Table of Contents
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BESṬĀM (3)
Chahryar Adle
or Basṭām, a small town in the medieval Iranian province of Qūmes and modern Ostān-e Semnān. It is located in a large valley on the southern foothills of the Alborz.
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BESṬĀM O BENDŌY
A. Shapur Shahbazi
maternal uncles of Ḵosrow II Parvēz and leading statesmen and soldiers under Hormozd IV and Ḵosrow Parvēz.
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BESṬĀMĪ family
Richard W. Bulliet
leading family among the Shafeʿites of Nīšāpūr from the late 4th/10th through the early 6th/12th century.
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BESṬĀMĪ, BĀYAZĪD
Hamid Algar
[Basṭāmī], ABŪ MOḤAMMAD BĀYAZĪD b. ʿEnāyat-Allāh, a 16th-century faqīh and Sufi of Khorasan.
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BESṬĀMĪ, ŠEHĀB-AL-DĪN
Hamid Algar
[Basṭāmī], SHAIKH (d. 1405), a Sufi of Herat during the Timurid period.
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BESṬĀMĪ, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN
Hamid Algar
b. Moḥammad b. ʿAlī [Basṭāmī], al-Ḥanafī, al-Ḥorūfī (d.1454), Ottoman polymath of Khorasanian ancestry.
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BESṬĀMĪ, BĀYAZĪD
Gerhard Böwering
[Basṭāmī] (Abū Yazīd Ṭayfūr b. ʿĪsā b. Sorūšān), early (9th-century) Muslim mystic of Iran. Much of his fame is owing to ecstatic utterances, which he was the first to employ consistently as expressions of Sufi experience.
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BĒṮ ĀRAMAYĒ
Michael Morony
lit. “land of the Arameans,” the region and Sasanian province of Āsōristān in Iraq between the Jabal Ḥamrīn and Maysān.
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BĒṮ DARAYĒ
Michael Morony
(Arabic Bādarāyā), a district southeast of the lower Nahrawān canal in Gōḵē (Arż Jūḵā), Iraq.
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BĒṮ GARMĒ
Michael Morony
a region and province in northeastern Iraq named after a people, possibly a Persian tribe.
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BĒṮ LAPAṬ
Michael Morony
the Syriac name for Vēh Antiōk Šāpūr (Gondēšāpūr), founded in ca. 260 by Šāpūr I in Ḵūzestān with the Roman captives from Valerian’s army.
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BĒṮ SELŌḴ
Michael Morony
“house of Seleucos,” abbreviation of Karkā ḏe Bēṯ Selōḵ, “fortress of the house of Seleucos,” modern Kirkuk in Iraq.
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BĒṬANĪ
Daniel Balland
a Pashtun tribe on the eastern edge of the Solaymān mountains. The recent history of the Bēṭanī has been largely determined by the land that they now inhabit, adjacent to the plains of the middle Indus and the Wazīr uplands.
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BETLĪS
cross-reference
See BEDLĪS.
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BĒVARASP
cross-reference
See ŻAḤḤĀK.
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BHADRA
Ronald E. Emmerick
a magician, who according to Buddhist legend tried to deceive the Buddha by means of his magic powers in order to disprove the Buddha’s claim to omniscience.
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BHADRACARYĀDEŚANĀ
Ronald E. Emmerick
the name of a Buddhist text belonging to the Mahāyāna Tantric tradition of which a Khotanese translation is extant.
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BHADRAKALPIKASŪTRA
Ronald E. Emmerick
the name of a Buddhist Mahayanist text (Sanskrit sutra) concerning the names of the Buddhas to appear in the good aeon (Sanskrit bhadrakalpa).
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BHAGARIAS
Mary Boyce and Firoze M. P. Kotwal
lit. “Sharers,” one of the five groups (panth) of Parsi Zoroastrian priests on the coast of Gujarat.
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BHAGVĀN DĀS HENDĪ
N. H. Ansari
Indian poet and author writing in Persian. He belonged to the Hindu Srīvāstava Kāyastha community, which is known for its deep interest in Persian.
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BHAIṢAJYAGURUVAIḌŪRYAPRABHARĀJASŪTRA
Ronald E. Emmerick
the name of a Buddhist Mahayanist text of which a number of fragments in Old Khotanese and Sogdian are extant.
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BHANDĀRĪ
N. H. Ansari
putative author of Ḵolāṣat al-tawārīḵ, a general history of India written in Persian during the reign of Awrangzēb (r. 1658-1707), with special emphasis on the rulers of Delhi.
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BHARUCHA, SHERIARJI DADABHAI
Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa
Parsi scholar (1843-1915). During the last years of his life he was criticized for his reformist views that the Zoroastrian religion was not meant for a particular fold but was open for all.
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BHARUCHAS
Mary Boyce and Firoze M. P. Kotwal
the name of a group (panth) of Parsi Zoroastrian priests who had their headquarters at the ancient port of Bharuch (Broach) in Gujarat.
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BHAVĀṄGA
Ronald E. Emmerick
the name assigned by H. W. Bailey to ten fragmentary Khotanese folios, a transcription of which he published.
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BHOWNAGGREE, Mancherjee Merwanjee
John McLeod
(1851-1933), Sir, Parsi statesman; His ancestors were from the principality of Bhāvnagar in Gujarat, whence his surname originates.
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BĪA-PAS, BĪA-PĪŠ
Cross-Reference
See GĪLĀN.
