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EPIGRAPHY,the study of inscriptions, particularly their collection, decipherment, interpretation, dating, and classification.
i. OLD PERSIAN AND MIDDLE IRANIAN EPIGRAPHY
Definitions, classification, and method.
Inscriptions are texts carved, incised, or engraved on durable materials like stone and metal. Often they are public messages intended to be permanent, but graffiti scratched, drawn, or painted on walls are also included. Manuscripts, on the other hand, are texts written on less durable material like leather, papyrus, bast, or paper; they are primarily of administrative, juridical, economic, private, religious, or literary character. Sometimes administrative and economic documents are written on unbaked clay, pottery (ostraca), bone, or wood and thus occupy a position between inscriptions and manuscripts. As this third category of texts fills many gaps in the knowledge of epigraphy, it seems useful to include it in epigraphic studies. In a narrow sense epigraphy also includes paleography, which cannot, however, be treated separately from the paleography of manuscripts.
Inscriptions can be classified on various continua, for example, between monumental and small examples. The inscription of Darius I (522-486 B.C.E.) at Bīsotūn (qq.v) is the largest known example of the former category from the pre-Islamic period, whereas the smallest inscriptions are found on coins, seals, gems, utensils, and other portable objects. Inscriptions can also be classified as monolingual, bilingual, trilingual, and so on or as royal, priestly, official, and private or as “lapidary” and cursive. In Iranian epigraphy the lapidary paleographic style was sometimes archaizing, whereas cursive usually reflected the contemporaneous style of writing.
Iranian epigraphy of the pre-Islamic period covers mainly inscriptions in the Old and Middle Iranian languages: Old Persian, Middle Persian, Parthian, Chorasmian (see CHORASMIA iii), Sogdian, and Bactrian (see BACTRIAN LANGUAGE). Old and Middle Persian inscriptions span by far the longest period of time, from the Bīsotūn inscription until the early Islamic period, yet limiting study to inscriptions in Iranian languages cannot fully account for historical reality. Many non-Iranian traditions were incorporated into Iranian culture, which complicated the linguistic aspects of epigraphic remains from the multinational empires of the Achaemenids, the Parthians, the Sasanians, and the Kushans. As a consequence Iranian epigraphy has from the beginning required attention to materials in such non-Iranian languages as Babylonian, Elamite (see ELAM v), Aramaic (q.v. i), Greek (Huyse), Sanskrit, and Middle Indian.
Iranian epigraphy is underdeveloped, in that the publications of inscriptions are widely dispersed and the particular requirements for epigraphic work not always recognized by authors. The only attempt at collecting and studying Iranian inscriptions systematically from a consistent point of view was undertaken by the founder of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum (q.v.), W. B. Henning, who “in his later years . . . stressed the importance of making known to the scholarly world all inscriptions by photographic or other reproductions” (Frye, 1970, p. 152). It can be inferred from the volumes of the Corpus published by Henning himself that his attention was focused on epigraphic fieldwork, with all its hardships, rather than on publishing materials kept in European museums. Yet, despite his efforts and those of his successors, the majority of important epigraphic publications have appeared outside the Corpus. For example, most of the inscriptions from Persepolis and its surroundings must still be consulted in E. F. Schmidt’s archeological reports, the illustrations of which are, however, usually too small for epigraphic work.
The famed archeologist and epigrapher Ernst Herzfeld documented about 100 blocks of the Paikuli inscription (1924), developing a completely new method of presenting the material. As he demonstrated, in attempting to establish a reliable text of such weathered material, it is insufficient merely to publish available squeezes and photographs; often it is necessary to retouch duplicate copies in order to make visible relevant evidence and to facilitate restoration of sequences of half-illegible characters as entire words (see, e.g., Davary and Humbach, 1976, pp. 14-15). Descriptions of graphic details, which are usually both complicated and ineffective, are thus rendered superfluous, and scholarly discussion becomes possible. Following a somewhat different approach, Rüdiger Schmitt (1991), in his masterly edition of the Old Persian text at Bīsotūn, which is visible only from a great distance, combined modern photographs with old drawings like those by Henry C. Rawlinson, which were made when the inscription was in much better condition than it is now.
The origins of Iranian epigraphy.
A.-H. Anquetil-Duperron first introduced in the West some information on the Avestan and Pahlavi languages, from Parsi sources, including strange Aramaic spellings in Pahlavi, for example, malca for “king” and boman for “son” (today transliterated MLKʾ/MLKA and BRH/BRE respectively). He thus opened the way to decipherment of Middle Persian and eventually Old Persian inscriptions. Small and inexact drawings of details of such inscriptions had first reached Europe in the work of Jean Chardin, who was in Persia in the mid-17th century. The first exact documentation was provided by Carsten Niebuhr, who visited Persepolis, Naqš-e Rostam, and Naqš-e Rajab in March 1765 and published complete copies of several cuneiform inscriptions: the Old Persian-Elamite-Babylonian trilingual inscriptions DPa and XPe; Old Persian DPd, DPe, XPb; Elamite DPf; and Babylonian DPg (for identification and location of Old Persian inscriptions, see Kent, Old Persian). He also reproduced the three short Middle Persian-Parthian-Greek trilingual inscriptions ANRm and ANRmβ of Ardašīr (q.v.; 224-40 C.E.) and ŠNRb of Šāpūr (240-70), as well as the Middle Persian KNRm of the high priest Kardēr (for identification and location of Middle Persian inscriptions, see Back). The last provides an informative example of the way in which poor lighting conditions can distort visual acuity, but all Niebuhr’s other copies were of such accuracy that A. I. Silvestre de Sacy was able to make scholarly use of them (Figures 1, 2).
Beginning with the Greek versions of ANRm and ŠNRb, which he restored by mutual comparison, and including the short ANRmβ as well, Silvestre de Sacy succeeded for the most part in deciphering the respective Middle Persian versions. For example, he read and restored the crucial sections of the Greek version of ANRm as Masdasnou theou Artaxarou basileōs basileōn Arianōŋhuiou theou Papakou basileōs (1793, p. 30), corresponding to Middle Persian mzdysn beh ʾrthštr MLKʾn MLKʾ ʾyrʾn . . . BRH pʾpky MLKʾ (in modern transliteration) “of the Mazdayasnian lord Ardašahr/Ardašīr, king of kings of Ērān, son of the king lord Pābag.” His only error here was in reading beh “better,” rather than bgy “lord.”
Silvestre de Sacy clearly recognized that what are now known as the Middle Persian versions are in the language of the Sasanians (1793, p. 121). He was less successful in classifying the language of the Parthian versions as Deylamite (1793, p. 123), but their true character was soon recognized, as is clear from Edward Thomas’ comment (p. 267) that the alphabet “was once designated ‘Parthian’ . . . but has latterly been known as Chaldeo-Pehlvi.” This early identification was later credited to F. C. Andreas (Meillet, p. 242), though he himself preferred the terms arsacidisch and Nordwest-Dialekt (cf. Nyberg, 1923, p. 186 n. 1). Herzfeld used the terms Parsik and Pahlavik to designate epigraphic Middle Persian and Parthian respectively. It seems to have been Henning who reintroduced the term Parthian (1934; cf. 1951).
Today little attention is paid to Silvestre de Sacy’s fundamental epigraphic studies, including work on the Middle Persian inscriptions at Ṭāq-e Bostān and the coin inscriptions of the Sasanian kings. The names of G. F. Grotefend, who, in 1802, took the first important step toward decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform script, and Rawlinson, who completed it except for a few details (1847), are better known.
At Persepolis Niebuhr had recognized three types of cuneiform, all written from left to right, with increasing inventories of characters. As it later turned out, the languages of the three are Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian respectively; Old Persian was the first of the three to be deciphered. O. G. Tychsen (pp. 24 ff.) identified the Old Persian word divider. Friedrich Münter (pp. 124 ff.) recognized the Achaemenid origin of the monuments at Persepolis and, drawing on Silvestre de Sacy’s work, deciphered the sequence of characters for the Old Persian title “king of kings,” though without their phonetic values. Grotefend, combining Silvestre de Sacy’s evidence with Herodotus’ report that Darius I’s father had not been royal (3.70), correctly contrasted the graphic structure of DPa dārayavauš xsāyaθiya . . . vištāspahyā puça “Darius the king, the son of Vištāspa” (not called “king”) with XPe xšayā@ršā xšāyaθiya . . . dārayavahauš xsāyaθiyahyā puça “Xerxes the king, the son of Darius the king.” He was thus able to derive first readings of the proper names in the two inscriptions.
During the next few decades only a few details were added to Grotefend’s fundamental achievement (Weissbach, pp. 65-73), but Rawlinson’s careful documentation of the Bīsotūn inscription and his admirable decipherment of its Old Persian version vastly increased knowledge of Old Persian and laid the foundation for decipherment of the Babylonian and Elamite versions.
Old Persian.
Apart from Bīsotūn, Old Persian royal inscriptions have been discovered at Pasargadae/Morḡāb (M), Persepolis (P), Naqš-e Rostam (N), Susa (S), and Suez (Z). Most are official proclamations carved on stone, but inscriptions on seals, weights, and utensils have also been preserved. Most of these inscriptions are of Darius I and Xerxes (486-465 B.C.E.). Although there are inscriptions of their successors Artaxerxes I, Darius II, and Artaxerxes II and III (qq.v.), most are stereotyped repetitions of well-known patterns and exhibit increasing dissolution of the grammatical rules of Old Persian. A set of gold tablets from Hamadān, bearing the names of Ariaramnes (ArH) and Arsames (AsH) respectively, are of a later time (see ARIYĀRAMNA; ARŠĀMA).
Most Achaemenid inscriptions are trilingual, in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian in that order. Walther Hinz and most other scholars concluded from the Old Persian version of the inscription at Bīsotūn (DB 4.88-92, par. 70) that the Old Persian script was created on Darius’ orders and first used in that inscription. Doubts on this point arose from the trilingual inscription of Cyrus (q.v. iii; 559-530 B.C.E.) the Great at Morḡāb (CMa), the oldest Achaemenid inscription found in Persia, but the arrangement of the three versions suggests that only the Elamite and Babylonian versions were contemporary and that the Old Persian version was added later (Stronach).
Remains of a hieroglyphic text were found with the trilingual inscription DZc. Much more precious is the trilingual DSab, discovered at Susa, to which five hieroglyphic texts were also added, one of them containing a list of provinces of the Achaemenid empire (Yoyotte). Two fragments of a copy of the Babylonian version were unearthed in Babylon. (On the Aramaic version of the Bīsotūn inscription, see below.)
Babylonian.
Babylonian clay tablets earlier than the Old Persian inscriptions provide important information on the early history of the Achaemenids. On a prism dated in the year 30 of the Assyrian ruler Aššurbanipal (q.v.; 639 B.C.E.) Cyrus, king of Persia (see CYRUS ii), is mentioned as a tributary. Cyrus the Great’s revolt against the Median king Astyages (q.v.) and his conquest of Ecbatana (qq.v.) are described in the so-called “Nabonidus Chronicle” (Pritchard, pp. 305-6); the defeat of Nabonidus and the transition from his rule in Babylon to that of Cyrus the Great is alluded to in the abusive “Verse Account of Nabonidus” (Pritchard, pp. 112-15). The earliest Achaemenid imperial document, preserved on the famous Cyrus cylinder and datable after the conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C.E. (Pritchard, pp. 315-16; see CYRUS iv), includes the proclamation of Cyrus the Great as “king of Babylon, king of the countries.” Closely related is the Babylonian inscription of Antiochus Soter (q.v.; Pritchard, p. 317) of 268 B.C.E.
Babylonian cuneiform texts include numerous transcriptions of Old Persian proper names and titles, thus contributing to knowledge of Median and Persian onomastics and the structure of the Achaemenid administration (Eilers; Hinz, 1975; Moore). Dates by regnal year attest an uninterrupted sequence of rulers at Babylon from Cyrus I through Cambyses, Nebuchadnezzar, Smerdis, Darius I, Xerxes I, and Artaxerxes I down to the Seleucids and Arsacids.
Elamite.
Achaemenid Elamite played an important part in the court administration at Persepolis. Two assemblages of clay tablets inscribed in Elamite were discovered there by George Cameron: eighty-four “treasury tablets” dated 492-458 B.C.E., recording “disbursements of silver . . . chiefly in lieu of rations in kind” (Hallock, p. 1, after Cameron pp. 83-199), and 2,087 “fortification tablets” dealing with “administrative transfer of food commodities” in 509-458 (Hallock, p. 1). Cameron stressed the significance of both groups for Achaemenid economic and religious history, as well as their archeological and linguistic significance, yet it is mainly the onomastics that have attracted scholarly attention, as a number of Old Persian proper names appear in Elamite, stimulating etymological research (Gershevitch, 1969; Hinz, 1975; Mayrhofer, 1973).
Aramaic.
Fragments of an Aramaic version of the Bīsotūn inscription were found in the collection of papyri from Elephantine (q.v.) in Egypt (Greenfield and Porten), providing evidence that Imperial Aramaic was the language of the central Achaemenid chancery in correspondence with provincial chanceries. Among numerous lapis lazuli mortars and pestles discovered by Schmidt at Persepolis 163 items were inscribed in ink in Aramaic, the inscriptions being of economic, rather than ritual, character, as R. A. Bowman had originally thought. The objects themselves apparently originated in what is now Afghanistan, in Arachosia, which is mentioned on a number of them, but few scholars have doubted that they were inscribed in or near Persepolis. Nevertheless, the use of Aramaic, rather than Elamite, suggests that the inscriptions were added in the province where the objects were produced and collected before delivery to Persepolis. Still unpublished are “a number of brief Aramaic texts incised or written in ink or both, on small clay tablets discovered along with the fortification tablets” (Bowman, p. 19).
Owing to the scarcity of other materials, several imperial Aramaic inscriptions discovered in remote parts of the Achaemenid empire are of interest for Old Persian studies. For example, in the Aramaic version of the Lycian-Greek-Aramaic trilingual inscription from Xanthos in Anatolia the Iranian equivalent of “Apollo and the nymphs” is ḥštrpty wʾḥwrnš, that is, “Xšaθrapati and the Ahurānīs,” and in the inscription of Arebsun in Cappadocia the Mazdean religion is described as “sister and wife” of King Bel.
The development of scripts of the Pahlavi type.
Scribes in the provincial chanceries probably developed their own spellings and writing customs as early as the late Achaemenid period. After the fall of the Achaemenid empire different Iranian scripts developed from these provincial styles: Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, and Chorasmian, all of the “Pahlavi type,” that is, with varying numbers of Aramaic elements preserved in their spelling. Some of them came over time to be read with their Iranian lexical equivalents, whereas others were replaced by purely Iranian spellings.
The development of the four scripts of Pahlavi type, with their varying orthographic and calligraphic rules, was governed not only by inner dynamics but also probably by a strong tendency among chanceries and scribal schools to distinguish themselves from one another. This tendency resulted, for example, in divergent spellings of the Iranian words for “year-month-day” in dating formulas: Middle Persian ŠNT-BYRḤ-YWM, Parthian ŠNT-YRḤʾ-YWM, Chorasmian BŠNT-YRḤʾ-YWM, and Sogdian ŠNT-YRḤʾ-YWMʾ (Tolstov and Livshits, p. 240; in Panjīkant replaced by ŠNT-mʾγ-myδ and even by srδ-mʾγ-myδ); they are to be compared with the date B ʾLWL mʾḥ ŠNT 10 in the Aramao-Iranian inscription Laḡmān II (Davary and Humbach, 1974).
The poorly preserved inscription to the right of the entrance to the tomb of Darius at Naqš-e Rostam (Frye, 1982) is exceptional in that no non-Iranian word is discernible. The month mʾḥy sndrm(t) is all that remains of the date. In line 20 it is possible to discern the Iranian verbal form (. . .)t hyndy; the name ʾrtḥšs Artaxerxes shows the typical Persian development of s from Iranian θr.
The Aramao-Iranian of Aśoka. Most of the stone edicts of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka (q.v.; ca. 272-231 B.C.E.), intended to propagate Buddhist morals, were composed in slightly varying Middle Indian dialects and written in Indian scripts (in the northwest usually Kharoṣṭhī, elsewhere Brāhmī, q.v.). Several Aśoka inscriptions discovered in Arachosia and neighboring areas are written in Greek or Aramao-Iranian, a regional form intermediary between Imperial Aramaic and Pahlavi script, or in Aramao-Indian, that is, Middle Indian written in unvocalized Aramaic script. These inscriptions, consisting of both literal and partly free renderings of passages from the edicts, were evidently addressed to people who followed the tradition of Alexander’s chancery in the eastern parts of his former empire, which had been ceded by the Seleucids to Candragupta and his grandson Aśoka. The Aramao-Iranian inscriptions from Taxila (in the Panjāb; Humbach, 1976) and the Laḡmān valley (I and II; Dupont-Sommer; Davary and Humbach, 1974) and the Greek inscription from Qandahār are monolingual. There are bilingual inscriptions as well: two fragments in Aramao-Indian and Aramao-Iranian, one from Pol-e Darūnta (Henning 1949-50) and the other from Qandahār (II; Benveniste and Dupont-Sommer), and a completely preserved Greek and Aramao-Iranian inscription from Qandahār (I; Scerrato et al.; Schlumberger et al.; Pugliese Carratelli and Garbini).
