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ARMY i. Pre-Islamic Iran ii. Islamic, to the Mongol period iii. Safavid Period iv. Afšar and Zand Periods v. Qajar Period vi. Pahlavi Period vii. In Afghanistan from 1919

ARMY i. Pre-Islamic Iran Introduction. Source materials for a study of pre-Islamic Iranian military concerns fall into four categories: textual evidence; archeological finds of actual specimens of martial equipments; documentary representations (on monuments and objects of art); and philological deductions for organizational matters. The availability and value of these categories…

ARMY ii. Islamic, to the Mongol Period The Arab armies which overran Sasanian Iraq and Iran in the middle decades of the 7th century A.D. comprised essentially the levée en masse of the male, free Muslim Arab cavalrymen (the moqātela), receiving stipends (ʿaṭāʾ) from the dīvān established, probably on Persian models,…

ARMY iii. Safavid Period 1. Under Shah Esmāʿīl and Ṭahmāsp (1501-76). After leaving his refuge at Lāhīǰān, Shah Esmāʿīl, the spiritual director of the Safavid order and founder of the Safavid state, recruiting followers en route (already 450 at Rašt (Afżal al-tawārīḵ 1,60b) and 1,500 at Ṭārom (Ahṣan al-tawārīḵ p….

ARMY iv. Afšār and Zand (ca. 1142-1205/1730-90) The successor states to the Safavid empire were conceptually and administratively a direct continuation of the Safavid establishment. In terms of armament and organization, this applied also to the army. However, just as the ideology and motivations of the Afsharid and Zand rulers…

ARMY v. Qajar Period i. The early Qajar army. ii. Early Qajar military reform. (1) The first French mission. (2) The first British mission. (3) The second British mission. (4) The second French mission. iii. Military reform under Nāṣer-al-Din Shah (1) Amir-e Kabir. (2) The Austrian mission. (3) The third…

ARMY vi. Pahlavi Period Reżā Shah’s reign, 1925-1941. The development of a modern military force in Iran is closely associated with the rise of Reżā Khan, from being an officer in the Cossack division (formed in 1879) to his becoming, in the aftermath of the coup he led in 1921,…

ARMY vii. In Afghanistan from 1919 Prior to 1919 the Afghan army consisted of two elements: tribal levies to supplement the regular army (gawmī recruitment: a tribe had to provide a definite quota of recruits), drafted to the colors under the hašt-nafarī system. Technically, one man in every eight was…

ARNAVĀZ, New Persian form of the name of one of the mythical king Jamšēd’s sisters. The Avestan name Arənauuāčī (AirWb., col. 197, s.v. arənavak- probably signifies “she who speaks (ouuāč-ī) the injustice (arəna-) [to denounce it]” (so M. Mayrhofer, Iranisches Personennamenbuch I: Die Avestischen Namen, Vienna, 1977, no. 24; differently…

ARNOLD, Sir THOMAS WALKER. British orientalist, b. April 19, 1864; d. June 9, 1930. The third son of a Devonport businessman, he gained a scholarship at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read classics, but was soon drawn towards oriental studies. At the age of twenty-four he was appointed teacher of…

ARPA KHAN (also Arpā Kaʾon or Gāvon, representing Mongol keʾün, “son,” in the sense of “prince of the blood”), 10th Il-khan of Iran (r. 736/1335-36). He was descended not from Hülegü (Hūlāgu) but from the latter’s younger brother Ariḡ Böke (Arīq Būkā), this branch of the family having entered Iran…

ARRAJĀN, a medieval city and province in southwestern Iran on the border between Ḵūzestān and Fārs. The ruins of Arraǰān lay between 7.5 and 11 km northeast of modern Behbahān in an area now known as Arḡūn, near the southern bank of the Kordestān river, and around a shrine called…

ARRĀN, a region of eastern Transcaucasia. It lay essentially within the great triangle of land, lowland in the east but rising to mountains in the west, formed by the junction of the Rivers Kur or Kura and Araxes or Aras. It was thus bounded on the north by Šervān; on…

ARRIAN, L. FLAVIUS ARRIANUS, Greek historian from Bithynia, born in Nicomedia, whose father had obtained Roman citizenship. He held very high positions. The apex of his career occurred under the emperor Hadrian who appointed him governor of Cappadocia in 131 CE. His reputation as a historian earned him the name…

ARROWS IN EASTERN IRAN. Arrows came in use along with the bow, and the two developed in parallel. In the Bronze Age in eastern Iran, metal arrowheads of bronze were widespread, while skillfully made stone arrowheads, inherited from the earlier period, remained in use. By the turn of the first…