Iran is a country with a deep and complex history. Over several thousand years Iran has been the source of numerous creative contributions to the spiritual and literary world and the site of many remarkable manifestations of material culture. The special place that Iran has come to hold in contemporary historical events most recently as a center stage actor in the unfolding and interconnected drama of worldwide nuclear arms proliferation and terrorism is all the more reason to explore the characters and personality of Iran and Iranians.This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Iran is designed to give the reader a quick and understandable overview of specific events movements people political and social groups places and trends. Through its extensive chronology introduction bibliography appendixes and more than double the number of crossreferenced dictionary entries as in the previous edition the work allows for considerable exploration of a number of historical and contemporary topics and issues. In particular the modern period defined as 1800present is covered extensively.