BĀR (audience). The royal audience was one of the most important and enduring of the court ceremonies practiced in Iran. Initially it was influenced, in certain details of the ceremonial, by similar Egyptian and Assyrian practices, and subsequently it in turn influenced the practices of imperial Rome, medieval Europe, and above all the caliphate and the Indian empire (Walser, pp. 19ff., 22ff.). In Iran the audience ceremony endured without significant change until the 20th century.

i. From the Achaemenid through the Safavid period

ii. The Qajar and Pahlavi periods