Meaning of Iran | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A country in West Asia in the Middle East. Official name: Islamic Republic of Iran. Capital: Tehran.
2. Rare spelling of Iran.
   alt-of, rare
3. regions inhabited by the Iranian peoples.
   literary

Equivalents

Examples

“The Persians, in naming their country, make use of one word, which they indifferently pronounce Iroun, and Iran.”

“Light was happiness; and the people of Iran, the land of light, were the favourites of heaven; while those of Turan, the gloomy region beyond the mountains to the north, were its enemies.”

“"Iran is a vast and ancient country in a strategic location in the Middle East. It borders Russia, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf."”

“The US President himself accused Iran of being behind the provocation, threatening airstrikes on Iran last week – but calling them off just minutes before they were to begin.”

“"Kavi means a king, but it is particularly used of the kings belonging to the second and most celebrated of the two mythical dynasties of Iran." "One certain fact is the occurrence of geographical names [Bactria, Sogdiana, etc] in Vendidad I, which are obviously intended to describe the earliest homes of the Iranian races whose lore was the Avesta."”

“"Zoroaster of Iran. — Zoroaster, it is believed, sprang up in the seventh century before the Christian era, somewhere in the land between the Indus and the Tigris."”

“"Iran. in early times, the name applied to the great Asiatic plateau which comprised the entire region from the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and Russian Turkestan on the north to the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, and the Arabian Sea on the west and south, and extending to the Indus on the east, likewise comprising the modern Afghanistan and the territory to the north of it as far as the Jaxartes River."”

“"[W]e may surmise that there was a strong sense of Iranian unity lending solidarity to the eastern half of the empire. It is only in the generations after Alexander, in Eudemus and in Eratosthenes (ap. Strabo), that we find mention of the concept of a greater nation of Iran (Arianē) stretching from the Zagros to the Indus; but the sense of unity must have been there, for Herodotus tells us that the Medes were formerly called Arioi, and Darius I (followed by Xerxes) in his inscriptions proclaims himself an Iranian (Ariya) by race - he speaks of himself in ascending order as an Achaemenid, a Persian and an Iranian (Naqsh-i Rustam)."”

“"[The] Cambridge History of Iran [is] a survey of the history and historical geography of the land which is present-day Iran, as well as other territories inhabited by peoples of Iranian descent."”

“N. B. Irân is the antient Name of Perſia, and the Perſians at preſent call it by that Name. Irân pronounc’d Irûn, is Perſia at large; Pars is proper Perſia.”

“About this time many rebels had ſeized the provinces of Irân, and ſet up for independent monarchs. This exceedingly diſpleaſed Timûr; who, having conquered the kingdom of Tûrân, which Jenghîz Khân formerly divided between his ſons Tuſhi and Jagatay, he reſolved to ſubdue the empire of Irân, or Perſia at large.”

“The sixth and next discourse is on Persia or Irân. / There is solid reason to suppose, that a powerful monarchy had been established in Irân, for ages before the Assyrian Dynasty, (which commenced with Cayumers, about eight or nine centuries before Christ) under the name of the Mahabadian Dynasty, and that it must be the oldest in the world.”

““I am your servant,” said the other, “I am the servant of your family. You do not know me, but Mashallah! praises to Allah, it is a long while since I have known you. The air of Irân is filled with your renown; I am come from Mazanderan, and there by the beard of the shah I swear you are worshipped.”[…]The shah has vowed that you are to be the greatest man who sits in his gate: see, he gives to you in marriage the choicest maiden of Irân; that flower, of which others have not dared even to catch a distant scent, has been at once plucked and thrown into your bosom.”

““This is the face (or resemblance) of the servant of Ormuzd, the god (or the divine) Sapor, king of the kings of Irân and Turân (Persia and Scythia) of the race of the gods, son of the servant of Ormuzd, the divine Artaxares, king of the kings of Irân, of the race of the gods; grandson of the divine Papek the king.””

