Table of Contents

  • HA-GE’ULLAH

    Amnon Netzer

    Judeo-Persian weekly newspaper published in Tehran between 1920 and 1923.

  • HAAS, WILLIAM S.

    Hossein Kamaly

    (1883-1956), German-born Iranist, advisor to the Iranian ministry of education and a pioneer of Iranian studies in the United States. 

  • ḤABAQUQ, TOMB OF

    S. Soroudi

    This brick monument, the overall shape of which is comparable with the tomb of Amir Timur in Samarqand, consists essentially of an octagonal tower topped by a conical roof. Each of the eight sides of the roughly 7 meter high tower is embellished with the design of an inset arch.

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  • ḤABIB AL-ESLĀM

    Nasser-al-Din Parvin

    Persian-language weekly newspaper published in Kabul, 1929 replacing Amān-e afḡān at the time of Bačča-ye Saqqā.

  • ḤABIB EṢFAHĀNI

    Tahsin Yazıcı

    (1835-93), MIRZĀ, Iranian poet, grammarian, and translator, who spent much of his life in exile in Ottoman Turkey; noted for his Persian grammar, Dastur-e Soḵan, regarded as the first systematic grammar of the Persian language and a model for many later works.

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  • ḤABIB-ALLĀH

    Ludwig W. Adamec

    (1872-1919), Amir, monarch who initiated modernization in Afghanistan.

  • ḤABIB-ALLĀH ḴORĀSĀNI

    Jalal Matini

    (1850-1909), Hājj Mirzā, an enlightened religious scholar of Mašhad and a poet.

  • ḤABIB-ALLĀH SĀVAJI

    Barbara Schmitz

    (1587-1628), one of the more conservative artists active during the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1587-1628). All we know about him, besides his paintings, is the brief note by his contemporary Qāżi Aḥmad, who, writing in 1596, referred to him as a masterful artist distinguished among his peers.

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  • ḤABIBĀBĀDI, MOʿALLEM

    Cross-Reference

    See MOʿALLEM ḤABIBĀBĀDI.

  • ḤABIBIYA SCHOOL

    Ludwig W. Adamec

    an elite high school for boys established in 1903 in Kabul and named after its founder, Amir Ḥabib-Allāh.

  • ḤABL AL-MATIN

    Nassereddin Parvin

    (lit. strong cord), name of three newspapers published in Calcutta, Tehran, and Rašt.

  • ḤABLARUD

    M. H. Ganji

    river in Damāvand and Garmsār districts of Semnān province in northern Persia.

  • ḤADĀʾEQ AL-SEḤR

    N. Y. Chalisova

    shortened title of the famous treatise Ḥadāʾeq al-seḥr fi daqāʾeq al-šeʿr (“Gardens of magic in the subtleties of poetry”) by Rašid(-e) Waṭwāt (d. 1182-83).

  • HADAF EDUCATIONAL GROUP

    Aḥmad Birašk

    (Goruh-e Farhangi-e Hadaf), a pioneering private educational complex founded in Tehran in 1949-50.

  • HĀDI ḤASAN

    K. A. Jaisi

    Indian scholar of Persian literature (1894-1963).

  • HĀDI SABZAVĀRI

    Seyyed Hossein Nasr

    (1797-1873), Shaikh Mollā, prominent Islamic philosopher of the Qajar period, also known as a theologian and poet.

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  • ḤADIQAT AL-ḤAQIQA WA ŠARIʿAT AL-ṬARIQA

    J.T.P. de Bruijn

    a Persian didactical maṯnawi by the twelfth-century poet Ḥakim Majdud b. Ādam Sanāʾi.

  • HADIŠ (1)

    cross-reference

    See PALACE i. ACHAEMENID.

  • HADIŠ (2)

    Mary Boyce

    the Avestan name of a minor Zoroastrian divinity, glossed in Pahlavi (tr. of Visprad 1:9) by mēnōg ī xānag “Spirit of the house.”

  • HADITH

    Shahab Ahmed, A. Kazemi-Moussavi, Ismail K. Poonawala, Hamid Algar, Shaul Shaked

    term denoting reports that convey the normative words and deeds of the Prophet Moḥammad; it is understood to refer generically to the entire corpus of this literature and to the thousands of individual reports that comprise it.

  • HADITH i. A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

    Shahab Ahmed

    Hadith literature is understood to be the repository of the sonna (normative conduct) of the Prophet, which is regarded as second in authority only to the Koran as a source of Divine truth.

