Table of Contents

  • ARMAḠĀN

    L. P. Elwell-Sutton

    a monthly literary magazine founded in 1919.

  • ARMĀʾĪL

    Jes P. Asmussen

    legendary figure in the myth of Ẓaḥḥāk.

  • ARMAITI

    M. Boyce

    one of the six great Aməša Spəntas in Zoroastrianism.

  • ARMAVIR

    R. H. Hewsen

    one of the capitals of ancient Armenia.

  • ARMAZI

    D. M. Lang

    (or ARMAZ-TSIKHE), an important royal city of Georgia.

  • ARMENIA i. IMAGE OF PERSIANS IN

    Robert Thomson

    In the Sasanian period Armenians developed a self-awareness as Christians against the background of their earlier Iranian social and religious culture.

  • ARMENIA ii. ARMENIAN WOMEN IN THE LATE 19TH- AND EARLY 20TH-CENTURY PERSIA

    Houri Berberian

    In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Iranian Armenians were concentrated in Azerbaijan and Isfahan. When demographic studies included the numbers of women, these were noticeably smaller than those for men, most likely because male heads of families were less apt to report about female family members.

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  • ARMENIA AND IRAN

    Multiple Authors

    series of articles that covers Irano-Armenian relations in pre-modern times. 

  • ARMENIA and IRAN i. Armina, Achaemenid province

    R. Schmitt

    a province (satrapy) of the Achaemenid empire; the inhabitants are called Arminiya- “Armenian.” 

  • ARMENIA AND IRAN ii. The pre-Islamic period

    M. L. Chaumont

    under Darius and Xerxes had much narrower boundaries than the future Armenia of the Artaxiads and the Arsacids.

  • ARMENIA AND IRAN iii. Armenian Religion

    J. R. Russell

    In the formative period the Armenians appear to have absorbed Hurrian, Hittite, and Urartian elements in their religious beliefs. Iran, however, was to be the dominant influence in Armenian spiritual culture.

  • ARMENIA AND IRAN iv. Iranian influences in Armenian Language

    R. Schmitt, H. W. Bailey

    attested in written sources since the 5th century A.D. and characterized from the very beginning of the literary documentation by a large number of Iranian loanwords.

  • ARMENIA and IRAN v. Accounts of Iran in Armenian sources

    M. Van Esbroeck

    Since Armenian writing itself begins only around 430, almost forty years after the disappearance of the Armenian Arsacid empire, the historians who write of Arsacid or earlier events belong to a later era.

  • ARMENIA AND IRAN vi. Armeno-Iranian relations in the Islamic period

    H. Papazian

    expansion of Islam in Iran caused a big rift between Armenia, already converted to Christianity, and Iran.

  • Armenians in India

    Cross-Reference

    See JULFA v. Armenians in India.

  • ARMENIANS OF MODERN IRAN

    A. Amurian and M. Kasheff

    Armenians can be found in almost every major city of Iran.

  • ARMENO-IRANIAN RELATIONS in the pre-Islamic period

    Nina Garsoian

    appearance of Armenian literature in the second half of the fifth century CE, in the generation which followed the great revolt of the Armenian nobles in 450 against Yazdgird II’s attempt to re-impose Zoroastrianism on their already Christian country, resulted in its almost total obliteration of Armenia’s ties to the Iranian world.

  • ARMIN

    Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

    the fourth son of Kay Qobād in certain texts of the Šāh-nāma.

  • ARMINA

    Cross-Reference

    See ARMENIA AND IRAN i.

  • ARMOR

    J. W. Allan

    The main evidence for the form of armor used under the Achaemenids comes from Xenophon and Herodotus. Xenophon in his Cyropaedia describes the guard of Cyrus the Great as having bronze breastplates and helmets, while their horses wore bronze chamfrons and poitrels together with shoulder pieces (parameridia) which also protected the rider’s thighs.

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  • ARMOR ii. In Eastern Iran

    Boris A. Litvinsky

    By the 6th, or even 7th, century BCE, the Scythian and Northern Caucasian nomads had formed a complete complex of defensive armor.

  • ARMY

    Multiple Authors

    a survey from early pre-Islamic times to the mid-20th century.

  • ARMY i. Pre-Islamic Iran

    A. Sh. Shahbazi

    materials for a study of pre-Islamic Iranian military concerns fall into four categories: textual evidence; archeological finds; documentary representations (on monuments and objects of art); and philological deductions. 

  • ARMY ii. Islamic, to the Mongol period

    C. E. Bosworth

    Arab armies which overran Sasanian Iraq and Iran in the middle decades of the 7th century A.D. comprised essentially the levée en masse of the male, free Muslim Arab cavalrymen.

