Table of Contents

  • AUSTRIA i. Relations with Persia

    Helmut Slaby

    Diplomatic and commercial relations between Austria and Persia have a long history, stretching back to the sixteenth century.

  • AUSTRIA ii. IRANIAN STUDIES

    X. Tremblay and N. Rastegar

    The present entry is intended as a synthetic history of the organization of Iranian studies (1) up to 1918 in all the Habsburg “hereditary countries,” which included the present Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, also parts of Poland, Romania, and Ukraine, and (2) since 1918 in the Republic of Austria exclusively.

  • AUTIYĀRA

    R. Schmitt

    name of a district of the satrapy Armina of the Achaemenid empire.

  • AUTOPHRADATES

    M. A. Dandamayev

    name of several Achaemenid officials, especially the satrap of Lydia under the  Artaxerxes II, from 391 B.C. until the late 350s.

  • AVA

    C. E. Bosworth

    the basic modern form of the name of two small towns of northern Persia, normally written Āba in medieval Islamic sources.

  • AVADĀNA

    R. E. Emmerick

    Sanskrit term for a category of Buddhist narrative literature.

  • AVADH

    R. B. Barnett

    an ancient cultural and administrative region lying between the Himalayas and the Ganges in North India, named after Ayodhyā, the setting of the Sanskrit epic Ramayana.

  • AVALOKITEŚVARA-DHĀRAṆĪ

    R. E. Emmerick

    name given by H. W. Bailey to a Buddhist text written in archaizing Late Khotanese, ending with a dhāraṇī (Skt. “spell, sacred formula”) preceded by homage to the bodhisattvas.

  • AVARAYR

    R. Hewsen

    a village in Armenia in the principality of Artaz southeast of the Iranian town of Mākū.

  • ĀVĀZ

    G. Tsuge

    Āvāz as a musical term has three basic meanings: (1) The classical vocal style of Iran, which is based on the elaborate modal system called dastgāh and sung mainly to classical Persian verses. (2) “Tune.” This term is used to denote an auxiliary mode in the dastgāh system.

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  • AVERY, PETER

    David Blow

    The most important part of Avery’s published works consists of translations of Persian poetry, in particular the ghazals (ḡazal) of Hafez, the Persian poet for whom he felt a special empathy. He began translating some of the ghazals while still a student at SOAS.

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  • AVESTA

    Multiple Authors

    the holy book of the Zoroastrians.

  • AVESTA i. Survey of the history and contents of the book

    J. Kellens

    “Avesta” is the name the Mazdean (Mazdayasnian) religious tradition gives to the collection of its sacred texts. The etymology and the exact meaning of the name (Pahlavi ʾp(y)stʾk/abestāg) can not be considered established.

  • AVESTA ii. Middle Persian Translations

    Alberto Cantera

    The ritual Avestan texts belonging to the great rituals are transmitted through two different kinds of manuscripts: the Sāde manuscripts, containing only the Avestan text, and the so-called Pahlavi manuscripts, which include the Pahlavi translations.

  • AVESTAN GEOGRAPHY

    G. Gnoli

    Geographical references in the Avesta are limited to the regions on the eastern Iranian plateau and on the Indo-Iranian border.

  • AVESTAN LANGUAGE I-III

    K. Hoffmann

    The Avestan script is based on the Pahlavi script in its cursive form. The earliest Pahlavi manuscripts date from the fourteenth century A.D., but the Pahlavi cursive script must have developed from the Aramaic script already in the first centuries A.D.

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  • AVESTAN LANGUAGE iv. AVESTAN SYNTAX

    Jean Kellens

    The only complete syntax of Avestan which is still usable today is H. Reichelt’sAwestisches Elementarbuch.

  • AVESTAN PEOPLE

    M. Boyce

    The term Avestan people is used here to include both Zoroaster’s own tribe, with that of his patron, Kavi Vištāspa, and those peoples settled in Eastern Iran.

  • AVIATION

    Abbas Atrvash

    Originally the Iranian government had approached the U.S. administration to negotiate the purchase of American military aircrafts and to organize the training of pilots and technicians. But the Americans rejected the request, arguing that such an agreement would violate the disarmement clauses of the post-World War I peace treaties.

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  • AVICENNA

    Multiple Authors

    Latin form of the name of the outstanding philosopher and physician of the medieval period,  Abū ʿAlī Ḥosayn Ebn Sīnā (d. 1037).