Explore Iranica

FIREARMS in Persia. This article surveys the history and production of various firearms and artillery in Persia from their introduction to the 19th century. i. History. ii. Production of Cannon and Muskets.   i. HISTORY The generic word used in Persian for a gun (i.e., an arquebus or harquebus, originally…

FIREARMS  ii. PRODUCTION OF CANNON AND MUSKETS It is now known that some fifty cannons were made in Persia between 920/1514 and 930/1523, during the reign of Shah Esmāʿīl I (q.v), following an Ottoman model (Bacqué-Grammont, p. 166). By the last quarter of the 16th century, cannon-making was so common…

FIRST DASTUR MEHERJIRANA LIBRARY, THE (www.meherjiranalibrary.com/), the second Parsi library (after that of Mulla Firoze, in 1854-57; Rehatsek, preface) founded in India, established in 1872 CE in Navsari (India) by the Meherjirana family, which has been celebrated since the 12th century CE for its religious relevance for the Parsi communities…

FĪRŪZ(PĒRŌZ), Sasanian king (r. 459-84), son of Yazdegerd II (r. 439-57). After Yazdegerd’s death his other son, Hormozd, hitherto viceroy of Sīstān, was crowned as Hormozd III (q.v.). The relevant sources are not clear as to which of the two sons was the elder. Armenian sources refer to Hormozd as…

FĪRŪZ BAHRĀM, one of Tehran’s oldest high schools, founded by Parsi philanthropist Bahramji Bikaji as a memorial to his son Fīrūz, who was lost at sea in the Mediterranean in 1915. Bikaji’s initial plan was to build an elementary school in Afghanistan, where his daughter and son-in-law served in the…

FĪRŪZ (or Pīrūz) MAŠREQĪ (not Mošrefī as in Majmaʿ al-foṣaḥāʾ, p. 946), poet at the court of the Saffarids Yaʿqūb b. Layṯ (r. 253-65/867-78) and his brother ʿAmr b. Layṯ (r. 265-88/878-901). Next to nothing is known about his life. Hermann Ethé mentions (p. 218) him with the epithet ḥakīm…

FIRUZ (Farmānfarmāʾiān), MARYAM (b. Kermanshah, 1292/1913; d. Tehran, 12 March 2008; Figure 1), political activist, feminist activist, and author.  She was also a leading member of the Tudeh party of Iran and was arrested by the Islamic Republic security forces in 1983. Firuz was born into the royal Qajar family. …

FĪRŪZĀBĀD, town and district (šahrestān) in Fārs, about 110 km south of Shiraz (lat 28° 50´ N, long 52° E, alt ca. 1,300 m; Gazetteer of Iran III, pp. 256-58, 292; Figure 1). The plain is 10 to 20 km wide and is abundantly watered by springs and the perennial…

FĪRŪZKŪH,name of two towns: (1) a fortified city in the medieval Islamic province of Ḡūr in Central Afghanistan, which was the capital of the senior branch of the Ghurid sultans (see GHURIDS) for some sixty years in the later 6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries; (2) fortress and surrounding settlement in the…

FĪRŪZŠĀH-NĀMA, pre-Safavid prose romance. The hero is Fīrūzšāh, son of Dārāb of the Kayanid house. The earliest surviving version was related by the story–teller Mawlānā Shaikh Ḥājī Moḥammad b. Shaikh Aḥmad b. Mawlānā ʿAlī b. Ḥājī Moḥammad Ṭāherī (or Ṭāmerī), known as Bīḡamī (q.v.). The original text probably consisted of…