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BĪĀBĀN
Brian Spooner
name of the coastal plain that extends south from the mouth of the Mīnāb river for 88 miles to the cape Raʾs al-Kūh, which is 30 miles west of the Jask promontory.
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BĪĀBĀN
Cross-Reference
Persian word meaning “desert.” See DESERT.
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BĪĀBĀNAK
Eckart Ehlers
a group of isolated oasis settlements in central Iran, stretching over an area of 70 by 90 miles of what is mostly desert.
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BĪĀR
C. Edmund Bosworth
(from Ar. plur. of beʾr “well, spring”), a small settlement of medieval Islamic times on the northern fringe or the Dašt-e Kavīr, modern Bīārjomand.
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BĪBĪ KHANOM MOSQUE
Bernard O’Kane
named after Bībī Khanom, otherwise known as Sarāy-Molk Khanom, chief wife of Tīmūr (r. 7/1370-1405).
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BĪBĪ ŠAHRBĀNŪ
Mary Boyce
the dedication of a Moslem shrine on a hillside by Ray to the south of Tehran. The legend attached to it is that of Šahrbānū, a daughter of the last Sasanian king, Yazdegerd III (r. 632-51).
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BĪBĪ ZAYNAB, MAUSOLEUM OF
Bernard O’Kane
named after Bībī Zaynab, its legendary occupant, together with her mother Oljā Aīm, the wet nurse of Tīmūr (r. 1370-1405). It is in the Šāh-e Zenda necropolis in Samarkand.
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BIBLE
Multiple Authors
This series of articles covers various aspects of the Bible, as pertaining to Iran and Iranian lands.
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BIBLE i. As a Source for Median and Achaemenid History
M. A. Dandamayev
The old biblical texts arose in various historic periods. Except for some parts of the books of Ezra and Daniel, composed in Aramaic, all these texts are written in Hebrew.
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BIBLE ii. Persian Elements in the Bible
Morton Smith
Identification of Persian elements in the Bible is difficult because: (1) nobody knows just what was “Persian” when the biblical books were being written. (2) many things then “Persian” were also elements of other cultures.
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BIBLE iii. Chronology of Selected Persian Translations of Parts or the Whole of the Bible
Kenneth J. Thomas and Fereydun Vahman
The following selection of translations, for which there are existing manuscripts, represents the diversity of translators as well as versions of particular historical significance or usage.
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BIBLE iv. Middle Persian Translations
Shaul Shaked
The only extant Middle Persian Bible version is represented by fragments of a translation of the Psalms. The Christians of Iran were dependent largely on the Syriac versions of the Bible, but the activity of creating new versions in the current vernacular must have been part of the missionary effort.
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BIBLE v. Sogdian Translations
Nicholas Sims-Williams
The following manuscripts containing biblical texts in Sogdian have been made known. None of them survives in anything like complete form, and some are mere fragments.
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BIBLE vi. Judeo-Persian Translations
Jes P. Asmussen
Judeo-Persian or Jewish-Persian is the common designation for, Persian written with Hebrew characters. Among the earliest and most important Judeo-Persian texts are the Bible translations.
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BIBLE vii. Persian Translations of the Bible
Kenneth J. Thomas and Fereydun Vahman
The Pentateuch, the books of the prophets, and the writings (Heb. ketūbīm), including the Psalms, from the Hebrew scriptures, collectively known as the Old Testament, and the Gospels and other writings in Greek, collectively known as the New Testament, have all been translated into Persian.
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BIBLE viii. Translations into other Modern Iranian Languages
Kenneth J. Thomas
John Leyden, a gifted Scottish linguist and poet who went to Calcutta in 1803 as a surgeon’s assistant for the East India Company and subsequently became a professor at the College of Fort William, was involved in translating the Gospels into a number of languages, including both Pashto and Baluchi.
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BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND CATALOGUES
Multiple Authors
i. In the West. ii. In Iran. This series of articles covers the catalogues of manuscripts and bibliographies of printed works on Iran compiled by scholars in Iran, Europe (including Russia) and North America.
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BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND CATALOGUES i. In the West
J. T. P. de Bruijn
European interest in Iranian bibliography was awakened in the 16th and early 17th centuries, when manuscripts were brought to the West in ever-increasing numbers and became much sought after by humanists engaged in Oriental studies.
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BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND CATALOGUES ii. In Iran
Aḥmad Monzawī and ʿAlī Naqī Monzawī
Persian-language catalogues of manuscripts preserved in libraries in Iran and elsewhere range from detailed works in book form to articles in journals and short lists published separately or as supplements to other publications.
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BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND CATALOGUES ii. In Iran (continued)
Aḥmad Monzawī and ʿAlī Naqī Monzawī
fehrest (lit. list, index). The word has now generally been superseded in Persian by ketāb-šenāsī.
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BĪČAGĀN LAKE
cross-reference
See BAḴTAGĀN LAKE.
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BICKERMAN, ELIAS JOSEPH
Muhammed A. Dandamayev
(1897-1981), a leading scholar of Greco-Roman history and the Hellenistic world, whose research interests extended to Judaism and some aspects of Iranian history.
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BICKNELL, HERMAN
Michael C. Hillmann
(1830-1875), a translator of Ḥāfeẓ. Some of his metered and rhymed translations replicate, or at least giving the impression of, Persian monorhyme patterns.