The coexistence of Greek and Aramao-Iranian is apparent also in Parthian leather documents from Avroman (q.v.; 1st century B.C.E.) in Kordestān and in the inscriptions from Armazi (q.v.) near Mtskheta in Georgia, one of which is bilingual in Greek and Aramao-Iranian (middle or end of the 2nd century C.E.; Tsereteli, 1942), another monolingual in Aramao-Iranian (end of the 1st century C.E.; Henning, Mitteliranisch, p. 39 fig.; Altheim and Stiehl, pp. 243-61), and a third monolingual in Greek (period of Vespasian, 69-79 C.E.; Tsereteli, 1960).
Middle Persian.
In the Persian-speaking area the transition from Imperial Aramaic to the Pahlavi script of the Sasanian period can be followed on the legends of the early coins of Persis in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C.E. (Alram, pp. 162-86). The Frataraka (q.v.) governors like Artaxerxes I (who spelled his name in the Medo-Parthian way as ʾrtḥštr, rather than ʾrthšs) still used Aramaic ductus and syntax, for example, in bgdt prtrkʾ zy ʾlhyʾ br bgwrt (“Bayād, frataraka of the gods, son of Bayward”). Typical Pahlavi spellings did not occur before the rise of the governors to petty kings in the mid-2nd century B.C.E. Aramaic br “son” was then replaced by Pahlavi BRH in dʾryw MLKʾ BRH wtprdt MLKʾ “King Darēw [II], son of King Wātfradāt” (Henning, Mitteliranisch, p. 25).
On the first coin issues of the Sasanian kings, in the 3rd century C.E., there is a sharp difference in quality between the neatly engraved portraits and the confusing paleography of the legends. The die engravers apparently had difficulty reproducing the contemporary lapidary script. Late Sasanian legends increasingly exhibit cursive features, particularly from the time of Khosrow I (531-79) and after. Leaving aside certain graphic archaisms like logograms for mint names, there seems to have been a straight line of development toward the ductus on the coin legends of the early Arab governors of Ṭabarestān (Unvala).
For unclear, perhaps technical, reasons the trilingual inscription of Ardašīr ANRm at Naqš-e Rostam (Plate I) follows the sequence Parthian, Greek, Middle Persian, whereas the inscription ANRmβ on the relief of Ahura Mazdā on the same monument provides the canonical sequence Middle Persian, Parthian, Greek, which recurs on Šāpūr I’s inscription ŠNRb. In Šāpūr’s great trilingual inscription ŠKZ, cut into the outer walls of the base of the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt, the Middle Persian version is on the left side, the Parthian on the right, and the Greek on the back of the building. This inscription, which provides much information on the history and inner structure of the Sasanian empire, has also contributed materially to knowledge of inscriptional Middle Persian and Parthian. The Greek version includes various renderings of such Middle Iranian proper names as krtyr/kltyr. When referring to the famous high priest, it is rendered as Greek Karteir, revealing a deliberately archaizing pronunciation, but, when referring to another person, the Greek rendering is Kirdeir, adapted to contemporary Middle Persian phonetics. Owing to religious principles, the high priest Kardēr’s inscriptions at Sar-Mašhad (KSM), Naqš-e Rostam (KNRm), Naqš-e Rajab (KNRb), and the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt (KKZ, immediately below the Middle Persian version of ŠKZ) are in Middle Persian only. In this connection it is worth mentioning that the monolingual Middle Persian inscription of Abnūn, found at Barm-e Delak (q.v.) and dated in the year 3 of Šāpūr’s reign, shows a composition very similar to that of Kardēr’s NRb (Skjærvø).
Two of six rectangular recesses hewn into the rock at Ḥājīābād in Fārs are covered respectively by Middle Persian and Parthian versions of an inscription (ŠH), in which a shooting by Šāpūr is described (MacKenzie). It is not clear whether the remaining four recesses were destined for further versions of the same text, for documentation of similar feats, or both. At any rate, the parallel “shooting inscription” at Tang-e Borāq (ŠTBq; Gropp, in Hinz, 1969, pp. 229-37) is also only bilingual, as is Šāpūr’s inscription at Bīšāpūr (q.v.; ŠVŠ).
The monumental Middle Persian and Parthian inscription at Paikuli (NPi; Herzfeld, 1924; Humbach and Skjærvø) is a description of events in connection with Narseh’s accession to the throne in 293 and is thus an extraordinary document on Sasanian political practice. There is no Greek version, and Parthian appeared for the last time. In his inscription at Bīšāpūr (NVŠ) Narseh dispensed with Parthian, as did Šāpūr II and Sāpūr III at Ṭāq-e Bostān (ŠTBn 1, ŠTBn 2) and the author of the inscription at Meškīnšahr in Azerbaijan (ŠMS).
A cursive ductus closer to that of Book Pahlavi appears on private stone inscriptions of the later Sasanian and early Islamic periods. Among them horticultural work is recorded at Tang-e Ḵošk (TX), but most are daḵma (places for exposure of the dead), funerary, or commemorative inscriptions like those found at Eqlīd, Taḵt-e Tāūs/Eṣṭaḵr, Maqṣūdābād, Bīšāpūr, Tang-e Jelow, Shah Esmāʿīl, Kāzerūn, Bāḡ-e Larda, Darband (q.v.), Istanbul, and Sian in Shensi province (Gropp, in Hinz, 1969, pp. 257-60; idem, 1970; idem 1975; Kasumova, 1979; idem, 1988; Tafażżolī; Humbach, 1988). The tomb inscription from Sian (874 C.E.) is in Chinese and Pahlavi but is not really bilingual: The Chinese text follows the Chinese pattern of commemorating an official (perhaps of Iranian descent), whereas the Pahlavi text dedicated to his wife is typically Mazdean in character (Humbach, 1988). A bilingual construction text in Arabic and Pahlavi from Qalʿa Bahman in Fārs was published by Ali Hassuri, but his reading of the dates should be reconsidered. An Arabic and Pahlavi construction text from Rādkān in Māzandarān (ca. 411/1020-21; Blair, no. 31) is a late offshoot of the Pahlavi tradition of Ṭabarestān, as is a similar text from Rasget in the same region, in which the Pahlavi is written in the same decorative paleography as the Arabic (Bivar and Yarshater, pls. 35-40).
The 199 Pahlavi ostraca reproduced by Jean de Menasce (1957) and deciphered by Dieter Weber, most of them collected by Herzfeld near Varāmīn and datable to the 6th century, are written in a cursive shorthand closely related to that found on the papyri from Egypt. The excavations at Dura Europos (q.v. ii) also yielded Pahlavi dipinti, one ostracon, and several graffiti.
A large number of Sasanian seals has survived, many inscribed with uncial or cursive script, though the characters are often decomposed into their single elements. Richard N. Frye (1960) distinguished three main types. The common type of private seal includes conventional figures or monograms, to which proper names, religious slogans, or both have been added (e.g., ʾpstʾn ʿL yzdʾn “(I take) refuge in the gods,” YWM ŠPYR “(May my?) day (be) good,” lʾst or lʾsty “truthful, righteous,” lʾstyhy “truth, rectitude”). Of greater historical value is the second type, personal seals belonging to officials and dignitaries, whose inscriptions expressed political power (e.g., whwdynšhpwhry ZY ʾnblkpty “Wehdēnšābuhr, master of the storehouse,” wʾlʾn ZY mgw ʿL ʾtwlplnbgʾn “Wārān, the magus (assigned?) to Ādurfarnbayān”). The third type consists of seals of office with no figures but only writing, usually with a place name plus the office but no personal name (e.g., whʾlthštl štldstʾn mgwh “the ‘magushood’ of the city of Wehardaxšahr/Wehardašēr”). A special group consists of magic seals, which sometimes contain relatively long inscriptions (Gyselen, 1995). Extensive collections of available material have been published by Philippe Gignoux and Rika Gyselen (Gignoux, 1978; Gignoux and Gyselen; Gyselen, 1993; for bullae, usually found in multiples on single items, see Frye, 1973; Göbl, 1976).
Parthian.
Unlike the coin legends of the Frataraka governors and petty kings of Persis, those of the Arsacids are of limited epigraphic value. Until the time of Vologases I (51-77 C.E.) they were exclusively in Greek; then one or two Parthian letters were added, but full Parthian legends did not appear before Mithridates IV (ca. 130), and even then they were graphically unsatisfactory. With rare exceptions they included no ruler’s personal name, and years are rare (Sellwood; Alram, pp. 121-37). The Gotarsēs Geopothros mentioned in a Greek inscription on a relief at Sar-e Pol in Kordestān (Gropp, 1986) recalls the Gotarzēs mentioned on the relief of Mithridates II (123-87 B.C.E.) hewn into the rock at Bīsotūn (Silvestre de Sacy, 1815, p. 191, pl. I) but now destroyed.
Outstanding among epigraphic sources are the ostraca discovered at Nisa (in Turkmenistan), the ancient royal capital of the Parthians. There are a total of 1,448 items inscribed with black ink (D’yakonov and Livshits, 1976-79). Many of them bear dates in the Arsacid era corresponding to years of the 1st century B.C.E. Similar materials were later excavated at other sites in Turkmenistan (Livshits, 1977, pp. 157-58; idem, 1984b). In Persia only one Parthian ostracon has come to light, at Šahr-e Qūmes west of Dāmḡān (Bivar, 1970), but more have been discovered at Dura Europos (q.v. ii).
Other Parthian materials include the inscription at Kal-e Jangal, the rock inscription of one Vologases at Bīsotūn, and a small relief, perhaps of the same ruler (Gropp, 1970, pp. 200-201, pl. 101/1). The only pre-Sasanian Parthian stone inscriptions of some relevance are the bilingual (Parthian and Greek) inscription of Arsaces Vologeses of Mesene, son of Mithridates (Morano), and that of Artabanus V, discovered at Susa, both dated in the year 462 of the Seleucid era (151 C.E.). The latter was discussed by Henning (1952) in connection with the Elymaic inscriptions at Tang-e Sarvāk in Ḵūzestān (2nd century C.E.) and Elymaic coins.
Chorasmian.
Whereas books in Late Chorasmian are written in Arabic script, Middle Chorasmian inscriptions (less precisely called “Old Chorasmian”) are written in a script of the Pahlavi type (see CHORASMIA iii). Two small early inscriptions on clay vessels from the site of Koy-Krylgan Kala are tentatively attributed to the 2nd or 1st century B.C.E. (Livshits, 1968, p. 435). Middle Chorasmian is, however, attested mainly through coin legends (Vaĭnberg), a large number of dated inscriptions in ink on ossuaries excavated at Tok Kala (Tolstov and Livshits; Gudkova; Henning, 1965), and inscriptions on silver vessels, some of them dated (Henning, 1965, p. 167). The dates are apparently in the same unknown era as those on the documents of wood and leather from Toprak Kala (Livshits, 1984a).
Sogdian.
Paleographically the Sogdian coins fall into two groups, the smaller with legends in Bukharan script, the larger with legends in Samarkand uncial script (Frye, 1949; Smirnova, 1963). Although the Bukharan script is attested only fragmentarily on these coins and a few utensils (Livshits, Kaufman, and D’yakonov), the Samarkand variant is well known, particularly from Sogdian Buddhist manuscripts written in the calligraphic “sutra style” and juridical and economic manuscripts from Mount Mugh (Panjīkant). An earlier stage of development can be recognized from the Sogdian letters found at Dunhuang (in Xinjiang) and is epigraphically attested in most of the more than 600 short rock inscriptions discovered by Karl Jettmar on the Upper Indus (Sims-Williams).
Notable inscriptions in cursive ductus include one found in the Ladakh region of the Himalayas (Müller; Klyashtornyĭ and Livshits, 1972, p. 83 no. 3); the Old Turkish-Sogdian-Chinese inscription of Karabalgasun in the Orhon region of Mongolia (Hansen; Yoshida; Hamilton); the Sogdian-Turkish inscriptions from Sevreĭ Somon on the southern border of the Gobi desert and Bugut in Mongolia (Klyashtornyĭ and Livshits, 1971; idem, 1972); and twenty-five small inscriptions (ostraca and so on) from the temple at Panjīkant (Livshits and Shkoda 1982).
Bactrian.
The only unequivocal trace of the Aramaic tradition found on the former territory of Bactria is a short inscription from Āy Ḵānom (q.v.) south of the Oxus (Livshits, 1977, pp. 166 n. 15, 167; Livshits and D’yakonov, in Rapin, 1992, p. 105), whereas the Greek tradition is well attested there (Huyse, pp. 113-15; Rapin, pp. 95-121, 387-92). The coins of the Greco-Bactrian rulers have legends in Greek, and even from north of the Oxus there is a Greek dedication to the deified river, dating from the 2nd century B.C.E. (Litvinskiĭ, Vinogradov, and Pichikiyan). Inscriptions in the Bactrian language were written in a variant of the Greek alphabet.
In the Indo-Iranian borderlands numerous coins with inscriptions in more or less correct Greek were issued at the beginning of the common era by such rulers as the Indo-Parthians Azes, Azilises (qq.v.), and Hermaios. From the epigraphic point of view, the coins of the Kushan dynasty of Bactria are the most noteworthy. The copper issues of Kujula Kadphises include bilingual inscriptions in corrupt Greek and Middle Indian, but those on the gold coins of his successor, Vima Kadphises, are quite correct. Bilingualism was abandoned a few decades later by Kanishka, whose first issues are inscribed only in Greek but who later changed to exclusive use of Bactrian language and script.
Thanks to the efforts of French and Soviet archeologists in particular, a substantial number of Bactrian inscriptions have been discovered. An outstanding epigraphic task is the decipherment of the inscription of a Kushan king named Vima (Ooēmo Taktio) dated in the year 279 of the Seleucid era, month Gorpiaios, found at Dašt-e Nāwor (q.v.), of which only poor photographs survive (Davary and Humbach, 1976). The Bactrian text is accompanied by some lines in Kharoṣṭhī and some in the same unknown script attested from Issyk and Āy Ḵānom (Vertogradova).
A similar date (279 or 275) occurs in an unfinished inscription from Sorḵ Kotal, consisting of the beginning of the first line on a large monolith. The sanctuary was perhaps beginning to fall into disrepair in that year. Later reconstruction work, begun in the year 31 of an unknown era, is recorded in a monumental inscription preserved in three parallel versions, which, however, differ noticeably in their final lines. The earliest is version B (thirty-one blocks inscribed rather carelessly); the next is A (twenty-one blocks; for correct rearrangement of the blocks of the two versions, see Humbach, 1966-67, II, pls. 17-19). Both were reused in construction of a well (Gershevitch, 1979; idem, 1980). Version M, preserved on a monolith, includes additions in the last lines that are not present in B and A. M is thus the final and most authoritative version. Although it is carefully inscribed, decipherment is complicated by unsystematic writing of final vowels and perhaps by omission of certain simple words because of constraints on space, which has resulted in the often contradictory evidence about which Henning complained (1960, p. 47). The so-called “Palamedes inscription” from Sorḵ Kotal provides a combination of a Bactrian and a short Greek text. A new long monumental inscription, giving the genealogy of Kanishka, was made known by Nicholas Sims-Williams at the conference of the Societas Iranica Europaea in Cambridge in September 1995 (P. O. Skjærvø, personal communication).
In the area between the Hindu Kush and the Oxus Soviet archeologists have unearthed a monumental inscription at Delbarjīn (q.v.; Livshits and Kruglikova). Notable findings made north of the Oxus include the graffiti from Kara Tepe in Tajikistan, written in an early cursive ductus, one dated year 35 of an unknown era, another year 97 (Livshits, 1969; Harmatta, 1969; Humbach, 1970), as well as the monumental inscription from Aĭrtam dated in the year 4 of Huvishka (Turgunov, Livshits, and Rtveladze 1981)
The lapidary script of the Bactrian stone inscriptions and coins seems to have been influenced by the cursive ductus attested at Kara Tepe. After the Sasanian conquest the cursive script itself was revived in Bactrian inscriptions on coins produced by the Sasanian Kushanshahs (Humbach 1966-67, I, pp. 50-52), followed by the Huns (pp. 53-59) and the Turkish rulers of Kabul and Gandhara (pp. 59-66). Among the latter, whom Robert Göbl took to be Huns as well (1967, I, p. 1), there are several issues with bilingual and trilingual legends in Bactrian, Pahlavi, and Sanskrit.
The latest known Bactrian inscriptions have been discovered in the Tochi valley (Wazīrestān) in a group comprising an Arabic-Sanskrit inscription (ITAS) dated in the Islamic era 243/857, Sanskrit year 32 (= Laukika 3932 = 857 C.E.); a Sanskrit-Bactrian inscription (ITSB), with Sanskrit date 38 (= Laukika 3938 = 863 C.E.) and Bactrian 632, a synchronism suggesting that the Bactrian era began in 231 C.E.; an Arabic-Bactrian inscription (ITAB) dated in Bactrian 635 (866 C.E.); and a Bactrian inscription with traces of an unidentifiable script (ITBX) dated in Bactrian 636 (867 C.E.). Whereas the three Bactrian texts, written in cursive script, are the latest evidence for the epigraphic use of the Bactrian language, the two Arabic versions seem be the earliest evidence of the language of the conquerors in the Indo-Iranian borderlands (Humbach, 1994). See also AŚOKA.
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(HELMUT HUMBACH)
ii. GREEK INSCRIPTIONS FROM ANCIENT IRAN
Introduction. In April 1815 the Prussian Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin enthusiastically accepted the proposal by August Boeckh to produce a comprehensive thesaurus of inscriptions that would include all Greek inscriptional material published to date. When in 1853 Johannes Franz published the third of four folio volumes of this Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (CIG), its twenty-eighth chapter contained five inscriptions of Media and Persia then known (III 4673-6). Of these, the two short early Sasanian inscriptions in Naqš-e Rostam (nos. 4675a+b; see below) are the ones mentioned earliest in modern western literature, having been registered by several travelers in the second half of the 17th century.
