Table of Contents

  • AMLĀK

    E. Hooglund

    (plural of melk), privately owned agricultural estates; the term (of Arabic origin) designates a form of rural land tenure pattern that existed simultaneously in Iran with various other types of land holdings over several centuries. 

  • AMLĀK-E ḴĀṢṢA

    Cross-Reference

    See ḴĀṢṢA.

  • AMLAŠ

    Multiple Authors

    i. Geography.  ii. Excavations.

  • AMLAŠ i. Geography

    Marcel Bazin

    small town and district in the southeastern part of Gilān Province.

  • AMLAŠ ii. Excavations

    R. H. Dyson

    small village in southeastern Gilān which, since 1959, has given its name to a large assortment of archeological artifacts derived from illegal, clandestine excavations in the nearby valleys of the Alborz range.

  • ʿĀMMA

    E. Kohlberg

    (pl. ʿawāmm), a common Emāmī Shiʿite appellation for the Sunnites. 

  • ʿAMMĀRA

    Cross-Reference

    See ʿAMĀRA.

  • ʿAMMĀRLŪ

    P. Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe of Gīlān and Khorasan. 

  • AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS

    M. L. Chaumont

    historian who provides important information on the Sasanians (b. ca. 330-35).

  • AMMITMANYA

    M. Mayrhoffer

    an Iranian, to whom were entrusted 215 (?) BAR of grain provided for provisions at Tukraš.

  • AMMŌ, MĀR

    J. P. Asmussen

    Manichean apostle, outstanding figure in the missionary history of Manicheism during the 3rd century CE.

  • AMOGHAPĀŚAHṚDAYA

    R. E. Emmerick

    “the heart or essence of the Amoghapāśa ritual,” the name of a Buddhist text belonging to the Mahayanist Tantric tradition. 

  • ĀMOL

    C. E. Bosworth, S. Blair, E. Ehlers

    a town on the Caspian shore in the southwest of the modern province of Māzandarān, medieval Ṭabarestān.

  • ĀMOL (ĀMŪYA)

    C. E. Bosworth

     town situated three miles from the left bank of the Oxus river (Āmū Daryā).

  • AMOL WARE

    Y. Crowe

    Amol wares are mainly fine bowls with flaring walls and straight rims and larger dishes with flattened, everted, or straight rims. Some of these have been greatly restored, so that they feel much heavier than they once were, and their coarser base rings lack the sureness of potting that typifies better-preserved specimens.

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  • ĀMOLI

    David O. Morgan

    Shiʿite scholar and author, died at Shiraz in 1352-53, when it was under the control of the Inju ruler Abu Esḥāq Jamāl-al-Din.

  • ĀMOLĪ, SAYYED BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN

    E. Kohlberg

    early representative of Imamite theosophy (b. 720/1320, or perhaps 719/1319).

  • ĀMORAʾĪ

    P. Lecoq

     the dialect spoken in Āmora, a village in the šahrestān of Tafreš.

  • AMORDĀD

    Cross-Reference

    See AMURDĀD.

  • AMORGES

    A. Sh. Shahbazi

    Greek form of the name of several notable Iranians of the Achaemenid period.

  • AMPELIUS, LUCIUS

    Philip Huyse

    author of a short encyclopaedic work Liber memorialis in fifty chapters covering such diverse subjects as cosmography (and astronomy), geography and ethnography, theology and especially history.

  • 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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  • ʿAMR B. LAYṮ

    C. E. Bosworth

    ṢAFFĀRĪ, military commander and second ruler of the Saffarid dynasty of Sīstān (r. 879-900).

  • ʿAMR B. ʿOBAYD

    J. van Ess

    early Muʿtazilite theologian and traditionist (d. probably 144/761).

  • ʿAMR B. YAʿQŪB

    C. E. Bosworth

    great-grandson of the co-founder of the Saffarid dynasty and ephemeral boy amir in Sīstān, 299-301/912-13.

  • AMR BE MAʿRŪF

    W. Madelung

    Arabic al-amr be’l-maʿrūf wa’l-nahy ʿan al-monkar “enjoining what is proper or good and forbidding what is reprehensible or evil,” one of the principle religious duties in Islam.  

  • AMRANLU

    P. Oberling

    a small Turkic tribe which has settled down in the village of Galūgāh in Māzandarān.  

  • AMRĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ

    I. K. Poonawala

    (d. 999/1590-91 [?], poet and Sufi from Kūhpāya, a village near Isfahan.

