Encyclopædia Iranica
Table of Contents
-
GABAE
Rüdiger Schmitt
the name of two places in Persia and Sogdiana.
-
GABAIN, ANNEMARIE VON
Peter Zieme
Von Gabain was particularly interested in the question of the extent to which the religious ideas of the Central Asian peoples had been influenced by Zoroastrianism or other Iranian beliefs, and this perspective is reflected in several of her publications.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GABBA
Jean-Pierre Digard and Carol Bier
a hand-woven pile rug of coarse quality and medium size (90 × 150 cm or larger) characterized by an abstract design that relies upon open fields of color and a playfulness with geometry. This kind of rug is common among the tribes of the Zagros (Kurdish, Lori-speaking ethnic groups, Qašqāʾīs).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GABR
Mansour Shaki
a New Persian term used from the earliest period as a technical term synonymous with mōḡ (magus). With the dwindling of the Zoroastrian community, the term came to have a pejorative implication.
-
GABRA
Cross-Reference
See GŌR.
-
GABRI WARE
Cross-Reference
See CERAMICS.
-
GABRIEL, ALFONS
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
-
GABRIELI, FRANCESCO
Giuliano Lancioni
The significance of Gabrieli’s contribution was widely recognized. He was a national member of Accademia dei Lincei since 1957 and served as its president in the years 1985-88; from 1968 to 1977 he was president of Istituto per l’Oriente.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GAČ
Cross-Reference
See GYPSUM.
-
GAČ-BORĪ
Sheila S. Blair
plasterwork or stucco. Gypsum plaster has been used as a building material in Persia for more than 2,500 years. Originally it may have been applied as a rendering to mud brick walls to protect them from the weather, but it was soon exploited for its decorative effects.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GAČSAR
Minu Yusof Nezhad
a village in the Karaj district, situated at an altitude of 2,210 m at 110 km northwest of Tehran and 7 km south of the Kandavān Tunnel on the main road to the Caspian coast.
-
GAČSĀRĀN
Eckart Ehlers
town and oilfield in the province of Ḵūzestān, southwestern Persia.
-
GADĀʾĪ
Cross-Reference
See BEGGING.
-
GÄDIATỊ (SEḰAYỊ FỊRT) COMAQ
Fridrik Thordarson
(1883-1931), Ossetic writer.
-
ḠADĪR ḴOMM
Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi
lit. “pool of Ḵomm”; the name of a pool near a small oasis along the caravan route between the cities of Mecca and Medina, near an area currently known as Joḥfa.
-
GADŌTU
Cross-Reference
a demon. See UDA.
-
ḠAFFĀRI QAZVINI, AḤMAD
Kioumars Ghereghlou
(d. 1568), 16th-century Persian scribe and historian who authored two universal histories and dedicated them to Shah Ṭahmāsp Ṣafavi.
-
ḠAFFĀRĪ, ABU’L-ḤASAN
Cross-Reference
-
ḠAFFĀRĪ, FARROḴ KHAN
Cross-Reference
-
ḠAFFĀRĪ, ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN
Kambiz Eslami
Following in the footsteps of his father, he began his career as one of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah’s personal pages. He had already received the title amīn(-e) ḵalwat when he accompanied the shah on his second journey to Khorasan in 1883. His promotion to the position of chief musketeer in 1883-84 was followed by two other appointments.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠAFFARĪ, MOḤAMMAD
Cross-Reference
a prominent Qajar painter. See KAMĀL-AL-MOLK.
-
ḠAFFĀRĪ, MOḤAMMAD-EBRĀHĪM KHAN
Kambiz Eslami
son of Farroḵ Khan Amīn-al-Dawla, a high-ranking Qajar official. He spent his early years in the inner circle of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah’s court and then traveled to Europe to continue his education. In 1891 he received the title Moʿāwen-al-Dawla, and was named the head of the Commerce Court and deputy minister of justice.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠAFFĀRĪ, NEẒĀM-AL-DĪN
Kambiz Eslami
(1844-1915), Qajar minister and engineer. In his later years, Ḡaffārī held several important positions, including the minister of mines, the minister of public services, and minister of education.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠAFFĀRĪ, ṢANĪʿ-AL-MOLK
Cross-Reference
-
GAFUROV, BOBODZHAN GAFUROVICH
Boris A. Litvinsky
(1908-1977), Tajik statesman, academician, and historian. His energy and administrative skills were instrumental in establishing Tajikistan’s first State University in 1948, and in inaugurating its national Academy of Sciences in 1951. He published more than 500 works.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GAGIK
Cross-Reference
-
GĀH
Mary Boyce
a Middle Persian, Parthian, and New Persian word meaning either “place” or “time.”
-
GĀH-ŠOMĀRĪ
Cross-Reference
See CALENDARS.
-
GĀHAMBĀR
Cross-Reference
See GĀHĀNBĀR.
-
GĀHĀNBĀR
Mary Boyce
Middle Persian name for the feasts held at the end of each of the six seasons of the Zoroastrian year.
-
GAHĪZ
Nassereddin Parvin
weekly newspaper published in Kabul from January 1968 to April 1973, owned, edited, and published by Menhāj-al-Dīn Gahīz (1922-73), who was apparently assassinated by Soviet agents.
-
GAIL, MARZIEH
Wendy Heller
(1908-1993), Persian-American Bahaʾi author, essayist, and translator; child of the first Persian-American Bahaʾi marriage, and the first woman to work at a newspaper in Tehran.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GALBANUM
Hushang Aʿlam
There has been confusion or uncertainty about the nature (color, taste, odor, medicinal properties) of galbanum, the plants involved, and habitats. The confusion has resulted mainly from the similarity of galbanum to resins yielded by some other umbelliferous plants.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠĀLEB DADA, MOḤAMMAD ASʿAD
Tahsın Yazici
also known as Mehmed Esad Galib Dede, Shaikh Ḡāleb, or Şeyh Galib (b. Istanbul, 1757; d. Galata, 1799) poet in Turkish and Persian.
-
ḠĀLEB, Mīrzā ASAD-ALLĀH Khan
Munibur Rahman
(b. Agra, 1797; d. Delhi, 1869), one of the greatest poets of Muslim India who wrote poems in both Persian and Urdu.
-
GALEN
Cross-Reference
See JĀLINUS.
-
GALERIUS
Cross-Reference
See NARSEH.
-
GĀLEŠĪ
Cross-Reference
-
GALĪN QAYA
Cross-Reference
dialect. See HARZANDĪ.
-
GALLIMARD PRESS
Cross-Reference
See PUBLISHING HOUSES.
-
ḠALYĀN
Shahnaz Razpush and EIr
or QALYĀN (nargileh); a water pipe chiefly used in the Middle East and Central Asia for smoking tobacco. It is composed of several parts: the bādgīr (chimney); sar-e ḡālyān or sarpūš (the top bowl; sar-ḵāna in Afghanistan); tana (the body); mīlāb (the immersion pipe); ney-e pīč (hose); and kūza (the reservoir of water).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠALZĪ
Cross-Reference
See ḠILZĪ.
-
ḠAMĀM HAMADĀNĪ
Cross-Reference
See ḠEMĀM HAMADĀNĪ.
-
GAMASĀB
Cross-Reference
See KARḴA RIVER, forthcoming online.
-
GAMBRA
Cross-Reference
See BANDAR-e ʿABBĀS(Ī).
-
GAMBRON
Cross-Reference
See BANDAR-e ʿABBĀS(Ī).
-
GAMES
Cross-Reference
See BĀZĪ.
-
GAN(N)ĀG MĒNŪG
Cross-Reference
See AHRIMAN.
-
GANĀVA
Minu Yusofnezhad
county (šahrestān) and port city on the Persian Gulf in the province of Būšehr.
-
GANDĀPŪR
M. Jamil Hanifi
one of two Šērānī Pashtun/Paxtun tribal segments (the other being the Baḵtīār), who claim origin in southwestern Afghanistan.
-
GANDĀPŪR, ŠĒR MOḤAMMAD KHAN
M. Jamil Hanifi
b. Mehrdād Khan b. Āzād Khan, author of the Persian Tawārīḵ-e ḵoršīd-e jahān, an important chronicle containing genealogical accounts and tables of Pashtun/Paxtun tribal groups.
-
GAṆDARƎBA
Antonio Panaino
(Mid. Pers. Gandarw/Gandarb), a term attested the Avesta as the name of a monster living in the lake Vourukaṧa.
-
GANDHĀRA
Willem Vogelsang
(OPers. Gandāra), a province of the Persian empire under the Achaemenids. The name of Gandhāra or Gandhārī occurs in ancient Indian texts as the name of a people.
-
GANDHĀRAN ART
B. A. Litvinsky
Iranian contribution and Iranian connections. The region of Gandhāra attained its peak of prosperity in the Kushan period (1st to 3rd centuries CE), when it became one of the strongholds of Buddhism.
-
GĀNDHĀRĪ LANGUAGE
Richard Salomon
The language of ancient Gandhāra, the area around the Peshawar Valley in the modern North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, lying near the border of the Indian and Iranian linguistic areas.
-
GANDOM
Daniel Balland and Marcel Bazin
“wheat,” both the plant and the grain. Wheat bread has been the staple of local diets throughout Iranian plateau for millennia. A very broad range of bread wheat varieties has traditionally been grown in the Iranian lands, especially in Afghanistan.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GANDOMAK, TREATY OF
M. Jamil Hanifi
an agreement between Amir Moḥammad-Yaʿqub of Afghanistan (r. February to October 1879) and Major Pierre Louis Napolıon Cavagnari, representing the British Government of India.
-
GĀNEMĪ
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
-
GANG DEŽ
Cross-Reference
See KANGDEŽ.
-
ḠANĪ (article 1)
G. L. Tikku and EIr
Pen name of Mollā MOḤAMMAD-ṬĀHER KAŠMĪRĪ (1630-69), one of the most celebrated poets of Kashmir who wrote in the Indian Style (sabk-e hendī).
-
ḠANI (article 2)
Prashant Keshavmurthy
Pen name of Mollā MOḤAMMAD-ṬĀHER KAŠMĪRĪ (1630-69). He practiced the “Speaking Anew” (tāza-guʾyi) stylistics of the ḡazal that had arisen across the Persian world in the early 1500s.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠANĪ, QĀSEM
Abbas Milani
Qasem Gani was a prolific writer and, during his many years abroad, corresponded with several eminent figures of the time. His diaries, notebooks, and letters have been compiled and edited in twelve volumes under the general supervision of his son, Cyrus Ghani.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠANĪMAT KONJĀHĪ
Arif Naushahi
Persian poet from the Indian subcontinent, famous for composing Nīrang-e ʿešq (d. ca 1713).
-
ḠANĪZĀDA, MAḤMŪD
Hassan Javadi
b. Mīrzā Ḡanī Dīlmaqānī, liberal journalist, historian, and poet (1879-1936).
-
GANJ-ʿALĪ KHAN
Mohammad-Ebrahim Bastani Parizi
a military leader and governor of Kermān, Sīstān, and Qandahār under Shah ʿAbbās I (996-1038/1588-1629).
-
GANJ-E ARŠADĪ
S. H. Askari
An Indo-Persian collection of sayings (malfūẓāt) of the Češtī saint of Jaunpour Aršad Badr-al-Ḥaqq (1047-1113/1637-1701).
-
GANJ-E BĀDĀVARD
Mahmoud Omidsalar
(the treasure brought by the wind), name of one of the eight treasures of the Sasanian Ḵosrow II Parvēz (r. 591-628 C.E.) according to most Persian sources.
-
GANJ-E ŠAKAR, Farid-al-Din Masʿud
Gerhard Böwering
Popularly known as Bābā Farid, a major Shaikh of the Češtīya mystic order, born in the last quarter of the 6th/12th century in Kahtwāl near Moltān, Punjab.
-
GANJ-E ŠĀYAGĀN
Cross-Reference
See Supplement
-
GANJ-NĀMA
Stuart C. Brown
(lit. treasure book), location in a pass at an altitude of about 2,000 m across the Alvand Kūh leading westward to Tūyserkān, 12 km southwest of Hamadān.
-
GANJA
C. Edmund Bosworth
(Ar. Janza), the Islamic name of a town in the early medieval Islamic province of Arrān (the classical Caucasian Albania, Armenian Alvankʿ).
-
GANJA, TREATY OF
Cross-Reference
See NĀDER SHAH.
-
GANJAFA
Cross-Reference
See CARD GAMES.
-
GANJAʾĪ, REŻĀ
Nassereddin Parvin
Ganjaʾī owes his fame to his publication of the politico-satirical weekly Bābā Šamal in 1943-45 and 1947, which became one of the most popular satirical journals in the history of journalism in Persia. Thereafter, most of his colleagues, journalists, writers, and even public figures addressed him as “Bābā Šamal.”
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GANJAK
Cross-Reference
See GANZAK.
-
GANJĪNA-YE FONŪN
Nassereddin Parvin
a biweekly magazine published in Tabrīz for a year (1903-04). It was the first scholarly Persian periodical published in Persia.
-
GANZABARA
Matthew W. Stolper
(treasurer), title of provincial and sub-provincial financial administrators in the Achaemenid empire, extended to workers attached to Achaemenid treasuries.
-
GANZAK
Mary Boyce
a town of Achaemenid foundation in Azerbaijan. The name means “treasury” and is a Median form (against Pers. gazn-), adopted in Persian administrative use.
-
GAOTƎMA
Bernfried Schlerath
an Avestan proper name only attested in Yt. 13.16: “An eloquent man will be born, who makes his words heard in verbal contests, ... victorious over the defeated Gaotəma.”
-
ḠĀR
Ezzat O. Negahban
(cave) and Stone Age cave dwellers in Iran. Caves and rock shelters were particularly attractive living places for the hunter gatherers of the early Paleolithic period. The geography of the Iranian Plateau with its bordering mountain system meant that there were many cave sites which would have been suitable for early cave dwelling man.
