On the basis of typological considerations, the paper attempts to document and compare nominal compounding, and its evolution, in various Iranian languages. Particular attention is given to the interrelationship between compounds and syntactic NPs, and, among compounds, between determinative and possessive compounds. Given the lack of a comprehensive typological investigation of nominal compounding to date, the primary aim of this paper is to present original data in an unbiased manner and to identify some meaningful typological parameters as a starting point for further cross-linguistic investigation.