Table of Contents

• 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 (harā bərəzaitī: see ALBORZ). According to this tradition, the world was divided into seven (circular) regions.

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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

  denoting “seven items beginning with the letter sin (S),”  one of the components 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

  large Elamite archeological site in Ḵūzestān province, in the southwestern alluvial plains of Persia, about 10 km southeast of Susa and 60 km south of Andīmešk.

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• HAFTA

  Babri 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).