Since those early days of modern Greek epigraphy, the number of known Greek inscriptions from ancient Iran (that is, all countries which once had a population that spoke some Iranian idiom) has enormously increased. The geographic boundaries of Greek epigraphy of the “Extrême-Orient grec,” a term coined by Bernard Haussoullier in 1903, have been transferred much farther to the east in Bactria and Arachosia (qq.v.). As these inscriptions represent an invaluable and varied source of information about the encounter of the Greek and Iranian civilizations, it is regrettable that no corpus yet exists. Such a collection has been planned within the framework of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, however, for more than thirty-five years. Louis Robert had started work on it (Robert, 1960, p. 86, n. 2), but unfortunately, he did not live to complete it. His preliminary work was continued by Paul Bernard and Jean Pouilloux (Bernard, 1987, p. 111) and is now in the hands of Bernard and Georges Rougemont (personal communication from N. Sims-Williams).
In view of this situation, a chronologically arranged survey of Greek inscriptions from Iran will have to suffice. The following inscriptions have been recorded so far (for a more detailed survey on these and other inscriptions, see Huyse, 1995):
The Achaemenid period.
Persepolis. a) Five graffiti of the 6th-5th centuries B.C.E. from the limestone quarries on the Kūh-e Raḥmat near Persepolis, of which the owner inscription by one Pytharchos seems to be the most important (Carratelli, 1966, pp. 31-34). b) A clay tablet from Persepolis of about 500 B.C.E., mentioning the wine measure maris (Fort. 1771 in Hallock, p. 2).
Susa. a) An early Milesian dedication to Apollo from the 6th century B.C.E. on a large bronze astrágalos. It was carried off in 494 from Didyma to Susa by Darius’s soldiers and now is in the Louvre (Rehm, ed., p. 7; Bravo, pp. 833-35). b) An inscription of “Nikoklēs, son of Nikoklēs, Sinopian” which may belong to the 4th century B.C.E. or earlier (Cumont, 1928, pp. 79-80, no. 1).
The Hellenistic period (Seleucids, Greco-Bactrians, etc.).
Persis. a) Five inscriptions on altar stone slabs dedicated to the Greek gods Zeus Megistos, Athena Basileia, Apollo, Artemis, and Helios (first mentioned by Ernst Herzfeld in several publications; for details, see Robert, 1946-47, no. 225). b) A milestone from Pasargadae (Lewis apud Stronach, pp. 160-61).
Media. a+b) An important inscription of June 193 B.C.E., now in the Mūza-ye Īrān-e bāstān, Tehran, recording an edict by the Seleucid king Antiochos III the Great (223-187 B.C.E., q.v.) for the polis of Laodikea (Nehāvand) on the appointment of a high priestess for the cult of Queen Laodikē (Robert, 1949, pp. 5-29); two copies of this inscription to other addressees are extant, one in Phrygian Dodurga of May 193 B.C.E. (ibid.), the other in Kermānšāh of February/March 193 B.C.E. (Robert, 1967, pp. 283-96; idem, 1989, pp. 471-84). c) A short honorary inscription from Laodikea, now also in the Mūza-ye Īrān-e bāstān for Menedēmos, governor of the Upper Satrapies, and named in (a) above (Robert, 1949, p. 23; idem, 1950, pp. 73-75). d) An epitaph for Eumenēs, son of Demetrios in Kermānšāh, which has now disappeared (first noticed by Herzfeld; see Robert, 1967, pp. 295-96; idem, 1989, pp. 483-84). e) An apotropaic inscription of about 300-250 B.C.E. engraved above the door of a chamber in the cave complex at Karaftū (Bernard, 1987). f) A dedication of a relief of Herakles Kallinikos at Bīsotūn (q.v.), dated 148 B.C.E., by Hyakinthos, son of Pantauchos, for the well-being of Kleomenēs, governor of the Upper Satrapies (Robert, 1963, p. 7; idem, 1989, p. 615).
Susiana/Ḵūzestān. The French excavations at Susa have brought to light numerous interesting Greek inscriptions from the 3rd to 1st centuries B.C.E., some containing decrees or honorary inscriptions (SEG VII, 2-8). Others include a dedication to the goddess Māh from the end of the 3rd century B.C.E. by one Apollodōros, son of Krateros (SEG VII, 10); a short 3rd-century dedicatory poem in elegiac distichs on the base of a statue of Apollo, now in the Louvre (SEG VII, 11); a series of manumissions records, for the most part from the 2nd century B.C.E. (SEG VII, 15, 17-26; see also Robert, 1936; Koshelenko and Novikov); a few fragments of inscriptions on terracotta pottery and a couple of Rhodian sealings (SEG VII, 28-34); and a short inscription with the title archiereús (Cumont, 1938).
Hyrcania. A manumission record of Hermaios, son of Euandros, from the time of the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochos I (281-261 B.C.E.; q.v.) and dedicated to the Greco-Egyptian god Sarapis. The exact place where the inscription was found remains unknown (Robert, 1960).
Drangiana/Sīstān. A selection of five ostraca, including a long but unfortunately very fragmentary ostracon of twelve to thirteen lines, from Qalʿa-ye Sām (Carratelli, 1966, pp. 34-35). Other ostraca remain unpublished (cf. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt, p. 80).
Bactria. a) A short Greek inscription in a cave at Qara Kamar in northern Bactria, on the frontier of modern Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Ustinova). b) The majority of Greek inscriptions in Bactria have been found during excavations by the Délégation Archéologique Française at Āy Ḵānom (q.v., i.e., Alexandreia Ōxeianē) from 1965 onward. Apart from a large collection of graffiti on storage vases both in and outside the treasury house (Rapin, 1983 [= SEG XXXIII, 1220-46]; idem, 1987, pp. 52-59), two finds are particularly noteworthy: the dedication of two brothers to the gods Hermes and Herakles found in a gymnasium (Robert, 1968, pp. 417-21; idem, 1989, pp. 511-15]), and a base of a statue near the hērōon with two inscriptions, one in two elegiac distichs stating that a certain Klearchos had made a careful copy of the Delphic maxims of the Seven Sages, the other containing the last five of these maxims (Robert, 1968, pp. 421-57; idem, 1989, pp. 515-51; Schmitt, pp. 55-56). c) A six-line fragment in elegiac distichs, on a terracotta plaque, probably belonging to a funerary epigram, found at Jīgā Tepe near Delbarjīn (q.v.; Kruglikova, pp. 425-26). d) A dedication to Oxos of the mid-2nd century B.C.E. from Taḵt-e Sangīn (Litvinskiĭ, Vinogradov, and Pichikyan). e) The so-called Palamēdēs inscription from Sorḵ Kotal near Baḡlān (Curiel, pp. 194-97). f) Some fragmentary graffiti on jars from Tepe Nemlīk/Namalīk (west of Balḵ), Emšī Tepe (near Balḵ), and Garaw Qalʿa/Javān (Rapin, 1983, p. 316, no. 5; Schmitt, p. 53, no. 44).
Arachosia. a) Two edicts from Qandahār (probably Alexandreia en Arachosia) by the Indian emperor Aśoka (r.
ca. 268-232 B.C.E., q.v.) of the Maurya dynasty, admonishing his subjects to piety and abstinence. One is a bilingual Greco-Aramaic inscription (ed. Pugliese Carratelli, 1958 [improved version 1964] and, independently, Schlumberger, Robert, Dupont-Sommer, and Benveniste); the other contains the remaining parts of a Greek translation of the Prakrit Rock Edicts XII and XIII, discovered in 1958 and 1964, respectively (ed. Schlumberger, 1964; on both texts, see Schmitt, pp. 43-51). b) A fragmentary 3rd-century B.C.E. metric dedication on an alabaster base of a statue group (for further analysis and literature, see Schmitt, p. 51, nos. 37-38).
The Parthian period.
Bīsotūn. a) An inscription on a relief showing the Parthian king Mithridates II (r. ca. 124/3-87 B.C.E.) honored by four dignitaries (Dittenberger, ed., 431; Kawami, pp. 155-57). b) An inscription on another relief immediately to the right of (a), showing the Parthian king Gotarzes (II; r. ca. 38-51 C.E.) defeating his adversary in a cavalry battle (Franz, ed., III, 4674; Kawami, pp. 157-59).
Susa. a) Two poems in elegiac distichs in honor of Zamaspēs, stratíarchos of Susa during the reign of the Parthian king Phraates IV (38/7-2 B.C.E.), expressing gratitude for his irrigation works on the river Gondeisos (SEG VII, 12-13). b) A letter of December 21 C.E. from the Parthian king Artabanus II (r.
12-ca. 38 C.E., q.v.) to the magistrates of Susa, concerning the validation of a contested city election. It is now in the Louvre (Welles, pp. 299-306, no. 75). c) A hymnus for Apollo of the 1st century C.E., now in the Louvre (SEG VII, 14). d) A portrait of a queen with an inscription of the artist Antiochos, son of Druās, on the crown (Cumont, 1939). e) An inscription on a mosaic, bearing the female name Mousa (Ghirshman).
Nisa. An inscription on a rhyton (Bernard, 1985, esp. p. 90).
The Sasanian period.
Naqš-e Rostam. a) A short trilingual (Middle Persian, Parthian, and Greek) inscription of the Sasanian king Ardašīr I (r. 224-241 C.E., q.v.) under an investiture scene (Back, p. 281). b) A very short trilingual (Middle Persian, Parthian, and Greek) inscription under a relief of Ahura Mazdā (q.v.; reign of Ardašīr I; Back, p. 282). c) A long and extremely important inscription of Ardašīr’s son Šāpūr I (r. 241/2-272 C.E.) on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt near Naqš-e Rostam, also called “Res Gestae Saporis.” The king introduces himself and his empire, boasts of his victories against the Romans, and enumerates his foundations of sacred fires (Maricq; Back, pp. 284-371; Huyse, forthcoming).
Naqš-e Rajab. A short trilingual (Middle Persian, Parthian, and Greek) inscription on the belly of a statue of the horse of Šāpūr I (Back, pp. 282-83).
Bibliography (for cited works not given in detail, see “Short References”): M. Back, Die sassanidischen Staatsinschriften, Acta Iranica 18, Leiden, Tehran, and Liège, 1978. P. Bernard, “Les rhytons de Nisa: I. Poétesses grecques,” Journal des Savants, 1985, pp. 25-118. Idem, “Le Marsyas d’Apamée, l’Oxus et la colonisation séleucide en Bactriane,” Stud. Ir. 16/3, 1987, pp. 103-15. B. Bravo, “Sulân: Représailles et justice privée contre des étrangers dans les cités grecques (Etude du vocabulaire et des institutions),” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 10, 1980, pp. 675-987. G. P. Carratelli, “L’iscrizione greca” in G. P. Carratelli and G. L. Della Vida, ed. and tr. with comm., Un editto bilingue greco-aramaico di Aśoka: La prima iscrizione greca scoperta in Afghanistan (= SOR 21), Rome, 1958, pp. 11-14. Idem, “The Greek Section of the Kandahar Inscription” in G. P. Carratelli and G. Garbini, ed. and tr. with comm., A Bilingual Graeco-Aramaic Edict by Aśoka: The First Greek Inscription Discovered in Afghanistan (= SOR 29), Rome, 1964, pp. 29-39. Idem, “Greek Inscriptions of the Middle East,” East and West 16/1-2, 1966, pp. 31-36. F. Cumont, “Inscriptions grecques de Suse,” Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique de Perse 20, 1928, pp. 77-98. Idem, “Une brève inscription grecque de Suse,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris, 1938, pp. 305-7. Idem, “Portrait d’une reine parthe trouvé à Suse,” ibid., Paris, 1939, pp. 330-41. R. Curiel, “Inscriptions de Surkh Kotal,” JA 242, 1954, pp. 189-205. W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1903-5. J. Franz, ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum III, Berlin, 1853. R. Ghirshman, “Cinq campagnes de fouilles à Suse,” RA 46, 1952, pp. 1-18. R. T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets, Chicago, 1969. B. Haussoullier, “Inscriptions grecques de l’Extrême-Orient grec,” Mélanges Perrot: Recueil de mémoires concernant l’archéologie classique, la littérature et l’histoire anciennes dédié à Georges Perrot, Paris, 1903, pp. 155-59. P. Huyse, “Die Begegnung zwischen Hellenen und Iraniern: Griechische epigraphische Zeugnisse von Griechenland bis Pakistan,” in Ch. Reck and P. Zieme, eds., Iran und Turan: Beiträge Berliner Wissenschaftler, Werner Sundermann zum 60. Geburstag gewident, Wiesbaden, 1995, pp. 99-113. T. Kawami, Monumental Art of the Parthian Period in Iran, Acta Iranica 26, Leiden, Tehran, and Liège, 1987. G. A. Koshelenko and S. V. Novikov, “Manumissii Selevkii-na-Evlee” (Manumissions from Seleucia on the Eulaeus), VDI, 1979, 2, pp. 41-54. I. Kruglikova, “Les fouilles de la mission archéologique soviéto-afghane sur le site gréco-kushan de Dilberdjin en Bactriane,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris, 1977, pp. 407-27. B. A. Litvinskiĭ, Y. G. Vinogradov, and I. R. Pichikyan, “Votiv Atrosoka iz xrama Oksa v Severnoĭ Baktrii” (The votive offering of Atrosokes from the Temple of Oxus in northern Bactria), VDI 1985/4, pp. 84-110. A. Maricq, “Res Gestae Divi Saporis,” Syria 35, 1958, pp. 297-360. C. Rapin, “Les inscriptions économiques de la trésorerie hellénistique d’Aï Khanoum (Afghanistan),” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 107, 1983, pp. 315-72. Idem, “La trésorerie hellénistique d’Aï Khanoum,” Revue archéologique, 1987, pp. 41-70. A. Rehm, Didyma II. Die Inschriften, Berlin, 1958. L. Robert, “Sur les affranchissements de Suse,” Revue philologique, 1936, pp. 137-52 (= Opera Minora II, pp. 1216-31]. Idem, Bulletin épigraphique, 1946-47, no. 225. Idem, “Inscriptions séleucides de Phrygie et d’Iran,” Hellenica 7, 1949, pp. 5-29. Idem, “Addenda au Tome VII,” Hellenica 8, 1950, pp. 73-75. Idem, “Inscription hellénistique d’Iran,” Hellenica 11-12, 1960, pp. 85-91. Idem, Review of “P. M. Fraser, Samothrace: II/1, The Inscriptions on Stone, New York, 1960,” Gnomon 35, 1963, pp. 50-79 (= Opera minora VI, pp. 589-618). Idem, “Encore une inscription grecque de l’Iran,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris, 1967, pp. 281-96 [= Opera minora V, pp. 469-84]. Idem, “De Delphes à l’Oxus. Inscriptions grecques nouvelles de la Bactriane,” ibid., Paris, 1968, pp. 416-57 (= Opera minora V, pp. 510-51). Idem, Opera minora selecta, 7 vols. Amsterdam, 1969-90. D. Schlumberger, “Une nouvelle inscription grecque d’Açoka,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris, 1964, pp. 126-40. Idem, L. Robert, A. Dupont-Sommer, and É. Benveniste, “Une bilingue gréco-araméenne d’Asoka,” JA 246, 1958, pp. 1-48. R. Schmitt, “Ex occidente lux: Griechen und griechische Sprache im hellenistischen Fernen Osten,” in P. Steinmetz, ed., Beiträge zur hellenistischen Literatur und ihrer Rezeption in Rom, Stuttgart, 1990, pp. 41-58. SEG = Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum VII, Leiden, 1934. S. Sherwin-White and A. Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire, London, 1993. D. Stronach, Pasargadae: A Report on the Excavations Conducted by the British Institute of Persian Studies from 1961 to 1963, Oxford, 1978. Y. B. Ustinova, “Naskal’nye latinskie i grecheskaya nadpisi iz Kara-Kamara” (Greek and Latin Rock Inscriptions from Qara Kamar), VDI, 1990, 854, pp. 145-47 (cf. supra sub Litvinskiĭ). B. C. Welles, Royal Correspondance in the Hellenistic Period, New Haven, 1934.
(PHILIP HUYSE)
iii. ARABIC INSCRIPTIONS IN PERSIA
In Persia, as in the rest of the Islamic lands, Arabic was the basic language for foundation and religious texts on buildings and objects. In the early Islamic period these texts were usually written in some variant of the angular script known as Kufic (see CALLIGRAPHY). From the 12th century inscriptions in Persian became more common, especially for poetic texts, and cursive scripts tended to replace angular ones. In general, inscriptions on portable objects made in Persia followed the forms and styles of monumental inscriptions (Blair, Bloom, and Wardwell).
Monumental inscriptions. Although Pahlavi continued to be used until the 6th/12th century in inscriptions in such isolated regions as the Caspian coast (e.g., the tomb tower at Lājīm in Māzandarān; Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, no. 2331; Blair, 1992, no. 32), foundation texts on buildings in the Islamic period were usually written in Arabic. Persian first appeared in commemorative inscriptions, which were less formal than foundation texts. Beginning in the mid-4th/10th century the Buyids (q.v.) included Persian names in commemorative texts carved at Persepolis, e.g., an inscription carved in the name of ʿAżod-al-Dawla in 344/955-56 (Plate I; Donohue, pp. 74-75; Blair, 1992, no. 7). Dates in Persian first appeared in the mid-5th/11th century (e.g., in a carved inscription of Abū Kalījar dated 2 Ābān 438/24 October 1046; Moṣṭafawī, p. 340; Blair, 1992, no. 43). The first foundation text in Persian is from the Ilek–Khanid mausoleum at Safīd Boland in Farḡāna, datable to 447-51/1055-60 (Nashch and Kochneu; Blair, 1992, no. 47). In the late 5th/11th and early 6th/12th centuries Persian verses were used on such palaces as Rebāṭ-e Malek (471/1078-79) northeast of Bukhara (q.v.) and the Ghaznavid Masʿūd III’s palace at Ḡazna (505/1111) in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the use of Arabic for such texts remained standard in Persia even in the Qajar period (1193-1342/1779-1924).
