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.

• 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.

• 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 and has been observed and studied in well-preserved palaces and houses of more recent periods, and consequently can be inferred from remaining traces and foundations of excavated archeological monuments.

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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.

• PANJIKANT

  Boris I. Marshak

  (Sogd. Pancyknδ), a Sogdian city, the ruins of which are located in the southern periphery of the present-day city of Panjakent in western Tajikistan. The systematic archeological excavations show that this city, situated on the rim of a high terrace overlooking a fertile, well-irrigated valley, was founded in the 5th century C.E. and was inhabited until the 770s.

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• PAPER AND PAPERMAKING

  Willem Floor

  By 650 CE, the Persians started to import Chinese paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree, though it was so rare a commodity that it was only used for important state documents.

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• 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.

• PASARGADAE

  David Stronach and Hilary Gopnik

  capital city and last resting place of Cyrus the Great (r. 559-530 BCE), located in northern Fārs in the fertile and well-watered Dasht-i Murghab (Dašt-e morḡāb), the site stands 1,900 m above sea level at 30°15’ N and 53°14’ E.

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• PAUL THE PERSIAN

  Byard Bennett

  writer at the time of the Nestorian Patriarch Ezekiel (567-580 C.E.), well versed in ecclesiastical and philosophical matters.

• PAYĀM-E MAŠREQ

  David Matthews

  Title of a collection of Persian verse by Muhammad Iqbal.

• PAYANDEH, ABU’L-QASEM

  Ṣafdar Taqizāda

  (1908/1911-1984), journalist, translator, and fiction writer.

• PEARL i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

  Brigitte Musche

  i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD The oldest find of pearls in Persia comes from Tepe Giyan in Luristan, from levels dated to the mid-second millennium BCE.

• PEARL ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD

  Daniel T. Potts

  ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD In the Islamic era pearls have been widely used—strung to make necklaces or sewn onto textiles, used to decorate hats, crowns, daggers, and scabbards.

• PELLIOT, PAUL

  Samuel Lieu

  (1878-1945), French orientalist who particularly contributed to the study of the languages and  history of the diverse religions and cultures of Central Asia.

• PEPPER

  Cross-Reference

  See FELFEL.

• PERICLES

  Ernst Badian

  (ca. 495-429 BCE), Athenian politician and commander in the period after the major victories over the forces of Xerxes I.

• PERSEPOLIS

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  Ruined monuments of the acropolis of the city of Pārsa, the dynastic center of the Achaemenid Persian kings, located in the plain of Marvdašt, some 57 km northwest of Shiraz. One of the best-known sites of the ancient world, the oldest description of it is in Diodorus Siculus (1st cent. BCE), derived from accounts by Alexander historians.

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• PERSEPOLIS ELAMITE TABLETS

  Muhammad Dandamayev

  administrative records in Elamite inscribed on clay tablets. Parts of two archives of such tablets were discovered in Persepolis in 1933-34 and 1936-38.

• PERSIAN AUTHORS OF ASIA MINOR PART 1

  Tahsin Yazıcı (prep. Osman G. Özgüdenlı)

• PERSIAN AUTHORS OF ASIA MINOR PART 2

  Tahsin Yazıcı (prep. Osman G. Özgüdenlı)

• PERSIAN GULF i. IN ANTIQUITY

  Daniel T. Potts

  The Persian Gulf is a shallow, epi-continental sea approximately 1,000 km long and 200-350 km wide, narrowing to about 60 km across at the Straits of Hormuz.

• PERSIAN MANUSCRIPTS i. IN OTTOMAN AND MODERN TURKISH LIBRARIES

  OSMAN G. ÖZGÜDENLI

  The Persian manuscripts in the libraries of Istanbul and Anatolia today were collected from four sources: (1) Persian manuscripts written, translated, and copied in Anatolia; (2) those brought into Anatolia by immigrant scholars; (3) those brought by traders; 4) those brought as booty of the wars and conquests of the 16th and 18th centuries.

