The spectrum of landscape meanings and its equivalents in Persian languag

The word ‘Landscape1’ is an ancient and widely used terminology which denotes different meanings in different school of thoughts. Even though over the course of time it has been emerged in different forms, it and all its associated forms of the word signify a single meaning. The history of Iranian linguistics and anthropology shows that people have been conscious of landscape and its conceptualization. Landscape in Persian language is equivalent to "Manzar". Landscape and its group of equivalent words in Iranian sources date back to early Islamic centuries. Attention to different layers of the meaning of the landscape and has led to Persian word coinage. Although all words apparently explain "a scene in front of an observer", they are differently conceptualized. There seems to be a hierarchy of meaning systems which begins with a neutral and non-moving image in front of a human being and ends with a dynamic, human-dependent image. The emergence of Iranian gardens since the first millennium BC, as landscape artifacts reflecting the interpretation of the nature, shows that landscape has received attention in an old and rich culture of Iran. This article reviews the pertinent literature of the word landscape in Persian language and shows how it is represented in Iranian civilization.