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127-405: The Fihrist indexes authors, together with biographical details and literary criticism. Ibn al-Nadim's interest ranges from religions, customs, sciences, with obscure facets of medieval Islamic history, works on superstition, magic, drama, poetry, satire and music from Persia, Babylonia, and Byzantium. The mundane, the bizarre, the prosaic and the profane. Ibn al-Nadim freely selected and catalogued

254-526: A Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which evolves into Fārs ( فارس ) in modern Persian. In the Bible , particularly in the books of Daniel , Esther , Ezra , and Nehemya , it is given as Pārās ( פָּרָס ). A Greek folk etymology connected the name to Perseus , a legendary character in Greek mythology . Herodotus recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses , from whom

381-437: A book, to avoid copyists cheating buyers by passing off shorter versions. Cf. Stichometry of Nicephorus . He refers to copies by famous calligraphers, to bibliophiles and libraries, and speaks of a book auction and of the trade in books. In the opening section, he deals with the alphabets of 14 peoples and their manner of writing and also with the writing-pen, paper and its different varieties. His discourses contain sections on

508-564: A center of interest, particularly during the annual international Shiraz Arts Festival and the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire . The Pahlavi rulers modernized Iran, and ruled it until the 1979 Revolution . In modern Iran, the Persians make up the majority of the population. They are native speakers of the modern dialects of Persian , which serves as the country's official language. The Persian language belongs to

635-609: A condition, divide the patients into two groups, perform bloodletting only on one group, watch both, and compare the results." Astronomy in Islam was able to grow greatly because of several key factors. One factor was geographical: the Islamic world was close to the ancient lands of the Greeks, which held valuable ancient knowledge of the heavens in Greek manuscripts. During the new Abbasid Dynasty after

762-577: A dialect version of Gujarati , and no longer speak in Persian. They do however continue to use Avestan as their liturgical language. The Parsis have adapted many practices and tendencies of the Indian groups that surrounded them, such as Indian dress norms, and the observance of many Indian festivals and ceremonies. From Persis and throughout the Median, Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian empires of ancient Iran to

889-410: A geometric system. The enclosure of this symmetrically arranged planting and irrigation by an infrastructure such as a palace created the impression of "paradise". The word paradise itself originates from Avestan pairidaēza ( Old Persian paridaida ; New Persian pardis , ferdows ), which literally translates to "walled-around". Characterized by its quadripartite ( čārbāq ) design,

1016-524: A gradual decline much earlier; thus, Khan (2003) identifies the proper golden age as being the two centuries between 750 and 950, arguing that the beginning loss of territories under Harun al-Rashid worsened after the death of al-Ma'mun in 833, and that the crusades in the 12th century resulted in a weakening of the Islamic empire from which it never recovered. Regarding the end of the Gola, Mohamad Abdalla argues

1143-554: A lesser extent within the Caucasus proper to the northwest. In historical contexts, especially in English , "Persian" may be defined more loosely (often as a national identity) to cover all subjects of the ancient Persian polities, regardless of their ethnic background. The term Persian , meaning "from Persia", derives from Latin Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ),

1270-569: A long period of time the personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrian Christians . Among the most prominent Christian families to serve as physicians to the caliphs were the Bukhtishu dynasty. Throughout the 4th to 7th centuries, Christian scholarly work in the Greek and Syriac languages was either newly translated or had been preserved since the Hellenistic period. Among

1397-655: A major role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire . The Medes , another group of ancient Iranian people, unified the region under an empire centered in Media , which would become the region's leading cultural and political power of the time by 612 BC. Meanwhile, under the dynasty of the Achaemenids , the Persians formed a vassal state to the central Median power. In 552 BC, the Achaemenid Persians revolted against

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1524-470: A man deprived of sense experience by being blindfolded and free falling would still be aware of his existence. In epistemology , Ibn Tufail wrote the novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and in response Ibn al-Nafis wrote the novel Theologus Autodidactus . Both were concerning autodidacticism as illuminated through the life of a feral child spontaneously generated in a cave on a desert island . Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī played

1651-406: A method that could be generally used to determine the sum for any integral power. He used this to find the volume of a paraboloid . He could find the integral formula for any polynomial without having developed a general formula. Islamic art makes use of geometric patterns and symmetries in many of its art forms, notably in girih tilings. These are formed using a set of five tile shapes, namely

1778-435: A more available and detailed documentation than the earlier periods, and is especially more evident within the context of Zoroastrian musical rituals . Overall, Sasanian music was influential and was adopted in the subsequent eras. Iranian music, as a whole, utilizes a variety of musical instruments that are unique to the region, and has remarkably evolved since the ancient and medieval times. In traditional Sasanian music,

1905-482: A mosque, boarding house, and a library. It was maintained by a waqf (charitable endowment), which paid salaries of professors, stipends of students, and defrayed the costs of construction and maintenance. The madrasa was unlike a modern college in that it lacked a standardized curriculum or institutionalized system of certification. Muslims distinguished disciplines inherited from pre-Islamic civilizations, such as philosophy and medicine, which they called "sciences of

2032-692: A period of artistic growth that left a legacy ranging from Cyrus the Great's solemn tomb at Pasargadae to the structures at Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rostam . The Bam Citadel , a massive structure at 1,940,000 square feet (180,000 m ) constructed on the Silk Road in Bam , is from around the 5th century BC. The quintessential feature of Achaemenid architecture was its eclectic nature, with elements from Median architecture, Assyrian architecture, and Asiatic Greek architecture all incorporated. The architectural heritage of

