Table of Contents

  • SATASPES

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    an Achaemenid, the son of a certain Teaspis and from his mother’s side a nephew of King Darius I.

  • SATI BIK

    Peter Jackson

    Mongol princess of the Il-Khanid dynasty who reigned for about nine months in 1338, though only in name.

  • SATTĀR KHAN

    Anja Pistor-Hatam

    (1868-1914), defender of Tabriz during the Qajar “Lesser Autocracy” in 1908-09—an example of a mythical personage, and as a long-lasting focal point of collective memory and identity, whose symbolic function has an impact until this very day.

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  • SAVDO ABDULQODIRHOJAI

    Keith Hitchins

    (1823-24-1873), Tajik lyric and satirical poet.

  • ṢAWMAʿA SARĀ

    Marcel Bazin

    city and district in western Gilān.  The city is located at lat 37°17′ N, long 29°19′ E, in the Fumanāt plain, at a distance of 25 km to the west of Rašt, the center of the province.

  • ŠĀYEST NĒ ŠĀYEST

    Fereydun Vahman

    (Proper and Improper), a work in the Middle Persian/Pahlavi language dealing with Zoroastrian jurisprudence and containing miscellaneous laws concerning sins, purity, and impurity.

  • SAYFI QAZVINI

    Kioumars Ghereghlou

    (1481-1555), a Persian historian best known for his Lobb al-tawāriḵ, a chronicle dealing with the dynastic history of Iran from ancient times until the late 1540s.

  • ŠĀYGĀN, ʿALI

    Hamid Hosseini

    (ALI SHAYEGAN; b. Shiraz, 1903; d. Westwood, New Jersey, 10 May 1981), law scholar, author, academician, and one of the closest associates of the prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

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  • ŠAYḴ-ʿALI KHAN ZANGANA

    Rudi Matthee

    (1611 or 1613-1689), grand vizier for twenty years under Shah Solaymān I Ṣafawi.

  • SAYR WA SOLUK

    S. J. Badakhchani

    title of the spiritual autobiography of Naṣir-al-Din Ṭusi (1201-74), celebrated polymath and vizier of under the Il-khanid.

  • SAYYED AJALL

    George Lane

    governor of the Dali province in China during the Mongol period.

  • SCERIMAN FAMILY

    Sebouh Aslanian and Houri Berberian

    a wealthy Persian-Armenian merchant family.

  • SCHAEDER, HANS HEINRICH

    Werner Sundermann

    HANS HEINRICH (1896-1957), a major German Iranist and scholar of related disciplines.

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  • SCHEFER, Charles-Henri-Auguste

    Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam

    In 1833 Schefer entered the prestigious Collège Louis-le-Grand, where one of his classmates was Charles Baudelaire (1821-67). Schefer enrolled in his school's Arabic, Turkish, and Persian courses for prospective translators (jeunes de langues). 

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  • SCHEIL, Jean-Vincent

    Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam

    (1858-1940), Father, French philologist and archeologist.

  • SCHLERATH, BERNFRIED

    Stefan Zimmer

    German scholar of Indo-European, chiefly Indo-Iranian, philology and Indo-European cultural studies.

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  • SCHLIMMER, JOHANNES LODEWIK

    Willem Floor

    (1818-1876), Dutch physician who served in Iran as an instructor of medicine and became a leading pioneer in the promotion of modern medicine in Iran. His Terminologie Medico-Pharmaceutique (1874) helped standardize medical technical terms in Persian. 

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  • SCHMIDT, HANNS-PETER

    Touraj Daryaee

    (1930-2017), a German Indo-Iranist who specialized in studies on Indian mythology and the Zoroastrian religion.

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  • SCYTHIAN LANGUAGE

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    one of the idioms spoken by the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian steppelands along the northern edge of the home of the Iranian peoples in the Old Iranian period.

  • SCYTHIANS

    Askold Ivantchik

    a nomadic people of Iranian origin who flourished in the steppe lands north of the Black Sea during the 7th-4th centuries BCE.

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  • SE QAṬRA ḴUN

    SOHILA SAREMI

    short story by Ṣādeq Hedāyat in a collection with the same title.

