Table of Contents

• OAK

  Cross-Reference

  See BALŪṬ.

• ʿOBAYD ZĀKĀNI

  Daniela Meneghini

  a Persian poet from the Mongol period (d. ca. 770/1370), renowned above all for his satirical poems.

• OBOLLA

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a port of Lower Iraq during the classical and medieval Islamic periods.

• ŌDŌ, TŌMĀ

  Eden Naby

  (1853-1918), Assyrian scholar and archbishop, born in Alqosh, north of Mosul, but who spent most of his adult life in Urmia, where he was killed.

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• OḠUZ KHAN NARRATIVES

  İlker Evrım Bınbaş

  The Tāriḵ-e Oḡuz begins with a short genealogical and topographical introduction connecting the family of Oḡuz to that of Japheth, or Öljey/Oljāy Khan, as he is called in the text, and his son Dib Yāwqu Khan, who lived nomadic life around the lakes of Issyk-Kul and Balkhash.

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• OHRMAZD

  Cross-Reference

  Middle Persian name of the supreme deity in Zoroastrianism. See AHURA MAZDĀ.

• OIL AGREEMENTS IN IRAN

  Parviz Mina

  (1901-1978): their history and evolution. The history of Iranian oil agreements began with an unprecedented concession granted by Nāṣer-al-Din Shah in 1872 to Baron Julius de Reuter.

• OIL INDUSTRY

  Multiple Authors

  i. Petroleum and its Products. ii. Iran's Oil and Gas Resources

• OIL INDUSTRY i. PETROLEUM AND ITS PRODUCTS

  A. Badakhshan and F. Najmabadi

  The first requisite for an oil or a gas field is a reservoir: a rock formation porous enough to contain oil or gas and permeable enough to allow their movement through it.

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• OIL INDUSTRY ii. IRAN’S OIL AND GAS RESOURCES

  A. Badakhshan and F. Najmabadi

  The Iranian oil industry is the oldest in the Middle East. Although the occurrence of numerous seeps in many parts of Iran had been known since the ancient times, the systematic exploration and drilling for oil began in the first years of the 20th century.

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• OḴOWWAT

  Nassereddin Parvin

  (Brotherhood), the name of four newspapers and one magazine published in Tabriz, Rašt, Shiraz, Kermānšāh, and Baghdad in the early 1900s.

• OKRA

  Cross-Reference

  See BĀMĪA.

• ʿOLAMĀ-YE ESLĀM

  Siamak Adhami

  “The Doctors of Islam,” title given to two medieval Zoroastrian polemical treatises written in Modern Persian.

• OLEARIUS, ADAM

  Christoph Werner

  (1599-1671), German author, secretary to the Holstein mission to Persia (1635-39), noted for the detailed account of his travels in Russia and Persia.

• OLIVE TREE

  Willem Floor

  (zaytun). The cultivated olive tree (Olea europaea L, Oleaceae) is a long-lived, evergreen tree native to the Mediterranean basin. It is valued for its fruit and oil.

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• OLSHAUSEN, JUSTUS

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (1800-1882), German theologian and Oriental scholar, one of the pioneers of Iranian studies in the German-speaking countries. His most important contribution to Iranian studies is his decipherment of the Pahlavi legends of Late Sasanian coins, by which he became almost a second decipherer of the Pahlavī script after Silvestre de Sacy. 

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• OMAN, SEA OF

  Willem Floor

  the sea, or gulf, which divides Iran and the Arabian peninsula and forms the link between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

• OMM AL-KETĀB

  Farhad Daftary

  title of an anonymous Persian book associated with certain early Shiʿite ḡolāt (extremist) groups of southern Iraq. Originally published in Arabic, this work found its way into the manuscript collections of the Nezāri Ismaʿilis of Badaḵšān and became one of their most sacred and secret works, although it does not contain any known Ismaʿili doctrines.

• ONO, Morio

  Ali Ferdowsi

  (1925-2001), eminent Japanese scholar and Iranologist.

• ʿONṢORI

  EIr

  (ca. 961-1039), celebrated Persian poet of the early Ghaznavid period.

• OPIUM

  Cross-Reference

  See AFYŪN.

• OPTICS

  Elaheh Kheirandish

  The science of “aspects” or “appearances” (ʿelm al-manāẓer), as optics was called in the Islamic Middle Ages, has a long and impressive history in both Arabic and Persian.

• ORAHAM, ALEXANDER JOSEPH

  Eden Naby

  (1898-1953), physician and lexicographer, born in the village of Armudāḡāj of the Urmia District, Azerbaijan. He emigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. He is known for the widely used Assyrian-English Oraham’s Dictionary.

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• ORANSKIĬ, IOSIF MIKHAILOVICH

  Ivan Steblin-Kamensky

  It is difficult to name a field of Iranian studies which was not included in Oranskii's studies: history of Iranian studies, history of the teaching of Persian and other Iranian languages, the study of the languages themselves, the development of their grammatical structure, etymology, language contacts, dialectology, ethnology, etc.

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• ORBELI, IOSEF ABGAROVICH

  Karen Yuzbashian

  (1887-1961), orientalist and academician who specialized in Iranian studies, Armenian and Kurdish philology, and archeology.

