Table of Contents

• ṬABAQĀT-E NĀṢERI

  C. E. Bosworth

  an extensive general history composed in Persian by  b. Serāj-al-Din Jowzjāni, who for the first part of his career lived in Ḡur under the Ghurid sultans and latterly in Muslim India under the Moʿezzi or Šamsi Delhi sultans.

• TABRIZ x. MONUMENTS x(1). The Blue Mosque

  Sandra Aube

  (Pers. Masjed-e kabud), also known as Masjed-e moẓaffariya, built during the rule of the Qarā Qoyunlu dynasty (1351-1469) and completed in 1465. The extant tilework documents artistic connections with contemporary architecture in Timurid Khorasan and in the Ottoman Empire.

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• TADAYYON, Sayyed Moḥammad Birjandi

  Hormoz Davarpanah

  (b. Birjand, 1881; d. United States, December 1951), early 20th-century educationist and politician.

• TAḎKERA-YE NAṢRĀBĀDI

  Mahmoud Fotoohi

  a compilation of short biographical notices on some one thousand poets of the Safavid period.

• TAḎKERAT al-AWLIĀʾ

  Mohammad Esteʿlami

  (Saints’ Lives), a hagiographic account of the sayings and miraculous deeds (karāmāts) of eminent sufis and other religious figures from the early Islamic centuries.

• TAḎKERAT al-MOLUK

  M. Ismail Marcinkowski

  (Memorial for kings), Persian manual from the transitional period between the collapse of the Safavid empire at the end of the reign of Shah Solṭān Ḥosayn (r. 1694-1722) and the early Afghan period in Persia.

• TAFAŻŻOLI, AḤMAD

  Philippe Gignoux

  (1937-1997), a prominent scholar and philologist in the field of Middle Iranian studies.

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• TAFT

  EIr, based on an article submitted by Ali Modarres

  town and district in Yazd province.

• ṬAHMĀSP I

  Colin P. Mitchell

  (1524-1576), second ruler of the Safavid dynasty. His 52-year reign was the longest of all Safavid rulers.

• TĀJ AL-SALĀṬIN

  M. Ismail Marcinkowski

  a book in the genre of Mirror for Princes written in Malay by Boḵāri Jawhari (fl. early 17th cent.).

• TĀJ-al-SALṬANA

  Afsaneh Najmabadi

  (1884-1936), one of the best known daughters of the Qajar king Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (r. 1848-96), due to her memoirs (Ḵāterāt), written in 1914, which were first partially published in 1969 and whose authenticity has been disputed.

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• TAJADDOD

  Nassereddin Parvin

  (Modernity), a newspaper published as the official organ of the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, of which a total of 202 issues appeared in Tabriz.

• TAJIK

  Multiple Authors

  i. The Ethnonym: Origins and Application. ii. Tajik Persian. iii. Colloquial Tajiki in Comparison with Persian of Iran.

• TAJIK i. THE ETHNONYM: ORIGINS AND APPLICATION

  John Perry

  The Tajiks are an Iranian people, speaking a variety of Persian, concentrated in the Oxus Basin, the Farḡāna valley (Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan) and on both banks of the upper Oxus.

• TAJIK ii. TAJIK PERSIAN

  John Perry

  Tajiki Persian is the variety of New Persian used in Central Asia. From the 1920s it was officially fostered in the USSR as the national literary language of the Tajik SSR (since 1991, the Republic of Tajikistan). It is also spoken in parts of Uzbekistan, notably in the cities of Bukhara and Samarqand.

• TAJIK iii. COLLOQUIAL TAJIKI IN COMPARISON WITH PERSIAN OF IRAN

  Bahriddin Aliev and Aya Okawa

  Fārsi of Iran (here called “Farsi” for short), Tajiki, and Dari are distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist.

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• TAJIKISTAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

  Habib Borjian

  Tajikistan’s leading research institution for coordinating and conducting theoretical and applied research projects.

• TAJIKISTAN i. STATUS OF ISLAM SINCE 1917

  Muriel Atkin

  Tajikistan’s population, which numbered slightly more than six million in the year 2000, consists overwhelmingly of ethnic groups which have historically been Muslim.

• TAJIKISTAN v. DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS

  Habib Borjian

  The alphabet change to Roman and then to Cyrillic (1928 and 1940) coupled with vernacularization of Tajik Persian, called for independent lexicography in Tajikistan.

