Table of Contents

  • HESYCHIUS

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    (Gk. Hēsýchios), Greek lexicographer from Alexandria, whose lexicon records a number of Iranian words (6th or possibly 5th century CE).

  • HIDALI

    Matthew W. Stolper

    city and region in Elam; a residence of Elamite kings in the early 7th century B.C.E., a regional administrative center thereafter.

  • HIDDEN IMAM

    Cross-Reference

    See ISLAM IN IRAN vii. The Concept of Mahdi in Twelver Shi'ism; ESCHATOLOGY iii. Imami Shiʿism.

  • HILL, GEORGE FRANCIS

    Carmen Arnold-Biucchi

    Hill was born at Berhampore, Bengal, the youngest of five children to the missionary Rev. Samuel John Hill and Leonora Josephine, born Müller, of Danish descent. He came to England at the age of four, attended the School for Sons of Missionaries at Blackheath, and went to University College School and University College, London.

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  • HINDU

    J. T. P. de Bruijn

    (Hendu) denotes in Persian an inhabitant of the Indian subcontinent as well as a follower of Hinduism. The stereotype of the Hindu developed into an element of lyrical imagery which had little to do with reality.

  • HINDU KUSH

    Ervin Grötzbach

    the name given to the southwest range of the massive middle and south Asiatic mountain complex lying partly in Afghanistan and partly in Pakistan.

  • HINDU PERSIAN POETS

    Stefano Pello

    From the late 16th century Hindus contributed to the development of Indo-Persian literary culture in general, and to the output of Persian verse in particular.

  • HINZ, (A.) WALTHER

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Hinz served as a counter-intelligence officer during World War II and suffered a period of internment afterwards. Due to his suspension from his teaching post by the British military government, he was forced to earn his living by another profession, partly as a translator, and, from 1950, as the political editor of a newspaper in Göttingen.

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  • HIPPOCRATES

    Lutz Richter-Bernburg

    or Boqrāṭ in Islamic tradition, where he is often referred to as “the first codifier of medicine” (4th-3rd cents. BCE).

  • 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.

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  • 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.

  • ḤOBAYŠ B. EBRĀHIM B. MOḤAMMAD TEFLISI

    Tahsin Yazici

    author of numerous scientific works who lived in Anatolia (d. ca. 1203-04).

  • ḤOḎEQ, JUNAYDOLLO MAḴDUM

    Keith Hitchins

    (ḤĀḎEQ, JONAYD-ALLĀH; b. mid-1780s; killed 1843), one of the leading Tajik poets of his time.

  • HODGSON, MARSHALL GOODWIN SIMMS

    Saïd Amir Arjomand

    (1922-1968), prominent scholar of Islamic civilization and professor of history and social thought at the University of Chicago.

  • HODIVALA, SHAHPURSHAH HORMASJI DINSHAHJI

    Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa

    (d. 1944), professor of literature, history, and political economy,  best known for his works on Parsi history and on numismatics.

  • HODIVALA, SHAPURJI KAVASJI

    Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa

    (1870-1931), scholar of Avestan and Zoroastrian studies.

  • ḤODUD AL-ʿĀLAM

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    a concise but very important Persian geography of the then known world, Islamic and non-Islamic, begun in 982-83 by an unknown author from the province of Guzgān (in northern Afghanistan).

  • HOERNLE, AUGUSTUS FREDERIC RUDOLF

    Ursula Sims-Williams

    philologist of Indian languages and decipherer of Khotanese (1841-1918).

  • HOFFMANN, KARL

    Johanna Narten

    Hoffmann was mainly interested in Indo-Iranian studies, which he did not conceive of as a mere combination of Indology and Iranian studies, but as a distinct subject comprising historical philology and comparative linguistics. His studies are essentially devoted to Vedic (in India) and to Avestan and Old Persian.

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  • HOJIR

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    in traditional Iranian history, a hero who guarded the Dež-e Sapid “White Fort” on the border of Iran and Turān.

