Explore Iranica

FALLĀḤ, REŻĀ (b. 1328/1910, Kāšān; d. 1360 Š./1981, London), deputy manager of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC; Šerkat-e mellī-e naft-e Īrān), in charge of international relations and marketing, “a shrewd man of affairs, the Shah used him as a behind-the-scenes negotiator with the oil companies” (Alam, p. 37n.). Son…

FALSAFA, philosophy.  i. PRE-ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY Pre-Islamic philosophy, which may be called Mazdean philosophy, is a syncretic system incorporating various Greek thought, predominantly Peripatetic and Neo-Platonic. Historical evidence traces its origin to Parthian times. Bardesanes (154-222 C.E.; q.v.), a mystic thinker of Parthian origin has frequently employed Mazdean doctrines in his…

FALSAFĪ, NAṢR–ALLĀH (b. Tehran, 9 Āḏar 1280 Š./30 November 1901; d. 2 Ḵordād 1360 Š./22 May 1981), Persian historian, educator, journalist, translator, and poet. i. Biography. ii. Zendagānī-e Šāh ʿAbbās-e Awwal.   i. BIOGRAPHY Falsafī’s father was Mīrzā Naṣr-Allāh Mostawfī Savādkūhī, a government accountant. His maternal grandfather was Āqā ʿAlī…

FALUDY, György (George Faludy, b. Budapest, 22 September 1910; d. Budapest 1 September 2006), Hungarian poet, translator, and publicist.  His father was a chemist and worked as a teacher in a higher technical school.  He finished secondary school in 1928 and studied at the Universities of Vienna (1928-30), Paris (1931-32),…

FAMILY LAW, legal prescriptions dealing with marriage, divorce, the status of children, inheritance, and related matters. i. In Zoroastrianism. ii. In Islam. iii. In Modern Persia.   i. IN ZOROASTRIANISM Mazdean family law is the most extensive and involved section of the civil code as set forth in the few…

FAMILY PLANNING, a term for programs to regulate family size that came into use in the West in the 1930s. Although it originally encompassed efforts both to promote and to curtail fertility, explosive population growth in the developing countries since mid-century has narrowed its meaning to control of fertility, including…

FAMINES. Famines have been reported throughout Persian history by numerous authors and observers. According to a compilation made by Charles Melville, they occurred in Khorasan in 115/733 (Melville, p. 130), in Sīstān in 220/835 (Melville, p. 130), in Khorasan and Sīstān in 400/1009-10 (Melville, p. 136), in Khorasan in 1099…

FANĀʾĪĀN, Mīrzā FARAJ-ALLĀH JONŪN b. Loṭf-ʿAlī b. Moḥammad-Reżā, poet, born in the village of Sangsar, near Semnān in 1290/1873. A shoemaker by profession, his formal education was minimal, but four years of travel (1304-8/1887-91) with his mentor, the Bahai scholar and poet Āqā Moḥammad Fāżel Qāʾenī (Nabīl-e Akbar), provided him…

FANĪ, pen name of Shaikh MOḤAMMAD-MOḤSEN b. Ḥasan KAŠMĪRĪ (d. 1081/1670-71), Indo-Persian scholar and poet, to whom the Dabestān-e-maḏāheb (q.v.) has wrongly been attributed (ʿAskarī, p. 85). He studied under Mulla Yaʿqūb Ṣarfī (d. 1013/1605) and Mulla Wāṣeb, a Persian poet from Kashmir (Ḥasan Khan, p. 308). The poets Mulla…