Review of Encyclopaedia Iranica (EIr), by Sean Swanick (original) (raw)
Related papers
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1991
The publication of a major new encyclopedia marks a special occasion in the history of a field. Beyond a mere survey of the extant knowledge, a great encyclopedia brings together and integrates diverse traditions of scholarship, redefines and extends the field's intellectual boundaries, and in the end, establishes a more secure, authoritative, and coherent foundation for the field. The appearance of the Encyclopaedia Iranica signals such a turning point in the development of the field of Iranian studies nearly a century after its debut as an academic subject in the West. Based on the extremely high quality of the initial volumes under review here, we can justifiably expect this magisterial work to meet the highest standards for a major specialized encyclopedia. Indeed, it may well serve as a model for similar projects dealing with other cultural areas in the Middle East and elsewhere. The project was initiated in the early 1970s by Ehsan Yarshater, who is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University and the director of that university's Center for Iranian Studies. The original plan for the project called for concurrent publication in Persian and English, and ten Persian fascicles were published in the 1970s. However, with the collapse of the Pahlavi regime and the termination of a grant from the Iranian government in 1979, the Persian edition had to be discontinued. Since that time, financial support for the project has come principally from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the United States. The inaugural fascicle of the Encyclopaedia in English was published in 1982, and by autumn of 1989, three volumes (25 fascicles totaling over 3,000 pages in royal octavo, two-column format) had appeared in print. It is projected that the completed Encyclopaedia Iranica will be comprised of 18 volumes, including a supplemental volume and a separate volume of indices. If the present schedule of six 112-page fascicles per year could be sustained, the project would be completed by the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. The general subject areas covered by the Encyclopaedia Iranica, in addition to the basic categories of biography and toponymy, include art and archaeology, ethnography, folklore and music, fauna and flora, geography, history, literature and linguistics, philosophy, religion, and science and medicine. What is made apparent by this list of topics and the composition of the project's board of consulting editors is the unmistakable grounding of the Encyclopaedia within the classical disciplines of the humanities. None of the consulting editors is from the social science field, though of course many of the contributors are social scientists. Given the inclusion of a wide range of topics relating to the contemporary economic, social, educational, and political institutions in the Encyclopaedia, and the distinctive perspectives that the social sciences bring to such matters, a more visible and active editorial participation by social scientists would certainly seem desirable. The geographic coverage of the Encyclopaedia goes well beyond the boundaries of the present-day Iranian state to encompass all the lands where Iranian languages were or are spoken, including Afghanistan, Tadjikestan, Baluchistan, Kurdistan, parts of the Caucasus, and the Pathan areas of Pakistan. The main entry on "Afghanistan" (I: 486-566), for example, consists of some twelve separate articles on the geography, flora and fauna, ethnography, languages, archaeology, art and literature, and political history of that country. Several of these, e.g., a remarkably rich article on the languages of Afghanistan by Ch. M. Kieffer, represent up-to-date syntheses in English of the available literature in a variety of languages. A summary table (II: 516) in an article on the modern Afghan army by L. Dupree, giving a detailed list of Afghan army ranks, along with their Pashtu,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1990
The publication of a major new encyclopedia marks a special occasion in the history of a field. Beyond a mere survey of the extant knowledge, a great encyclopedia brings together and integrates diverse traditions of scholarship, redefines and extends the field's intellectual boundaries, and in the end, establishes a more secure, authoritative, and coherent foundation for the field. The appearance of the Encyclopaedia Iranica signals such a turning point in the development of the field of Iranian studies nearly a century after its debut as an academic subject in the West. Based on the extremely high quality of the initial volumes under review here, we can justifiably expect this magisterial work to meet the highest standards for a major specialized encyclopedia. Indeed, it may well serve as a model for similar projects dealing with other cultural areas in the Middle East and elsewhere. The project was initiated in the early 1970s by Ehsan Yarshater, who is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University and the director of that university's Center for Iranian Studies. The original plan for the project called for concurrent publication in Persian and English, and ten Persian fascicles were published in the 1970s. However, with the collapse of the Pahlavi regime and the termination of a grant from the Iranian government in 1979, the Persian edition had to be discontinued. Since that time, financial support for the project has come principally from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the United States. The inaugural fascicle of the Encyclopaedia in English was published in 1982, and by autumn of 1989, three volumes (25 fascicles totaling over 3,000 pages in royal octavo, two-column format) had appeared in print. It is projected that the completed Encyclopaedia Iranica will be comprised of 18 volumes, including a supplemental volume and a separate volume of indices. If the present schedule of six 112-page fascicles per year could be sustained, the project would be completed by the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. The general subject areas covered by the Encyclopaedia Iranica, in addition to the basic categories of biography and toponymy, include art and archaeology, ethnography, folklore and music, fauna and flora, geography, history, literature and linguistics, philosophy, religion, and science and medicine. What is made apparent by this list of topics and the composition of the project's board of consulting editors is the unmistakable grounding of the Encyclopaedia within the classical disciplines of the humanities. None of the consulting editors is from the social science field, though of course many of the contributors are social scientists. Given the inclusion of a wide range of topics relating to the contemporary economic, social, educational, and political institutions in the Encyclopaedia, and the distinctive perspectives that the social sciences bring to such matters, a more visible and active editorial participation by social scientists would certainly seem desirable. The geographic coverage of the Encyclopaedia goes well beyond the boundaries of the present-day Iranian state to encompass all the lands where Iranian languages were or are spoken, including Afghanistan, Tadjikestan, Baluchistan, Kurdistan, parts of the Caucasus, and the Pathan areas of Pakistan. The main entry on "Afghanistan" (I: 486-566), for example, consists of some twelve separate articles on the geography, flora and fauna, ethnography, languages, archaeology, art and literature, and political history of that country. Several of these, e.g., a remarkably rich article on the languages of Afghanistan by Ch. M. Kieffer, represent up-to-date syntheses in English of the available literature in a variety of languages. A summary table (II: 516) in an article on the modern Afghan army by L. Dupree, giving a detailed list of Afghan army ranks, along with their Pashtu,
Encyclopaedia Iranica: 35 a New Agenda for Persian Studies, by Garry W. Tromp
Iran & the Caucasus, 2008
Professor Tromp's paper is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the celebrations of 35 years of the "Encyclopaedia Iranica" project, delivered on 3 May 2008, at the University of Sydney, and on 7 June 2008, at the Arya International University, Yerevan, during the international conference "Iran and the Caucasus: Unity and Diversity."
Encyclopedia Iranica http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/taarof, 2017
TAʿĀROF, an Arabic term (lit. ‘becoming acquainted’) used in Persian to define a nearly untranslatable concept encompassing a broad complex of behaviors in Iranian life that mark and underscore differences in social status. It underscores and preserves the integrity of culturally defined status roles as it is carried out in the life of every Iranian every day in thousands of different ways. Taʿārof has both a linguistic and a social behavioral component. This article deals succinctly with both.
Preface to the Iranian Edition
2020
An Introduction to the Iranian Edition of “A Human End to History?”, translated by Zaniar Ebrahimi and published in 2020.