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Šahnāz title Šahnāz genre/topic Muğām Šahnāz language Azeri performer Ḵān Šušinski, voice instrument Voice; Tār; Kamānča; Gavāl (daf) composer   author/poet   first line of poem   recorded by   place of recording   date of recording 1915-1960 duration 5:47 source Great Singers of the Republic of Azerbaijan (recordings 1915-1960)….

ŠAHNĀZI, ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn, (b. Tehran, 1284 Š./1905; d. Tehran, 1327 Š./1948) musician and performer of the tār (a plucked long-necked lute). He was the younger son of Āqā Ḥosayn Qoli (q.v.), the master musician and player of the tār. ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn received his tār training from his elder brother ʿAli-Akbar Šahnāzi, and…

ŠAHNĀZI, ʿAli Akbar, (b. Tehran, 1276 Š./1897, d. Tehran, 1363 Š./1984) master musician, renowned teacher, and composer of Persian classical music. ʿAli Akbar was the eldest son of Āqā Ḥosayn-qoli (q.v.) the celebrated master musician and performer of the tār (a plucked long-necked lute). His father and his uncle, Mirzā…

ŠAHRBĀNU (lit. “Lady of the Land,” i.e., of Persia), said to be the daughter of Yazdgerd III (r. 632-51), the last Sasanian king. According to the beliefs of the Shiʿites, in particular the Twelvers or Imamis, but also of a substantial number of Sunnis, she became the principal wife of…

ŠAHRESTĀN YAZDEGERD, the Sasanian city-fortress built by Yazdegerd II (r. 439-57 CE) in the province of Čol, attested by the 6th-century Syrian chronicle of Karkā Bēṯ Selōḵ (present-day Kirkuk) of the district of Bēṯ Garmē in northeastern Iraq (Hoffmann, p. 50; Pigulevskaia, p. 44). The chronicle relates that after the…

ŠAHRESTĀNĪHĀ Ī ĒRĀNŠAHR (The Provincial Capitals of Iran), the only major surviving Middle Persian text on geography: it enumerates the cities, their builders, and their importance for Persian history. The text was put to final redaction in the Abbasid period (late eighth or early ninth centuries CE), as it mentions…

ŠAHREWAR, name of one of the Amahraspandān (see AMƎŠA SPƎNTA) in Zoroastrianism. This is the Middle Persian form of the name deriving from Av. Xšaθra Vairya, meaning literally “dominion to be chosen” and more freely “choice/desirable/best dominion.” Absent from the Gāthās, Xšaθra Vairya appears in the recent strata of the…

SAIFPOUR FATEMI, Nasrollah (Naṣr-Allah Saifpur Fāṭemi, b. 16 June 1909, Nāʾin; d. 23 March 1990, New York), journalist, political figure, and university professor. Saifpour Fatemi was born into a landowning family in Nāʾin. His father was a prominent clergyman and held the title of sayf-al-ʿolamāʾ (Sword of the learned), conferred…

SAIIDO NASAFI, MIROBID (Mir ʿĀbed Sayyedā Nasafi), Tajik poet (b. Nasaf, present-day Qarshi, ca. late 1740s; d. Bukhara, between 1707 and 1711). Information about him is scanty. One must turn to Saiido’s own poetry to supplement the brief notices in the works of his contemporaries. Muhammadbade Maleho Samarqandi (Moḥammad-Badeʿ Maleḥā…

SAKAS: IN AFGHANISTAN The ethnonym Saka appears in ancient Iranian and Indian sources as the name of the large family of Iranian nomads called Scythians by the Classical Western sources and Sai by the Chinese (Gk. Sacae; OPers. Sakā). From their realms in the Central Asian plains, the Sakas appear…

ŠAKKI, a district of eastern Transcaucasia, now within the northwesternmost part of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan, where the modern town of Sheki or Shaki (lat 41°12′ N, long 47°10′ E) perpetuates its older name; in 2008 the town had a population of 65,000.  The usual boundaries of pre-modern Šakki…

SALAMIS, island west of Athens and site of a major naval battle in 480 BCE between the Greeks and the Persian fleet of Xerxes I. Salamis was the second of five battles of the Greco-Persian War of 480-79. After the fall of Thermopylae and the inconclusive engagements at Artemisium, Salamis…

SALEMANN, Carl Hermann (in Russian: Zaleman, Karl Germanovitsh), a leading Iranist scholar of his time, specializing in Middle and early Modern Persian (1849-1916). He was a Baltic German, born in Reval (now Tallinn) in Estonia on 28 December 1849. In 1867 he entered the Oriental Faculty of the University of…

SALJUQS iii. SALJUQS OF RUM A dynasty of Turkish origin that ruled much of Anatolia (Rum; ca. 1081-1308). The Saljuqs of Rum were descended from the Great Saljuqs who ruled Iraq, Iran and Central Asia. Qotlomoš b. Arslān Esrāʿil b. Saljuq, a cousin of Ṭoḡrel Beg (d. 1063) and Čaḡri…

SALJUQS v. SALJUQID LITERATURE The term ‘Saljuqid literature’is used here to refer to literary works in Persian produced between 432/1040 and 617/1220. The beginning of Saljuq (Seljuk) literature is conventionally associated with the decisive defeat of the Ghaznavids at Dandānqān by the Saljuq army (1040), and it ends with the…