  • ḤOJJAT

    Maria Dakake

    (“proof or argument”), a term used as: (1) a line of argument in debate; (2) designation of the Shiʿite Imams;  (3) an epithet of the Twelfth Imam; (4) a high official in the Ismaʿili missionary activities

  • ḤOJJAT-AL-ESLĀM

    Hamid Algar

    (lit. Proof of Islam), a title awarded to Shiʿite scholars, originally as an honorific but later as a means of indicating their status in the hierarchy of the learned.

  • ḤOJJATIYA

    Mahmoud Sadri

    a Shiʿite religious lay association founded in 1953 by the charismatic cleric Shaikh Maḥmud Ḥalabi to defend Islam against the Bahai missionary activities.

  • HOJVIRI, ABU’L-ḤASAN ʿALI

    Gerhard Böwering

    B. ʿOṮMĀN B. ʿALI AL-ḠAZNAVI AL-JOLLĀBI (d. ca. 1071-72), author of the Kašf al-maḥjub, the most celebrated early Persian Sufi treatise.

  • HOLDICH, THOMAS HUNGERFORD

    Denis Wright

    As head of the Baluchistan Survey Party from 1883, Holdich organized surveys of south Baluchistan and Makran. In 1884 he headed the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission’s survey party; in 1896 he was chief British Commissioner on the Perso-Baluch Boundary Commission.

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  • ḤOLWI, JAMĀL-AL-DIN MAḤMUD

    Tahsin Yazi

    biographer of the leaders of the Ḵalwati Sufi order and minor poet (1574-1654).

  • HŌM

    cross-reference

    See HAOMA.

  • HŌM YAŠT

    W. W. Malandra

    name given to a section of the Avestan Yasna, namely, Y. 9-11.11. It is central to the ritual and is recited prior to the priestly consumption of the parahaoma (Pahl. parāhōm).

  • HOMĀM-AL-DIN

    William L. Hanaway and Leonard Lewisohn

    13th-century Persian poet, best known for his ḡazals, which follow those of Saʿdi in style and tone.

  • HŌMĀN

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    son of Vēsa, in Iranian traditional history one of the most celebrated heroes of Turān.

  • HOMĀY ČEHRZĀD

    Jalil Doostkhah

    according to Iranian traditional history, a Kayānid queen; she was daughter, wife, and successor to the throne of Bahman, son of Esfandiār.

  • HOMĀY O HOMĀYUN

    cross-reference

    See ḴᵛĀJU KERMĀNI.

  • HOMĀYUN

    Jean During

    (lit. “auspicious”), an important modal system (dastgāh) in traditional Persian music.

  • HOMĀYUN PĀDEŠĀH

    Wheeler M. Thackston

    (1508–56), NĀṢER-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD, second Mughal emperor in Kabul and northern India, and the succesor to Bābor.

  • HOMMAIRE de HELL, IGNACE XAVIER MORAND

    Jacqueline Calmard-Compas

    French engineer, geographer, traveler (1812-1848). He carried out pioneering scientific research in the Ottoman empire, southern Russia, and Persia

  • HOMOSEXUALITY

    Multiple Authors

    OVERVIEW of the entry: i. In Zoroastrianism. ii. In Islamic law. iii. In Persian literature. iv. In modern Persia. See Supplement.  

  • HOMOSEXUALITY i. IN ZOROASTRIANISM

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    Zoroastrian literature contains discussions of personal relations only in legal contexts and is quite explicit with regard to sins of a sexual nature.

  • HOMOSEXUALITY ii. IN ISLAMIC LAW

    E. K. Rowson

    The foundational texts of Islam address, and generally condemn, sexual relations between members of the same sex.

  • HOMOSEXUALITY iii. IN PERSIAN LITERATURE

    EIr

    a sharp contrast exists between the treatment of homosexuality in Islamic law and its reflection in Persian literature, particularly poetry (the chief vehicle of Persian literary expression).

  • HOMOSEXUALITY iv. IN MODERN IRAN

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • HONAR O MARDOM

    Nassereddin Parvin

    a monthly magazine published by the General Office of Fine Arts in the Ministry of Education, 1957, 1962-79.