2159-431: A regular decagon , an elongated hexagon , a bow tie, a rhombus , and a regular pentagon . All the sides of these tiles have the same length; and all their angles are multiples of 36° (π/5 radians ), offering fivefold and tenfold symmetries. The tiles are decorated with strapwork lines (girih), generally more visible than the tile boundaries. In 2007, the physicists Peter Lu and Paul Steinhardt argued that girih from

2286-426: A significant role in the development of algebra , arithmetic and Hindu–Arabic numerals . He has been described as the father or founder of algebra . Another Persian mathematician, Omar Khayyam , is credited with identifying the foundations of Analytic geometry . Omar Khayyam found the general geometric solution of the cubic equation . His book Treatise on Demonstrations of Problems of Algebra (1070), which

2413-507: A source of law in place of qiyas and extension of the notion of sunnah to include traditions of the imams . The body of substantive Islamic law was created by independent jurists ( muftis ). Their legal opinions ( fatwas ) were taken into account by ruler-appointed judges who presided over qāḍī 's courts, and by maẓālim courts, which were controlled by the ruler's council and administered criminal law. Classical Islamic theology emerged from an early doctrinal controversy which pitted

2540-499: A variety of Persian by the name of Aimaqi , which also belongs to the Dari dialect continuum. Persian-speaking communities native to modern Arab countries are generally designated as Ajam , including the Ajam of Bahrain , the Ajam of Iraq , and the Ajam of Kuwait . The Parsis are a Zoroastrian community of Persian descent who migrated to South Asia , to escape religious persecution after

2667-451: A young age with study of Arabic and the Quran , either at home or in a primary school, which was often attached to a mosque. Some students would then proceed to training in tafsir (Quranic exegesis) and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), which was seen as particularly important. Education focused on memorization, but also trained the more advanced students to participate as readers and writers in

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2794-449: Is a section on "Persian, Indian, Byzantine, and Arab books on sexual intercourse in the form of titillating stories", but the Persian works are not separated from the others; the list includes a "Book of Bahrām-doḵt on intercourse." This is followed by books of Persians , Indians, etc. on fortune-telling, books of "all nations" on horsemanship and the arts of war, then on horse doctoring and on falconry, some of them specifically attributed to

2921-690: Is attested as late as 465". Following the Arab conquest of the Sasanian Empire in the medieval times, the Arab caliphates established their rule over the region for the next several centuries, during which the long process of the Islamization of Iran took place. Confronting the cultural and linguistic dominance of the Persians, beginning by the Umayyad Caliphate , the Arab conquerors began to establish Arabic as

3048-663: Is essentially a reciprocal cultural exchange. Its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, even for centuries after the withdrawal of the Persians from Europe following the Greco-Persian Wars . During the Achaemenid era, Persian colonists settled in Asia Minor . In Lydia (the most important Achaemenid satrapy), near Sardis , there was the Hyrcanian plain , which, according to Strabo , got its name from

3175-575: Is from the Behistun Inscription , a multilingual inscription from the time of Achaemenid ruler Darius the Great carved on a cliff in western Iran. There are several ethnic groups and communities that are either ethnically or linguistically related to the Persian people, living predominantly in Iran, and also within Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, the Caucasus, Turkey, Iraq, and the Arab states of

3302-525: Is known to have one of the world's oldest and most influential literatures. Old Persian written works are attested on several inscriptions from between the 6th and the 4th centuries BC, and Middle Persian literature is attested on inscriptions from the Parthian and Sasanian eras and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the 3rd to the 10th century AD. New Persian literature flourished after

3429-545: Is listed in The Guinness Book Of Records as the world's oldest degree-granting university. The Al-Azhar University was another early madrasa now recognized as a university. The madrasa is one of the relics of the Fatimid caliphate. The Fatimids traced their descent to Muhammad's daughter Fatimah and named the institution using a variant of her honorific title Al-Zahra (the brilliant). Organized instruction in

3556-481: Is made up of lines of altitude and azimuth with an index, horizon, hour circle, zenith, Rete , star pointer, and equator to accurately show where the stars are at that given moment. Use of the astrolabe is best expressed in Al-Farghani 's treatise on the astrolabe due to the mathematical way he applied the instrument to astrology, astronomy, and timekeeping. The earliest known Astrolabe in existence today comes from

3683-416: Is no unambiguous definition of the term, and depending on whether it is used with a focus on cultural or on military achievement, it may be taken to refer to rather disparate time spans. Thus, one 19th century author would have it extend to the duration of the caliphate, or to "six and a half centuries", while another would have it end after only a few decades of Rashidun conquests, with the death of Umar and

3810-450: Is obligatory upon every Muslim". This injunction was seen to apply particularly to scholars, but also to some extent to the wider Muslim public, as exemplified by the dictum of al-Zarnuji , "learning is prescribed for us all". While it is impossible to calculate literacy rates in pre-modern Islamic societies, it is almost certain that they were relatively high, at least in comparison to their European counterparts. Education would begin at

3937-421: Is regarded as the world's oldest existing carpet, depicts elements of Assyrian and Achaemenid designs, including stylistic references to the stone slab designs found in Persian royal buildings. According to the accounts reported by Xenophon, a great number of singers were present at the Achaemenid court. However, little information is available from the music of that era. The music scene of the Sasanian Empire has

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4064-438: Is supposed to have lasted from the end of the ninth to the end of the eleventh century. The era after this period is conventionally known as the "age of decline". A survey of literature from the nineteenth century onwards demonstrates that the decline theory has become the preferred paradigm in general academia. The various Quranic injunctions and Hadith (or actions of Muhammad ), which place values on education and emphasize

