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The Encyclopaedia Iranica is a non-partisan, non-political, non-religious, non-ideological, and entirely independent compendium of objective, richly documented, and reliable information about Iranian and related societies. A multi-disciplinary reference work of vast proportions, it aims at responding to all questions about Iranian lands, their history and their culture.
The scope of the Encyclopaedia Iranica is not limited to the geographical boundaries of present day Iran. In fact it is the only precise and reliable reference work on the lands, life, culture and history of all Iranian peoples and their interaction with other societies and countries from the earliest times to the present. Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kurdish regions, Baluchistan, the Pathan regions of Pakistan, Parsi communities of India, and Ossetic and Talesh regions of the Caucasus are thus fully covered; appropriate coverage is also devoted to Central Asia, Mesopotamia, and the Indian Subcontinent, where at certain periods Iranian languages were the predominant means of communication or literary expression.
Since 1979, the Encyclopaedia Iranica has been supported as a “major project” by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the foremost sponsor in the US of educational, academic and research projects in the humanities.
The Encyclopaedia Iranica draws on the most authoritative scholarship worldwide to ensure the quality and reliability of its entries. More than 1600 scholars from all over the world have thus far contributed articles to it in a variety of languages, from English and Russian to Persian, Turkish and Chinese.
The Encyclopaedia Iranica has a two-pronged approach to its publication: publication online and publication in print. The latter follows the alphabetical order of the entries. The first volume of the print version was published in 1982. So far thirteen volumes, which brings us nearly to the end of letter “I”, have been published.
Online publication began in 2002 and is for the articles that are invited irrespective of alphabetical order enabling us to take advantage of all the available scholars in the field of Iranian studies and also to give priority to significant entries sought be the readership. It is helping to accelerate the completion of the Encyclopaedia. All entries will eventually appear in print.
The Encyclopedia Iranica has no other source of support than the individuals and organizations that value its mission.
Budget
The Editor, the International Advisory Committee, and the Consulting Editors serve free of charge. Office space, utilities, and distribution of funds are the charge of the University. Thus, the budget for the project is devoted to careful and meticulous preparation of the entries and their publication. The average annual operational budget for the two-year period 2004-2006 has been $950,000. Budget expenditure is a model of thrift and economy.
A printed volume takes an average of eighteen months to complete. Each copy of the Encyclopaedia costs approximately $700 to produce and is sold for $250, in order to enable students and scholars to afford it. The balance is made up by donations from supporters.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has recognized the need for, and significance of, Encyclopaedia Iranica, and has supported it financially since 1979; an exception in terms of both the length of patronage and the amount of support bestowed on a research-tool project.
The American Council of Learned Societies has endorsed Encyclopaedia Iranica. Professor Stanley N. Katz, its President, wrote to the Editor: “It is an honor for the ACLS to have even this remote connection to such a distinguished academic undertaking, and I congratulate you on this success and wish you the best of luck in the continued excellence of the Encyclopaedia.”
In June 1997, the highly prestigious Union Académique Internationale voted unanimously to extend its patronage to Encyclopaedia Iranica.
Several foundations and organizations have also supported this project. In 1990, the J. Paul Getty Trust also recognized the particular contribution of Encyclopaedia Iranica in the fields of art and archaeology by allocating to it a substantial grant for a 3-year period.
Among other organizations that have supported the Encyclopaedia Iranica may be mentioned the Iran Heritage Foundation (London), the Mahvi Cultural Foundation (Geneva), the Ahoora Foundation (Texas), Bibliotheca Persica (NY), the Semnani Family Foundation (Utah), the Persian Cultural Foundation (NJ) the Roshan Cultural Heritage Foundation (Geneva), the Institute for Ismaili Studies (London), the Fereydoun Soudavar Foundation (Geneva), the Persian Heritage Foundation (NY), the Nazem Family Foundation (NY), the Keyan Foundation (L.A.), and the Bahari Foundation (London).
Additional funding for this project has been provided by philanthropic families and individuals who have recognized its scholarly value.
Among the individuals who have generously supported the Encyclopaedia are Khosrow Eghbal, Mahmoud Khayami, Anousheh Ansari, Hamid Moghadam, Akbar Ghahary, Faranak Amirsaleh, Sedigheh Rastegar, Houshang Ansary, Gita and Ali Saberioon, the late Richard Haas, and many others.
