Table of Contents

• 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

  a Neolithic site near Šāhrud in northeastern Iran, important for having an unbroken archeological sequence from the 7th to the early 5th millennium BCE.

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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, 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” (Bartholomae). This approximation of the meaning, in eschatological contexts only, has the disadvantage of associations with Christian theology.

• 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.

• SAQQĀ-ḴĀNA i. 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 ii. SCHOOL OF ART

  Hamid Keshmirshekan

  The term saqqā-ḵāna was first used to refer to a contemporary art movement in Iran in 1962. It 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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• ŠARAFĀBĀD

  Robert M. Schacht and Henry T. Wright III

  the name of a village and an adjacent ancient settlement called Tepe Šarafābād in Southwest Iran.

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• 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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• 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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• 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.

• 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.

• SCHEFER, Charles-Henri-Auguste

  Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam

  (1820-1898), orientalist and academic administrator, as well as minister plenipotentiary and bibliophile.

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• SCHEIL, Jean-Vincent

  Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam

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

• 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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• 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.

• 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

  Armenian–Iranian photographer (b. Tehran, late 1830s; d. Tehran, 1933). Sevruguin’s reputation as a portrait photographer soon came to the attention of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (r. 1848-1896), who appointed him as one of the official court photographers. Of the more than 7,000 glass-plate negatives that Sevruguin made, only 696 have survived.

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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

  (1921-2007), writer, journalist, and translator, who founded the Los-Angeles-based quarterly Rahavard.

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• SHAHID SALESS, Sohrab

  Pardis Minuchehr

  Iranian cinematographer and award-winning filmmaker.

• 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.

• SHAPUR

  Multiple Authors

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

• SHAPUR I 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.

• SHAPUR I ii. The Great Statue

  G. R. GAROSI

  the great statue of Shapur (Šāpūr) I stands in the so-called cave of Shapur, a huge limestone cave in southern Iran, about 6 km from the ancient city of Bišāpur.

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• SHAPUR II

  Touraj Daryaee

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