• TAKLAMAKAN

  Alain Cariou

  the largest desert in China, and one of the largest deserts in the world. This desert basin is strategically situated on the famous Silk Road, which is the main caravan track joining China and West Eurasia with India via the Karakum pass, Afghanistan, Central Asia and Persia.

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• TAḴT-E SOLAYMĀN

  Dietrich Huff

  outstanding archeological site with substantial Sasanian and Il-khanid ruins in Azerbaijan, between Bijār and Šāhin-dež, about 30 km north-northeast of Takāb. Up to the early Islamic time the geographical name of the place and the region was Šiz.

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• TAḴTI, Ḡolām-Reżā

  Houchang E. Chehabi

  (b. Tehran, 20 Šahrivar 1309 Š./27 August 1930; d. Tehran, 27 Ordibehešt 1347 Š./7 June 1968), freestyle wrestling champion, and Persia’s most popular athlete of the 20th century.

• ṬĀLEB

  Cross-Reference

  Poet and physician (d. 1015/1606-07). See ABU ṬĀLEB TABRIZI.

• ṬĀLEB ĀMOLI

  Paul Losensky

  Persian poet of the early 17th century (b. Mazandaran, ca. 1580; d. India, 1626-7).

• TĀLEŠ DISTRICT

  Marcel Bazin

  altogether stretches north from the Safidrud, which cuts through the western Alborz mountains in western Gilān, to the the Araxes-Kura plain in the south of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

• ṬĀLEŠ DULĀB

  Cross-Reference

  one of the five traditional Ṭāleš khanates (Ḵamsa-ye Ṭavāleš) in western Gilān.

• TAʿLIM O TARBIAT

  Nassereddin Parvin

  monthly periodical published by the Ministry of Culture (April 1925-March 1927, April 1934-July 1938). 

• TALMUD ii. RABBINIC LITERATURE and MIDDLE PERSIAN TEXTS

  Yaakov Elman

  Jews and Persians had coexisted in Mesopotamia, mostly peaceably, for some 700 years by the time that the first generation of prominent Babylonian talmudic rabbis was born in the third quarter of the 2nd century.

• TALMUD, PERSIAN ELEMENTS IN

  Jacob Neusner

  Persian influence on Judaism through the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) is by no means negligible. The Bavli is full of Iranian words and motifs.

• TANG-E SARVAK

  Ernie Haerinck

  (Gorge of the cypresses), an archeological site in eastern Ḵuzestān province, southwestern Iran. It is located in a gorge in the mountainous area approx. 50 km north of Behbahān. At an altitude of ca. 1200 m, it is only reached after a long climb.

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• TANNING, RUBBER, AND FOOTWEAR INDUSTRIES

  Willem Floor

  Tanning was an economic activity traditionally practiced all over Iran, not only in the large towns, but also (for local consumption) in small towns and large villages, and it was practiced on a small scale by the nomads.

• TAQIYA iii. AMONG BABIS AND BAHAIS

  Kamran Ekbal

  Dissimulation of the faith was widespread among Babis and Bahais until the early years of the ministry of Shoghi Effendi (1921-57), when he, in a number of messages starting in 1927, prohibited its practice.

• TĀRIḴ-E QOM

  Andreas Drechsler

  (The History of Qom), an early local history (comp. 378/988) from medieval Persia by Ḥasan b. Moḥammad Qomi, which has been preserved in an early 9th/15th-century Persian translation.

• TĀRIḴ-E SISTĀN

  C. E. Bosworth

  an anonymous local history in Persian of the eastern Iranian region of Sistān, the region that straddles the modern Iran-Afghanistan border. It forms a notable example of the flourishing genre of local histories in the pre-modern Iranian lands.

• ṬARZI, MAḤMUD

  May Schinasi

  (1865-1933), writer, journalist, politician, and a prominent figure in Afghanistan in the first quarter of the 20th century. Tarzi was hailed as the "father of journalism" and oversaw the bi-monthly Serāj al-aḵbār, for which he wrote most of the articles, and was a translator of Turkish, an essayist, and a poet.

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• TAVALLALI, Fereydun

  Kāmyār ʿĀbedi

  (1919-1985), noted poet and writer. His literary career paralleled the dominant social, political, and literary trends of the middle decades of 20th century Iran.

• TAʿZIA

  Peter Chelkowski

  a term used for the Shiʿite passion play performed in Persia. It is the sole form of serious drama to have developed in the world of Islam, with the exception of contemporary theater, which was introduced to Islamic countries in the mid-19th century.