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• PERSIS, KINGS OF

  Joseph Wiesehöfer

  the Persian dynasts who between the 2nd century BCE and 3rd century CE ruled as Parthian representatives in Persis, southwestern Iran.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN i. PRE-ISLAMIC NAMES: GENERAL

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  The system of formation of personal names attested in the Iranian languages to a great extent agrees with that known from most of the other Indo-European languages.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN ii. AVESTAN NAMES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  In the Avesta (q.v.) at least 400 personal names are attested. The bulk of these names is found in the second part of the Fravardīn Yašt in a litany-like enumeration.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN iii. ACHAEMENID PERIOD

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Evidence from the Achaemenid period is considerable, but in authentic sources, the inscriptions of the kings themselves, fewer than fifty names are documented in their Old Persian form.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN iv. PARTHIAN PERIOD

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  For the Parthian period there is no super-abundance of primary sources written in the official (Middle) Parthian administrative language.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN v. SASANIAN PERiOD

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  For Sasanian times, priority treatment must be given to the names attested in non-literary, that is, epigraphic sources (in the broadest sense of the word).

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN vi. ARMENIAN NAMES OF IRANIAN ORIGIN

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Linguistic research has documented that the majority of Iranian lexical and other borrowings in Armenian originated in the Parthian language.

• PERSONAL NAMES, SOGDIAN i. IN CHINESE SOURCES

  Y. Yoshida

  Especially during some hundred years before the An Lushan’s rebellion (755-63 C.E.), when Tang controlled Central Asia, a great many Sogdians were encountered in northern China.

• PESTS, AGRICULTURAL

  Cyrus Abivardi

  “Pest” refers to any animal or plant causing harm or damage to people or their animals, crops, or possessions, even if it only causes annoyance. Pests belong to a broad spectrum of organisms. The present article is confined to summary information on the most important insect pests that damage fruit trees and field crops in Persia.

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• PEUCESTAS

  Ernst Badian

  officer under Alexander the Great on his campaign in Asia.

• PEYK-E SAʿĀDAT-E NESWĀN

  Nassereddin Parvin

  women's magazine published in Rašt , 1927-30.

• PEYMĀN

  Nassereddin Parvin

  periodical published (1933-42) in Tehran by Aḥmad Kasravi, historian of the Constitutional Revolution.

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• PHILATELY

  Roman Siebertz

  Stamps, which were introduced to Iran in 1868, have from the outset served as an object of utility as well as an instrument of official self-representation. From the Qajar era to the present, their iconography has always reflected the ideology the respective political system in power by depicting the then valid political or religious symbols of power.

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• PHILATELY vi. POSTAL HISTORY

  Mano Amarloui

  The postal service is a government institution whose very nature entails facilitating communication among its citizens, and between its citizens and those living in other countries.

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• PHILOSOPHY

  Cross-Reference

  see under FALSAFA.

• PHOENIX MOSQUE

  George Lane

  a historical monument built in 1281 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, on the coastal area of China.

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• PHRAORTES

  I. Medvedskaya

  the second king of the Median dynasty. All information about him is from Herodotus.

• PIANO IN PERSIAN MUSIC

  Hormoz Farhat

  iThe first piano is known to have arrived in Persia as a gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to Fatḥ ʿAli Shah.

• PIR-E ZAN

  Anna Krasnowolska

  a calendar-related legend about an Old Woman who personifies winter.  Besides Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, the legend is widespread all over southern Europe and the Balkans (from Portugal to Bulgaria), as well as in Turkey, Arab Near East, and North Africa (from Morocco to Egypt).

• PÎREMÊRD

  Keith Hitchins

  (1867-1950), pen-name of Tawfiq, son of Maḥmud, son of Ḥamza (in Kurdish: Tewfîq kurî MehmûdʿAḡa kurî Hemze ʿAḡa), Kurdish writer, journalist, and public intellectual.

• PLANE TREE

  Cross-Reference

  See ČENĀR.

• PLANTAIN

  Cross-Reference

  See BĀRHANG.

• PLUM

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀLŪČA.