4191-628: Is the immediate ancestor of Modern Persian and a variety of other Iranian dialects, became the official language of the empire and was greatly diffused among Iranians. The Parthians and the Sasanians would also extensively interact with the Romans culturally. The Roman–Persian wars and the Byzantine–Sasanian wars would shape the landscape of Western Asia , Europe , the Caucasus , North Africa, and

4318-627: Is traditionally said to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258. There are a few alternative timelines. Some scholars extend the end date of the golden age to around 1350, including the Timurid Renaissance within it, while others place the end of the Islamic Golden Age as late as the end of 15th to 16th centuries, including

4445-470: The ahl al-hadith movement, led by Ahmad ibn Hanbal , who considered the Quran and authentic hadith to be the only acceptable authority in matters of faith, against Mu'tazilites and other theological currents, who developed theological doctrines using rationalistic methods. In 833 the caliph al-Ma'mun tried to impose Mu'tazilite theology on all religious scholars and instituted an inquisition ( mihna ), but

4572-710: The Al-Azhar Mosque began in 978. Arabic became a trade language . The Muslim-ruled Spanish capital of Córdoba , which surpassed Constantinople as the Europe 's largest city, also became a prominent world leading centre of education and learning producing numerous polymaths. Juristic thought gradually developed in study circles, where independent scholars met to learn from a local master and discuss religious topics. At first, these circles were fluid in their membership, but with time distinct regional legal schools crystallized around shared sets of methodological principles. As

4699-624: The Arab conquest of Iran with its earliest records from the 9th century, and was developed as a court tradition in many eastern courts. The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , the Divān of Hafez , The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi are among

4826-402: The Caucasus (primarily in the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan and Dagestan , Russia ), albeit heavily assimilated, are known as Tats . Historically, however, the terms Tajik and Tat were used synonymously and interchangeably with Persian . Many influential Persian figures hailed from outside of Iran's present-day borders—to the northeast in Afghanistan and Central Asia , and to

4953-512: The First Fitna . During the early 20th century, the term was used only occasionally and often referred to as the early military successes of the Rashidun caliphs . It was only in the second half of the 20th century that the term came to be used with any frequency, now mostly referring to the cultural flourishing of science and mathematics under the caliphates during the 9th to 11th centuries (between

5080-733: The Greek colonies of the Tauric Chersonesos , and for a brief time the Roman province of Asia . After a long struggle with Rome in the Mithridatic Wars , Pontus was defeated; part of it was incorporated into the Roman Republic as the province of Bithynia and Pontus , and the eastern half survived as a client kingdom. Following the Macedonian conquests , the Persian colonists in Cappadocia and

5207-448: The Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) in the 10th century. It was easier to manufacture than parchment , less likely to crack than papyrus , and could absorb ink, making it difficult to erase and ideal for keeping records. Islamic paper makers devised assembly-line methods of hand-copying manuscripts to turn out editions far larger than any available in Europe for centuries. It

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5334-558: The Iranian calendar , which corresponds to around March 21 in the Gregorian calendar. An ancient tradition that has been preserved in Iran and several other countries that were under the influence of the ancient empires of Iran, Nowruz has been registered on UNESCO 's Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists . In Iran, the Nowruz celebrations (incl. Charshanbe Suri and Sizdebedar ) begin on the eve of

5461-561: The Old Assyrian form Parahše , designating a region belonging to the Sumerians . The name of this region was adopted by a nomadic ancient Iranian people who migrated to the region in the west and southwest of Lake Urmia , eventually becoming known as "the Persians". The ninth-century BC Neo-Assyrian inscription of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III , found at Nimrud , gives it in

5588-548: The Pahlavi dynasty issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran , the native name of the country, in formal correspondence. However, the term Persian is still historically used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent . Persia is first attested in Assyrian sources from the third millennium BC in

5715-472: The Sasanian Empire , a national culture that was fully aware of being Iranian took shape, partially motivated by restoration and revival of the wisdom of "the old sages" ( dānāgān pēšēnīgān ). Other aspects of this national culture included the glorification of a great heroic past and an archaizing spirit. Throughout the period, Iranian identity reached its height in every aspect. Middle Persian , which

5842-660: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , translation of philosophical texts from Arabic to Latin in Western Europe "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world". The influence of Islamic philosophers in Europe was particularly strong in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics, though it also influenced the study of logic and ethics. Ibn Sina argued his " Floating man " thought experiment concerning self-awareness , in which

5969-608: The Timurid Renaissance under the Timurid dynasty . With a new and easier writing system , and the introduction of paper , information was democratized to the extent that, for probably the first time in history, it became possible to make a living from only writing and selling books. The use of paper spread from China into Muslim regions in the eighth century through mass production in Samarkand and Khorasan , arriving in Al-Andalus on

6096-691: The Umayyad seat of Córdoba , the Andalusian scholar Abū Bakr al-Zubaydī , produced Ṭabaqāt al-Naḥwīyīn wa-al-Lughawīyīn (‘Categories of Grammarians and Linguists’) a biographic encyclopedia of early Arab philologists of the Basran , Kufan and Baghdad schools of Arabic grammar and tafsir (Quranic exegesis), which covers much of the same material covered in chapter II of the Fihrist . The Fihrist , written in 987, exists in two manuscript traditions, or "editions":

6223-465: The Western world , the names Persia and Persian came to refer to all of Iran and its subjects. Some medieval and early modern Islamic sources also used cognates of the term Persian to refer to various Iranian peoples and languages, including the speakers of Khwarazmian , Mazanderani , and Old Azeri . 10th-century Iraqi historian Al-Masudi refers to Pahlavi , Dari , and Azari as dialects of

