Table of Contents

  • ŠAHRESTĀNĪHĀ Ī ĒRĀNŠAHR

    Touraj Daryaee

    (The Provincial Capitals of Iran), the only major surviving Middle Persian text on geography.

  • ŠAHREWAR

    William W. Malandra

    name of one of the Amahraspandān in Zoroastrianism. This is the Middle Persian form of the name deriving from Av. Xšaθra Vairya, meaning literally “dominion to be chosen” and more freely “choice/desirable/best dominion.”

  • SAIFPOUR FATEMI

    Lotfali Khonji

    journalist, political figure, and university professor.

  • SAIIDO NASAFI, MIROBID

    Keith Hitchins

    (Mir ʿĀbed Sayyedā Nasafi), Tajik poet (d. Bukhara, between 1707 and 1711).

  • SAKAS: IN AFGHANISTAN

    Pierfrancesco Callieri

    from the large family of Iranian nomads called Scythians who moved southwards towards the territories of present-day Afghanistan from their realms in the Central Asian plains, about the mid-second century BCE.

  • ŠAKKI

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    a district of eastern Transcaucasia, now within the northwesternmost part of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan, where the modern town of Sheki or Shaki.

  • SALAMIS

    Christopher Tuplin

    island west of Athens and site of a major naval battle in 480 BCE between the Greeks and the Persian fleet of Xerxes I. Salamis was the second of five battles of the Greco-Persian War of 480-79.

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  • SALEMANN, Carl Hermann

    D. Durkin-Meisterernst

    (1849-1916, a leading Iranist scholar of his time, specializing in Middle and early Modern Persian. His tenacity and willingness to publish his results quickly contributed greatly to the advancement of the study of the newly found texts from Central Asia.

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  • SALJUQS iii. SALJUQS OF RUM

    Andrew Peacock

    dynasty of Turkish origin that ruled much of Anatolia (Rum), ca. 1081-1308.

  • SALJUQS v. SALJUQID LITERATURE

    Daniela Meneghini

    The term ‘Saljuqid literature’is used here to refer to literary works in Persian produced between 432/1040 and 617/1220.

  • SALJUQS vi. ART AND ARCHITECTURE

    Lorenz Korn

    The Saljuq period can be regarded as an epoch in which Islamic art and architecture in Persia reached maturity, i.e., in which techniques were developed and formal solutions were established that lasted for centuries to come.

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  • SAMĀʿI, ḤABIB

    MORTEZA DEHKORDI and EIr.

    (1905-46), renowned santur player.

  • SAMAK-E ʿAYYĀR

    Marina Gaillard

    a prose narrative originating in the milieu of professional storytellers, transmitted orally and written down around the 12th century.

  • SAMARQAND i. HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY

    Frantz Grenet

    Since the publication of the entry Afrāsiāb in 1984 new information has been brought to light on this archeological site and, consequently, on the history of pre-Mongol Samarqand.

  • SAMFONI-e MORDAGĀN

    Houra Yavari

    first novel (1989) by Abbas Maroufi, fiction writer and the founder and editor of the periodical Gardun

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  • ŠAMS-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD

    Farhad Daftary

    (1240-1310-11), Nezāri Ismaʿili imam, the sole surviving son of Rokn-al-Din Ḵoršāh, the last lord of Alamut. The youthful Šams-al-Din was taken to a safe place; thus, escaped the tragic fate of his family, who were all murdered by the Mongols.

  • SANĀʾI

    J. T. P. de Bruijn

    (d. ca. 1130), Persian poet of the later Ghaznavid era, celebrated particularly for his homiletic poetry and his great influence on the development of mystical literature in general.

  • SANAI, MAHMOUD

    Ali Gheissari

    professor of psychology, psychoanalyst, educator, writer, translator, and government official.

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  • SAN‘ATIZADEH KERMANI, Homayun

    Cyrus Alinejad

    (1925-2009), entrepreneur, man of letters, publisher, and founding manager of Moʾassasa-ye entešārāt-e Ferānklin, who played an instrumental role in the introduction of modern publishing industries in Iran.

  • SANCISI-WEERDENBURG, HELEEN

    Amélie Kuhrt

    (1944-2000), Dutch ancient historian, specializing in classical Greek and Achaemenid history.

  • SAND GROUSE

    Eskandar Firouz

    a family (Pteroclididae) of game birds of which seven species are found in Persia, characteristic of Persia’s vast deserts and steppes. They have no affinity with true grouse and are included in the same order as pigeons (Columbiformes).

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  • ŠĀNDARMAN

    Cross-Reference

    one of the five traditional Ṭāleš khanates (Ḵamsa-ye Ṭavāleš) in western Gilān, between Ṭāleš Dulāb and Māsāl.

  • SANG-E CHAKHMAQ

    Christopher P. Thornton

    The Aceramic Neolithic phase spans Levels 2-5 of the Western Tepe. This period is notable for large mud-brick houses with plastered and red-painted floors and well-built fireplaces, some of which appear to have had ritual significance. Amongst these houses there is abundant evidence for lithic tools.

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  • SANG-E ṢABUR

    Ali Ferdowsi

    (1966, tr. by Mohammad Reza Ghanoonparvar, as The Patient Stone, 1989), the last, and arguably, the most critically acclaimed work of fiction by Sadeq Chubak.

  • SANGLĀḴ, MOḤAMMAD-ʿALI

    Maryam Ekhtiar

    (b. Qučān, Khorasan, date unknown; d. Tabriz, 3 March 1877), celebrated calligrapher and stone carver, as well as poet and author. He lived as a dervish and spent much of his time traveling, with long sojourns in the Ottoman empire and Egypt.

