Table of Contents

  • ŠOKUROV, MOḤAMMADJĀN

    Habib Borjian and Evelin Grassi

    (1925-2012), Tajik scholar and literary critic. From the late 1980s, in the milieu of glasnost, he cultivated an interest in the theory of modern Tajik culture, and he published copiously on the issues of the history and contemporary conditions of Tajik language, literature, and culture during the independence period after 1991.

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  • SOLAYMĀN

    Peter Jackson

    Il-Khan of Iran (1339-1344), a great-grandson of Hülegü’s third son Yošmut.

  • SOLAYMĀN I

    Rudi Matthee

    (1648-1694), Shah, the eighth king of the Safavid dynasty and the oldest son of Shah ʿAbbās II. Until his enthronement, he grew up secluded in the royal harem and his first language was Turkish.

  • SOLAYMĀNI, Ātajān Peyrow

    Keith Hitchins

    (1899-1933), Tajik poet who blended the classical traditions of Tajik-Persian verse with the social themes of the new Soviet Central Asia of the 1920s and early 1930s.

  • SOLṬĀN ḤOSAYN

    Rudi Matthee

    (1668-1727), the ninth and last Safavid king, the eldest son of Shah Solaymān I. Like most Safavid rulers, he was most comfortable speaking Turkish, although he appears to have learned Persian as well.

  • SOLṬĀN WALAD

    Cross-Reference

    13th-14th-century Sufi shaikh and poet, son and eventual successor of Mawlānā Jalāl-al-Din Rumi(Mawlawi). See BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN SOLṬĀN WALAD.

  • SOPURḠĀN

    David G. Malick

    Neo-Aramaic Sipūrḡān, Assyrian village in the Urmia plain, situated on the Nazlu river, 26 km northeast of the city of Urmia.

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  • SORḴA

    Habib Borjian

    (locally: Sur), township and sub-province in Semnān Province.

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  • SORUSHIAN, Jamshid

    Carlo G. Cereti

    (1914-1999), a Zoroastrian community leader and author.

  • SOUR CHERRY

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀLBĀLŪ.

  • SOUR GRAPE jUICE

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀB-ḠŪRA.

  • SOUTH PERSIA RIFLES

    Floreeda Safiri

    (SPR), a locally recruited militia, commanded by British officers, and operating in the provinces of Fārs and Kermān from 1916 to 1921.

  • SOUTHEAST ASIA i. PERSIAN PRESENCE IN

    M. Ismail Marcinkowski

    Attention will be given to some of the most striking features of the Persian influences on Southeast Asian Islamic culture.

  • SOUTHEAST ASIA ii. SHIʿITES IN

    M. Ismail Marchinkowski

    Along with Sufism, Shiʿite elements too entered Malay-Indonesian Islam, certainly by way of southern India, where it was well represented.

  • SPĀHBED

    Rika Gyselen

     Sasanian title that denoted a high military rank and meant  ‘chief of an army, general.’

  • SPAIN: RELATIONS WITH PERSIA IN THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES

    José Cutillas Ferrer

    Spanish-Persian relations trace back to al-Andalos, when the presence of people and cultural materials from Persia reached its highest level.

  • SPANDARMAD

    Cross-Reference

    one of the six great Aməša Spəntas in Zoroastrianism. See ĀRMAITI .

  • SPEAR

    Boris A. Litvinsky

    (Av. aršti- ‘spear,’ OPers. aršti ‘throwing weapon’ or ‘javelin’) is mentioned in the Avesta several times.

  • SPIEGEL, FRIEDRICH (VON)

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    (1820 -1905), German orientalist and scholar of Iranian studies.

  • SPULER, Bertold

    Werner Ende, Bert Fragner, Dagmar Riedel

    As a teenager Spuler lived through the economic and political turmoils of the 1920s following German defeat in World War I. He received a humanist education, with a focus on Latin and Greek, at the Bismarck Gymnasium in Karlsruhe. Spuler easily picked up languages.

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  • 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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  • SUSA ii. HISTORY DURING THE ELAMITE PERIOD

    François Vallat

    This span of almost two thousand years has been divided into three clearly defined phases called paleo-, meso-, and neo-Elamite, each of which presents peculiarities of its own.

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  • SUSA iii. THE ACHAEMENID PERIOD

    Remy Boucharlat

    The history of Persia before Cyrus and at the beginning of his reign indicate that Persian elements were present in the plain not far from Susa in the first decades of the 6th century.

  • SUSA iv. The Hellenistic and Parthian Periods

    Laurianne Martinez-Sève

    The town retained its importance under Alexander’s officers and successors, the Diadochs. It continued to house an extensive treasury and was a major prize in the wars they engaged in.

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  • SUSA v. THE SASANIAN PERIOD

    G. Gropp

    The satrap of Susa (Šuš) had been loyal to the Parthian king Artabanus V, and the city was forcibly conquered by Ardašir (qq.v.) in 224 after his victory over King Šād-Šāpur of Isfahan.

  • Sušyānt

    Cross-Reference

    See SAOŠYANT.

  • SUVASHUN

    Masʿud Jaʿfari Jazi

    The story is narrated through the eyes of Zari, a happily married woman whose behavior, as she struggles to protect her family, runs counter to that of the traditionally marginalized Persian woman. Other details are recounted through accounts of social visits and other encounters between Zari and her friends and relatives.

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  • SUYĀB

    Gregory Semenov

    now called Ak-Beshim, the site of an important city on the Silk Road, located 60 km to the east of the city of Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan.

  • SWEDEN

    Multiple Authors

    i. Persian Art Collections, ii. Swedish Officers in Persia, 1911-15, iii. Swedish Archeological Mission to Iran, iv. Iranian Community

  • SWEDEN i. PERSIAN ART COLLECTIONS

    Karin Еdahl

    Persian art collections in Sweden contain items from the prehistoric period (3600 BCE) to the 19th century. The first artifacts of possibly Iranian origin were brought by Vikings (or Rus), who traveled to the shores of the Caspian and there met with merchants from Iran. 

  • SWEDEN ii. SWEDISH OFFICERS IN PERSIA, 1911-15

    Mohammad Fazlhashemi

    In October 1910, increasing unrest in southern Persia led the British government to demand that the Persian central government restore order. The Persian government decided to create a highway gendarmerie with the aid of European instructors.