-
GARAMAIOI
Cross-Reference
See BĒT GARMĒ.
-
ḠARB-ZADEGĪ
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
-
ḠARČESTĀN
C. Edmund Bosworth
name of a region in early Islamic times, situated to the north of the upper Harīrūd and the Paropamisus range and on the head waters of the Moṟḡāb.
-
GARCIN DE TASSY
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
-
GARDANE MISSION
Jean Calmard
(1807-9), a diplomatic and military project between France and Persia which represented Napoleon’s last attempt to realize his Oriental ambitions. From late 1795, Persia became part of French projects against British India. From the renewal of Franco-Ottoman relations (June 1802), he sought information on Persia.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GARDEN
Multiple Authors
referring to a garden estate, intended primarily for pleasure rather than permanent residence or production of crops, formally laid out, usually incorporating architectural elements, such as ornamental pools, gate-houses, and pavilions.
-
GARDEN i. ACHAEMENID PERIOD
Mehrdad Fakour
Since the first millenium B.C.E., the garden has been an integral part of Persian architecture, be it imperial or vernacular.
-
GARDEN ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD
Lisa Golombek
Donald Wilber’s study of the Persian garden remains the most comprehensive, to which should be added the articles by Ettinghausen and Pinder-Wilson in the proceedings of the Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the Islamic Garden.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GARDEN iii. INFLUENCE OF PERSIAN GARDENS IN INDIA
Howard Crane
Traces of Sultanate period gardens in the Persian style survive around Delhi in the citadel (Kōṭlā) of the Tughluqid Fīrūzšāh III (1351-88) and at Vasant Vihar (14th century).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GARDEN iv. BOTANICAL GARDENS
Borhan Riazi
In Persia there are only three botanical gardens (bāḡ-e gīāh-šenāsī) in the exact scientific sense of this term.
-
GARDEN v. In Persian Literature
Cross-Reference
See BĀḠ iii.
-
GARDEN vi. IN PERSIAN ART
Lisa Golombek
For the decorative arts, the “garden carpet” is the quintessential re-creation of the garden, while paintings depict the garden as a setting for events. Vegetal motifs as ornament may be understood as generic allusions to the garden. In special circumstances, these allusions may be viewed as allusions to paradise themes.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GARDĪZ
Daniel Balland
(Gardēz), a city in the Solaymān Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, 122 km south of Kabul. The city is situated at 2,300 m above sea-level, in a large intramountainous depression watered by the upper course of the Rūd-e Gardīz.
-
GARDĪZĪ, ABŪ SAʿĪD ʿABD-al-ḤAYY
C. Edmund Bosworth
b. Żaḥḥāk b. Maḥmūd, Persian historian of the early 5th/11th century. He was clearly connected with the Ghaznavid court and administration and close to the sultans.
-
GARDŌY
Cross-Reference
sister of Bahrām Čōbīn. See Bahrām VI Čōbīn.
-
GARGAR RIVER
Cross-Reference
See KĀRŪN RIVER.
-
GARLIC
Etrat Elahi
or allium sativum; a species in the onion family Alliaceae used as an ingredient in a variety of Persian dishes mainly as a condiment.
-
GARMAPADA
Rüdiger Schmitt
name of the fourth month (June-July) of the Old Persian calendar.
-
GARMSĀR
Bernard Hourcade
a region (Qešlāq and Garmsār) in the province of Semnān situated beyond the Caspian Gates, known particularly as a stopover on the great road to Khorasan.
-
GARMSĪR AND SARDSĪR
Xavier de Planhol
lit. "warm zones and cold zones"; two terms identifying regional entities that form a major geographical contrast deeply affecting the popular conscience in Persia.
-
GARŌDMĀN
William W. Malandra
the Pahlavi name for heaven and paradise.
-
GARRETT COLLECTION
Kambiz Eslami
one of the finest collections of Near Eastern manuscripts, bequeathed to the Princeton University Library by Robert Garrett (1875-1961), a graduate and a trustee of the university.
-
GARRŪS
Cross-Reference
See under KURDISTAN, forthcoming online.
-
GARRŪSĪ
Cross-Reference
See KURDISH DIALECTS, forthcoming online.
-
GARRŪSĪ, AMĪR NEẒĀM
Cross-Reference
See AMĪR NEẒĀM GARRŪSĪ.
-
GARRŪSĪ, FAŻEL KHAN
Cross-Reference
-
GARŠĀH
Cross-Reference
See GAYŌMART.
-
GARŠĀSP
Cross-Reference
See KARŠĀSP.
-
GARŠĀSP-NĀMA
François de Blois
or Karšāsp-nāma; a long heroic epic by Asadī Ṭūsī (d. 1072/73) completed, as the author says in the epilogue, in 1066, and dedicated to a ruler of Naḵjavān by the name of Abū Dolaf.
-
GARSĒVAZ
Cross-Reference
See KARSĒVAZ.
-
GAS, NATURAL
Cross-Reference
-
ḠAṢB
Forthcoming
concept in Shiʿite law, meaning usurpation or unlawful seizure. See Supplement.
-
GASTEIGER, ALBERT JOSEPH
HELMUT SLABY
In 1870, Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah decided to make a pilgrimage to Karbalāʾ, and Gasteiger repaired and partially rebuilt the road via Hamadān and Kermānšāh to the Turkish border and also rendered the road from Kangāvar via Qom to Tehran usable.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GATE
Cross-Reference
See DARVĀZA.
-
GATHAS
Multiple Authors
or GĀΘĀS; the core of the great Mazdayasnian liturgy, the Yasna, consisting of five gāθās, or modes of song (gā) that comprise seventeen songs composed in Old Avestan language, and arranged according to their five different syllabic meters.
-
GATHAS i
Helmut Humbach
Each single song covers one chapter (Av. hāiti-, Phl. hā) of the Yasna.
-
GATHAS ii
William W. Malandra
Of the entire corpus of the Avesta, the Gathas have been translated far more frequently than any of its other divisions.
-
GAUB(A)RUVA
Rüdiger Schmitt
Old Persian personal name, spelled g-u-b-ru-u-v (DB IV 84 etc.) and reflected in Elamite Kam-bar-ma, Babylonian Gu-ba-ru(-ʾ) (DB etc.), Ku-bar-ra (DNc 1), Gu-ba(r)-ri, etc., Aramaic gwbrw (not gwbrwh, as restored in the past), Greek Gōbrýās, Gōbrýēs, and Latin Gobryas.
-
GAUDEREAU, MARTIN
Jacqueline Calmard-Compas
(b. Langeais, 1663; d. Paris, 1743), French missionary priest (and later Abbé) who left valuable observations on Persia and played a part in Franco-Persian relations.
-
GAUGAMELA
Ernst Badian
site of one of the greatest battles in history, resulting in the decisive victory of Alexander the Great over Darius III on 1 October 331 B.C.E.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GAUMĀTA
Pierre Briant
according to the Bīsotūn inscriptions, the Magian pretender who seized the Achaemenid throne by claiming to be Bardiya (Smerdis), the son of Cyrus the Great.
-
GĀV
Cross-Reference
See CATTLE.
-
GĀV-ZABĀN
Hushang Aʿlam
lit. ”ox-tongue” (in reference to the rough, tongue-shaped leaves of the plant); the popular designation for several medicinal species of the borage family (Boraginaceae).
-
GAVA
Cross-Reference
See SOGHDIA.
-
GĀVĀHAN
Cross-Reference
See PLOW.
-
ḠĀVĀL
Jean During
or daf; the most widespread percussion instrument in the Republic of Azerbaijan, played as much in artistic as in popular music and professional ensembles.
-
GAVAN
Cross-Reference
plant of the genus Astragalus. See TRAGACANTH (pending).
-
GĀVĀN GĪLĀNĪ
Cross-Reference
See MAḤMŪD GĪLĀNĪ.
-
GAVAZN
Cross-Reference
See RED DEER.
-
GĀVBAND
Amir Ismail Ajami
the owner of the oxen (gāv) in the traditional farming system of Persia.
-
GĀVBĀRA
Cross-Reference
See DABUYIDS.
-
GĀVBĀZĪ
Christian Bromberger
arranged fights between bulls. These now take place only in the Caspian provinces of Gīlān and Mazandarān. In the past, however, they were common throughout Persia and formed part of the entertainment in local festivities along with other games involving pitting animals and creatures of all kinds against each other.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĀVMĪŠ
Cross-Reference
buffalo. See CATTLE.
-
GAVOR QALʿA
Cross-Reference
See GYAUR KALA.
-
GĀW Ī ĒWDĀD
William W. Malandra
or ēwagdād; the name of the primordial Bovine in Zoroastrian mythology.
-
ḠAWṮ KHAN, NAWWĀB MOḴTĀR-AL-MOLK
Cross-Reference
See NAWWĀB-E DAKHAN.
-
ḠAWṮĪ, MOḤAMMAD
K. A. Nizami
b. Ḥasan b. Mūsā Šaṭṭārī MANDOVĪ (b. Mandu, 1554), author of Golzār-e-abrār, a Persian hagiography of Indian saints.
-
ḠAYBA
Said Amir Arjomand
(Pers. ḡaybat) lit. "absence"; term used by the Shiʿites to refer to the occultation of the Hidden Imam.
-
ḠĀYER KHAN
Peter Jackson
b. Tekeš (d. 1220), Turkish general of the Ḵᵛārazmšāh ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Moḥammad.
-
GAYḴĀTŪ KHAN
Peter Jackson
(1291-95) fifth Mongol Il-khan of Persia; his coins also bear the name Īrinjīn Dūrjī (Tibetan Rin-chen rDo-rje, lit. “Jewel Diamond”) bestowed upon him by Buddhist lamas.
-
GAYŌMART
Mansour Shaki
or Gayūmarṯ, Kayūmarṯ; the sixth of the heptad in Mazdean myth of creation, the protoplast of man, and the first king in Iranian mythical history.
-
GAYŌMARD (ARTICLE 2)
Carlo Cereti
in the Zoroastrian tradition, a primordial giant, the first man from whom mankind descends.
-
GAYSĀTA
Hiroshi Kumamoto
the name of a town in Khotanese documents in the A. F. R. Hoernle, Mark Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, and N. F. Petrovsky collections.
-
GAZ (1)
B. Grami, M. R. Ghanoonparvar
common term in Persian for several species of the genera Tamarix (desert trees) and Astragalus (spiny shrubs of gavan); also the name of a confection made with the sweet exudate (gaz-angobīn) produced on Astragalus.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GAZ (2)
Minu Yusofnezhad
or Jaz; a town in the province of Isfahan, of the šahrestān of Barḵᵛār and Mayma, situated 18 km north of the city of Isfahan at an altitude of 1,578 m above sea level.
-
ḠAZĀ
Cross-Reference
-
GAZA
Cross-Reference
See GANZAK.
-
GAZACA
Cross-Reference
See GANZAK.
-
ḠAŻĀʾERĪ
Etan Kohlberg
nesba of two Imami authors and traditionists (10th-11th centuries).
-
ḠAŻĀʾERĪ RĀZĪ, ABŪ ZAYD MOḤAMMAD
François de Blois
or ḠAŻĀYERĪ RĀZĪ, b. ʿALĪ, Persian poet of the early 11th century.
-
ḠAZAL
Multiple Authors
the most important Persian lyric, adopted also by literatures influenced by the classical Persian tradition, in particular Turkish and Urdu poetry.
-
ḠAZAL i. HISTORY
J. T. P. de Bruijn
The basic meaning of the word in Arabic is “spinning.” At a very early stage, the figurative sense of “having amorous talks with women, flirting” must have led to the association with erotic poetry.
-
ḠAZAL ii. CHARACTERISTICS AND CONVENTIONS
Ehsan Yarshater
The Persian ḡazal, especially the Hafezian and the post-Hafezian, does not usually follow a sustained narrative, but consists of a number of lines and statements largely independent of each other.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ MAŠHADĪ
Munibur Rahman
(b. Mašhad, 1526-27, d. Ahmadabad, 1572), poet laureate in Persian (malek-al-šoʿarāʾ) at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD
Multiple Authors
b. Moḥammad Ṭūsī (1058-1111), one of the greatest systematic Persian thinkers of medieval Islam and a prolific Sunni author on the religious sciences (Islamic law, philosophy, theology, and mysticism) in Saljuq times. Overview of entry: i. Biography, ii. The Eḥyāʾ ʿolum al-dīn, iii. The Kīmīā-ye saʿādat, iv. Minor Persian works, v. As a Faqīh, vi. Ḡazālī and Theology, vii. Ḡazālī and the Bāṭenīs, viii. Impact on Islamic Thought.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD i
Gerhard BÖWERING
(variant name Ḡazzālī; Med. Latin form, Algazel; honorific title, Ḥojjat-al-Eslām"The Proof of Islam”), born at Ṭūs in Khorasan in 450/1058 and grew up as an orphan together with his younger brother Aḥmad Ḡazālī (d. 520/1126; q.v.).
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, ii, iii
W. Montgomery Watt
ii. The Eḥyāʾ ʿolum al-dīn, iii. The Kīmīā-ye saʿādat.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, iv
Nasrollah Pourjavady
iv. Minor Persian works.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, v
Wael B. Hallaq
v. As a Faqīh.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, vi
Michael E. Marmura
vi. Ḡazālī and Theology.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, vii, viii
Wilferd Madelung
vii. Ḡazālī and the Bāṭenīs, viii. Impact on Islamic thought.
-
ḠAZĀLĪ, MAJD-AL-DĪN Abu’l-Fotūḥ AḤMAD
Nasrollah Pourjavady
b. Moḥammad b. Aḥmad (ca. 1061-1126), outstanding mystic, writer, and eloquent preacher.