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• TEA

  Cross-Reference

  See ČĀY.

• TEHRAN i. A PERSIAN CITY AT THE FOOT OF THE ALBORZ.

  Xavier de Planhol

  At the northern borders of Iran’s arid central plateau, the southern foothills of the Alborz chain, which have the advantage of major precipitations, are particularly suitable for human settlements.

• TEHRĀNI, Ḥosayn

  Morteżā Ḥoseyni Dehkordi

  (1911-1973) well-known master performer of the tonbak.

• TEKIŠ B. IL ARSLĀN

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  , ʿAlāʾ-al-Donyā wa’l-Din Abu’l-Moẓaffar (r. 1172-1200), a ruler of the branch of Khwarazmshahs who descended from the Great Saljuq slave commander (ḡolām) Anuštigin Ḡarčāʾi.

• TELEGRAPH i. FIRST TELEGRAPH LINES IN PERSIA

  Soli Shahvar

  The initiator of introducing the electric telegraph in Persia was Mirzā Malkom Khan. In 1858 he carried out two successful telegraphic experiments for Nāṣer-al-Din Shah.

• TENTS in Iran

  Multiple Authors

  A portable dwelling characteristic of certain nomad groups. It consists of a canopy of cloth or skin supported by upright posts and anchored to the ground by means of pegs and ropes.

• TENTS i. General Survey

  Jean-Pierre Digard

  The most common type of tent in Iran and Afghani­stan is the “black tent” (constructed of bands of woven goat hair stitched together), which is known from Mauritania to India.

• TENTS ii. Variety, Construction, and Use

  Peter Alford Andrews

  Both of the basic tent types used by nomads elsewhere in the Middle East are present in Iran and Afghanistan: the black, goat-hair tent and the felt tent.

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• TEPE HISSAR

  Robert H. Dyson

  (Tappa Ḥeṣār), prehistoric site located just south of Dāmḡān in northeastern Persia.

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• TEPE YAHYA

  D. T. Potts

  (Tappe Yaḥyā), archeological site in the Soḡun valley, Kerman province, ca. 220 km south of Kerman and 130 km north of the Straits of Hormuz.

• TERKEN ḴĀTUN

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  title of the wife of the Khwarazmshah Tekiš b. Il-Arslān (r. 1172-1200) and mother of ʿAlāʾ-al-Din Moḥammad (r. 1200-20).

• TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN IRAN

  Willem Floor

  Textile production in Iran dates back to the 10th millennium BCE. The first European-style factories in Persia were established in the 1850s and were among the first establishments in the country to use modern technology.

• THAILAND-IRAN RELATIONS

  M. Ismail Marcinkowski

  Iran’s cultural and trade relations with Southeast Asia date back far into the pre-Islamic period. Official diplomatic relations between the two regions become traceable only during the Safavid period (1501-1722).

• TIGER

  Cross-Reference

  See BABR.

• TIGRAN II

  N. Garsoian

  THE GREAT, king of Armenia (r. 95-55 BCE),  the most distinguished member of the so-called Artašēsid/Artaxiad dynasty.

• TIGRIS RIVER

  Daniel T. Potts

  major river arising in the Taurus mountains of eastern Turkey, fed mainly by snow melt, which flows about 2,032 km through eastern Turkey and Iraq to the Persian Gulf.

• TILLA BULAK

  Kai Kaniuth

  a Late Bronze Age site in the Kugitang district of southern Uzbekistan (lat 66°48′ E, long  37°42′ N) classified as belonging to the Sapalli Culture, the regional variant of the Namazga VI tradition in the Surchandarya region.

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• TIŠTRYA

  Antonio Panaino

  (Pahl. Tištar, NPers. Teštar), an important Old Iranian astral divine being (yazata-), to whom the eighth hymn (Tištar Yašt) of the Later Avestan corpus was dedicated (Panaino, 1990).

• TOBACCO

  Willem Floor

  Modes of use, cultivation, and cultural connotations of Tobacco in Iran. Persian sources imply that the use of tobacco was already known in Persia before its introduction into Europe in the 1550s.

• TOḤFAT AL-AḤBĀB

  Solomon Bayevsky

  (Gift for friends), a Persian dictionary of the early Safavid period, compiled by Ḥāfeẓ Solṭān-ʿAli Owbahi Heravi in 936/1529-30.

