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LAWḤ “tablet,” a term used distinctively in the Bahai writings as part of the title of individual compositions of Bahāʾ-Allāh (q.v.) addressed to individuals or groups of individuals. In popular, but probably inaccurate, usage, it is also used to refer to similar writings of cAbd-al-Bahāʾ (q.v.) and sometimes Shoghi Effendi….

LAYARD, Austen Henry, Sir (b. 5 March 1817, Paris; d. 5 July 1894, London), French archeologist and politician (FIGURE 1, FIGURE 2, FIGURE 3). Layard is chiefly known for his excavations in northern Iraq between 1845 and 1851. He worked mainly at the Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Nineveh, in…

LĀYEQ ŠĒR-ʿALI (Taj. Loiq Šeralī, known professionally as Loiq/Lāyeq), Tajik poet (b. Mazār-e Šarif, in the region of Panjakent, 20 May 1941; d. Dushanbe, 30 June 2000). Born into a peasant family, Lāyeq Šēr-ʿAli had his early schooling in Panjakent and then graduated from the State Pedagogical Institute in Dushanbe…

LE STRANGE, GUY (b. Hunstanton, Norfolk, 24 July 1854; d. Cambridge, 24 December 1933), scholar in Persian, Arabic, and Spanish, specially notable for his work in the field of the historical geography of the pre-modern Middle Eastern and Eastern Islamic lands and his editing of Persian geographical texts. Born into…

LENTZ, OTTO HELMUT WOLFGANG (b. Hameln, Niedersachsen, February 23, 1900-d. Marburg, Germany, December 8, 1986), German Iranologist who specialized in Middle Iranian and New Persian dialects as well as on Iranian religions (FIGURE 1). His father was the town’s school director, Dr. Phil. Alfred Lentz (d. 8 December 1986 in…

LEOPARD (Panthera pardus, Pers. Palang), the largest and most powerful member of the cat family still occurring in Iran (FIGURE 1). The Persian leopard is very variable in both size and coloration, depending on the conditions of the natural environment of its range. This geographical variability is quite natural, considering…

LESĀN-AL-DAWLA, MIRZĀ ʿALI KHAN (b. Tabriz, ca. 1862; d. Tehran, ca. 1920), royal librarian. His career at the royal court began in Tabriz in 1891 when his duties included that of librarian to Crown Prince Moẓaffar-al-Din Mirzā Qajar. In 1896, when Moẓaffar-al-Din succeeded Nāṣer-al-Din Shah, Mirzā ʿAli Khan accompanied the…

LEWIS, David Malcolm (b. London, UK, 7.6.1928; d. Oxford, UK, 12.7.1994), distinguished historian and epigrapher of Greece in the fifth and fourth century BCE and, by extension, of the Achaemenid empire (FIGURE 1). Educated at the City of London School and Corpus Christi, Oxford, where he studied the traditional Classics…

LEXICOGRAPHY (farhang-nevisi), the compiling of dictionaries, glossaries, and vocabularies of a language or a particular lexical corpus, the entry words being defined in the same language (monolingual) or another (bilingual).  The following is an outline of the characteristics, geocultural affinities, and historical development of Persian lexicography. i. Introduction ii. Alphabetical…

LEYLI O MAJNUN, a narrative poem of approximately 4,600 lines composed in 584/1188 by the famous poet Neẓāmi of Ganja. It is the third of his five long narrative poems known collectively as the Ḵamsa (the Quintet). The origin of the story. Majnun (lit. possessed) is an epithet given to…

LIGHTING EQUIPMENT AND HEATING FUEL Before the widespread use of electricity in Iran, the main illuminants were vegetable oils and animal fat, in addition to wax and tallow candles, and to some lesser extent naphtha and, in Baku, natural gas. Vegetable oils and animal fat began slowly to be replaced…

LILAC, a fragrant, deciduous shrub of the genus Syringa of Oleaceae, olive family.  The term is derived from Persian lilanj, the indigo plant (Skeat, p. 341; cp. Mid. Pers. nīl “indigo,” nili “dark blue”). “Lilac” is also a substantive for a pale to light or moderate purple (Amer. Heritage Dict.,…

LILY, name of herbaceous and bulbous flowering plants of the genus Lilium L. of Liliaceae, the lily family.  The lily, called susan in Persian and Arabic (Zāhedi, p. 110, Dehḵodā, s.v.), is from Old English lilie, Latin lilia (plural of lilium), cognate with Gk. leirion (Skeat, p. 341).  Lily is…