Table of Contents
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NIGHTINGALE
Cross-Reference
See BOLBOL.
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NĪRANGDĪN CEREMONY
Firoze M. Kotwal and Philip G. Kreyenbroek
a Zoroastrian ritual to consecrate gōmēz, or bull’s urine; the consecrated liquid is known as nīrang or nīrangdīn.
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NISA
Antonio Invernizzi
New Nisa, capital of ancient Parthia, occupies a large area enclosed within stout mud-brick fortifications, which enclose a citadel. Excavations here have brought to light a monumental funerary building of the Parthian era with a flat, crenellated roof, a façade, and wall decoration with terracotta plates.
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NISĀBURI, ḤASAN
David Pingree
b. Moḥammad al-Aʿraj, Neẓām-al-Din Qommi, astronomer; d. after 1311.
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NISĀYA
Rüdiger Schmitt
the Old Iranian name of several Iranian regions and places, which cannot easily be distinguished from one another.
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NISHAPUR i. Historical Geography and History to the Beginning of the 20th Century
C. Edmund Bosworth
Nishapur (Nišāpur) was, with Balḵ, Marv and Herat, one of the four great cities of the province of Khorasan. It flourished in Sasanid and early Islamic times, but after the devastations of the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, subsided into a more modest role until it revived in the 20th century.
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NISHAPUR vi. Archeology
Rocco Rante
A major crossroad on the international trade route and silk road, the archeological area in Nishapur has two main sections which have been subjects of discoveries during different eras.
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NISHAPUR vii. Excavations by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Marika Sardar
The MMA started expeditions in Iran in 1935 in Qaṣr-e Abu Naṣr, continued to Nishapur, and ended in 1948 after six seasons.
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NISIBIS
Samuel Lieu
city in northern Mesopotamia, a major focus of military confrontations between the Roman and Sasanian empires an center of theological studies for the Church of the East. Once in Sasanian hands, the city’s role was reversed to that of advanced Persian base of operations against Roman and Byzantine frontier defenses.
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NÖLDEKE, THEODOR
Rüdiger Schmitt
Nöldeke could convincingly prove the thesis already proposed by Niels Ludvig Westergaard (1815-1878) that Middle Persian was not an Irano-Semitic hybrid language, but an authentic Iranian dialect, the phonetic forms of which were “obscured by a partly cryptographic, partly extremely historicizing spelling.”
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