A fully developed tradition of monumental Arabic inscriptions on Persian architecture can be documented only from the mid-4th/10th century (Blair, 1992, introd.). Earlier examples rarely survive in Persia, probably because of the impermanent materials used. According to contemporary chroniclers, however, the early ʿAbbasid caliphs’ foundation inscriptions on Persian buildings resembled those used elsewhere. For example, an inscription of al-Manṣūr (136-58/754-75) on a treasury in Azerbaijan, recorded by the early 4th/10th-century scholar Abū ʿAbd-Allāh Moḥammad Jahšīārī (Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, no. 43), is comparable to contemporary inscriptions commemorating repairs and enlargements to the sanctuary (ḥaram) at Mecca by the same caliph and his successor, al-Mahdī (158-69/775-85; Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, nos. 40, 48-52). Inscriptions of the 3rd-4th/9-10th centuries recorded in the Caucasus by the 19th-century traveler M. N. Khanikoff were similar. Grave markers from early Islamic Persia were also inscribed in Arabic. The earliest known example is a tombstone discovered in the Emāmzada Jaʿfar at Damḡān (q.v.), recording the death of a Zaydī descendant of the prophet ca. 267/900 (Adle, pp. 292-97). A handful of 4th/10th-century crested grave covers excavated at Sīrāf on the Persian Gulf and a series of steles dating from the 5th/11th century onward from the Yazd region are also inscribed in Arabic (Lowick, pp. 79-115; Afšār, II, pp. 909-16).
From the next 150 years, approximately seventy-five inscriptions survive. They decorated mosques, tombs, palaces, minarets, and such civil structures as walls, bridges, and cisterns. The most complete formula for construction texts consisted of the besmela (see BESMELLĀH), the verb (generally amara be-benāʾ “ordered the construction [of],”) some mention of the structure (often indicated only by a pronoun), the name and titles of the patron, the date, and the name of the artisan. Adjectives were rarely used to qualify the structure built, though the foundation inscription in rhymed prose on the Gonbad-e Qābūs ordered by the Ziyarid prince Qābūs b. Vošmgīr in 397/1006-7 is one notable exception (Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, no. 2118; Blair, 1992, no. 19). As in the rest of the Islamic world, during the course of time the list of the patron’s titles grew longer. The patrons themselves, some of whom were women, represented the myriad small dynasties that flourished in Persia and Transoxania in the 10th-11th centuries: the Hasanuyids, Kakuyids, Bawandids (see ĀL-E BĀVAND), Ziyarids, Ḵᵛārazmšāhs, Firuzanids, Shaddadids, Ilek-khanids (Qarakhanids), and the like. The artisans’ signatures were also in Arabic. In addition to builders, such as the man who signed the tomb tower known as the Pīr-e ʿAlamdār in Damḡān in 417/1026-27, other specialists included the woodcarver who signed the columns in the mosque at Ḵīva (ca. 400/1010) or the ironworkers who signed the gates at Yazd and Ganja (see EBRĀHĪM B. ʿOṮMĀN) in 430/1040-41 and 455/1063 (Blair, 1992, nos. 34, 26, 41, 48, respectively). The usual formula for the signature was ʿamal (“work [of]”) or ʿamela (“[so-and-so] made”).
There is no standard corpus of inscriptions dating after the 12th century, but many are included in the Répertoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe (Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet), of which seventeen volumes covering the period up to 783/1381, plus a geographical index, have appeared. Other inscriptions can be found in works on individual Persian provinces and cities, for example, those by Loṭf-Allāh Honarfar on Isfahan and Īraj Afšār on Yazd, as well as the volumes published by Anjoman-e āṯār-e mellī (q.v.). The general trends are thus clear. The basic formula remained the same as in earlier periods, but the texts became longer and more flowery. The patrons boasted ever more elaborate titles and epithets, and adjectives and metaphors abounded. In the foundation inscription on the mosque of Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh in Isfahan, for example, Shah ʿAbbās I (996-1038/1588-1629) is lauded as “the greatest sultan, the most generous king, the reviver of the virtues of his pure fathers, the propagator of the religion of the infallible Imams, Abu’l-Moẓaffar ʿAbbās al-Ḥosaynī al-Mūsawī al-Ṣafawī, Bahādor Khan, may God the Exalted make his kingdom eternal and may his ships sail in the seas of eternity” (al-solṭān al-aʿẓam wa’l-ḵāqān al-akram . . .; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 402).
In addition to historical inscriptions, there were also religious inscriptions in Arabic, including koranic citations, Hadiths, poems, prayers, and pious phrases. Some koranic texts, such as the famous Throne verse (Āyat al-korsī, Koran 2:255), are general evocations of the glory of Islam and were popular on many types of buildings in all periods. Others, such as 9:18 (ennamā yaʿmoro masājed Allāh man amana be’llāh wa’l-yawm al-āḵer wa aqāma al-ṣalāt wa atā al-zakāt wa lam yaḵša “The mosques of God shall be visited and maintained by such as believe in God and the Last Day and perform the prayer and pay the alms and fear none but God alone; it is they who are expected to be among the guided”) and 55:26-27 (koll man ʿalayhā fān; wa yabqā wajh rabbek ḏu’l-jalāl wa’l-ekrām “All that dwells upon the earth is perishing, yet still abides the face of thy Lord, majestic splendid”), are more specific and allude to a building’s function as mosque or tomb. Specific passages sometimes permitted plays on words with the name of the founder; for example, verse 17:79, (ʿasā an yabʿaṯak rabbok maqāman maḥmūdan “Soon will thy Lord raise thee to a laudable station”) was popular with patrons named Maḥmūd, including Shah Maḥmūd, the Muzaffarid ruler of the region who restored the Madrasa-ye Emāmīya/Bābā Qāsem (755/1354) in Isfahan (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 309).
Hadiths were not as common as koranic quotations in Islamic epigraphy. The earliest example from the Persian world decorates a wooden meḥrāb (niche) removed from the congregational mosque at Iskodar in the Zarafšān valley in Tajikistan and now in the United Republic Museum in Dushanbe (Deniké, fig. 4; Blair, 1992, no 27). The style of floriated Kufic in one of the rectangular framing bands suggests a date ca. 400/1010. The text, which refers to the inestimable rewards for those who guard the front line, is appropriate to a site on the frontiers of Islam; it is not attested in the major concordance of canonical Hadiths (Wensinck et. al.) and may well have been invented for the occasion. Hadiths soon became more popular, perhaps because they were more adaptable than koranic citations. Some were simply familiar sayings, but most were chosen because they were appropriate to the buildings or places on which they were inscribed. In the tomb of Tūmān Āqā, one of Timur’s wives, in the Šāh-e Zenda cemetery outside Samarqand (808/1404-5), the saying “The tomb is a door and everyone enters it” (al-qabr bāb wa koll al-nās dāḵalahu) is inscribed above the doorway to the mausoleum, and “Hasten with prayer before you miss it” (ʿajjelū be’l-ṣalāt qabl al-fawt) and “Hasten with repentence before death” (ʿajjelū be’l-tawba qabl al-mawt) above the portal to the mosque (Golombek and Wilber, I, p. 249; Shishkin). Often Hadiths were chosen for sectarian purposes. A meḥrāb added to the congregational mosque in Isfahan in 710/1310 after Sultan Öljeitü (Uljāytū, 703-17/1304-17) had converted to Shiʿism (Plate II), is inscribed with a Hadith attributed to Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb (q.v.) to the effect that whoever frequents a mosque will receive one of eight benedictions (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 120). The Hadith was probably directed at the traditionally Sunni population in this troublesome sectarian city. Under the Safavids Hadiths became especially popular. For example, in the mosque of Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh in Isfahan several are included in the large band of ṯolṯ script (see CALLIGRAPHY) at the base of the dome signed by the celebrated calligrapher ʿAlī-Reżā ʿAbbāsī (q.v.) in 1025/1616-17. The text begins with a prophetic Hadith about the rewards for pious Muslims. This is followed by two additional passages about the actions suitable for someone going to a mosque. The two authorities cited are the Ahl al-Bayt (q.v.) and Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādeq, respectively (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 407-10).
Arabic religious poems were also inscribed on buildings in Persia. Some of the blind niches on the interior of the mausoleum of Shah Aḥmed Qāsem known as the Dar-e Behešt outside the Kāšān gate in Qom (780/1378) are inscribed with verses extolling the lineage of the deceased, ʿAlī b. Jaʿfar (Modarresī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, II, 46). Persian poetry was common on 9th/15th-century buildings, but under the Safavids Arabic poetry again became popular. The mosque of Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh provides a good example. On the large band framing the arches on the north and south sides of the interior is a poem signed by Bāqer, the builder, asking the čahārdah maʿṣūm (q.v. “fourteen infallible ones”) to intercede for Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh in the hereafter. A similar band on the east and west arches contains a poem invoking the čahārdah maʿṣūm. This poem, as suggested by Honarfar (Eṣfahān, pp. 412-15), may be by Shaikh Bahāʾ-al-Dīn ʿĀmelī (q.v.), the famous Imami scholar of the period of Shah ʿAbbās I. Pious phrases in Arabic were common in inscriptions in all periods. They included such general expressions as “God is the greatest” (Allāho akbar), the ninety-nine “beautiful names” of God (al-asmāʾ al-ḥosnā, see Gardet), and the names of revered people like the four rightly guided caliphs or the čahārdah maʿṣūm. Many phrases reflect sectarian loyalties. A reference to “Moḥammad’s pure and pleasing family” in the bay over the meḥrāb at the 4th/10th-century congregational mosque at Nāʾīn may well indicate Shiʿite patronage for the structure (Blair, 1992, no. 9).
In the early Islamic period architectural inscriptions in Persia were written in plain forms of angular script used elsewhere in the Islamic world. Beginning in the 4th/10th century this simple script was elaborated in several ways. One of the simplest variants was “foliated Kufic,” in which the tips of the letters swell into leaf forms. An early example occurs on the lintel at the tomb of the Samanids in Bukhara (320s/930s; Bulatov, pl. 9; Blair, 1992, no. 4). This script in turn developed into “floriated Kufic,” in which independent floral motifs sprout from the letters and in the spaces between them, as in the foundation inscription framing the portal to the mausoleum at Tīm in the Zarafšān valley in Uzbekistan (367/977; Pugachenkova, fig. 43; Blair, 1992, no. 11) and the superb cut-plaster inscriptions on the interior of the Emāmzāda Yaḥyā b. Zayd at Sar-e Pol in the province of Toḵārestān (Jūzjān) in northern Afghanistan (ca. 500/1100; Bivar; Blair, 1992, no. 75).
Both foliated and floriated Kufic were popular in the western Islamic world, where they were particularly associated with Fatimid (q.v.; 358-567/969-1171) monuments in Cairo, for example, al-Azhar and the mosque of al-Ḥākem. One variety of script that seems to have originated in the eastern Islamic world, however, is “interlaced Kufic,” in which the stems or bodies of the letters are plaited. A crested grave cover from Sīrāf dated 364/975 (Lowick, pl. X) has a single interlaced letter (the kāf in raḥmateka), but another grave cover, dated less than two decades later (383/993), has extensive interlacing: Single letters are plaited, two or three consecutive letters are intertwined, and the ligature between the two lāms of Allāh has been transformed into a lattice of three superimposed trilobes (Lowick, pls. XII and XIII). Interlacing also occurred in architectural inscriptions. One of the first surviving examples is in the mosque at Ardestān (q.v.): Although the mosque seems to have been extensively rebuilt in 553-55/1158-60 (Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, nos. 3224, 3238), the koranic band in the arcade running south from the corner of the court can be attributed on stylistic grounds to about 400/1010; it contains an interlaced kāf (Blair, 1992, no. 23).
Interlaced script is difficult to read and was thus usually reserved for well-known texts, like the koranic verses on the crested grave covers, in the mosque at Ardestān, or on the minaret at Termeḏ dated 423/1031-32 (Blair, 1992, no. 38 and figs. 61-62). In order to increase legibility, ornament was gradually removed to the upper zone of the inscription, so that only the ascenders and tails, rather than the bodies, of the letters were plaited. This kind of script occurs in the two foundation inscriptions (407-11/1016-21) on a tomb tower in the Rādkān valley of the Alborz mountains south of Sārī: on a stucco plaque above the doorway and in the band encircling the tower below the roof. In both inscriptions the patron, the Bawandid prince Abū Jaʿfar Moḥammad, is named (Flury, 1920; idem, 1921).
Despite the restriction of interlacing to the upper zone, inscriptions were still somewhat cluttered. To reduce the clutter and increase the legibility, the ornament in the upper zone was the separated and enlarged so that it was equal in weight to the bodies of the letters in the lower zone. Elaborate plaiting was replaced by floral decoration. A superb example of such “bordered Kufic” is the foundation inscription, with the name of the patron, the Saljuq vizier Neẓām-al-Molk, formerly in the “madrasa” at Ḵargerd in Khorasan (ca. 465-70/1072-77; Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, no. 2789; Blair, 1992, no. 57) and now in the Mūza-ye Īrān-e bāstān in Tehran. Herzfeld (1943, p. 16, figs. 35-36) called it “perhaps the masterpiece of Kufic epigraphy in Iran” (Plate III). The stucco inscription is organized in three zones. The lower contains the bodies of the letters, outlined with beading. It is balanced by an upper zone of approximately equal width containing two tiers of palmettes, which appear to grow from the ascenders. The medial zone is allotted to the ascenders themselves, which are generally unornamented. The inscription projects about 7.5 cm from a background of floral arabesques, and the two levels of carving highlight the contrast between the organic elements in the background and the rigid ascenders that march in stately rhythm across the band.
The shift in monumental epigraphy from angular to cursive scripts can also be documented in the inscriptions dating before the 12th century. Cursive script first appeared in commemorative texts such as those carved at Persepolis; by the second half of the 11th century it was in use for foundation inscriptions on buildings. Some of the first examples survive on the stucco meḥrābs added to the Masjed-e Pāmanār at Zavāra in 461/1068-69 (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 171-75; Blair, 1992, no. 51); these cursive inscriptions, which include the name of the patron, are played off against larger framing inscriptions with koranic texts in Kufic. Persian artists quickly realized the decorative possibilities of juxtaposing angular and cursive scripts. Stone fragments from Ḡazna in the name of Ebrāhīm b. Masʿūd (Flury, 1925, nos. 4-7; Blair, 1992, no. 69) show the sophisticated way in which the Ghaznavids exploited style to underscore content: on one panel from a meḥrāb three types of script—cursive, foliated Kufic, and simple Kufic—contain three types of text, namely koranic, pious, and historical. Such a juxtaposition of scripts for rhetorical and artistic effect appeared at the same time in Saljuq lands. In the sanctuary dome added to the great mosque in Isfahan in 479-80/1086-87, for example, the monumental koranic inscription carved on the impost blocks is in cursive script, whereas the foundation inscription in brick relief encircling the base of the dome is in Kufic (Galdieri, p. 38; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 76; Blair, 1992, no. 61).
After the 6th/12th century Kufic was relegated to a secondary role and appeared primarily in repeating panels or stylized motifs. “Square Kufic” became popular under the Il-khanids and may have imitated Chinese seal script (Krachkovskaya, pp. 23-24). Often such panels simply repeat such pious phrases al-molk le’llāh (dominion belongs to God) or the names of highly regarded people. The stucco panels in “square Kufic” in the shrine of Pīr-e Bakrān at Lenjān outside Isfahan (703-12/1303-12) are particularly elaborate and spell out the names of God and the čahārdah maʿṣūm (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 256-60). Glazed bricks could also be set into surfaces in common bond so that they spelled out words in Kufic script. This technique, sometimes called bannāʾī (builder’s), was an easy way to enliven vast wall surfaces and “drench” the architecture in writing. First used in the 6th/12th century, it became characteristic of monuments built by the Timurids in Central Asia. The exterior of the shrine of the Sufi shaikh Ḵᵛāja Aḥmad Yasawī at Yasī/ Turkestān (799-801/1397-99) is covered with great expanses of continuous geometric patterns enclosing square Kufic designs. Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilbur (p. 210) have suggested that such inscriptions were not meant to be read as individual statements, but rather, that the repetition of sacred names was comparable to verbal repetitions in the Sufi ḏekr (q.v.).
The most popular cursive script in later centuries was an elongated ṯolt¯. Beginning in the 14th century, a second inscription was often interwoven in the ascenders of the first. The earliest surviving examples in Persia are the inscriptions painted on the plaster revetment in the interior of the tomb of Öljeitü (Uljāytū) at Solṭānīya (Blair, 1987, pp. 43-96). Color was also exploited to underscore the message. In foundation inscriptions framing portals, the patron’s name was often highlighted in yellow in the center of a white inscription on a dark-blue glazed ground. In an early example dated 851/1447, on the portal leading to the winter prayer hall (šabestān) in the congregational mosque at Isfahan the name of the ruler, Solṭān Moḥammad, grandson of Šāhroḵ, is set off in ocher (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 122-23).
