Explore Iranica

GEORGIA iii. IRANIAN ELEMENTS IN GEORGIAN ART AND ARCHEOLOGY Ancient Georgian tribes had close cultural contacts with Near Eastern civilizations from the 18th century B.C.E. (Figure 3; Figure 4), as evidenced by the gold figurine of a stag (Sumerian influence) and the silver bowl with two friezes of relief decoration…

GEORGIA iv. LITERARY CONTACTS WITH PERSIA The tribes of Georgia had a well-established and vast literary tradition and folklore long before the Christian era. None of the pre-Christian Georgian literary works have survived, however. Christianity became established in Georgia as an official religion at the beginning of the 4th century,…

GEORGIA v. LINGUISTIC CONTACTS WITH IRANIAN LANGUAGES Due to many centuries of close contacts between Georgia and Persia, a large number of Iranian loanwords came into the Georgian language. These belonged to various spheres of vocabulary and were borrowed at different periods and from different dialects: from Eastern Iranian Scytho-Alan-Ossetic,…

GEORGIA vi. IRANIAN STUDIES AND COLLECTIONS IN GEORGIA The institutional foundations of Iranian studies in Georgia were laid after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Two centers emerged, namely the University of Tbilisi and the Georgian branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which later became the Georgian Academy…

GEORGIA vii. GEORGIANS IN THE SAFAVID ADMINISTRATION Safavid interaction with Georgia and its inhabitants dates from the inception of the state in the early 16th century, when Georgians fought alongside the Qezelbāš in Shah Esmāʿīl I’s army (Grey, ed., pp. 190, 193; Scarcia Amoretti, p. 61). Under Shah Ṭahmāsb I…

GEORGIA viii. GEORGIAN COMMUNITIES IN PERSIA Many thousands of Georgians, Armenians, and Circassians who were transplanted to Persia by Shah ʿAbbās I (996-1038/1588-1629) were peasants, and they were settled in villages in the Persian hinterland. A large group of Georgians and Armenians were moved into the Farīdan region, west of…

GEOY TEPE, a rich archeological site located in western Azarbaijan about 7 km south of the town of Urmia (Reżāʾīya) plain made known through the aerial survey of ancient sites in Persia carried out by Erich F. Schmidt in the 1930s. With the publication of Schmidt’s pioneer work it was…

GERĀYLĪ, a Turkic tribe of Khorasan, Gorgān, and Māzandarān. According to Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana (pp. 157-58), the Gerāylī are descendents of the once powerful Kereit of Mongolia, whose leader, Wang Khan, was defeated by Čengīz Khan (q.v.) in 1203. But there is no solid evidence to support this claim. Nor is there…

GERDKŪH, a fortress on the summit of an isolated rocky hill in the Alborz mountains, situated some 18 km west of Dāmḡān (q.v.) in northern Persia. Thrust forward into a sloping plain, the hill of Gerdkūh rises about 300 meters above its base, and seen from the south, the access…

GEREH-SĀZĪ (lit: making gereh “knot”), term used to refer to various geometric designs in woodworking and architectural decoration. i. Woodwork. ii. Architecture.   i. WOODWORK Gereh-sāzī refers to two related techniques of woodworking: either a lattice frame, which could be left plain or filled with wooden insets, colored glass, or…

GEREŠK, a small oasis-city on the right bank of the Helmand river in Southern Afghanistan, the headquarters of the district (woloswālī) of Nahr-e Serāj (see below) within the province of Helmand (q.v.). It is located at an altitude of 840 m near the easiest passages over the middle Helmand. These…

GERMANIKEIA (Germanicia; Mid. Pers. Germanyōs), city in the ancient country of Commagene in the Roman province of Syria, present-day Maraş in southeast Turkey. According to the inscription of Šāpūr I, the city was captured in 252 or probably in 253 (about the date see DICHŌR) in the course of Šāpūr’s…