Table of Contents

  • 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.