6350-437: The law of sines is attributed; he wrote " The Book of Unknown Arcs of a Sphere " in the 11th century. This formula relates the lengths of the sides of any triangle, rather than only right triangles , to the sines of its angles. According to the law, where a , b , and c are the lengths of the sides of a triangle, and A , B , and C are the opposite angles (see figure). The earliest use of statistical inference

6477-410: The octave was divided into seventeen tones. By the end of the 13th century, Iranian music also maintained a twelve-interval octave, which resembled the western counterparts. The Iranian New Year 's Day, Nowruz , which translates to "new day", is celebrated by Persians and other peoples of Iran to mark the beginning of spring on the vernal equinox on the first day of Farvardin , the first month of

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6604-753: The western group of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family . Modern Persian is classified as a continuation of Middle Persian , the official religious and literary language of the Sasanian Empire , itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used by the time of the Achaemenid Empire . Old Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages attested in original text. Samples of Old Persian have been discovered in present-day Iran, Armenia , Egypt , Iraq , Romania ( Gherla ), and Turkey . The oldest attested text written in Old Persian

6731-415: The "world's first true scientist". Avicenna made rules for testing the effectiveness of drugs, including that the effect produced by the experimental drug should be seen constantly or after many repetitions, to be counted. The physician Rhazes was an early proponent of experimental medicine and recommended using control for clinical research. He said: "If you want to study the effect of bloodletting on

6858-482: The 15th century resembled quasicrystalline Penrose tilings . Elaborate geometric zellige tilework is a distinctive element in Moroccan architecture . Muqarnas vaults are three-dimensional but were designed in two dimensions with drawings of geometrical cells. Jamshīd al-Kāshī 's estimate of pi would not be surpassed for 180 years. Ibn Muʿādh al-Jayyānī is one of the several Islamic mathematicians on whom

6985-559: The 8th century to the 13th century. This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786 to 809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom , which saw scholars from all over the Muslim world flock to Baghdad , the world's largest city by then, to translate the known world's classical knowledge into Arabic and Persian . The period

7112-550: The Arabic writings attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (written c. 850–950), would remain the basis of all theories of metallic composition until the eighteenth century. Likewise, the Emerald Tablet , a compact and cryptic text that all later alchemists up to and including Isaac Newton (1642–1727) would regard as the foundation of their art, first occurs in the Sirr al-khalīqa and in one of

7239-416: The Caucasus (primarily living in the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian republic of Dagestan ), speak a language ( Tat language ) that is closely related to Persian. The origin of the Tat people is traced to an Iranian-speaking population that was resettled in the Caucasus by the time of the Sasanian Empire. The Lurs , an ethnic Iranian people native to western Iran, are often associated with

7366-465: The Islamic period. It was made by Nastulus in 927-28 AD and is now a treasure of the Kuwait National Museum . In about 964 AD, the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi , writing in his Book of Fixed Stars , described a "nebulous spot" in the Andromeda constellation , the first definitive reference to what is now known to be the Andromeda Galaxy , the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way . The geocentric system developed by Ptolemy placed

7493-400: The Late Assyrian forms Parsua and Parsumaš as a region and a people located in the Zagros Mountains , the latter likely having migrated southward and transferred the name of the region with them to what would become Persis (Persia proper, i.e., modern-day Fars ), and that is considered to be the earliest attestation to the ancient Persian people. The ancient Persians played

7620-403: The Median monarchy, leading to the victory of Cyrus the Great over the throne in 550 BC. The Persians spread their influence to the rest of what is considered to be the Iranian Plateau , and assimilated with the non-Iranian indigenous groups of the region, including the Elamites and the Mannaeans . At its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in

7747-433: The Mediterranean Basin for centuries. For a period of over 400 years, the Sasanians and the neighboring Byzantines were recognized as the two leading powers in the world. Cappadocia in Late Antiquity , now well into the Roman era, still retained a significant Iranian character; Stephen Mitchell notes in the Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity : "Many inhabitants of Cappadocia were of Persian descent and Iranian fire worship

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7874-408: The Parthian era, Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value. However, it did not yet have a political import. The Parthian language , which was used as an official language of the Parthian Empire, left influences on Persian, as well as on the neighboring Armenian language . The Parthian monarchy was succeeded by the Persian dynasty of the Sasanians in 224 AD. By the time of

8001-403: The Persian Gulf . The Tajiks are a people native to Tajikistan , Afghanistan , and Uzbekistan who speak Persian in a variety of dialects. The Tajiks of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are native speakers of Tajik , which is the official language of Tajikistan, and those in Afghanistan speak Dari , one of the two official languages of Afghanistan. The Tat people , an Iranian people native to

8128-610: The Persian contribution to this new Islamic civilization is of immense importance. The work of Iranians can be seen in every field of cultural endeavor, including Arabic poetry, to which poets of Iranian origin composing their poems in Arabic made a very significant contribution." While cultural influence used to radiate outward from Baghdad, after the Mongol destruction of the Abbasid Caliphate, Arab influence decreased. Iran and Central Asia, benefiting from increased cross-cultural access to East Asia under Mongol rule , flourished and developed more distinctively from Arab influence, such as

8255-402: The Persian fire ceremony at the towns of Hyrocaesareia and Hypaepa . Mithridates III of Cius , a Persian nobleman and part of the Persian ruling elite of the town of Cius , founded the Kingdom of Pontus in his later life, in northern Asia Minor. At the peak of its power, under the infamous Mithridates VI the Great , the Kingdom of Pontus also controlled Colchis , Cappadocia , Bithynia ,