  • HADITH ii. IN SHIʿISM

    A. Kazemi-Moussavi

    The Twelver Shiʿite conception of Hadith is generally in line with that of the Sunnites as discussed in Section i. However, Hadith about the Imams are authoritative as well.

  • HADITH iii. IN ISMAʿILISM

    Ismail K. Poonawala

    Ismaʿilis had neither a Hadith collection of their own nor a distinct Ismaʿili law before the establishment of the Fatimid dynasty in North Africa in 297/909.

  • HADITH iv. IN SUFISM

    Hamid Algar

    In keeping with all other categories of Islamic literature, the writings of the Sufis are replete with not only Koranic citations but also quotations of Hadith.

  • HADITH v. AS INFLUENCED BY IRANIAN IDEAS AND PRACTICES

    Shaul Shaked

    The contact of Arabia with ancient Iran started even before Islam, and there are definite traces of the presence of Iranian religious notions in the Koran.

  • HĀDŌXT NASK

    Jean Kellens

    (Book of scriptures), the sixth of the seven Gaθic (Gāsānīg) nasks of the Sasanian Avesta, according to the Dēnkard (8.45.1).

  • HADRIAN

    Ernst Badian

    (Publius Aelius Hadrianus), Roman emperor 117-38. He abandoned the Parthian War and the provinces east of the Euphrates that had been instituted by Trajan but never securely held. He permanently renounced any intervention in Armenia and Parthia.

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  • ḤĀʾERI, ʿABD-AL-KARIM YAZDI

    Hamid Algar

    (1859-1937), Shaikh, an influential “source of emulation” and founder of the institution of religious teaching and guidance in Qom. His literary legacy was relatively meager, the result of his preoccupation with administering the Ḥawza and teaching.

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  • HAFEZ

    Multiple Authors

    Celebrated Persian lyric poet (ca. 715-792/1315-1390).

  • HAFEZ i. AN OVERVIEW

    Ehsan Yarshater

    Hafez is the most popular of Persian poets. Many of his lines have become proverbial sayings, and there are few who cannot recite some of his lyrics.

  • HAFEZ ii. HAFEZ’S LIFE AND TIMES

    Bahaʾ-al-Din Khorramshahi and EIr

    In spite of this enormous popularity and influence, details of his life are extremely sketchy, and the brief references in taḏkeras (anthologies with biographical sketches) are often unreliable or even purely fictitious.

  • HAFEZ iii. HAFEZ’S POETIC ART

    J. T. P. de Bruijn

    Perhaps the greatest progress in research on Hafez during the past century has been made in the domain of philology. Critical editions have been published which begin to provide a reliable basis for the study of Hafez’s poetry.

  • HAFEZ iv. LEXICAL STRUCTURE OF HAFEZ’S GHAZALS

    D. Meneghini Correale

    Despite limitations, it is nevertheless necessary to base textual criticism on complete and reliable lexico-statistical inventories of Hafez’s ghazals.

  • HAFEZ v. MANUSCRIPTS OF HAFEZ

    Julie Scott Meisami

    A major concern of 20th-century Hafez scholarship has been the establishment of a reliable text of his poems.

  • HAFEZ vi. PRINTED EDITIONS OF THE DIVĀN OF HAFEZ

    Bahaʾ-al-Din Khorramshahi and EIr

    Printed editions of Hafez’s poems include partial and complete collections, non-critical and critical editions, in lithographic, calligraphic, facsimile, and typeset formats. The first printed edition was commissioned by Richard Johnson of the East India Company and published by Upjohn’s Calcutta press in 1791.

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  • HAFEZ viii. HAFEZ AND RENDI

    Franklin Lewis

    Rend, variously translated in English as “rake, ruffian, pious rogue, brigand, libertine, lout, debauchee,” is the very antithesis of establishment propriety.

  • HAFEZ ix. HAFEZ AND MUSIC

    Franklin Lewis

    The poetics of Hafez depends on a sensuality of language and imagery. Smell, taste, texture, color and certainly sound imagery abound. Translations and adaptations from Hafez have repeatedly been set to music of the Western classical music tradition. 

  • HAFEZ x. TRANSLATIONS OF HAFEZ IN ENGLISH

    Parvin Loloi

    The first poem by Hafez to appear in English was the work of Sir William Jones (1746-94).

