Dialectal and technical terms in the vaqfnāmehs of the sacred Razavi Mausoleum

The Āstan-e Qods-e Razavi (organization in charge of Imam Reza’z Mausoleum) is one of the world’s greatest waqf establishments. The foundation of this administration- endowment body is grounded on its enormously extensive documents, especially waqfi texts: unique documents through which the decisive role of the Organization in Iran’s historical, economic, political and cultural changes during the past centuries is revealed. These documents dating especially from the Safavid, Afsharid, Zand, and Qajar periods, comprise original vaqfnāmehs (deeds of endowments) as well as their copies, settlement contracts, transactions contracts, eqrarnāmehs (confession letters), leasing letters, lists of raf’ va bakhsh (annual revenues and expenditures), pages of accounting books etc. Considering the extensivity of available information in these documents, especially linguistic data, the rereading and surveying of this invaluable legacy is of immense necessity. In this article, being the first of its kind on the documents mentioned above, the dialectal and technical terms used in them, but not to be found in Persian dictionaries, have been revisited.