Table of Contents

  • ARBERRY, ARTHUR JOHN

    E. P. Elwell-Sutton

    British orientalist (1905-1969).

  • ARCHELAUS

    M. Tardieu

    the assumed author of a Christian polemic against the Manicheans composed before 348 CE.

  • ARCHEOLOGY

    Multiple Authors

    The history of archeological research in Iran may be divided into two periods, before and after the Second World War. The early period can in turn be subdivided into a first phase of mainly French activity (ca. 1884-1931), and a second phase in which archeology in Iran became a multinational affair (1931-40). The modern period can be subdivided into what might best be called the “quiet phase” (1940-57) and the “explosive phase” (1958-78).

  • ARCHEOLOGY i. Pre-Median

    T. C. Young

    As early as the 17th century, a number of European travelers reported with surprise on the remarkable ancient monuments to be seen throughout the countryside. The first scientific and scholarly attempt to deal with one such monument, however, was Rawlinson’s recording of the Bīsotūn (Behistun) inscription (1836-41). 

  • ARCHEOLOGY ii. Median and Achaemenid

    D. Stronach

    The family of ceramics represented in the Median levels at Tepe Nush-i Jan seems to be associated with the moment that the Medes consolidated their power in the vicinity of Hamadān in the second half of the 7th century B.C. 

    This Article Has Images/Tables.

  • ARCHEOLOGY iii. SELEUCID AND PARTHIAN

    K. Schippmann

    Very few monuments from the Seleucid period have been discovered in Iran, and probably none from the time of Alexander the Great.

  • ARCHEOLOGY iv. Sasanian

    D. Huff

    Archeological field work has played a comparatively smaller part in forming the image of Sasanian history and culture than the large number of preserved monuments, buildings, and rock reliefs, collections of coins and objects of art.

  • ARCHEOLOGY v. Pre-Islamic Central Asia

    V. M. Masson

    Archeological remains of almost all the major epochs have now been uncovered, and the materials have been obtained that describe comprehensively the ancient civilizations of Central Asia of the pre-Islamic period.

    This Article Has Images/Tables.

  • ARCHEOLOGY vi. Islamic Iran

    R. Hillenbrand

    From the outset Islamic archeology in Iran was overshadowed by the numerous and splendid sites of earlier periods, and archeological investigation of Islamic sites began appreciably later in the Iranian world than in western Islam and in the Indian subcontinent.

  • ARCHEOLOGY vii. Islamic Central Asia

    G. A. Pugachenkova and E. V. Rtveladze

    The study of the archeology of the Islamic period was initiated in Central Asia in the late 19th century by Turkestan amateurs and St. Petersburg scholars, and has been carried on with growing intensity since Soviet times.