Table of Contents

  • INSECTIVORES

    Steven C. Anderson

    members of the mammalian order, small animals with several conservative anatomical characteristics. They retain five digits on all limbs and walk or run with soles and heels on the ground (plantigrade). Three families are represented in Persia and Afghanistan: hedgehogs, family Erinaceidae; moles, family Talpidae; and shrews, family Soricidae.

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  • INSECTS

    Steven C. Anderson

    The insects of Persia and Afghanistan belong to the Palearctic fauna, although in the eastern and southeastern parts of the region there are representatives of the Oriental fauna characteristic of the Indian subcontinent.

  • INSTITUT PASTEUR

    Amir A. Afkhami

    the institute for bacteriology and vaccination founded by the Persian government in 1921 as a branch of Institut Pasteur of Paris. The idea of establishing an institute for microbiological research and immunology in Iran was conceived in the aftermath of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in Persia.

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  • INSTITUTE FOR IRANIAN PHILOLOGY

    Claus V. Pedersen

    (INSTITUT FOR IRANSK FILOLOGI), University of Copenhagen. i. Forerunners. ii. History. Although the Institute was founded only in 1961, it has a long prehistory, since it is the natural culmination of about 200 years of Iranian studies in the Kingdom of Denmark.

  • INSTITUTE OF ISMAILI STUDIES

    Paul E. Walker

    founded in 1977 by H. H. Prince Karim Aga Khan, a gathering point for the Ismaili community’s interest in its own history and in its relationship with the larger world of Islamic scholarship and contemporary thought.

  • INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES AND RESEARCH

    Kazem Izadi

    (MOʾASSESA-YE MOṬĀLEʿĀT WA TAḤQIQĀT-E EJTEMĀʿI), an academic body established in 1958 at the University of Tehran for research, counseling, education, and publication.

  • INTAPHERNES

    cross-reference

    See VINDAFARNĀ.

  • INTERNATIONAL DUNHUANG PROJECT

    Susan Whitfield

    (IDP), founded in 1994, a collaboration among libraries, museums, and research institutes worldwide to conserve, catalogue, digitize and research archeological artifacts, manuscripts, and archives relating to the archeological sites of Central Asia during the period of the ‘Silk Road.’ 

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  • INVERTEBRATE ANIMALS

    Steven C. Anderson

    IN IRAN, AFGHANISTAN, AND NEIGHBORING CENTRAL ASIA. This category includes all animals without a vertebral column. Thus it is a term of convenience that, though widely used, has little biological meaning.

  • INVESTITURE

    Maria Brosius, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, Jenny Rose

    the ceremonies and symbolic actions used to assert the assumption of rulership and to elicit affirmation of it. i. The Achaemenid period. ii. The Parthian period. iii. The Sasanian period.

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