Table of Contents

• ASTWIHĀD

  M. F. Kanga

  the demon of death in the Avesta and later Zoroastrian texts.

• ASTYAGES

  R. Schmitt

  the last Median king.

• ʿĀŠŪRĀʾ

  M. Ayoub

  tenth day of Moḥarram, the first month of the Islamic calendar; for Sunnis it is a day on which fasting is recommended, and for Shiʿites a day of mourning for the martyrdom of Imam Ḥosayn.

• ĀŠŪRĀDA

  J. Qāʾem-Maqāmī

  (or Āšūrʾāda, ʿAšūrʾāda), formerly (until ca. 1308-09 Š./1930) three adjacent islands, now part of the end of the Mīānkāla peninsula of Māzandarān, at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea.

• ASWĀR

  P. O. Skjærvø

  (Middle Persian) “horseman.” In Old Persian asabāra designated the horseman as opposed to the foot-soldier.

• ASYLUM

  Cross-Reference

  religious, secular, and extraterritorial. See BAST.

• ʿAṬĀʾ SAMARQANDĪ

  D. Pingree

  author of a set of astronomical tables for an unidentified prince of the Yuan dynasty of China, 1362-63.

• ATĀBAK

  C. Cahen

  Turkish atabeg, lit. “father-chief,” a Turkish title of rank which first appears, at least under this name, with the early Saljuqs.

• ATĀBAK-E AʿẒAM, AMĪN-AL-SOLṬĀN

  J. Calmard

  grand vizier under the last three Qajar kings.

• ATĀBAKĀN-E ĀḎARBĀYJĀN

  K. A. Luther

  an influential family of military slave origin, also called Ildegozids, ruled parts of Arrān and Azerbaijan from about 530/1135-36 to 622/1225.

• ATĀBAKĀN-E FĀRS

  B. Spuler

  princes of the Salghurid dynasty who ruled Fārs in the 6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries.

• ATĀBAKĀN-E LORESTĀN

  B. Spuler

  rulers of Lorestān, part of the Zagros highlands of southwestern Iran in the later middle ages. Lorestān had a mixed population of Lors, Kurds, and others.

• ATĀBAKĀN-E MARĀḠA

  K. A. Luther

   a family of local rulers of Marāḡa who ruled from the early 6th/12th century until 605/1208-09.

• ATĀBAKĀN-E YAZD

  S. C. Fairbanks

  a dynasty which governed Yazd in the 6th/12th century.

• ʿATABĀT

  H. Algar

  “thresholds,” more fully, ʿatabāt-e ʿalīyāt or ʿatabāt-e (or aʿtāb-e) moqaddasa “the lofty or sacred thresholds,” the Shiʿite shrine cities of Iraq

• ATĀʾĪYA ORDER

  D. DeWeese

  a branch of the Yasavīya Sufi brotherhood especially active in Ḵᵛārazm from the 8th/14th century.

• ĀṮĀR AL-BĀQĪA

  D. Pingree

   (The Chronology of Ancient Nations), a historical work by Bīrūnī, composed at the age of 27, in 1000 CE.

• ĀṮĀR AL-BELĀD

  C. E. Bosworth

  the title of a geographical work composed in Arabic during the 7th/13th century by the Persian scholar Abū Yaḥyā Zakarīyāʾ b. Moḥammad Qazvīnī.

• ĀṮĀR AL-WOZARĀʾ

  M. Dabīrsīāqī

  a biographical work on ministers and other officials, their policies and literary works, by Sayf al-dīn Ḥāǰǰī b. Neẓām ʿAqīlī, written at Herat between 1470-71 and 1486-87.

• ĀṮĀR-E ʿAJAM

  M. Dabīrsīaqī

  a study of the geographical features and historical monuments of Fārs.

• ĀTAŠ

  M. Boyce

  “fire”. Zoroastrian veneration of fire plainly has its origin in an Indo-Iranian cult of the hearth fire, going back in all probability to Indo-European times.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• ĀTAŠ Journal

  N. Parvīn

  (Fire), a Persian journal of news and political comment, published in Tehran, 1946-60.

