Table of Contents

• ḤIRA

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  city on the desert fringes of southwestern Mesopotamia; known in pre-Islamic times as the capital of the Lakhmid Arab dynasty, clients of the Sasanians, it survived as an urban settlement into the early centuries of the Islamic period.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• HISSAR, TEPE

  Cross-Reference

  (Tappa Ḥeṣār), prehistoric site located just south of Dāmḡān in northeastern Persia. See TEPE HISSAR.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY

  Multiple Authors

  This entry is concerned with the historiography of the Iranian and Persephone world from the pre-Islamic period through the 20th century in Persian and other Iranian languages. The periods and their subdivisions of this historiography are covered in 14 articles.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY i. INTRODUCTION

  Elton Daniel

  Historiography, literally, is the study not of history but of the writing of history. In modern usage, this term covers a wide range of related but distinct areas of inquiry.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY ii. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

  A. SH. Shahbazi

  Iranian historiography remained unaffected by the Herodotean school and developed from oral traditions and the Mesopotamian-style “quasi-history,” which embellished historical narratives.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY iii. EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD

  Elton L. Daniel

  It might be questioned whether there is, strictly speaking, any “historiography of Persia in the early Islamic period” at all, since it is by no means clear that there was an Islamic “Persia” prior to the rise of the Safavids.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY iv. MONGOL PERIOD

  Charles Melville

  Persian historiography reached its maturity during the period of 13th-15th centuries, which might broadly be described as the Turko-Mongol era.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY v. TIMURID PERIOD

  Maria Szuppe

  Timurid historiography is firmly rooted within the Persian literary tradition of official court histories of the post-Mongol period.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY vi. SAFAVID PERIOD

  Sholeh Quinn

  Safavid historiography, although developing unique features of its own, had its origins in the eastern Timurid tradition that was centered in Herāt.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY vii. AFSHARID AND ZAND PERIODS

  Ernest Tucker

  Persian historical writing in the 18th century reflected the profound changes that occurred in Iran after the1722 Afghan conquest of Isfahan.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY viii. QAJAR PERIOD

  Abbas Amanat

  In the century and a half that constituted the Qajar period (1786-1925), writing of history evolved from production of annalistic court chronicles and other traditional genres into the earliest experimentations in modern historiography.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY ix. PAHLAVI PERIOD

  Abbas Amanat, EIr

  Historiography of this period will be treated in two separate entries: (1) General survey of historical writings; and (2) Specific topics concerning historical works.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY ix. PAHLAVI PERIOD (1)

  Abbas Amanat

  The historical studies of this period are primarily about documenting Iran’s national identity.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY ix. PAHLAVI PERIOD (2)

  EIr

  a survey of contributions in the fields of chronology, calendar systems, religious history, and cultural continuity from pre-Islamic to the Islamic period, and a survey of the ultra-nationalistic current in historical writings in the Pahlavi period.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY x. ISLAMIC REPUBLIC.

  Cross-Reference

  See Supplement

• HISTORIOGRAPHY xi. AFGHANISTAN

  Christine Noelle-Karimi

  The historiography of the day not only bears witness to the perceptions current at the time but also was subject to reinterpretation as new historical predilections arose. The available historical accounts may thus be read on several levels.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY xii. CENTRAL ASIA

  Yuri Bregel

  The first Persian historical work produced in Central Asia (Transoxiana, Ḵʷārazm, Farḡāna, and Eastern Turkestan) was the 10th-century translation of the history of Ṭabari.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY xiii. THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

  cross-reference

  See INDIA xvi.

• HISTORIOGRAPHY xiv. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

  Sara Nur Yildiz

  Ottoman historical works composed in Persian occupy an important place in the corpus of court-oriented Ottoman historical writing of the early and classical periods.

• HNČʿAK

  Aram Arkun

  colloquial term for members of the Social Democratic Hnčʿakean Party [SDHP], founded in Switzerland by Russian Armenians in 1887, with  branches in Persia, the Russian empire, the Ottoman empire, and elsewhere.