• TOḤFAT AL-SAʿĀDA

  Solomon Bayevsky

  An early 16th-century Persian dictionary of 14,000 entries by Maḥmud b. Shaikh Żiāʾ-al-Din Moḥammad, a poet of northern India.

• TONB

  Guive Mirfendereski

  (GREATER and LESSER), two tiny islands of arguable strategic importance in the eastern Persian Gulf, south of the western tip of Qešm island.

• TOPKAPI PALACE

  Zeren Tanındı

  and its Persian holdings. The Topkapı Palace, which was known as the Yeni Saray (New Palace) until the 19th century, served the Ottoman sultans for almost 380 years as the imperial residence and center of command.

• TRAJAN

  Erich Kettenhofen

  Marcus Ulpius Traianus, Roman emperor (98-117 CE), born probably in 53 CE, and died in early August 117. During his reign, the Imperium Romanum stretched to its widest extent, but only for a short period.

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• TREE

  Cross-Reference

  See DERAḴT.

• ṬUBĀ VA MAʿNĀ-YE ŠAB

  Houra Yavari

  novel (1987) by Shahrnush Parsipur, fiction writer and essayist, generally regarded as one the first instances of magical realism in modern Iran. The novel’s creative use of magical realism is colored by a distinctly mystical tone and has borrowed much of its flavor from Iran’s Illuminationist Philosophy.

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• TUMANSKIǏ, Aleksandr Grigor’evich

  Jahangir Dorri

  (1861-1920), Russian orientalist, major-general of the Russian Imperial Army. He belonged to an ancient aristocratic family which had originated from the Great Duchy of Lithuania.

• TUP

  F. Farrokh

  (tr. by Fariydoun Farrokh as The Cannon, Washington D. C., 2009), the first full-length novel by Gholam-Hosayn Sa’edi.

• ṬURĀN

  C. E. Bosworth

  (ṬOVARĀN), the mediaeval Islamic name for the mountainous district of east-central Baluchistan lying to the north of the mediaeval coastal region of Makrān, what was in recent centuries, until 1947, the Aḥmadzay Khanate of Kalat.

• TURFAN EXPEDITIONS

  Werner Sundermann

  Turfan (also Uigur Turpan, Chin. Tulufan) in Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan) is the largest oasis (ca. 170 square kilometers) on the ancient northern Silk Road.

• TURKEY

  Cross-Reference

  See BŪQALAMŪN.

• TURKIC LANGUAGES OF PERSIA: AN OVERVIEW

  Michael Knüppel

  Only in few other regions (Caucasus and Southern Siberia) one can find a nearly comparable diversity of Turkic languages as in Persia. The number of their speakers varies from several thousands to several millions.

• TURKIC LOANWORDS IN PERSIAN

  Michael Knüppel

  Turkic-Iranian language contacts, as well as reciprocal loaning/borrowing of words, go back to the era of the Old Turkic language. 

• TURKIC-IRANIAN CONTACTS i. LINGUISTIC CONTACTS

  John R. Perry

  Speakers of Iranian and Turkic languages have been in contact since pre-Islamic times, notably along the Inner Asian commercial corridors known collectively as the Silk Road.

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• TURKIC-IRANIAN CONTACTS ii. CHAGHATAY

  Andras J. E. Bodrogligeti

  belongs to the Altaic group of the Uralo-Altaic language family.

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• TURKMENS OF PERSIA ii. LANGUAGE

  Michael Knüppel

  inhabit an extensive area which stretches from the northwest of Kazakhstan and the adjacent parts of Russia over Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to northern and northwestern Afghanistan, as well as to northeastern Persia.

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• TURKO-SOGDIAN COINAGE

  Larissa Baratova

  issues of the khaqans (ḵāqāns) of the Western Turkic khanate in Central Asia between the 6th and 8th centuries CE, so called because the Turkic rulers issued them with Sogdian inscriptions.

• ṬUSI, NAṢIR-AL-DIN ii. AS MATHEMATICIAN AND ASTRONOMER

  George Saliba

  Naṣir-al-Din Abu Jaʿfar Moḥammad Ṭusi (1201-1274) wrote works on subjects ranging from arithmetic to geometry, and to mathematical geography and spherical trigonometry, to astronomy proper as well as to astrological science and optics and trigonometry.

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• T~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Cross-Reference

  list of all the figure and plate images in the T entries