Table of Contents

• EDUCATION xiii. RURAL AND TRIBAL SCHOOLS

  Moḥammad Bahmanbeygī, Nāṣer Mīr, Moḥammad Pūrsartīp, and EIr

  Compulsory-education laws enacted in 1911 and 1943 provided the legal framework for the extension of modern education into rural and tribal areas. Until the 1950s, however, the Persian government did not possess the resources  to implement these laws; in addition, landowners and tribal khans resisted such efforts.

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• EDUCATION xiv. SPECIAL SCHOOLS

  Samineh Baghchehban-Pirnazar

  Until 1968 responsibility for children with special educational needs had fallen on the individual schools. In that year the National Organization for Special Education  was established as a general directorate under a deputy minister of education.

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• EDUCATION xv. FOREIGN AND MINORITY SCHOOLS IN PERSIA

  EIr

  Modern education was introduced to Persia in the 19th century by European and American religious institutions and military advisers.

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• EDUCATION xvi. SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS

  Aḥmad Bīrašk and EIr

  No standardized schoolbooks existed in Persia before the advent of the modern educational system. The first were written by European teachers at the Dār al-fonūn in the mid-19th century.

• EDUCATION xvii. HIGHER EDUCATION

  David Menashri

  Initially Reżā Shah’s government, like the Qajar government before it, encouraged aspiring professionals to study abroad, but, while urging them to absorb practical elements of Western culture, he also warned them to reject “harmful” influences and preserve their own national identity.

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• EDUCATION xix. TEACHERS’-TRAINING COLLEGES

  Majd-al-Dīn Keyvānī

  Dānešgāh-e tarbīat-e moʿallem, the oldest institution for educating teachers in Persia, was founded  in Tehran in 1336/1918. It has gone through various phases and changes of name since.

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• EDUCATION xviii. TEACHERS’-TRAINING SCHOOLS

  Eqbāl Yaḡmāʾ ī

  In March 1934 an act establishing lower and advanced schools for teachers’ training under the Ministry of Education (Wezārat-e maʿāref) was adopted by the Majles, and an operating charter for such schools was ratified in July of the same year.

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• EDUCATION xx. ADULT EDUCATION

  Šahlā Kāẓemīpūr

  The Ministry of Education (Wezārat-e maʿāref) established adult-literacy classes in state schools considered suitable. They were to last two years and to consist of ninety-six two-hour classes each year, free of charge. Reading and writing Persian, arithmetic, and elementary history, geography, and civics were to be taught.

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• EDUCATION xxi. EDUCATION ABROAD

  Afshin Matin-Asgari

  A survey of 350 students abroad between 1811 and 1920 indicates that more than 50 percent of the total studied in France, about 15 percent in Russia, and 5-10 percent in Germany, England, Switzerland, Istanbul, and Beirut. A small number studied in Egypt, India, and the United States.

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• EDUCATION xxii. PHYSICAL EDUCATION

  Cross-Reference

  See PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

• EDUCATION xxiii. MILITARY EDUCATION

  Cross-reference

  See MILITARY EDUCATION.

• EDUCATION xxiv. EDUCATION IN POSTREVOLUTIONARY PERSIA, 1979-95

  Golnar Mehran

  The history of education in the Islamic Republic falls into two phases: from the revolution to the cease-fire between Persia and Iraq in 1367 Š./1988 (the revolutionary period), when Islamic ideology predominated, and the subsequent period of reconstruction and privatization.

• EDUCATION xxv. WOMEN’S EDUCATION IN THE QAJAR PERIOD

  Afsaneh Najmabadi

  The premodern conception of women’s education was varied. In some medieval books of ethical instruction and counsel teaching women to read was recommended, whereas other authors warned against it.

• EDUCATION xxvi. WOMEN’S EDUCATION IN THE PAHLAVI PERIOD AND AFTER

  EIr

  In the 1920s and 1930s women’s public education in Persia was established and grew rapidly.  In 1926-27 the enrollment of females in primary schools was about 17,000, 21 percent of total enrollment at that level.

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• EDUCATION xxvii. IN AFGHANISTAN

  M. Mobin Shorish

  By the end of the 19th century, mosque schools (maktabs) and madrasas had lost their vitality, rigor, and scope. Internecine struggles among the ruling Abdālī  and subsequently among the Moḥammadzai clan ensured that no trace of regular and systematic education remained in the country.