  • SEALS AND SEALINGS

    Pierfrancesco Callieri

    IN THE EASTERN IRANIAN LANDS  The bulk of the material known at present is of antiquarian origin and was gathered between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries when European and Russian scholars and collectors turned their attention to these previously unexplored regions.

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  • SEBEOS

    James Howard-Johnston

    a seventh-century Armenian historian. The Armenian history traditionally attributed to Sebeos is an important source for the history of the Sasanian empire from the last years of Hormozd IV to the death of Yazdegerd III. 

  • SEBÜKTEGIN

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    a slave commander of the Samanids and the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty in eastern Afghanistan.

  • SEFIDRUD

    Cross-Reference

    See Safidrud.

  • ŠEHĀB-AL-DIN ŠĀH ḤOSAYNI

    Farhad Daftary

    the forty-seventh imam of the Nezāri Ismaʿilis was a high dignitary and author in the 19th century.

  • SELEUCIA

    Cross-Reference

    For Seleucia on the Tigris, see  s.v.  CTESIPHON.

  • SELEUCID ECONOMY

    G. G. Aperghis

    Economic activity was based mainly on agriculture. Trade and industry tended to be local. Conversion from commodity-based revenue, as practiced by the Achaemenids, to coin-based was achieved through urbanization.

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  • SELEUCID EMPIRE

    Rolf Strootman

    founded in 312/311 BCE by Seleucus I Nicator, formerly a general in the army of Alexander the Great. Adopting the titles “King of Asia” and “Great King,” the Macedonian rulers of the Seleucid dynasty laid claim to the territory of the former Achaemenid empire. 

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  • SELEUCID ERA

    Rolf Strootman

    the first system of continuous year numbering, introduced in the Middle East by the Seleucids, and the direct forerunner of the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish years. As the formal time reckoning system of the Seleucid empire, the era was adopted throughout the Middle East.

  • SELEUCUS

    Rolf Strootman

    (Greek: Seleukos), name of seven kings of the Seleucid empire. Seleucus I Nicator (r. 312-281 BCE), was founder of the Seleucid empire and succeeded in re-uniting the greater part of the former Achaemenid empire after the death of Alexander the Great.

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  • SEMINO, Barthélémy

    Shireen Mahdavi

    French general, engineer, and linguist in the service of the Qajars in Persia.

  • SEPEHRI, Sohrab

    Houman Sarshar

    (1928-1980), notable Iranian poet and painter.

  • SERĀJ AL-AḴBĀR-E AFḠĀNIYA

    May Schinasi

    “Torch of the news of Afghanistan,” bi-monthly Persian language newspaper published in Kabul during the second decade of the reign of Amir Ḥabib-Allāh (r. 1901-19).

  • ŠERVĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    (ŠIRVĀN, ŠARVĀN), a region of Eastern Transcaucasia, known by this name in both early Islamic and more recent times, and now (since 1994) substantially within the independent Azerbaijan Republic.

  • ŠERVĀNŠAHS

    C. E. Bosworth

    (Šarvānšāhs), the various lines of rulers, originally Arab in ethnos but speedily Persianized within their culturally Persian environment, who ruled in the eastern Caucasian region of Šervān from mid-ʿAbbasid times until the age of the Safavids.

  • SEVRUGUIN, ANTOIN

    Aphrodite Désirée Navab

    (1830-1933), Armenian–Iranian photographer who lived most of his life in Persia. He studied painting and photography in Tbilisi. Sevruguin decided to create a survey of the people, landscape, and architecture of Persia. He had a reputation as a portrait photographer and thus Nāṣer-al-Din Shah appointed him as an official court photographer.

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  • Šeydā

    Margaret Caton

    the pen name of Mirzā ʿAli-Akbar Širāzi (b. Shiraz, 1259/1843; d. Tehran at the Ṣafi ʿAlišāh ḵānaqāh, 1324/1906), a Persian musician regarded as the most important composer of the lyrical popular song (taṣnif) in the late Qajar period.

  • SHADDADIDS

    Andrew Peacock

    Caucasian dynasty of Kurdish origin reigning from about 950 until 1200, first in Dvin and Ganja, later in Ani.

  • SHADMAN, Sayyed Fakhr-al-Din

    Ali Gheissari

    (1907-1967), cultural critic and writer of fiction, professor of history, civil servant, and cabinet minister.