  • HAFEZ xi. TRANSLATIONS OF HAFEZ IN GERMAN

    Hamid Tafazoli

    The name of Hafez is closely associated with that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in German literature. This is directly attributable to the status Goethe accords Hafez in his West-West-östlicher Divan (1819).

  • HAFEZ xii. HAFEZ AND THE VISUAL ARTS

    Priscilla Soucek

    The 16th century constitutes the apex in production for illustrated copies of Hafez’s Divān; they were made in several places for a range of patrons. The largest group of the illustrated Hafez manuscripts was produced in Shiraz, the most impressive among them dating to the 1580s.

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  • HAFEZ xiii. - xiv. HAFEZ’S TOMB (ḤĀFEẒIYA)

    Kuros Kamali Sarvestani

    The Hafeziya is located south of the Koran Gate (Darvāza-ye Qorʾān) on the northern edge of Shiraz. It is on the site of the famous Golgašt-e Moṣallā, the pleasure ground often mentioned in the poems of Hafez.

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  • ḤĀFEẒ EṢFAHĀNI

    Parviz Mohebbi

    Mawlānā Moḥammad, known as Moḵtareʿ (inventor), 15th-16th century engineer, summoned by the Timurid court of Sultan Ḥosayn Bāyqarā to construct a clock after a European model.

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  • ḤĀFEẒ-E ABRU

    Maria Eva Subtelny and Charles Melville

    (d. 1430), author of many historical and historico-geographical works in Persian, which were commissioned by Šāhroḵ, the Timurid ruler of Herat during the first decades of the 15th century.

  • ḤĀFEẒ-E ʿAJAM

    Tahsin Yazıcı

    HĀFEẒ-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD, scholar of religion and author, renowned for his ability to write with speed and in an attractive style.

  • HAFT

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    (seven), the heptad and its cultural significance in Persian history. The number has been explained as the symbolic expression of a distinct culture.

  • HAFT AMAHRASPAND YAŠT

    Antonio Panaino

    or simply Haf-tān yašt, the second hymn of the Avestan corpus. It is dedicated to the seven Zoroastrian entities and recited on the first seven days of the month.

  • HAFT EQLIM

    Cross-Reference

    See HAFT KEŠVAR.

  • HAFT KEŠVAR

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    (seven regions), the usual geographical division of the world in Iranian tradition; ancient Iranians  envisioned the world as vast and round and encircled by a high mountain.

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  • HAFT ḴOSRAVĀNI

    Ameneh Youssefzadeh

    the seven musical systems or modes attributed to Bārbad, the famous court musician of the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parvēz (r. 590-628).

  • HAFT ḴᵛĀN

    Olga M. Davidson

    the title of two famous episodes in Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma, the Haft Ḵᵛān-e Rostam, and the Haft Ḵᵛān-e Esfandiār, describing seven exploits that each hero had to undertake.

  • HAFT LANG

    Cross-Reference

    See BAḴTIĀRI TRIBE.

  • HAFT OWRANG

    cross-reference

    See JĀMI.

  • HAFT PEYKAR

    François de Blois

    a famous romantic epic by Neẓāmi Ganjavi from the last decade of the 6th/12th century. The title can be translated literally as “seven portraits,” but also with the figurative meaning of “seven beauties.”

  • HAFT QOLZOM

    Ṣafurā Hušyār

    (lit., The seven seas), the title of a Persian dictionary compiled in India in 1813-18 by Abu’l-Moẓaffar Ḡāzi-al-Din Ḥaydar (d. 1827).

  • HAFT SIN

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    “seven items beginning with the letter sin (S),”  a component of the rituals of the New Year’s Day festival (see NOWRUZ) observed by most Iranians. The items are traditionally displayed on the dining cloth (sofra) that every household spreads out on the floor (or on a table) in a room normally reserved for entertaining guests.

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  • HAFT TEPE

    Ezat O. Negahban

    In the 1950s and 1960s, Haft Tepe became part of a large sugar cane plantation. In the course of leveling the land for planting, some of the archaeological remains were destroyed and others exposed. During the construction of the main road to the plantation, a baked brick wall was uncovered and the discovery reported to the Iranian Archaeological Service.

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  • HAFTA

    Badri Gharib

    (“week”), history of the calendar week in Iran.

  • HAFTĀNBŌXT

    Mansour Shaki

    traditional reading of the name of a legendary warlord in southern Persia, mentioned in the Kār-nāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān (The exploits of Ardašīr son of Pābag).

