The ʿ abbāsī is a four- shāhī silver coin struck by the Ṣafavid ruler of Iran Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 995–1038/1587–1629) in 995/1587, which dominated Iranian coinage until the middle of the twelfth/eighteenth century. (The shāhī is a Ṣafavid term for a coin equal to 50 dīnār s (golde…
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The term lūṭī (pl. alvāṭ ) referred primarily to dervishes and entertainers. Both groups were storytellers and performers with snakes and scorpions, sometimes obscuring the difference between the two, and both had a reputation for immorality (drinking wine, pederasty, using opiu…
Kish (Ar., Qays) is an Iranian island important in the past (in trade) and the present (in tourism and trade). It lies in the Persian Gulf, nineteen kilometres off Bandar-i Charak. During the fifth–eighth/eleventh–fourteenth centuries it was the emporium through which trade from…
Khark (or Kharg, Ar. Khārij) is a rocky island of thirty-one square kilometres. It lies in the Persian Gulf, fifty-five kilometres west-northwest of Bushire (Būshihr) and thirty-two kilometres from Rig, on the coast of the Gulf. Because of its location near Bushire and oil field…
The bazaar in Iran and Central Asia is: 1) a daily market, usually a fixed urban market centre characterised by buildings in a typical layout and with a typical architectural design, with merchants’ stands; 2) a less frequent (usually weekly) urban or rural market with stands; o…
Baqqāl-bāzī (lit., grocer play, or baqqāl-uyīnī (same meaning)) was until the 1920s a popular Iranian form of satirical, improvisatory slapstick comedy ( maskhara , buffoonery, or tamāshā , spectacle), so called because the play’s main character was a rich grocer (baqqāl) who wa…
Ashrafī is the term for a gold coin that was first minted in Mamlūk Egypt in 916/1510 and was probably named after the sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy (r. 825–41/1422–38). It weighed about 3.45 grams and was modelled after the Venetian or Florentine ducat ( zecchino and fiorino ) in st…
Artisans in Iran were the mainstay of the urban economy throughout the Islamic period until the 1950s and constituted a significant part of its labour force. Artisans (pishavar, ahl-i kasb, ahl-i ḥirfa) generally worked in small, mostly family-operated workshops, which usually h…
Amīr-i lashkar (major general) is an Iranian army rank that was in use from 1922 to 1934. With the creation of the new unified army on 5 January 1922 by Riḍā Khān (Shāh of Iran 1925–41), who was at the time the minister of defence and commander of the army (sardār-i sipah) , muc…
The title amīr al-umarāʾ was an honorific bestowed during the ʿAbbāsid caliphate on the caliph’s locum tenens or his de facto ruler. From the Mongol period onwards, this was the title of the commander of the army as locum tenens of the ruler, although it was also given to import…
Portrait of Prince Ardashīr Mīrzā, signed “Abū l-Ḥasan naqqāsh-bashī Ghaffārī sanna 1269” (1852-3). Gouache on paper, heightened with gold, 43.2 x 30.5 cm. The painting, formerly in the collection of the Berkeley Trust, was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in London in 2004.…