Inscriptions on portable objects. Arabic was the standard language on coins and was also used for dedicatory inscriptions on metalwork, textiles, and ceramics, though other languages continued to be used on objects made for several centuries in such isolated areas as the mountains near the Caspian Sea or Central Asia. For example, a hoard found in Māzandarān and now in the Mūza-ye Īrān-e bāstān, included three silver bowls, two inscribed in Pahlavi with the name Wandād Hormazd of the Kārens, a local ruler in the late 2nd/8th century (Ghirshman; Henning). On the basis of a Sogdian note written in ink on a silk textile from the treasury of the collegial church of Notre Dame at Huy, Belgium, Dorothy Shepherd was able to identify a whole group with a type that medieval authors called “Zandanījī,” referring to the town of Zandana near Bukhara (Shepherd and Henning, esp. pp. 38-40; see also ABRĪŠAM iii., esp. pl. XII/2, where the legend has been transposed with that of pl. XII/1).
By the 4th/10th century dedicatory inscriptions in Arabic had become standard. A good example is a silver wine service found at Hamādān, now also in the Mūza-ye Īrān-e bāstān. It comprises three conical bowls, two saucers, a tray, a ewer, two small jugs, a bottle, and a cup. Seven of the pieces are inscribed with the name of the amir Abu’l-ʿAbbās Valgīn b. Hārūn, identified as “client of the Commander of the Faithful,” a title that suggests a date ca. 400/1010 (Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, nos. 2154-60). Instead of the standard foundation text that appears on architecture and begins with amara be-benāʾ (ordered the construction [of]), objects were usually inscribed with dedicatory texts invoking blessings and good wishes on the owner. The inscription on the wine service, for example, asks for God’s blessing (baraka men Allāh). This type of inscription on a silk fragment found in the church treasury at Saint-Josse-sur-Mer near Calais (Louvre, Paris, no. 7502; Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, no. 1507; Survey of Persian Art, pl. 981) invokes glory and good fortune (ʿezz wa eqbāl) for the commander Abū Manṣūr Baḵtekīn (d. 349/960-61), who served the Samanid amir of Transoxania and Khorasan ʿAbd-al-Malek b. Nūḥ (r. 343-50/954-41).
Like the foundation inscriptions, these dedicatory inscriptions became more elaborate over time. A bronze pencase in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., (no. 36.7; Plate IV) has a benedictory inscription invoking glory, good fortune, and twenty other benefits for its owner for eternity. In the dedication encircling the lid, he is identified as “the most grand vizier, the great, the wise, the just, the one assisted by God, the victorious, the triumphant, Majd-al-Molk, the honor of the government and religion, the flame of Islam and the Muslims, the chosen among the kings and sultans, the light of the nation, the benefactor of the people, the example of the great ones and his equals, the pillar of dignity, the lord of viziers, the king of lieutenants, the governor of Iran, the grand vizier and ruler of Khorasan, al-Moẓaffar, son of the deceased vizier, Majd-al-Molk” (Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, no. 3671). Herzfeld (1936-37) identified this man as one of the last viziers of the Ḵᵛārazmšāhs. Another inscription between the hinges on the rim of the lid at the back includes the signature of the artist, ʿamal Šāḏī al-naqqāš (the work of Šāḏī the engraver), and the date 607/1210.
Already by the 12th century such dedicatory inscriptions were often written in Persian. The classic example is a superb bronze known as the “Bobrinski bucket,” after a former owner, and now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (no. CA-12687), which was made for a merchant in 559/1163. It is decorated with friezes of merrymakers, animals, and animated inscriptions inlaid in copper and silver. Around the rim is a long text in Persian, in which it is recorded that the piece was ordered by ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd-Allāh Rašīdī; “struck” (żarb-e; inlaid?) by Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-al-Wāḥed; and “made” by (ʿamal-e) Ḥājeb Masʿūd b. Aḥmad, the decorator in Herat for its owner, the exalted Ḵᵛāja Rokn-al-Dīn, glory of the merchants, trustee of the Muslims, ornament of the pilgrims and the two sanctuaries, Rašīd-al-Dīn ʿAzīzī b. Abu’l-Ḥosayn [sic] Zanjānī (Ettinghausen, 1943; Combe, Sauvaget, and Wiet, no. 3280; corrections in Melikian-Chirvani, pp. 82-83 nn. 60-61). A bronze aquamanile in the shape of a zebu feeding her calf while a leopard bites the hump on her back, also in the Hermitage (no. AZ-225), and dated 603/1206 has a dedicatory inscription in Persian (Giuzalian, pp. 102-5). On metal wares from the 9th/15th century onward, dedicatory inscriptions were replaced by Persian verses (e.g., Melikian-Chirvani, 1982, chap. IV).
The most common religious inscriptions on portable objects made in Persia are koranic verses. They occur frequently on coins and luster-painted ceramics. Koran 2:137, which contains the longest word in the Koran, fa-sa-yakfīkahom-Allāh (God will be sufficient for you against them), seems to have served as a talisman and was inscribed in many media, from a cobalt bowl excavated at Samarra in Mesopotamia to luster-painted tiles, coins, and tombstones (Miles, pp. 155-56). Luster-painted tiles were decorated with a limited range of koranic inscriptions, especially well-known passages such as the Throne Verse and the short suras from the end of the book. These texts were chosen for their appropriateness to the site where tiles were mounted. In tombs, for example, they often contained references to the Day of Judgment and the horrors of hell (Watson, pp. 150-51).
During the Safavid period Arabic poems and phrases invoking Shiʿite figures became common on coins and metalwork (Melikian-Chirvani, Chap. V). Pious phrases were ubiquitous in all media in all periods, and phrases like al-molk le’llāh became such clichés that they were often misspelled or stylized beyond recognition. Such stylized repeat patterns can be found around the rims of mīnāʾī (lit. “enamel”; see CERAMICS) ceramics and on innumerable carpet borders.
There is one type of Arabic inscription that seems to have been specific to one particular type of portable object: the moralizing aphorisms found on slip-painted ceramics made in eastern Persia and Transoxania in the 4th/10th century and often associated with the patronage of the Samanid dynasty. The inscriptions praise the virtues of patience, work, intelligence, knowledge, generosity, and the like. A typical example is al-tadbīr qabl al-ʿamal yoʾmanaka men al-nadam; al-ṣabr meftāḥ al-faraj (Planning before work protects you from regret; patience is the key to comfort; Bol’shakov; Volov, p. 117). These inscriptions were sometimes written in an elaborate plaited script that makes them extremely difficult to decipher.
Like architectural inscriptions the inscriptions on objects made in Persia in the early centuries are generally written in some form of angular Kufic script and follow a similar progression from simple to more elaborate foliated, floriated, interlaced, and bordered types. Interlaced Kufic is often associated with the Samanid slip-painted wares. Kufic script became more and more stylized and was eventually relegated to repetitive phrases, whereas the more easily legible cursive script was used for dedicatory inscriptions. In many elaborate luster-painted tile assemblages, such as the cenotaph cover made by Moḥammed b. Abī Ṭāher for the shrine at Qom in 602/1206 or the meḥrāb made by Abū Zayd for the shrine at Mašhad in 612/1215 (Watson, figs. 103-4), bands of stylized Kufic are played off against various styles of cursive. Despite this secondary role, Kufic was still used for sophisticated patterns. A tile said to have come from the Masjed-e Šāh in Isfahan (Art Institute, Chicago, no. 1926.1186) has a repeating Kufic inscription with the koranic phrase “God, there is no god but He” (Allāh lā elāh ellā howa). The first four words are repeated in white on a dark blue ground on the four sides of the tile, and the tall stems of the letters form an interlocking pattern in the center. The fifth word, howa, is repeated four times in turquoise above the stems of the letters and forms an internal square.
By the 12th century cursive scripts had replaced angular ones. The celebrated luster-painted plate made by Sayyed Šams-al-Dīn Ḥasanī in 607/1210 (Freer Gallery of Art, no. 41.11) has a long dedicatory inscription in naskò around its rim, invoking everlasting glory on an amir and esfahsālār (military commander) whose name is unfortunately lost; the poetic text inscribed on the interior and exterior of the gadrooned vessel walls are also in naskò and include an ode with alternating hemistichs in Arabic and Persian, a quatrain, and good wishes (Guest and Ettinghausen). In later centuries naskò was replaced by ṯolt¯. A group of low brass bowls inlaid with gold and silver are typically decorated with four figural roundels alternating with four epigraphic cartouches inscribed in elongated ṯolt¯ with hooked ascenders; on the basis of their titulary, they have been attributed to the province of Fārs in the early 8th/14th century (Melikian-Chirvani, chap. 3). As in architectural inscriptions, the ascenders of the letters are sometimes elongated, and a second inscription in Kufic is inscribed across them (e.g., Freer Gallery, bowl, 80.25; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, no. 6-1886; Melikian-Chirvani, pp. 213-14). On metalwork produced under the Timurids and Safavids, nastaʿlīq (see CALLIGRAPHY) script was common, especially in Persian verses.
One script seems to have been unique to metalwork: anthropomorphic or zoomorphic script, in which the letters or parts of them assume human or animal form. Ornithomorphic script, in which the letters are transformed into birds or the tails of the letters end in birds’ heads, was used on Samanid slip–painted ceramics and later on bronzes produced in the same region. By the 12th century anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and human-headed scripts were fully developed on eastern Persian metalwork. The best example is the Bobrinski bucket (see above). In the upper, cursive inscription the top halves of the letters have been transformed into figures of revelers, dancers, and musicians, whereas the lower halves are in bird or animal shapes or end in bird and animal heads. The middle inscription is in Kufic with interlaced ascenders. In the lower inscription, also in cursive, the letters terminate in human heads, and animals chase one another through the ascenders. The only known example of such a script in a medium other than metal work is the human-headed cursive in a Persian inscription from the harbor fortress at Baku, dated 632/1234-35 (Bretanitskiĭ, pp. 82-87); it is of such mediocre quality, however, that it must have been derivative from metalwork.
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Epigrafika Vostoka 12, 1958, pp. 23-38; 15, 1963, pp. 73-87; 16, 1963, pp. 35-55; 17, 1966, pp. 54-62. A. Bombaci, The Kūfic Inscription in Persian Verses in the Court of the Royal Palace of Masʿūd III at Ghazni, Rome, 1966. A. S. Bretanitskiĭ, Zodchestvo Azerbaidzhana XII-XIV vv (The architecture of Azerbaijan XII-XIV centuries), Moscow, 1966. M. Bulatov, Mavzoleĭ Samanidov (The tombs of the Samanids), Tashkent, 1976. E. Combe, J. Sauvaget, and G. Wiet, eds., Répertoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe, 17 vols., Cairo, 1931—. B. Deniké, “Quelques monuments de bois sculpté at Turkestān occidental,” Ars Islamica 2, 1935, pp. 69-83. J. Donohue, “Three Buwayhid Inscriptions,” Arabica 20, 1973, pp. 74-80. R. Ettinghausen, “The Bobrinsky ‘Kettle’: Patron and Style of an Islamic Bronze,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 24, 1943, pp. 193-208. S. Flury, “Bandeaux ornementés à inscriptions arabes: Amida-Diarbekr,” Syria 1, 1920, pp. 235-49, 318-28; 2, 1921, pp. 54-62. Idem, “Le décor épigraphique des monuments de Ghazna,” Syria 6, 1925, pp. 61-90. Idem, “La mosquée de Nayin,” Syria 11, 1930, pp. 43-58. E. Galdieri, Eṣfahān Masgid-i Ğumʿa 3: Research and Restoration Activities, 1973-1978, New Observations, 1979-1982, Rome, 1984. L. Gardet, “al-Asmāʾ al-Ḥoṣnā” in EI2 I, pp. 714-17. R. Ghirshman, “Argenterie d’un seigneur sassanide,” Ars Orientalis 2, 1957, pp. 77-82. L. T. Giuzalian, “The Bronze Qalamdan (Pen-Case) 542/1148 from the Hermitage Collection (1936-1965),” Ars Orientalis 7, 1968, pp. 95-119. L. Golombek and D. Wilber, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, 2 vols., Princeton, 1988. G. D. Guest and R. Ettinghausen, “The Iconography of a Kāshān Luster Plate,” Ars Orientalis 4, 1961, pp. 25-64. W. B. Henning, “New Pahlavi Inscriptions on Silver Vessels,” BSOAS 22, 1959, pp. 132-34; repr. in idem, Selected Papers, Acta Iranica 15, Leiden, 1977, pp. 533-35. E. Herzfeld, “Postsasanidische Inschriften,” AMI 4, 1931-32, pp. 14-56. Idem, “A Bronze Pen-Case,” Ars Islamica 3, 1936, pp. 35-44). Idem, “Arabische Inschriften aus Iran und Syrien,” AMI 8, 1936-37, pp. 78-102. Idem, “Damascus. Studies in Architecture—II,” Ars Islamica 10, 1943, pp. 13-70. Abū ʿAbd-Allāh Moḥammad Jahšīārī, Ketāb al-wozarāʾ wa’l-kuttāb, ed. M. Saqqā et al., Cairo, 1357/1938. N. Khanikoff, “Les inscriptions musulmanes du Caucase,” JA, August 1862, pp. 57-155. L. Komaroff, The Golden Disk of Heaven: Metalwork of Timurid Iran, Costa Mesa, 1992. V. A. Krachkovskaya, “Evolutsiya kufichesckogo pis’ma v sredneĭ Aziĭ” (The evolution of Kufic script in Central Asia), Epigrafika Vostoka 3, 1949, pp. 3-27. N. Lowick, Sīrāf XV: The Coins and Monumental Inscriptions, London, 1985. A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World 8th-18th Centuries, London, 1982. G. C. Miles, “Epitaphs from an Isfahan Graveyard,” Ars Islamica 6, 1939, pp. 151-57. Ḥ. Modarresī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Torbat-e pākān, 2 vols., Qom, 2535 (=1355) Š./1976. M. T. Moṣṭafawī, Eqlīm-e Pārs, Tehran, 1343 Š./1964. V. N. Nastich and B. D. Kochnev, “K attributsii mavzoleya Shaikh-Fazil” (On the attribution of the tomb of Shaikh Fāżel), Epigrafika Vostoka 24, 1988, pp. 69-76. G. A. Pugachenkova, Mavzoleĭ Arab-Ata (The Arab-ata mausoleum), Tashkent, 1963. L. Richter-Bernburg, “Amīr-Malik-Shāhānshāh. ʿAḍud ad-daula’s Titulature Re-examined,” Iran 18, 1980, pp. 83-102. D. Shepherd and W. Henning, “Zandanījī Identified?” in R. Ettinghausen, ed., Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst: Festschrift Ernst Kühnel, Berlin, 1959, pp. 15-40. V. A. Shishkin, “Nadpisi v ansamble Shakhi-Zinda” (The inscriptions in the Šāh-e zenda complex) in Zodchestva Uzbekistana (The architecture of Uzbikistan), Tashkent, 1970, pp. 7-71. M. Soroodeh, “Drei alte kufische Inschriften aus Iran,” ZDMG 125, 1975, pp. 315-16. J. Sourdel-Thomine, “Inscriptions seljoukides et salles à coupoles de Qazwīn en Iran,” REI 42, 1974, pp. 3-43. L. Volov [Golombek], “Plaited Kufic on Samanid Epigraphic Pottery,” Ars Orientalis 6, 1966, pp. 107-33. O. Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, London, 1985. A. J. Wensinck et al., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, 6 vols., Leiden, 1936-88.
(SHEILA S. BLAIR)
iv. SAFAVID AND LATER INSCRIPTIONS
The principal characteristic of epigraphy in Persia after the advent of the Safavids (907/1501) is the emphasis on Persian poetry and pious Shiʿite texts with an iconographic potency and deliberate frequency hitherto unknown. Arabic remained the language of koranic and Hadith quotations while Persian became increasingly prominent through its use for historical and poetic inscriptions in both architecture and decorative arts. Cursive scripts, especially ṯolṯ and nastaʿlīq (see CALLIGRAPHY) supplanted the earlier Kufic and its variants in all but the essentially decorative repeat patterns in secondary positions.
Monumental inscriptions. There are no systematically recorded or analyzed collections of inscriptions for this period, nor are there any comprehensive architectural surveys as there are for the Il-Khanid and Timurid periods. The essential source for Safavid inscriptions is Honarfar’s work on Isfahan, the city whose buildings provide the substance of Safavid monumental inscriptions in general. Apart from Isfahan, major Safavid, Zand and Qajar inscriptions survive in buildings in Ardabīl, Kermān, Qom, Mašhad, Shiraz, Yazd, and Tehran as well as in the Māzandarān region. Persian surveys on these cities and the provinces in general, published in monographs by Anjoman-e āṯār-e mellī (q.v.), document the relevant inscriptions. Foundation and commemorative inscriptions, royal decrees (farmān), and endowment (waqf) texts constitute the largest official epigraphic evidence; tombstones, once documented systematically, will enhance our understanding of the popular trends in the epigraphy of this period.
Aside from recording the historical cicumstances of the construction—patron’s name, builder, calligrapher, date—foundation inscriptions tend to include proclamations that delineate the main theological and political orientation of the Safavid state, above all Twelver Shiʿism, declared by Shah Esmāʿīl I (907-30/1501-24, q.v.) as the state religion.
