ولایت فقیه
Velâyat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) is Khomeini’s 1970 doctrine that a senior Shia cleric must rule the state. A theological argument that became a security architecture.
Arabic
اطلاعات سپاه
Etelâ’ât-e Sepâh (IRGC Intelligence Organization, IRGC-IO) is the IRGC’s parallel intelligence service, separate from MOIS. It detained Niloofar Hâmedi and Elâhe Mohammadi in 2022.
وزارت اطلاعات
Vezârat-e Etelâ’ât (MOIS) is Iran’s civilian Ministry of Intelligence, founded 1984. Implicated in the chain murders of dissidents and decades of overseas assassinations.
بسیج
Basij is the IRGC’s volunteer paramilitary, the muscle that beats women and protesters in the street. Sanctioned by the US Treasury for human-rights abuses.
مولانا
Mowlana is the Persian name for the thirteenth-century poet known in English as Rumi. Iranians, Afghans, and Tajiks call him Mowlana, “our master,” not Rumi.
سعدی
Saadi is the thirteenth-century Shirazi poet who wrote the Bustan and the Golestan. His Bani Adam verse on shared humanity is inscribed at the United Nations building in New York.
قم
Qom is Iran’s clerical center and second-most-sacred city, home to the Hazrat-e Masumeh shrine and the seminaries that train most of the country’s senior Shia clergy.
حضرت
Hazrat is the title of high religious respect in Persian, used for prophets, imams, saints, and sometimes God. Hazrat-e Ali, hazrat-e Mohammad. B1 vocabulary loaded with reverence.
تصوف
Tasavvof is the practice of Sufism. Persian-language tasavvof produced Rumi, Hafez, and Attar, and remains the most literary branch of the tradition worldwide. B2 vocabulary.
صوفی
A Sufi is a practitioner of tasavvof, the Persian-language Sufi tradition that produced Rumi, Hafez, and Saadi. B1 vocabulary with a charged modern history.