-
ḠĀZĀN KHAN, MAḤMŪD
R. Amitai-Preiss
(1271-1304), oldest son of Arḡūn Khan and his eventual successor as the seventh Il-khanid ruler of Persia (r. 1295-1304).
-
ḠĀZĀN-NĀMA
Charles Melville
a verse chronicle of the reign of the Il-khan Ḡāzān Khan (1295-1304), by Ḵᵛāja Nūr-al-Dīn b. Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Aždarī.
-
ḠAŻĀYERĪ RĀZĪ
Cross-Reference
See ḠAŻĀʾERĪ RĀZĪ.
-
GAŽDAHAM
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh
an Iranian hero of Dež-e Safīd, a fortress near the border seperating Iran from Tūrān, during the reigns of the Kayanid kings Nōḏar and Kay Kāvūs.
-
GAZELLE
Cross-Reference
-
GAZĪ
Cross-Reference
See ISFAHAN xxii.
-
GAZMA
Cross-Reference
See CITIES.
-
ḠAZNAVĪ, ABŪ RAJĀʾ
EIr
b. Masʿūd III, a poet at the court of the Ghaznavid sultan Bahrāmšāh (r. ca. 1117-1157).
-
ḠAZNĪ
Xavier de Planhol, Roberta Giunta
or Ḡazna, Ḡaznīn; province and city in southeastern Afghanistan. The earliest known monuments of Ḡaznī belong to the Ghaznavid period (366-583/977-1187), the best representative of which are the two minarets standing east of the citadel, close to two large mounds resembling mosques.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GAZOPHYLACIUM LINGUAE PERSICAE
Cross-Reference
See DICTIONARIES iii.
-
GĀZORGĀH
Lisa Golombek
a village approximately 2.5 miles northeast of the city of Herat in present-day northwestern Afghanistan at 34°22′ N and 62°14′ E, situated at an elevation of 4,100 feet.
-
GĀZORGĀHĪ, MĪR KAMĀL-AL-DĪN ḤOSAYN
Shiro Ando
b. Šeḥāb-al-Dīn Esmāʿīl Ṭabasī (b. 1469/70), a Timurid ṣadr and author of a collection of biographies of Sufis known as the Majāles al-ʿoššāq.
-
GEBER
Cross-Reference
See GABR, MAJŪS.
-
GEDROSIA
Willem J. Vogelsang
or Kedrosia; a place-name known only from Classical sources.
-
GEIGER, BERNHARD
RÜDIGER SCHMITT
Geiger studied Hebrew and Arabic before being persuaded by Leopold von Schroeder to turn to Indian and Iranian studies. Among his teachers in Vienna, Bonn, Prague, Göttingen, and Heidelberg were the Indologists Leopold von Schroeder, Moriz Winternitz, and Franz Kielhorn and the Iranists Friedrich Carl Andreas (q.v.) and Jacob Wackernagel.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEIGER, WILHELM
Bernfried Schlerath
Geiger’s first publication (1877) was an edited version and annotated translation of the Pahlavi version of the first chapter of the Vidēvdād, the first part of which was his doctoral thesis. Later in 1880 he published a translation with commentary of the third chapter.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĒL
Cross-Reference
tribes in the Arsacid and Sasanian periods. See GĪLĀN.
-
GELDNER, KARL FRIEDRICH
Bernfried Schlerath
Geldner’s first significant work appeared in 1874 while he was still a student, in the form of an answer to a prize essay question posed by the Philosophical Faculty at Tübingen. The essay was expanded and published in 1877 under the title Über die Metrik des jüngeren Avesta.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GELĪM
Cross-Reference
See KELIM; see also CARPETS v. Flat-woven carpets: Techniques and structures; and vii. Islamic Persia to the Mongols.
-
GELPKE, RUDOLF
HERMANN LANDOLT
Rudolf Gelpke was educated at the universities of Basel, Zürich, and Berlin. He became a noted writer in his early twenties, and his novel Holger und Mirjam was published in Zürich in 1951. His interests in the Islamic world began after a visit to Tunisia in 1952.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GELŠĀH
Cross-Reference
See GAYŌMART.
-
GEMCUTTING
Parviz Mohebbi
(Pers. ḥakkākī); the first-known reference in Persian to gem cutting is found in an anonymous treatise on jewelry, Jowhar-nāma-ye neẓāmī.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GENÇOSMAN, MEHMED NURÎ
Tahsın Yazici
(b. Ağın district of Elazığ, 1897; d. Istanbul, 1976), Turkish poet and translator of Persian works.
-
GENDARMERIE
Stephanie Cronin
the first modern highway patrol and rural police force in Persia. The Government Gendarmerie (Žāndārmerī-e dawlatī) was established in 1910 by the second Majles and proved the most enduring in a series of official projects for the modernization of the armed forces under the leadership of foreign officers.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GENDER RELATIONS i
Farzaneh Milani
Gender relations in Persia. Overview of article: i. In Modern Persia, ii. In the Islamic Republic.
-
GENDER RELATIONS ii
Hammed Shahidan
ii. In the Islamic Republic.
-
GENGHIS KHAN
Cross-Reference
See ČENGĪZ KHAN.
-
GENIE
Mahmoud Omidsalar
name of a category of supernatural beings believed to have been created from smokeless fire and to be living invisibly side-by-side the visible creation.
-
GENOA
Michele Bernardini
an important port city in Liguria, in northwestern Italy, which during the Middle Ages played a significant role between Europe and the East, including Persia. Genoa was sacked by Muslim raiders from North Africa in 935 but became an economic and commercial power during the First Crusade (1096-1101).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEOGRAPHY
Multiple Authors
Geography of Persia and Afghanistan. Overview of the entry: i. Evolution of geographical knowledge, ii. Human geography, iii. Political geography, iv. Cartography of Persia.
-
GEOGRAPHY i. Evolution of geographical knowledge
Xavier de Planhol
Geography of Persia and Afghanistan. The concept of Iran and ancient Iranian geography (Justi; Spiegel, I, pp. 188-243 and especially pp. 210-12; Herzfeld, pp. 671-720; Gnoli, 1980, 1989).
-
GEOGRAPHY ii. Human geography
Xavier de Planhol
The primordial component of the land of Iran, since it was a sedentary world as opposed to the nomadic Tūrān, must have been situated above the level of the internal steppes and deserts, in the highland river valleys having both arable alluvial soils and plenty of water from the rainfall in the mountains.
-
GEOGRAPHY iii. Political Geography
Xavier de Planhol
The territory of Tajikistan corresponds with the predominantly Iranian ethnic sector of the mountainous southeastern periphery of the Bukhara emirate, which came under Russian influence at the end of the 19th century.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEOGRAPHY iv. Cartography of Persia
CYRUS ALAI
The world’s oldest known topographical map is a Babylonian clay tablet (ca. 2300 B.C.E.) found at Nuzi in northeastern Iraq. The site covered by this map may have lain between the Zagros mountains and the hills running through Kirkuk.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEOLOGY
Eckart Ehlers
This article is concerned with those aspects of the geology of Persia that are of immediate economic and cultural significance for the country and its inhabitants, primarily (1) geological structure and orohydrographic differentiation of Persia, (2) geology and natural hazards, and (3) geology and natural resources.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEOPOTHROS
Cross-Reference
See GŌDARZ.
-
GEORGIA
Multiple Authors
(Pers. Gorjestān; Ar. al-Korj). This series of entries covers Georgia and its relations with Iran.
-
GEORGIA i. The land and the people
Keith Hitchins
At a crossroads of great empires to the east, west, and north throughout their history, the Georgians absorbed and adapted elements from the cultures of diverse peoples, while at the same time defending their political and cultural independence against all comers. The Georgians are today distinguished by a unique cultural heritage.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEORGIA ii. History of Iranian-Georgian Relations
Keith Hitchins
Between the Achaemenid era and the beginning of the 19th century, Persia helped to shape Georgian political institutions, modified social structure and land holding, and enriched literature and culture.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEORGIA iii. Iranian elements in Georgian art and archeology
Gocha R. Tsetskhladze
Ancient Georgian tribes had close cultural contacts with Near Eastern civilizations from the 18th century BCE. Iranian elements appeared from the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C.E., as they did in the art of the entire Caucasian region.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEORGIA iv. Literary contacts with Persia
Aleksandre Gvakharia
The tribes of Georgia had a well-established and vast literary tradition and folklore long before the Christian era. None of the pre-Christian Georgian literary works have survived, however. Christianity became established in Georgia as an official religion at the beginning of the 4th century.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEORGIA v. LINGUISTIC CONTACTS WITH IRANIAN LANGUAGES
Thea Chkeidze
Due to many centuries of close contacts between Georgia and Persia, a large number of Iranian loanwords came into the Georgian language.
-
GEORGIA vi. Iranian studies and collections in Georgia
Keith Hitchins
The institutional foundations of Iranian studies in Georgia were laid after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
-
GEORGIA vii. Georgians in the Safavid Administration
Rudi Matthee
Safavid interaction with Georgia and its inhabitants dates from the inception of the state in the early 16th century, when Georgians fought alongside the Qezelbāš in Shah Esmāʿīl I’s arm.
-
GEORGIA viii. Georgian communities in Persia
Pierre Oberling
Many thousands of Georgians, Armenians, and Circassians who were transplanted to Persia by Shah ʿAbbās I (996-1038/1588-1629) were peasants, and they were settled in villages in the Persian hinterland.
-
GEORGIEVSK, TREATY OF
Cross-Reference
See GEORGIA, iii.
-
GEOY TEPE
Ezat O. Negahban
a rich archeological site located in western Azerbaijan about 7 km south of the town of Urmia (Reżāʾīya) plain made known through the aerial survey of ancient sites in Persia carried out by Erich F. Schmidt in the 1930s.
-
GERĀMĪ
Cross-Reference
son of Jāmāsp. See JĀMĀSP.
-
GERĀYLĪ
Pierre Oberling
a Turkic tribe of Khorasan, Gorgān, and Māzandarān.
-
GERDKŪH
Farhad Daftary
a fortress on the summit of an isolated rocky hill in the Alborz mountains, situated some 18 km west of Dāmḡān in northern Persia.
-
GERDŪ
Cross-Reference
See WALNUT.
-
GEREH-SĀZĪ
Marcus Milwright
(lit. "making knot”), a form of geometric interlaced strapwork ornament that is commonly found in architecture and the minor arts throughout the Islamic world. In Persian Islamic architecture gereh-sāzī designs exist in a variety of media, particularly cut brickwork (bannāʾī), stucco, and cut tilework (mosaic faïence).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEREŠK
Daniel Balland
a small oasis-city on the right bank of the Helmand river in Southern Afghanistan, the headquarters of the district (woloswālī) of Nahr-e Serāj within the province of Helmand.
-
GERMANIKEIA
Erich Kettenhofen
city in the ancient country of Commagene in the Roman province of Syria, present-day Maraş in southeast Turkey.
-
GERMANIOI
Pierre Briant
(also Karmanians, Carmanians), name of an ancient Persian tribe engaged in farming.
-
GERMANY
Multiple Authors
i. German-Persian diplomatic relations, ii. Archeological excavations and studies, iii. Iranian studies in German: Pre-Islamic period, iv. Iranian studies in German: Islamic period, v. German travelers and explorers in Persia, vi. Collections and study of Persian art in Germany, vii. Persia in German literature, viii. German cultural influence in Persia, ix. Germans in Persia, x. The Persian community in Germany.
-
GERMANY i. German-Persian diplomatic relations
Oliver Bast
Around 1555 a man coming from Italy, who called himself the son of the “king of Persia,” turned up at the University of Wittenberg.
-
GERMANY ii. Archeological excavations and studies
Dietrich Huff
The first Germans who reported on the historical and archeological monuments of the ancient Persian world, were, as in other nations, adventurers and travelers of a different kind.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GERMANY iii. Iranian studies in German: Pre-Islamic period
Rüdiger Schmitt
This contribution aims at presenting an overview of the studies on all aspects of the culture of pre-Islamic Iran as conducted by German, Austrian, and Swiss scholars.
-
GERMANY iv. Iranian studies in German: Islamic Period
Bert G. Fragner
Until World War I, there were only a few scholars concentrating on subjects specifically Iranian, but many Orientalists did not refrain from dealing with Iranian, particularly Persian, affairs.
-
GERMANY v. German travelers and explorers in Persia
Oliver Bast
Hans Schiltberger, a Bavarian soldier, was the first German to give an eyewitness account of his travels in Persia. Initially captured by the Ottomans in 1396, he later became a prisoner of Tīmūr at the battle of Ankara (1402).
-
GERMANY vi. Collections and Study of Persian Art in Germany
Jens Kröger
From the 19th century on, Persian works of art were collected systematically to acquire knowledge of the world and to educate and inspire artists and craftsmen. Collecting, exhibiting, and studying Persian art reached an unprecedented scale in the 20th century.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GERMANY viii. German cultural influence in Persia
Christl Catanzaro
A lasting influence was mainly exercised on Persians who either attended a German school in Persia, had other personal contacts with Germans, studied in Germany, or worked there.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GERMANY ix. Germans in Persia
Oliver Bast
The Germans in Persia who have risen to a certain prominence fall mainly into one or more of the following categories: a) travelers and explorers (see above); b) experts in the service of the Persian government; c) agents and soldiers; d) members of German institutions in Persia.
-
GERMANY x. The Persian community in Germany
Asghar Schirazi
Only a small number of Persians resided in Germany before World War I. They were for the most part students besides several merchants and a few political emigrants.
-
GERMANY xi. Iranian Coins in the Federal Bank of Germany
Karin Mosig-Walburg
The collection of Iranian coins in the Deutsche Bundesbank comprises a number of pieces of rare or very rare specimens, almost all minted in precious metal, from Achaemenids to Pahlavi dynasties.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GEROWGĀN-GĪRĪ
Cross-Reference
-
GEŠNĪZ
Cross-Reference
See CORIANDER.
