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HAFT KEŠVAR (seven regions), the usual geographical division of the world in Iranian tradition. Ancient Iranians, who may have believed in a tripartite division of the earth (see IRAJ), developed an orderly picture of the world, envisioned as vast and round and encircled by a high mountain (harā bərəzaitī, see…

HAFT ḴOSRAVĀNI, the seven musical systems or modes attributed by Abu Manṣur Ṯaʿālebī (Ḡorar, p. 698) to Bārbad (q.v.), the famous court musician of the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parvēz (r. 590-628). They were sung in royal banquets during the lifetime of Ṯaʿālebi. Haft Ḵosravāni seems to be what Abu’l-Ḥasan…

HAFTḴᵛĀN, the title of two famous episodes in Ferdowsi’s Šāh-nāma, the Haft Ḵᵛān-e Rostam, and the Haft Ḵᵛān-e Esfandiār, describing seven exploits that each hero had to undertake before reaching his ultimate goal. The orthography of the word ḵᵛān or ḵān, and the structural parallels between the two episodes, have…

HAFT PEYKAR, a famous romantic epic by Nezami of Ganja (Neẓāmi Ganjavi) from the last decade of the 6th/12th century. The title can be translated literally as “seven portraits,” but also with the figurative meaning of “seven beauties.” Both translations are meaningful and the poet doubtless exploited intentionally the ambiguity…

HAFT QOLZOM (lit., The seven seas), the title of a Persian dictionary compiled in India in 1229-34 /1813-18 by Abu’l-Moẓaffar Ḡāzi-al-Din Ḥaydar (d. 1243/1827), the sultan of Awadh province in the State of Uttar Pradesh, and arranged and prefaced by Mawlawi Qabul-Moḥammad, a secretary and poet in his court. This…

HAFT SIN, denoting ‘seven items beginning with the letter sin (S)’, is one of the components of the rituals of the New Year’s Day festival (see NOWRUZ) observed by most Iranians (Figure 1). The items are traditionally displayed on the Sofra-ye haft sin (Massé, Croyances, pp. 156-57; Enjavi, I, pp….

HAFT TEPE, an archaeological site in Ḵūzestān province, in the southwestern alluvial plains of Persia, about 10 km southeast of Susa and 60 km south of Andīmešk (PLATE I). This large Elamite site (see ELAM), composed of many individual mounds, forms an imposing mass rising about the surrounding plain. The…

HAFTA “week.” The Sumerians and the Babylonians apparently were the first people to observe the relation of time with the movements of the stars and planets, and to divinize some of them and associate time divisions with them. The major Babylonian astronomical groupings of seven and twelve were well known…

HAFTĀNBŌXT, traditional reading of the name of a legendary warlord in southern Persia, mentioned in the Kār-nāmag ī Ardašīr ī Pābagān (The exploits of Ardašīr son of Pābag) and as Haftvād in the Šāh-nāma. In the Kār-nāmag, in a demoniacal romance derived from national traditions, he is involved in an ancient…

HAFTAVĀN TEPE, one of the three largest settlement mounds in the Urmia basin, Azerbaijan, covering fifty acres and not far from the village of Haftavān, itself barely two miles from the district town of Salmās (known as Šāhpur under the Pahlavi dynasty) near Khoy. This mound was chosen for a…

HAFTŌRANG, the circumpolar constellation Ursa Major (UMa) was already known in Young Avestan literature under the appellative of haptōiriṇga- (only pl. with star-, m., “star”), a Bahuvrīhi compound (Duchesne-Guillemin, p. 177, 215) probably signifying “having seven signs,” as assumed by Bartholomae (col. 1767; cf. Justi, p. 320; out of date…

HAFTVĀD (Haftwād), the hero of a legend associated with the rise of the Sasanian Ardašir I (r. 224-39). The Šāh-nāma (ed. Moscow, VII, pp. 139-54) gives his “strange story” (dāstān-e šegeft) as follows. In the city of Kojārān on the coast of the Persian Gulf, there lived a man of…