  • AMṚTAPRABHADHĀRAṆĪ

    R. E. Emmerick

    name given by H. W. Bailey to a fifty-line text in Late Khotanese.

  • ĀMŪ DARYĀ

    B. Spuler

    river about 2,500 km long, regarded in ancient times as the boundary between Iran and Tūrān.

  • ʿAMŪOḠLĪ, ḤAYDAR KAN

    Cross-reference

    (ʿAMOḠLĪ). See ḤAYDAR KHAN ʿAMŪOḠLĪ.

  • AMURDĀD

    M. Boyce

    one of the seven great Aməša Spəntas of Zoroastrianism, the hypostasis of the concept of “not dying,” that is Long Life on this earth or Immortality in the hereafter.

  • ĀMŪYA

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀMOL.

  • AMYRTAEUS (II)

    E. Bresciani

    “The God Ammon has given him”, King of Egypt, 404-398 B.C., the only member of Manetho’s 29th dynasty.

  • AMYTIS

    R. Schmitt

    Median and Persian female name.

  • AN LU-SHAN

    E. G. Pulleyblank

    frontier general of mixed Sogdian and Turkish ancestry who rose to high rank during the latter part of the reign of Hsüan-tsung (713-56).

  • AN SHIH-KAO

    E. G. Pulleyblank

    or An Ch’ing, the earliest known translator of Buddhist texts into Chinese. 

  • AN-HSI

    E. G. Pulleyblank

    name by which the Parthian empire was known to the Chinese, a transcription of Aršak-, the name of the Parthian ruling house.

  • ANABASIS

    R. Schmitt

    title of ancient campaign accounts stylistically influenced by the so-called Periplus books.

  • ANĀHĪD

    M. Boyce, M. L. Chaumont, C. Bier

    Ardwīsūr Anāhīd, Middle Persian name of Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā, a popular Zoroastrian yazatā; she is celebrated in Yašt 5 (known as the Ābān Yašt) which is one of the longest and best preserved of the Avestan hymns. Sūrā and anāhitā are common adjectives, meaning respectively “strong, mighty” and “undefiled, immaculate.”

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  • ANĀMAKA

    R. Schmitt

    name of the tenth month (December-January) of the Old Persian calendar.

  • ANAND RAM MOKLES

    B. Ahmad

    Chronicler, lexicographer, and poet of the later Mughal period (1111-64/1699-1750.

  • ĀNANDRĀJ, FARHANG-E

    Cross-Reference

    Persian dictionary by Monšī Moḥammad Bādšāh, completed in 1306/1888. See FARHANG-E ĀNANDRĀJ.

  • ANANIAS OF SHIRAK

    Cross-Reference

    (7th century), scholar, to whom (or to a pseudo-MOVSĒS XORENAC‘I) is attributed the anonymous work Armenian Geography (Ašxarhac‘oyc‘). On this work, see MARKWART, JOSEF.

  • ANANIAS OF SHIRAK (ANANIA ŠIRAKAC‘I)

    Tim Greenwood

    Armenian scholar (ca. 600-670 CE), to whom is attributed a wide range of late Antique scientific texts, including the anonymous Armenian Geography (Ašxarhac‘oyc‘).

  • ANANTAMUKHANIRHĀRADHĀRAṆĪ

    R. E. Emmerick

    the name of a Buddhist text belonging to the Mahayanist Tantric tradition. 

  • ANAPHAS

    R. Schmitt

    Persian male name.

  • ANĀRAK

    C. E. Bosworth

    a baḵš and its town on the southern fringes of the Dašt-e Kavīr.

  • ANĀRAKI

    G. L. Windfuhr

    the dialect of Anārak, a town with 2,100 inhabitants in the Bīābānak region northeast of the city of Nāʾīn.

  • ANATOLIA

    Cross-Reference

    and its relations with Iran: see Asia Minor.

  • ANAW

    T. C. Young, Jr., G. A. Pugachenkova

    village and archeological site at the foot of the Kopet-Dag mountains east of Ashkhabad in Soviet Turkestan.

  • ANA’L-ḤAQQ

    A. Schimmel

    “I am the Truth,” the most famous of the Sufi šaṭḥīyāt (ecstatic utterances, or paradoxes).

  • ʿANBAR

    Ž. Mottaḥedīn

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

  • ANBĀR

    M. Morony

    (Pers. term meaning granary), a town on the left bank of the Euphrates five km northwest of Fallūǰa and sixty-two km west of Baghdad. 

