Search Results for “tree”

• TREE

  Cross-Reference

  See DERAḴT.

• PLANE TREE

  Cross-Reference

  See ČENĀR.

• ĀLBĀLŪ

  A. Parsa

  (or ĀLŪBĀLŪ), sour cherry (Cerasus vulgaris), a tree of western Asia and eastern Europe.

• ANUŠAWAN

  J. R. Russell

  grandson of Ara, legendary king of Armenia, called sawsanuēr “devoted to the plane tree.”

• BIRCH

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  (Pers.tūs), the genus Betula L., found in western Azer­baijan, along the Karaj river, and other locations on the southern slopes of the Alborz.

• BARG-E BŪ

  A. Parsa

  (or deraḵt-e ḡār; Eng. laurel and sweet bay), Laurus nobilis, the most popular species of the family Lauraceae, the one used for laurel wreaths. The tree is common in Persian gardens.

• AFRĀ

  A. Parsa

  Persian term for the maple tree (genus Acer), also embracing a few shrubs of the family Aceraceae.

• BEECH

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  Fagus L. Modern Iranian botanists tend to refer to this tree as rāš. Its timber is used more than any other wood for making doors, windows, inexpensive furni­ture, and tools.

• ĀZĀD

  M. Bazin

  Zelkova crenata or Siberian elm, a tree of the Ulmaceae family, for which also other scientific names, such as Zelkova carpinifolia, Zelkova hyrcana, Planera crenata, and Planera Richardi, have been proposed.

• BĀLANG

  W. Eilers

  citron, the fruit of a species of citrus tree (Citrus medica cedrata). This article discusses the history of the word.

• CORNELIAN CHERRY

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  the male cornel tree, a dogwood shrub with edible berries.

• DAḴĪL

  Ḥosayn-ʿAlī Beyhaqī

  lit. “interceder”; a piece of rag or cord or a lock fastened (daḵīl bastan) on a sacred place or object, for example, the railing around a saint’s tomb or grave or a public fountain (saqqā-ḵāna), the branch of a tree considered sacred, or another plant, in order to obtain a desired benefit.

• FRĀXKARD

  Ahmad Tafazzoli

  name of the cosmic ocean in Iranian mythology.

• ʿANBAR

  Ž. Mottaḥedīn

  (ambergris), a waxy, aromatic substance produced in the intestines of stomach of the sperm whale and used in perfumery.

• JUJUBE

  Hušang Aʿlam

  (ʿonnāb), the edible drupe of the jujube tree Ziziphus jujuba Miller.

• BARSOM

  M. F. Kanga

  (Av. barəsman), sacred twigs that form an important part of the Zoroastrian liturgical apparatus. The number varies according to the ceremony to be performed. Today brass or silver wires are used in place of twigs.

• DĀR(- E) TANHĀ

  Ernie Haerinck

  lit., “the lonely tree”; an ar­cheological site in the district of Badr, near the village of Jabar, ca. 70 km east-southeast of Īlām, in the province of Pošt-e Kūh.

• SIMORḠ

  Hanns-Peter Schmidt

  (Persian), Sēnmurw (Pahlavi), Sīna-Mrū (Pāzand), a fabulous, mythical bird. The name derives from Avestan mərəγō saēnō ‘the bird Saēna’, originally a raptor, either eagle or falcon, as can be deduced from the etymologically identical Sanskrit śyená.

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• HAZELNUT

  H. Aʿlam

  (fandoq), the hard-shelled fruit of the shrub (or small tree) Corylus avellana L. (fam. Corylaceae), containing an edible kernel of high nutritious value.

• ANAPHAS

  R. Schmitt

  Persian male name.

• ELM

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  any of several species of hardy deciduous ornamental or forest trees of the genus Ulmus L. (fam. Ulmaceae), typically called nārvan in Persian.

• DĀRČĪNĪ

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  lit., “Chinese tree/wood."