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• ORDUBĀD

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a town on the north bank of the middle course of the Araxes (Aras) river of eastern Transcaucasia, former in Persian territory but now in the Republic of Azerbaijan.

• ʿORFI ŠIRAZI

  Paul Losensky

  Persian poet of the latter half of the 16th century (b. Shiraz, 1555; d. Lahore, Aug. 1591).

• ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

  Kamyar Abdi

  a major research center devoted to the study of the history, languages, and archeology of the ancient Near East, and Egypt.

• ORMURI

  Ch. M. Kieffer and EIr.

  language spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Ormur or Baraki.

• OROITES

  C. J. Brunner

  satrap of Lydia, Phrygia, and Ionia during the reigns of the Achaemenid kings Cyrus II and Cambyses.

• ORONTES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Old Iranian name, attested only in Greek forms, carried by several personages of the Achaemenid period.

• OŠNUYA

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  (now OŠNAVIYA), a small town of southwestern Azerbaijan, on the historic route from the Urmia basin toward the plains of northern Iraq.

• OSRUŠANA

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a district of medieval Islamic Transoxania lying to the east of Samarqand (q.v.) on the upper reaches of the Zarafšān river or Nahr-e Ṣogd.

• OSSETIC LANGUAGE i. History and description

  Fridrik Thordarson

  According to the 1989 Soviet census, Ossetic is spoken by about 500,000 people; of these, about 330,000 live in North Ossetia and 125,000 in Georgia. These figures should, however, be regarded with some caution as a large part of the Ossetic population is bilingual, also speaking Kabardian, Ingush, or Karachay-Balkar.

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• OSSETIC LANGUAGE ii. Ossetic Loanwords in Hungarian

  J.T.L. Cheung

  One of the features of Ossetic is the number of lexical traces that show ancient contacts with many, often very diverse, ethnic groups.

• OSTANES

  Morton Smith

  legendary mage in classical and medieval literature.

• OSTOVĀ

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  rural district (rostāq) of northern Khorasan, considered in medieval Islamic times to be an administrative dependency of Nišāpur.

• OTANES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Greek form (Otánēs) of the name OPers. Utāna(DB IV 83 u-t-a-n, rendered as Elam. Hu-ud-da-na, Bab. Ú-mi-it-ta-na-na-ʾ), which often is interpreted as “having good descendants”.

• ʿOTBI

  C. E. Bosworth

  the family name of two viziers of the Samanids of Transoxiana and Khorasan.

• ʿOTBI, ABU NAṢR MOḤAMMED

  Ali Anooshahr

  (ca. 961-1036 or 1040), secretary, courtier, and author of the Arabic al-Kitāb al-Yamini, an important dynastic history of the Ghaznavids.

• OTRĀR

  C. E. Bosworth

  medieval town of Transoxania, in a rural district (rostāq) of the middle Jaxartes River (Syr Darya), apparently known in early Islamic times as Fārāb/Pārāb/Bārāb.

• OTTOMAN-PERSIAN RELATIONS i. UNDER SULTAN SELIM I AND SHAH ESMĀʿIL I

  Osman G. Özgüdenli

   The dynamics of Ottoman-Safavid relations during these almost contemporaneous reigns (1512-20 and 1501-24, respectively) are closely connected with the general socio-political and socio-religious conditions in Anatolia, Persia, and the border regions between the two empires since the second half of the 15th century.

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• OTTOMAN-PERSIAN RELATIONS ii. AFSHARID AND ZAND PERIODS

  Ernest Tucker

   At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Ottoman conflicts with European powers overshadowed relations with the Safavids.

• OUPHARIZES

  R. N. Frye

  (Greek name or appellative Wahriz), general of cavalry in the time of Ḵosrow I.

• OUSELEY, Gore

  Peter Avery and EIr

  (1770-1844), entrepreneur, diplomat, and orientalist.

• OUSELEY, WILLIAM

  Peter Avery and EIr

  (1767-1842), officer and orientalist.

• OWL

  Cross-Reference

  See BŪF.

• OXATHRES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Persian masculine name, attested only in Greek forms, borne by several Achaemenid personages.

• OXUS RIVER

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀMŪ DARYĀ.

• OXUS TRUMPET

  Bo Lawergren

  Oxus trumpets are shorter (ca. 10 cm in length) than modern trumpets, but like modern ones they have a flaring bell at the front and a mouthpieces at the back. The most common material is silver, but copper, gold, lead, and gypsum are also used. Some are decorated with human and animal faces of high artistic merit.

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• OXYARTES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Bactrian noble, satrap under Alexander the Great.

• OXYATHRES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  brother of the Achaemenid Darius III and companion of Alexander the Great.

• OZAI-DURRANI, ATAULLAH K.

  EIr

  Afghan inventor and developer of fast-cooking rice, marketed under the name “Minute Rice.”

• ÖZGÄND

  Bertold Spuler

  in the Middle Ages, a thriving city on the eastern edge of the Ferghana basin, on one of the tributaries of the Jaxartes.

• O~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Cross-Reference

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