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GĀZORGĀH, a village approximately 2.5 miles northeast of the city of Herat in present-day northwestern Afghanistan at 34°22′ N and 62°14′ E, situated at an elevation of 4,100 feet. The name has also been applied at times to the eastern end of the minor mountain ridge to the north of…

GĀZORGĀHĪ, MĪR KAMĀL-AL-DĪN ḤOSAYN, b. Šeḥāb-al-Dīn Esmāʿīl Ṭabasī (b.874/1469-70), a Timurid ṣadr and author of a collection of biographies of Sufis known as the Majāles al-ʿoššāq (sometimes mistakenly ascribed to Sultan Ḥosayn Bāyqarā, q.v.). Through his mother, a sister of Mīr Rafīʿ-al-Dīn Ḥosayn, he belonged to a prominent family of…

GEDROSIA (or Kedrosia), a place-name known only from Classical sources. In the Alexander biographies and later geographies the name was used to denote much of present-day southern Baluchistan in south Pakistan and southeast Persia. According to Arrian, the province extended from the land of the Oritans, along the western banks…

GEIGER, BERNHARD, scholar of Indo-Iranian studies (b. 30 April 1881 in Bielitz, the present-day Bielsko-Biała in Poland; d. 5 July 1964 in New York; Figure 1). Geiger studied Hebrew and Arabic before being persuaded by Leopold von Schroeder to turn to Indian and Iranian studies. Among his teachers in Vienna,…

GEIGER, WILHELM, German scholar of Iranian and Indian philology (b. Nuremberg 21 July 1856, d. Neubiberg 2 September 1943; Figure 1). He studied classical and Oriental languages at Bonn, Berlin, and finally at Erlangen, where he studied with Friedrich von Spiegel and received his doctoral degree in 1876. He taught…

GELDNER, KARL FRIEDRICH, German scholar of Iranian and Indian studies (1852-1929; Figure 1). 1. Life. Geldner was born the son of a parson in Saalfeld on Saale, Thuringia, on 17 December 1852. He studied Sanskrit and the Avesta at Leipzig in 1871 with Windisch and Brockhaus. In 1872, he moved…

GELPKE, RUDOLF, Swiss scholar, writer, and translator of Persian literature (b. Waldenburg, Switzerland, 24 December, 1928; d. 19 January 1972; Figure 1). He was educated at the universities of Basel, Zürich, and Berlin. He became a noted writer in his early twenties, and his novel Holger und Mirjam was published…

GEMCUTTING (ḥakkākī). The first-known reference in Persian to gem cutting is found in an anonymous treatise on jewelry, Jowhar-nāma-ye neẓāmī, written in 592/1195-96 under the last Ḵᵛārazmšāh. According to Īraj Afšār (pp. 40-41), both Naṣīr-al-Dīn Ṭūsī and Abu’l-Qāsem Kāšānī used this treatise in their works (see bibliography) without mentioning it….

GENÇOSMAN, MEHMED NURÎ, Turkish poet and translator of Persian works (b. 1897 in the Ağın district of Elazığ; d. Istanbul, 1976). Gençosman was educated in Diyarbakır, Elazığ, and Konya, and became official clerk of Elazığ before being called up for military service in World War I. At the end of…

GENDARMERIE, the first modern highway patrol and rural police force in Persia. It was established in 1910 by the Persian government with the help of Swedish officers and continued its services into the Pahlavi era. This article discusses the history of the Gendarmerie during two periods: (1) the Swedish period,…