-
GĒSŪ-DARĀZ
Cross-Reference
See GĪSŪ-DARĀZ.
-
GĒTĪG AND MĒNŌG
SHAUL SHAKED
a pair of Middle Persian terms that designate the two forms of existence according to the traditional Zoroastrian view of the world as expressed in the Pahlavi books.
-
GƎUŠ TAŠAN
William W. Malandra
(the fashioner of the Cow), a divine craftsman who figures prominently in the Gathas of Zoroaster but falls into obscurity in the Younger Avesta, being there associated with the fourteenth day of the month, known in Middle Persian simply as Gōš.
-
GƎUŠ URUUAN
William W. Malandra
“the soul of the Cow,” the name of the archetypal Bovine, whose plight is a subject of Zoroaster’s gāθā, often identified as “the Cow’s Lament.”
-
GĒV
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh
one of the foremost heroes of the national epic in the reigns of Kay Kāvūs and Kay Ḵosrow.
-
GHAFFARY, FARROKH
Michele Epinette
(1922-2006), Iranian artist and one of the founders of the National Archives of Iranian Cinema; he served as one of the directors of the National Iranian Radio-Television, worked as the chief organizer of the Shiraz Festival of Arts.
-
GHAZNAVIDS
C. Edmund Bosworth
an Islamic dynasty of Turkish slave origin 977-1186, which in its heyday ruled in the eastern Iranian lands, briefly as far west as Ray and Jebāl; for a while in certain regions north of the Oxus, most notably, in Kᵛārazm; and in Baluchistan and in northwestern India.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GHILAIN, Antoine
Aloïs van Tongerloo
In addition to his demanding teaching responsibilities, Ghilain continued with his academic work at the University of Leuven. The commitment documents his intellectual stamina and iron will, as he had to travel by train between La Louvière and Leuven, even in the dark days of World War II when Belgium was under German occupation.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GHIRSHMAN, ROMAN
Laurianne Martinez-Sève
Ghirshman came from an affluent family in Kharkov and was enlisted in 1914 into the Russian army. In 1917, he joined the counter-revolutionary camp, and after the Communist victory took refuge in Istanbul, where he earned a living as a violinist.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GHURIDS
C. Edmund Bosworth
There were at least three raids by the early Ghaznavids into Ḡūr, led by Sultan Maḥmūd and his son Masʿūd, in the first decades of the 11th century; these introduced Islam and brought Ḡūr into a state of loose vassalage to the sultans.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĪĀH-ŠENĀSĪ
Cross-Reference
See BOTANICAL STUDIES.
-
GĪĀʾĪ, ḤAYDAR
Mina Marefat
or Heydar Ghiaï-Chamlou (b. Tehran, 1922; d. Cap d’Antibe, 1985), an influential pioneer of modern architecture in Persia and professor at the University of Tehran. Stylistically, his work was thoroughly “modern,” introducing aspects of the contemporary and International Style architecture of Europe.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĪĀN TAPPA
Cross-Reference
See GIYAN TEPE.
-
GĪĀNĪ
Cross-Reference
a Lori dialect. See GĪŌNĪ.
-
GIANTS, THE BOOK OF
Werner Sundermann
a book mentioned as a canonical work of Mani in the Coptic Kephalaia, in the Homilies and Psalms, as well as in the Chinese compendium of Mani’s teachings.
-
ḠĪĀṮ AL-LOḠĀT
Solomon Bayevsky
lit. "Aid in [the explication of] vocabulary," punning on the author’s name; a Persian dictionary compiled in India in 1827 by the linguist, philologist, and poet Moḥammad Ḡiāṯ- al-Din b. Jamāl-al-Din b. Jamāl-al-Din b. Šaraf-al-Din Rāmpuri Moṣṭafā-ābādi.
-
ḠĪĀṮ BEG, ʿEʿTEMĀD-AL-DAWLA
Mehrdad Shokoohy
or Gīāṯ-al-Dīn Moḥammad Tehrānī (d. 1622), prime minister of the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr and father of the emperor’s wife, Nūr Jahān.
-
ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN BALBAN
Cross-Reference
See DELHI SULTANATE.
-
ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN DAŠTAKĪ
Cross-Reference
(1462-1541), scholar, philosopher, and motakallem (theologian) of the late Timurid and early Safavid period, and, for a brief interval under Shah Ṭahmāsb, one of two ṣadrs (chief clerical overseers). See DAŠTAKI, ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN.
-
ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD
Peter Jackson and Charles Melville
(d. 1336), Il-khanid vizier, the son of Rašīd-al-Dīn Fażl-Allāh Hamadānī (executed 1318), the celebrated historian and vizier of Ḡāzān Khan.
-
ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD TEHRĀNĪ
Cross-Reference
(d. 1622), prime minister of the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr and father of the emperor’s wife, Nūr Jahān. See ḠĪĀṮ BEG.
-
ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN NAQQĀŠ
Priscilla Soucek
a painter (naqqāš) active in Herat ca. 1419-30, where he was in the employ of the Timurid Bāysonḡor b. Šāhroḵ.
-
ḠIĀṮ-AL-DIN RĀMPURI
Gregory Maxwell Bruce
(1785-1852), MOḤAMMAD, Persian lexicographer, literary scholar, philologist, poet, and teacher.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN ŠĪRĀZĪ
Lisa Golombek
master architect in Khorasan during the reign of the Timurid Šāhroḵ (1405-47).
-
ḠĪĀṮ-AL-DIN TOḠLOQ
Cross-Reference
See DELHI SULTANATE i; TUGHLUQIDS.
-
ḠĪĀṮVAND
Pierre Oberling
a Kurdish tribe of the Qazvīn region.
-
GIBB MEMORIAL SERIES
C. Edmund Bosworth
or GMS; a series of publications, which has continued for almost a century, mainly, but not exclusively, dedicated to editions and translations of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish texts.
-
GIBBON, EDWARD
Michael Rogers
(1737-1794), author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1776-88). Relations of Persia and the later steppe nomads with the East Roman/Byzantine empire are an essential component of Gibbon’s celebrated history.
-
GIFT GIVING
Multiple Authors
various aspects of gift giving in Persia.
-
GIFT GIVING i. Introduction
EIr
The following article constitutes a preliminary attempt at studying various aspects of gift giving in a chronological and historical framework, from the pre-Islamic era to the early modern period.
-
GIFT GIVING ii. In Pre-Islamic Persia
JOSEF WIESEHÖFER
Giving and receiving gifts appears to have assumed a particular significance and a specific manner in the ancient Near East, and especially in ancient Iran.
-
GIFT GIVING iii. In The Medieval Period
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
-
GIFT GIVING iv. In The Safavid Period
Rudi P. Matthee
Virtually all available information on the practice of gift giving in pre-modern Persia is limited to the political elite; It is clear, though, that offering gifts was a conspicuous part of traditional social and political life in Persia.
-
GIFT GIVING v. In the Qajar Period
Willem Floor
This habit of gift giving was part of the fabric of Persian life and held for all classes and ranks or social and ethnic groups.
-
GĪLAKĪ
Cross-Reference
-
GILĀN
Multiple Authors
or Ḡelān; province at the southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea.
-
GĪLĀN i. GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOGRAPHY
Marcel Bazin
Gīlān includes the northwestern end of the Alborz chain and the western part of the Caspian lowlands of Persia. The mountainous belt is cut through by the deep transversal valley of the Safīdrūd between Manjīl and Emāmzāda Hāšem near Rašt.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĪLĀN ii. Population
Habibollah Zanjani
The first general census was carried out in 1956 and the sixth in 1996. The geographical boundaries and area have varied from one census to another; at the present time it is 14,819 square kilometers and includes 99 districts, 30 counties and 12 townships. In 1996, there were 2,700 settlements and 35 cities.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĪLĀN iii. Archeology
Ezat O. Negahban
The archeology of Gīlān, particularly in the pre-Islamic period, is usually studied in the wider context of the entire south Caspian region, including Mazandarān and Gorgān. Articles on three important locations, Marlik Tepe, Amlaš, and Deylamān, illustrate the perennial difficulties faced by archeological research in Persia.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĪLĀN iv. History in the Early Islamic Period
Wilferd Madelung
The Gelae (Gilites) seem to have entered the region south of the Caspian coast and west of the Amardos River (later Safīdrūd) in the second or first century B.C.E.
-
GĪLĀN v. History under the Safavids
Manouchehr Kasheff
Gīlān has traditionally been considered by its local population as a land of two distinct regions divided by the course of Safīdrūd River.
-
GĪLĀN vi. History in the 18th century
EIr and Reza Rezazadeh Langaroudi
The rapid decline of the Safavids in the first decades of the 18th century, leading to their ultimate demise in 1722, created a general state of chaos in the country.
-
GĪLĀN vii. History in the 19th century
EIr and Reza Rezazadeh Langaroudi
Sealed off by mountains from the rest of the country, political and social life in Gīlān had always been highly influenced, if not determined, by its geographical position. The history of 19th-century Gīlān began with the continuation of the binary division of Bīa-pas and Bīa-pīš and the rule of local families.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILĀN viiia. In the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11
Pezhmann Dailami
Two classes featured prominently in Gilān as the driving forces of the revolution, and the alliance of these two, the peasantry and the urban petty-bourgeoisie of artisans, shopkeepers, and petty traders, was the hallmark of a radical movement on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea.
-
GĪLĀN ix. Monuments
Manouchehr Sotoudeh
Most buildings of historical interest in Gilān have been repeatedly repaired and rebuilt. Some have clear records of their history, but most lack reliable, primary documents, and one has to rely on a variety of indirect evidence, such as the dates engraved on entrance doors or tombstones to reconstruct part of the past of a given edifice.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĪLĀN x. LANGUAGES
Donald Stilo
In Gīlān there are three major Iranian language groups, namely Gīlakī, Rūdbārī, and Ṭālešī, and pockets of two other groups, Tātī and Kurdish. The non-Iranian languages include Azeri Turkish and some speakers of Gypsy (Romany, of Indic origin).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILĀN xi. Irrigation
Christian Bromberger
In the rice-growing regions of the Caspian hinterland, water requirements are considerable and irrigation requires careful organization. It is estimated that one hectare of rice, on average, requires 12,400 cubic meters of water. To meet this demand various techniques are used.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILĀN xii. Rural Housing
Christian Bromberger
In the north of the province, these minimal constructions (wells and rice barns) are traditionally complemented by a covered area for rice threshing, and, in Rašt district, by a separate building for drying paddy, known as a dudḵāna, garmḵāna, or bujḵāna. In the silkworm growing areas, the silkworm nursery occupies a place of honor.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILĀN xiii. Kinship and Marriage
Christian Bromberger
According to a 1991 sample survey, in Iran, the plain of Gilān has the lowest proportion of marriages whether with paternal or maternal cousins or with a near or distant (non-consanguineous) relation.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILĀN xiv. Ethnic Groups
Christian Bromberger
Each group living in the province is characterized by one or several specific production activities, so that an ethnonym refers as much to territorial, linguistic, and cultural roots as to any dominant professional specialization.
-
GILĀN xv. Popular and Literary Perceptions of Identity
Christian Bromberger
In Afghanistan, Uzbeks are called “noodle eaters” by their neighbors and in Persia the Arabs from Khuzestan are stigmatized as susmārḵor “lizard eaters”.
-
GILAN xvi. FOLKLORE
Christian Bromberger
Even today, old women believe that cutting down an āzād tree is an act of sacrilege. Whether they are themselves objects of worship or simply grow near the tombs of saints, near cemeteries or inside mosques, these trees are places of devotion, each one dedicated to a specific type of wish (naẕr).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILAN xvii. Gender Relations
Christian Bromberger
In Gilan roles and tasks are distributed according to a more flexible pattern: to a large extent, women take an important part in agricultural work; in their homes, the line between male and female spaces is blurred; craftwork, industrial, and commercial activities are not the exclusive prerogative of men in this region.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILAN xviii. Rural Production Techniques
Christian Bromberger
Chaff produces a great amount of smoke and was once used to punish miscreants or disobedient children who were locked up in the dud otāḡ (literally “smoke room,” where sheaves of rice were dried and cocoons stifled). This punishment was called fal-a dud (“the smoke from the rice chaff”).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILĀN xix. Landholding and Social Stratification
Christian Bromberger
Prior to the Land Reform of 1962 that began the process of land redistribution, the dominant production system in Gilān, as in the majority of Persianprovinces, was of a feudal nature.
-
GILĀN xx. Handicrafts
Christian Bromberger
Gilān was a region that produced raw materials (including silk), to which one came for supplies, much more than a region where finished products were made; and the area long remained rural, with only minor importance accorded to towns housing professionals, workshops, and master craftsmen.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GILĀN xxi. Cooking
Christian Bromberger
Eating habits and culinary preparations in Gilān have several distinct characteristics. In this rice-producing region, the consumption of rice is much higher than elsewhere in Persia. Garden vegetables and kitchen herbs (sabzi) generally appear in the makeup of most dishes and give the regional cuisine the green touch that is its hallmark.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GĪLĀN NEWSPAPERS
Nassereddin Parvin
title of four newspapers published in Rašt.
-
GILANENTZ CHRONICLE
Ina Baghdiantz McCabe
a compendium of reports collated as a journal by Petros di Sarkis Gilanentz (Gilanencʿ), which constitutes an important source for the history of events in Transcaucasia and Persia during the period March 1722 to August 1723, notably the Afghan invasion and siege of Isfahan.
-
GĪLĀNŠĀH
Cross-Reference
See ONṢOR-AL-MAʿĀLĪ.
-
GĪLĀS
Cross-Reference
See CHERRY.
