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(a.), “memorandum” or “aidemémoire”. The word is considered a verbal noun of the form II verb d̲h̲akkara “to-remind”, but already in its nine occurrences in the Ḳurʾan it tends to mean a concrete “reminder” rather than a verbal “reminding”. 1. In Arabic literature. Tad̲h̲kira occurs not infrequentiy in the tides of books. From a closer scrutiny of these tides, two clusters of books emerge that represent two different “genres” of text presentation: (1) handbooks and (2) notebooks. It should be noted that, in most cas…

(a.), “scene”, increasingly employed as “theatre” (in the same sense as “Bühne” in German); frequently synonymous with tiyātrō (from the Italian). 1. In the Arab East. Primarily an artistic and literary phenomenon of the last two centuries, the Arab theatre has its roots in local performances of passion plays [see taʿziya ], marionette and shadow plays [see ḳaragöz ], mimicry and other popular farces, and was affected by the then contemporary (rather than the classical) foreign theatre as well. Although some popular open-air plays…

(a.), poetry. 1. In Arabic. (a) The pre-modern period. It is the supreme ornament of Arab culture and its most authentically representative form of discourse. The ideas articulated by poetry and the emotional resonances which it conveys earn it, even in the present day, where numerous new literary forms are in competition with it, the approval of scholars and the populace alike. Despite the phonetic resemblance, s̲h̲iʿr is totally unconnected with the Hebrew s̲h̲īr , the ʿayn is a “hard” consonant which persists in the roots common to the two langu…

, a dynasty which ruled in Persia as “sovereigns 907-1135/1501-1722, as fainéants 1142-8/1729-36, and thereafter, existed as pretenders to the throne up to 1186/1773. I. Dynastic, political and military history. The establishment of the Ṣafawid state in 907/1501 by S̲h̲āh Ismāʿīl I [ q.v.] (initially ruler of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān only) marks an important turning-point in Persian history. In the first place, the Ṣafawids restored Persian sovereignty over the whole of the area traditionally regarded as the heartlands of Persia for the first ti…

i.—Geography The geological background: The alignments of Iran’s principal topographie features, represented by the Kūhhā-yi Alburz and the Zagros Chain, are west to east and north-west to south-east, respectively. In broad context, the Alburz is a continuation of the European Alpine structures, while the Zagros chain has been linked through Cyprus with the Dinaric Alps (Fisher, 1956). The structure of the mountain rim of the country has been influenced strongly by tectonic movements which have n…

(a.), poet. ¶ 1. In the Arab world. A. Pre-Islamic and Umayyad periods. Among those endowed with knowledge and with power in ancient Arabia stands the figure of the s̲h̲āʿir , whose role is often confused with that of the ʿarrāf ( s̲h̲aʿara and ʿarafa having the same semantic value: cf. I. Goldziher, Abhandlungen , i, 3 ff.) and of the kāhin [ q.v.]. They were credited with the same source of inspiration, the d̲j̲inns (Goldziher, Die Ǧinnen der Dichter , in ZDMG, xlv [1891], 685 ff.). However, the s̲h̲āʿir was, originally, the repository of magical rather than divinatory knowledge; …