BŪRĀN

 

BŪRĀN, (Middle Pers. Bōrān) also called Ḵadīja (192-271/807-84), wife of al-Maʾmūn and daughter of Ḥasan b. Sahl, was probably so named after the Sasanian queen Bōrān (r. 29-30). At the age of ten she was betrothed to al-­Maʾmūn, but the wedding took place at her father’s residence in Fam al-Ṣelḥ near Wāseṭ when she was almost eighteen (Ramażān, 210/December, 825-­January, 826). The occasion was so pompously celebrated that it became proverbial and won the name of “The Invitation of Islam,” Daʿwat al-Eslām (cf. Ṯaʿālebī, Ṯemār al-qolūb, Cairo, 1965, pp. 165). She is also remembered for asking the caliph to pardon his uncle Ebrāhīm b. Mahdī and to allow Zobayda to go on pilgrimage. Nothing else is known about her as a queen (210-18/825-33) or during her long life after the death of al-Maʾmūn (218/833). She died (Rabīʿ I, 271/Septem­her, 884) in the former palace of Jaʿfar Barmakī on the Tigris (al-Qaṣr al-Ḥasanī), which she had received from her father. She is credited with the creation of the popular dish būrānī (see Naḵjavānī, p. 145).

 

Bibliography:

N. Abbott, Two Queens of Bagh­dad, Chicago, 1974, pp. 231-35.

Abu’l-Fażl Aḥmad b. Abī Ṭāher Ṭayfūr, Taʾrīḵ Baḡdād, Cairo, 1949, pp. 113-16.

Ebn at-Aṯīr, VI, pp. 395-96.

Ebn Badrūn, Šarḥ qaṣīdat Ebn ʿAbdūn, Cairo, pp. 265-71.

EI2 I, pp. 1312. Ebn Ḵallekān, Wafayāt, ed. Abbas, p. 287.

Ebn Taḡrīberdī, III, p. 65.

Hendūšāh Naḵjavānī, Tajāreb al-salaf, facs. ed. A. S. Ḥ. Rawẓātī, Tehran, 1361 Š./1982, fols. 163-65 = pp. 143-45.

Kaḥḥāla, Aʿlām al-nesāʾ, 3rd ed., Damascus, 1977, I, p. 159.

Masʿūdī, Morūj, ed. Pellat, IV, p. 327.

Mojmal, ed. Bahār, pp. 354-55.

W. Muir, The Caliphate. Its Rise, Decline, and Fall, London, 1898, pp. 503, 504, 506-07.

Aḥmad b. ʿOmar Neẓāmī ʿArūżī Samarqandī, Čahār maqāla, ed. M. Qazvīnī, rev. M. Moʿīn, 3rd ed., Tehran, 1333 Š./1954, text, pp. 32-36.

Soyūṭī, Nozhat al-jolasāʾ, Beirut, 1958, p. 30. Ṭabarī, III, pp. 1081-­85.

Yāqūt, Boldān I, pp. 807-08; III, pp. 917.

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 بوران booran boran bouran

(Ihsan Abbas)

Originally Published: December 15, 1989

Last Updated: December 15, 1989

This article is available in print.
Vol. IV, Fasc. 5, pp. 553-554