  • SHAH ABBAS I

    Cross-Reference

    Safavid king of Iran (996-1038/1588-1629). Styled "Shah ʿAbbās the Great," he was the third son and successor of Solṭān Moḥammad Shah. See ʿABBĀS I.

  • SHAHBAZ, Hasan

    Ḡafur Mirzāʾi

    From 1942 to 1948 Shahbaz wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, translated his first books, and worked as a translator for foreign companies, and as a contractor for Allied Forces in Iran. In 1949 he became an editor at the News Desk of the Embassy of Pakistan and later joined the American Embassy in Tehran.

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  • SHAHID SALESS, Sohrab

    Pardis Minuchehr

    Iranian cinematographer and award-winning filmmaker.

  • SHAHRYAR, MOHAMMAD HOSAYN

    Kamyār ʿĀbedi and EIr

    (1906-1988), prolific poet and the most noted representative of the short-lived Persian romanticism, who also composed poems in Azeri Turkish. Shahryar’s poetry has influenced many contemporary poets.

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  • SHAHRZAD

    Mohammad Tolouei

    (Reżā Kamāl, 1898-1937), dramatist and translator who played a key role in introducing European Romanticism to Iran through his loose adaptations of French drama.

  • SHAHSEVAN

    Richard Tapper

    (Šāhsevan), name of a number of tribal groups in various parts of northwestern Iran, notably in the Moḡān and Ardabil districts of eastern Azerbaijan and in the Ḵaraqān and Ḵamsa districts between Zanjān and Qazvin.

  • SHAMANISM

    Philippe Gignoux

    AND ITS CONNECTION TO IRAN. Archeological and ethnological sources in Iran do not lead to confirmation of the existence of shamanic practices there, whether ancient or modern. Yet some scholars have tried to find traces of them.

  • SHAMI STATUE

    Trudy S. Kawami

    from Šāmi, Khuzestan, the only intact monumental cast bronze of the Parthian period.

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  • SHATT AL-ARAB

    D. T. Potts

    (ŠAṬṬ AL-ʿARAB), combined effluent of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

  • SHAYKHISM

    Denis Hermann

    (ŠAYḴIYA), a school of Twelver Shiʿism whose founding is attributed to Shaikh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾi (d. 1241/1826).

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  • SHEEP

    Cross-Reference

    See GUSFAND.

  • SHEYBANI, MANUCHEHR

    Saeid Rezvani

    poet, painter, filmmaker, and dramatist.

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  • SHIELD in Eastern Iran

    Boris A. Litvinsky

    In Lurestan, a round bronze shield was found, which has a skirting along the edge, an umbo in the center, and relief depictions of fantastic creatures.

  • SHIʿITE DOCTRINE

    Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi

    Shiʿite doctrine is usually considered to be based on five principles. However, to articulate matters of faith in such a manner seems reductionist and late.

  • SHIʿITE DOCTRINE ii. Hierarchy in the Imamiyya

    Rainer Brunner

    The distinction between believers and ulema (ʿolemāʾ “religious scholars”) is known to both Sunnites and Shiʿites, and forms the starting point for internal ranking systems among their ulema.

  • SHIʿITE DOCTRINE iii. Imamite-Sunnite Relations since the Late 19th Century

    Rainer Brunner

    Since the 20th century, sectarian relations have reflected a growing number of attempts to reach, at least to some degree, an understanding and a rapprochement of each other’s views (taqrib, rarely taqārob).

  • SHIʿITES IN ARABIA

    Werner Ende

    survey of the Arabian peninsula including Persian Gulf regions.

  • SHIʿITES IN LEBANON

    Sabrina Mervin

    Shiʿites, that is, Muslims adhering to the Twelver (eṯnāʿašari) or Imamite persuasion of Shiʿism, form the single largest denominational community of Lebanon. Their number is estimated at 1.5 million.

  • SHIR-E SHIAN

    Christopher P. Thornton

    Given the lack of architectural remains and the shallowness of the deposit, Schmidt argued that Shir-e Shian was a temporary campsite occupied for only one period. It is also plausible, given that burials were often placed below the floors of houses in prehistory, that the mounds of Shir-e Shian had simply been heavily eroded over time.

