Table of Contents

  • SRAOŠA

    William W. Malandra

    a major deity (yazata) in Zoroastrianism, whose great popularity reserved a place for him in Iranian Islam as the angel Surōš. In Avestan, the word occurs both as a noun and as a name. Its basic common meaning is “to hear and obey.”

  • STAMPS

    Cross-Reference

    see PHILATELY

  • STANZAIC POETRY

    Gabrielle van den Berg

    Stanzaic verse forms have been part of the corpus of classical Persian poetry from the early stage onwards and have continued to play a role until modern times,  alhough the quantity of stanzaic poetry in Persian literature is modest in comparison to other verse forms.

  • STARK, FREYA Madeline

    Malise Ruthven

    British travel-writer.  Her 1934 book The Valley of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels belongs to the canon of English travel literature.

  • STATEIRA

    Ernst Badian

    a name attested for several royal women of the Achaemenid period: daughter of Hydarnes, wife of Codomannus, daughter of Darius III.

  • STEEL INDUSTRY IN IRAN

    Willem Floor

     In 1927, plans were drawn up to establish smelting works in the north of the country to produce rail tracks domestically.

  • STEIN, (Marc) Aurel

    Susan Whitfield

    (1862-1943), Sir, Hungarian–British archeologist and explorer, was born in Pest, Hungary and died in Kabul, Afghanistan.

  • STERN, SAMUEL MIKLOS

    Farhad Daftary

    (1920-1969), a Hungarian-British orientalist and a leading scholar of modern Ismaʿili studies.

  • STOREY, Charles Ambrose

    Yuri Bregel

    British orientalist, author of the bio-bibliographical survey of Persian literature (1888-1968).

  • STROPHIC POETRY

    Cross-Reference

    See STANZAIC POETRY.

  • STRUYS, JAN JANSZOON

    Willem Floor

    (1630-1694), Dutch sailor and sail maker, whose account of his various travels in Europe, Africa, and Asia, first published in 1676, has been translated into several languages. 

  • STUCCO DECORATION

    Jens Kröger

    IN IRANIAN ARCHITECTURE. This entry focuses on the Parthian and Sasanian periods and hints at the continuity in the Islamic period.

  • STŪM

    Firoze M. Kotwal and Jamsheed K. Choksy

    Essentially a soliloquy of remembrance, the stūm ritual links living Zoroastrians to deceased coreligionists by reminding them that righteousness during life ensures salvation after death.

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  • SŪDGAR NASK and WARŠTMĀNSR NASK

    Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina

    the first and second of three commentaries on the Old Avesta, extant in a Pahlavi resume in book nine of the Dēnkard, the third being the Bag nask.

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  • SUGAR

    Willem Floor

    Cultivation, manufacturing, and processing in Iran. Sugar was already known in Sasanian Persia around 460 CE.

  • SULEDEH

    Habib Borjian

    Caspian township and former sub-province in Māzandarān province, located half a mile off the Caspian shore on the river Suledeh, which rose in the hills of Lābij/Lāvij. Suledeh was on the western border of the coastal part of Nur district.

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  • ŠUR

    Jean During

    a modal system (dastgāh) in the traditional music in Iran.

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  • SŪR SAXWAN

    Touraj Daryaee

    (Banquet Speech), a Middle Persian text about a court banquet held in the Sasanian Empire.

  • SUSA

    Multiple Authors

    a collection of articles about a major ancient city in Iran and one of the capital cities of the Achaemenids.

  • SUSA i. EXCAVATIONS

    Hermann Gasche

    In 1836, Major Rawlinson visited the site briefly and discovered fragments of columns, as well as an inscription by a “king of Susra.” Layard stayed in Khuzestan between 1840 and 1842. He, too, was interested in the famous “black stone” of the Tomb of Daniel, which had already disappeared before Rawlinson’s visit.

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