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ANGLO-PERSIAN AGREEMENT OF 1919, provisional agreement made between the British and the Persian governments which, if ratified, would have granted the British a paramount position of control over the financial and military affairs of Iran. From the days when Napoleon conceived the idea of invading India with the help of…

ANGLO-PERSIAN OIL COMPANY (ŠERKAT-E NAFT-E ENGELĪS O IRAN), a British company formed to extract and market oil in the oil fields of southwestern Iran. This article treats its early history and development from its beginning in the early 20th century until 1955, when it became British Petroleum Company. Early history….

ANGLO-PERSIAN WAR (1856-57). Following their defeat in the Russo-Persian wars of 1219-28/1804-13 and 1242-44/1826-28, the Qajars, tried to compensate for their losses by reasserting Persia’s control over western Afghanistan. Attempts to bring the principality of Herat under their rule in 1249/1833, 1253-55/1837-39, and 1268/1852 were strongly resisted by the British:…

ANGLO-RUSSIAN AGREEMENT OF 1873, an attempt by the Foreign Offices of London and St. Petersburg to define the northern boundary of Afghanistan. After the first Anglo-Afghan War, British India and Afghanistan settled into relatively peaceful coexistence. Dōst Moḥammad had returned to Kabul in 1843 and appointed his son Moḥammad Akbar…

ANGLO-RUSSIAN CONVENTION OF 1907, an agreement relating to Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. Signed on 31 August in St. Petersburg, it formalized political changes that had occurred in the Far East, the Middle East and Europe as a result of the Russo-Japanese war and the Russian revolution of 1905. Anglo-Russian rivalry…

AṄGULIMĀLĪYA-SŪTRA, a Buddhist text concerning the conversion to Buddhism of a robber called Aṅgulimāla. The work is known from Pali (Aṅgulimāla Sutta) and from translations into Chinese and Tibetan. A passage from the Aṅgulimālīya-sūtra is quoted in a text whose Sogdian version has been published. A smaller, still unlocated passage…

ANGŪR, grapes. i. Production and trade. ii. In Afghanistan. iii. In literature.   i. Production and Trade Origins and historical evolution. The grape-vine (Vitis vinifera, raz, mow, tāk) is probably the oldest and best known of the cultivated fruit plants grown in Iran (B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica, Chicago, 1919, p. 220;…

ANHALT CARPET, a medallion rug possibly made in Tabrīz, at the time of Shah Ṭahmāsp (r. 930-84/1524-76). The carpet, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (inv. 46.128), was reportedly discovered in the second half of the 19th century in Dessau Castle, a seat…

ANĪS, a daily Kabul newspaper, in Darī (Persian), with some articles in Pashto. The oldest Afghan paper in continuous publication, it began, as a bi-weekly, on 5 May 1927. It was one of a number of papers initiated during the reign of King Amanallāh (1337-48/1919-29) to promote Afghan unity and…

ANĪS AL-ṬĀLEBĪN WA ʿODDAT AL-SĀLEKĪN, one of the most important sources extant for the life and dicta of Bahāʾ-al-dīn Naqšband, eponymous founder of the Naqšbandī Sufi order. The work was written in Persian by one of his morīds, Ṣalāḥ-al-dīn b. Mobārak Boḵārī and completed in 785/1383. It is divided into…

ANĪS AL-ʿOŠŠĀQ, a small handbook of the imagery traditionally used in Persian love poetry, by Ḥasan b. Moḥammad Šaraf-al-dīn Rāmī (sometimes Zāmī), d. 795/1393. It was dedicated to the Jalayrid Shaikh Oways I (r. 757-76/1356-74). Browne’s passing reference to the date of composition as 826/1423 (Lit. Hist. Persia III, p….

ANĪS-AL-DAWLA (d. 1314/1896-97), the most important wife of Nāṣer-al-dīn Shah Qāǰār. Named Fāṭema-solṭān at birth (probably 1258/1842; C. Serena, Hommes et choses en Perse, Paris, 1883, p. 187), she was the daughter of an impoverished peasant from a village in Lavāsān, northeast of Tehran. After her father’s death and her…