8382-432: The Persian garden was evolved and developed into various forms throughout history, and was also adopted in various other cultures in Eurasia. It was inscribed on UNESCO 's World Heritage List in June 2011. Carpet weaving is an essential part of the Persian culture, and Persian rugs are said to be one of the most detailed hand-made works of art. Achaemenid rug and carpet artistry is well recognized. Xenophon describes

8509-413: The Persian language. In 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta referred to the Afghans of Kabul as a specific sub-tribe of the Persians. Lady Mary (Leonora Woulfe) Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, states that the Kurds and the Leks would consider themselves as belonging to the race of the "old Persians". On 21 March 1935, the then-king of Iran Reza Shah of

8636-421: The Persian settlers that were moved from Hyrcania . Similarly near Sardis, there was the plain of Cyrus, which further signified the presence of numerous Persian settlements in the area. In all these centuries, Lydia and Pontus were reportedly the chief centers for the worship of the Persian gods in Asia Minor. According to Pausanias , as late as the second century AD, one could witness rituals which resembled

8763-459: The Persians is eclectic and has included contributions from both the east and the west. Due to the central location of Iran, Persian art has served as a fusion point between eastern and western traditions. Persians have contributed to various forms of art, including calligraphy , carpet weaving , glasswork , lacquerware , marquetry ( khatam ), metalwork , miniature illustration , mosaic , pottery , and textile design . The Persian language

8890-407: The Persians and the Kurds . They speak various dialects of the Luri language , which is considered to be a descendant of Middle Persian . The Hazaras , making up the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, speak a variety of Persian by the name of Hazaragi , which is more precisely a part of the Dari dialect continuum. The Aimaqs , a semi-nomadic people native to Afghanistan, speak

9017-447: The Persians took the name. Apparently, the Persians themselves knew the story, as Xerxes I tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece, but ultimately failed to do so. Although Persis (Persia proper) was only one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term (e.g., Persia ) were adopted through Greek sources and used as an exonym for all of the Persian Empire for many years. Thus, especially in

9144-433: The Persians. Then we have books of wisdom and admonition by the Persians and others, including many examples of Persian andarz literature, e.g. various books attributed to Persian emperors Khosrau I , Ardashir I , etc. Gustav Flügel Bayard Dodge Islamic Golden Age The Islamic Golden Age was a period of scientific, economic and cultural flourishing in the history of Islam , traditionally dated from

9271-557: The Quran and hadith. The classical theory of Islamic jurisprudence elaborates how scriptures should be interpreted from the standpoint of linguistics and rhetoric. It also comprises methods for establishing authenticity of hadith and for determining when the legal force of a scriptural passage is abrogated by a passage revealed at a later date. In addition to the Quran and sunnah, the classical theory of Sunni fiqh recognizes two other sources of law: juristic consensus ( ijmaʿ ) and analogical reasoning ( qiyas ). It therefore studies

9398-940: The Sasanian Empire includes, among others, castle fortifications such as the Fortifications of Derbent (located in North Caucasus , now part of Russia ), the Rudkhan Castle and the Shapur-Khwast Castle , palaces such as the Palace of Ardashir and the Sarvestan Palace , bridges such as the Shahrestan Bridge and the Shapuri Bridge , the Archway of Ctesiphon , and the reliefs at Taq-e Bostan . Architectural elements from

9525-694: The adherents of the Church of the East ( Nestorians ), contributed to Islamic civilization during the reign of the Umayyads and the Abbasids by translating works of Greek philosophers and ancient science to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic . They also excelled in many fields, in particular philosophy , science (such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq , Yusuf Al-Khuri , Al Himsi , Qusta ibn Luqa , Masawaiyh , Patriarch Eutychius , and Jabril ibn Bukhtishu ) and theology . For

9652-503: The ancients" or "rational sciences", from Islamic religious sciences. Sciences of the former type flourished for several centuries, and their transmission formed part of the educational framework in classical and medieval Islam. In some cases, they were supported by institutions such as the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, but more often they were transmitted informally from teacher to student. The University of Al Karaouine , founded in 859 AD,

9779-507: The application and limits of analogy, as well as the value and limits of consensus, along with other methodological principles, some of which are accepted by only certain legal schools. This interpretive apparatus is brought together under the rubric of ijtihad , which refers to a jurist's exertion in an attempt to arrive at a ruling on a particular question. The theory of Twelver Shia jurisprudence parallels that of Sunni schools with some differences, such as recognition of reason ( ʿaql ) as

9906-420: The attempts to impose a caliphal writ in matters of religious orthodoxy ultimately failed. This controversy persisted until al-Ash'ari (874–936) found a middle ground between Mu'tazilite rationalism and Hanbalite literalism, using the rationalistic methods championed by Mu'tazilites to defend most substantive tenets maintained by ahl al-hadith . A rival compromise between rationalism and literalism emerged from

10033-400: The boundaries of the schools became clearly delineated, the authority of their doctrinal tenets came to be vested in a master jurist from earlier times, who was henceforth identified as the school's founder. In the course of the first three centuries of Islam, all legal schools came to accept the broad outlines of classical legal theory, according to which Islamic law had to be firmly rooted in

10160-404: The carpet production in the city of Sardis, stating that the locals take pride in their carpet production. A special mention of Persian carpets is also made by Athenaeus of Naucratis in his Deipnosophistae , as he describes a "delightfully embroidered" Persian carpet with "preposterous shapes of griffins ". The Pazyryk carpet, a Scythian pile-carpet dating back to the 4th century BC that

