Featured Articles
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CHRONICLE OF EDESSA
a short local history of Edessa (modern Urfa), written in Syriac by an anonymous author and covering chiefly the period from 201-540 C.E. Events such as incursions by the Huns (403-04, 531) and relations between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires are noted briefly.
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ĀSĪĀ (or āsīāb, Mill)
or āsīāb, "mill." Before World War II most grain ground to produce flour for the staple in the Iranian diet, bread, was processed by traditionally powered mills, principally watermills. Except in remote areas they have been replaced by diesel or electrically-driven mills, and old machinery has fallen derelict.
Encyclopædia Iranica
Published in English, Encyclopædia Iranica is a multi-volume, multi-disciplinary work designed to provide a detailed and accurate picture of an important world civilization over a span of several thousand years. It is the most extensive compendium ever conceived on the past and present culture of the Iranian peoples and their contribution to the broader history of human civilization.
The Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation, Inc. was established in 1990 as an independent not-for-profit 501(c)(3) public foundation registered in New York State. The Foundation’s main purpose is to promote the cause of Encyclopædia Iranica and to ensure its continuation as an independent scholarly databank.
The Foundation has established an endowment fund to support the Encyclopædia Iranica project, and funds the majority of its costs. The Foundation’s charter empowers it to carry out the Encyclopædia Iranica project independently.
Encyclopædia Iranica is a non-partisan, non-political, non-religious, non-ideological, and an entirely independent compilation of objective, documented, and reliable information that has drawn on the expertise of leading scholars world-wide at major universities and academies in North America, Europe and Asia.
Students, scholars, and all those eager to learn more about Iranian peoples and their culture will find the Encyclopædia Iranica an indispensable source of information. Those Iranians brought up abroad, interested in learning about their cultural heritage, will particularly benefit from this objective and unbiased resource.
In Focus
Zoroastrianism:
A Collection of Articles from the Encyclopædia Iranica
Edited by Mahnaz Moazami, 2-volume set, Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation: New York, NY, 2016
Zoroastrian theology, cosmology and cosmogony, history of the faith, its rituals and ceremonies, Avestan and Middle Persian texts, festivals such as Nowruz, Mehregan, and Sada, and a host of other topics, hitherto dispersed amidst other entries in their alphabetical sequence in the Encyclopædia Iranica, are gathered together here in a 2-volume set.