  • ANBAR

    C. E. Bosworth

    (or ANBĪR), a town of the medieval Islamic province of Gūzgān or Jūzǰān in northern Afghanistan, probably to be identified with the modern Sar-e Pol.  

  • ʿANBARĀN

    Marcel Bazin

    a township and district (baḵš) in the Namin sub-provincial district (šahrestān) of Ardabil Province.

  • ANBARĀNĪ Dialect

    Cross-Reference

    See ṬĀLEŠĪ.

  • ʿANBARĪ, ABU’L-ʿABBĀS

    C. E. Bosworth

    4th-5th/10th-11th century poet and prose stylist of Khorasan and statesman in the service of the Qarakhanids.

  • ANBARĪĀN FAMILY

    C. E. Bosworth

    a distinguished family of officials, littérateurs, ʿolamāʾ, and traditionists from Bayhaq (modern Sabzavār).

  • ANBARIN QALAM, ‘ABD-AL-RAḤĪM

    Cross-Reference

    See ʿABD-AL-RAḤĪM ʿANBARĪN QALAM.

  • ANCIENT LETTERS

    N. Sims-Williams

    The group consists of five almost complete letters and a number of fragments of similar letters. Each letter was folded several times and bore the names of the sender and addressee on the outside. Most were tied with string; one letter was wrapped in silk and enclosed in an envelope of coarse cloth addressed to Samarkand.

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  • ʿANDALIB, NĀṢER MOḤAMMAD

    A. Schimmel

    Sufi writer (b. in Delhi 1105/1693-94, d. 1172/1759).

  • ANDĀMEŠ

    Cross-Reference

    See ANDĪMEŠK; DEZFŪL.

  • ANDARĀB

    C. E. Bosworth

    or ANDARĀBA, the name of a river and a town situated upon it in northern Afghanistan.

  • ANDARĪMĀN

    Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

    the name of a number of Turanian heroes in the Šāh-nāma.

  • ANDARUN

    M. A. Djamalzadeh

    or ANDARŪNĪ (inside), the private quarters of well-to-do houses in contrast to bīrūnī. the public rooms usually reserved for men.

  • ANDARWAYWAZĪG

    C. J. Brunner

    Middle Persian term for “acrobat, tumbler” (lit. “one who plays in the air”).

  • ANDARZ

    S. Shaked, Z. Safa

    “precept, instruction, advice”: the literary genre in pre-Islamic and New Persian literatures.

  • ANDARZBAD

    M. L. Chaumont

    Sasanian administrative title meaning “chief advisor” for a city.

  • ANDARZGAR

    J. P. Asmussen

    Mid. Pers. term, “counselor, teacher.”

  • ANDEJĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    town in in the medieval Islamic province of Farḡāna, modern Russian Andizhan, in the easternmost part of the in the easternmost part of Uzbekistan.

  • ANDIJAN UPRISING

    Anke von Kuegelgen

    On the night of 9 Muḥarram 1316/30 May 1898, a group of about 2,000 poorly armed men attacked the 4th and 5th Russian Companies on the outskirts of Andijan under the leadership of the Naqšbandi Sufi Shaykh Dukči Išān (Muḥammad ʿAli Madali, ca. 1856-1898). 

  • ANDĪMEŠK

    X. De Planhol

    (also ANDĀMEŠ, ANDĀLMEŠK), the name of medieval Dezfūl.

  • ANDḴŪY

    D. N. Wilber

    a commercial town in northwestern Afghanistan.

  • ANDRAGORAS

    R. N. Frye

    Seleucid satrap of Parthia and Hyrcania, known primarily from his coins.

  • ANDREAS, FRIEDRICH CARL

    W. Lentz, D. N. MacKenzie, B. Schlerath

    German Iranologist (1846-1930).

  • ANĒRĀN

    Ph. Gignoux

    “non-Iran,” Middle Persian ethno-linguistic term generally used pejoratively to denote a political and religious enemy of Iran and Zoroastrianism.  

  • ANGAJĪ, ḤĀJJ MĪRZĀ ABŪ’L-ḤASAN

    H. Algar

    (1282-1357/1865-1939), a leading moǰtahed of Tabrīz, politically active during both the Constitutional Revolution and the reign of Reżā Shah.

  • ANGALYŪN

    J. P. Asmussen

    Persian rendering of the title of the Gospel of Mani.