10287-402: The categories of their authors, together with their relationships, their times of birth, length of life, and times of death, the localities of their cities, their virtues and faults, from the beginning of the formation of science to this our own time (377 /987). An index as a literary form had existed as tabaqat  – biographies. Contemporaneously in the western part of the empire in

10414-426: The dominant approach by scholars is the "decline theory.": The golden age is considered to have come into existence through a gigantic endeavor to acquire and translate the ancient sciences of the Greeks between the eighth and ninth centuries. The translations era was followed by two centuries of splendid original thinking and contributions, and is known as the "golden age" of Islamic science. This so-called "golden age"

10541-480: The earth as 6339.6 km (modern value is c. 6,371 km), the best estimate at that time. Persian people The Persians ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən z / PUR -zhənz or / ˈ p ɜːr ʃ ən z / PUR -shənz ) are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise the majority of the population of Iran . They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of

10668-687: The equivalent of professional athletes today. The House of Wisdom was a library established in Abbasid -era Baghdad , Iraq by Caliph al-Mansur in 825 modeled after the academy of Jundishapur . During this period, the Muslims showed a strong interest in assimilating the scientific knowledge of the civilizations that had been conquered. Many classic works of antiquity that might otherwise have been lost were translated from Greek , Syriac , Middle Persian , and Sanskrit into Syriac and Arabic, some of which were later in turn translated into other languages like Hebrew and Latin . Christians , especially

10795-577: The essence of objects flows into the eyes. Alhazen correctly argued that vision occurred when light, traveling in straight lines, reflects off an object into the eyes. Al-Biruni wrote of his insights into light, stating that its velocity must be immense when compared to the speed of sound. The early Islamic period saw the establishment of some of the longest lived theoretical frameworks in alchemy and chemistry . The sulfur-mercury theory of metals , first attested in pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana's Sirr al-khalīqa ("The Secret of Creation", c. 750–850) and in

10922-420: The establishment of organised scholarship in the House of Wisdom and the beginning of the crusades ), but often extended to include part of the late 8th or the 12th to early 13th centuries. Definitions may still vary considerably. Equating the end of the golden age with the end of the caliphates is a convenient cut-off point based on a historical landmark, but it can be argued that Islamic culture had entered

11049-601: The expansion of the Persianate societies , particularly those of Turco-Persian and Indo-Persian blends. After over eight centuries of foreign rule within the region, the Iranian hegemony was reestablished by the emergence of the Safavid Empire in the 16th century. Under the Safavid Empire, focus on Persian language and identity was further revived, and the political evolution of the empire once again maintained Persian as

11176-559: The fall of the Sassanian Empire . They have had a significant role in the development of India , Pakistan and Sri Lanka , and also played a role in the development of Iranian nationalism during the late Qajar years and Pahlavi dynasty. They are primarily located in the western regions of India principally the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra , with smaller communities in other parts of India and in South and Southeast Asia. They speak

11303-643: The fall of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, records only traces of Persians in western Asia Minor; however, he considered Cappadocia "almost a living part of Persia". The Iranian dominance collapsed in 330 BC following the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great , but reemerged shortly after through the establishment of the Parthian Empire in 247 BC, which was founded by a group of ancient Iranian people rising from Parthia . Until

11430-484: The famous works of medieval Persian literature. A thriving contemporary Persian literature has also been formed by the works of writers such as Ahmad Shamlou , Forough Farrokhzad , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , Parvin E'tesami , Sadegh Hedayat , and Simin Daneshvar , among others. Not all Persian literature is written in Persian, as works written by Persians in other languages—such as Arabic and Greek—might also be included. At

11557-427: The first discourse on the scripts and the different alphabets) only the last four discourses, in other words, the Arabic translations from Greek, Syriac and other languages, together with Arabic books composed on the model of these translations. Perhaps it was the first draft and the longer edition (which is the one that is generally printed) was an extension. Ibn al-Nadim often mentions the size and number of pages of

11684-643: The first time after two centuries of no attestation of the language, now having received the Arabic script and a large Arabic vocabulary. Persian language and culture continued to prevail after the invasions and conquests by the Mongols and the Turks (including the Ilkhanate , Ghaznavids , Seljuks , Khwarazmians , and Timurids ), who were themselves significantly Persianized , further developing in Asia Minor , Central Asia , and South Asia , where Persian culture flourished by

11811-428: The good and beautiful things that the soil produce." The Persian garden , the earliest examples of which were found throughout the Achaemenid Empire, has an integral position in Persian architecture. Gardens assumed an important place for the Achaemenid monarchs, and utilized the advanced Achaemenid knowledge of water technologies, including aqueducts , earliest recorded gravity-fed water rills, and basins arranged in

11938-647: The importance of acquiring knowledge, played a vital role in influencing the Muslims of this age in their search for knowledge and the development of the body of science. The Islamic Empire heavily patronized scholars. The money spent on the Translation Movement for some translations is estimated to be equivalent to about twice the annual research budget of the United Kingdom's Medical Research Council . The best scholars and notable translators, such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq , had salaries that are estimated to be

12065-738: The institution, and it placed its holder within a genealogy of scholars, which was the only recognized hierarchy in the educational system. While formal studies in madrasas were open only to men, women of prominent urban families were commonly educated in private settings and many of them received and later issued ijazas in hadith studies, calligraphy and poetry recitation. Working women learned religious texts and practical skills primarily from each other, though they also received some instruction together with men in mosques and private homes. Madrasas were devoted principally to study of law, but they also offered other subjects such as theology, medicine, and mathematics. The madrasa complex usually consisted of

