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VIOLLET, Henry (b. Paris, 1880; d. Paris, 1955), French archeologist and architect. His father, Paul-Marie Viollet (1840-1914), was an archivist in the French National Archives and member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, who played an important role in his son’s career. Henry Viollet was a student at the…

VIS O RĀMIN, an 11th-century verse romance by Faḵr al-Din Asʿad Gorgāni, a poet about whom virtually nothing is known and of whose works, apart from Vis o Rāmin, only three possible examples (a fragment of personal satire, a short ḡazal, and a robāʿi), amounting to fifteen lines in all,…

VISPERAD (or Visprad), name of a lengthy Avestan text divided into 24 chapters (Pahl. kardag, Pers. karda); the name derives from Av. vīspe ratawō meaning “all the ratu-s.” It was never meant to stand alone, its chapters being inserted for recitation into various parts of the Yasna. Nor does it…

VISRAMIANI, title of the Georgian translation of the Vis o Rāmin, a versified romance by Persian poet Faḵr-al-Din Asʿad Gorgāni (fl. mid-11th cent.). The 12th-century translation traditionally is attributed as one of the works of a feudal lord, Sargis Tmogveli. The Georgians were converted to Christianity at the beginning of…

VULLERS, JOHANN AUGUST (b. Bonn, 23 October 1803; d. Bonn, 21 January 1881, Figure 1), German Iranologist and orientalist.  He was born to the cooper and wine-merchant Johann Theodor Vullers (1776-1846) and his wife Margarethe, born Pützfeld (1762-1851).  In 1822, he started studying Catholic theology at the University of Bonn,…

V~ ENTRIES: CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS Entry Image Caption VANDEN BERGHE, LOUIS  Figure 1. Louis Vanden Berghe. Courtesy of the author. VANDEN BERGHE, LOUIS Figure 2. The fire temple complex at Kunar Siāh. (Photograph by Erik Smekens, Ghent University). VANDEN BERGHE, LOUIS Figure 3. Standard of the “master of animals” type from Tattulbān (8th century….

WACKERNAGEL, JACOB, Swiss classicist and scholar of Indo-European and Indo-Iranian studies (b. Basel, Switzerland, 11 December 1853; d. Basel, 22 May 1938; Figure 1), the son of Wilhelm Wackernagel (1806-1869), professor of German Language and Literature in Basel from 1835. He was named Jacob (written with “c”) after the famous…

WAKIL-AL-RAʿĀYĀ, well known regional title assumed by Karim Khan Zand (r. 1164-93/1751-79) after he established himself at Shiraz in 1179/1765. It is recorded in variants wakil-al-raʿiya, wakil-e raʿiat, and wakil-al-ḵalāʾeq, all meaning “deputy of the people,” and marked a significant change of polarity in the wording of Karim Khan’s title…

WAKIL-al-RAʿĀYĀ, Ḥāji Shaikh (Moḥammad) Taqi Irāni (b. ca. 1285/1868, d. 1318 Š./1939), a prominent merchant and the Majles deputy of Hamadān, who, in October 1906, was the first provincial deputy (wakil-e majles) to take his place in the First Majles (parliament) to be established after the Constitutional Revolution (Browne, p….

WALDMAN, Marilyn (b. Dallas, Texas, 13 April 1943; d. Columbus, Ohio, 8 July 1996), scholar of Islamic history. Waldman received her BA from Radcliffe College, where she specialized in African Studies, and her MA (1966) and PhD. (1974) from the University of Chicago, where she studied under the noted historian…

WALDSCHMIDT, ERNST (b. Lünen, Westphalia, Germany, 15 July 1897; d. Göttingen, 25 February 1985), Indologist. His research focused on Sanskrit manuscripts in the Turfan collection, but with the Iranian studies scholar Wolfgang Lentz he also co-authored a couple of probing contributions to Manichean Studies. i. Life. ii. Research.

WALDSCHMIDT, ERNST i. Life Ernst Waldschmidt (Figure 1) was the only child of Ernst and Elise Waldschmidt.  His parents married in 1896, and his father, a bookbinder and merchant, died shortly before his birth.  Waldschmidt spent his childhood and youth in Lünen, a small town in northwest Germany, near Dortmund. …

WALDSCHMIDT, ERNST ii. Research Towards the end of the 19th century, Russian scholars inaugurated the scientific exploration of the Turfan oasis in Chinese Turkestan, on the northern Silk Road.  Until the mid 1930s, British, French, Japanese and German expeditions followed in the footsteps of their Russian colleagues.  All teams removed…

WAR KABUD, an archeological site to the north of Čavār in Ilām Province (Pošt-e kuh, Lorestān). Two hundred and three individual tombs of a large plundered graveyard (more than 1,000 tombs estimated to have been plundered) were excavated in 1965 and 1966 by the Belgian Archaeological Mission in Iran, directed…