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• EDUCATION xxviii. IN TAJIKISTAN

  Habib Borjian

  Modern education in Tajikistan developed as the country emerged as a Soviet socialist republic, under the Soviet policy of standardization, with language as virtually the only variable. In Tajikistan, as in other Central Asian republics, this policy brought about nearly universal literacy.

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• EFTEḴĀR DAWLATĀBĀDĪ, ʿABD-AL-WAHHĀB BOḴĀRĪ

  S. Moinul Haq

  (b. Ahmadnagar; d. Dawlatābād, 1776), Deccani biographer and poet in Urdu and Persian.

• EFTEḴĀRĪĀN

  François de Blois

  a family of officials and poets from Qazvīn, reputed descendants of the caliph Abū Bakr, who flourished under the early Il-khans in the 13th century.

• EGGPLANT

  Cross-Reference

  See BĀDENJĀN.

• EḠLAMEŠ

  Cross-Reference

  See SAYF-AL-DĪN ʿEMĀD-AL-DĪN EḠLAMEŠ.

• EGLANTINE

  Cross-Reference

  See NASTARAN.

• EGYPT

  Multiple Authors

  relations with Persia and Afghanistan.

• EGYPT i. Persians in Egypt in the Achaemenid period

  Edda Bresciani

  The last pharaoh of the Twenty-Sixth dynasty, Psamtik III, was defeated by Cambyses II in the battle of Pelusium in the eastern Nile delta in 525 B.C.E.; Egypt was then joined with Cyprus and Phoenicia in the sixth satrapy of the Achaemenid empire.

• EGYPT ii. Egyptian influence on Persia in the Pre-Islamic period

  Philip Huyse

  In the fields of artistic work, architecture and sculpture, the Persians do not seem to have had any lasting impact on Egyptian tradition, during either both Achaemenid occupations of Egypt, or the short-lived presence of the later Sasanians.

• EGYPT iii. Relations in the Seleucid and Parthian periods

  Heinz Heinen

  It remains difficult to ascertain the proportion of ethnic Persians who survived the transition from Achaemenid to Hellenistic rule in Egypt or who came to that country after the conquest by Alexander.

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• EGYPT iv. Relations in the Sasanian period

  Ruth Altheim-Stiehl

  The occupation of Egypt, beginning in 619 or 618, was one of the triumphs in the last Sasanian war against Byzantium. Ḵosrow II Parvēz had begun this war in retaliation for the assassination of the Byzantine emperor Mauricius.

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• EGYPT v. Political And Commercial Relations In The Islamic Period

  Cross-reference

  See under FATIMIDS; AYYUBIDS; IL-KHANIDS DYNASTY.

• EGYPT vi. Artistic relations with Persia in the Islamic period

  Jonathan M. Bloom

  Although direct evidence of artistic links between Persia and Egypt before the Mongol invasion of the Near East in the 13th century is limited, surviving works of art suggest that transfer of artistic ideas resulted from the movement of artisans and their works.

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• EGYPT vii. Political and religious relations with Persia in the modern period

  Shahrough Akhavi

  The beginnings of modern diplomatic relations between Egypt and Persia may be dated from 1847, when Mīrzā Taqī Khan Amīr(-e) Kabīr signed the second treaty of Erzurum with the Ottomans.

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• EGYPT viii. Egyptian cultural influence in Persia, modern times

  EIr

  Egypt, together with Turkey and the Caucasus, was one of the major sources of cultural and political influences in Persia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• EGYPT ix. Iran’s cultural influence in the Islamic period

  Moḥammad el Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Moʾmen

  During the 16th-18th centuries, when Egypt was a province of the Ottoman empire, Persian literature was widely studied IN THE EMPIRE, and the Persian language was one of the administrative languages. 

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• EGYPT x. Relations with Afghanistan

  Ludwig W. Adamec

  Both Egypt and Afghanistan came under British hegemony in the latter part of the 19th century; therefore no official relations existed between them.

• EGYPT xi. Persian Journalism in Egypt

  Nassereddin Parvin

  A number of Persian journals were published in Egypt, after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

• EHRBEDESTĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See HERBEDESTĀN.