• ČAMRŪŠ

  Alan V. Williams

  a mythical bird that in the Pahlavi books, of all birds of land and sky, is second only to the Sēn bird in worth.

• DRAXT Ī ĀSŪRĪG

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  lit. "The Babylonian tree"; a versified contest over precedence between a goat and a palm tree, composed in the Parthian language, written in Book Pahlavi script, and consisting of about 120 verses. 

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• ARDESTĀNI

  P. Lecoq

  the dialect spoken in the small town of Ardestān.

• SAQQEZ

  Bahram Grami

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

• JAŽN-Ā JAMĀʿIYA

  Khalil Jindy Rashow

  (Feast of the Assembly), the great communal festival of the Yazidis.

• ʿABD-AL-ʿAẒĪM AL-ḤASANĪ

  W. Madelung

  Shiʿite ascetic and transmitter buried in the main sanctuary of Ray (9th century).

• ČĀR BAKR

  G. A. Pugachenkova

  (lit. “four Bakrs”), family necropolis of the powerful Jūybāri shaikhs near the village of Sumitan.

• DERAḴT

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  tree, shrub.

• AIWYǠŊHANA

  M. F. Kanga

  Avestan term “wrapping round, girdle”: (1)  a strip from a date-palm leaf used to tie bundle of wires which constitute the barsom, (2) the kusti or sacred girdle.

• OLIVE TREE

  Willem Floor

  (zaytun). The cultivated olive tree (Olea europaea L, Oleaceae) is a long-lived, evergreen tree native to the Mediterranean basin. It is valued for its fruit and oil.

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• CASSIA

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  a genus of shrubs and trees of the family Leguminosae (or Caesalpiniaceae in some classifications).

• BEH

  Wilhelm Eilers, Hūšang Aʿlam, Nesta Ramazani

  “quince, Cydonia.”  i. The word.  ii. The tree.  iii. Culinary uses of the fruit. Wild quince trees are found in the Caucasus, and the cultivated variety may have originated there.

• DAHBĪDĪYA

  Hamid Algar

  a hereditary line of Naqšbandī Sufis centered on the shrine at Dahbīd, a village about 11 km. from Samarqand.

• DERAḴT-E ANJIR-E MAʿĀBED

  LOQMĀN TADAYON-NEŽĀD

  the last and highly acclaimed work of fiction by Ahmad Mahmud.

• BĀḠ iii. In Persian Literature

  W. L. Hanaway

  Bāḡ appears both as an object of description and as the prime source of nature imagery in Persian literature. 

• BAḴTAK

  F. Gaffary

  a folkloric she-creature of horrible shape, personifying a nightmare. Baḵtak resembles the Āl, another “female devil” of Iranian folklore.

• SE QAṬRA ḴUN

  SOHILA SAREMI

  short story by Ṣādeq Hedāyat in a collection with the same title.
  

• NAḴL

  Peter Chelkowski

  As ritual objects for the ʿĀšurāʾ, naḵls are built from wood in various sizes, from simple constructions that can be carried by two persons to colossal structures about three stories high that have to be supported by hundreds of men.

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• BĀDĀM

  X. de Planhol, N. Ramazani

  “almond.”  i. General.  ii. As food.  The genus Amygdalus is very common in Iran and Afghanistan and throughout the Turco-Iranian area.

• COLUMNS

  Wolfram Kleiss

  one of several kinds of upright, load-bearing architectural members encompassed, along with piers, in the term sotūn. In the Achaemenid palaces at Persepolis and Susa columns, whether plain or fluted, reached a height of 19 m and a diameter up to 1.60 m; they were topped by double-protome capitals, themselves an additional 8 m high.

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• ESTHER, BOOK OF

  Shaul Shaked

  a short book of the Old Testament, written in Hebrew.

• LILAC

  Ahmad Aryavand and Bahram Grami

  a fragrant shrub of the olive family. Different varieties exist with blue and purple flowers, used for aroma, decorative, and medicinal purposes. The Persian lilac is a small shrub and has been a garden favorite in Iran for centuries and today occurs in various parts of the country.

