Table of Contents

• AḤMAD SOLṬĀN AFŠĀR

  R. M. Savory

  Qizilbāš amir in the Safavid service.  

• AḤMAD TABRĪZĪ

  İ. Aka

  Persian poet (first half of the 8th/14th century).

• AḤMAD TAKŪDĀR

  P. Jackson

  third il-khan of Iran (r. 680-83/1282-84), seventh son of Hülegü.

• AḤMAD TŪNĪ

  J. van Ess

  Karrāmī theologian who lived about 400/1010.  

• AḤMAD YĀDGĀR

  Hameed-ud-Din

  10th/16th century historian of the Afghans in India.

• AḤMAD, NEẒĀM-AL-DIN

  Erika Glassen

  vizier and amir under the Timurids (d. 912/1507).

• AḤMAD-E ʿABD-AL-ṢAMAD

  Cross-Reference

  See AḤMAD ŠĪRĀZĪ.

• AḤMAD-E JĀM

  H. Moayyad

  a Conservative Sufi with unreserved loyalty to the Šarīʿa (1049 -1141).

• AḤMAD-E ḴĀNI

  F. Shakely

  (1061-1119/1650-1707), a distinguished Kurdish poet, mystic, scholar, and intellectual who is regarded by some as the founder of Kurdish nationalism.

• AHMADABAD

  L. A. Desai

  Major city of Gujarat state in western India and a former center of Persian culture.

• AḤMADĀVAND

  P. Oberling

  a small, sedentary Kurdish tribe of western Iran.

• AHMADNAGAR

  Z. A. Desai

  major city and province in the state of Maharashtra in western India, founded about 900/1495 by Malek Aḥmad Neẓām-al-molk, a Bahmanī governor, on the site where he had earlier won a battle against his sovereign’s forces.

• AḤMADNAGARĪ, ʿABD-AL-NABĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿABD-AL-NABĪ.

• AḤMADPURĪ, GOL MOḤAMMAD

  K. A. Nizami

  (d. 1243/1827), a Panjabi saint and Češtī hagiographer.

• AḤMADZĪ

  C. M. Kieffer

  “descendants of Aḥmad” (sing. Aḥmadzay), a Paṧtō clan and tribal name.

• AḤRĀR

  C. E. Bosworth

  (or BANU’L-AḤRĀR), in Arabic literally “the free ones,” a name applied by the Arabs at the time of the Islamic conquests to their Persian foes in Iraq and Iran.

• AḤRĀR, ḴᵛĀJA ʿOBAYDALLĀH

  J. M. Rogers

  (806-96/1404-90), influential Naqšbandī of Transoxania.

• AHRIMAN

  J. Duchesne-Guillemin

  "demon," God’s adversary in the Zoroastrian religion.

• AHRIŠWANG

  B. Schlerath

  a learned transcription of the Avestan nominative Ašiš vaŋuhī, the goddess “Good Recompense.”

• AḤSĀʾĪ, SHAIKH AḤMAD

  D. M. MacEoin

  (1753-1826), Shiʿite ʿālem and philosopher and unintending originator of the Šayḵī school of Shiʿism in Iran and Iraq.

• AḤSAN AL-TAQĀSĪM

  C. E. Bosworth

  a celebrated geographical work in Arabic written towards the end of the 4th/10th century.

• AḤSAN AL-TAWĀRĪḴ

  ʿA. Navāʾī

  a chronological history of Iran and the neighboring countries written by Ḥasan Beg Rūmlū (b. 937/1530-31), a qūṛčī in the service of the Safavid Shah Ṭahmāsb.

• AHU

  B. Schlerath

  two homonymous Avestan terms: (1) “Existence, life” in a range of religious phrases, (2) “Lord, overlord,” linked with ratu- “lord, judge.”

• ĀHŪ

  B. P. O’Regan, H. Javadi

  Two species of gazelle occur in Iran, Gazella sub-gutturosa and G. dorcas.

• AHUNWAR

  C. J. Brunner

  Middle Persian form of Avestan Ahuna Vairya, name of the most sacred of the Gathic prayers.

