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EN ISLAM IRANIEN, ASPECTS SPIRITUELS ET PHILOSOPHIQUES (4 vols., Paris, 1971-73), the magnum opus of Henry Corbin (q.v.), consisting of essays summarizing most of the major themes that defined his scholarly career and revealing his intellectual grasp of Persian philosophical thought. The four volumes are devoted respectively to the four…

ENAMEL (Pers. mīnā, possibly a dialect form of mīnū < Mid. Pers. mēnōg “uncorporeal, spiritual, the world beyond, heaven” < *"sky" < "blue," meaning "glass, luster, enamel" [Horn, Etymologie, s.v. mīnō; for the ū-/ā- variation in words derived from OIr. -u stems, cf. Av. bāzu-, Pers. bāzū, Sogd. βāzā; Av....

ENCYCLOPÆDIA IRANICA, an alphabetically arranged reference work which seeks to provide scholarly articles relating to “all aspects of Iranian life and culture.” The Encyclopædia Iranica grew out of an idea proposed in 1969 by Ehsan Yarshater, director of the Bongāh-e tarjoma wa našr-e ketāb (q.v.; Institute for Translation and Publication…

ENCYCLOPAEDIAOF ISLAM, a reference work of fundamental importance on topics dealing, according to its self-description, with “the geography, ethnography and biography of the Muhammadan peoples.” Published under the auspices of E. J. Brill, it exists in two editions. The first edition was published during the period 1913-1938 and supervised by…

ENCYCLOPAEDIAS, PERSIAN Pre-modern. In Persia, as in other Islamicized lands, the notion of an encyclopaedia developed out of the “need for inventory” of the knowledge acquired through numerous translations of foreign (mainly Greek) scientific texts subsidized by Baghdad (Arnaldez et al., p. 448). The newly introduced sciences were variously combined…

ENGLISH i. Persian elements in English. ii. Persian Influences in English and American Literature. iii. Translations of Classical Persian Literature. iv. Translations of Modern Persian Literature. v. Translations of English Literature into Persian.   i. PERSIAN ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH Words from all stages of Persian and from many fields have…

ENGLISH ii. PERSIAN INFLUENCES IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE Although academic Persian studies may be said to have begun in England in the early 17th century with the establishment of chairs in Arabic at the two leading universities at Cambridge and Oxford, it was not until the late 18th century…

ENGLISH iii. TRANSLATIONS OF CLASSICAL PERSIAN LITERATURE Translations from classical Persian into English fall initially into two categories. There is a group of texts whose purpose is to convey the information of the original in discrete units, most useful with prose or narrative poetry and not necessarily “literary.” There are…

ENGLISH iv. TRANSLATIONS OF MODERN PERSIAN LITERATURE Modernist literature in Persia can be said to develop gradually throughout the 19th century, but for English readers it begins abruptly, shortly after the Constitutional revolution, with the translations of Edward Browne. The poems translated in his Press and Poetry (1914) added to…

ENGLISH v. TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH LITERATURE INTO PERSIAN In the period of French domination. The first texts translated from English into Persian were diplomatic exchanges and bilateral treaties. During the early decades of the 19th century very few Persians were capable of undertaking such translations, and most of those few…

ENJAVĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ, SAYYED ABU’L-QĀSEM (b. Shiraz, 1921, d. Tehran, 25 Šahrīvar 1372 Š./16 September 1993), eminent Persian folklorist. He was born into an educated and clerical family. After receiving his early education in Shiraz he studied political science at Tehran University. Later he traveled to Geneva and visited other cities…