Several trends in the epigraphy of this period are already present in the earliest example of a full epigraphic program on a major Safavid building, namely the mausoleum of Hārūn-e welāyat in Isfahan (Plate V), built during the reign of Esmāʿīl I in 918/1513 (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 360-69). The Arabic foundation inscription, written in ṯolṯ and placed over the tomb entrance, includes appropriately enough a Hadith mentioning Aaron (Hārūn) and states Esmāʿīl’s claim of descent from ʿAlī. Esmāʿīl’s reign as a caliphate and his role as “the friend of God” (wālī lewāʾ al-welāya) and as a warrior in the cause of God (al-ḡāzī al-mojāhed fī sabīl Allāh) have been interpreted as deliberate affronts to the Sunni Ottoman usurpation of such titles (Hillenbrand, 1986, p. 762; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 361). Moreover, the concepts of welāya and ḵelāfa were essential for the legitimization of the rule of the Safavid shahs especially in constructing genealogical links to the Imams in early Safavid historiography (Quinn, pp. 76-90). Above this inscription are tile panels with blessings on the čahārdah maʿṣūm (q.v.) reinforcing the Shiʿite theme of the epigraphic ensemble, and a common epigraphic feature of the majority of religious buildings of this later period.
Less esoteric than the epigraphic program at Hārūn-e welāyat is the political propaganda routinely included in later inscriptions. For a brief period the phrase “in the caliphate of . . .” (dar zamān-e ḵelāfat-e; fī ayyām ḵelāfa) continued to be included, albeit infrequently, in some inscriptions added in Ṭahmāsb’s time (930-84/1524-76) to buildings as prominent as the Masjed-e Jomʿa of Isfahan or as small as the Ḏu’l-faqār mosque in the bāzār of Isfahan (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 92, 384).
Equally pointed in message is the expression of Shiʿite sentiment in earlier Safavid inscriptions. During the reign of Shah Ṭahmāsb, an elaborately worded Arabic inscription on the northern ayvān of the old courtyard at the shrine of Fāṭema Maʿṣūma in Qom declares Ṭahmāsb, among other honorifics, “the successor to the pure and infallible Imams” (Modarresī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, I, p. 76). Shah ʿAbbās I’s oft-repeated personal devotion to ʿAlī is expressed in the clearest terms on the portal inscription at the small mosque known as Masjed-e sofračī in Isfahan, where he is called the “loyal slave (@golām be-eḵlāsá) of the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb” (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 475).
Some of the tenor of the message was preserved in the 17th century. Thus the phrase “the propagator of the faith of the infallible Imams” (morawwej maḏhab al-aʾemma al-maʿṣūmīn), or “the twelve Imams” (morawwej maḏhab al-aʾemma al-aṯnā ʿašar), became standard in foundation inscriptions of many religious buildings. The first variant of the phrase is embedded in an elaborate Arabic inscription dated 1012/1603 at the entrance to the mosque of Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh in Isfahan (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 402) while the second version is found on an inscription also from the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I at the shrine of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn in Ardabīl (Dībāj, p. 64). The formulaic expression of Shiʿite devotion was preserved even as Persian increasingly replaced Arabic in foundation inscriptions. At the madrasa of Āqā Kāfūr in Isfahan Shah ʿAbbās II (1052-77/1642-66) is described in Persian as the “propagator of the rightful faith of their holiness the infallible Imams” (morawwej-e maḏhab-e beḥaqq-e ḥażarāt-e aʾemma-ye maʿṣūmīn; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 606).
Shiʿite iconography also provided fertile grounds for a thematic and visual unity in the epigraphic system of the later period. The most common passage to be found is the Prophet’s saying: “I am the city of knowledge and ʿAlī is its gate” (ana madīnat al-ʿelm wa ʿAlī bābohā). Isolated in a cartouche or fitted within a larger text, the iconographic subtlety of the saying is made evident by its placement above the entrance portals and on the doors of religious buildings.
In the earliest prominent example of its use in the Hārūn-e welāyat, “ʿAlī [is] the gate” may also be a eulogy of Shah Esmāʿīl who, in some of his own verses, had compared himself to the first Shiʿite Imam (Hillenbrand, p. 763; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 368; Babayan, p. 36). Such esoteric meanings found greater currency in decorative arts, as discussed below, than in monumental epigraphy, which quickly tended towards a more conventional use of the passage in a wide range of buildings from the prominent entrance portal of Shah ʿAbbās I’s congregational Masjed-e Shah in Isfahan to a late Qajar addition to the shrine of Fāṭema Maʿṣūma at Qom to the small neighborhood Raḥīm Ḵān mosque in Isfahan from the reign of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah (1264-1313/1848-96; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 430, 797; Modarresī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, I, p. 108).
Persian poetry as appropriated in Safavid and later epigraphy epitomizes this taste for an intricately layered iconography in which the functional and the literary elements are thematically unified. Cisterns, ablution basins, and doors offer some of the most sophisticated examples of the Safavid predilection for such iconographic constructs. At a cistern built in 1055/1645 by the Safavid vizier Sārū Taqī at the eastern corner of the courtyard of the madrasa of Dār-al-šefā in Qom, two quatrains in Persian are placed above the entrance to the subterranean water tank (Modarresī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, II, pp. 140-41). The first two verses dedicate the cistern to the memory of Imam Ḥosayn b. ʿAlī, who was martyred in the desert of Karbalā still thirsting for water. The Shiʿite sentiment of the theme is further heightened by the curse on Yazīd, the Omayyad caliph responsible for the martyrdom of Ḥosayn and his followers, and the curse on Yazīd’s tomb included as the chronogram in the quatrain.
Persian poems on a pair of silver doors ordered by Shah Ṣafī I in 1046/1636 for Masjed-e Šāh compare the Isfahan mosque with Masjid-al-Ḥarām in Mecca adding eulogies of Ṣafī as the great sovereign of the age, who shall for his angel-like nature effortlessly attain entry into Mecca through these doors (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 433-34; Allen, p. 130). The metaphor of the door as the gate opening Kaʿba onto Isfahan (šod dar-e Kaʿba dar Ṣefāhān bāz) makes up the chronogram in the last hemistich.
The great currency of Persian poetry in later epigraphy can be documented in a wide range of buildings from the beginning of the 16th century through the end of the Qajar period. The earliest manifestations of this trend are often limited to a few verses; either giving some historical information as, for instance, the names of the patron and the architect (e.g., Hārūn-e welāyat; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 361) or evoking an image appropriate to the context as in the case of the Hadith about Imam ʿAlī being the gate to the city of knowledge on the door of Masjed-e Ḏu’l-faqār in Isfahan (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 384), or even more ornately executed on the silver facings of the doors to the Madrasa-ye čahār-bāḡ (Allen, pp. 130-32).
Although Persian verses were increasingly included in Timurid buildings, it was in the Safavid period when inscriptions of Persian poetry became an essential component of the architectural setting. In that capacity, poetry is employed to decorate, to describe, and to communicate the meaning of the architecture. Verses attributed to Ḥāfeẓ, written in nastaʿlīq and enclosed in cartouches, celebrate the peaceful pleasures of life in a late 16th century mansion in Nāʾīn (Gropp and Najmabadi, pp. 194-95). They are also made to convey the theme of the painted scenes on the walls above even though the depicted stories derive from the works of other poets (e.g., Neẓāmī Ganjavī) rather than Ḥāfeẓ. According to Qāżī Aḥmad (ed. Minorsky, p. 143), @gazals by Ḥāfeẓ and Ḥosām-al-Dīn Maddāḥ adorned the ayvān and the portals of the Čehel Sotūn in Qazvīn.
It is, in fact, rare to find classical poetry in monumental epigraphy. More common is poetry composed specifically for a building. Characteristically, these poems lavish praise on the royal patron, on the Prophet and the Imams, and they describe the circumstances of founding, the component parts of the building, and its meaning. At the palace of Čehel Sotūn (q.v.) in Isfahan, thirty couplets report the event of a fire in 1118/1706 and the subsequent repairs of the building on the order of Shah Solṭān-Ḥosayn (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 572-74). Eulogies for the king are followed by a series of metaphorical and direct references to precise parts of the building that were repaired and embellished at the time of the inscription. The contemporary inscriptions at Madrasa-ye čahār bāḡ in Isfahan contain an unusually large number of panegyrics interspersed with metaphoric references to the architecture composed in fanciful Persian verse (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 685-722).
The significance of Persian poetry in monumental epigraphic programs, on the rise since the Timurids, reaches its zenith in the Qajar period. The Qajar additions and repairs to famous shrines such as the shrine of Fāṭema Maʿṣūma in Qom occasioned an impressive outpouring of versified Persian inscriptions (Modarresī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, I, pp. 48-111). Not only is there an overwhelming quantitative presence but poetry is made visually more prominent and legible. Previously, poetry tended to be contained either in panels often, by necessity, set in flat side walls of ayvāns, or was written in a continuous band. Qajar designers opted instead for superposed pairs of cartouches each containing a verse (Hillenbrand, 1983, p. 358). This visually propitious organization of paired, ornately framed distichs is best exemplified on the entrance portals of two Qajar mosques: the exquisite Rokn-al-Molk mosque in Isfahan (Plate VI; Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 805-21), and the mosque of Āqā Bozorg in Kāšān (Narāqī, pp. 254-62; Hillenbrand, 1983, fig. 8).
Note should also be made of a rare and curious stone tablet with twenty four couplets composed in Turkish and installed at the inner face of the mountainside that formed a natural fortification at Kalāt-e Nāderī, the stronghold briefly occupied by Nāder Shah (Ḵosravī, pp. 55-58). The poem lavishes praise on the Creator, the Prophet, the Imams, and above all on Nāder Shah (r. 1148-60/1736-47) but seems to have been left unfinished like the only major building at this site.
Other important categories of inscriptions in Persian are royal decrees and endowment texts. Both are found in large numbers in religious buildings: Ṭahmāsb’s decree imposing bans on theologically unlawful activities in the city of Ardabīl placed prominently at the main entrance into the shrine of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn (Dībāj, pp. 68-69); decrees issued by ʿAbbās I, Fatḥ-ʿAlīšāh Qājār and Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah Qājār concerning tax and tariff exemptions installed in the Masjed-e Šāh in Isfahan (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 444-46, 458-60); and decrees in verse issued by Shah Ṭahmāsb, Shah ʿAbbās I, etc. in Masjed-e Meydān in Kāšān (Narāqī, pp. 211-34). Tombstones also form an important category of epigraphic evidence but any characterization of the period’s funerary inscriptions will require a larger and more systematically organized data than is currently available.
From the Safavid period onwards, inscriptions in Persian, prose or poetry, are almost invariably written in nastaʿlīq in contradistinction to the overwhelming preference for ṯolṯ for Arabic texts, be they foundation inscriptions, koranic passages, or, rarely, a poem in Arabic as in Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh mosque (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, p. 415). In buildings, inscriptions in ṯolṯ were often written in two rows, the upper one woven through the elongated ends of the letters below. Nastaʿlīq, on the other hand, was inscribed within ample space to enhance its cursive elegance. If the inscription was in tile, it was most often in white against a dark-blue ground.
Some of the greatest masters of calligraphy were employed to design the monumental inscriptions of the major buildings of this period. ʿAlī-Reżā ʿAbbāsī, ʿAbd-al-Bāqī Tabrīzī (qq.v.), Moḥammad-Reżā Emāmī (Plate VII), Moḥammad-Ṣāleḥ, and ʿAbd-al-Raḥīm Jazāyerī are among the most frequently encountered names in Safavid buildings.
A survey of Safavid epigraphy is incomplete without at least a brief mention of Armenian inscriptions still extant in the churches of New Julfa in Isfahan (Honarfar, Eṣfahān, pp. 505-21; Carswell, pp. 32, 62). The inscriptions may be carved in stone or painted, mostly framed in square tablets. They contain the name of the patron, the date of the foundation, repairs, or additions. A distinct feature of the Armenian epigraphic texts is the inclusion of the names of other family members, male and female, and invocations for blessings on the patron and his clan.
Inscriptions on objects. Epigraphy in the decorative arts of this period is largely confined to metalwork and textiles. With the exception of Melikian-Chirvani’s systematic studies on metalwork, most other epigraphic evidence for objects in this period is scattered and must be extracted from entries in museum and exhibition catalogues.
In metalwork, as in monumental inscriptions, the conspicuous presence of Persian poetry and Shiʿite invocations marks the principal change in taste from the earlier period when koranic and Hadith quotations, maxims, and prayers all in Arabic were favored. Arabic is still the preferred language for dates and signatures as well as a new category of prayers in which God’s blessings are called upon the čahārdah maʿṣūm or the imams. There is also an Arabic poem which invites the believers to place their faith in Imam ʿAlī’s welāya and his power to deliver them from distress. Both these invocations appear first in a brass inkwell dated 919/1513 (Melikian-Chirvani, 1982, pp. 19, 282-83), notable for being exactly contemporary with the Shiʿite inscriptions at Hārūn-e welāyat.
Shiʿite militancy of the early Safavid phrase, however, did not supplant the Persian predilection for mystical poetry, a legacy of an earlier age, which became the quintessential Safavid epigraphic text in metalwork (Melikian-Chirvani, 1974, p. 544). Mysticism (ʿerfān, q.v.) and the cult of Imam ʿAlī were effortlessly wedded together in poems that graced metal objects ranging from wine bowls to dervish’s bowls (kaškūl). Sufi-inspired poetry by contemporary authors, such as Ahlī Toršīzī and ʿAbd-Allāh Hātefī (for examples see, Melikian-Chirvani, 1974, pp. 556-57; idem, 1982, p. 331) appear with the same frequency as mystical verses by the classical poets such as Ḥāfeẓ, Saʿdī, and Jāmī.
Poems often make references to the function of the object on which they appear. Metaphoric evocations of mystical concepts, as for example the moth consumed by the burning candle, as the inscription on candlesticks and torch-stands, or the reflection of the beloved for mirrors, are not new. The novelty of the Safavid epigraphy in portable arts lies in the complex layering of meanings and mental images. On a bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum, for example, a poem with mystical and ʿAlī worship implications (from a sāqī-nāma by Moḥammad Ṣūfī Māzandarānī) asks the cupbearer, by invoking ʿAlī (Sāqī-e Kawṯar), to pour a cup of wine (Melikian-Chirvani, 1982, pp. 329-30).
Inscriptions in textiles offer equally complex iconographic constructions. Religious verses and especially Shiʿite invocations in a variety of cursive scripts decorate tomb cloths. The verses tend to be contained within cartouches and written in moṯannā style, that is, each verse is matched symmetrically on the other side of a central dividing line with its own mirror image (for an example see Welch, 1979, pp. 150-51). The repetition of such invocations, possible in textiles as an integral aspect of weaving itself, implies ritual incantations particularly appropriate for tomb cloths.
With textiles there is an additional element of literary refinement which derives from the fact that Persian poetry borrows heavily from the terminology of the textile industry (Clinton, pp. 7-11). An eloquent convention in Persian poetry, for instance, is the comparison between the composing of a poem and the weaving of robes. In Safavid textiles, the choice of the poetry woven as inscription into textiles suggests a remarkable literary and iconographic unity. A love poem woven into a figural textile observes the extraordinary beauty of the fabric as though its threads were spun from the soul and likens the beauty of the beloved in body and soul to that of the textile (Plate VIII; Bier, pp. 184-85). Thus the epigraphic message succeeds in conveying multiple layers of meaning in a single stroke: it celebrates mystical and temporal love as well as the visually beautiful and technically accomplished textile itself. In this case, images of lovers and hunters further enhances the potency of the epigraphic elements of composition, in turn, written in the elegant nastaʿlīq, the script commonly found in these textiles.