• AHURA

  F. B. J. Kuiper

  designation of a type of deity inherited by Zoroastrianism from the prehistoric Indo-Iranian religion.

• AHURA MAZDĀ

  M. Boyce

  the Avestan name with title of a great divinity of the Old Iranian religion, who was subsequently proclaimed by Zoroaster as God.

• AHURA.ṰKAĒŠA

  M. Boyce

  an infrequent Avestan adjective meaning “following the Ahuric doctrine.”

• AHURĀNĪ

  B. Schlerath

  feminine deity of the waters.

• AHVĀZ

  C. E. Bosworth, X. De Planhol, J. Lerner

  a town of southwestern Iran.

• AHVĀZĪ

  D. Pingree

  a 4th/10th century mathematician.

• AHVĀZĪ, ABU’L-ḤASAN

  Cross-Reference

  See ABU’L-ḤASAN AHWĀZĪ.

• ĀĪN GOŠASP

  A. Tafażżolī

  a general of Hormazd IV (A.D. 579-590), sent by him to campaign against the rebellious general Bahrām Čūbīn.

• ĀĪN-E AKBARĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See AKBAR-NĀMA.

• ĀĪN-NĀMA

  A. Tafażżolī

  Arabic and New Persian form of Middle Persian ēwēn nāmag (“book of manners”), a general term for texts dealing with the exposition of manners, customs, skills, and arts and sciences.

• ĀĪNA-KĀRĪ

  E. G. Sims

  the practice of covering an architectural surface with a mosaic of mirror-glass.

• ĀĪNA-YE ḠAYBNOMĀ

  L. P. Elwell-Sutton

  “The Revealing Mirror,” a fortnightly illustrated magazine which began publication in Tehran on 22 Jomādā I 1325/3 July 1907, edited by Sayyed ʿAbd-al-Raḥīm Kāšānī.

• AIRYAMAN

  M. Boyce

  an ancient Iranian divinity and a yazata of the Zoroastrian pantheon, known in Manichean Middle Persian as Aryaman, in Pahlavi as Ērmān.

• AIRYAMAN IŠYA

  C. J. Brunner

  Gathic Avestan prayer.

• AIWYǠŊHANA

  M. F. Kanga

  Avestan term “wrapping round, girdle”: (1)  a strip from a date-palm leaf used to tie bundle of wires which constitute the barsom, (2) the kusti or sacred girdle.

• ʿAJABŠĪR

  ʿA. Kārang

  a town and baḵš in East Azerbaijan. 

• ʿAJĀʾEB AL-DONYĀ

  L. P. Smirnova

  (“Wonders of the world” or “Wonderful things”), title of a Persian geography.

• ʿAJĀʾEB AL-MAḴLŪQĀT

  C. E. Bosworth, I. Afshar

  (“The marvels of created things”), the name of a genre of classical Islamic literature and, in particular, of a work by Zakarīyāʾ b. Moḥammad Qazvīnī.

• ʿAJĀʾEB AL-MAQDŪR

  U. Nashashibi

  (“The wondrous turns of fate in the vicissitudes of Tīmūr”), a history of the life and conquests of Tīmūr (1336-1405).

• ʿAJAM

  C. E. Bosworth

  the name given in medieval Arabic literature to the non-Arabs of the Islamic empire, but applied especially to the Persians.

• ʿAJAMĪ

  A. A. Kalantarian

  6th/12th century architect under the Eldigüzid atabegs, founder of the Nakhchevan architectural school.

• ʿAJEZ, NARAYAN KAUL

  A. Mattoo

  Kashmiri Brahman of the 17th-18th centuries, a poet and compiler of Moḵtaṣar-e tārīḵ-e Kašmīr (1710-11).

• ĀJĪ ČĀY

  E. Ehlers

  (Talḵa-rūd, “Bitter river”), a river which flows into Lake Urumia. 

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• ʿAJIB MĀZANDARĀNI

  M. Dabirsiāqi

  19th-century poet of the Qajar court.

• ĀJĪL

  M. Kasheff

  an assortment of nuts, roasted chickpeas and seeds such as watermelon, pumpkin, and pear, and raisins and other dried fruits.