• CYPRESS

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  (sarv), Cupressus (Tourn.) L. The genus Cupressus is represented in Persia by one spe­cies (sempervirens L.), with three varieties: the cereiform (cereiformis Rehd.), called sarv-e nāz in Shiraz; the more common pyramidal or fastigiate, variously called sarv-e šīrāzī (Shiraz cypress) and sarv-e kāšī (Kāšān cypress); and the horizontal, known popularly by several names but usually referred to as zarbīn by modern Persian botanists.

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• BAHMAN YAŠT

  W. Sundermann

  Middle Persian apocalyptical text preserved in  Pahlavi script, a Pāzand (i.e., Middle Persian in Avestan script) transliteration, and a garbled New Persian translation.

• BOXTREE

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  Buxus L. spp., šemšād, common name for numerous species of evergreen shrubs or trees of the family Buxaceae. The species B. sempervirens grows wild in lowland or plain forests of the Caspian provinces.

• 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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• CARMANIA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  ancient region east of Fārs province, approximately equivalent to modern Kermān. The Old Persian form is attested only once in inscriptions.

• ABU’L-ḤASAN NĀDER-AL-ZAMĀN

  D. Duda

  Emperor Jahāngīr had him trained to be a court painter like his father. By their use of color and line, father and son together noticeably strengthened the Persian elements in the Mughal painting of the period.

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• GREECE xv. Ancient Greek borrowings of Persian herbs and plants of medicinal value

  Luigi Arata

  It is well attested that the ancient Greek city-states (poleis) and the Persian Empire had continuous commercial contact which influenced the ordinary life of both parties.

• ʿAJABŠĪR

  ʿA. Kārang

  a town and baḵš in East Azerbaijan. 

• GEMCUTTING

  Parviz Mohebbi

  (Pers. ḥakkākī); the first-known reference in Persian to gem cutting is found in an anonymous treatise on jewelry, Jowhar-nāma-ye neẓāmī.

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• 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.

• SORḴA

  Habib Borjian

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

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• HONEY

  Hushang Aʿlam

  (ʿasal, archaic Pers. angobin).  In Iranian lore, according to the Nowruz-nāma, Hušang, the second  Pišdādiān king, first “brought out honey from the zanbur (“wasp”).

• FIG

  Hušang Aʿlam

  the “fruit” of several species and subspecies of Ficus L. (fam. Moraceae) in the geobotanical area covered by K. H. Rechinger’s Flora Iranica.

• 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.

• DABBĀḠĪ

  ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  tanning, the process by which animal skins are made into leather.

• CORAL

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  the skeletal deposit of marine polyps, often treated as a gem material.

• BĀḠ-E ERAM

  K. Afsar

  a famous and beautiful garden at Shiraz. Its site was formerly on the northwestern fringe of the city but is now well inside the greatly expanded urban area.

• ČENĀR

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  “Oriental plane (tree),” indigenous from southeastern Europe to the Iranian plateau. In Persia proper, spontaneous planes have been observed by botanists. Cultivated planes are popular as ornamental or shade trees.

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• GAZ (2)

  Minu Yusofnezhad

  or Jaz; a town in the province of Isfahan, of the šahrestān of Barḵᵛār and Mayma, situated 18 km north of the city of Isfahan at an altitude of 1,578 m above sea level.

• BALĀSAGĀN

  M. L. Chaumont, C. E. Bosworth

   “country of the Balās,” designating a region located for the most part south of the lower course of the rivers Kor (Kura) and the Aras (Araxes), bordered on the south by Atropatene and on the east by the Caspian Sea.  i. In pre-Islamic times.  ii. In Islamic times.

• CAMPHOR

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  a strong-smelling volatile white solid essential oil obtained from two genera of the camphor tree and used from ancient times in Persia as an aromatic with antiseptic and insect-repelling properties.