  • ARMY iii. Safavid Period

    M. Haneda

    Shah Esmaʿil's army was comprised of tribal units, the majority of which were Turkmen, the remainder Kurds and Čaḡatāy.

  • ARMY iv. Afšar and Zand Periods

    J. R. Perry

    Nāder Shah grew up a raider, made his early reputation as a mercenary, and came to power as commander-in-chief of a fugitive Safavid claimant in Afghan-occupied Iran; by force of arms he drove out the Afghans and intimidated the Ottoman Turks and Russians who had sought to partition Iran.

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  • ARMY v. Qajar Period

    Stephanie Cronin

    at the end of the 18th century, the military forces of the first Qajar ruler Āḡā Moḥammad Khan (r. 1789-97) resembled those of preceding dynasties.

  • ARMY vi. Pahlavi Period

    M. J. Sheikh-ol-Islami

    While few foreign officers were employed, many cadets were sent abroad, mainly to French military academies. Consequently, the nascent military institutions were highly influenced by the style and organization which were prevalent in France.

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  • ARMY vii. In Afghanistan from 1919

    L. Dupree

    Using Turkish advisers, Amānallāh Khan (r. 1919-29)  unsuccessfully tried to create a nationalist-oriented army.

  • ARNAVĀZ

    A. Sh. Shahbazi

    one of the mythical king Jamšēd’s sisters.

  • ARNOLD, THOMAS WALKER

    B. W. Robinson

    Sir (1864-1930), British orientalist.

  • ARPA KHAN

    P. Jackson

    10th Il-khan of Iran (r. 736/1335-36).

  • ARRAJĀN

    H. Gaube

    medieval city and province in southwestern Iran between Ḵūzestān and Fārs.

  • ARRĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    a region of eastern Transcaucasia.

  • ARRIAN

    M. L. Chaumont

    Greek historian (2nd cent. CE).

  • ARROWS in Eastern Iran

    Boris A. Litvinsky

    came in use along with the bow, and the two developed in parallel. In the Bronze Age in eastern Iran, metal arrowheads of bronze were widespread, while skillfully made stone arrowheads, inherited from the earlier period, remained in use. 

  • ARSACIDS

    Multiple Authors

    (Persian Aškānīān), Parthian dynasty which ruled Iran from about 250 BCE to about 226 CE.

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  • ARSACIDS i. Origins

    A. Sh. Shahbazi

    The various accounts of the origins of Arsaces, the founder of the dynasty, reflect diverse developments over time in political ideologies.

  • ARSACIDS ii. The Arsacid dynasty

    K. Schippmann

    The rise of the Arsacids is closely linked to the history of Seleucids, who lost large parts of their Iranian possessions within a period of roughly fifteen years.

  • ARSACIDS iii. Arsacid Coinage

    M. Alram

    Coins minted in Iran under the Arsacids superseded Seleucid currency in the territories successively taken from the Seleucids. In essential denominations, iconography, and script, they are markedly Hellenistic, but they also show Iranian features.

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  • ARSACIDS iv. Arsacid religion

    M. Boyce

    It may reasonably be assumed that, at least from the time they seized power, the Arsacids were professed Zoroastrians.

  • ARSACIDS v. The “Arsacid” era

    EIr

    As an indication of their imperial aspirations, the Parthians established their own dynastic era, beginning with the vernal equinox. The historicity of this era was proved by a Babylonian tablet equating the Seleucid year 208 with 144 of the Arsacid era.

  • ARSACIDS vi. Arsacid chronology in traditional history

    A. Sh. Shahbazi

    The Parthian rule lasted 474 years, longer than any dynastic period in Iranian history, but post-Sasanian sources give various figures for the duration of the Arsacid rule.

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  • ARSACIDS vii. The Arsacid dynasty of Armenia

    C. Toumanoff

    Third dynasty of Armenia, from the first to the mid-fifth century. Arsacid rule brought about an intensification of the political and cultural influence of Iran in Armenia.

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  • ARSACIDS viii. Military Architecture Of Parthia

    Krzysztof Jakubiak

    In the western parts of the Parthian empire, i.e., in the Mesopotamian plain, military and defensive systems and fortifications developed under a clearly strong influence of earlier civilizations that had existed in the region.

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  • ARŠAK

    Cross-Reference

    See ARSACIDS.

  • ARŠĀMA

    E. Bresciani

    name of several Achaemenid notables.

  • ARSAMES

    Cross-Reference

    See ARŠĀMA.

  • ARSANES

    Cross-Reference

    See NARSE.

  • ARSANJĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    a small town in Fārs on the northeastern fringes of the Zagros mountain massif.