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WILLIAM OF RUBRUCK, Friar (fl. 1253-1255), a Flemish Franciscan missionary who traveled through the lands that the Mongols had conquered in the Crimea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Asia Minor between 1253 and 1255. Apart from references in the Opus Maius of his fellow-Franciscan Roger Bacon (see below), his report…

WIZĀRIŠN Ī ČATRANG UD NIHIŠN Ī NĒW-ARDAXŠĪR [WČN], “the explanation of chess and the arrangement of backgammon.” WČN is a minor Pahlavi text, mainly attested in ms MK (fols. 115-20), edited by Jamaspji Jamasp-Asana (1913) with the help of other minor codices (for its editions and translations see the bibliography;…

WOLFF, FRITZ, German Iranologist (b. Berlin, 11 November 1880; d. 1943; PLATE I), specializing in Avestan and Šāh-nāma studies and the author of Glossar zu Firdosis Schahname. Fritz Wolff’s father, Emanuel Wolff (1850-1901), and his mother Hedwig Wolff, b. Wolff (1860-1935), were born in and near Posen (now Poznan in…

WOLSKI, JÓZEF (b. Tarnów, Poland, 19 March 1910; d. Kraków, 2 October 2008), distinguished Polish historian, whose research has had an enduring effect on the study of ancient Iranian history. He completed the famed King Jan III Sobieski gymnasium in Kraków. After graduating from Jagiellonian University (1928-32), he became an…

WOMEN i. IN PRE-ISLAMIC PERSIA Few primary literary texts document the activities of royal and non-royal women in pre-Islamic Persia. To learn about these, we are largely dependent on the often hostile secondary sources of the Greek and Roman periods which, however, are of limited historical value, as they tend…

WOMEN ii. IN AVESTA The egalitarian ideals of Zoroastrianism—in particular, the recognition of women as “men’s partners in the common struggle against evil” (Boyce, 1972, p.  308, fn. 83) have long served to protect the dignified status of women within the Mazdayasnian community. Such notions of gender parity are firmly…

WOMEN iii. IN SHIʿISM In theory, Shiʿism has a more favorable attitude towards women than Sunni Islam. These favorable differences are largely annulled, however, by some specific Shiʿite practices as well as the social realities of women’s lives in Shiʿite communities. Overall, the social position of Shiʿite women throughout the…

WOMEN iv. IN THE WORKS OF THE BAB AND IN THE BABI MOVEMENT The Bab elevated the status of women in his writings and confirmed this in his actions. The Babi community reflected this change in the actions of the Babi women. (1) Women in the works of the Bab….

WOOL (Pers. pašm), the fiber that was the earliest to be used for the making of textiles in Persia. Archeological finds have shown that sheep wool and goat hair were already woven around 6500 BCE, although some doubt this data. Spinning whorls and warp weights dating from 5000 BCE have…

W~ ENTRIES: CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS Entry Image Caption WACKERNAGEL, JACOB  Figure 1. Photograph of Jacob Wackernagel, 1912-13. (Voit Collection, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voit_199_Jakob_Wackernagel.jpg). WAR KABUD  Figure 1. General view of the excavated area amidst the robber pits. WAR KABUD Figure 2. Selection of burial goods: pottery and bronze mace-heads, axe-adze, quiver…

XANTHUS THE LYDIAN, Greek historiographer, son of a certain Kandaules, probably born in Sardis, and a Hellenized Lydian. He lived sometime after Hecataeus of Miletus and was an older contemporary of Herodotus, but the information of the Suda (s.v.) that he was born at the time when Cyrus II the Great…