  • ANGIOLELLO, GIOVANNI MARIA

    A. M. Piemontese

    (or DEGLI ANGIOLELLO) (1451-ca. 1525), Venetian adventurer, merchant, and author of an important historical report on the Aq Qoyunlū and early Safavid Persia.

  • ANGLO-AFGHAN RELATIONS

    J. A. Norris

    a survey from the earliest times to the death of the last Bārakzay ruler in 1357 Š./1978.

  • ANGLO-AFGHAN TREATY OF 1905

    J. A. Norris

    an agreement pertaining to British control of Afghan foreign policy and related matters.

  • ANGLO-AFGHAN TREATY OF 1921

    L. W. Adamec

    the outcome of peace negotiations following the Third Anglo-Afghan War. 

  • ANGLO-AFGHAN WARS

    J. A. Norris, L. W. Adamec

    First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-42), Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80),  Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919).

  • ANGLO-IRANIAN AGREEMENT

    Cross-Reference

    See ANGLO-PERSIAN AGREEMENT.

  • ANGLO-IRANIAN RELATIONS

    Multiple Authors

    This series of articles covers relations between England and Iran from the Safavid to the Pahlavi periods. 

  • ANGLO-IRANIAN RELATIONS i. Safavid to Zand Periods

    R. W. Ferrier

    English interest in Persia during this period is almost exclusively concerned with trade and has almost nothing to do with political relations. Relations arose as the result of a failure to trade eastwards through Russia and Central Asia in the mid-16th century by merchants of the Russia Company, which, though formed in London on 26 February 1555, had already dispatched their first voyage of three ships by the northeastern route round Russia on 18 May 1553.

  • ANGLO-IRANIAN RELATIONS ii. Qajar period

    F. Kazemzadeh

    Before the 19th century Anglo-Iranian relations were sporadic. Periods of engagement alternated with decades of disengagement. After the death of Karīm Khan Zand (1193/1779) contacts between Britain and Iran diminished and were maintained with regularity only in the Persian Gulf as the center of government authority moved north.

  • ANGLO-IRANIAN RELATIONS iii. Pahlavi period

    R. W. Ferrier

    For most of the 20th century relations have been dominated politically by the modernization and revival of Iran under the stimulus of Reżā Shah and his son and successor Moḥammad Reżā Shah, strategically by Iran’s proximity to the Soviet Union, and economically by Iranian oil.

  • ANGLO-IRANIAN WAR

    Cross-Reference

    See ANGLO-PERSIAN WAR.

  • ANGLO-PERSIAN AGREEMENT OF 1919

    N. S. Fatemi

    provisional agreement made between the British and the Persian governments which, if ratified, would have granted the British a paramount position of control over the financial and military affairs of Iran. 

  • ANGLO-PERSIAN OIL COMPANY

    F. Kazemi

    (ŠERKAT-E NAFT-E ENGELĪS O IRAN), a British company formed to extract and market oil in the oil fields of southwestern Iran.  

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  • ANGLO-PERSIAN WAR (1856-57)

    J. Calmard

    Following their defeat in the Russo-Persian wars of 1219-28/1804-13 and 1242-44/1826-28, the Qajars, tried to compensate for their losses by reasserting Persia’s control over western Afghanistan.

  • ANGLO-RUSSIAN AGREEMENT OF 1873

    J. A. Norris

    an attempt by the Foreign Offices of London and St. Petersburg to define the northern boundary of Afghanistan.

  • ANGLO-RUSSIAN CONVENTION OF 1907

    F. Kazemzadeh

    an agreement relating to Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.

  • ANGRA MAINYU

    Cross-Reference

    See AHRIMAN.

  • AṄGULIMĀLĪYA-SŪTRA

    R. E. Emmerick

    a Buddhist text concerning the conversion to Buddhism of a robber called Aṅgulimāla.

  • ANGŪR

    M. Bazin, X. de Planhol, W. L. Hanaway, Jr

    In the big river basins, real viticulture in organized plantations gradually took shape. Western cultural influences brought by the Greeks may well have stimulated this development. The vineyards are always irrigated, even though rain-fed vine growth is possible in most of the districts. The waterings, however, are few.

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  • ANHALT CARPET

    M. H. Beattie

    The overall composition, the central medallion, and the cloud bands are characteristic of Tabrīz, which was a major artistic center under the Safavids. The carpet’s almost perfect state of preservation, which at one time cast doubt on its being from the 16th century, has been attributed to its remaining in its original Turkish packing.

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  • ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

    Cross-Reference

    See DĀM-DĀRĪ