • IRAN ix. RELIGIONS IN IRAN (2) Islam in Iran (2.3) Shiʿism in Iran Since the Safavids

    Hamid Algar

    The Safavids originated as a hereditary lineage of Sufi shaikhs centered on Ardabil, Shafeʿite in school and probably Kurdish in origin. Their immediate following was concentrated in Azerbaijan.

  • IRAN x. Persian art and architecture

    Multiple Authors

  • IRAN xi. MUSIC

    Bruno Nettl

  • IRAN AND THE CAUCASUS

    Victoria Arakelova

    the annual international academic journal of the Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies, Yerevan (CCIS), founded in 1997.

  • IRAN LEAGUE

    Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa

    organization established in 1922 by prominent Parsis with the aim of reviving and strengthening cultural and other ties between the Parsis of India and Iran.

  • IRAN NAMEH

    Abbas Milani

    the oldest post-Islamic Revolution scholarly journal published since 1982 by the Iranian Diaspora.

  • IRAN NATIONAL COMPANY

    Parviz Alizadeh

    established in August 1962, the single pioneer of the automotive industry in Iran, assembling and manufacturing various motor vehicles and their spare parts.

  • IRĀN newspapers

    Nassereddin Parvin

    title of five newspapers, of which four were published in Persia and one in Baghdad, Iraq.

  • IRAN, JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTE OF PERSIAN STUDIES

    C. Edmund Bosworth and Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis

    The British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) was inaugurated in December 1961 in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s official visit to Iran in March of that year.

  • IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIRS

    Malcolm Byrne

    the linkage in the mid-1980s of two separate and distinct U.S. covert operations in Iran and Central America.

  • IRĀN-E JAVĀN

    Nassereddin Parvin

    weekly paper published in Tehran from 5 Esfand 1305 to 28 Bahman 1306 Š. (25 February 1926-17 February 1927) as the organ of an association with the same name (Anjomān-e Irān-e javān).

  • IRĀN-E JAVĀN, ANJOMAN-E

    Jamšid Behnām

    (The society of young Iran), a society founded in January 1921 by a number of young intellectuals who had received their higher education in Europe.

  • IRAN-E KABIR

    Nassereddin Parvin

    periodical published in the city of Rašt by the political activist Grigor Yaqikiān, 1929-30.

  • IRĀN-E MĀ

    Nassereddin Parvin

    a political newspaper published in Tehran, 1943-60, with long interruptions. It was an influential liberal paper with nationalistic orientations.

  • IRĀN-E NOW

    Nassereddin Parvin

    title of two political newspapers published in Tehran during the second and third decades of the 20th century.

  • IRAN-IRAQ WAR

    cross-reference

    See IRAQ vii. IRAN-IRAQ WAR.

  • IRAN-NAMEH

    Vahe Boyajian

    journal of Oriental studies, founded in Yerevan, Armenia, in May 1993 as a scholarly monthly publication in the Armenian language.

  • IRĀN/LA REVUE IRAN

    Nassereddin Parvin

    the first philatelic magazine ever published in Persia; it was published from Mehr 1302 to Bahman 1311 Š. (September 1923-February 1933) as the organ of Kolub-e bayn-al-melali-e Irān, a society founded by Naṣr-Allāh Falsafi (q.

  • IRANI, DINSHAH JIJIBHOY

    Afshin Marashi

    (1881-1938), a prominent member of the Zoroastrian community of Bombay.  He was trained and worked as a professional lawyer, but at the same time he was also active as a philanthropist and scholar of Zoroastrianism and Persian literature.

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  • IRANI, HUSHANG

    Sayeh Eghtesadinia

    (1925-1973), radical modernist poet and pioneer of modern mystical poetry in Iran, whose early poems are categorized among the first examples of concrete or visual poetry in Persian poetry.

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  • IRANIAN IDENTITY

    Multiple Authors

    collective feeling by Iranian peoples of belonging to the historic lands of Iran. This sense of identity, defined both historically and territorially, evolved from a common historical experience and cultural tradition.

  • IRANIAN IDENTITY i. PERSPECTIVES

    Ahmad Ashraf

    Perspectives on Iranian identity have been influenced by competing views on the origins of nations.

  • IRANIAN IDENTITY ii. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

    Gherardo Gnoli

    The idea of Iran as a religious, cultural, and ethnic reality goes back as far as the end of the 6th century BCE.

  • IRANIAN IDENTITY iii. MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PERIOD

    Ahmad Ashraf

    While Syria and Egypt lost their languages under the hegemony of Arabic, Iran survived as the main cultural area in the emerging Islamic empire that maintained its distinct linguistic and cultural identity.

