Table of Contents

  • ʿAQL-E SORḴ

    H. Corbin

    “The Crimsoned Archangel” (lit., “The Red Intellect”), one of the visionary recitals or treatises on spiritual initiation of Sohravardī (d. 1191)

  • ĀQSŪ (1)

    R. E. Emmerick

    town in eastern Turkestan, modern Chinese Sinkiang, about six km to the north of the river Āqsū. It lies on the caravan route between Maralbāšī and Kučā.

  • ĀQSŪ (2)

    C. Naumann

    a river in the Āmū Daryā system. The upper course, called the Morḡāb in the Soviet Union, finds its source in the Little Pamir, the eastern part of Afghanistan’s Waḵān-Pāmīr mountains.

  • ARA THE BEAUTIFUL

    J. R. Russell

    son of Aram, mythical king of Armenia.  

  • ĀRĀʾ WA’L-DĪĀNĀT

    J. van Ess

    doxographical work, famous especially for its information about non-Islamic religions and Greek philosophy, written by Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbaḵtī (d. between 300/912 and 310/922).

  • ʿARAB

    Multiple Authors

    As two of the most prominent ethnic elements in the Middle East, Arabs and Iranians have been in contact with each other, and at times have had their fortunes intertwined, for some three millennia. 

  • ʿARAB i. Arabs and Iran in the pre-Islamic period

    C. E. Bosworth

    Centuries of contacts between the Arabs and Persians should have left behind some legacy in the fields of thought and culture, but such a legacy is not easy to quantify or to evaluate.

  • ʿARAB ii. Arab conquest of Iran

    M. Morony

    During the first two centuries of the Muslim era (7th-8th centuries A.D.) the Sasanian state and much of the east Iranian region in Central Asia were conquered by the mostly Arab armies of the early Islamic state. 

  • ʿARAB iii. Arab settlements in Iran

    E. L. Daniel

    Arab settlements were critical in making the effects of the conquest long term, rather than transitory, and in facilitating the symbiosis of Iranian and Arab cultures within a mutual Islamic context.

  • ʿARAB iv. Arab tribes of Iran

    P. Oberling and B. Hourcade

    Estimates of the Arabic-speaking population of Iran range from 200,000 (1957) to 650,000 (1960). In present-day Iran there are still many families and tribes whose Arab origin can be traced.

  • ʿARAB v. Arab-Iranian relations in modern times

    R. K. Ramazani

    The military coup of Reżā Khan (1921) and his accession to the throne (1925) resulted in sufficient governmental capacity to conduct foreign affairs effectively. Reżā Shah’s good-neighbor policy addressed three major problems with Iraq.

  • ʿARAB MĪŠMAST

    P. Oberling

    an Arab tribe of Fārs, Tehran, and Khorasan.  

  • ʿARAB MOḤAMMAD B. ḤĀJJĪ

    G. L. Penrose

    khan of Ḵīva 1013-32/1602-23 (?).

  • ARAB-SASANIAN COINS

    M. Bates

    Arab-Sasanian is a term applied to several different coinages of early Islamic Iran which were issued under Arab authority using the design and inscriptions of the preceding Sasanian coinage.

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  • ʿARABESTĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See ḴŪZESTĀN.

  • ARABIA

    Multiple Authors

    i. The Achaemenid province Arabāya. ii. The Sasanians and Arabia.

  • ARABIA i. THE ACHAEMENID PROVINCE ARABĀYA

    M. Dandamayev

    In the Bīsotūn and other Old Persian inscriptions that list provinces of the Achaemenid empire in a geographical sequence, Arabāya is placed after Babylonia and Assyria (i.e., Syria) and before Egypt.

  • ARABIA ii. The Sasanians and Arabia

    Daniel T. Potts

    Within a few years after the commencement of Ardašir I’s (r. ca. 224-242) program of conquest, the Sasanians undertook military engagements in both northeastern Arabia and Oman.

  • ARABIAN NIGHTS

    Cross-Reference

    See ALF LAYLA WA LAYLA.

  • ARABIAN SEA

    Cross-Reference

    See OMAN, SEA OF.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE

    Multiple Authors

    The profound influence of Arabic in Iran can be traced to its social, religious, and political significance in the wake of the Muslim conquest, when it became the language of the dominant class, the language of religion and government administration, and by extension, the language of science, literature, and Koranic studies.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE i. Arabic elements in Persian

    A. A. Ṣādeqī

    The proportion of Arabic words in Persian was about thirty percent in the 4th/10th century and reached some fifty percent in the 6th/12th. 

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE ii. Iranian loanwords in Arabic

    A.Tafażżolī

    Loanwords in Arabic, traditionally called moʿarrab (arabicized) or daḵīl (foreign words), include a considerable number of Iranian elements.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE iii. Arabic influences in Persian literature

    L. P. Elwell-Sutton

    any inquiry into the early development of Islamic Persian language and literature is faced with the same problem—the absence of contemporary material.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE iv. Arabic literature in Iran

    V. Danner

    comprises the works of the early Arab conquerors and those of the Persians who wrote in Arabic. The latter, by far more numerous, ensured Iran a major role in the development of Arabic letters.