• CINNAMUS

  Marie Louise Chaumont

  putative rival of Artabanus II (12-38) as king of the Arsacids.

• SHAHID SALESS, Sohrab

  Pardis Minuchehr

  Iranian cinematographer and award-winning filmmaker.

• CARACAL

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  (Felis caracal Schreber = Lynx caracal, Caracal caracal), also called “desert lynx” or “Persian lynx”; in Persian, sīāhgūš, lit. “black-eared.”

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• CHARCOAL

  Willem Floor

  car­bonized wood and other vegetal material, an important household and industrial fuel in Persia and Afghanistan.

• CAPITALS

  Wolfram Kleiss

  in architectural terminology, tran­sitional elements between weight-bearing supports (see COLUMNS) and the roofs or vaults supported. The development of the capital began in Assyria, when a tree trunk was inserted in the earth with another trunk or branch laid in the fork to carry the roof construction.

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• ANJOMAN-E ĀṮĀR-E MELLĪ

  ʿĪ. Ṣadīq

  (AAM), The National Monuments Council of Iran, established in 1301 Š./1922 to promote interest in and to preserve Iran’s cultural heritage.  

• GARMSĪR AND SARDSĪR

  Xavier de Planhol

  lit. "warm zones and cold zones"; two terms identifying regional entities that form a major geographical contrast deeply affecting the popular conscience in Persia.

• BAḴTĪĀRĪ MOUNTAINS

  E. Ehlers

  The impressive basin-range-structure of the Baḵtīārī mountains, a result of the geological development of the Zagros system since late Cretaceous time and culminating in the orogenesis of Tertiary upfolding, is accentuated by the complicated and unique drainage system, which itself is the result of geology and topography.

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• ḠAZĀLĪ, ABŪ ḤĀMED MOḤAMMAD, iv

  Nasrollah Pourjavady

  iv. Minor Persian works.

• FLAGS iii. of Tajikistan

  Habib Borjian

  On 28 April 1929, the constitution of the Tajik ASSR adopted a state arms and flag. The arms consisted of a hammer (bālḡa) and local sickle (dās) symbol against a star, which depicts a blue sky brightened by golden rays of sun rising above snowy mountains. The star is encircled on each side by wreaths of wheat and cotton.

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• FORESTS AND FORESTRY i. In Persia

  Eckart Ehlers

  Less than 2 percent of Persia is covered by forests, while another 8 to 9 percent may be regarded as depleted former forest areas. Altogether, 150-160,000 km² are, or have been, densely forested areas.

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• RUDBĀR

  Marcel Bazin and Christian Bromberger

  town and district in southwestern Gilān. Rudbār is located on both banks of the Safidrud river at lat 36°51′ N, long 49°25′ E, at an average altitude of 300 m.

• ĀL-E FARĪḠŪN

  C. E. Bosworth

  The Iranian name of the family, Farīḡūn, may well be connected with that of the legendary Iranian figure Farīdūn/Afrīdūn; moreover the author of the Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, who seems to have lived and worked in Gūzgān, specifically says in his entry on the geography of Gūzgān that the malek of that region was a descendant of Afrīdūn.

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• ʿABBĀSĪ, ŠAYḴ

  R. Skelton

  Apart from an apparently early work in the standard Isfahan style of the second quarter of the 17th century (Cristie’s 10 July 1975, lot 197), Šayḵ ʿAbbāsī departed from the established conventions of Safavid painting and embarked upon an eclectic manner in which European and Indian elements played an important role.

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• 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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• BOT

  William L. Hanaway, Jr.

  a term frequent in poetry with meanings ranging from an idol in the literal sense to a metaphor for ideal human beauty. These senses have been used since the earliest surviving Persian poetry.

• APHORISM

  P. Sprachman

  “short sentences drawn from long experience” to Cervantes, “the wisdom of many, the wit of one” to Lord Russell, the terms proverb, aphorism, maxim have evaded strict definition and demarcation.