“‘This is the edict of me, the Ormazd-worshipper, the divine being Sapor, the king of kings of Irân and non-Irân, of heavenly origin from God; the son of the Ormazd-worshipper, the divine being Ardeshir, the king of kings of Irân, of heavenly origin from God; the grandson of the divine being Bâbek, the king.[…]’”

“This, as well as the limitation of Dualism to Irân and Babylon, is refuted by the frequent occurrence of the dualistic conception of the world among the most various savage peoples.[…]So also Dualism as it appears in Irân is a myth that has taken an ethical sense.”

“30. And it came to Mânûskîhar, the monarch of Irân, and through it many wonder-wrought actions were performed by him; he smote Salm and Tûg in revenge for Aîrîk, he was a responder to the superfluities of foreign countries, he arranged the realm of Irân, improved and fertilised the land of Irân, and made the country of Irân victorious over foreigners. / 31. At another time it came to Aûzôbô, son of Tûmâsp, a descendant of Mânûskîhar the monarch of Irân; and, through that destiny and glory combined, the new-born came to mature activity and the proportions of a man during childhood, through agriculture; he disclosed his lamenting mother to the countries to Irân, he marched on to the destruction of foreigners, to drive out and make them outcast from the land of Irân; he also defeated the village-terrifier of the country of Irân, the wizard who frightened his father and fellow-immortals, Frangrâsîyâk of Tûr; and he developed and fertilised the country of Irân, and increased the many streams and cultivated lands in the country of Irân.”

“Arjâsp, the king of the Khyaonas that “Look to my lance.” Those who may look to the interpretation of this lance may run to the country of Irân (to render submission).”

“[…]the history of a country which lies between Irân, the ancient motherland of the Parsees, and Hindustan, the motherland of the Hindus.[…]It has also several allusions to eminent kings and personages of ancient Irân, like King Jamshed, Tahamtan (Rustam) and his celeberated horse the Rakhsh, Minocheher, Buzurj Meher, Noshirwan, Kai Kâus, Kai Kobâd, Dârâ and Kai Khusru.[…]In addition to these, Dr. Spooner produces literary, numismatic, and other evidences to show, that there was the probability, well-nigh amounting to certainty, of a very powerful influence of Irân upon India.”

“The problem as to the pre-Saka population of Eastern Irân is related to that of the origin of the Iranian Medes and Persians in West and Southwest Irân.”

“The place in this of the religious revolution in Irân, Zoroastrianism, is more obscure.”

“It results from the collation of at least two manuscripts – the ص (S) codex coming from the university library of the Indian city of Lakahanu – and the خ (X) manuscript – not better defined – conserved in Irân, as writes the administrator of the printing edition:[…]”

“In the Preface is described the Geography of the ancient Kingdom of Irān, which is here stated to have reached from the Jihon or Amū River to the Euphrates; and from Derbend, on the Caspian, to the Persian Sea.”

“But it has been deemed by one high authority to reveal to us a closer connexion of India and Irān than has yet suggested itself: in the Dāsas Hillebrandt sees the Dahae, in the Paṇis the Parnians, and he locates the struggles of Divodāsa against them in Arachosia.[…]Similarly he suggests that the Sṛiñjaya people, who were connected like Divodāsa with the Bhāradāja family, should be located in Irān, and he finds in the Sarasvatī, which formed the scene of Divodāsa’s exploits, not the Indian stream but the Irānian Harahvaitī.[…]Other references to connexions with Irān have been seen in two names found in the Rigveda.[…]But the Rigveda knows a Pṛithī and later texts a Pṛithu, an ancient and probably mythical king, and thus we have in the Vedic speech itself an explanation of Pārthava which does not carry us to Irān.[…]Whatever the causes which severed Irān and India, in the earliest period, at least as recorded in the Rigveda, the relations of the two peoples seem not to have been those of direct contact.”

“Ṭāq-i Bustān lies just east of Kirmānshāh, a town in western Irān on the so-called High Road that led from Mesopotamia through the central Zagros Mountains to Khurāsān, the crucially important Central Asiatic frontier of Arab conquest.[…]Then there was also Abū LuʾLuʾa Fayrūz al-Nihāwandī, an Iranian Christian carpenter, stonemason, and smith, who was taken prisoner during Heraclius’s war with Irān, and then captured in turn from the Romans during the Arab invasion of Syria.”