• POLAK, Jakob Eduard

  Christoph Werner

  (1818-1891), Austrian physician and writer who was instrumental in establishing modern medicine in Iran. From 1851 to 1860, he taught medicine at the Dār al-fonun, and from 1855 to 1860, he served as personal physician of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (r. 1848-96). His study Persien: Das Land und seine Bewohner (1865) belongs to the outstanding ethnographic works about 19th-century Iran.

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• POLAND ii. PERSIAN ART AND ARTIFACTS IN POLISH COLLECTIONS

  Beata Biedrońska-Słota, Dorota Malarczyk, and Barbara Mękarska

  Persian art has been present in Poland since medieval times. Among the objects—bought or brought back as war booty, like carpets, textiles, tents, richly ornamented weaponry, gold products—illuminated Persian manuscripts were also to be found. The majority of the collections were originally created by aristocratic and noble families of the former Polish Commonwealth.

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• POLEMICS i. BETWEEN SHIʿITES AND JEWS

  Daniel Tsadik

  Twelver (Eṯnā ʿAšari Emāmi) Shiʿite polemics refer here to arguments gleaned from compositions written by Shiʿites.

• POLO, MARCO

  Michele Bernardini

  (1254-1324), Venetian merchant and traveler (b. Venice or Curzola, 1254; d. Venice, 8 January 1324), whose travel accounts gained worldwide fame and whose description of the countries he visited between 1271 and 1298 represents a primary geographical and historical source concerning Asia during the Mongol domination.

• PONTUS

  Brian McGing

  a Greek word meaning “sea,” generally taken in the ancient world to refer to the Black Sea— Pontos Euxeinos, or Axeinos (Strabo 1.2.10 C21).

• POPE, ARTHUR UPHAM

  Noel Siver

  (1881-1969), American educator, author, and ardent advocate of Persian art and architecture.

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• PORTUGAL i. RELATIONS WITH PERSIA IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE (1500-1750)

  Joao Teles e Cunha

  Portuguese-Persian relations had some importance for both countries during the early Modern Age, coinciding with the rise and fall of the Safavids.

• POŠT-E KUH

  Ernie Haerinck and Bruno Overlaet

  the most western part of the historical Luristan (Lorestān) tribal area in the Zagros.

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• PREHISTORY OF IRAN: ARTIFICIAL CRANIAL MODIFICATIONS

  Aurelie Daems and Karina Croucher

  Cranial modification is caused during infancy through the shaping of a baby’s head whilst it is still malleable. Such shaping can be caused by both intentional and unintentional means.

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• PROSODY i. MIDDLE PERSIAN

  Gilbert Lazard

  There are remnants left of pre-Islamic poetry within western Middle Iranian languages: fragments of Manichean religious hymns, some poems preserved in the literature of Pahlavi, and poetical pieces in New Persian not following the rules of classical versification. The Manichean manuscripts in Parthian and Middle Persian enable us to recognize the general form of the poems.

• PROSODY ii. New Persian

  Cross-Reference

  The study of poetic metre and of the art of versification, including rhyme, stanzaic forms, and the quantity and stress of syllables. See ʿARUŻ. 

  See also BALUCHISTAN iiia. Baluchi Poetry.

• PROTOTHYES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  according to Herodotus 1.103.3 the father of the Scythian king Madýēs, who is said to have gone into battle against the Medes.

• PUNJABI

  Christopher Shackle

  Indo-Aryan language of the Punjab with about 26 million speakers in India and more than 60 million in Pakistan.

• PUR BAHĀʾ JĀMI, TĀJ-AL-DIN

  George Lane

  poet, pun master, satirist, and often scathing social commentator.

• PUYANDA, Moḥammad-Jaʿfar

  Jalil Doostkhah

  (1954-1998), scholar and translator of literary texts and sociological studies. He never joined any political organization or party, but was a diligent defender of democracy and freedom of speech and belief. He had a key role in reorganizing the Writers Association of Iran (Kānun-e nevisandagān-e Irān) in August 1998. On 8 December 1998, he was kidnapped, and later his suffocated body was found in a suburb of Tehran.

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