Iran Civil Service Exam cheat sheet

The lunar Hijri year is about 354 days, roughly 11 days shorter than the solar year, so Islamic dates drift earlier each Gregorian year.

The first verse revealed (Quran 96:1-5) occurred in the Cave of Hira; the migration (hijra) to Medina in 622 CE marks year 1 of the Hijri calendar.

Iran's official religion is Twelver Shi'a Islam, and Persian is the official language; the Constitution names Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian Iranians as recognized religious minorities.

Key Iranian national holidays: Nowruz (1 Farvardin), Islamic Republic Day (12 Farvardin), Nature Day Sizdah-Bedar (13 Farvardin).

Shi'a Imams number twelve; the Twelfth Imam (Mahdi) is believed in occultation, a doctrine central to Iranian religious culture.

Persian New Year follows the vernal equinox, so Nowruz falls on 20 or 21 March in the Gregorian calendar.

Major Shi'a mourning observances: Muharram (Ashura on 10 Muharram) and Ramadan (month of fasting, 9th lunar month).

Persian alphabet has 32 letters; it is written right-to-left and is an abjad (vowels largely unwritten except long vowels alef, vav, ye).

Classical Persian poetry meters derive from the Arabic aruz system; the meter (bahr) is determined by syllable patterns of sabab and vatad.

Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (completed ~1010 CE) is in motaqareb meter and preserves pre-Islamic Iranian epic and myth.

Rudaki (9th-10th c.) is regarded as the father of Persian poetry; Sa'di wrote Golestan (prose) and Bustan (verse).

Hafez wrote ghazals; Rumi (Molavi) composed the Masnavi in ramal meter; Nezami's Khamsa is a five-part versified romance cycle.

Persian grammar: no grammatical gender; ezafe (-e) links nouns to adjectives and possessors (ketab-e sabz = the green book).

Orthographic rule: the ezafe is usually unmarked in writing but pronounced; plural markers are -ha (inanimate) and -an (animate, formal).

The Quran has 114 surahs and 6,236 verses (by the Kufi count); the longest surah is Al-Baqarah (2), the shortest Al-Kawthar (108).

Meccan surahs (revealed before 622 CE) emphasize monotheism and resurrection; Medinan surahs emphasize law, community, and governance.

The Prophet Muhammad received the first revelation at age 40 (610 CE), migrated to Medina in 622 CE, and died in 632 CE.

Hadith classification: sahih (sound), hasan (good), da'if (weak), mawdu' (fabricated); the isnad (chain) and matn (text) are both evaluated.

Shi'a hadith collections include al-Kafi, Man la yahduruhu al-faqih, Tahdhib al-Ahkam, and al-Istibsar (the Four Books).

The Battle of Badr occurred in 2 AH (624 CE); the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah in 6 AH; the conquest of Mecca in 8 AH.

Quranic sciences: naskh (abrogation), asbab al-nuzul (occasions of revelation), and qira'at (canonical recitations).

Conditional types: Type 1 (if + present, will + base), Type 2 (if + past, would + base), Type 3 (if + past perfect, would have + past participle).

Passive voice: be + past participle; only transitive verbs passivize. Example: 'The report was written by the analyst.'

Reported speech backshifts tense one step (present to past, past to past perfect) unless reporting verb is present.

Subject-verb agreement: indefinite pronouns (everyone, each, nobody) take singular verbs; 'neither...nor' agrees with the nearer subject.

Prepositions of time: in (months, years), on (days, dates), at (clock times).

Commonly confused pairs: affect (verb) / effect (noun); principal (main) / principle (rule); its (possessive) / it's (it is).

Relative clauses: defining clauses take no commas and allow 'that'; non-defining clauses take commas and forbid 'that'.

Percent change = (new - old) / old x 100; successive changes of a% and b% give a + b + ab/100.

Work rate: combined rate = 1/a + 1/b; time together = ab/(a+b).

Mixture rule (alligation): ratio of quantities = (price2 - mean) : (mean - price1).