-
GILCHRIST, JOHN BORTHWICK
John R. Perry
(1759-1841), physician, Indologist, and teacher of Persian and Urdu who pioneered the Western study and teaching of modern Indian languages in British India.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠILZĪ
M. Jamil Hanifi
or ḠALZĪ, one of three major Pashtun/Paxtun tribal confederations in Afghanistan.
-
GINDAROS
Erich Kettenhofen
present-day Jendīres, a town in the ancient region of Cyrrhestike in Syria.
-
GIŌNI
Colin MacKinnon
or Giāni; a Persian dialect of the Northern Lor type, spoken in the village of Giān/Giō, 12 km west of the city of Nehāvand.
-
GISTĀN QARA
Cross-Reference
b. Jani Beg. See KISTĀN QARĀ b. Jani Beg.
-
GISU-DARĀZ
Richard M. Eaton
or Gēsu-darāz (b. Delhi, 1321-d. Gulbarga, 1422), the popular title of Sayyed MOḤAMMAD b. Yusof Ḥosayni, the most important transmitter of Sufi traditions from North India to the Deccan plateau.
-
GITI
Nassereddin Parvin
a leftist daily paper published from 24 June 1943 to December 1943 by Ḵalil Enqelāb Āḏar as the official organ of the Workers union.
-
Giv
Cross-Reference
Giv. See Gēv.
-
GIV, ROSTAM
Farhang Mehr
In 1953, Giv created the Rostam Giv Charitable Foundation for the promotion of the education and welfare of the Zoroastrian community. In the same year, he encouraged his brother’s heirs to endow an elementary school for girls in Tehran. He also built sixty low-rent houses, equipped with modern amenities, for needy Zoroastrians.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GIVA
Jamshid Sadaqat-Kish
a traditional footwear in Persia, mainly consisting of an upper part made of twined white cotton thread sewn up on the edges of a cloth and leather or rubber sole. The earliest known mention of the word giva is probably ca. 1333, a reference to the bāzār-e giva-duzān (giva-makers’ market) of Shiraz.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GIYAN TEPE
Ezat O. Negahban
or GIĀN TAPPA, Žiān Tappa; a large archeological mound located in Lorestān province in western Persia, about 10 km southeast of Nehāvand and southwest of Giān village in the Ḵāva valley.
-
GLACIERS
Eckart Ehlers
and ice fields in Persia. Due to Persia’s location in the very center of the arid dry belt, stretching from North Africa in the west to Central Asia in the east, and also due to its very specific topography, glaciers and/or permanent ice fields are restricted and concentrated in a very few locations.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GLADWIN, FRANCIS
Parvin Loloi
(d. ca. 1813), lexicographer and prolific translator of Persian literature into English.
-
GLASS
Jens Kröger
Glass blowing was invented in the Syro-Palestinian region during the Parthian period in the mid-first century B.C.E. and quickly spread from there to neighboring regions. Production of glass was much more widely spread within the Sasanian empire; it also became in both shapes and types of decoration independent from Parthian prototypes.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GLASS INDUSTRY
Willem Floor
Glass making has been known and practiced in Iran for about 3,500 years. Until about 1930 local glass making was done in small craft workshops. The raw materials needed for glass production abound in Iran except for soda ash, but this input will also soon be entirely domestically produced.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GLOSSAR ZU FIRDOSIS SCHAHNAME
Cross-reference
See WOLFF, FRITZ.
-
GLYPTIC
Cross-Reference
See CYLINDER SEALS.
-
GNOLI, GHERARDO
Carlo Cereti
(1937-2012), an Iranist and historian of religion, combining an extraordinary scientific output with a constant focus on cultural policy.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GNOSTICISM
Kurt Rudolph
in Persia. The current academic term gnosticism or gnosis goes back to the early Christian period and has a heresiological background; its representatives were called Gnostics, meaning people who believed in specific “insights” and ways of behavior that deviated from the official church and its teachings and who disseminated their beliefs through their own writings.
-
GOAT
Cross-Reference
See BOZ.
-
GŌBADŠĀH
D. N. Mackenzie
the name of a mythical ruler first appearing in medieval Zoroastrianism.
-
ḠOBĀRI, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN
Tahsİn Yazici
b. ʿAbd-Allāh (d. 1566), Ottoman poet, calligrapher, and Sufi who wrote in both Turkish and Persian.
-
ḠOBAYRĀ
A. D. H. Bivar
medieval township in Kermān province, located at 57° 29 E and 47° N, 70 km by road south of Kermān City (historical Bardsir) at the intersection of the medieval eastern highway and the route from Kermān to Bāft, Esfandaqa, and Jiroft.
-
GOBINEAU, Joseph Arthur de
Jean Calmard
Gobineau’s father, Louis (1784-1858), a military officer, was for a time retained in Spain (1823-28), and the son’s education was left to his adventurous mother and her lover, Charles Sottin de la Coindière, who was Arthur’s private tutor.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GÖBL, ROBERT
Michael Alram
Gobl's mentor in studying numismatics was Karl Pink, whose methodology had a lasting influence on Göbl’s further academic career. One of Göbl’s most pressing aims was to try out Pink’s structural methodology of the minting of coins in the Roman Empire on other well-defined numismatic complexes.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOBRYAS
Rüdiger Schmitt
the most widely known (Greek) form of the Old Persian name Gaub(a)ruva, attested for various officers and officials of the Achaemenid period.
-
GOD
Cross-Reference
See AHURA MAZDĀ; BAGA.
-
GODARD, ANDRÉ
Ève Gran-Aymerich and Mina Marefat
(b. Chaumont, France, 1881; d. Paris, 1965), French architect, archeologist, art historian, and director of the Archeological Services of Iran (Edāra-ye koll-e ʿatiqāt).
-
GŌDARZ
Mary Boyce, A. D. H. Bivar, A. Shapur Shahbazi
name of various Iranian historical figures; an Iranian epic hero in wars against the “Turanians” in northeastern Iran; and the scion of a clan of paladins in Iranian traditional history.
-
GODIN TEPE
T. Cuyler Young, Jr.
or GOWDIN TEPE; an archeological site in the central Zagros, which was occupied from ca. 5,000 to 500 B.C.E. located at 48° 4′ E and 34° 31′ N in the Kangāvar valley, approximately halfway between Hamadān and Kermānšāh.
-
GOEJE, Michael Jan de
Cross-Reference
See DE GOEJE.
-
GOETHE INSTITUTE
H. E. Chehabi
in Persia and Afghanistan. Named after the celebrated German poet and writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the Goethe Institute was founded in 1951 in Munich as a non-profit organization for training foreign teachers of the German language.
-
GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG von
Hamid Tafazoli
(1749-1832), the most renowned poet of German literature, interested in the East and in Islam.
-
ḠOJDOVĀN
Habib Borjian
(also Ḡojdavān, Ḡajdovān), town and district in the oasis of Bukhara.
-
ḠOJDOVĀNI
Cross-Reference
See ʿABD-AL-ḴĀLEQ ḠOJDOVĀNI.
-
GÖK TEPE
Cross-Reference
See GEOY TEPE.
-
GOKARN
Cross-Reference
See HAOMA.
-
GÖKLEN
Cross-Reference
See GUKLĀN.
-
GOL
Hušang Aʿlam
or gul; rose (Rosa L. spp.) and, by extension, flower, bloom, blossom.
-
GOL ḴĀNĀN MORDA
Bruno Overlaet
Three pit graves, of which one was covered with flat stones, were found underneath the Iron Age III tombs. One contained a button base beaker and two comparable beakers were found between the Iron Age III tombs. This indicates the presence of Iron Age I graves at the site.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOL O BOLBOL
Layla S. Diba
lit. “rose and nightingale,” a popular literary and decorative theme. Together, rose and nightingale are the types of beloved and lover par excellence; the rose is beautiful, proud, and often cruel, while the nightingale sings endlessly of his longing and devotion.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOL-ĀQĀ
EIr
a weekly satirical magazine founded by Kayumarṯ Ṣāberi which first began publication on 23 October 1990.
-
GOL-E GĀVZABĀN
Cross-Reference
See GĀVZABĀN.
-
GOL-E GOLĀB, ḤOSAYN
Cross-Reference
(1895-1985) botanist, musician, poet, scholar, and member of the Farhangestān. See GOL-GOLĀB.
-
GOL-E SORḴI, ḴOSROW
Cross-Reference
(1943-1974), poet and revolutionary figure whose defiant stand during his televised show trial, and subsequent execution by firing squad in 1974, enshrined his place in the cultural and political history of modern Persia. See GOLSORḴI.
-
GOL-E ZARD
Nassereddin Parvin
literary, socio-satirical newspaper, published 1918-1924.
-
GOL-GOLĀB, ḤOSAYN
H. Ettehad Baboli
Among Gol-golāb’s best known songs are “Aḏarābādagān” and “Ey Irān”; the latter has become virtually the national anthem of Persia. Gol-golāb also composed Persian lyrics for the music of Georges Bizet’s Carmen and Charles Gounod’s Faust.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLĀB
Hušang Aʿlam
rose water, a distillate (ʿaraq) obtained chiefly from the gol-e moḥammadi, the best-known product made from rose petals in Persia, widely used in sherbets, sweetmeats, as a home medicament, and on some religious occasions.
-
GOLĀBI
Cross-Reference
See PEAR.
-
ḠOLĀM
Cross-Reference
See Supplement; on ḡolāms as military slaves, see BARDA AND BARDA-DĀRĪ.
-
ḠOLĀM ʿABD-AL-QĀDER NAẒIR
Cross-Reference
author of Golestān-e nasab. See NAẒIR.
-
ḠOLĀM HAMADĀNI
Cross-Reference
author of Taḏkera-ye fārsi and other works. See MOṢḤAFI.
-
ḠOLĀM JILĀNI
Cross-Reference
poet and author of Dorr-e manẓum. See RAFʿAT.
-
ḠOLĀM SARVAR
Arif Naushahi
b. Mofti Ḡolām Moḥammad LĀHURI (b. Lahore, 1828; d. near Medina, 1890), historian, hagiographer, and poet in Persian and Urdu.
-
ḠOLĀM YAḤYĀ
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
-
ḠOLĀM-ʿALI
Cross-Reference
See NAQŠBANDI ORDER.
-
ḠOLĀM-ʿALI KHAN, AMIR TUMĀN
Cross-Reference
See ʿAZĪZ-AL-SOLṬĀN.
-
ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN ṢĀḤEB(-E) EḴTIĀR
Cross-Reference
See AMĪN-E ḴALWAT.
-
ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN SEPAHDĀR
Cross-Reference
provincial governor and minister of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah. See SEPAHDĀR.
-
ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN KHAN ṬABĀṬABĀʾI
Arif Naushahi
(b. Delhi, 1727-28, d. after 1781), Sayyed, secretary (monši) by profession, political intermediary, and author of a popular history of India called Siar al-motaʾaḵḵerin.
-
ḠOLĀM-REŻĀ ḴOŠNEVIS
Maryam Ekhtiar
Eṣfahāni, Mirzā (b. Tehran, 1829/30; d. Tehran, 1886/87), a calligrapher and epigraphist of late 19th-century Persia.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
ḠOLĀMĀN-E ḴAṢṢA-YE ŠARIFA
Cross-Reference
See ʿABBĀS I; BARDA and BARDADĀRĪ v.
-
ḠOLĀT
Heinz Halm
lit. "exaggerators," sing. ḡāli; an Arabic term originally used by Twelver Shiʿite (eṯnā ʿašariya) heresiographers to designate those dissidents who exaggerate the status of the Imams in an undue manner by attributing to them divine qualities.
-
GOLBADAN BĒGOM
Munibur Rahman
(ca. 1522/23-1603), daughter of Ẓahir-al-Din Moḥammad Bābor, founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, half sister of Bābor’s successor, Homāyun, and author of Homāyun-nāma, the account of the reign of Homāyun.
-
GOLČIN GILĀNI
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak and Homa Katouzian
(b. Rašt, 1910; d. London, 1972), pen name of the poet MAJD-AL-DIN MIR-FAḴRĀʾI. Throughout the 1940s, Golčin sent his compositions to Persia for publication; many appeared in the literary journals of the period, such as Soḵan, Yaḡmā, Armaḡān, Foruḡ, Yādgār, and Jahān-e now.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLČIN MAʿĀNI, AḤMAD
Iraj Afshar
(b. Tehran, 1916; d. Mašhad, 2000), literary scholar, bibliographer, and poet. He held various administrative and judicial posts in the Ministry of Justice (1934-59). His considerable knowledge of literary manuscripts was later put to good use when he was transferred to the Majles Library, where he catalogued the Persian and Arabic manuscripts.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLD
Jennifer C. Ross & James W. Allan
Persia possesses a number of gold sources—in the northwest (Azerbaijan and Zanjān), near Kāšān at the western edge of the central plateau, and, according to Strabo, in Kermān. Gold sources in Afghanistan are located in Badaḵšān, which is also the source region for lapis lazuli.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLDEN HORDE
Peter Jackson
name given to the Mongol Khanate ruled by the descendants of Joči (Juji; d. 1226-27), the eldest son of Čengiz (Genghis) Khan.
-
GOLDSMID, Major-General Sir Fredrick John
Denis Wright
(b. Milan, 1818; d. Hammersmith, England, 1909), British scholar, negotiator and arbitrator of Perso-Afghan boundary dispute.
-
GOLESTĀN
Nassereddin Parvin
the title of two early 20th-century Persian newspapers.
-
GOLESTĀN PALACE
Cross-Reference
See ARG.
-
GOLESTĀN PALACE LIBRARY
Cross-Reference
See BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND CATALOGUES; ROYAL LIBRARY.
-
GOLESTĀN PROVINCE
Cross-Reference
See GORGĀN.