• ĀTAŠ NIYĀYIŠN

  M. Boyce and F. M. Kotwal

  the fifth in a group of five Zoroastrian prayers, which is addressed to fire and its divinity.

• ĀTAŠ, AḤMAD

  cross-reference

  See  ATEŞ, AHMED.

• ĀTAŠ, Ḵᵛāja ʿAlī Ḥaydar

  M. Baqir

  late 18th to early 19th-century Indo-Muslim poet in Persian and Urdu.

• ĀTAŠ-ZŌHR

  M. Boyce and F. M. Kotwal

  or ātaš-zōr, a Middle Persian term for the Zoroastrian ritual.

• ĀTAŠDĀN

  M. Boyce

   “place of fire, fire-holder,” designates the altar-like repository for a sacred wood-fire in a Zoroastrian place of worship.

• ATASHI, MANUCHEHR

  Saeed Rezaei

  modernist poet, journalist, and translator.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• ĀTAŠKADA

  M. Boyce

   “house of fire,” a Zoroastrian term for a consecrated building in which there is an ever-burning sacred fire.

• ATEŞ, AHMED

  Tahsin Yazici

  (1911-1966), Turkish orientalist and scholar of Persian literature.

• ATHENAIOS OF NAUCRATIS

  J. Duchesne-Guillemin

  author of the Deipnosophistai, his only extant work, in which in about a hundred passages he deals with things Persian.

• AṮĪR AḴSĪKATĪ

  Z. Safa

  Poet of the 6th/12th century with a distinctive style.

• AṮĪR OWMĀNĪ

  Z. Safa

  Poet of the ʿErāqī (western Iranian) school of the 7th/13th century (d. 665/1266).

• AṮĪR-AL-DĪN ABHARĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See ABHARĪ SAMARQANDĪ, AṮĪR-AL-DĪN.

• ATKINSON, James A.

  A. Karimi-Hakkak

  (1780­-1852), a notable British orientalist, a scholar of the Persian language and literature, and the translator of Persia literature.

• ATOSSA

  R. Schmitt

  Achaemenid queen.

• ʿAṬR

  F. Aubaile-Sallenave

  “perfume” (Arabic ʿeṭr, plur. ʿoṭūr; in Persian also ʿaṭrīyāt, perfumes), a Semitic term also attested in Syriac and Amharic.

• ATRAK

  C. E. Bosworth

  river of northern Khorasan, flowing first northwest, and then southwest into the Caspian Sea.

• ĀΘRAVAN-

  M. Boyce

  (Avestan) “priest” regularly used to designate the priests as a social “class,” one of the three into which ancient Iranian society was theoretically divided.

• ĀTRƎVAXŠ

  W. W. Malandra

  (Mid. Pers ādurwaxš), one of the eight Zoroastrian priests (ratu) necessary for performance of the yasna ritual.

• ATROPATENE

  Cross-Reference

  See AZERBAIJAN.

• ATROPATES

  M. L. CHAUMONT

  the satrap of Media, commander of the troops from Media, Albania, and Sacasene at the battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C.

• ATRUŠAN

  J. R. Russell

  the Armenian word for “fire temple,” a loan-word from Parthian.

• ATSÏZ B. ʿALĀʾ-AL-DĪN

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿALĀʾ-AL-DĪN ATSÏZ.

• ATSÏZ ḠARČAʾĪ

  C. E. Bosworth

  ruler of Ḵᵛārazm with the traditional title Ḵᵛārazmšāh, 521 or 522/1127 or 1128 to 551/1156.

• ATTABI

  E. Sims

  one of many names for cloth used by medieval Islamic writers.

• AṬṬĀR, FARĪD-AL-DĪN

  B. Reinert

  Persian poet, Sufi, theoretician of mysticism, and hagiographer, born ca. 540/1145-46 at Nīšāpūr, and died there in 618/1221.

• ʿAṬṬĀŠ

  J. van Ess

  Ismaʿili leader during the time of Sultan Barkīāroq (Berk-yaruq, d. 498/1104).

• ATTAŠAMA

  M. Mayrhofer

  personal name in the Nuzi texts.

• ĀTUR

  Cross-Reference

  "fire." See ĀDUR and ĀTAŠ.