Arithmetic sequence: a_n = a_1 + (n-1)d; sum = n(a_1 + a_n)/2. Geometric: a_n = a_1 r^(n-1); sum = a_1(1 - r^n)/(1 - r).

Probability of independent events multiplies; of mutually exclusive events adds. P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B).

Area formulas: triangle = 1/2 x base x height; circle = pi r^2; trapezoid = (a+b)/2 x h. Volume of cylinder = pi r^2 h.

Speed = distance / time; average speed for equal distances = 2xy/(x+y) (harmonic mean), not the arithmetic mean.

Validity concerns form, not truth: a valid argument can have false premises; soundness requires validity plus true premises.

Modus ponens: P -> Q, P therefore Q (valid). Modus tollens: P -> Q, not-Q therefore not-P (valid). Affirming the consequent (P -> Q, Q therefore P) is invalid.

Contrapositive of P -> Q is not-Q -> not-P (equivalent); converse (Q -> P) and inverse (not-P -> not-Q) are not equivalent.

Syllogism rules: a valid categorical syllogism has three terms, a distributed middle term, and no two negative premises.

Venn diagrams test categorical syllogisms; shading indicates emptiness, an X indicates existence.

Analytical sequencing: place fixed items first, then apply adjacency and ordering constraints; count arrangements with n! and permutations nPr = n!/(n-r)!.

Negation flips quantifiers: not(all A are B) = some A are not B; not(some A are B) = no A are B.

Binary to decimal: each bit position is a power of 2; 1011 (binary) = 8+0+2+1 = 11 (decimal).

1 byte = 8 bits; 1 KB = 1024 bytes; 1 MB = 1024 KB; 1 GB = 1024 MB.

OSI model has 7 layers (Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, Application); TCP operates at Transport, IP at Network.

IPv4 addresses are 32-bit; IPv6 addresses are 128-bit. Private IPv4 ranges: 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16.

Boolean logic: AND yields 1 only if both inputs are 1; OR yields 1 if any input is 1; XOR yields 1 only if inputs differ.

Common file extensions: .docx (Word), .xlsx (Excel), .pptx (PowerPoint), .pdf (portable document), .html (web page).

HTTP status codes: 200 OK, 301 Moved Permanently, 404 Not Found, 500 Internal Server Error.

Iran's Constitution was adopted in 1979 (1358 SH); it was revised in 1989, removing the office of Prime Minister and strengthening presidential powers.

The Supreme Leader (Rahbar) is head of state, appointed by the Assembly of Experts (Majles-e Khobregan), which is elected by popular vote.

The President is elected by direct popular vote for a four-year term and may serve at most two consecutive terms.

The Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles) has 290 members elected for four-year terms; it can impeach the President and ministers.

The Guardian Council (Shura-ye Negahban) has 12 members (6 jurists appointed by the Leader, 6 lawyers elected by Majles) and vets legislation and candidates.

The Expediency Council (Majma'-e Tashkhis-e Maslahat) resolves disputes between Majles and Guardian Council.

Judicial authority is independent; the Head of the Judiciary is appointed by the Leader for five years.

Public administration principles: hierarchy, span of control, unity of command, and division of labor (Fayol's 14 principles).

POSDCORB (Gulick and Urwick): Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting, Budgeting.

Max Weber's ideal bureaucracy: division of labor, hierarchy, written rules, impersonal relations, merit-based appointment.

Budgeting types: line-item (input-based), program (output-based), performance budgeting, and zero-based budgeting (ZBB).

Classical management theory (Taylor's scientific management) emphasizes time-and-motion efficiency; human relations school (Mayo's Hawthorne studies) emphasizes social factors.

Iran's civil service is regulated by the Civil Service Management Law (Qanun-e Modiriyat-e Khadamat-e Keshvari), which sets recruitment, promotion, and evaluation rules.

Performance appraisal methods: rating scales, critical incident, management by objectives (MBO), and 360-degree feedback.