• ĒHRPAT

  Cross-Reference

  See HERBED.

• EḤSĀN-AL-ʿOLŪM

  Cross-Reference

  See FARĀBĪ.

• EḤSĀN-ALLĀH KHAN DŪSTDĀR

  Cosroe Chaqueri

  (ʿAlī-ābādī; b. Sārī, Māzandarān, 1883, d. Baku, ca. 1938), second most prominent figure in the the Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran (Ḥokūmat-e jomhūrī-e šūrawī-e Īrān), the radicalized second phase of the Jangalī movement in the years 1920-21.

• EḤTEŠĀM-AL-DAWLA

  Īraj Afšār

  (1839-92), first son of Farhād Mīrzā Moʿtamed-al-Dawla Qājār and maternal grandson of Moḥammad-ʿAlī Mīrzā Dawlatšāh.

• EḤTEŠĀM-AL-DAWLA, ḴĀNLAR KHAN

  Kambiz Eslami

  (d. Tehran, April 1862), seventeenth son of ʿAbbās Mīrzā and governor of several regions in Persia during the reigns of Moḥammad Shah and Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah Qajar.

• EḤTEŠĀM-AL-DAWLA, ḴĀNLAR KHAN

  Iraj Afšār

  (1818-88), also known as Eḥtešām-al-Molk and Moʿtamed-al-Dawla, second son of Farhād Mīrzā Moʿtamed-al-Dawla Qājār.

• EḤTEŠĀM-AL-SALṬANA

  Mehrdad Amanat

  (1863-1936), Mīrzā Maḥmūd Khan ʿAlāmīr Qajar, governor, diplomat, and speaker of the Persian Parliament.

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• EḤTĪĀJ

  Nassereddin Parvin

  weekly newspaper published in Tabrīz by ʿAlīqolī Khan Tabrīzī, known as Ṣafarov, who had distributed political šab-nāmas (lit. "night letters") in 1892.

• EḤYĀ-YEʿOLŪM-AL-DĪN

  Cross-Reference

  See ḠAZĀLĪ ii.

• EILERS, WILHELM

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  In 1958 Eilers was appointed to the professorship in Oriental philology at the University of Würzburg. Although he was offered in 1962 the professorship in ancient Near Eastern studies at the University of Vienna, he stayed in Würzburg and taught there until his retirement in 1974.

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• EJĀZA

  Devin J. Stewart

  "lit. permission, license, authorization"; a term describing a variety of academic certificates ranging in length from a few lines to many fascicles.

• EJMĀʿ

  Devin J. Stewart

  lit. "consensus"; a technical term in Islamic jurisprudence (oṣūl al-feqh).

• EJMIATSIN

  S. Peter Cowe

  currently designation of three separate but interrelated entities: the cathedral and monastic complex which forms the residence of the supreme patriarch and catholicos of all the Armenians, the city in which this complex is located, and the district of which the latter is the administrative center.

• EJTEHĀD

  Aron Zysow

  in Shiʿism, an Arabic verbal noun having the literal sense of "exerting effort."

• EJTEMĀʿĪŪN, FERQA-YE

  Janet Afary

  (FEAM; lit., "Social-Democratic party"), an organization founded in 1905 by Persian emigrants in Transcaucasia with the help of local revolutionaries.

• EKBĀTĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See ECBATANA.

• EKEŁEACʿ

  James Russell

  Gk. Akilisēnē, region along the Euphrates in northwest Armenia.

• EKRĀM, MOḤAMMAD

  J. Bečka

  or Ekrom, b. ʿAbd-al-Salām (1847-1925), known as Dāmollā Ekrāmče, a Bukharan scholar and madrasa teacher.

• EKRĀMĪ, JALĀL

  J. Bečka

  or Jalol Ikromī (1909-93), considered to be Tajikistan’s most important fiction writer and playwright of the Soviet period.

• EḴŠĪD

  F. Grenet and N. Sims-Williams

  Arabo-Persian form of a Sogdian royal title attested in Sogdian script as (ʾ)xšyδ and in Manichean script as (ʾ)xšy(y)δ.

• EKSĪR

  Cross-Reference

  See KĪMĪĀ.