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  • SHIRAZ ARTS FESTIVAL

    Hormoz Farhat

    For eleven consecutive years, beginning in 1967, a festival of arts, known in Persian as Jašn-e honar, took place in Shiraz and the nearby remains of the ancient imperial city of Persepolis. Its purpose was to be a meeting place of the performing arts of the Eastern world with those of the West.

  • SHIRAZ i. HISTORY TO 1940

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    The city of Shiraz has been the capital of the province of Fārs since the Islamic conquest, succeeding Eṣṭaḵr of the Sasanian period and Persepolis of the Achaemenid days.

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  • SHIRVANLU, FIRUZ

    EIr

    (1938-1989), art critic, scholar, and artist, who played an instrumental role in the creation and management of several museums and cultural centers in the 1960s and 1970s.

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  • SHOGHI EFFENDI

    Moojan Momen

    Šawqi Rabbāni (1897-1957), eldest grandson and successor of ʿAbd-al-Bahāʾ as leader of the Bahai Faith (1921-57). Iranian Bahais usually refer to him as Ḥażrat-e Waliy-e Amrallāh, the title given to him by ʿAbd-al-Bahāʾ, usually translated as “the Guardian of the Cause of God, or simply “the Guardian.”

  • SIĀH-QALAM

    Bernard O'Kane

    “black pen” (1) the genre of paintings or drawings done in pen and ink; (2) the painters of such drawings.

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  • SIĀHKAL

    Marcel Bazin and Christian Bromberger

    small town and sub-provincial district (šahrestān) in the southeastern part of Gilān province.

  • SIALK, TEPE

    Cross-Reference

    See  CERAMICS i. The Neolithic Period through the Bronze Age in Northeastern and North-central Persia.

  • SIAR AL-MOLUK

    Neguin Yavari

    also known as Siāsat-nāma (The book of statecraft) and Panjāh faṣl (Fifty chapters), a manual on statecraft written for the Saljuq sultan Malekšāh by his vizier Neẓām-al-Molk.

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  • SIĀVAŠ

    Cross-Reference

    See  KAYĀNIĀN vi. Siiāuuaršan, Siyāwaxš, Siāvaš.

  • SIBERIAN ELM

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀZĀD.

  • SĪH-RŌZAG

    Enrico G. Raffaelli

    a text of the Xorda Avesta comprising invocations to Zoroastrian divinities.

  • SILK

    Cross-Reference

    Originally from China, silk has been known in Iran since ancient times. See ABRĪŠAM.

  • SILVER

    Michael Spink

    Silver, the element Ag, was found in a number of areas of Islamic Greater Iran, and medieval authors described its exploitation. Although few silver vessels have survived, contemporary literature demonstrates its importance as a luxury material.

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  • SIMJURIDS

    Luke Treadwell

    a family of Turkish mamluks who over four generations, from the late 9th century to the Qarakhanid conquest (389/999), played a leading role in the Samanid state.

  • SIMORḠ

    Hanns-Peter Schmidt

    (Persian), Sēnmurw (Pahlavi), Sīna-Mrū (Pāzand), a fabulous, mythical bird. The name derives from Avestan mərəγō saēnō ‘the bird Saēna’, originally a raptor, either eagle or falcon, as can be deduced from the etymologically identical Sanskrit śyená.

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  • SINDHI

    Christopher Shackle

    A language of the Indo-Aryan family. Many of its numerous distinctive features may be attributed to the isolated position in the lower Indus valley of Sindh.

  • SINEMĀ WA NEMĀYEŠĀT

    Nassereddin Parvin

    the first Persian magazine entirely devoted to cinematography (1930).

  • SIRĀFI, ABU SAʿID ḤASAN

    David Pingree

    10th-century polymath known best for his work as a grammarian.

  • ŠIRĀZI, Nur-al-Din Moḥammad ʿAbd-Allāh

    Fabrizio Speziale

    Indo-Muslim physician and one of the main Persian authors of works on medical subjects in India in the 17th century.

  • SISIGAMBIS

    Ernst Badian

    the mother of Darius III and of Stateira (2), perhaps also of Oxyathres; captured in the Persian base camp after the battle of Issus along with other members of the immediate royal family.

