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GĒTĪG AND MĒNŌG, a pair of Middle Persian terms that designate the two forms of existence according to the traditional Zoroastrian view of the world as expressed in the Pahlavi books. The term gētīg alludes to the material, visible, and tangible aspect of the world; mēnōg refers to the aspect…

GĒV, one of the foremost heroes of the national epic in the reigns of Kay Kāvūs and Kay Ḵosrow (qq.v.). According to the Šāh-nāma, he is the son of Gōdarz and father of Bēžan/Bīžan and a direct descendant of Kāva the Smith (Kāva-ye Āhangar; qq.v.) through his paternal grandfather, Kašvād….

GHAFFARY, FARROKH (Ḡaffari, Farroḵ; b. Tehran, 7 Esfand 1300/26 February 1922; d. Paris, 26 Āḏar 1385/17 December 2006), artist, author, actor, film director, and film critic; he served as one of the directors of the National Iranian Radio-Television from 1966 to 1978 and also worked as the chief organizer of…

GHAZNAVIDS, an Islamic dynasty of Turkish slave origin (366-582/977-1186), which in its heyday ruled in the eastern Iranian lands, briefly as far west as Ray and Jebāl; for a while in certain regions north of the Oxus, most notably, in Kᵛārazm; and in Baluchistan and in northwestern India. Latterly, however,…

GHILAIN, Antoine (b. 25 January 1901 in Petit-Rœulx-les-Braine, Hainaut, Belgium; d. 1 April 1947 in Arquennes, Hainaut, Belgium), Roman-Catholic priest, secondary school teacher of Latin and Greek, scholar of Manicheism, and pioneer of Parthian linguistics (FIGURE 1). Ghilain was born in a hamlet in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium….

GHIRSHMAN, ROMAN, French archeologist of Ukranian origin (b. Kharkov, 1895; d. Budapest, 5 September 1979, while attending the Congress of the International Federation of Classical Studies; Figure 1). Ghirshman was one of the pioneers of archeological research in Persia, where he spent almost thirty years excavating numerous sites. He also…

GHURIDS (or Āl-e Šansab), a medieval Islamic dynasty of the eastern Iranian lands. They began as local chiefs in Ḡūr (q.v.) in the heartland of what is now Afghanistan, but became a major power from the mid-12th century until the opening years of the 7th/13th century. Ḡūr was then the…

GIANTS, THE BOOK OF, a book mentioned as a canonical work of Mani in the Coptic Kephalaia (chap. 148), in the Homilies (p. 25.3-4), and Psalms (p. 46.29), as well as in the Chinese compendium of Mani’s teachings, third article (Copt. pčōme nngigas, pčōmennsalašire; Chin. ju huan ). In Mir….

ḠĪĀṮ AL-LOḠĀT (‘Aid in [the explication of] vocabulary’, punning on the author’s name), a Persian dictionary compiled in India in 1827 by the linguist, philologist, and poet Moḥammad Ḡīāṯ- al-Din b. Jamāl-al-Din b. Šaraf-al-Din Rāmpuri Moṣṭafā-ābādi. The dictionary comprises more than 17,000 entries; this number is considerably enhanced when homographs…

ḠĪĀṮ BEG (Ḡīāṯ-al-Dīn Moḥammad Tehrānī), ʿEʿTEMĀD-AL-DAWLA, prime minister of the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr and father of the emperor’s wife, Nūr Jahān. He was the younger of the two sons of Ḵᵛāja Moḥammad-Šarīf Hejrī, a poet and minister of Šaraf-al-Dīn Moḥammad Khan and his son Tātār Solṭān, the governor (beglarbegī) of…