  • ARABIC LANGUAGE v. Arabic Elements in Persian

    John R. Perry

    The following will survey the topic under the following rubrics: Lexical statistics; Phonology and orthography; Loanword classes; Grammatical elements; Semantics; History and evolution.

  • ʿARABŠĀH, ʿEMĀD-AL-DĪN

    Z. Safa

    a poet and mystic of the 8th/14th century.

  • ʿARABŠĀHĪ

    Y. Bregel

    a dynasty of Chingisid origin that ruled in Ḵᵛārazm from the beginning of the 10th/16th century.

  • ARACHNIDS

    ʿA, Aḥmadī and R. G. Tuck, Jr.

    or ARACHNIDA, Pers. ʿankabūtīān,  the largest chelicerate class of the invertebrate phylum Arthropoda. Zoogeographically, the Iranian arachnid fauna differs little from that of adjacent regions. General behavior and life history information available from authoritative entomology and invertebrate zoology texts applies to Iranian representatives as well.

  • ARACHOSIA

    R. Schmitt

    province in the eastern part of the Achaemenid empire around modern Kandahār, which was inhabited by the Iranian Arachosians or Arachoti. 

  • ARĀK

    X. de Planhol

    Arāk was originally the popular name of Solṭānābād, a town in western Iran, but is now the official name as well.

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  • ARAK iii. Basic Population Data, 1956-2011

    Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

    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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  • ARAKADRI

    W. Eilers

    name of uncertain meaning given in Darius I’s inscription (DB 1.37) to a mountain in the region of Pišiyāuvādā.

  • AṘAKʿEL OF TABRĪZ

    A. K. Sanjian

     Armenian historian, born at Tabrīz in the 1590s, died at Etchmiadzin in Armenia in 1670.

  • ARAL SEA

    B. Spuler

    Daryā(ča)-ye Ḵᵛārazm, inland sea in western Turkestan, bounded since 1924 and 1936 by Karakalpaqistan (part of the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan) in the south and Kazakhstan in the north.

  • ARAMAIC

    F. Rosenthal, J. C. Greenfield, S. Shaked

    The Arameans, the speakers of all those dialects, are first directly mentioned in cuneiform texts from the end of the twelfth century B. C. where they are said to belong to the Akhlame group of people. In the course of time, various names such as Chaldean, Nabatean, Syrian, and Assyrian, came into use for Aramaic-speaking peoples.

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  • ARAMAZD

    cross-reference

    Armenian form of AHURA MAZDĀ.

  • ARĀN (1)

    cross-reference

    or ALĀN, Inscr. Mid. Pers. ʾlʾn-, Inscr. Parth. ʾrdʾn, ʾln-. See ALANS, ALBANIA, ARRĀN.

  • ARĀN (2)

    cross-reference

    See ḤOLVĀN.

  • ĀRĀN (3)

    ʿA. N. Rażawī

    a small town about 10 km north of Kāšān.

  • ARANG

    C. J. Brunner

    a river in ancient Iranian tradition.

  • ARĀNĪ, TAQĪ

    E. Abrahamian, B. Alavi

    (1902-1940), Iranian Marxist and intellectual initiator of the communist Tudeh Party.

  • ARARAT

    X. de Planhol

    extinct volcano in the northeastern extremity of Turkey close to the Iran-Soviet frontiers.  

  • ARAŠ

    Cross-Reference

    Old Persian arašni-, Avestan araθni-) “cubit.” See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

  • ĀRAŠ

    A. Tafażżolī, W. L. Hanaway, Jr.

    Avestan Ǝrəxša, Middle Persian Ēraš, a heroic archer in Iranian legend. The Avesta (Yašt 8.6) refers to what was apparently a familiar episode in the epic tradition.

  • ĀRAŠ, KAY

    A. Tafażżolī

    Avestan KAVI ARŠAN, a member of the Kayanid dynasty in Iranian legend. 

  • ARASBĀRĀN

    Cross-Reference

    See AHAR.

  • ARAŠK

    Cross-Reference

    or AREŠK (Pahlavi), Avestan araska-, Persian rašk “envy,” in Middle Persian sometimes personified as a demon. See RAŠK (pending).

  • ARAXA

    M. A. Dandamayev

    Old Persian form of the name of a leader of a Babylonian rebellion against Darius I.

  • ARAXES RIVER

    W. B. Fisher, C. E. Bosworth

    The Araxes rises near Erzurum (Turkey) in the Bingöl Dağ region: there is only a low divide separating it from the headwaters of the Euphrates river. The drainage-pattern of the Araxes is complex. Subsidiary downthrow basins open off it, and a system of feeder tributaries occupying broad, flat-floored valleys has developed.

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