  • SISTĀN ii. In the Islamic period

    C. E. Bosworth

    It was during the governorship in Khorasan of ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmer for the caliph ʿOṯmān that the Arabs first appeared in Sistān, when in 31/652 Zarang surrendered peacefully, although Bost resisted fiercely.

  • SISTĀNI, MIRZĀ ŠĀH-ḤOSAYN

    Kioumars Ghereghlou

    (1571-after 1627), Persian historian, poet, and bureaucrat whose works include a local history of Sistān, a biographical dictionary of poets, and two maṯnawis.

  • ŠKAND GUMĀNĪG WIZĀR

    Carlo G. Cereti

    a Middle Persian Zoroastrian text written by Mardānfarrox son of Ohrmazddād in the ninth century.

  • SLAVES and SLAVERY

    Cross-Reference

    See BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI.

  • SMBAT BAGRATUNI

    N. Garsoian

    distinguished Armenian prince and head of the Bagratid house at the turn of the 6th to the 7th century.

  • SMOKING IN IRAN

    Esfandyar Batmanghelidj

    Iran began producing finished cigarettes in order to meet growing domestic demand.  Russian investors established a series of manufacturing facilities in Rasht by 1890.  According to the accounts of the British consul in Gilan, the these produced cigarettes “too hot and coarse for European tastes,” but “well made and cheap enough.”

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  • SOAP

    Willem Floor

    (Ar. and Pers. ṣābun) was manufactured in Persia from antiquity. In the 10th century, various Persian towns produced soap, among them Bost, Balkh, and Arrajān.

  • ṢOBḤI, FAŻL-ALLĀH MOHTADI

    Moojan Momen

    (1897-1962), Persian school teacher, who is best known as a children’s storyteller, collector of folktales, broadcaster, and Bahai apostate.

  • SOCIETAS IRANOLOGICA EUROPAEA

    Gherardo Gnoli

    (SIE), important international association in the field of Iranian studies.

  • SODIQI MUNŠI, Mirzo

    Keith Hitchins

    Tajik poet (d. 1819). Little is known of his life and career.

  • SOFRA

    Mahmoud Omidslalar

    a piece of cloth that is spread on the floor, and on which dishes of food are placed at meal times.

  • SOGDIAN LANGUAGE

    Multiple Authors

    one of the Eastern Middle Iranian languages once spoken in Sogdiana.

  • SOGDIAN LANGUAGE i. Description

    Yutaka Yoshida

    Sogdian is one of the Eastern Middle Iranian languages once spoken in Sogdiana (northern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) before the Islamization of the area in the 10th century. It was written in three scripts: Sogdian, Manichean, and Syriac.

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  • SOGDIAN LANGUAGE ii. Loanwords in Persian

    B. Gharib

    Loanwords from Sogdian into Persian were adopted through the cultural relations and commercial interactions which existed between Iran proper and Transoxiana, the birth place of Sogdian language.

  • SOGDIAN LITERATURE i. Buddhist

    Yutaka Yoshida

    A considerable number of Buddhist Sogdian texts dating from around the 8th century CE were unearthed from “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas” at Dunhuang in western China and from Turfan in Chinese Turkestan.

  • SOGDIAN TRADE

    Etienne de la Vaissiere

    The people of Sogdiana were the main caravan merchants of Central Asia from the 5th to the 8th century.

  • SOGDIANA

    Multiple Authors

    the name in Classical sources for Suγd, the region of Central Asia north of the river Oxus/Amu Darya.

  • SOGDIANA i. The Name

    Pavel Lurje

    etymology of the name of the ancient and medieval land around Samarqand.

  • SOGDIANA ii. Historical Geography

    Pavel Lurje

    accounts of the cities and regions of Sogdiana.

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  • SOGDIANA iii. HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY

    É. de La Vaissière

    an Iranian-speaking region in Central Asia that stretches from the rivers Āmu Daryā in the south to the Syr Daryā in the north, with its heart in the valleys of the Zarafšān and the Kaška Daryā.

  • SOGDIANA iv. SOGDIAN ART

    Markus Mode

    The development and apogee of Sogdian art was limited to four or five centuries before and during the Muslim conquest of Transoxania. Sogdian art of the heartlands flourished in the settled areas of the Zeravshan and Kashkadarya valleys, as well as in Ustrushana (Osrušana), north of the Turkestan mountain range.

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