  • HONARESTĀN-E ʿĀLI-E MUSIQI-E MELLI

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • HONARMANDI, HASAN

    Kāmyār ʿĀbedi

    poet, translator, and literary scholar.

  • HONEY

    Hushang Aʿlam

    (ʿasal, archaic Pers. angobin).  In Iranian lore, according to the Nowruz-nāma, Hušang, the second  Pišdādiān king, first “brought out honey from the zanbur (“wasp”).

  • ḤOQAYNI

    Wilferd Madelung

    the nesba of two 11th-century Zaydi Imams, father and son, scholars of religious law.

  • ḤOQUQ

    Nassereddin Parvin

    the name of various 20th-century periodicals in Iran and Afghanistan.

  • ḤOQUQ-E EMRUZ

    Nassereddin Parvin

    a journal published irregularly in Tehran, 1963-76.

  • HORDĀD

    Antonio Panaino

    “Integrity (of body), Wholeness”, one of the Avestan entities (AMƎŠA SPƎNTA), normally mentioned in association with Amərətāt (AMURDĀD) already in the Gāθās.

  • HORMIZD

    cross-reference

    See HORMOZD i.

  • HORMOZĀN

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    one of the last military leaders of Sasanian Persia, a member of one of the seven great families of Sasanian Persia (d. 644).

  • HORMOZD (1)

    cross-reference

    See AHURA MAZDĀ.

  • HORMOZD (2)

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    (Ormisdas), a brother of the Sasanian great king Šāpur II (r. 307-79 CE), who participated on the Roman side in the emperor Julian’s Persian expedition of 363 CE.

  • HORMOZD I

    M. RAHIM SHAYEGAN

    Sasanian great king (r. 272-73 CE), the throne name of Šāpur I’s son and and successor, Hormozd-Ardašēr.

  • HORMOZD II

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    Sasanian great king (r. 303-09 CE). He assumed a crown very similar to that of Bahrām II,  representing the varəγna, the royal falcon.

  • HORMOZD III

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    Sasanian great king (r. 457-59 C.E.). He was the eldest son and heir of Yazdegerd II and “was king of Sejestān" (Ṭabari).

  • HORMOZD IV

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    Sasanian great king (r. 579-90 CE). He succeeded Ḵosrow I Anōširavān just as the latter was negotiating a peace treaty with the Byzantine empire.

  • HORMOZD V

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    Sasanian great king (r. 630-32 CE) in the turbulent years following the murder of Ḵosrow II Parvēz (628).

  • HORMOZD KUŠĀNŠĀH

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    Sasanian prince governor of Kušān. He is known from his coins minted in eastern Iran and references in three Latin sources. His coins are gold scyphate (cup-shaped) and light bronze issues; rare heavy copper and silver coins also occur.

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  • HORMOZDGĀN

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    BATTLE OF, the engagement which brought Ardašir I and the Sasanian dynasty to power, 28 April 224 CE.

  • HORMOZGĀN PROVINCE

    Cross-Reference

    See Supplement.

  • HORMOZI, SAʿID

    Jean During

    Said Hormozi did not perform in public, worked as a bank employee, and frequented musical circles such as that of Solaymān Amir Qāsemi, who preserved the purity of Persian music. He was a Sufi affiliated to the Ṣafi-ʿAlišāh brotherhood and entered a state of profound meditation when he played the setār, which made his music particularly captivating.

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  • HORMUZ i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

    D. T. Potts

    island and a strategic strait (Tanga-ye Hormoz) in the Persian Gulf, linking it to the Gulf of Oman, as well as the name of a medieval port near the strait.

  • HORMUZ ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD

    Willem Floor

    Hormuz fell to the Arabs in 650-51. In the 10th century, the town of Hormuz was the chief port for Kermān and Sistān, although the main Persian Gulf port was Jannāba. It was known for its cultivation of a variety of millet (ḏorra), indigo, cumin, and sugarcane.