“Before arriving in Khoyy, I had heard that they called it Irān’s Turkistān.[…]Aside from Gaelān, I haven’t seen any other area in Irān’s provinces that has so many beautiful people as in the province of Khoyy.”

“As has been shown above, the Land of Īrān is situated in the central part of the habitable world, but more on the western quarter, so that in longitude most of it lies west of the central meridian (in longitude 90°), while the lesser part falls beyond and to the east of this central line.[…]In the description of the habitable world the positions of places are all reckoned from the equator, this being the topmost line, and (in the map of Īrān, therefore) whatsoever has been set down is after this wise from the tables (of latitudes and longitudes) of places that are commonly agreed to as being (towns) of importance.”

“7) The ceiling normally consisted of intersecting triangular stone slabs converging towards a huge central lotus flower. This system was well-known in Īrān and Central Asia (29).[…]To return to Mithra, great importance attaches to the opinions the A. expresses on the subject of his «westernised» and mystic type, which he attributes to some non-Mazdean communities who took refuge in Babylonia when Xerxes banned from Īrān the so-called cult of the daēva gods and of Aṅra Mainyu.”

“Īrān became a part of the immense empire of the Caliphs; but within that empire Īrānian influence soon made itself strongly felt, and in the spiritual and political life of Islām illustrious sons of Īrān played leading rôles.”

“Of these the most informative are the Persian sources composed in Īrān. Unlike Persian historiography in Asia Minor, Persian authors in Īrān were very adept at creating universal histories, which often contain important news about Asia Minor. The period of Mongol domination of Īrān was the golden age of Persian literature.”

“This may be seen clearly in the case of the old Persian myth, mentioned briefly above (pp. 15, 16), where I showed that all that it told of the contests and mutual relations of the Sun and Night was, at the stage of the rising national consciousness, converted into contests between Îrân and Tûrân—the heroes of mythology became national heroes, the victorious Sun became a victorious helper and saviour of the nation, and the malicious intriguing Darkness the cunning hero of the hostile people.[…]The preservation of old national memories was promoted partly by the intellectual movement excited in Îrân by the ‘King’s Book’ (Shâh-nâmeh), partly by national historians of a remarkable type, who were at the same time proficient in Arabic philology and interested in the preservation of old memories of their own nation.”

“The kingdom of the Sassanians on the other hand, the Arabs completely overran and conquered; Yazdajird, the last of the Chosroes, was hunted down and slain, and the whole land of Îrân passed under the rule of Islam.[…]The Great Desert of Central Persia is the most remarkable physical feature of the high tableland of Îrân.[…]And their misuse of the name is perpetuated throughout Europe to the present day, for with us Persia—from the Greek Persis—has become the common term for the whole empire of the Shâh, whereas the native Persians call their country the kingdom of Îrân, of which Fârs, the ancient Persis, is but one of the southern provinces.”

“And along with the heroic legends of Îrân, it was natural that some of its religious tenets also should gain access to their minds.”

“In the midst of these affairs an ambassador from Shâh Ismâ‘il Husainî Safawî — who had succeeded by inheritance as king of the dominions of Khurâsân and ‘Irâk and the whole country of Îrân — with many valuable presents, jewels fit for kings and fleet Arab horses, arrived at the royal court and had the happiness of kissing the royal vestibule.”

“There is a young poet of the type of Aga Spenta who has been instrumental in interpreting the thoughts and aspirations of old Îrân to the new Îrân.[…]This will help us in India to study Pahlavî better after the renaissance in Îrân has well advanced.[…]May they be deciphered as early as convenient and speak to us the stories of what had happened in Îrân, twenty-two to twenty-five centuries ago.”

“During a study tour in Îrân 1959 I tried to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of the black tent.[…]In a large area of Western and Central Îrân the black tents are rather closely related.”

“In Abkar’s reign skilled horticulaturists^([sic]) came from Îrân and Trânsoxianâ and settled in India.”

CEFR level