Bibliography (for cited works not given in detail, see “Short References”): Ī. Afšār, Yādegārhā-ye Yazd, 2 vols. in 3, Tehran, 1348-54 Š./1969-75. J. W. Allen, “Silver Door Facings of the Safavid Period,” Iran 33, 1995, pp. 123-37 and pls. XIV-XXII. K. Babayan, “The Waning of the Qizilbash: The Spiritual and the Temporal in Seventeenth-Century Iran,” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1993. M.-E. Bāstānī Pārīzī, Rāhnemā-ye āṯār-e tārīḵī-e Kermān, Tehran, 1335 Š./1956. C. Bier, ed., Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran, 16th-19th Centuries, Washington, D.C., 1987. J. Carswell, New Julfa: The Armenian Churches and Other Buildings, Oxford, 1968. J. W. Clinton, “Image and Metaphor” in C. Bier, ed., Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran, 16th-19th Centuries, Washington, D.C., 1987, pp. 7-11. E. Dībāj, Rāhnemā-ye āṯār-e tārīḵī-e Āḏarbāyjān-e šarqī wa Āḏarbāyjān-e ḡarbī, Tabrīz, 1343 Š./1964. Y. Ḏokāʾ, Tārīḵča-ye sāktemānhā-ye Arg-e salṭanatī-e Tehrān wa rāhnemā-ye Kāḵ-e golestān, Tehran, 1349 Š./1970. A. Eqtedārī, Dīār-e šahrīārān: Āṯār wa banāhā-ye tārīḵī-e Ḵūzestān, 2 vols., Tehran, 1353-54 Š./1975-76. E. Galdieri, Eṣfahān: ʿĀlī Qāpū, An Architectural Survey, Rome, 1979. A. Godard, “Iṣfahān,” Athār-é Īrān 2, 1937. G. Gropp and S. Nadjmabadi, “Ein Gedicht von Hafez in einem Safavidenpalast,” AMI 2, 1969, pp. 193-96. R. Hillenbrand, “The Role of Tradition in Qajar Religious Architecture” in E. Bosworth and C. Hillenbrand, eds., Qajar Iran: Political, Social and Cultural Change 1800-1925, Edinburgh, 1983, pp. 352-82. Idem, “Safavid Architecture” in Camb. Hist. Iran VI, pp, 759-842. B. Jāmeʿī, Negāh-ī be āṯār wa abnīa-ye tārīḵī-e Ardabīl, Tehran, 1372 Š./1993. ʿA.-ʿA. Kārang, Āṯār-e bāstānī-e Āḏarbāyjān. Āṯār wa abnīa-ye tārīḵī-e šahrestān-e Tabrīz, Tehran, 1351 Š./1972. B. Karīmī, Rāhnemā-ye āṯār-e tārīḵī-e Šīrāz, Tehran, 1327 Š./1948. M.-R. Ḵosravī, Kalāt-e nāderī, Mašhad, 1367 Š./1988. A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, “Safavid Metalwork: A Study in Continuity,” Iranian Studies 7, 1974, pp. 543-85. Idem, Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World, 8th-18th Centuries, London, 1982. Ḥ. Modarresī Ṭabāṭabāʾī, Torbat-e pākān, Qom, 2335 (=1355) Š./1976. M. A. Moḵleṣī, Fehrest-e banāhā-ye tārīḵī-e Āḏarbāyjān-e šarqī, Tehran, 1371 Š./1992. A. H. Morton, “The Ardabīl Shrine in the Reign of Shāh Ṭahmāsp I (Introduction),” Iran 12, 1974, pp. 31-64. Idem, “The Ardabīl Shrine in the Reign of Shāh Ṭahmāsp I (Concluded),” Iran 13, 1975, pp. 39-58. M.-T. Moṣṭafawī, Āstāna-ye ḥażrat-e ʿAbd-al-ʿAẓīm, Tehran, 1330 Š./1951. Idem, Eqlīm-e Pārs, Tehran, 1343 Š./1964. Idem, Ātār-e tārīḵī-e Ṭehrān I: Amāken-e motabarreka, ed. M. H. Moḥaddeṯ, Tehran, 1361 Š./1982. A. Moʾtamen, Rāhnemā-ye tārīḵī-e Āstān-e qods-e rażawī, Tehran, 1349 Š./1970. A. Mowlavī, Āṯār-e bāstānī-e Ḵorāsān I, Mašhad, 1354 Š./1975. Ḥ. Narāqī, Āṯār-e tārīḵī-e šahrestānhā-ye Kāšān wa Naṭanz, Tehran, 1348 Š./1969. D. Pickett, “Inscriptions by Muḥammad Riḍā al-Imāmī,” Iran 22, 1984, pp. 91-102. S. A. Quinn, “Historical Writing During the Reign of Shâh ʿAbbās I,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1993. A. Rafīʿī Mehrābādī, Āṯār-e mellī-e Eṣfahān, Tehran, 1352 Š./1973. M. Sotūda, Az Āstārā tā Estārbād, 7 vols., Tehran, 1349-66 Š./1970-87. P. Varjāvand, Sarzamīn-e Qazvīn, Tehran, 1349 Š./1970. A. Welch, Shah ‘Abbas and the Arts of Isfahan, New York, 1973. Idem, Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World, New York, 1979. D. Wilber, The Masjid-i ʿAtiq of Shiraz, Shiraz, 1972.
(SUSSAN BABAIE)
v. IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
The systematic survey and study of Perso-Arabic epigraphy of the Indian subcontinent is not even half a century old. Studies of the Indian region, also of recent origin, have been done by the Perso-Arabic section of the Epigraphy Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India. Prior chance finding by Survey and other officials were studied by Henry Blochmann (d. 1878), then teaching at Calcutta, and after his death by Paul Horn. A few local scholars, who were directly or indirectly involved with the compilation of district gazetteers or other writings also published a number of works in Urdu or Persian on the history of towns and their inscriptions (for details see Ancient India, pp. 224-32 and annual reports of the archaeological departments of native Indian states, particularly Gwalior and Hyderabad [Deccan]; inscriptions of Delhi were published in the List of . . . Monuments; see also Yazdani, Nazim).
These epigraphs as a rule date from the last decade of the 12th century, when permanent Muslim rule was established in northern India, and a short time later elsewhere. Under the Arab occupation of Sind or the later Ghaznavid occupation of the northwestern region, including Punjab and coastal strips of Gujarat, Konkan, Malabar, and Coromandal, early Muslim settlers quite likely had left such records. No trace of them, however, has been found. The so-called first and second century Hijra (7th and 8th centuries) epigraphs reported at Kovelam near Madras and Kollam in Malabar (now part of Kerala) either no longer exist or have been incorrectly read. About a dozen early records, all in Arabic, have been found in Sind and frontier provinces of Pakistan, and in Gujarat and Haryana states of India (Pakistan Archaeology 3, 1966, pls. XXV-XXXIX; Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (hereafter EIM), 1921-22, pl. XIIa; ibid., 1925-26, pl. XIb; Epigraphia Indica II, 1894, p. 143 [not illustrated]; Annual Reports on Indian Epigraphy, 1963-64, no. 303 of App. D; idem, 1972-73, nos. 31-32 of App. D; Epigraphia Indica: Arabic and Persian Supplement, hereafter EI-APS, 1965, pls. I-IV). With most parts of the subcontinent gradually coming under Muslim occupation, the number of these epigraphs increased. They covered almost the entire subcontinent and represented all imperial, provincial, or minor rulers during almost three-fourth of the second millennium.
With an exception or two, the language of these epigraphs remained Arabic for about half a century. Toward the close of the 13th century, the Persian state language was widely used in epigraphs. Under the Mughals (1526-1858), Persian replaced Arabic almost throughout the region. Also after the British established power, Persian remained the medium of epigraphical text. Even after more than four decades of independence, Persian continues to hold its sway. Urdu, the unofficial lingua franca until independence, now gains somewhat more currency, particularly in outlying (mofaṣṣal) areas.
A striking aspect of these epigraphs is that Persian has remained totally foreign to the southwestern coastal area, the present Indian state of Kerala. The case is more or less the same in the southeastern and southernmost strip comprising the present Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which during a brief spell of Muslim authority there, in the mid-14th century, under the Madura sultanate, and then under the Qoṭbšāhī rulers and the Mughals in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the semi-independent nawwābs of Karnataka, saw extensive use of Persian. Likewise, in easternmost Bengal the epigraphic language was almost exclusively Arabic until the Mughal period, when it was totally replaced by Persian. In Orissa and Assam, which effectively came under Muslim authority in the 17th century, Persian was the language of epigraphs. In westernmost Gujarat, one encounters a curious phenomenon: both prose and verse epigraphs of the Delhi sultanate period (1296-1406), are generally in Persian, but later replaced by Arabic under the Gujarat sultans (1406-1580). Persian records there are not, however, as rare as in Bengal. Again, under the Mughals Persian eased out Arabic, and under British rule it was in vogue. In the northern and central regions, under the Delhi sultanate and provincial kingdoms of Jaunpur, Malwa, etc., Persian made its appearance in the second half of the 13th century and was used more or less universally from the second half of the 14th century. In Deccan, too, Persian was employed by and large under the Bahmanids (1347-1518, q.v.), their five successor dynasties (16th-17th centuries), the Mughals, their governors ruling the greater part of the territory as Neẓāms of Hyderabad, and the petty chiefs or nawwābs of Bankapur, Kalyani, and Savnur in Karnataka and Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh.
These epigraphs, like their Indian counterparts in Sanskritic and Dravidian languages, are basically commemorative. They report events, including construction of religious edifices such as mosques and mausoleums; military structures such as forts, city-walls, gateways, and bastions; secular buildings such as palaces, mansions, pleasure-pavilions, and granaries; and public works such as tanks and cisterns, step-wells and wells, dams and embankments, caravanserais, or schools. Epigraphs communicated state administrative orders or edicts, regarding levy or remission of duties; ordered discontinuation of unauthorized imposts or practices introduced by local officials; and adjusted rates and prices of consumer goods. Epigraphs also announced deeds of endowment of property such as shops and gardens for various purposes, including proper upkeep of mosques, such charitable institutions as free kitchens (langar-e davāzdah emām), and such public works as public baths (ḥammām). They further indicated boundary-stones of kingdoms, direction-stones to well-known places in different direction from a road junction, and charted distances, etc. Unlike their Indian counterparts, they were inscribed on moveable objects such as guns, swords, daggers, shields, coats-of-mail, porcelain and metal plates, dishes, bowls, astrolabes and celestial globes, as well as precious stones such as gems. Copper-plate inscriptions in Persian, an important branch of Indian epigraphy, and in a way the counterparts of paper documents such as farmāns (q.v.), are no longer extant except for a few examples of a more recent date.
Most of these Perso-Arabic inscriptions are religious in nature. Epitaphs are found in greater numbers than mosque inscriptions. Next in order of quantity are epigraphs on forts, bastions, etc., epigraphs pertaining to public works and to charitable institutions; royal edicts, administrative orders, deeds of endowment, and the like; and miscellaneous epigraphs such as direction-stones, etc. Among inscriptions on moveable objects, those on weapons outnumber the rest.
Persian epigraphs are found both in prose and verse. But unlike their Indian counterparts, they are very brief, at times comprising one line in prose or one or two couplets. They mention only the purport of the record, construction of a structure by such and such a person, the death of a person and the like, on a particular day, month, and year. Often they omit day and month. At times, particularly in epigraphs erected under state patronage or by government officials, there is a reference to the king and the governor of the province, division, or locality. In the epigraphs of the Gujarat sultans and their collaterals, the Ḵānzāda chiefs of Nagaur in Rajastan, the full genealogy of the reigning king is given. The epigraphs containing administrative orders or deeds of endowment are, by their very nature, somewhat larger.
The year is usually given in the Hijra era, in words, until about the middle of the 15th century, and thereafter in Arabic numerals. From quite an early period, dates, with or without figures, were given in chronograms calculated according to the abjad (q.v.) system. Chronograms appear in much greater numbers in the 18th-20th centuries. Another era used in Indo-Persian epigraphs, and almost exclusively in some parts of Deccan, is the šohūr (lit., “months”) san, which is a solar adaptation of the Hijra calendar introduced in 741/1340 (for details see, Martin, pp. 81-106). In very few cases Vikrama Samvat (era of Hindu chronology) is also given. In one epigraph from north India the date is given in as many as ten eras (Annual Report, 1971-72, App. D, no. 201). Mughal inscriptions of Akbar and a very few of his successors are dated in the Elāhī era introduced by Akbar and based on Persian solar calendar. Such dating later gave way to the regnal year (san-e jolūs), which also became a regular feature in coins of Mughal emperor Jahāngīr (r. 1014-37/1605) and his successors. Use of the regnal year in Indo-Persian epigraphs, as in the Persian coin couplet legend, is generally believed to have come into vogue in the Mughal period. In fact, the Gujarat sultans used the regnal year before the advent of the Mughals in India (EI-APS, 1974, pp. 41-42).
From the literary point of view, the language of these epigraphs, unlike their Indian counterparts, is unexceptional. In many cases, the expression is plain or bereft of literary flavor, not to mention rhetorical artifice or embellishment. The language is occasionally clumsy or grammatically incorrect, but there are instances in which incomplete sentences render it difficult to make out the exact purport of the epigraph. Quite a few epigraphs of moderate to good length, however, are stylistically well composed. Among them are pre-Mughal records, the epigraph on the ʿAlāʾī Darvāza at Delhi, dated 710/1310, and some 14th- and 15th-century epigraphs at Bihar Sharif (Bihar), Debikot (West Bengal), Gogi (Karnataka), etc. Some epigraphs of the Mughal period, such as those on the Jāmeʿ mosques and red forts at Agra, Delhi, and Lahore are fairly long and afford specimens of fine Persian prose (J[R]ASB, 1973, p. 251; Epigraphia Indica II, p. 292; EIM, 1929-30, pp. 10-11, 1931-32, p. 6; EI-APS, 1951-1952, pp. 9-10; List of . . . Monuments I, p. 16). The epigraph on the Dīvān-e ḵāsṣ in the Delhi red fort is from the pen of the erudite and learned prime minister of Shah Jahān (1627-1658), Saʿd-Allāh Khan (Warit, fol. 387a).
Metrical epigraphs are found in good number, and the quality of composition is somewhat better. Apart from those found in small towns or villages of outlying areas which at times display utter disregard of prosody or idiom, there is a fairly large quantity of good poetical specimens. Many of the metrical epigraphs in northern and central India and Deccan date from the mid-14th century onward. The Deccan includes the present Marathawad region of Maharashtra and Bidar-Bijapur-Raichur districts of Karnataka, which were part of Neẓām’s dominions, and which contained such petty chiefdoms as Bankapur, Kalyani, Kurnool and Savanur. The quality of their verse is uneven or, in many cases, rather substandard. The records of Malwa sultans, quite a few of them appearing on step-wells, are in most cases in verse. The poetry is at times good and at times mediocre or bad (EIM, 1909-10, pp. 11-16, 19-22, 29; EI-APS, 1964, pp. 46, 50, 52-54, 56-60, 63, 65, 67, 70, 73-74, 77-78). The same may be said of 15th century Bahmanid inscriptions (ibid., pp. 22-23, 25, 27, 29-30, 32-33, 40; EIM, 1931-32, pp. 10-20), which is rather surprising in view of the close relations between the Bahmanid sultans, who claimed Iranian origin, and Persia, marked by matrimonial alliance with the progeny of the famous Kermān saint and poet Shah Neʿmat-Allāh Walī (d. 834/1430), whom the sultans held in high regard.
The epigraphs of the 16th-17th century ʿĀdelšāhī (924-1097/1518-1686, q.v.) and Qoṭbšāhī (924-1098 /1518-1687) rulers of Bijapur and Golkonda-Hyderabad, respectively, who also had close relations with Persia, furnish better poetry. Surprisingly, in the above-mentioned small chiefdoms, as in parts of Tamil Nadu under the nawwābs of Karnataka, a considerable number of fairly high quality records is found.
In the pre-Mughal Bengal, the absence of Persian epigraphs explains the lack of metrical epigraphs. The exceptions are the Persian epigraphs of Sekandar Shah (r. 759-92/1358-90), two of the many records of ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Ḥosayn Shah (r. 899-925/1493-1519), and about half a dozen of Šēršāh Sūrī (r. 1538-45) in mixed prose and verse. The 765/1363 inscription of Sekandar Shah is from Shah ʿAṭāʾs tomb at Dinajpur and contains prose and verse of a fairly high order along with an admixture of important-sounding Arabic titles. The Mughal epigraphs of Bengal, with the exception of Akbar’s early epigraphs in Arabic, are in Persian, mostly in fairly good verse.
In Gujarat, the quality of the pre-Mughal epigraph is, with exceptions, below average and at times mediocre. The epigraphs of the Mughal period contain good and at times fine verse. As in Deccan, the epigraphs of the petty principality of Cambay (now Khambhat), which contain chronogrammatic metrical obituary notices of members of the ruling family and other leading men, were composed by poets of no mean order. These inscriptions are perhaps not surprising as the Cambay nawwābs, of comparatively recent Persian origin, have to date maintained contacts with Persia. There has been an influx of prominent and learned men, including the descendants of the famous Safavid minister Ḵalīfa Solṭān, from Persia to Cambay. An Arabic epitaph at Cambay, dated 685/1287, of a Persian émigré with notable poetic talents, Zayn-al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Sālār Yazdī, contains one Persian ḡazal and two robāʿīs in highly mystical strain, furnishing a specimen of 13th-century Persian verse in Gujarat (EI-APS, 1961, pp. 20-21).
In the northern and northwestern part of the subcontinent, where a considerable number of epigraphs disappeared in the aftermath of partition of the country, epigraphs in verse were identified from the 14th century onward. Recently, a few metrical epitaphs of the 7th/13th century have been found at Bilram in Uttar Pradesh (Annual Report, 1966-67, App. D, nos. 249-50). The quality of verse in most of these epigraphs, as elsewhere, is uneven, but on the whole, above average. As usual, again, the epigraphs of the Mughal period furnish better specimens of verse than those of the pre-Mughal period. The former include epigraphs composed by known and well-known poets like Kāteb-al-Molk Dawrī and Mīr Moḥammad-Maʿṣūm Nāmī Bakkarī, who engraved epigraphs containing his own verses in excellent nastaʿlīq script (see CALLIGRAPHY) on pillars, minar-bases, and architraves, and on walls of mosques, tombs, temples, caravanserais, etc. His works appear at places in India, Afghanistan, and even Persia, where he went as the Mughal emperor Akbar’s envoy to Shah ʿAbbās I (q.v.). Other epigraphs of the Mughal period were composed by the poets Shaikh ʿAlī Ḥazīn, Mīr Ḡolām-ʿAlī Āzād Belgrāmī, Mīrzā Asad-Allāh Ḡāleb, the last Mughal emperor Bahādor Shah and others. A far greater number of metrical epigraphs were composed by lesser known poets or poets who are not known from any other source. Quite a few of them appear to be poets of no mean order, such as the composer of the epitaph of Yūsofī (d. 884/1479-80), which contain a couple of ḡazals and robāʿīs (Annual Reports, 1963-64, App. D, p. 305; Epigraphia Indica II, 1894, p. 139). Four mosque inscriptions of fairly high poetic content were composed by Moḥammad-Šarīf, whose taḵallosá (pen name) was Yomnī. He was a retainer of Mughal emperor Awrangzēb’s maternal uncle Šāyasta Khan (ibid., 1960-61, App. D, 132; 1965-66, App. D, p. 174; 1969-70, App. D, p. 204; 1971-72, App. D, pp. 167-68, 180). Dawrī and Yomnī were, like Nāmī, excellent nastaʿlīq calligraphers, a fact known from their records only. The well-known and outstanding nasḵ and ṯolṯ calligrapher of Akbar’s tomb and Taj Mahal at Agra, ʿAbd-al-Ḥaqq Šīrāzī, whose title was Amānat Khan, was also a poet of merit. This fact is known only from the inscription composed and designed by him and executed in faïence on the gateway of the sarāy he built in 1050/1640-41. The sarāy near Amritsar, in Punjab, was named after him, and continues to be called in government records, as Sarāy-e Amānat Khan (Begley, 1985b, pp. 283-89).
