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TĀJ-al-SALṬANA (b. 5 or 6 Rabiʿ II 1301/ 3 or 4 February 1884 in Tehran; d. probably 1936 in Tehran), one of the daughters of Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (r. 1848-96) and the author of memoirs (ḵāterāt) which have raised much controversy since their first partial publication in 1969 (FIGURE 1). The…

TAJADDOD (Modernity), a newspaper published as the official organ of the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, of which a total of 202 issues appeared in Tabriz between 16 Jomādā II 1335/7 April 1917 and 14 Ḏu’l-ḥejja 1338/29 August 1920. Though licensed as a weekly, the paper appeared twice a week in…

TAJIK i. The Ethnonym: Origins and Application ii. Tajik Persian iii. Colloquial Tajiki in Comparison with Persian of Iran

TAJIK i. THE ETHNONYM: ORIGINS AND APPLICATION Modern usage. The Tajiks are an Iranian people, speaking a variety of Persian, concentrated in the Oxus Basin, the Farḡāna valley (Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan) and on both banks of the upper Oxus, i.e., the Pamir mountains (Mountain Badaḵšān, in Tajikistan) and…

TAJIK ii. TAJIKI PERSIAN Tajik Persian (self-designation [zabon-i] tojik,tojikī, forsī-i tojikī; also called Tajiki, Tojiki, Tadzhik) is the variety of New Persian used in Central Asia. From the 1920s it was officially fostered in the USSR as the national literary language of the Tajik SSR (since 1991, the Republic of…

TAJIK iii. COLLOQUIAL TAJIKI IN COMPARISON WITH PERSIAN OF IRAN The dialects and colloquialisms that are used throughout Persian-speaking regions are diverse. Literary Persian differs from that spoken in modern Iran, which likewise differs from colloquial Tajiki and the form of Persian spoken in Afghanistan (Dari). Fārsi of Iran (here…

TAJIKISTAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, Tajikistan’s leading research institution for coordinating and conducting theoretical and applied research projects. The institution began as the Tajik Base (baza) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1932, was reorganized into a Branch (filal) in 1941, and finally came under the jurisdiction of Tajikistan’s Council…

TAJIKISTAN i. Status of Islam Since 1917 Tajikistan, an independent Central Asian state since the end of 1991, was formerly part of the Soviet Union. Tajikistan’s population, which numbered slightly more than six million in the year 2000, consists overwhelmingly of ethnic groups which have historically been Muslim, primarily the…

TAJIKISTAN v. DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS The alphabet change to Roman and then to Cyrillic (1928 and 1940) coupled with vernacularization of Tajik Persian, called for independent lexicography in Tajikistan; this began early in the Soviet period, thrived in the 1950s, and continued at a remarkable pace until the chaotic years…

Tajnis title Tajnis genre/topic ‘Āšeq Hawāsi language Azerbaijani performer Abolfazl Ebādiyān, bālābān ‘Āšeq Rasul Qorbāni, sāz and voice Nezām-‘Ali Qaradāği, gāvāl instruments Bālābān; Sāz; Gāvāl; Voice composer   author/poet   first line of poem   recorded by Mohsen Kalhor place of recording   date of recording   duration 3:12 source…

TAKLAMAKAN (Uighur toponym probably derived from the Arabic tark, ‘out, relinquish,’ and makan, ‘place’), the largest desert in China, and one of the largest deserts in the world. It is located in the depression of the Tarim basin, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Its core is a desert area…

TAḴT-e SOLAYMĀN, outstanding archeological site with substantial Sasanian and Il-khanid ruins in Azerbaijan, between Bijār and Šāhin-dež, about 30 km north-northeast of Takāb, at about 2,200 m elevation, surrounded by mountain chains of more than 3000 m height. The place was obviously chosen for its natural peculiarity; an outcrop of…

TAḴTI, Ḡolām-Reżā (b. Tehran, 20 Šahrivar 1309 Š./27 August 1930; d. Tehran, 27 Ordibehešt 1347 Š./7 June 1968), freestyle wrestling champion, and Persia’s most popular athlete of the 20th century. His early death at the age of 38 is still a matter of controversy. Taḵti was born in the Ḵāniābād…

ṬĀLEB ĀMOLI (Taleb of Amol), Sayyed Moḥammad, Persian poet of the early 17th century (b. Mazandaran, ca. 1580-d. India, 1626-7). A precocious talent, Taleb embarked on his literary career in his late teens, composing praise poems to notables in his native Mazandaran and ḡazals (lyrics) under the penname Āšub. Beginning…