Table of Contents

  • ABAQA

    Peter Jackson

    (or ABAḠA, “paternal uncle” in Mongolian; ABĀQĀ in Persian and Arabic), eldest son and first successor of the Il-khan Hülegü.

  • ʿABAQĀT AL-ANWĀR

    ʿA.-N. Monzavi

    a large Persian and Arabic work by Mīr Ḥāmed Ḥosayn b. Moḥammad-qolī b. Moḥammad b. Ḥāmed of Lucknow on the legitimacy of the imamate and the defense of Shiʿite theology.

  • ABAR NAHARA

    Cross-Reference

    Aramaic name for the lands to the west of the Euphrates—i.e., Phoenicia, Syria, and Palestine (Parpola, p. 116; Zadok, p. 129; see ASSYRIA ii). These regions apparently passed from Neo-Babylonian to Persian control in 539 B.C.E. when Cyrus the Great conquered Mesopotamia. See EBER-NĀRĪ.

  • ABARKĀVĀN

    M. Kasheff

    Late Sasanian name of Qešm island in the Straits of Hormoz.

  • ABARQOBĀḎ

    C. E. Bosworth

    Ancient town of lower Iraq between Baṣra and Vāseṭ, to the east of the Tigris, in the region adjacent to Ahvāz, known in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times as Mēšūn (Mid. Pers. form) or Maysān/Mayšān (Syriac and Arabic forms).

  • ABARQUH

    Multiple Authors

    (or ABARQŪYA), a town in northern Fārs; it was important in medieval times, but, being off the main routes, it is now largely decayed.

  • ABARQUH i. History

    C. E. Bosworth

    In present-day Iran, Abarqūh is situated in the tenth ostān, that of Isfahan, and forms a baḵš or district of the šahrestān of Yazd.

  • ABARQUH ii. Monuments

    R. Hillenbrand

    Numerous pre-Safavid monuments survive in Abarqūh, but the lack of important later buildings suggests a sharp decline in the city’s wealth.

  • ABARŠAHR

    H. Gaube

    Name of Nīšāpūr province in western Khorasan. From the early Sasanian period, Nišāpur, which was founded or rebuilt by Šāpur I in the first years of his reign, was the administrative center of the province.

  • ABARSĀM

    E. Yarshater

    (APURSĀM in Middle Persian), a dignitary and high-ranking officeholder of the court of the Sasanian king Ardašīr I (A.D. 226-42).