-
GOLESTĀN TREATY
Elton L. Daniel
agreement arranged under British auspices to end the Russo-Persian War of 1804-13. The origins of the war can be traced back to the decision of Tsar Paul to annex Georgia (December 1800) and, after Paul’s assassination (11 March 1801), the activist policy followed by his successor, Alexander I.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLESTĀN-E HONAR
Kambiz Eslami
a 16th-century treatise on the art of calligraphy, with brief biographical notices on a selection of past and contemporary calligraphers and artists, by the Safavid author and historian Qāżi Aḥmad b. Šaraf-al-Din Ḥosayn Monši Qomi Ebrāhimi.
-
GOLESTĀN-E SAʿDI
Franklin Lewis
probably the single most influential work of prose in the Persian tradition, completed in 1258 by Mošarref-al-Din Moṣleḥ, known as Shaikh Saʿdi of Shiraz.
-
GOLESTĀNA, ABU’L-ḤASAN
Cross-Reference
-
GOLESTĀNA, ʿAlāʾ-al-Din Mirzā MOḤAMMAD
Hamid Algar
b. Šāh Abu Torāb Moḥammad-ʿAli (d. 1698-99), prominent religious scholar of the Safavid period, a scion of the Golestāna family of Ḥosayni sayyeds in Isfahan.
-
GOLESTĀNA, ʿALI-AKBAR
Maryam Ekhtiar
(b. 1857-58; d. 1901), calligrapher, scholar, and mystic of late 19th-century Persia.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLGUN, FARID-AL-DAWLA Mirzā MOḤAMMAD-ḤASAN KHAN HAMADĀNI
Parviz AḏkāʾI
(1877-1937), constitutionalist and journalist.
-
GOLHĀ, BARNĀMA-YE
Daryush Pirnia with Erik Nakjavani
lit. “Flowers Program”; a series of radio programs on music and poetry, on the air for almost twenty-three years (March 1956 to February 1979), which aimed at illustrating the perennial thematic and aesthetic relationships between poetry and traditional music in Persian culture.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLINDUCH
Sebastian Brock
or GOLEN-DOḴT (d. 591), female Christian martyr.
-
GOLIUS, JACOBUS
J. T. P. de Bruijn
(b. The Hague, 1596; d. Leiden, 1667), Dutch orientalist who widened the scope of Persian studies, as they had been pursued by Dutch Arabists since the end of the 16th century.
-
GOLḴANI, MOḤAMMAD ŠARIF
EVELIN GRASSI
MOḤAMMAD ŠARIF (1770s-1827), poet and satirist from Kokand (Ḵōqand), bilingual in Persian and Chaghatay.
-
GOLKONDA
Cross-Reference
See HYDERABAD.
-
GOLPAR
Hušang Aʿlam
any of several perennial aromatic herbaceous plants of the genus Heracleum L. (fam. Umbelliferae) growing wild in humid alpine regions in Persia and some adjacent areas.
-
GOLPĀYAGĀN
Minu Yusofnezhad
or GOLPĀYEGĀN; a šahrestān (county) and town located in Isfahan province, bordered on the east by the county of Barḵᵛār and Meyma, on the south by Ḵᵛānsār county, on the north by the counties of Maḥallāt and Ḵomeyn (Central province), and on the west by Aligudarz county (province of Lorestān).
-
GOLPĀYAGĀNI, ABU’L-FAŻL
Cross-Reference
-
GOLPĀYAGĀNI, MOḤAMMAD-REŻĀ
Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi
(1899-1993), Ayatollah Sayyed, a chief figure in the contemporary Shiʿite clerical hierarchy, who took a moderate stand in the opposition to what was considered the state’s disregard for Islamic principles in the name of modernization.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLPĀYEGĀNI DIALECT
Cross-Reference
See CENTRAL DIALECTS.
-
GÖLPINARLI, ABDÜLBAKI
Tahsin Yazıcı
(1900-1982), Turkish scholar noted in particular for his studies of the Turkish Sufi orders. He joined many Sufi orders without remaining in any of them for long. His greatest interests were in Shiʿism and the Mevlevi (Mawlawiya) order.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLŠAHRI, SOLAYMĀN
EIr
or GÜLŞEHRÎ; 13th century Ottoman Sufi and poet who wrote in Persian and Turkish.
-
GOLŠĀʾIĀN, ʿABBĀSQOLI
Abbas Milani
After private schooling at home, Golšāʾiān studied at the French-run Alliance Française and at the Dār al-fonun. In 1920, he enrolled in the new law school created by the Ministry of Justice (ʿAdliya). After completing the required courses in two years, he was employed at the same ministry.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLŠAN
Nassereddin Parvin
cultural magazine published in the early days of 1917 in Tehran by Sayyed Reżā Yazdi “Amir Reżwāni” (d. 1936), first twice a week and from its sixth year three times a week.
-
GOLŠAN ALBUM
Kambiz Eslami
or Moraqqaʿ-e golšan; a sumptuous 17th-century album of paintings, drawings, calligraphy, and engravings by Mughal, Persian, Deccani, Turkish, and European artists in the Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLŠAN DEHLAVI, Shah SAʿD-ALLĀH
Moinuddin Aqeel
b. Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad-Saʿid (1664-1728), Naqšbandi Sufi and prolific poet in Persian with the pen name (taḵallosá) Golšan.
-
GOLŠAN-E MORĀD
John R. Perry
a history of the Zand Dynasty (1751-94) by Mirzā Moḥammad Abu’l-Ḥasan Ḡaffāri.
-
GOLŠAN-E RĀZ
Hamid Algar
lit. "The Rose Garden of Mysteries"; a concise didactic matnawi in a little over a thousand distichs on the key terms and concepts of Sufism, which has for long served as a principal text of theoretical mysticism in the Persian-speaking and Persian-influenced world.
-
GOLŠANI ṢĀRUḴĀNI
Tahsin Yazici
a 15th-century Turkish poet who also wrote in Persian.
-
GOLŠANĪ, EBRĀHIM
Tahsin Yazici
b. Moḥammad b. Ebrāhim b. Šehāb-al-Din (d. 1534), Sufi poet and the founder of the Golšaniya branch of the Ḵalwati Sufi order.
-
GOLŠANI, MOḤYI MOḤAMMAD
Tahsin Yazici
b. Fatḥ-Allāh b. Abi Ṭāleb (1528/29-1606/7), scholar and author in Persian and Turkish and inventor of an artificial language.
-
GOLŠEHRI, SOLAYMĀN
Cross-Reference
Sufi and poet in Turkish and Persian. See GÜLŠEHRI.
-
GOLŠIRI, Hušang
Ḥasan Mirʿābedini and EIr
(b. Isfahan, 1938; d. Tehran, 2000), novelist who explored new literary techniques. He received the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett award (1997) via the Human Rights Watch Organization and was awarded the Osnabrück Peace prize (1999) from the Erich Maria Remarque Foundation for his defense of freedom of speech.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOLSORḴI, ḴOSROW
Maziar Behrooz
(1943-1974), poet and revolutionary figure whose defiant stand during his televised show trial, and subsequent execution by firing squad in 1974, enshrined his place in the cultural and political history of modern Persia.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GŌMAL
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi
or Gōmāl: a sub-province (woloswāli) and village in Paktiā province, eastern Afghanistan; a river originating in the Ḡazni province and flowing southeast through the Wazirestān tribal agency and the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan; and a passage linking the eastern foothills of the Solaymān mountain range with the Indus plains.
-
GOMBROON
Cross-Reference
See BANDAR-e ʿABBĀS(Ī).
-
GOMBROON WARES
Cross-Reference
-
GŌMĒZ
Mary Boyce
cow's urine.
-
GOMIŠĀN
Cross-Reference
a district in Golestān Province. See GORGĀN.
-
GONĀBĀD
Minu Yusuf-Nežād
a town and a sub-province (šahrestān) in the province of Khorasan.
-
GONĀBĀDI ORDER
Hamid Algar
an offshoot of the Neʿmat-Allāhi Sufi order, still active in Persia.
-
GONĀBĀDI, ʿEMĀD-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD
Shiro Ando
or Jonābādi, b. Zayn-al-ʿĀbedin b. Neẓām-al-Din Moḥammad (b. 1415), Timurid financial officer and vizier.
-
GONĀBĀDI, Mirzā ABU’L-QĀSEM QĀSEMI
Cross-Reference
poet. See QĀSEMI Gonābādi, Mirzā Abu’l-Qāsem.
-
GONĀBĀDI, MOḤAMMAD PARVIN
Cross-Reference
Persian scholar and translator. See PARVIN GONĀBĀDI.
-
GONBAD -E ʿALAWIĀN-E Hamadān
Cross-Reference
-
GONBĀD-E KĀVUS
Cross-Reference
See GONBAD-E QĀBUS.
-
GONBAD-E QĀBUS
E. Ehlers, M. Momeni, and EIr, Habib-Allāh Zanjāni, Sheila S. Blair
(now referred to officially as Gonbad-e Kāvus) is the administrative center of the sub-province (šahrestān) of the same name and the urban center of the Turkman tribal area in northern Persia. It is named after its major monument, a tall tower that marks the grave of the Ziyarid ruler Qābus b. Vošmgir (r. 978-1012).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GONBAD-E SORḴ
Marcus Milwright
the “Red Tomb,” completed on 4 March 1148, the earliest of five medieval mausolea located in Marāḡa in Azerbaijan. It combines elements of the two common forms of Islamic Iranian monumental tomb, the domed cube, and the conically-roofed circular or polygonal tower.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GONDĒŠĀPUR
A. Shapur Shahbazi, Lutz Richter-Bernburg
in the Sasanian epoch, Gondēšāpur was one of the four major cities of Ḵuzestān, the other three being Karḵa, Susa, and Šuštar. The extensive irrigation systems developed there by the early Sasanians were probably aimed at supplying a large population.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GONDOPHARES
A. D. H. Bivar
Indo-Parthian king (20-46 C.E.) in Drangiana, Arachosia, and especially in the Punjab.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GŌR
Cross-Reference
the historical name for present-day Firuzābād in Fārs. See ARDAŠIR ḴORRA; FIRUZĀBĀD.
-
GŌRĀN
Cross-Reference
a tribe in Kurdistan. See GURĀN.
-
GORĀN, ʿABD-ALLĀH SOLAYMĀN
Keith Hitchins
(1904-62), the leading Kurdish poet of the twentieth century.
-
GORĀZ
Cross-Reference
See BOAR.
-
GORBA
Cross-Reference
-
ḠŌRBAND
M. Jamil Hanifi
or ḠURBAND; a major valley of Kōhestān/Kuhestān and a sub-province (woloswāli) of Parvān province in the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush massif, located approximately 50 miles north of Kabul.
-
ḠORBATI
Cross-Reference
See GYPSY.
-
GORDĀFARID
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh
daughter of Gaždaham, the castellan of Dež-e Sapid, the Iranian fortress on the frontier with Turān.
-
GORDIA
Cross-Reference
a female character in the Shah-nama. See BAHRĀM (2) vii. Bahrām VI Čōbīn.
-
GORDIANUS III
Cross-Reference
Roman emperor. See Šāpur I.
-
GORDON, THOMAS EDWARD
Rose L. Greaves
(1832–1914), General Sir, British intelligence officer, director of the Imperial Bank of Persia (Bānk-e šāhi-e Irān) from 1893 to 1914, author, and apparently the first person to use the term Middle East, which meant particularly Persia and Afghanistan.
-
GORDUENE
Cross-Reference
See KORDUK.
-
GORG
Cross-Reference
See WOLF.
-
GORGĀN
Multiple Authors
OVERVIEW of the entry: i. Geography, ii. Dašt-e Gorgān, iii. Population, iv. Archeology, v. Pre-Islamic history, vi. History from the rise of Islam to the beginning of the Safavid Period, vii. To the end of the Pahlavi era.
-
GORGĀN i. Geography
Ḥabib-Allāh Zanjāni
the ancient Hyrcania, an important Persian province at the southeast corner of the Caspian sea.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GORGĀN ii. Dašt-e Gorgān
Eckart Ehlers
the designation of a steppe-region of approximately 10,000 km2 near the southeastern edge of the Caspian Sea, stretching for almost 200 km east-west between Morāva Tappa and the coast of the Caspian Sea near Gomišān.
-
GORGĀN iii. Population
Ḥabib-Allāh Zanjāni
Over the past four decades, the population of Golestān Province as a whole has increased 4.5 times, 8.5 times in the urban and 3.3 times in the rural areas. In the same period, the number of its cities has increased from 5 to 16.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GORGĀN iv. Archeology
Muhammad Yusof Kiani
The Greek historian Arrian, recording Alexander’s expedition to the East, speaks of Alexander’s march to the city of Zadracarta, the largest town in the region and the capital of Hyrcania, where the royal palace was situated.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GORGĀN v. Pre-Islamic history
A. D. H. Bivar
The area comprises two distinct climatic zones: the rainforest of the Alborz northern slopes and the Gorgān plain, well-watered and fertile close to the mountains but passing into increasingly desert steppe as the distance from the foothills increases.
-
GORGĀN vi. History From The Rise Of Islam To The Beginning Of The Safavid Period
C. Edmund Bosworth
formed in Sasanian and pre-modern Islamic times a transitional zone, a corridor, between the subtropical habitat and climate of Māzandarān to its west, and the arid steppes of Dehestān and beyond them, the Qara Qum Desert to its northwest.
-
GORGĀN vii. History from the Safavids to the end of the Pahlavi era
Jawād Neyestāni and EIr
Two characteristics dominated the history of Gorgān in the period between the 16th and early 19th centuries: incessant tribal unrest and power politics.
-
GORGĀN BAY
Cross-Reference
See ASTARĀBĀD BAY.
-
GORGANAJ
Cross-Reference
See CHORASMIA.