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  • HORN, PAUL

    Erich Kettenhofen

    German philologist and specialist in Iranian and Turkish languages (1863-1908).

  • HOROSCOPE

    David Pingree

    the horoscopic diagram or theme which depicts the positions of the planets in the zodiacal signs and of the zodiacal signs relative to the local horizon at a given time. 

  • ḤORR-E ʿĀMELI

    Meir M. Bar Asher

    (1624-1693), one of the outstanding Twelver Shiʿite Hadith scholars of the Aḵbāri school and a prolific author.

  • ḤORR-E RIĀḤI

    Jean Calmard

    a leading tribesman in Kufa, who intercepted Ḥosayn b. ʿAli and his party and led them to Karbalā, but later repented and fought and died (10 October 680) there on Ḥosayn’s side.

  • HORSE

    cross-reference

    See ASB.

  • HORSE RACING

    Azartash Azarnoush

    The history of horse racing in Iran can be traced back to the Achaemenid period. Xenophon refers to a race set up by Cyrus II.

  • HORSESHOES

    Wolfram Kleiss

    (naʿl), iron protectors for the hooves of pack animals and mounts. In Persia, as in southern Europe, both horses and donkeys are shod.

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  • HORUFISM

    Hamid Algar

    a body of antinomian and incarnationist doctrines evolved by Fażl-Allāh Astarābādi (d. 1394), known to his followers also as Fażl-e Yazdān (“the generosity of God”). Its principal features were elaborate numerological interpretations of the letters of the Perso-Arabic alphabet and an attempt to correlate them with the human form.

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  • ḤOSĀM-AL-DIN ʿALI BEDLISI

    Tahsin Yazici

    NURBAḴŠI, Kurdish Sufi author of a commentary on the Koran, among other works (d. 1494-95).

  • ḤOSĀM-AL-DIN ČALABI

    Mohammad Estelami

    (d. 1284), ḤASAN B. MOḤAMMAD b. Ḥasan, Ebn Aḵi Tork, leading disciple and first successor of Jalāl-al-Din Rumi.

  • HŌŠANG

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    called Pēšdād, an early hero-king in Iranian tradition, father of the Iranians and founder of the Pēšdādian dynasty.

  • HŌŠANG JĀMĀSP

    Mary Boyce and Firoze Kotwal

    a distinguished Parsi scholar-priest (1833-1908).

  • ḤOSAYN B. ʿALĀʾ-AL-DAWLA

    cross-reference

    See JALĀYERIDS.

  • ḤOSAYN B. ʿALI

    Multiple Authors

    Hosayn b. Ali is the second surviving grandson of the Prophet Moḥammad through his daughter Fāṭema and the third Imam of the Shiʿites after his father and his elder brother Ḥasan.

  • ḤOSAYN B. ʿALI i. LIFE AND SIGNIFICANCE IN SHIʿISM

    Wilferd Madelung

    In contrast to the pacifist and conciliatory character of his elder brother, Ḥosayn inherited his father’s fighting spirit and intense family pride, although he did not acquire his military prowess and experience.

  • ḤOSAYN B. ʿALI ii. IN POPULAR SHIʿISM

    Jean Calmard

    Legendary accounts about Ḥosayn and his martyrdom were from the outset influenced by his status as a Shiʿite Imam.

  • ḤOSAYN B. ʿALI iii. THE PASSION OF ḤOSAYN

    Peter Chelkowski

    The taʿzia (literally “mourning”) is a dramatic form which Shiʿite Muslims in Persia have created to commemorate the tragedy of Ḥosayn ebn ʿAli, and thus it is comparable to the Christian passion play. See also TA'ZIA.

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  • ḤOSAYN B. OVAYS

    cross-reference

    See JALAYERIDS.

  • ḤOSAYN B. RUḤ

    Said Amir Arjomand

    (d. 938), SHAIKH ABU’L-QĀSEM ḤOSAYN B. RUḤ B. ABI BAḤR NOWBAḴTI, third of the four “special vicegerents” (nowwab-e ḵāṣṣa) of the Hidden Imam.