• BURIAL v. In Bahai Communities

  Vahid Rafati

  Bahai laws on burial are limited to a few basic principles that are binding on all Bahai communities around the world.

• DIVINATION

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  the art or technique of gaining knowledge of future events or distant states by means of observing and interpreting signs.

• KAYĀNIĀN x. The End of the Kayanids

  Prods Oktor Skjærvø

  In the Pahlavi texts. The Bundahišn only records that, when Wahman, son of Spandyād, came to the throne, Iran was a wasteland, and the Iranians were quarreling with one another.

• BAHMAN (2) SON OF ESFANDĪĀR

  Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

  son of ESFANDĪĀR, a Kayanian king of Iran in the national epic.  

• ʿABDALLĀH ŠĪRĀZĪ

  P. P. Soucek

  Qāżī Aḥmad praises ʿAbdallāh’s skill in lacquer painting (rang o rowḡan). This technique was widely used in the decoration of bookbindings during the 16th century, and the examination of surviving bindings may lead to the discovery of further works by ʿAbdallāh.

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• N~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Cross-Reference

  list of all the figure and plate images in the letter N entries.

• BAḴTĪĀRĪS of AFGHANISTAN

  D. Balland

  two small Paṧtō-speaking groups in the eastern part of the Irano-Afghan area bearing the name Baḵtīārī or Baḵtīār.

• FELFEL

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  modern Persian term designating the fruits and/or berries of two botanically different groups of plants: the pepper proper and the capsicum peppers.

• LEOPARD

  Eskandar Firouz

  (Panthera pardus, Pers. Palang), the largest and most powerful member of the cat family still occurring in Iran. The Persian leopard is very variable in both size and coloration, depending on the conditions of the natural environment of its range.

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• ILĀM i. GEOGRAPHY

  M. Rezazadeh Shafarudi

  Until the mid-1930s Ilam was known as the Poštkuh of Lorestān as opposed to the Piškuh of Lorestān, which was located in the eastern part of the region. Since the Ṣafavid era Lorestān had been administered under the wālis (governors-general), who came from the chieftains of Lor-e Kuček tribes.

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• IMMORTALS

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (Gk. athánatoi), name of a corps of 10,000 Persian élite infantry soldiers in Herodotus, in connection with Xerxes’ campaign against Greece in 480–479 BCE.

• MÜLLER, FRIEDRICH

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (1834-1898), Austrian scholar of linguistics and ethnography. He was the founder and main advocate of the so-called “linguistic ethnography.” He worked on a genealogical classification and a description of all the languages around the globe known at his time (and often examined for the first time by himself). 

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• AMPHIBIANS

  S. C. Anderson

  Twenty species occur in Iran: six salamanders in three genera in two families and fourteen frogs and toads in four genera in four families. The amphibian fauna is most diverse in the northwestern provinces, which have the greatest rainfall and running water throughout the year.

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• EPIGRAM

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  originally a Greek word meaning “inscription” and denoting in Western literatures a genre of short poems characterized by their contents and style rather than by a specific prosodic form.

• DUCK

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  technically any species of the family Anatidae but in Persian popular usage including similar waterfowl from other families, particularly some geese and grebes.

• ĀB-ZŌHR

  Mary Boyce

  “offering of water,” the Middle Persian form of a Zoroastrian technical term, Av. Ape zaoθra. Making the offering of water is the culminating rite of the main Zoroastrian act of worship, the yasna; and preparing and consecrating it is at the center of the rituals of the second part of this service.

• GANĀVA

  Minu Yusofnezhad

  county (šahrestān) and port city on the Persian Gulf in the province of Būšehr.

• GIANTS, THE BOOK OF

  Werner Sundermann

  a book mentioned as a canonical work of Mani in the Coptic Kephalaia, in the Homilies and Psalms, as well as in the Chinese compendium of Mani’s teachings.