  • HAFTAVĀN TEPE

    Charles Burney

    one of the three largest settlement mounds in the Urmia basin, Azerbaijan, covering fifty acres and not far from the village of Haftavān, itself barely two miles from the district town of Salmās.

  • HAFTŌRANG

    Antonio Panaino

    the circumpolar constellation Ursa Major (UMa),  known in Young Avestan literature under the appellative of haptōiriṇga- (only pl. with star- “star”).

  • HAFTVĀD

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    (Haftwād), the hero of a legend associated with the rise of the Sasanian Ardašir I (r. 224-39). The Šāh-nāma gives his “strange story” (dāstān-e šegeft).

  • HAGIOGRAPHIC LITERATURE

    Jürgen Paul

    in Persia and Central Asia. Hagiographic literature may be defined broadly as a biographical genre devoted to individuals enjoying an exclusive religious status as “saints” or “holy men” in the eyes of the authors.

  • HAGMATĀNA

    Cross-Reference

    See HAMADĀN.

  • HAIFA

    Hossein Amanat

    a port city in northwestern Israel and the site of a number of significant Bahai holy places, administrative buildings, and historical monuments. Bahais consider it their most sacred location after the shrine of Mirzā Ḥosayn-ʿAli Nuri Bahāʾ-Allāh, the prophet of the Bahai faith, situated across the bay in nearby ʿAkkā.

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  • HAIKU

    Eva Lucie Witte

    a Japanese poetic form adopted and employed by Iranian poets since the second half of the 20th century.

  • ḤAIM, MOREH ḤAḴĀM

    Amnon Netzer

    eminent Jewish scholar (b. Tehran, 1872; d. Tehran, 1942).

  • ḤAIM, ŠEMUʾEL

    Amnon Netzer

    generally known as Monsieur Ḥaim or Mister Ḥaim, journalist and Majles deputy (b. Kermānšāh, 1891; executed Tehran, Dec. 15, 1931).

  • ḤAIM, SOLAYMĀN

    Amnon Netzer

    twentieth-century lexicographer, became known as one of the first serious lexicographers to prepare Persian-language dictionaries into and from English, French and Hebrew (1886-1970).

  • HAJAR

    Cross-Reference

    See BAHRAIN.

  • HAJĀR

    cross-reference

    See ŠARAFKANDI, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN.

  • ḤĀJEB

    C. Edmund Bosworth, Rudi Matthee

    administrative and then military office in the pre-modern Iranian world.

  • ḤĀJEB i. IN THE MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PERIOD

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    The office of ḥājeb, implying military command, appears in the Iranian world with the Samanids, where it probably grew out of the amir’s domestic household.

  • ḤĀJEB ii. IN THE SAFAVID AND QAJAR PERIODS

    Rudi Matthee

    In the Safavid period the ḥājeb, the major domo or master of ceremony, was called the išik-āqāsi-bāši, literally “head of the masters of the threshold.”

  • ḤĀJI ʿALILU

    Pierre Oberling

    a Turkic tribe of Persian Azerbaijan. Its main branch lives north of Varzaqān and Ahar, in Qarājadāḡ (Arasbārān); another branch dwells in the vicinity of Marāḡa.

  • ḤĀJI ĀQĀ

    F. Farzaneh

    a satirical novella by Ṣādeq Hedāyat, published in the journal Soḵan in 1945, followed by a second edition in 1952.

  • ḤĀJI BĀBĀ

    Nasseredin Parvin

    a satirical and politically critical newspaper, published in Tehran, 1949-53.

  • ḤĀJI BĀBĀ AFŠĀR

    Anna Vanzan

    son of an officer in the army of the Crown Prince ʿAbbās Mirzā and one of the first Persian students sent to study in Europe (1811).

  • ḤĀJI BĀBĀ OF EṢFAHĀN

    cross-reference

    See HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN.

  • ḤĀJI FIRUZ

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    a prominent type of traditional folk entertainer, who appears as a street performer in the days preceding Nowruz. The Ḥāji Firuz entertains passers-by by singing traditional songs and dancing and playing his tambourine for a few coins.

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  • ḤĀJI MIRZĀ ĀQĀSI

    Cross-Reference

    grand vizier of Moḥammad Shah Qāǰār (r. 1250-64/1834-48) between 1251-64/1835-48. See ĀQĀSI, ḤĀJI MIRZĀ.

  • ḤĀJI PIĀDA

    cross-reference

    Mosque of. See ISFAHAN x, MONUMENTS.