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  • SANJANA, Darab Dastur Peshotan

    Michael Stausberg

    (1857-1931), Zoroastrian head-priest and scholar.

  • SANJAR SHAH

    Gerd Gropp

    an archeological site in Tajikistan, discovered by a team of Soviet orientalists in 1947.

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  • SANJAR, Aḥmad b. Malekšāh

    Deborah G. Tor

    Abu’l-Ḥārith, Moʿezz-al-donyā-wa’l-din, Borhān Amir-al-Moʾmenin, first subordinate sultan of Khorasan and then Great Sultan of the Great Saljuq empire.

  • SAOŠYANT

    William Malandra

    a term in Zoroastrianism sometimes rendered as “savior.” Since the term also occurs frequently in reference to contemporary individuals, a more neutral translation such as “benefactor” or “helper” (Lommel) may be preferred. 

  • ŠĀPUR

    Multiple Authors

    Three Sasanian king of kings and a number of notables of the Sasanian and later periods were called “Shapur.”

  • ŠĀPUR I: History

    Shapur Shahbazi

    second Sasanian king of kings (r. 239-70) and author of several rock-reliefs and the trilingual inscription on the walls of the so-called Kaʿba-ye Zardošt [ŠKZ].

  • ŠĀPUR I: The Great Statue

    G. R. GAROSI

    With a height of about 6.70 m and a width across the shoulders of more than 2 m, the monumental statue of Shapur I can be considered the most impressive extant sculpture dating from the Sasanian period. It is carved out of a huge stalagmite.

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  • ŠĀPUR I: ROCK RELIEFS

    Bruno Overlaet

    seven rock reliefs from the time of Šāpur I located in Fārs.

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  • ŠĀPUR II

    Touraj Daryaee

    (r. 309-79 CE), longest reigning monarch of the Sasanian dynasty.

  • SĀQI-NĀMA

    Paul Losensky

    (Book of the Cupbearer), a poetic genre in which the speaker, seeking relief from his hardships, losses, and disappointments, repeatedly summons the sāqi or cupbearer to bring him wine.

  • Sāqi-nāme in Dastgāh Māhur

    music sample

  • SAQQĀ-ḴĀNA HISTORY

    Willem Floor

    Saqqā-ḵāna is a term referring to public water dispensers, which were, and in some places still are, a feature of some large institutional buildings in Iran, typically mosques, shrines, and bazaars.

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  • SAQQĀ-ḴĀNA SCHOOL OF ART

    Hamid Keshmirshekan

    a contemporary art movement in Iran in 1962. The term was initially applied to painting and sculpture which used existing elements from votive Shiʿite art. It gradually came to be applied more widely to art works that used traditional-decorative elements.

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  • SAQQEZ

    Bahram Grami

    a semifluid resin obtained from cuts and cracks of the wild pistachio trees, found in its natural habitats in Iran.

  • ŠARAFĀBĀD

    Robert M. Schacht and Henry T. Wright III

    Tepe Šarāfabād was excavated in 1971 by the joint project of the University of Michigan and what was then the Archeological Service of Iran. The staff of the excavation was directed by Henry T. Wright III, and the official representative of the National Research Center for Archeology was Muhammed H.Ḵošābi.

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  • SARBEDĀRS

    Denise Aigle

    a religious movement in northern Khorāsān and eastern Māzandarān that led to the establishment of a dynasty of local rulers based in Sabzevār in the district of Bayhaq, northeastern Iran.

  • SARGOḎAŠTE-E SAYYEDNĀ

    Farhad Daftary

    title of an anonymous Persian work containing the biography of Ḥasan-e Ṣabbāḥ, the founder of the Nezāri Ismaʿili state of Persia, centered at the mountain fortress of Alamut.

  • ŠARḤ-e TAʿARROF

    Nasrollah Pourjavady

    an extensive commentary in Persian on Abu Bakr Moḥammad Kalābāḏi’s Sufi manual Ketāb al-Taʿarrof le-maḏhab ahl al-taṣawwuf.

  • ŠARIF KHAN, Moḥammad

    Fabrizio Speziale

    (d. ca. 1807), physician at the court of the Mughal emperor, Shah ʿĀlam II (r. 1760-1806), author, and the eponymous founder of the Šarifi family of physicians.

  • ŠARQ

    Nasserddin Parvin

    a literary journal published occasionally in Tehran between 1924 and 1932.

  • SASANIAN COINAGE

    Nikolaus Schindel

    The coinage of the Sasanian empire (ca. 224-651 CE) is not only the most important primary source for its monetary and economic history, but is also of greatest importance for history and art history.

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  • SASANIAN DYNASTY

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    The Sasanian dynasty represented the last Persian lineage of rulers to achieve hegemony over much of Western Asia before Islam, ruled 224 CE–650 CE.

  • SASANIAN ROCK RELIEFS

    G. Herrmann and V. S. Curtis

    one of the primary sources for documentation of the Sasanian period.

  • SASANIAN TEXTILES

    Matteo Compareti

    Classical, Islamic, and Chinese sources celebrate Sasanian textiles as a very precious commodity, but no specific descriptions of them are given. Most studies of Sasanian textile art are originally based on these sources and on examining the reliefs of the larger grotto at Tāq-e Bostān.

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  • SASANIAN WALL PAINTING

    An De Waele

    Murals found on sites within the territory of the Sasanian empire (224- 650 CE) are considered Sasanian. While their main function is decorative, their secondary function can be derived from location, theme, and dimension, and is important because it reflects a world-view.

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