-
GORGĀNI DIALECT
Cross-Reference
See MĀZANDARĀNI.
-
GORGĀNI, ABU’L-HAYṮAM AḤMAD
Cross-Reference
See ABU’L-HAYṮAM GORGĀNI.
-
GORGĀNI, FAḴR-AL-DIN ASʿAD
Julie Scott Meisami
(fl. ca. 1050), poet, best known for his verse romance Vis o Rāmin, completed in 1055 or shortly thereafter and dedicated to the Saljuq governor of Isfahan, the ʿAmid Abu’l-Fatḥ Moẓaffar b. Moḥammad.
-
GORGIJANIDZE, PARSADAN
Jemshid Giunashvili
(1626-1696), a Georgian literary figure and historian who served in the Safavid administration as deputy governor of Isfahan and royal chamberlain.
-
GORGIN
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh
son of Milād, one of the heroes of the reigns of Kay Kāvus and Kay Ḵosrow and the head of the Milād family.
-
GORGIN KHAN
Rudi Matthee
also known as Giorgio XI and Šāhnavāz Khan II; Georgian prince (d. 1709), who was alternately ruler of Georgia and holder of high positions in the Safavid administration and military.
-
GORGIN, IRAJ
Mandana Zandian
(1935-2012), radio and television broadcaster, journalist, and the founder of several Persian radio and television networks, whose life and career unfolded in two distinct sociopolitical milieus, in Iran in the two decades that culminated in the Revolution of 1979 and in exile over the subsequent three decades of his life.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GORJESTĀN
Cross-Reference
See GEORGIA.
-
GORUH-E FARHANGI-E HADAF
Cross-Reference
-
GORUH-E FARHANGI-E ḴᵛĀRAZMI
Cross-Reference
See ḴᵛĀRAZMI SCHOOLS.
-
GORZ
Jalil Doostkhah
or gorza, gorz-e gāvsār/sar, lit. "ox-headed club/mace," a weapon often mentioned and variously described in Iranian myths and epic. In classical Persian texts, particularly in Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma, it is characterized as the decisive weapon of choice in fateful battles.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GORZEVĀN
C. Edmund Bosworth
a town in the medieval Islamic region of Guzgān in northern Afghanistan.
-
GŌŠ YAŠT
W. W. Malandra
the title of the ninth Yašt of the Avesta, also known as Drwāsp Yašt, after the goddess Druuāspā (see DRVĀSPĀ) to whom, in fact, it is dedicated.
-
GŌSĀN
Mary Boyce
a Parthian word of unknown derivation for “poet-musician, minstrel.”
-
GOŠASB BĀNU
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh
or Bānu Gošasb; entitled savār (knight), Rostam’s daughter and the wife of Gēv.
-
GŌSFAND
Cross-Reference
See GUSFAND.
-
ḠOSL
Cross-Reference
See CLEANSING.
-
GOŠNASP ASPĀD
Cross-Reference
Sasanian military commander. See ḴOSROW II.
-
GŌSPAND
Cross-Reference
See CATTLE.
-
GOSPEL
Cross-Reference
See BIBLE.
-
GOSTAHAM
Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh
name of two heroes in the Šāh-nāma.
-
GOŠTĀSP
A. Shapur Shabazi
Kayanian king of Iranian traditional history and patron of Zoroaster.
-
GŌŠURUN
William W. Malandra
the Pahlavi name for the soul of the Sole-created Bull.
-
GOTARZES
Cross-Reference
See GŌDARZ.
-
GOTTHEIL, RICHARD JAMES HORATIO
Dagmar Riedel
Gottheil’s tenure at the New York Public Library (NYPL) is of relevance to the field of Iranian studies because he oversaw the development of its Near Eastern and Asian collections, first as Chief of Semitica and Orientalia (1897-1901), and afterwards as Chief of the Oriental Division.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GÖTTINGEN, UNIVERSITY OF, HISTORY OF IRANIAN STUDIES
Ludwig Paul
History of Iranian Studies at the University of Göttingen.
-
GOUVEA, ANTONIO DE
Rudi Matthee
(b. Beja, Portugal, 1575; d. Manzanares, Spain, 1628), Augustinian missionary and Portuguese envoy who visited Persia three times between 1602 and 1613 and who wrote on Persia.
-
GOVĀḴARZ
Cross-Reference
a district in the medieval province of Qohestān in Khorasan. See BĀKARZ.
-
GOWD-E ZEREH
Cross-Reference
See HĀMUN;
-
GOWDIN TEPE
Cross-Reference
an archeological site in western Persia. See GODIN TEPE.
-
GOWHAR
Nasereddin Parvin
a cultural journal published monthly from January 1973 to December 1978 (issue no. 72) of the philanthropic organization of Mortażā Nuriāni.
-
GOWHAR ḴĀTUN
C. Edmund Bosworth
a Saljuq princess who became the second wife of the Ghaznavid Sultan Masʿud III (r. 1099-1115).
-
GOWHAR-ĀʾĪN, Saʿd-al-dawla
C. Edmund Bosworth
(d. 1100), Turkish eunuch slave commander of the Great Saljuqs.
-
GOWHAR-E MORĀD (1)
Cross-Reference
philosopher and poet. See ʿABD-AL-RAZZĀQ LĀHĪJĪ
-
GOWHAR-E MORĀD (2)
Cross-Reference
pen name of the 20th-century author Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Sāʿedi. See SA'EDI, GHOLAM-HOSAYN.
-
GOWHAR-ŠĀD ĀḠĀ
Beatrice Forbes Manz
wife of Sultan Šāhroḵ b. Timur (r. 1409-47) and daughter of Ḡiāṯ-al-Din Tarḵān, a ranking amir under Timur.
-
GOWHAR-ŠĀD MOSQUE
Lisa Golombek
constructed in the early 15th century, the Friday mosque for pilgrims to the tomb of Imam ʿAli al-Reżā in Mašhad, so named after this famous shrine.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOWHARIN, SAYYED SĀDEQ
Peter Avery
Gowharin came from an old and distinguished family which traced its lineage back to the eponymous founder of the Nurbaḵšiyya, Sayyed Moḥammad Nurbaḵš (1392-1464). Himself a Sufi of the Ḵāksār order, his interest in mysticism went far beyond that of an academic.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GOWJA FARANGI
Cross-Reference
See TOMATO.
-
GOWRAK
Pierre Oberling
a Kurdish tribe in northwestern Persia.
-
GOWZ
Cross-Reference
See WALNUT.
-
GŌZEHR
Cross-Reference
Bazarangid ruler in Fārs. See ARDAŠĪR I.
-
GŌZIHR
D. N. Mackenzie
the Middle Persian development of an old Iranian compound adjective *gau-čiθra-, recorded in the Younger Avesta in the form gaočiθra-, as an epithet of the moon, “bearing the seed, having the origin of cattle” (or, “the ox”).
-
ḠOZZ
Peter B. Golden, C. Edmund Bosworth
a significant Turkic tribe in western Eurasia in the 5th century.
-
GRAND LODGE OF IRAN
Cross-Reference
See FREEMASONRY, iii-iv.
-
GRANICUS
Ernst Badian
river (mod. Kocabaş Çay) flowing into the Sea of Marmara.
-
GRANT DUFF, Sir EVELYN MOUNTSTUART
Denis Wright
(b. 1863; d. Bath, 1926), British diplomat serving successively in Rome, Tehran, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Berlin, then London.
-
GRANT, Captain NATHANIEL PHILIP
Denis Wright
(b. New York, 1774; k. Ḵorramābād, 1810), a military officer of the East India Company.
-
GRANTOVSKIĬ, EDVIN ARVIDOVICH
Mohammad Dandamayev
Grantovskiĭ specialized in the history of ancient Iranian tribes (especially the Medes, Persians and Scythians) and their civilizations. His research was based on Akkadian and Urartian inscriptions, Iranian texts, and classical sources and on evidence of archaeology, ethnography, and folklore.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GRAPES
Cross-Reference
See ANGŪR.
-
GRAPHIC ARTS
Mortażā Momayyez, Peter Chelkowski
Broadly speaking, graphic art and design have a long history in Persia; their antecedents can be seen in graphic motifs and patterns on ancient clay and metal vessels, stone reliefs, seals, brickwork, glazed tiles, plaster and wood carvings, cloths, carpets, marquetry, miniature paintings, calligraphy, and illumination of manuscripts.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GRAY, BASIL
John Michael Rogers
Gray's initiation into eastern art, for which there was then no provision at any British university, came in 1928, when he worked for a season on the excavations at the great palace of the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople, followed by study in Vienna under Josef Strzygowski, who was, however, already sunk deep in diffusionism.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GRAY, LOUIS HERBERT
William W. Malandra
In 1921 Gray was appointed associate professor of philology at the University of Nebraska, where he remained until his appointment at Columbia University as professor of Oriental Languages in 1926. In 1935, he became Professor of Comparative Linguistics, a position he held until his retirement in 1944.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GREAT BRITAIN
Multiple Authors
OVERVIEW of the entry: i. Introduction, ii. An Overview of Relations: Safavid to the Present, iii. British influence in Persia in the 19th century, iv. British influence in Persia, 1900-21, v. British influence during the Reżā Shah period, 1921-41, vi. British influence in Persia, 1941-79, vii. British Travelers to Persia, viii. British Archeological Excavations, ix. Iranian Studies in Britian, Pre-Islamic, x. Iranian Studies in Britain, the Islamic Period, xi. Persian Art Collections in Britain, xii. The Persian Community in Britain, xiii. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), xiv. The British Institute of Persian Studies, xv. British Schools in Persia.
-
GREAT BRITAIN i. INTRODUCTION
EIr
During the 16th century, several unsuccessful attempts were made by the Muscovy (or Russia) Company of London to develop trade between London and Persia via Russia.
-
GREAT BRITAIN ii. An Overview of Relations: Safavid to the Present
Denis Wright
Prior to the Safavid period, contacts between Britain and Persia were confined to the 13th century, and were infrequent and of short duration.
-
GREAT BRITAIN iii. British influence in Persia in the 19th century
Abbas Amanat
British imperial interests in Persia in the Qajar period were primarily determined by the concern for the security of colonial India and, secondarily, by trade, telegraphic communication, and financial or other conces-sionary agreements.
-
GREAT BRITAIN iv. British influence in Persia, 1900-21
Mansour Bonakdarian
In the late 1890s, the Foreign Office in London came to regard Germany as the main threat to the European balance of power and British imperial hegemony around the globe.
-
Great Britain v. British influence during the Reżā Shah period, 1921-41
Stephanie Cronin
During the reign of Reżā Shah (1925-1941) a profound transformation took place in both the character and the scope of British influence in Persia.
-
Great Britain vi. British influence in Persia, 1941-79
Fakhreddin Azimi
For the greater part of the Qajar era (1796-1924) Persia was the scene of intense rivalry between the Russian and British empires.
-
Great Britain vii. British Travelers to Persia
Denis Wright
The British, more than any others, have been prolific authors of travelogues, and memoirs about Persia.
-
Great Britain viii. British Archeological Excavations
St. J. Simpson
excavations began in Persia before the so-called “French monopoly” on archeological excavations.
-
Great Britain ix. Iranian Studies in Britain, Pre-Islamic
A. D. H. Bivar
Several fields of pre-Islamic Iranian Studies have seen great expansion during recent centuries, and to these, scholars and travelers from Great Britain have made substantial contributions.
-
Great Britain x. Iranian Studies in Britain, the Islamic Period
Charles Melville
British interest in, and scholarship on, Persia and Persian culture in the Islamic period goes back to the first formal contacts between the two countries, that is, at least to the 16th century and the growth of Britain’s involvement in the Levant and East Indian trades.
-
Great Britain xi. Persian Art Collections in Britain
J. Michael Rogers
The collecting of Persian art in Great Britain goes back at least to the missions despatched by the Safavid Shah ʿAbbās I (1588-1629) and the activities of the Sherley brothers at his court in Isfahan. The early 17th century also saw the growth of trade with Persia through the East India Company.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
Great Britain xii. The Persian Community in Britain (1)
Kathryn Spellman
This entry will be treated in two separate articles: (1) Persian Community and (2) The Library for Iranian Studies.
-
Great Britain xii. The Persian Community in Britain (2)
Namdar Baghaei-Yazdi
The Library for Iranian Studies in London was opened to members on 16 November 1991 and at that time the library consisted of a collection of 2,500 books and other publications.
-
Great Britain xiii. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
F. Safiri and H. Shahidi
In the late 1930s, the British Government began to fund BBC broadcasts in languages other than English designed to counter anti-British broadcasts from Germany and Italy. The first were in Arabic, in January 1938, followed by Spanish and Portuguese to Latin America in March. Persian broadcasts followed in December 1940.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
Great Britain xiv. The British Institute of Persian Studies
D. Stronach
was founded in the spring of 1961, thanks to the vision and commitment of a small group of scholars in Britain, each of whom had a special interest in the arts and letters of Persia.
-
Great Britain xv. British Schools in Persia
Gulnar E. Francis-Dehqani
This article will outline the major educational efforts of the British missionaries in Persia from 1871. The British schools in Persia were primarily founded by missionary organizations, most notably the Church Missionary Society (CMS).
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
Greece
Multiple Authors
OVERVIEW of the entry: i. Greco-Persian Political Relations, ii. Greco-Persian Cultural Relations, iii. Persian Influence on Greek Thought, iv. Greek Influence on Persian Thought, v. Greek Influence on Philosophy, vi. The Image of Persia and Persians in Greek Literature, vii. Greek Art and Architecture in Iran, viii. Greek Art in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Northwest India, ix. Greek and Persian Romances, x. Greek Medicine in Persia, xi. Greek Inscriptions in Iran, xii. Persian Loanwords and Names in Greek, xiii. Greek Loanwords in Middle Iranian Languages, xiv. Greek Loanwords in New Persian, xv. Ancient Greek borrowings of Persian herbs and plants of medicinal value.
