Table of Contents

• PADERY, ETIENNE

  Anne-Marie Touzard

  (b. 1674; fl 1714-1725), Ottoman Greek who served as a translator to the French embassy at Istanbul, and as a French consul at Shiraz.

• PĀDŠĀH ḴĀTUN

  Karin Quade-Reutter

  (1256-1295), ruler of Kerman during the Il-Khanids, the youngest daughter of Qoṭb-al-Din Moḥammad and Qotloḡ Tarkān Ḵātun, grew up under the tutelage of her mother, also a ruler in Kerman.

• PĀDYĀB

  Ramiyar P. Karanjia

  a Pahlavi word meaning “ritually clean.”

• PAHLAVI PAPYRI

  Dieter Weber

  documents written exclusively in Egypt during the Persian (Sasanian) occupation under Ḵosrow II between 619 and 629 CE.

• PAHLAVI PSALTER

  Philippe Gignoux

  name given to a fragment, consisting of twelve pages written on both sides, of a Middle Persian translation of the Syriac Psalter. It was discovered, with a mass of other documents, at Bulayiq, near Turfan, in eastern Turkistan (present-day Xinjiang, China) by one of the four German expeditions to Central Asia.

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• PAIKULI

  Cross-Reference

  name of a pass in Iraq, west of the Iranian border at Qaṣr-e Širin. It is the site of a Sasanian monument with inscription. See NARSEH  and HERZFELD, ERNST iv. Herzfeld and the Paikuli Inscription. (For the site, see Helmut Humbach, The Sassanian Inscription of Paikuli, Part 1. Supplement to Herzfeld’s Paikuli, Wiesbaden and Tehran, 1978, p. 5; map, fig. 116.)

• PAIRIKĀ

  Siamak Adhami

  a class of female demonic beings in the Avesta, often translated “sorceress, witch, or enchantress.”

• PALACE ARCHITECTURE

  Dietrich Huff

  The abundant variety of styles in Iranian domestic architecture conceals a basic functional system that has remained unchanged since the Achaemenid period.

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• PALEOLITHIC AGE IN IRAN

  Frank Hole

  The Paleolithic or ‘Old Stone Age’ begins with the first stone tools some 2.5million years ago in Africa, and it ends with the Neolithic or ‘New Stone Age,’ essentially at the beginnings of agriculture.

• PALM READING

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  (chiromancy or palmistry; Pers. Kaf-bini), a form of physiognomy that deduces personal characteristics from the form of the lines on the subject’s palm.

• PANDIYĀT-E JAVĀNMARDI

  Farhad Daftary

  a Nezāri Ismaʿili book originally written in Persian and containing the sermons or religious admonitions to the true believers, seeking exemplary standards of ethical behavior and spiritual chivalry.

• PANJIKANT

  Boris I. Marshak

  Sogdian city, the ruins of which are located south of present-day Panjakent in western Tajikistan. Archeological excavations show that this city, situated on the rim of a high terrace overlooking a well irrigated valley, was founded in the 5th century C.E. and was inhabited until the 770s.

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• PAPER

  Multiple Authors

  writing material invented in China that spread throughout Asia and to Iran in the pre-Islamic period.

• PAPER i. Paper in the Iranian World Prior to Printing

  Jonathan Bloom

  its use in Iran prior to the introduction of printing.

• PAPER ii. Paper and Papermaking

  Willem Floor

  In the 16th and 17th centuries, paper production took place in Persia in Isfahan, Yazd, and Kerman, and in the 18th century probably in Rasht. In the 19th century it is known to have taken place in Tehran, Isfahan, Kerman, and Mashad.

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• PARI

  Cross-Reference

  “fairy.” See  PAIRIKĀ.

• PARIḴĀN ḴĀNOM

  Manučehr Pārsādust

  (1548-1578), the second daughter of Shah Ṭahmāsp I, a politically influential and colorful figure at the Safavid court.

• PARMENIO

  Ernst Badian

  (b. ca. 400 BCE, d. 330 BCE); probably from mountainous Upper Macedonia, he became Philip II’s most successful general.

• PARSI COMMUNITIES i. EARLY HISTORY

  John R. Hinnells

  The creation of a Parsi settlement in India was the outcome of the migration of Zoroastrian refugees from their original homeland in medieval Islamic Persia.

• PARSI COMMUNITIES ii. IN CALCUTTA

  Jesse S. Palsetia

  Calcutta became a center of Parsi settlement from the 18th century. Dadabhoy Behramji Banaji is recorded as the first Parsi to have come to Calcutta from Surat in western India in 1767.

• PARTHIAN(S)

  Cross-Reference

  See ARSACID DYNASTY.

• PASARGADAE

  David Stronach and Hilary Gopnik

  capital city and last resting place of Cyrus the Great (r. 559-530 BCE), located in northern Fārs in the fertile and well-watered Dasht-i Murghab (Dašt-e morḡāb), the site stands 1,900 m above sea level at 30°15’ N and 53°14’ E.

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• PASHTO LANGUAGE

  Cross-Reference

  See AFGHANISTAN vi. PAŠTO.

• PASTEUR INSTITUTE

  Cross-Reference

  See INSTITUT PASTEUR.