12192-469: The languages that are closely related to Persian . The ancient Persians were originally an ancient Iranian people who had migrated to the region of Persis (corresponding to the modern-day Iranian province of Fars ) by the 9th century BCE. Together with their compatriot allies, they established and ruled some of the world's most powerful empires that are well-recognized for their massive cultural, political, and social influence, which covered much of

12319-598: The main language of the country. During the times of the Safavids and subsequent modern Iranian dynasties such as the Qajars , architectural and iconographic elements from the time of the Sasanian Persian Empire were reincorporated, linking the modern country with its ancient past. Contemporary embracement of the legacy of Iran's ancient empires, with an emphasis on the Achaemenid Persian Empire, developed particularly under

12446-413: The medieval Islamic world include the synthesis of ammonium chloride from organic substances as described in the works attributed to Jābir, and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī's experiments with vitriol , which would eventually lead to the discovery of mineral acids like sulfuric acid and nitric acid by thirteenth century Latin alchemists such as pseudo-Geber . Al-Biruni (973–1050) estimated the radius of

12573-413: The more complete edition contains ten maqalat ("discourses" - Devin J. Stewart chose to define maqalat as Book when considering the structure of Ibn al-Nadim's work). The first six are detailed bibliographies of books on Islamic subjects: Ibn al-Nadim claims he has seen every work listed or relies upon creditable sources. The shorter edition contains (besides the preface and the first section of

12700-453: The movement of the capital in 762 AD to Baghdad, translators were sponsored to translate Greek texts into Arabic. This translation period led to many major scientific works from Galen , Ptolemy , Aristotle , Euclid , Archimedes , and Apollonius being translated into Arabic. From these translations previously lost knowledge of the cosmos was now being used to advance current astrological thinkers. The second key factor of astronomy's growth

12827-490: The names that come directly from Arabic origins or are the translations of Ptolemy's Greek descriptions which are still in use today. Alhazen played a role in the development of optics . One of the prevailing theories of vision in his time and place was the emission theory supported by Euclid and Ptolemy, where sight worked by the eye emitting rays of light, and the other was the Aristotelean theory that sight worked when

12954-441: The neighboring Greek city states and the kingdom of Macedon , and later throughout the medieval Islamic world , all the way to modern Iran and others parts of Eurasia , Persian culture has been extended, celebrated, and incorporated. This is due mainly to its geopolitical conditions, and its intricate relationship with the ever-changing political arena once as dominant as the Achaemenid Empire. The artistic heritage of

13081-417: The origins of philosophy, on the lives of Plato and Aristotle , the origin of One Thousand and One Nights , thoughts on the pyramids , his opinions on magic , sorcery , superstition , and alchemy etc. The chapter devoted to what the author rather dismissively calls "bed-time stories" and "fables" contains a large amount of Persian material. In the chapter on anonymous works of assorted content there

13208-551: The planets. One of the first to criticize this model was Ibn al-Haytham , a leader of physics in the 11th century in Cairo. Then in the 13th century Nasir al-Din al-Tusi constructed the Maragha Observatory in what is today Iran. Al-Tusi found the equant dissatisfying and replaced it by adding a geometrical technique called a Tusi-couple , which generates linear motion from the sum of two circular motions. Then, Ibn al-Shatir who

13335-421: The primary language of the subject peoples throughout their empire, sometimes by force, further confirming the new political reality over the region. The Arabic term ʿAjam , denoting "people unable to speak properly", was adopted as a designation for non-Arabs (or non-Arabic speakers), especially the Persians. Although the term had developed a derogatory meaning and implied cultural and ethnic inferiority, it

13462-621: The prominent centers of learning and transmission of classical wisdom were Christian colleges such as the School of Nisibis and the School of Edessa , the pagan center of learning in Harran , and the renowned hospital and medical Academy of Gondishapur, which was the intellectual, theological and scientific center of the Church of the East. Many scholars of the House of Wisdom were of Christian background and it

13589-484: The reign of the Pahlavi dynasty , providing the motive of a modern nationalistic pride. Iran's modern architecture was then inspired by that of the country's classical eras, particularly with the adoption of details from the ancient monuments in the Achaemenid capitals Persepolis and Pasargadae and the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon . Fars, corresponding to the ancient province of Persia, with its modern capital Shiraz , became

13716-591: The rest of Asia Minor were cut off from their co-religionists in Iran proper, but they continued to practice the Iranian faith of their forefathers. Strabo, who observed them in the Cappadocian Kingdom in the first century BC, records (XV.3.15) that these "fire kindlers" possessed many "holy places of the Persian Gods", as well as fire temples. Strabo, who wrote during the time of Augustus ( r.  27 BC – AD 14 ), almost three hundred years after

13843-487: The rich culture of his time from various collections and libraries. The order is primarily chronological and works are listed according to four internal orders: genre; orfann (chapter); maqala (discourse); the Fihrist (the book as a whole). These four chronological principles of its underlying system help researchers to interpret the work, retrieve elusive information and understand Ibn al-Nadim's method of composition, ideology, and historical analyses. The Fihrist shows

13970-505: The rise of the Islamic gunpowder empires . The metaphor of a golden age began to be applied in 19th-century literature about Islamic history , in the context of the western aesthetic fashion known as Orientalism . The author of a Handbook for Travelers in Syria and Palestine in 1868 observed that the most beautiful mosques of Damascus were "like Mohammedanism itself, now rapidly decaying" and relics of "the golden age of Islam". There

14097-426: The same time, not all literature written in Persian is written by ethnic Persians or Iranians, as Turkic, Caucasian, and Indic authors have also used Persian literature in the environment of Persianate cultures . The most notable examples of ancient Persian architecture are the works of the Achaemenids hailing from Persis . Achaemenid architecture , dating from the expansion of the empire around 550 BC, flourished in