-
Greece i. Greco-Persian Political Relations
Rüdiger Schmitt
After subjugating the Medes, Cyrus II started his first expedition westwards. In 547 B.C.E. he turned against Lydia and its king, Croesus.
-
Greece ii. Greco-Persian Cultural Relations
Margaret C. Miller
This article is addresses the evidence for receptivity to Persian culture in Greece, the North Aegean, and West Anatolia, including receptivity on the part of the non-Greek peoples of these regions.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
Greece iii. Persian Influence on Greek Thought
Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin
The idea of Iranian origins of Greek philosophy had a legendary aura, either by declaring that Pythagoras had been Zoroaster’s pupil in Babylon, or by writing, as did Clement of Alexandria, that Heraclitus had drawn on “the barbarian philosophy.”
-
Greece iv. Greek Influence on Persian Thought
Mansour Shaki
After the conquest of Ionia, Lydia, and other regions of Asia Minor by Cyrus II, the Persians came into close contact with the Hellenes, their skilled artisans, renowned physicians, artists, statements, men-of-arms, and the like.
-
Greece v - vi. The Image of Persia and Persians in Greek Literature
Reinhold Bichler and Robert Rollinger
The image of Persia in Greek literature is highly stylized and may not be considered as a reflection of actually experienced cultural contacts.
-
GREECE vii. GREEK ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN IRAN
Rémy Boucharlat
The influx of elements of Greek art into Persia during the Achaemenid period was primarily the result of the importation of artists and artisans from Hellenized Asia Minor and rarely due to a direct supply of objects.
-
Greece viii. Greek Art in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Northwest India
Claude Rapin
The emergence of Greek art as a phenomenon following the expedition of Alexander the Great was a major cultural event in Central Asia and India. Its effects were felt for almost a thousand years, down to the early Islamic period.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
Greece ix. Greek and Persian Romances
Richard Davis
Three Persian verse romances of the 11th century stand out as significantly unlike other Persian verse romances, and they share enough features with the Greek Hellenistic Romances to suggest the existence of links between the two sets of tales.
-
GREECE x. GREEK MEDICINE IN PERSIA
Gül Russell
The question of Greek medicine in Iran is closely bound up with the history of Greco-Arabic medicine, which developed with the impetus of the “translation movement” between the 8th and the 10th centuries.
-
Greece xi - xii. Persian Loanwords and Names in Greek
Rüdiger Schmitt
The Greeks came into direct contact with speakers of Iranian languages when Cyrus II conquered the Lydian empire in 547 B.C.E. However, the possibility of linguistic borrowings in prehistoric times cannot be ruled out.
-
Greece xiii. Greek Loanwords in Middle Iranian Languages
Philip Huyse
The number of loanwords borrowed from Greek into the pre-Islamic Iranian languages is far less impressive than the number of borrowings in the other direction.
-
Greece xiv. Greek Loanwords in Medieval New Persian
Lutz Richter Bernburg and EIr
In the Islamic period, Persian learned literature was largely modelled upon Arabic antecedents and that these, whether translations from Greek or Arabic originals, strove to minimize foreign and unfamiliar-sounding vocabulary.
-
GREECE xv. Ancient Greek borrowings of Persian herbs and plants of medicinal value
Luigi Arata
It is well attested that the ancient Greek city-states (poleis) and the Persian Empire had continuous commercial contact which influenced the ordinary life of both parties.
-
GREECE xvi. Greek Ideas and Sciences in Sasanian Iran
Philippe Gignoux
The arrival of Greek ideas and sciences in Iran have been traced through translated texts. However, there are allusions and references that we can glean from Pahlavi literature, and on occasion in longer passages where the closely related medical and philosophical theories of the ancient East indicate their origins in Greek or Indian civilization. Some of these references go back as far as the Achaemenid period too.
-
GREEKS IN MODERN IRAN
Evangelos Venetis
economic and political trends beginning in the 19th century led to the establishment of a significant Greek community in Iran.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GRIBOEDOV, ALEXANDER SERGEEVICH
George Bournoutian
Griboedov joined the Russian administration in Transcaucasia in early 1819 and was sent by the Chief Administrator, General Ermolov, to Persia to establish the Russian Mission in Tehran.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GRIGORIAN, Marcos
Hengameh Fouladvand
(Mārcos [better known as Marco] Grigoriān, b. Kropotkin, Russia, 5 December 1925; d. Yerevan, 27 August 2007), Iranian-Armenian artist, actor, teacher, gallery owner, and collector who played a pioneering role in the development of Iranian modern art.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GRĪW
Werner Sundermann
a Middle Iranian word meaning “neck, throat” and “self, soul.”
-
GROTEFEND, GEORG FRIEDRICH
Rüdiger Schmitt
(b. Hannoversch-Münden, 1775; d. Hannover, 1853), German philologist and scholar of oriental studies.
-
GROUSSET, RENÉ
Jacqueline Calmard-Compas
(b. Aubais, Gard, France, 1885; d. Paris, 1952), French historian who based his wide-ranging research on the studies of the leading French orientalists of his time, and wrote works of synthesis on various aspects of Oriental history and culture.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GRUMBATES
Cross-Reference
See CHIONITES.
-
GRUNDRISS DER IRANISCHEN PHILOLOGIE
Rüdiger Schmitt
(Encyclopaedia of Iranian Philology; Strassburg, 1895-1904, reprinted Berlin and New York, 1974), the first attempt to summarize the knowledge of all subjects concerning Iran — the languages and literatures, history and culture of Iran and the Iranian peoples — that had been achieved by the end of the 19th century.
-
GRÜNWEDEL, ALBERT
Werner Sundermann
(b. Munich, 1856; d. Lenggries, 1935), prominent German Indologist, Tibetologist, art scholar, and archeologist.
-
GRYUNBERG TSVETINOVICH, ALEKSANDR LEONOVICH
Vladmir Kushev
(b. St. Petersburg, 1930; d. St. Petersburg, 1995), Russian linguist who specialized in Iranian languages.
-
GUARDIAN COUNCIL
A. Schirazi
or Šurā-ye Negahbān; a powerful 12-member council with vast legislative and executive jurisdictions that forms a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s Constitution.
-
GUBARU
Rüdiger Schmitt
Babylonian rendering of the Iranian name Gaub(a)ruva, which is best known in the Greek form Gōbryas.
-
GUDARZ
Cross-Reference
See GŌDARZ.
-
GUEVREKIAN, GABRIEL
Mina Marefat
(b. Istanbul, 1900; d. 1970), Armenian avant-garde architect, an influential figure in the development of modern architecture in Persia, linking Persian architects with Europe’s pioneers of the modern movement.
-
GUIDI, IGNAZIO
Erich Kettenhofen
Guidi’s most valuable discovery, the Syriac chronicle of an anonymous Nestorian Christian, contains otherwise non-attested details of late Sasanian history. Guidi recognized the significance of the synodal records of the Nestorian church for reconstructing the administration of the empire.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GUIDI’S CHRONICLE
Sebastian P. Brock
an anonymous, 7th-century chronicle of Nestorian Christians, known also as “the Khuzistan Chronicle,” written in Syriac and covering the period from the reign of the Sasanian Hormizd/Hormoz IV (579-89) to the middle of the 7th century and the time of the early Arab conquests.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GUILDS
Cross-Reference
See AṢNĀF; CHAMBER OF GUILDS; CHAMBER OF COMMERCE; BĀZĀR iii.
-
GUILLEMIN, MARCELLE
Anne Draffkorn Kilmer
One of the early investigators of the reconstruction of ancient Babylonian musical scales and music theory, she was the first scholar to explore and explain the musicological significance of the sequence of number-pairs of musical strings in a cuneiform text of the first millennium B.C.E. excavated at the archaeological site of Nippur in southern Iraq.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GUJARAT
Gavin R. G. Hambly
(Skt. Gurjaṛ), a province of India on its northwestern coastline.
-
GUJARATI
K. M. Jamaspasa
or Gojarati; the mother tongue of Gujaratis, which has been for centuries a vehicle of thought and expression for Hindus, Parsis, and Muslims of Gu-jarat in western India.
-
GUJASTAG ABĀLIŠ
Cross-Reference
See ABĀLIŠ.
-
GUKLĀN
Pierre Oberling
Turkmen tribal confederacy of the Gorgān region in northeastern Persia, the district of Qara Qalʿa in Turkmenistan, and the Ḵiva region in Uzbekistan.
-
ḠUL
Mahmoud and Teresa P. Omidsalar
designation of a fantastic, frightening creature in the Perso-Arabic lore.
-
GULBARGA
Gavin R. G. Hambly
or Golbargā; city and district in the central Deccan, India.
-
GULBENKIAN, CALOUSTE
Jennifer Manoukian
(1869-1955), Armenian oil financier, art collector, and philanthropist born in Lisbon.
This Article Has Images/Tables. -
GULF WAR and PERSIA
Lawrence G. Potter
the final conflict, which was initiated with United Nations authorization, by a coalition force from 34 nations against Iraq, with the expressed purpose of expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait after its invasion and annexion on 2 August 1990.
-
GUMĒZIŠN
D. N. Mackenzie
a Middle Persian noun, spelled gwmycšn in Pahlavi and gwmyzyšn in Manichean script, meaning “mixing, mingling, mixture.”
-
GÜNDÜZLÜ
Cross-Reference
See TURKIC TRIBES.
-
GUNPOWDER
Cross-Reference
See BĀRUT.
-
GUNS, GUNNERY
Cross-Reference
-
GUR
Cross-Reference
See ARDAŠIR ḴORRA, FIRUZĀBĀD.
-
ḠUR
C. Edmund Bosworth
a region of central Afghanistan, essentially the modern administrative province (welāyat) of Ḡōrāt.
-
GUR-E AMIR
Cross-Reference
See SAMARQAND.
-
GUR-E DOḴTAR
cross-reference
See BOZPĀR.
-
GURĀN
Pierre Oberling
a tribe dwelling in the dehestān of Gurān, between Qaṣr-e Širin and Kermānšāh (Bāḵtarān), in Kurdistan.
-
GURĀNI
D. N. Mackenzie
comprises a group of similar North-west Iranian dialects which includes that of Kandula, 25 miles north-north-west of Kermānšāh, and Bāǰalānī, in the region around Zohāb and Qaṣr-e Šīrīn, with an offshoot among the Šabak, Ṣārlī, and Bāǰalān (Bēǰwān) villages east of the city of Mosul in Iraq.
-
GURDZIECKI, BOGDAN
Rudi Matthee
known in Persia as Bohtam Beg; Polish envoy of Georgian-Armenian origin and first permanent Polish resident in Safavid Persia (d. Moscow, 1700).
-
ḠURIĀN
Cross-Reference
See FUŠANJ.
-
GURKHAN
Cross-Reference
See QARA ḴETĀY; CENTRAL ASIA; TITLE OF RULERS.
-
GURUMU
Cross-Reference
See BĒṮ GARMĒ.
-
GUŠA
Jean During
lit. "corner" or "part"; a term in Persian music designating a unit of melody of variable importance, which occupies a special place in the development of one of the twelve modal systems (dastgāh or āvāz).
-
GUSAN
Cross-Reference
See EPICS.
-
GUSFAND
Jean-Pierre Digard
sheep, ovine.
-
GUŠYĀR GILĀNI, ABU’L-ḤASAN B. LABBĀN
David Pingree
Arabicized Kušyār; an astronomer and mathematician from Gilān, whence his nesba Jili/Gilāni (fl. late 10th-early 11th cent.).
-
GUTIANS
Marc Van De Mieroop
name used in ancient Mesopotamian texts to refer to a variety of people, mostly from the Zagros mountain area.
-
GUTSCHMID, HERMANN ALFRED FREIHERR VON
Ronald E. Emmerick
(b. Loschwitz near Dresden, 1831; d. Tübingen, 1887), classical scholar and ancient historian with a special interest in the Ancient Near East.
-
GÜYÜK KHAN
Peter Jackson
(r. 1246-48), Mongol great khan (qaḡan), given posthumously the regnal title Ting-tsung.
-
GUZAŠTAG ABĀLIŠ
Cross-Reference
See ABĀLIŠ.
-
GUZGĀN
Cross-Reference
a district of what was in early Islamic times eastern Khorasan, now roughly corresponding to the northwest of modern Afghanistan, adjacent to the frontier with the southeastern fringe of the Turkmenistan Republic. See JOWZJĀN.
-
GWĀTI
Cross-Reference
See BALUCHISTAN.
-
GYMNASTICS IN PERSIA
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
-
GYPSUM
Dietrich Huff
soft mineral produced from natural gypsum rock by firing in kilns or piles and subsequent pulverization by pounding and grinding.
-
GYPSY
Jean-Pierre Digard, Gernot L. Windfuhr
generally referred to by the term kowli in Persian, seemingly a distortion of kāboli, that is, coming from Kabol, the capital of Afghanistan. It is not at all certain, however, that all the groups referred to as kowli are authentic gypsies; nor that only the groups referred to as kowli should be considered as gypsies.
-
GYPSY i. Gypsies of Persia
Jean-Pierre Digard
Almost everywhere in Persia there are groups with characteristics similar to those of the Gypsies, but they are called by different names, sometimes designating their geographic or ethnic origin, sometimes their social status, and sometimes their profession.
-
GYPSY ii. Gypsy Dialects
Gernot L. Windfuhr
The languages and dialects popularly called “Gypsy” (< Egipcien < qebṭi “Coptic, Egyptian”) constitute three major groups: Asiatic or Middle Eastern Domari, Armenian Lomavren, and European Romani.
-
Gurughli
music sample
-
G~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cross-Reference
list of all the figure and plate images in the letter G entries.