Table of Contents

• 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

  i. Introduction, ii. In Pre-Islamic Persia, iii. In the Medieval Period, iv. In the Safavid Period, v. In the Qajar Period.

• GIFT GIVING i, ii, iii

  EIr, Josef Wiesehöfer

  in Persia. The following articles constitute 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 iv

  Rudi P. Matthee

  iv. In the Safavid Period.

• GIFT GIVING v

  Willem Floor

  v. In the Qajar Period.

• GĪLAKĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See GĪLĀN x. Languages

• 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. To the northwest, the Ṭāleš highlands stretch a continuous watershed separating Gīlān and Azerbaijan.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• GĪLĀN ii. Population

  Habibollah Zanjani

  There are no reliable sources on the population of Gīlān until the first national census of population and housing in 1956.

  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

  During the 19th century, Persia underwent major political, economic, and social changes which were partly instigated by the Anglo-Russian colonial interests in the country and the beginnings of the incorporation of Persia into the emerging inter national economy.

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• 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 throughout their history. Some have clear records of their history, but most of them 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.

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• 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.

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• 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, depending on the micro climate of the area and the resources available.

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• GILĀN xii. Rural Housing

  Christian Bromberger

  There are considerable differences among settlement and building styles according to geographic location. Roughly, one can isolate four geographic areas, each with a distinctive type of rural dwelling: the Gilān plain; the low foothills of the Alborz range; the mountains, covered with forest and capped by alpine meadows; and finally the arid slopes of the Alborz.

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• GILĀN xiii. Kinship and Marriage

  Christian Bromberger

  Kinship in Gilān displays an exceptionally low level of intermarriage between consanguineous kin, marriage “strategies” whose objectives are to diversify, through the marriage alliance, the network of relations in towns and cities.

  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

  The folklore of Gilān is a striking example of the intricate ties between pre-Islamic practices and Islamic rituals.

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• GILAN xvii. Gender Relations

  Christian Bromberger

  The division of activities and spaces between the sexes is quite distinct in the province of Gilan.

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• GILAN xviii. Rural Production Techniques

  Christian Bromberger

  A considerable range of techniques is used to produce such diversified commodities as rice, silk, tea, tobacco, vegetables, olives, and wheat. One can, however, speak of a distinctly Gilāni technical system.

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• 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

  The Gilān region does not have a great craft tradition, as do other provinces of the interior of Iran with their towns famous for one or more specialties: carpets, ceramics, metalwork, etc.

  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.

  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.

• 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, ROSTAM

  Farhang Mehr

  , Arbāb (b. Yazd, 1888; d. San Diego, Calif., 1980), Majles representative, senator, president of Anjoman-e Zardoštiān of Tehran, businessman, and philanthropist.

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• 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 that in the Širāz-nāma (comp. ca. 1333) of Abu’l-ʿAbbās Zarkub Širāzi, where he mentions the bāzār-e giva-duzān (giva-makers’ market) of Shiraz.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• GLYPTIC

  Cross-Reference

  See CYLINDER SEALS.

• 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.