As We Enter a New Century and Millennium, We Tend to View More entities as forged, made up, invented—constructed is the more professional term in scholarship—than we did at any time in the past. Not only poems, paintings and other artifacts, but a whole range of phenomena, from an individual's sense of identity, to categories of knowledge or scientific disciplines, to feelings of belonging to professional, ethnic, or national entities, are thought of not as “natural” or “given” but as imagined, constructed. Languages and cultures themselves are said to be constructs, more or less fictional occurrences set forth as real by the force of massive belief in their “realness.” Under such circumstances we might well once again raise the question of how one conceptualizes—or evaluates, to move the matter on to the axiological plane—those epitomes of collective cultural construction, namely culture-specific encyclopedias, works of scholarship that were once thought of, rather naively, simply as “research tools”?

The Study of Classical Persian Literature Can be Separated from the study of modern Persian literature for heuristic reasons—one can be emphasized more than the other in teaching, and the path away from classicism to modernism and beyond can be charted—but it is impossible to draw a decisive line dividing the two. The modern develops out of the classical and constantly interacts with it. The two may be separated, but in the end Persian literature is one and is best thought of as such. The present review, in which classical literature will be the focus, is one such heuristic occasion.

This review will survey the field in terms of the major concerns of literary scholarship that are affected by the work of the Encyclopaedia Iranica and will try to illuminate the role of this reference work as a source of, and an aid to, literary scholarship.

In an Encyclopedia Devoted to Matters Pertaining to Persia and The greater Iranian cultural sphere, musical items cannot be too numerous or diverse. Musical topics fall under four categories: 1) the theory and history of traditional art music; 2) folk music of different regions; 3) musical instruments; and 4) individual musicians and their work, past and present, worthy of mention. Of these, art music provides the most extensive area for representation. The folk music of Persia, with patchy exceptions, has not been adequately studied; unfortunately satisfactory encyclopedia entries cannot be constructed in more than a few areas. The country is very rich in diverse musical instruments, but many are folk instruments about which, again, comparatively little scholarly work has been done. As to individual musicians, there are those medieval figures, mostly claimed by the Arabs and Turks as well, whom we know mainly through their extant writings on the theory of music. Only contemporary figures can be properly identified, both biographically and as to their artistic merits. They are mainly performers of the urban musical tradition.

The Coverage Accorded Central Asia and Afghanistan in the Encyclopaedia Iranica is remarkably broad. No significant aspect—geography, history, the economy, society, or culture—has been neglected, while the articles on the Iranian religious, economic, and cultural presence in China summarize existing scholarship and suggest new avenues of investigation. Taken together, the articles on Afghanistan provide an assessment of its unique place within the Iranian world, while those on Central Asia and China evaluate the importance of Iranian influences and trace the fate of Iranian peoples and cultures. Numerous articles stand as original contributions to their respective subjects and contain up-to-date and, in many cases, exhaustive bibliographies.

The Indian Subcontinent has been One of the Most Prominent Areas of Persian cultural efflorescence. The Parsis, with their Iranian religious heritage, have played an important role in Indian thought and commerce that continues today. Iranian Islam has since medieval times had a powerful influence, competing with Muslim currents from Central Asia and the Arabian subcontinent. From the twelfth through the nineteenth centuries, Persian was the most important administrative language for Muslim states in the area. Enormous numbers of historical chronicles, books of poetry, and Sufi works were composed in Persian by both Muslims and Hindus in these centuries, some of them classics of world literature such as the Akbarnāma or the works of Bidel. It has even been argued that in the eighteenth century more Hindus may have read the Bhagavad Gita in Persian translation than in the original Sanskrit, given the very large class of Hindu Persian scribes and administrators and the relatively smaller numbers of Sanskrit scholars. India had an important cultural, commercial, and intellectual influence on Iran, as well, an influence now largely forgotten.

Sufism is One of the Most Dynamic and Interesting Dimensions of Islamic religious and cultural expression. It is an umbrella term for a variety of philosophical, social, and literary phenomena occurring within the Islamic world. In its narrowest sense, the term “Sufism” refers to a number of schools of Islamic mystical philosophy and theology, to the phenomenon of religious orders and guilds (tarīqāt) that have exerted considerable influence over the development of Islamic politics and society, and to the varied expressions of popular piety and devotion to shrines found throughout the Islamic world. In a wider sense, Sufism is often seen as the spiritual muse behind much of pre-modern verse in the Islamic world, the idiom of much of popular Islamic piety, the primary social arena open to women's religious participation, and a major force in the conversion of people to Islam in Africa and Asia. The Sufi orders served as educational institutions that fostered not only the religious sciences but also music and decorative arts. Their leaders sometimes functioned as a challenge to the power of the juridic and theological establishment.

The Following Essay is Based on the Review of Entries in Encyclopaedia Iranica dealing with Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, other Christian groups, Babis-Bahais, and Jews up to the letter D. There are 36 entries for Armenia and Armenians, 28 for the Assyrians and Christians, 45 for Babis and Bahais, and 20 for Jews. These include main headings as well as extensive subheadings.

The entries show the vastness and complexity of the religious and ethnic landscape of Iran beginning long before Islam. Each group demonstrates a unique character and reflects what is significant in its link to the Persian environment. In order to introduce the reader and to present an accurate picture of the articles and the contributors, the four categories are covered separately and some points of convergence are discussed at the end. Although every attempt is made to refer to as many entries as possible, not all entries could be included.

Students of Classical Islam Now Have Several Substantial English-language reference works at their disposal. Foremost among these is the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (henceforth EI2) an imposing enterprise which attempts to cover all aspects of Islam in all lands from the time of the Prophet until the present. This noble ambition has carried the price of slow progress. Publication began in 1952 and after nearly half a century the work is still not complete. In the meantime The Encyclopedia of Religion and The Dictionary of the Middle Ages have appeared and been completed. Although the purview of these two works is much broader than the religion of Islam and the Islamic world, they contain many articles of considerable interest to Islamicists. Since the publication of its first fascicle in 1982, the Encyclopaedia Iranica has been supplementing these distinguished works, and eight volumes of a projected twenty have now been completed.

In Many Respects, Shiᶜism Constitutes the Most Important Element of Iranian culture since the Safavid rule in the sixteenth century. Shiᶜism not only presents a most divergent sectarian character in Islam, but also introduces a variety of rites and rituals, some of them well penetrated into the festive mode of thought of Iranians. The Encyclopaedia Iranica has dedicated numerous entries to Shiᶜite characters, rites and rituals in the first place, and to Shiᶜah thought and concepts in the second place. Looking at Shiᶜism as a culture, indeed, justifies the prominence of rituals. The community, in Heinz Halm's words, “is created through the process of rituals” more than “the profession of belief in dogma.” The Shiᶜite community, since the Safavid period, has been equipped with rituals that ensured a lasting cultural dimension for Shiᶜism. In our survey of Shiᶜism in Iranica, therefore, we deal first with rituals and symbols, second with juristic characters, third with concepts and titles, and finally with some general remarks on the issues.