14224-453: The sun, moon, and other planets in orbit around the Earth. Ptolemy thought that the planets moved on circles called epicycles and that their centers rode on deferents . The deferents were eccentric , and the angular motion of a planet was uniform around the equant which was a point opposite the deferent center. Simply, Ptolemy's models were a mathematical system for predicting the positions of

14351-508: The territory and population of the ancient world . Throughout history, the Persian people have contributed greatly to art and science . Persian literature is one of the world's most prominent literary traditions. In contemporary terminology, people from Afghanistan , Tajikistan , and Uzbekistan who natively speak the Persian language are known as Tajiks , with the former two countries having their own dialects of Persian known as Dari and Tajiki , respectively; whereas those in

14478-549: The time of Iran's ancient Persian empires have been adopted and incorporated in later period. They were used especially during the modernization of Iran under the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty to contribute to the characterization of the modern country with its ancient history. Xenophon , in his Oeconomicus , states: "The Great King [Cyrus II]...in all the districts he resides in and visits, takes care that there are parádeisos ("paradise") as they [Persians] call them, full of

14605-478: The tradition of commentary on the studied texts. It also involved a process of socialization of aspiring scholars, who came from virtually all social backgrounds, into the ranks of the ulema . For the first few centuries of Islam, educational settings were entirely informal, but beginning in the 11th and 12th centuries, the ruling elites began to establish institutions of higher religious learning known as madrasas in an effort to secure support and cooperation of

14732-415: The ulema. Madrasas soon multiplied throughout the Islamic world, which helped to spread Islamic learning beyond urban centers and to unite diverse Islamic communities in a shared cultural project. Nonetheless, instruction remained focused on individual relationships between students and their teacher. The formal attestation of educational attainment, ijaza , was granted by a particular scholar rather than

14859-609: The wealth, range and breadth of historical and geographical knowledge disseminated in the literature of the Islamic Golden Age , from the modern to the ancient civilisations of Syria , Greece , India , Rome and Persia . Little survives of the Persian books listed by Ibn al-Nadim. The author's aim, set out in his preface, is to index all books in Arabic , written by Arabs and others, as well as their scripts, dealing with various sciences, with accounts of those who composed them and

14986-471: The west to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the establishment of the cities of Pasargadae and Persepolis . The empire extended as far as the limits of the Greek city states in modern-day mainland Greece , where the Persians and Athenians influenced each other in what

15113-490: The work of al-Maturidi (d. c. 944), and, although a minority of scholars remained faithful to the early ahl al-hadith creed, Ash'ari and Maturidi theology came to dominate Sunni Islam from the 10th century on. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) played a major role in interpreting the works of Aristotle, whose ideas came to dominate the non-religious thought of the Christian and Muslim worlds . According to

15240-449: The works attributed to Jābir. Substantial advances were also made in practical chemistry. The works attributed to Jābir, and those of the Persian alchemist and physician Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (c. 865–925), contain the earliest known systematic classifications of chemical substances. However, alchemists were not only interested in identifying and classifying chemical substances, but also in artificially creating them. Significant examples from

15367-412: Was a significant step in the development of algebra, is part of the body of Persian mathematics that was eventually transmitted to Europe. Yet another Persian mathematician, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī , found algebraic and numerical solutions to various cases of cubic equations. He also developed the concept of a function . Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) discovered the sum formula for the fourth power, using

15494-430: Was from these countries that the rest of the world learned to make paper from linen. The centrality of scripture and its study in the Islamic tradition helped to make education a central pillar of the religion in virtually all times and places in the history of Islam. The importance of learning in the Islamic tradition is reflected in a number of hadiths attributed to Muhammad, including one that states "Seeking knowledge

15621-515: Was given by Al-Kindi (c. 801–873, also known as "Alkindus" in Europe), in Risalah fi Istikhraj al-Mu'amma ( A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages ) which contains the first description of the method of frequency analysis . Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) was a significant figure in the history of scientific method , particularly in his approach to experimentation, and has been described as

15748-530: Was gradually accepted as a synonym for "Persian" and still remains today as a designation for the Persian-speaking communities native to the modern Arab states of the Middle East. A series of Muslim Iranian kingdoms were later established on the fringes of the declining Abbasid Caliphate , including that of the ninth-century Samanids , under the reign of whom the Persian language was used officially for

15875-498: Was led by Christian physician Hunayn ibn Ishaq , with the support of Byzantine medicine . Many of the most important philosophical and scientific works of the ancient world were translated, including the work of Galen , Hippocrates , Plato , Aristotle , Ptolemy and Archimedes . Persians also were a notably high proportion of scientists who contributed to the Islamic Golden Age. According to Bernard Lewis : "Culturally, politically, and most remarkable of all even religiously,

16002-440: Was the religious observances followed by Muslims which expected them to pray at exact times during the day. These observances in timekeeping led to many questions in previous Greek mathematical astronomy, especially their timekeeping. The astrolabe was a Greek invention which was an important piece of Arabic astronomy. An astrolabe is a handheld two-dimensional model of the sky which can solve problems of spherical astronomy. It

16129-644: Was working in Damascus in 1350 AD employed the Tusi-couple to successfully eliminate the equant as well as other objectionable circles that Ptolemy had used. This new model properly aligned the celestial spheres and was mathematically sound. This development by Ibn al-Shatir, as well as the Maragha astronomers remained relatively unknown in medieval Europe. The names for some of the stars used, including Betelgeuse , Rigel , Vega , Aldebaran , and Fomalhaut are several of

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