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SALJUQS vi. ART AND ARCHITECTURE The naming of an art-historical period for the Saljuq dynasty, and its demarcation according to dynastic terms, has justly been debated. Nevertheless, a notion of Saljuq art has been shaped by the constant use of this term in the literature of the past decades (Schroeder,…

SAMAK-E ʿAYYĀR, a prose narrative originating in the milieu of professional storytellers, transmitted orally and written down around the 12th century. The only extant manuscript is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (bound in 3 vols., Ouseley 379, 380, 381). The text has been edited by Parviz Nātel Ḵānlari and…

SAMARQAND i. History and Archeology Since the publication of the entry Afrāsiāb (EIr. I, 1984, pp. 576-78), new information has been brought to light on this archeological site and, consequently, on the history of pre-Mongol Samarqand. This progress is mainly a result of the activities of the MAFOUZ (Mission Archéologique Franco-Ouzbèke), which…

SAMĀʿI, ḤABIB (b. Tehran, 1284 Š./1905; d. Tehran, 1325 Š./1946), outstanding player of the santur (a kind of dulcimer), usually considered the greatest santur player of his time (Mašhun, II, p. 517). Samāʿi’s first teacher of music was his father Ḥabib-Allāh Samāʿ Ḥożur, an accomplished performer of the santur, who…

SAMFONI-e MORDAGĀN (Tehran, 1989, translated by Lotfali Khonji, as Symphony of the Dead, Wiltshire, UK, 2007), the first and most acclaimed novel by Abbas Maroufi (ʿAbbās Maʿrufi, b. Tehran, 17 May 1957), fiction writer and the founder and editor of the periodical Gardun. He left Iran for Germany in the spring…

ŠAMS-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD, Nezāri Ismaʿili imam (b. Rudbār, in the late 640s/1240s; d. Azerbaijan, ca. 710/1310-11).  He was the sole surviving son of Rokn-al-Din Ḵoršāh, the last lord of Alamut.  Few biographical details are available for Šams-al-Din, who had received the naṣṣ or designation to succeed to the Nezāri Ismaʿili imamate. …

SANAI, MAHMOUD (Ṣanāʿi, Maḥmūd; b. Arāk, 23 May 1919; d. London, 13 September 1985), professor of psychology, psychoanalyst, educator, writer, translator, and government official (Figure 1, Figure 2). Sanai’s family originated in the city of Arāk and later moved to Hamadān, where his father, Ḥāj Aḥmad Ṣanāʿi Homāyuni, was involved…

Sanandaj – Dekr Qāderieh title Sanandaj – Dekr Qāderieh genre/topic  Dekr language Arabic performer Ḵalifeh Mirzā Āğah Ğowṭi instrument Voice composer   author/poet   first line of poem   recorded by   place of recording   date of recording   duration 0:53 source Voices from the Land of Iran. An…

SANĀʾI, Majdud b. Ādam Ḡaznavi, Persian poet, celebrated especially on account of his homiletic poetry and his great influence on the development of mystical literature (born and died in Ghazna, ca. 1087/1130, for further details see below). He normally used ‘Sanāʾi’ as a pen name in his poems, but very…

SANCISI-WEERDENBURG, Heleen (b. Haarlem, The Netherlands, 23 May, 1944; d. Utrecht, 28 May, 2000), Dutch ancient historian, specializing in classical Greek and Achaemenid history. She began her studies in ancient history at the University of Leiden, graduating in 1967 to research under the supervision of Professor W. den Boer, a…

SAND GROUSE (Pers. kokar, sangḵᵛārak, bāqerqera), a family (Pteroclididae) of game birds of which seven species are found in Persia (FIGURE 1). They are an interesting group of birds that are characteristic of Persia’s vast deserts and steppes. They have no affinity with true grouse, and any resemblance to the…

one of the five traditional Ṭāleš khanates (Ḵamsa-ye Ṭavāleš) in western Gilān, between Ṭāleš Dulāb and Māsāl. In the administrative reform of 1937 Šandarman became a rural district (dehestān) in Māsāl-Šandarman district (baḵš), Ṭavāleš sub-province (šahrestān). In the 1998 reform, Šandarman became a district of the sub-province of Māsāl. See…

SANG-E CHAKHMAQ (also Tepe Sang-i Chaxmaq; Pers. sang-e čaḵmāq “flint”), a Neolithic site near Šāhrud in northeastern Iran, important for having an unbroken archeological sequence from the 7th to the early 5th millennium BCE. The site was excavated by the Japanese scholar Seiichi Masuda (b. 1922) in the 1970s, but…

SANG-E ṢABUR (1966, tr. by Mohammad Reza Ghanoonparvar, as The Patient Stone, 1989), the last, and arguably, the most critically acclaimed work of fiction by Sadeq Chubak (Ṣādeq Čubak, 1916-1998), a noted Persian novelist and short story writer of the 20th century. The story is set in a half-ruined house…

SANGLĀḴ, MIRZĀ MOḤAMMAD-ʿALI ḴORĀSĀNI (میرزا محمد علی خراسانی سنگلاخ, b. Qučān, Khorasan, date unknown; d. Tabriz, 17 Ṣafar 1294/ 3 March 1877, Figure 1), celebrated calligrapher and stone carver of the 19th century, as well as poet and author. Sanglāḵ’s professional career spanned the reigns of three Qajar monarchs, namely,…