  • ḤĀJI PIRZĀDA

    Anna Vanzan

    (d. 1904), Moḥammad ʿAli Nāʾini, Persian sufi and traveler, whose diary follows the convention of the Qajar safar-nāmas in its description of the wonders seen abroad; he expresses a sincere apprehension for those Iranians abroad whom he felt had forgotten their culture and religion.

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  • ḤĀJI VĀŠANGTON

    Hossein Kamaly

    In his dispatches to Persia Ḥāji Vāšangton presented information about the American political system and society. He openly admired the Americans’ disdain for Europeans and regarded Americans as “alert, intelligent, learned, polite, and wealthy.” He stressed that all government dignitaries were “servants of the people.” 

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  • HAJIABAD

    Philippe Gignoux, EIr

    (Ḥājiābād), site of bilingual inscription of Šāpur I on the wall of a cave near Persepolis. OVERVIEW of the entry: i. The Inscriptions. ii. The Texts.

  • HAJIABAD i. INSCRIPTIONS

    Philippe Gignoux

    The Hajiabad inscriptions in Parthian and Middle Persian were discovered in 1818 in a grotto a few kilometers north of Persepolis. This text describes a feat of archery by King Šāpūr I performed in the presence of kings and princes, of the grandees and the nobles.

  • HAJIABAD ii. THE TEXTS

    EIr

    “This (is) the bowshot of me, the Mazda-worshipping god Shapur, king of kings of Eran and Non-Eran ..."

  • ḤĀJIĀNI

    Bruno Nettl

    a guša or subdivision of a mode in the canonic repertory (radif) of Persian classical music.

  • HAJJ

    cross-reference

    See PILGRIMAGE, forthcoming online.

  • ḤĀJJ SAYYĀḤ

    Ali Ferdowsi

    (ca. 1836-1925), constitutionalist and human rights activist who pursued democratic political reforms in Persia; the first modern Persian to tour the world, the first to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, wrote the first modernist Persian book of travels and the first modern prison notebook.

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  • HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN

    Abbas Amanat

    hero of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier (3 vols., London, 1824), the most popular Oriental novel in the English language and a highly influential stereotype of the so-called “Persian national character” in modern times. 

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  • HAJW

    J. T. P. de Bruijn

    and its synonym hejā, two of the many terms which denote types of humorous writing or light verse in Persian.

  • ḤAKAMI

    Mohammad-Mahdi Khalaji

    (ca.1848-1925-6), Mirzā ʿALI-AKBAR, philosopher and theosopher, known in his lifetime as Ḥakim but later referred to as Ḥakami.

  • ḤĀKEM

    cross-reference

    See ADMINISTRATION.

  • ḤĀKEM BE-AMR-ALLĀH

    Farhad Daftary

    ABU ʿALI MANṢUR, the sixth Fatimid caliph and sixteenth Ismaʿili Imam (r. 996-1021), arguably the most controversial member of the Fatimid dynasty.

  • ḤAKIM ʿALAWI KHAN

    Farid Ghassemlou

    an Iranian physician and author in the service of the Mughal Emperor Moḥammad Shah as his chief physician with the title of Moʾtamen-al-Moluk.  

  • ḤAKIM ATĀ

    Devin DeWeese

    a Central Asian Sufi; he is usually named as a direct disciple of Aḥmad Yasavi, and would therefore have lived in the early 13th century.

  • ḤAKIM TERMEḎI

    Bernd Radtke

    (ca. 820-830-ca. 907-12), ABU ʿABD-ALLĀH MOḤAMMAD b. ʿAli, a prolific mystic author, many of whose writings have survived.

  • ḤAKIMI, EBRĀHIM

    Abbas Milani and EIr

    Ḥakimi was born into an old and prominent family of court physicians. The family had been court physicians since the 17th century, starting with the eponym of the family, Moḥammad-Dāwud Khan Ḥakim, a physician at the courts of the Safavid Shah Ṣafi and Shah ʿAbbās II and the founder of the Ḥakim Mosque in Isfahan.

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  • ḤAKIMOVA, MAWJUDA

    Evelin Grassi

    (1932-1993), Soviet Tajik poetess, editor, and dramatist. Her poetry consists mainly of lyric miniatures on the theme of love and all manifestations of the natural world, from the Pamir mountains to the simplest flower plucked in a park in the suburbs of Dushanbe. 

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  • ḤĀL

    Jean During

    (lit. condition, state), an essential notion in Persian arts, especially music, which is supposed to bring about a meditative state.