These epigraphs do not generally furnish the detailed historical information of their Indian counterparts. In the absence of history-writing tradition in ancient India, Indian epigraphs were chiefly intended to convey as much information as possible. In the medieval period, such information was available in works of history, travelogues, state archival material, endowment deeds, etc. Nevertheless, epigraphs are valuable and authentic, providing dates not vouchsafed even by a contemporary literary source, for the reconstruction of various aspects of history. They supply missing links in the chronology or succession lists of rulers or governors. As is well-known, the entire chronology and succession order of the Bengal sultans has been reconstructed only on evidence furnished by epigraphs. They also throw new light on events and people not recorded in literature. A large number of officials at different levels of state administration or holding positions in public life would have remained in obscurity but for epigraphs. In addition, epigraphs correct anachronisms, incongruity and confusing or contradictory narratives of historical works; furnish important information about the posting locations of petty and middle-level officials who are generally overlooked by imperial or provincial historians; and provide the chief, and in most cases the only, source for local village, division, or province level history. Even the names of three successive 14th-century Toghloqian governors of Bihar are known through epigraphs only.
Apart from political history, these epigraphs furnish valuable data for administrative as well as social and economic life of the period. They refer to abolition of taxes and levies unauthorized by central authority; or put an end to undesirable customs such as niputrik in certain parts of Karnataka, whereby the property of a person, without heirs, upon his death reverted to the state; prohibit the marriage tax levied on certain communities by local officials or forced labor by certain groups; terminate the practice of Mughal fiefholders who compelled local merchants to purchase the produce of their lands in lot; adjust rates of levies on different professional communities; provide tank or irrigation facilities to increase agricultural production; increase marketing facilities in remote rural areas by establishing weekly village-markets (peinths); and provide tax concessions for a limited period, etc. A few endowment deeds give an insight into the workings of a public bath (ḥammām), detailing items and amounts of expenditure. An interesting caravansary epigraph, inscribed in Surat, in Gujarat, the embarkation port for Ḥajj pilgrimage from the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, specifically forbids occupation of rooms by military personnel and prescribes the use of income from occupancy by merchants and bona fide travelers primarily for the proper upkeep of various facilities; it also decrees that savings, if any, are to be given to travelers to the holy cities in Arabia. A few epigraphs also give the cost of buildings, wage rates, price schedule of vegetables, etc. (EIM, 1915-16, pp. 38-39, 1917-18, pp. 52, 55-56, 1925-26, p. 23, 1933-34, Sup., pp. 10-12, 1937-38, p. 1; EI-APS, 1953-54, pp. 25-27, 1955-56, p. 78, 1962, pp. 63-64; Annual Report, 1958-59, App. D, no. 123, 1962-63, App. D nos. 8, 139, 1963-64, nos. 188-89, App. D, 253). Such records also have been found in the southern Indian and, to a lesser extent, in the western subcontinent.
These epigraphs are also a totally neglected but important source for the study of Persian language and literature in the subcontinent, particularly during the pre-Mughal period and, to a lesser extent, under the Mughal rule. Not less important is the indirect evidence they provide on the extent and patterns of Indo-Persian relations at different times in different regions. Since the 12th and 13th centuries, when Persian merchant families from Bam, in Kermān (EI-APS, 1961, pp. 5, 9), settled in India, down to more recent times, there has been a steady flow of men from many walks of life from Persia to India. For example, at Karhad in Satara district of Maharashtra, dozens of Persian epitaphs of men and women from different parts of that country have been found (Annual Report, 1963-64, App. D, nos. 212-40). A record referring to the footprint of Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb (q.v.) has also been found there (EI-APS, 1965-66, App. D, no. 216).
No less important are these epigraphs for the study of Islamic art and architecture. They provide authentic dates of a variety of monuments, data essential to determine the origin and development of architectural styles in different regions at different periods (see further Desai, pp. 251-56). They also provide useful material on the history of Islamic calligraphic art in India, especially during the pre-Mughal period, whence calligraphic specimens in other media are not available. The large number of epigraphs spread over a vast region present a rich variety of high-quality calligraphic styles, from plain and ornamental kūfī of early inscriptions to nastaʿlīq of the modern epigraphs. Some early Delhi sultanate inscriptions in northern India present an excellent quality of monumental nasḵ and ṯolṯ, remarkable for elegance coupled with vigor and boldness and sometimes appearing against floral background. Their visual effect is enhanced by ornamental devices such as the peculiar shape of the letter kāf with its cross-drawn upper tail. In excellent ṯolṯ inscriptions of this period the vertical strokes of letters ending in slanting but blunt upper ends and pointed tapering or slightly inclined lower ends have a rhythmic harmony with the fine contour and proportion of its not-so-oval curves (EIM, 1911-12, pls. III, VIa, VIIIa-b, XIIIa, XVIa, 1913-14, pl. IVb; EI-APS, 1966, pls. Ib, VIa).
This bold monumental style did not conform to the rules of penmanship but was marked by variations and flourishes. The style was influenced by the period, locality, and subject above all, to the ingenuity and creativity of the artist. For example, in Bengal and Bihar in the east and in Gujarat in the west, a highly ornamental monumental calligraphy was developed which does not conform to either ṯolṯ or nask¨. In the earlier phase, it is akin to both, bearing a strong resemblance to the manuscript calligraphic style of the 9th-10th/15th-16th century termed bahār. This style is almost nask¨ in structure, with strokes thicker toward the left and terminating into blunt or solid points (e.g., Epigraphia Indica II, pl. facing p. 292; EI-APS V, 1964, C; Inscriptions of Bengal 29, fig. 18; Indo-Iranica, Calcutta, September-December 1976, pls. III-V). The style did not become popular and was soon replaced by a typical calligraphic style. Free from the conventional rules, the latter style combines features of ṯolṯ, reqāʿ, etc. (see CALLIGRAPHY). Its key note is a highly refined delicacy coupled with ornamental devices and decorative flourishes (EIM, 1917-18, pls. VIb, XII; EI-APS, 1955-56, pls. IIa-b, IIe, 1961, pls. VIb, VIIa-b, VIIIa-b, IXa-b, Xa-c).
This decorative style received a new design and dimension from the hands of the sensitive artists of Bengal proper, who created a highly stylistic form of ornamental ṭoḡrā. Their skillful and ingenuous manipulation of vertical upward strokes and horizontally curved letters produced a superb picturesque effect. This style, generally called the Bow-and-Arrow variety of Bengal, is unique in the entire range of Islamic monumental calligraphy. The calligraphers of Bengal have effectively drawn on hard stones of amazing size, as large as 3.5 by .6 m in one case (EI-APS, 1955-56, pl. IVb), to such pictorial forms as a row of bows with strung arrows pointing upwards, a line of earthen lamps aflame, birds flying in mid-air, ducks gliding majestically on water with their heads thrust out, serpents with raised hoods, railing of arches, etc. In some epigraphs, short and pointed letters are more pronounced in their straightness than roundness: for example, the loops of the middle, initial, or final ʿayn or final hā are fashioned into a colorful trefoil or almond-shaped eye (EI-APS, 1955-56, pls. IIIc, IVb-c, VIIa, VIIc; 1B, figs. 21, 23, 26-27, 35-36, 38, 46, 49).
The typical calligraphic styles mentioned above occurred also at Gujarat and, within a much shorter time span and smaller space, in Kandes and Rajastan. There are some exquisite specimens to be found there, such as the epigraph with a motif of a passing army with raised banners or of rope-knots intervening, like halters, in the line of flags (EIM, 1922-23, pls. VIIa-c). They undeniably lack, however, the highly artistic form and variety of their Bengal counterparts. Gujarat has its share of unique calligraphic styles in marble, arch-shaped epitaphs of the 7th-8th/13th-14th centuries. Most are found in coastal towns but some also appear in land. Fashioned after a highly standardized pattern of arched, square, or rectangular panels, their singularly exquisite calligraphy is basically nasḵ or ṯolṯ, with reqāʿ-like flourishes and ornamental kūfī in Besmela panels (EI-APS, 1961, pls. XVII, XIX, 1970, pls. IIc, Va, VIb, VIIb, 1971, pp. 3-4 and pls. IVa, Xb, XIIb, XIVb).
A similarly highly standardized and perfect pattern of calligraphy is found in the 11th/17th-century epitaphs of Hyderabad, mostly of Persian emigrant officials of the Qoṭbšāhī rulers and learned men. The style of writing of these is excellent ṯolṯ with ṭoḡrā flourishes.
During the Mughal period, nastaʿlīq was almost universally employed as the calligraphic medium. By its very formative elements, the perfectly graceful oval nastaʿlīq largely precludes distinctive varieties, except for some highly decorative picturesque forms such as golzār, māhī, ṭāwūs, maʿkūs, etc. These forms are restricted to paper-panel specimens popularly called waṣlī and never used in manuscript or monumental calligraphy. The exception is maʿkūs, of which quite a few specimens have been found (EI-APS, 1951-52, XIXa-b; Annual Report, 1967-68, App. D, nos. 23, 28, 38-39, 1968-69, App. D, nos. 91-92, 319, 324). Ṭoḡrā portraits of lions appear on some Deccan forts, and similar figures of a parrot and tiger, even a human face, occur in epigraphs (EIM, 1935-36, pl. XXXI; Annual Report, 1960-61, App. D, no. 121, 1967-68, App. D, no. 82). A large number of inscriptions from the 10th/16th century onward, throughout the subcontinent, including those of Mughal emperor Jahāngīr executed against a floral background, provide outstanding Persian specimens of this style. A few epigraphs of Shah Jahān’s time, such as those at Agra, Ajmer, and Delhi are written in excellent nasḵ and ṯolṯ by master calligraphers. Likewise, koranic inscriptions continued to be executed in nasḵ or ṯolṯ. Even in more recent times, the nastaʿlīq calligraphy of epigraphs is, on the whole, of a high order.
While a majority of the outstanding specimens of monumental calligraphy are unsigned, a few contain the names of master-artists who made their valuable contributions to this branch of Islamic art: to name only a few, most of them Persian by birth or origin, Moḡīṯ-al-Qārī Sīrāzī, Abū Ṭāleb Ḥosaynī Zarrīn-qalam, ʿAbd-al-Ḥaqq Šīrāzī entitled Amānat Khan, Ḵalaf Tabrīzī, Jalāl-al-Dīn Faḵḵār Šīrāzī, Moḥammad-Amīn Mašhadī, Moḥammad-Ṣāleḥ Baḥrānī, ʿArab Sīrāzī, and his son Esmāʿīl. We also have at least one exquisite ṯolṯ epigraph penned by a Bahmanid king and another by a Qoṭbšāhī nobleman (EIM, 1925-26, pl. VIII, 1935-36, pl. XXXIX).
The study of Perso-Arabic epigraphs of the subcontinent has not received adequate attention of scholars, evidently because other historical sources were available to them. Sporadic attempts were made during the past 200 years to publish photographic reproductions of some epigraphs, as they came to the attention of officials of the Archaeological Survey of India. Competent scholars such as Henry Blochmann of Calcutta (1838-78) and Paul Horn of Vienna published such findings in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and Epigraphia Indica. Other scholars who published a sizable number of epigraphs include M. ʿAbd-Allāh Čaḡatāʾī of Lahore, S. A. A. Belgrāmī of Hyderabad, Mawlawī Šams-al-Dīn Aḥmad of Rajshahi (Pakistan), B. D. Verma of Poona, Qīām-al-Dīn of Patna, and Subaš Parihar.
At the turn of the present century the Archaeological Survey began publishing a biennial supplement to its journal of Sanskritic and Dravidian inscriptions, the Epigraphia Indica. The issue of 1907-8 was edited by (later Sir) Denison Ross (1871-1940). The next issue was published under the new title EIM. The issues of 1909-10 and 1911-12 were edited by J. Horovitz, Professor of Arabic at Mohamedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh and Government Epigraphist for Muslim Inscriptions. Horovitz also compiled and published in the 1909-10 issue a list of 1,249 published Muslim inscriptions of India along with a scholarly introduction (pp. 30-144). Fourteen subsequent issues and one supplement were edited by (late Dr.) Ḡolām Yazdānī, Director of Archaeology of H. E. H. Neẓām’s Dominions. World War II delayed the publication of the next issue, compiled by Yazdānī. After about a decade it appeared as the 1949-50 issue under the editorship of Moḥammad Ašraf Ḥosayn, Assistant Superintendent for Epigraphy. V. S. Bendre compiled a chronological list of inscriptions published in this series, with a brief description of their contents and an exhaustive introduction covering all aspects of epigraphical research. His work was published in Bombay around 1944.
With the 1951-52 issue, the series was renamed as EI-APS. It became an annual after its 1959-60 issue. Between 1953 and 1983 twenty issues of larger format were published under the editorship of Z. A. Desai. Under him systematic collection of epigraphs from various parts of the country also began. The epigraphs are listed regularly under separate indices for Persian and Arabic inscriptions in the Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy, which began publication in 1883 as the Annual Report of the Government Epigraphist, Madras.
In Pakistan and Bangladesh, no systematic work is undertaken in this field, although the government has created an office for this purpose. Individual scholars, such as the late Ḥosām-al-Dīn Rāšedī, the late Mawlawī Šams-al-Dīn Aḥmad, Mohammad Abdul Ghafur, and Abdul Karim, have published a considerable number of epigraphs.
Bibliography: The series Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (EIM), and its 1909-10 issue (pp. 35-37), gives titles of books and journals in which texts of Perso-Arabic inscriptions were published. All issues of Epigraphia Indica Arabic and Persian Supplement (EI-APS, the last published for 1975). Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy, from 1952-53 onward (the last published in 1982-83). For the journals in which epigraphs have been published, consult relevant portions in J. D. Pearson, Index Islamicus; it also contains book notices.
M. Abdul Ghafur, Calligraphers of Thatta, Karachi, 1978. Abdul Karim, Inscriptions of Bengal V, Dacca, 1993. S. Abdur Rahim, List of Muhammadan and Hindu Monuments in Delhi Province, 4 vols., Calcutta, 1916-22. M. B. Aḥmad, Waqeʿāt-e-mamlakat-e-Bījāpūr, 3 vols., Agra, 1915, vols II-III. Idem, Waqeʿāt-e dār-al-ḥokūmat-e Dehlī, Agra, 1919; repr. Delhi, 1990. M. S. Ahmad, Inscriptions of Bengal IV, Rajshahi, 1960. Q. Ahmad, A Corpus of Arabic and Persian Inscriptions of Bihar, Patna, 1973. Ancient India 9, 1953 (1961), pp. 224-32. W. E. Begley, Monumental Islamic Calligraphy from India, Villa Park, Ill., 1985a (for calligraphic varieties mentioned in the text).
Idem, “A Mughal Caravansari Built and Inscribed by Amānat Khan, Calligrapher of the Taj Mahal” in F. M. Asher and G. D. Gai, eds., Indian Epigraphy, New Delhi, 1985b. S. A. Asgar Belgrami, The Landmarks of the Deccan, Hyderabad, 1927; Urdu version as Maʾāṯer-e Dakan, Karachi, 1978. M. A. Chaghatai, Muslim Monuments of Ahmadabad through Their Inscriptions, Poona, 1942. K. E. C. Creswell, A Bibliography of Architectures, Arts and Crafts of Islam, Cairo, 1961; Suppl., Cairo, 1973. Z. A. Desai, “Islamic Inscriptions: Their Bearing on Monuments” in F. M. Asher and G. D. Gai, eds., Indian Epigraphy, New Delhi, 1985. Idem, A Topographical List of Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions of South India, New Delhi, 1989 (containing list of inscriptions). Idem, A Topographical List of Arabic, Persian and Urdu Inscriptions in Western India, forthcoming. M. H. Martin, “The Shuhur San: Date Equivalents, Origins and Special Problems,” Epigraphia Indica, Arabic, and Persian, Suppl., 1971. P. I. S. Mustafizur Rahman, Islamic Calligraphy in Medieval India, Dacca, 1979, containing sections on mural calligraphy and an exhaustive bibliography. M. Nazim, “Bijapur Inscriptions,” Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, no. 49, Calcutta, 1936. S. Parihar, Muslim Inscriptions in the Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, New Delhi, 1985 (containing list of inscriptions). Pīr Ḥosām-al- Dīn Rāšedī, Mīr Moḥammad Maʿṣūm Bakkarī, Hyderabad, 1979 (in Sindi; for Mīr Moḥammad-Maʿṣūm Nāmī’s inscriptions, including those in Afghanistan and Persia). J. H. Ravenshaw, Gaur: Its Remains and Inscriptions, London, 1878 (amply illustrating highly picturesque monumental calligraphic styles of Bengal). H. K. Sherwani and P. M. Josi, eds., History of Medieval Deccan, 1295-1724 II, Hyderabad, 1974, pp. 36-79. M. ʿAlī-Šer Tatavī, Maklī-nāma, ed. (with exhaustive notes in Sindi) P. Ḥ. Rāšedī, Hyderabad, Pakistan, 1967 (for Sind inscriptions at Makli Hill Tatta). B. D. Verma, Glories of Bijapur, n.p., n.d. Moḥammad Warit, Pādšāh-nāma, MS Bankipore, Oriental Public Library, Patna, no. H.L. 119. B. G. Yazdani, Bīdar, Its History and Monuments, Oxford, 1947. See also annual reports of the archaeological departments of native Indian states, particularly Gwalior and Hyderabad.
(ZIYAUD-DIN A. DESAI)
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