• PAUL THE PERSIAN

  Byard Bennett

  writer at the time of the Nestorian Patriarch Ezekiel (567-580 C.E.). Bar Hebraeus attributes to Paul “an admirable introduction to the dialectics (of Aristotle).” He also appears as a literary figure in an early Byzantine Greek anti-Manichean work, the Debate of Photinus the Manichean and Paul the Persian.

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• PAVRY, BAPSY CURSETJI

  JENNY ROSE

   (1902-1995), daughter of Parsi Zoroastrian Dastur Cursetji Erachji Pavry.

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• PAYĀM-E MAŠREQ

  David Matthews

  Title of a collection of Persian verse by Muhammad Iqbal.

• PAYANDEH, ABU’L-QASEM

  Ṣafdar Taqizāda

  (1908/1911-1984), journalist, translator, and fiction writer.

• PEARL i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

  Brigitte Musche

  i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD The oldest find of pearls in Persia comes from Tepe Giyan in Luristan, from levels dated to the mid-second millennium BCE.

• PEARL ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD

  Daniel T. Potts

  ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD In the Islamic era pearls have been widely used—strung to make necklaces or sewn onto textiles, used to decorate hats, crowns, daggers, and scabbards.

• PEJMAN-E BAKHTIARI, HOSAYN

  Soheila Saremi

  (1900-1974) poet, lyricist, writer and  translator, who composed highly acclaimed ḡazals, and also played an instrumental role in editing and annotating Neẓāmi Ganjavi’s Panj Ganj or Ḵamseh.

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• PELLIOT, PAUL

  Samuel Lieu

  (1878-1945), French orientalist who particularly contributed to the study of the languages and  history of the diverse religions and cultures of Central Asia.

• PEPPER

  Cross-Reference

  See FELFEL.

• PERICLES

  Ernst Badian

  (ca. 495-429 BCE), Athenian politician and commander in the period after the major victories over the forces of Xerxes I.

• PERIKHANIAN, ANAHIT

  Arthur Ambartsumian

  (1928-2012), scholar of Iranian studies, specializing in Sasanian jurisprudence, history, and society. 

  
  
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• PĒRŌZ

  Cross-Reference

  Sasanian king (r. 459-84). See FIRUZ.

• PERROT, JEAN

  Rémy Boucharlat

  (1920-2012), French archeologist and the last director of the Délégation Archéologique Française en Iran (1968-83).

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• PERSEPOLIS

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  ruined monuments of the acropolis of the city of Pārsa, the dynastic center of the Achaemenid Persian kings, located in the plain of Marvdašt, some 57 km northeast of Shiraz.

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• PERSEPOLIS ADMINISTRATIVE ARCHIVES

  Annalisa Azzoni, Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre, Mark B. Garrison, Wouter F. M. Henkelman, Charles E. Jones, and Matthew W. Stolper

  two groups of clay tablets, fragments, and sealings produced and stored by administrative agencies based at Persepolis.

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• PERSEPOLIS ELAMITE TABLETS

  Muhammad Dandamayev

  administrative records in Elamite inscribed on clay tablets. Parts of two archives of such tablets were discovered in Persepolis in 1933-34 and 1936-38.

• PERSEPOLIS GRAFFITI: FOREIGN VISITORS

  St. John Simpson

  These represent another phase in the transformation of the monuments from living palaces to evocative ruined memorials of the past, alongside the earlier systematic iconoclastic defacement of exposed human faces, the addition of Sasanian and Buyid drawings and inscriptions.

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• PERSIAN AUTHORS OF ASIA MINOR PART 1

  Tahsin Yazıcı (prep. Osman G. Özgüdenlı)

  Several Saljuqs of Rum (Anatolia) chose Iranian names such as Kaykāvus and Kayḵosrov and even made Persian the official language of state and court.

• PERSIAN AUTHORS OF ASIA MINOR PART 2

  Tahsin Yazıcı (prep. Osman G. Özgüdenlı)

  bibliography of major Persian authors of Asia Minor.

• PERSIAN LANGUAGE i. Early New Persian

  Ludwig Paul

  Early New Persian is the first phase (8th-12th centuries CE) of the Persian language after the Islamic conquest of Iran.

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• PERSIAN MANUSCRIPTS i. IN OTTOMAN AND MODERN TURKISH LIBRARIES

  Osman G. Özgüdenli

  These are from four sources: (1) those written, translated, and copied in Anatolia; (2) those brought into Anatolia by immigrant scholars; (3) those brought by traders; 4) those brought as war booty.

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• PERSIS, KINGS OF

  Joseph Wiesehöfer

  the Persian dynasts who between the 2nd century BCE and 3rd century CE ruled as Parthian representatives in Persis, southwestern Iran.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN i. PRE-ISLAMIC NAMES: GENERAL

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  The system of formation of personal names attested in the Iranian languages to a great extent agrees with that known from most of the other Indo-European languages.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN ii. AVESTAN NAMES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  In the Avesta at least 400 personal names are attested. The bulk of these names is found in the second part of the Fravardīn Yašt in a litany-like enumeration.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN iii. ACHAEMENID PERIOD

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Evidence from the Achaemenid period is considerable, but in authentic sources, the inscriptions of the kings themselves, fewer than fifty names are documented in their Old Persian form.

• PERSONAL NAMES, IRANIAN iv. PARTHIAN PERIOD

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  For the Parthian period there is no super-abundance of primary sources written in the official (Middle) Parthian administrative language.