Order of the Lion and the Sun

The Imperial Order of the Lion and the Sun was instituted by Fat’h Ali Shah of the Qajar Dynasty in 1808 to honour foreign officials (later extended to Persians) who had rendered distinguished services to Persia. In 1925, under the Pahlavi dynasty the Order continued as the Order of Homayoun with new insignia, though based on the Lion and Sun motif. This motif was used for centuries by the rulers of Persia, being formally adopted under Mohammad Shah.

The order was senior to the Order of the Crown. It was issued in five grades.

Foreign Recipients
Major-General Sir John Malcolm was the first foreign recipient in 1810. Other foreign recipients include:
 * Richard Colley (Wellesley), Marquess Wellesley (1811)
 * Sir Gore Ouseley (1770–1844), British ambassador to Persia and oriental scholar (1812)
 * Major-General Sir Henry Lindsay-Bethune (1787–1851), Commander of Persian infantry regiments (1816)
 * General Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov (1777—1861), Russian ambassador to Persia 1817 (1817)
 * Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842), artist and diplomat (1819)
 * Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1821)
 * Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Willock, British Envoy to Persia 1815-1826 (1826)
 * Field marshal Ivan Paskevich (1782–1856) (1828)
 * Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Kinnear Macdonald, British Envoy to Persia 1826-1830 (1828)
 * Abbasqulu ağa Bakıxanov Qüdsi an Azerbaijani writer, historian, journalist, linguist, poet and philosopher (1829)
 * Aleksander Griboyedov (1795 - 1829), diplomat and playwright, Russian Envoy to Persia 1829 (1829)
 * Sir John McNeill, British Envoy to Persia 1836-1842 (1833)
 * Sir Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownagree KCIE
 * Sir George Hayter (1792–1871), British Portrait Painter
 * Armand Trousseau
 * Marshal Francois Achille Bazaine (1811–1888), Marshal of France
 * Seth Apcar
 * Sir Albert Abdullah David Sassoon (1889)
 * General Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler
 * Karl Georg Graf Huyn (1909)
 * Edward Granville Browne (1922)
 * Major-General Sir Frederick Sykes
 * General Boris Möller, Swedish chief for the second gendarmerie regiment (1914-1915)
 * Baron Eric Hermelin, Swedish translator of classical Persian poetry (1943)

In literature

 * Anton Chekhov has a short story titled The Lion And The Sun. The story is about a mayor who had "long been desirous of receiving the Persian order of The Lion and the Sun".