The complex of humanistic studies treating the history, economics, languages, literary texts, and material and spiritual culture of the peoples speaking languages of the Iranian family.Iranian studies took shape as a science in the 19th century. With the separation in the 20th century of Ossetian, Kurdish, Afghan, and Tajik studies from Iranian studies, the discipline is understood, on the one hand, as the study of Iran itself and, on the other hand, as the study of the languages and literatures (Iranian philology) and ancient history of the Iranian peoples.Works on the history and culture of the Iranian peoples, written in ancient and early medieval times by them or by other peoples, together with epigraphical material, serve as valuable sources for Iranian studies. The rise of Iranian studies in Western Europe was stimulated primarily by the development of trade and diplomatic relations between the European countries and Iran, Central Asia, and India, and partly by the practical needs of missionaries. In the 13th and 14th centuries the first descriptions of the journeys of G. di Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, and G. de Clavijo were published; later, accounts appeared by the Italian traveler Pietro della Valle, the French travelers J. Tavernier, J. Chardin, and R. du Mans, and the German travelers A. Olearius and E. Kämpfer. In the 17th through mid-18th centuries, the first translations of Iranian classics appeared (G. Gentius, Holland), as well as grammars (Lode-wijk de Dieu, France), dictionaries (Jacobus Golius, Holland), translations of historical sources, and historical research (T. Hyde, Great Britain; B. d’Herbelot and La Mamye-Clairac, France). All these works established a foundation for Iranian studies.
Development of Poetic Structures of Musical Systems