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  • IRANIAN IDENTITY iv. 19TH-20TH CENTURIES

    Ahmad Ashraf

    Comparative historians of nationalism acknowledge that Iran was among the few nations that experienced the era of nationalism with a deep historical root and experience of recurrent construction of its own pre-modern identity.

  • IRANIAN IDENTITY v. POST-REVOLUTIONARY ERA

    Cross-Reference

    Iranian identity during the post-revolutionary era will be discussed in a future online entry.

  • IRANIAN STUDIES

    Cross-Reference

    See under the names of individual countries and universities.

  • IRANIAN STUDIES, SOCIETY FOR

    Cross-Reference

    See SOCIETY FOR IRANIAN STUDIES.

  • IRĀNŠĀH

    Mary Boyce and Firoze Kotwal

    term now used by the Parsis as the name of their oldest sacred fire, the Ātaš Bahrām established originally at Sanjān and now installed at Udwada, both in Gujarat.

  • IRĀNŠAHR (1)

    cross-reference

    See ĒRĀN, ĒRĀNŠAHR.

  • IRĀNŠAHR (2)

    EIr

    city, formerly Fahraj, and sub-province (šahrestān) in the province of Sistān and Baluchistan.

  • IRĀNŠAHR (3)

    Manouchehr Kasheff

    an encyclopedic collection of articles published under the auspices of the UNESCO National Commission in Iran. The ambitious idea, as presented in the preface of the first volume, was to produce a highly reliable condensed, but comprehensive, sourcebook covering every aspect of the  civilization of Iran from ancient times to 1960.

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  • IRĀNŠAHR (4)

    Jamshid Behnam

    monthly Persian journal, published in forty-eight issues in Berlin by Ḥosayn Kāẓemzāda Irānšahr,  June 1922 to February 1927. Two principal tendencies can be distinguished in these articles:  a strong interest in ancient Persia and its language and culture, and belief in the potency of a nationalistic spirit.

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  • IRĀNŠAHR ii. Population, 1956-2011

    Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

    the population growth from 1956 to 2011, age structure, average household size, literacy rate, and economic activity status for 2006 and/or 2011.

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  • IRĀNŠAHR, ḤOSAYN KĀẒEMZĀDA

    Jamshid Behnam

    (1884-1962), ardent Iranian nationalist active during the First World War, prolific author on political, religious, and educational subjects, and publisher of the journal Irānšahr 1922-27; he resided in Berlin 1917-36, in Switzerland thereafter.

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  • IRĀNŠAHRI

    Dariush Kargar and EIr

    ABU’L-ʿABBĀS MOḤAMMAD b. Moḥammad (fl. 2nd half 9th cent.), mathematician, natural scientist, historian of religion, astronomer, philosopher, and author.

  • IRĀNŠĀN B. ABI’L-ḴAYR

    cross-reference

    See KUŠ-NĀMA.

  • IRANSHENASI

    Abbas Milani

    a journal of Iranian studies, began publication under the editorship of Jalāl Matini and with the help of generous Iranians who have been willing to subsidize it since the spring of 1989, when its first issue was published.

  • IRANZAMIN, TEHRAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

    J. Richard Irvine

    (Irānzamin, Madrasa-ye Baynalmelali-e Tehrān), a combined Iranian and American international school founded in 1967.

  • IRAQ

    Multiple Authors

    the southern part of Mesopotamia, known in the early Islamic period as del-e Irānšahr (lit. “the heart of the kingdom of Iran”), served as the central province of the Sasanian empire as well as that of the ʿAbbasid caliphate.

  • IRAQ i. IN THE LATE SASANID AND EARLY ISLAMIC ERAS

    Michael Morony

    The late Sasanid era. The late Sasanid winter capital was located at the urban complex on the Tigris river called “the cities” (al-Madāʾen) by the Arabs that included Ctesiphon, Aspānpur, Veh-Antioḵ-e Ḵosrow, and Veh-Ardašir.

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  • IRAQ ii - iii. FROM THE MONGOLS TO THE SAFAVIDS

    ʿAbbās Zaryāb

    The Mongol capture of Baghdad in 1258 came at a time when Persian influence was on the rise but the city as a whole in decline.

  • IRAQ iv. RELATIONS IN THE SAFAVID PERIOD

    Rudi Matthee

    Iraq was frequently the scene and the object of the intermittent wars the Ottomans and the Safavids fought in the 16th and early 17nth century.

  • IRAQ v. AFSHARIDS TO THE END OF THE QAJARS

    Ernest Tucker

    The collapse of the Safavid dynasty in the 1720s ushered in a new round of conflict in Iraq that would continue through the first half of the 18th century.