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ḤĀJI FIRUZ, the most famous among the traditional folk entertainers, who appears in the Persian streets in the days preceding Nowruz (Figure 1). The Ḥāji Firuz entertains passers-by by singing traditional songs and dancing and playing his tambourine for a few coins. He rarely knocks on a door, but begins…

Hāji Firuzi title Hāji Firuzi genre/topic Hāji Firuzi language   performer Gholām Luti, age 35 in 1969, with his son instrument vocal and dayre composer   author/poet   first line of poem dišab budam u ābji Sekine recorded by Stephen Blum place of recording Mešhed date of recording April 27,…

ḤĀJI PIRZĀDA, Moḥammad ʿAli Nāʾini, Persian traveler (b. between 1835 and 1840 in Nāʾin, d. March 1904 (Figure 1). Ḥāji Pirzāda, who came from a Sufi family, moved to Tehran where he became a disciple of the Neʿmat-Allāhi (q.v.) Shaikh Ḥāji Mirzā Ṣafā, with whom he traveled to Istanbul in…

ḤĀJI VĀŠANGTON (Washington), epithet for Ḥosaynqoli Khan Moʿtamed-al-Wezāra (later Ṣadr-al-Salṭana; b. Tehran 1265/1849, d. Tehran 1316 Š./1937; Figure 1), Persia’s first ambassador to the United States (1888–89). He was the seventh son of the ignominiously ousted Grand Vizier (Ṣadr-e aʿẓam), Mirzā Āqā Khan Nuri, Eʿtemād-al–Dawla (q.v.), and consequently spent his…

ḤĀJI ʿALILU, a Turkic tribe of Persian Azerbaijan. Its main branch lives north of Varzaqān and Ahar, in Qarājadāḡ (Arasbārān); another branch dwells in the vicinity of Marāḡa. In 1960, both branches were still nomadic. The summer quarters of the Ḥāji ʿAlilu of Qarājadāḡ were in the subdistricts (dehestān) of…

HAJIABAD (Ḥājiābād) INSCRIPTIONS, bilingual inscription of Šāpur I on the wall of Ḥājiābād cave near Persepolis. i. The Inscriptions. ii. The Texts (Parthian variants in square brackets).

HAJIABAD i. THE INSCRIPTIONS The Hajiabad inscriptions were discovered by Robert Ker Porter at Ḥājiābād in 1818 in a grotto a few kilometers north of Persepolis, at a place called Šayḵ ʿAli or Tang-e Šāh Sarvān, opposite the village of Ḥājiābād that gave these texts their name (Figure 1). Following…

HAJIABAD ii. THE TEXTS “This (is) the bowshot of me, the Mazda-worshipping god Shapur, king of kings of Eran and Non-Eran, whose descent (is) from the gods, son of the Mazda-worshipping god Ardashir, king of kings of Eran, whose descent (is) from the gods, grandson of the god Papak, king….

ḤĀJIĀNI, a guša (q.v.), or subdivision of a mode in the canonic repertory (radif) of Persian classical music. Its principal home is the mode (dastḡah) of Dašti (q.v.), one of the derivatives (naḡma) of the mode of Šur. Ḥājiāni occupies an important role among the five or six gušas that…

ḤĀJJ SAYYĀḤ, Mirzā Moḥammad ʿAli Maḥallāti (b. Maḥallāt, ca. 1252/1836, d. Tehran, 3 Mehr 1304 Š./25 September 1925; FIGURE 1), the first Iranian-American, a world traveler, constitutionalist and human rights activist. Life and travels. Mirzā Moḥammad-ʿAli, the son of Mollā Moḥammad-Reżā Maḥallāti, later known as Ḥājj Sayyāḥ (lit. ‘traveler’), was…

HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN, hero of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier (3 vols., London, 1824), the most popular Oriental novel in the English language and a highly influential stereotype of the so-called “Persian national character” in modern times. Morier (1782-1849), a former diplomat who…