The Encyclopaedia Iranica is dedicated to the study of Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.  The academic reference work will eventually cover all aspects of Iranian history and culture as well as all Iranian languages and literatures, facilitating the whole range of Iranian studies research from archeology to political sciences.  

The Encyclopaedia is an international, collaborative project, based at Columbia University  in the City of New York. Its compilation is all internationally renowned scholars of Iranian studies, who assist in the commissioning and editing of entries.

Encyclopaedia Iranica is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia  about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times.

The full text of most entries is available free for on-line viewing encoded with unicode. 

(Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems.)

Web site Encyclopaedia Iranica: http://www.iranicaonline.org/