Explore Iranica

HISTORIOGRAPHY xi. AFGHANISTAN The rise of the Dorrāni dynasty under Aḥmad Shah Sa-dōzay in 1160/1747 marked the beginning of an independent Afghan statehood, the political center of which was located in Qandahār and shifted to Kabul in 1775. Initially based on a loosely defined tribal polity, the Dorrāni empire was…

HISTORIOGRAPHY xii. CENTRAL ASIA The first Persian historical work produced in Central Asia (Transoxiana, Ḵʷārazm, Farḡāna, and Eastern Turkestan) was the 4th/10th century translation of the history of Ṭabari by the vizier of the Samanids, Abu ʿAli Moḥammad Balʿami. While no works on the history of the Samanids themselves were…

HISTORIOGRAPHY xiv. THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE Ottoman historical works composed in Persian occupy an important place in the corpus of court-oriented Ottoman historical writing of the early and classical periods. Although the predominant literary language of the Ottoman realm was Turkish, Persian, as a language of prestige and the preferred vehicle…

HNČʿAK, colloquial term referring to the members of the Social Democratic Hnčʿakean Party [SDHP], also called Hnčʿakean Revolutionary Party and Hnčʿakean Social Democratic Party; it was also the name of the party’s first periodical. Founded in Switzerland by Russian Armenians in 1887, the party quickly established branches in Persia, the…

ḤOBAYŠ B. EBRĀHIM B. MOḤAMMAD TEFLISI, author of numerous scientific works (d. ca. 600/1203-04) who lived in Anatolia. Ḥobayš’s exact name is uncertain, since he seems to have used a number of versions in his various writings, including the pennames Ḥabeš, Ḥasan, Ḥosayn, Šaraf-al-Din, Jamāl-al-Din and Kamāl-al-Din. In a copy…

ḤOḎEQ (ḤĀḎEQ), JUNAYDOLLO (JONAYD-ALLĀH) MAḴDUM, Tajik poet (b. Herat, mid-1780s; killed Šahr-e Sabz in Uzbekistan, 14 Ḏu’l-ḥejja 1258/15 January 1843). Details of his life are sketchy. The exact date of his birth is not known. He spent his early childhood in Herat, where he had been born (according to Ḵalili…

HODGSON, MARSHALL GOODWIN SIMMS (b. Richmond, Indiana, 11 April 1922; d. Chicago, 10 June 1968), prominent scholar of Islamic civilization and professor of history and social thought at the University of Chicago. Already by 1943 as an undergraduate, Marshall Hodgson had written a number of papers in world history, which were…

HODIVALA, SHAHPURSHAH HORMASJI DINSHAHJI (d. 26 November 1944), Principal of the Bahauddin (Bahāʾ-al-Din) College of Junagadh, and professor of literature, history, and political economy. He is best known for his works on Parsi history and on numismatics; the latter includes, in addition to his book on the coins of the…

HODIVALA, SHAPURJI KAVASJI, (b. 26 July 1870; d. 13 June 1931), scholar of Avestan and Zoroastrian studies. He studied Sanskrit with Sir Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, graduating in 1893. He then studied Avesta and taught at the Petit Orphanage in Poona before becoming private secretary to Kavasji Jalbhoy Seth in 1898,…

ḤODUD AL-ʿĀLAM, a concise but very important Persian geography of the then known world, Islamic and non-Islamic, begun in 372/982-83 by an unknown author from the province of Guzgān (q.v.) in what is now northern Afghanistan. It was dedicated to the local prince of the Fariḡunid family, Abu’l-Ḥāreṯ Moḥammad b….

HOERNLE, AUGUSTUS FREDERIC RUDOLF, philologist of Indian languages and decipherer of Khotanese (1841-1918). Born in Secundra, India, the second of nine surviving children of the Rev. C. T. Hoernle, he was sent to Europe for his education in 1848. In 1858, he went to Basle University and, from 1860, studied…

HOFFMANN, KARL (26 February 1915–21 May 1996; Figure 1), German Indo-Europeanist and Indo-Iranist. Karl Hoffmann was born at Hof am Regen (Upper Palatinate, Bavaria), the son of a railway official. He spent his childhood and youth in Munich; there he began his Indo-European and Indo-Iranian studies in 1934. At the…

HOJIR, Iranian hero who guarded the Dež-e Sapid “White Fort” on the border of Iran and Turān. He was a son of Gōdarz and a leading member of his clan (see GŌDARZIĀN). When Sohrāb attacked Iran at the head of a Turanian army guided by Hōmān (q.v.), he first met…

ḤOJJAT (Ar. ḥojja, “proof or argument”), a term used as: (1) a line of argument in the course of debate; (2) designation of the Shiʿite Imams or their most essential spiritual function as “proofs of God”; (3) an epithet specifically applied to the Twelfth Imam, Ḥażrat-e Hojjat; and (4) a…