• EḴTESĀN, TĀJ-AL-MOLK MOḤAMMAD

  Iqtidar Husain Siddiqi

  b. Aḥmad b. Ḥasan ʿAbdūsī Dehlavī (1300-51), author in Persian and secretary (dabīr) at the courts of the Tughluqid sultans Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Tōḡloq and his son Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Mo-ḥammad.

• EḴTĪĀR MONŠĪ, ḴᵛĀJA

  W. Thackston

  (fl. mid 10th/16th cent.), a master calligrapher of the chancery taʿlīq style from Herat.

• EḴTĪĀR-AL-DĪN

  Maria Eva Subtelny

  the citadel of Herat located on an elevation adjacent to the north wall of the old city and actually consisting of two parts, the stronghold proper—a rectangle of fired brick and a larger area to the west of unfired brick—that were originally buttressed by 25 towers which reflect various periods of construction.

• EḴTĪĀRĀT

  David Pingree

  lit. "choices, elections"; a term used in Islamic divination and astrology in at least four principle meanings.

• EḴWĀN AL-MOSLEMĪN, JAMʿĪYAT AL-

  Rudi Matthee

  lit. "Society of Muslim brethren"; the first modern religio-political movement in the Islamic world, founded in 1928 by Ḥasan Bannāʾ in Esmāʿīlīya Egypt.

• EḴWĀN AL-ṢAFĀʾ

  Paul E. Walker

  a self-professed brotherhood of piously ascetic scholars.

• ELĀHĪ

  Hamid Algar, J. W. Morris, Jean During

  or ʿAlīšāh (1895-1974), innovative and charismatic leader of one branch of the Ahl-e Ḥaqq and author of several texts on its teachings. The most complete presentation is to be found not in his Persian books, destined for circulation among Twelver Shiʿites, but in his unpublished writings in Gūrānī, intended to be read only by Ahl-e Ḥaqq initiates.

• ELĀHĪ HAMADĀNĪ, SAYYED MĪR ʿEMĀD-AL-DĪN MAḤMŪD

  M. Asif Naim-Siddiqi

  b. Ḥojjat-Allāh Asadābādī, a poet of the 17th century from Asadābād, a village near Hamadān.

• ELĀHĪ QOMŠA’Ī, MAHDĪ

  S. Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī

  b. Abu’l-Ḥasan (b. in Qomša, 1902; d. in Tehran, 1975), poet and professor of Islamic law and philosophy.

• ELAHI, BIJAN

  Mahdi Ganjavi

  (1945-2010), modernist Persian poet and translator.

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• ELĀHĪ-NĀMA

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿAṬṬĀR.

• ELĀHĪYĀT

  Cross-Reference

  See PHILOSOPHY.

• ELAM

  Multiple Authors

  ancient country encompassing a large part of the Persian plateau at the end of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. but reduced to the territory of Susiana in the Achaemenid period.

• ELAM i. The history of Elam

  F. Vallat

  During the several millennia of its history the limits of Elam varied, not only from period to period, but also with the point of view of the person describing it. It seems that Mesopotamians in the late 3rd millennium B.C.E. considered Elam to encompass the entire Persian plateau.

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• ELAM ii. The archeology of Elam

  Elizabeth Carter

  The archeological use of the term “Elam” is based on a loose unity recognizable in the material cultures of the period 3400-525 BCE at Susa in Ḵūzestān, at Anshan in Fārs, and at sites in adjacent areas of the Zagros mountains. Text-based definitions often lead to interpretations that are at odds with those derived from the study of material culture.

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• ELAM iii. Proto-Elamite

  R. K. Englund

  "Proto-Elamite” is the term for a writing system in use in the Susiana plain and the Iranian highlands east of Mesopotamia between ca. 3050 and 2900 B.C.E., a period generally considered to correspond to the Jamdat Nasr/Uruk III through Early Dynastic I periods in Mesopotamia.

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• ELAM iv. Linear Elamite

  MIRJO SALVINI

  a system of writing used at the end of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. by Puzur-Inšušinak, the last of the twelve “kings of Awan,” according to a king list found at Susa. He ruled ca. 2150 B.C.E. and was a contemporary of Ur-Nammu, the first ruler of the Ur III dynasty in Mesopotamia.

