The Encyclopaedia Iranica is Truly a Monumental Undertaking, Containing thousands of carefully selected items of information covering most aspects of Iranian civilization past and present. As the first seven volumes demonstrate, it is an indispensable reference work that belongs in the libraries of all universities and in the homes of everyone interested in Iran, whether for professional or personal reasons. In connection with ancient or pre-Islamic Iranian religions, the EIr represents the most important scholarly contribution since James Hastings edited the thirteen-volume Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh, 1908-1926, reprint New York, 1955, Edinburgh, 1994). In fact, both may be used as complementary research guides, for the rich descriptions of rituals in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics are not repeated in the EIr whereas the former lacks the up-to-date information on persons, places, events, ideas, theoretical standpoints, and bibliography so fully articulated in the latter.

Reviewing an Encyclopedia is in Itself a Difficult Task, Reviewing a specific topic or a set of topics in that encyclopedia while the encyclopedia is still in progress is even more so. An encyclopedia is not a book, one cannot read it from cover to cover even when it is finished. It does not have an introduction, a thesis, an argument, and a conclusion. It is not supposed to establish the frontiers of research in any field or to raise any issues about the direction of such research or the degree to which such frontiers could be pushed; instead it is supposed to report on the state of the art. In short one does not expect to find in an encyclopedia answers to pressing problems in a specific field but guidelines as to where such problems may be found.

Furthermore, an encyclopedia is organized by entries (alphabetically ordered) and not by the logic of the thesis, and the entries are mostly devoted to persons who are deemed as having played important roles in the domain with which the encyclopedia is concerned.

According to S. N. Elsenstadt, Institutions are Those Processes and structures, together with the associated set of regulative principles, that arrange human activities in a community “into definite organizational patterns from the point of view of some of the perennial, basic problems of any society or ordered social life.” From this perspective, the social dimension of the concept of social institutions is seen in terms of its “institutional spheres,” which include family and kinship, education, economics, politics, culture, and stratification. To this list may be added those approaches in psychology in which the unit of analysis is the group, community, or society.

Because the subject of “Social Institutions” covers such a vast domain, it will be necessary to focus upon only certain entries of the EIr in this domain. However, before proceeding, it is worth noting that some 150 articles in the first seven volumes may be classified under “social institutions,” including the subsections of articles.