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INVESTITURE of kings, the ceremonies and symbolic actions used to assert the assumption of rulership and to elicit affirmation of it. Covered here is investiture under the pre-Islamic dynasties. i. Achaemenid period. ii. Parthian period. iii. Sasanian period.   i. ACHAEMENID PERIOD Investiture of the early Persian kings. Although scarce,…

IONIAN REVOLT, the unsuccessful uprising of the Greek cities of Asia Minor against Achaemenid control, 499-493 B.C.E. The Ionians. Some Greeks had settled on the west coast of Asia Minor as early as Mycenean times; but the main settlement, along most of the coast and the offshore islands, was due…

IQĀʿ (pl. iqāʿāt), an Arabic term used in texts on music to denote rhythmic mode (or cycle) or rhythmic pattern. The theory of iqāʿ was created by the Arabs and introduced in the singing of graceful music (ḡenāʾ-al-raqiq) or artistic music (ḡenāʾ-al-motqan) as a new device of rhythmical symmetry independent…

IQBAL, MUHAMMAD (1877-1938; FIGURE 1), the spiritual father of Pakistan and leading Persian and Urdu poet of India in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Sialkot on 9 November 1877, Iqbal first learned Arabic and Persian, finished the Scotch Mission College in his hometown, and then joined…

IRAJ, the youngest son of Ferēdun and the eponymous hero of the Iranians in their traditional history. A cluster of legends in the Avesta, Pahlavi books, Sasanian-based Arabic and Persian sources, and particularly in the Šāh-nāma of Ferdowsi have elevated Iraj to the rank of a favorite hero who is…

رثای بزرگمرد فرهنگ ایران احسان یارشاطر زبان شناس، دانشنامه نگار و استاد بازنشسته دانشگاه کلمبیا     همی گفتم که خاقانی دریغا گوی من باشددریغا من شدم اخر دریغا گوی خاقانی نظامی در رثای خاقانی   لطمة عظیمی که درگذشت ایرج افشار بر فرهنگ ایران و ایران شناسی وارد ساخته…

The vacuum that has been left in Iranian Studies by the passing of Iraj Afshar has no equivalent in the living memory. When one reviews what he accomplished during a mere lifetime, one cannot help being deeply surprised at the vastness and the variety of the services that he rendered…

IRAJ MIRZĀ, JALĀL-AL-MAMĀLEK, a major Persian poet and satirist of the early 20th century and one of the most popular poets of the late Qajar period (b. Tabriz, Ramaẓān 1291/October 1874; d. Tehran, 27 Ša-ʿbān 1344/12 March 1926; FIGURE 1). Life. Iraj Mirzā was the son of Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Mir-zā Qājār,…

IRAN, New Persian Irān (Mid. Pers. Ērān, from OIr. *Aryānām “of the Aryans” [see ARYANS]), name of the modern political state, also used, as noun or adjective (e.g., “Iranian plateau”), as a geographical term. The adjective is applied, independently of political boundaries, as an ethnolinguistic descriptor (“Iranian languages”) and a…

IRAN AND THE CAUCASUS, the annual international academic journal of the Caucasian Center for Iranian Studies, Yerevan (CCIS), founded in 1997 by Garnik Asatrian, the head of the center. The journal was conceived as a multidisciplinary Orientalistic periodical of the center, which had already published the Armenian Journal of Oriental…

IRAN i. LANDS OF IRAN Iranian culture is inseparable from the geographical space within which it was formed and crystallized, and from which, during the Achaemenid period, it expanded considerably to bordering regions. Later it was caught in the powerful grip of invasions by Arabs and Turks—the last great mass…

IRAN ii. IRANIAN HISTORY: AN OVERVIEW This section provides a concise introduction to the history of Iran from its beginnings to modern times. The generally recognized periods of the country’s history are reviewed, and some of the major motifs or themes in the politics or culture of the various periods…

IRAN ii(2). Iran in the Islamic Period (651-1980s) This section of Persian history begins with the conquest by Muslim Arabs and the introduction of Islam to Persia, the gradual conversion of the Persians to the faith of the conquerors, and some 200 years of Arab rule of Persian provinces. Then,…

IRAN ii(2), continued FORMATION OF LOCAL DYNASTIES The Taherids (821-73). The first of these dynasties came into being when Ṭāher b. Ḥosayn, nicknamed Ḏu’l-Yaminayn (the Ambidextrous), who had successfully led Maʿmun’s army against his brother Amin (810), was appointed the governor of Khorasan with full power. The governorship remained in…