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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