Table of Contents

  • PADERY, ETIENNE

    Anne-Marie Touzard

    (b. 1674; fl 1714-1725), Ottoman Greek who served as a translator to the French embassy at Istanbul, and as a French consul at Shiraz.

  • PĀDŠĀH ḴĀTUN

    Karin Quade-Reutter

    (1256-1295), ruler of Kerman during the Il-Khanids, the youngest daughter of Qoṭb-al-Din Moḥammad and Qotloḡ Tarkān Ḵātun, grew up under the tutelage of her mother, also a ruler in Kerman.

  • PĀDYĀB

    Ramiyar P. Karanjia

    a Pahlavi word meaning “ritually clean.”

  • PAHLAVI PAPYRI

    Dieter Weber

    documents written exclusively in Egypt during the Persian (Sasanian) occupation under Ḵosrow II between 619 and 629 CE.

  • PAHLAVI PSALTER

    Philippe Gignoux

    name given to a fragment, consisting of twelve pages written on both sides, of a Middle Persian translation of the Syriac Psalter. It was discovered, with a mass of other documents, at Bulayiq, near Turfan, in eastern Turkistan (present-day Xinjiang, China) by one of the four German expeditions to Central Asia.

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  • PAIKULI

    Cross-Reference

    name of a pass in Iraq, west of the Iranian border at Qaṣr-e Širin. It is the site of a Sasanian monument with inscription. See NARSEH  and HERZFELD, ERNST iv. Herzfeld and the Paikuli Inscription. (For the site, see Helmut Humbach, The Sassanian Inscription of Paikuli, Part 1. Supplement to Herzfeld’s Paikuli, Wiesbaden and Tehran, 1978, p. 5; map, fig. 116.)

  • PAIRIKĀ

    Siamak Adhami

    a class of female demonic beings in the Avesta, often translated “sorceress, witch, or enchantress.”

  • PALACE ARCHITECTURE

    Dietrich Huff

    The abundant variety of styles in Iranian domestic architecture conceals a basic functional system that has remained unchanged since the Achaemenid period.

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  • PALEOLITHIC AGE IN IRAN

    Frank Hole

    The Paleolithic or ‘Old Stone Age’ begins with the first stone tools some 2.5million years ago in Africa, and it ends with the Neolithic or ‘New Stone Age,’ essentially at the beginnings of agriculture.

  • PALM READING

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    (chiromancy or palmistry; Pers. Kaf-bini), a form of physiognomy that deduces personal characteristics from the form of the lines on the subject’s palm.

  • PANDIYĀT-E JAVĀNMARDI

    Farhad Daftary

    a Nezāri Ismaʿili book originally written in Persian and containing the sermons or religious admonitions to the true believers, seeking exemplary standards of ethical behavior and spiritual chivalry.

  • PANJIKANT

    Boris I. Marshak

    Sogdian city, the ruins of which are located south of present-day Panjakent in western Tajikistan. Archeological excavations show that this city, situated on the rim of a high terrace overlooking a well irrigated valley, was founded in the 5th century C.E. and was inhabited until the 770s.

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  • PAPER

    Multiple Authors

    writing material invented in China that spread throughout Asia and to Iran in the pre-Islamic period.

  • PAPER i. Paper in the Iranian World Prior to Printing

    Jonathan Bloom

    its use in Iran prior to the introduction of printing.

  • PAPER ii. Paper and Papermaking

    Willem Floor

    In the 16th and 17th centuries, paper production took place in Persia in Isfahan, Yazd, and Kerman, and in the 18th century probably in Rasht. In the 19th century it is known to have taken place in Tehran, Isfahan, Kerman, and Mashad.

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  • PARI

    Cross-Reference

    “fairy.” See  PAIRIKĀ.

  • PARIḴĀN ḴĀNOM

    Manučehr Pārsādust

    (1548-1578), the second daughter of Shah Ṭahmāsp I, a politically influential and colorful figure at the Safavid court.

  • PARMENIO

    Ernst Badian

    (b. ca. 400 BCE, d. 330 BCE); probably from mountainous Upper Macedonia, he became Philip II’s most successful general.

  • PARSI COMMUNITIES i. EARLY HISTORY

    John R. Hinnells

    The creation of a Parsi settlement in India was the outcome of the migration of Zoroastrian refugees from their original homeland in medieval Islamic Persia.

  • PARSI COMMUNITIES ii. IN CALCUTTA

    Jesse S. Palsetia

    Calcutta became a center of Parsi settlement from the 18th century. Dadabhoy Behramji Banaji is recorded as the first Parsi to have come to Calcutta from Surat in western India in 1767.