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• ELAM v. Elamite language

  FRANÇOISE GRILLOT-SUSINI

  is known from texts in cuneiform script, most of them found at Susa but some from other sites in western and southwestern Iran and, in the east, in Fārs and ranging in date from the 24th to the 4th century B.C.E.

• ELAM vi. Elamite religion

  F. Vallat

  The information furnished by archeological excavations in Persia and by cuneiform documents permit a summary description of some aspects of Elamite religion from the end of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. until the Achaemenid period.

• ELAM vii. Non-Elamite texts in Elam

  SYLVIE LACKENBACHER

  Most non-Elamite texts inscribed on Elamite territories have been found in Susiana, that is, the region nearest to Mesopotamia and most exposed to Mesopotamian political and cultural influences.

• ELBURZ

  Cross-Reference

  See ALBORZ.

• ELBURZ COLLEGE

  Cross-Reference

  See ALBORZ COLLEGE.

• ELČĪ

  David O. Morgan

  (īlčī) envoy, messenger, or official traveling on government business during the Mongol period and thereafter. 

• ELECTIONS

  Fakhreddin Azimi, Shaul Bakhash, M. Hassan Kakar

  i. Under the Qajar and Pahlavi monarchies. ii. Under the Islamic republic, 1979-92. iii. In Afghanistan. 

• ELEGY

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  (Ar. marṯīa, Pers. mūya), poetry of mourning in Persian literature. 

• ELEMENTS

  Mansour Shaki

  i. In Zoroastrianism. ii. In Manicheism. iii. In Persian.

• ELEPHANT i. IN THE NEAR EAST

  François De Blois

   i. IN THE NEAR EAST

• ELEPHANT ii. In the Sasanian Army

  Michael B. Charles

  ii. IN THE SASANIAN ARMY

• ELEPHANTINE

  Edda Bresciani

  the largest island in the Nile, opposite Syene.

• ELGOOD, CYRIL LLOYD

  F. R. C. Bagley

  (1893-1970), British historian of medicine in Persia.

• ELIAS OF NISIBIS

  Cross-Reference

  See ELĪJĀ BAR ŠĪNĀJĀ.

• ELĪF EFENDI, Ḥaṣīrīzāda

  Tahsin Yaziçi

  (b. in Sütlüce, May 1850; d. 4 December 1926), Turkish poet and scholar.

• ELĪJĀ BAR ŠĪNĀJĀ

  Wolfgang Felix

  (975-1049) prominent Nestorian polyhistor. 975-1049). His work is an important source for Sasanian history. In 1002 he was made bishop of Bēṯ Nuhādrē in Adiabene, and in 1008 metropolitan of Nisibis (Naṣībīn). He wrote in Syriac and Arabic on theological issues.

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• ELIKEAN, GRIGOR E.

  Aram Arkun

  (1880-1951), an active figure in Persian and Armenian politics, the press, and literature. 

• EŁIŠĒ

  Robert W. Thomson

  or Elisaeus, fifth century author of the History of Vardan and the Armenian War, a detailed account of the Armenian rebellion against Yazdegerd II in 450, which was prompted by his persecution of their Christian faith.

• ELJIGIDEI

  Peter Jackson

  or Īlčīktāy, Īljīkdāy; the name of two Mongol generals.

• ELLIPI

  Cross-Reference

  See ASSYRIA.

• 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.

• ʿELM AL-KETĀB

  Cross-Reference

  See DARD, ḴᵛĀJA MĪR.

• ʿELM O HONAR

  Nassereddin Parvin

  title of two Persian magazines.

• ʿELMĪ

  Eqbāl Yaḡmāʾī

  a high school in Tehran with 500 students studying experimental sciences, mathematics, and economy.

• ELOQUENCE

  Cross-Reference

  (Faṣāḥāt). See BAYĀN (1).

• ELPHINSTONE, MOUNTSTUART

  Malcolm E. Yapp

  (1779-1859), author of an important description of Afghanistan; a British Indian official who rose to become governor of Bombay.

• ELQĀNIĀN, ḤABIB

  Shaul Bakhash

  Jewish merchant, industrialist, and philanthropist, who rose from modest beginnings to become one of Iran’s leading entrepreneurs.

• ELTON, JOHN

  John Perry

  (?-1751), English merchant, seaman and shipbuilder for Nāder Shah Afšār.