He is the Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University and Director of its Center for Iranian Studies. He has authored and served as the editor of numerous scholarly works. Among others he has authored Persian Poetry in the Second Half of the 15th Century (1953), Southern Tati Dialects (1970), and has edited the third volume of Cambridge History
of Iran, in two parts, covering the Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian periods (1983,1986), and Persian Literature (1988). He is the General Editor of the 40-volume Tabari Translation Project, and the Founding Editor of the Persian Text Series, the Persian Heritage Series, the Persian Studies Series, and the Modern Persian Literature Series, among others. He is an honorary member of Societas Iranologica Europaea and the International Society of Iranian Studies and a life member of the American Institute of Iranian Studies. Lecture series in his name have been instituted at the University of London, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Paris, and the University of Maryland.
He is Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1988 and is also a member of the French and Austrian Academies. He is particularly interested in the Middle Iranian languages of pre-Islamic Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, with their Indo-European roots, as well as their Central Asian setting, with its stimulating mixture of
languages, cultures, and religions. He is the author of Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, Vol. I: Legal and Economic Documents (2001) and Recent Discoveries in the Bactrian Language and their Historical Significance (2004) and numerous articles and chapters in books. Currently, he heads a team of scholars who are working on a comprehensive dictionary of Manichaean texts.
Professor Ashraf has taught sociology and social history of Persia at the Tehran University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Princeton University. He is the author of several books and numerous articles, including Historical Obstacles to the Development of Capitalism in Iran (1980). His writings have covered such topics as social hierarchies in Iran, tradition & modernity, Iranian national identity, agrarian relations in Iran, and charismatic leadership and theocratic rule in post-revolutionary Iran. He has served on the editorial board of Iranian Studies, the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, and Iran-Nameh. Since 1992, he has served as a Trustee-at-Large of the American Institute of Iranian Studies.
Dr. Brunner received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and taught pre-Islamic Iranian languages and religions at Columbia University in the 1970s. He was the original Assistant Editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica. His dissertation, A Syntax of Western Middle Iranian, was published in the Persian Studies Series of the Center for Iranian Studies (1977), and his Sasanian Stamp Seals in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was published by that museum (1978). His journal articles and Encyclopaedia Iranica entries deal with Sasanian seals, texts, and other pre-Islamic topics.
He is a graduate of University of St. Andrews and Oxford University and a scholar noted for his vast knowledge and bibliographical scholarship of Persian literature and history. He has taught Persian literature and history at Harvard University, Oxford University, University of Manchester and the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the author of a number of articles in the field of Persian studies. He collaborated with Professor C.E. Bosworth in the translation and annotation of the forthcoming History of Beyhaqi. His current project is a monograph entitled Studies in Classical Persian Literature.
A distinguished and skillful instructor of Persian, he has been teaching at Columbia University since 1969. He was a founding member of the American Association of Teachers of Persian and its secretary and treasurer until 2003. He has written a number of articles for the Encyclopædia Iranica, the Encyclopædia of Asian Studies, and Iran-Shenasi. He has also translated books by A.J. Arberry, S. Runciman and T.S. Eliot into Persian.
She received a BA in English Language and Literature and an MA in Psychology from the University of Tehran. Pursuing her studies in the US, she received an M.ED. from the Bank Street College of Education, while studying literature and literary criticism, particularly as applied to modern Persian fiction. She is the author of Psychoanalysis and Literature: Two Texts, Two Selves, Two Worlds (Tehran, 1995) and Living in the Mirror: A Literary Perspective (Tehran, 2005). She is the Consulting Editor on Modern Persian Fiction to the Encyclopaedia Iranica, to which she has contributed the article “Modern Fiction: History and Development”.
He graduated from Leningrad (at present St. Petersburg) State University in 1988. From 1988-2006 he was employed as a research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg. In 1995, he attended a course on cataloguing Islamic manuscripts in London. In 1995 he was also a fellow of the Warburg Institute (University of London) and in 1998 and 2002 a fellow at the Welcome Center in London. From 1997-1998 he taught Persian at the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. He has presented papers at many international conferences and congresses on Iranian Studies. He is the author of more than 20 publications in the fields of codicology and paleography of Persian manuscripts, history of science (mainly astrology and astronomy) in Iran and Iranian history and historiography.
Dr. Riedel studied Islamic history and medieval Arabic and Persian literatures at the Universitat Hamburg (Germany) and Indiana University. Her dissertation about Persian and Arabic anthologies received the 2005 dissertation prize of the Foundation of Iranian Studies. In 2005-2006, she was a fellow at the Arabic manuscript project of the Chester Beatty Library Dublin. She has taught at Indiana University and Universität Hamburg. Her current research focuses on the history of Islamic studies in the West and the transmission of knowledge in the Islamic world.