16 July 2003

Editing of the mythical, epic and historical dictionary of the geographical names of Iran has been finished and it is ready for publication.

According to the Head of the Language Research Center of Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization Dr. Sa'id Oryan, the preliminary task for making this dictionary started in 2001 and the dictionary now includes 1600 main and secondary entries.

"Research on the mythical, epic and historical geographical names of Iran is a very complicated task," Oryan says. "Therefore, despite the existence of many reliable sources, such as sources related to Iran before Islam and during Islamic period, the issue has not been studied systematically so far."

"The main difficulty in proceeding with this project was the diversity of the names that have changed so many times throughout the history," Oryan says.

The diversity of the names on one hand and the fact that the ones changed during the history have been forgotten on the other, have led to the ambiguity of the geographical history of Iran's land, added Oryan.

Dr. Oryan explained that the experiences of experts from other countries in writing encyclopaedias have shown that working first on dictionaries and then moving toward encyclopaedias is more logical and beneficial.

This dictionary is in fact the first step toward compiling the encyclopaedia of mythical, epic and historical geography of Iran.

It is predicted that the encyclopaedia will cover all the geographical names of the pre-Islamic era, and the Islamic period, such as the geographical names mentioned in Shahnameh (the Book of Epics) by Master Ferdowsi.

The encyclopaedia will also cover the transformation of the names throughout the history.

As Dr. Oryan predicts the results of research activities on the subject and the bibliography of available sources will also be included in the encyclopaedia.