Encyclopædia Iranica is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

 about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples

Iranian peoples

The Iranian peoples are an Indo-European ethnic-linguistic group, consisting of the speakers of Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, as such forming a branch of Indo-European-speaking peoples...

 from prehistory to modern times. It is a project of Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, started in 1973 at its Center for Iranian Studies, and is considered the standard encyclopaedia of the academic discipline

Academic discipline

An academic discipline, or field of study, is a branch of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined , and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to...

 of Iranistics.

The scope of the encyclopedia goes beyond Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 (formerly "Persia") and encompasses other geographical areas where Iranian languages

Iranian languages

The Iranian languages form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn is a subgroup of Indo-European language family. They have been and are spoken by Iranian peoples....

 dominated at certain times: Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....

, Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

 and Kurdistan, as well as some regions of the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

, South Asia

South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...

, Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

, and Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

. Relations of the Iranian world with other cultures (China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, European

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 countries, etc.) are also covered.

The project has published 15 volumes, and is planning on publishing a total of up to 45 volumes. The full text of most entries is available free for on-line viewing encoded with unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

.Earlier Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and Mac

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 users required a simple free font download to display words showing their correct characters and accents.

The editor-in-chief is Professor Ehsan Yarshater

Ehsan Yarshater

Ehsan Yarshater is the founder and director of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. He was the first full-time professor of Persian at a U.S. university since World War II....

 and managing editor is Ahmad Ashraf. The editorial board includes Nicholas Sims-Williams

Nicholas Sims-Williams

Nicholas Sims-Williams is a professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies , University of London, where he is the Research Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies at the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East. Sims-Williams is a scholar who specializes in...

, Christopher J. Brunner, Mohsen Ashtiany, Manuchehr Kasheff, and over 40 Consulting Editors from major international institutions doing research in Iranian Studies. A growing number (over 1,200 in 2006) of scholars from academic institutions in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, and Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 have contributed articles to Encyclopædia Iranica.

Many foundations, organizations, and individuals have supported Encyclopædia Iranica. Since 1979, the encyclopaedia has been sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities

National Endowment for the Humanities

The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...

, which, has been covering one-third of the project's budget for a few years. The list of sponsors includes American Council of Learned Societies

American Council of Learned Societies

The American Council of Learned Societies , founded in 1919, is a private nonprofit federation of seventy scholarly organizations.ACLS is best known as a funder of humanities research through fellowships and grants awards. ACLS Fellowships are designed to permit scholars holding the Ph.D...

, Union Académique Internationale

Union Académique Internationale

The Union Académique Internationale is the oldest and largest federation of Academies having a national character and created for international cooperation...

, Iran Heritage Foundation, and many other charitable foundations, philanthropic families and individuals.

See also

• Academy of Persian Language and Literature
  Academy of Persian Language and Literature
  Iran's Academy of Persian Language and Literature is a body controlled by the Iranian government presiding over the use of the Persian language in Iran and other Persian speaking countries. The academy members are academics of Persian literature and linguistics from , , , and .- History :The...
  
  
• Dastur al-Muluk
  Dastur al-Muluk
  One of only three surviving administrative handbooks from early 18th-century Safavid Iran and important research tool for scholars in Iranology. The Persian manuscript was edited during the 1960s by the Iranian scholar Mohammad-Taqi Daneshpazhuh....
  
  
• Iranology
• List of online encyclopedias

External links

• Encyclopædia Iranica Website. Full-text access to the Encyclopædia as it currently exists.
• Encyclopædia Iranica Events Website. Detailing future and past events sponsored or supported by Encyclopædia Iranica.
• Diverse information about Iranica
• Columbia College Today on Encyclopædia Iranica
• Guidelines for authors
• Scholars’ comments on Iranica