Table of Contents

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN SOLṬĀN WALAD

  M. I. Waley

  , MOḤAMMAD (1226-1312), Sufi shaikh and poet, son and eventual successor of Mawlānā Jalāl-al-Dīn Rūmī.

• BAHĀʾ-ALLĀH

  Juan Cole

  (1817-92), MĪRZĀ ḤOSAYN-ʿALĪ NŪRĪ,  founder of the Bahai religion or Bahaism. 

• BAHĀDOR

  C. Fleischer

  a Turco-Mongol honorific title, attached to a personal name, signifying “hero, valiant warrior.”

• BAHĀDOR JANG, AMIR

  A. Gheissari

  , ḤOSAYN PASHA KHAN, the head of the royal guards (kešīkčībāšī) and minister of court under Moẓaffar-al-Dīn Shah (r. 1896-1907).

• BAHĀDOR KHAN

  cross-reference

  See ABŪ ḠĀZĪ.

• BAHĀDOR SHAH I, II

  cross-reference

  See MUGHALS.

• BAHĀʾI TABRIZI

  Tahsin Yazici

  , AḤMAD (1874-1925), Persian calligrapher and poet.

• BAHAISM

  Multiple Authors

  or Bahai faith, a religion founded in the nineteenth century by Bahāʾ-Allāh that grew out of the Iranian messianic movement of Babism and developed into a world religion with internationalist and pacifist emphases.

• BAHAISM i. The Faith

  J. Cole

  Bahaism as a religion had as its background two earlier and much different movements in nineteenth-century Shiʿite Shaikhism (following Shaikh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī) and Babism.

• BAHAISM ii. Bahai Calendar and Festivals

  A. Banani

  The notion of renewal of time, implicit in most religious dispensations, is made explicit in the writings of the Bāb and Bahāʾ-Allāh.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• BAHAISM iii. Bahai and Babi Schisms

  D. M. MacEoin

  Although it never developed much beyond the stage of a sectarian movement within Shiʿite Islam, Babism experienced a number of minor but interesting divisions, particularly in its early phase.

• BAHAISM iv. The Bahai Communities

  P. Smith

  The development of the Bahai faith has been accompanied by a massive transformation of the religion’s social base. From being a religion predominantly composed of those of Iranian Shiʿite background, it has become a worldwide movement.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• BAHAISM v. The Bahai Community in Iran

  V. Rafati

  With the Declaration of the Bāb in 1844, followed by his being accepted as the promised Qāʾem (the Hidden Imam) by a handful of early believers, the first Babi community was born in the city of Shiraz.

• BAHAISM vi. The Bahai Community of Ashkhabad

  V. Rafati

  Attracted by religious freedom and economic opportunities unavailable to them in Iran, Iranian Bahais began to settle in Ashkhabad around 1884; the community prospered and reached its peak during the period 1917-28.

• BAHAISM vii. Bahai Persecutions

  D. M. MacEoin

  Bahai persecutions were a pattern of continuing discriminatory measures against adherents and institutions of the Bahai religion, punctuated by outbreaks of both random and organized violence.

• BAHAISM viii. Bahai Shrines

  J. Walbridge

  Of the Bahai sites of pilgrimage and visitation, the most important are the tombs of Bahāʾ-Allāh and the Bāb in Israel and the houses of the Bāb and Bahāʾ-Allāh in Shiraz and Baghdad.

• BAHAISM ix. Bahai Temples

  V. Rafati and F. Sahba

  Although the faith originated in Iran, no Bahai temple was ever built in that country, due to local antagonism. However,  since the time of Bahāʾ-Allāh, the Bahais of Iran have gathered in private Bahai homes to pray and to read the writings of the faith.

• BAHAISM x. Bahai Schools

  V. Rafati

  The Bahai schools were a series of government-recognized educational institutions conducted on Bahai principles from 1897 until 1929 in Ashkhabad and until 1934 in Iran.

• BAHAISM xi. Bahai Conventions

  M. Momen

  The first Bahai convention in the world was probably the meeting convened by the Chicago Spiritual Assembly on 26 November 1907 for the purpose of choosing a site for the House of Worship that was to be built.

• BAHAISM xii. Bahai Literature

  D. M. MacEoin

  This article is concerned primarily with poetry and belles lettres rather than apologetic, didactic, historiographical, liturgical, or scriptural materials.

• BAHĀʾĪYA ḴĀNOM

  M. Momen

  (1846-1932), eldest daughter of Bahāʾ-Allāh, considered by Bahais as the “outstanding heroine of the Bahai Dispensation.”

• BAHĀR (1)

  Ḡ.-Ḥ. Yūsofī

  a Persian literary, scientific, political, and social-affairs monthly, 1910-11, 1921-22. Bahār represented a departure from traditional Persian journalism; readers found its willingness to discuss contemporary literature and literary criticism a refreshing change.

• BAHĀR (2)

  Esmāʿil Jassim

  a newspaper founded by Shaikh Aḥmad Tehrāni (d. 1957), known as Aḥmad Bahār, in 1917, in Mašhad.

• BAHĀR, MOḤAMMAD-TAQĪ

  M. B. Loraine, J. Matīnī

  poet, scholar, journalist, politician, and historian (1886-1951). i. Life and work. ii. Bahār as a poet.

• BAHĀR-E KESRĀ

  M. G. Morony

  “The spring of Ḵosrow,” one of the names of a huge, late Sasanian royal carpet measuring 60 cubits (araš, ḏerāʿ) square (ca. 27 m x 27 m). It was divided among the conquering Muslims after Madāʾen was captured in 637.

• BAHĀRESTĀN (1)

  G. M. Wickens

  (Spring garden, Abode of spring), an anecdotal and moralistic work of belles-lettres in prose (both plain and rhythmic-rhyming) and verse, by ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Jāmī, composed in the poet’s old age, in 1487.

• BAHĀRESTĀN (2)

  ʿA.-A. Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  the name of a garden, public square, and complex of buildings in central Tehran.

• BAHĀRESTĀN-E ḠAYBĪ

  I. H. Siddiqui

  a detailed history in Persian of Bengal and Orissa for the period 1608-24 composed by Mīrzā Nathan ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Eṣfahānī.

• BAHĀRI

  Mortażā Varzi

  , (ʿALI-) AṢḠAR (1905-1995) master of the kamānča (long-necked bowed lute).

• BAHĀRLŪ

  P. Oberling

  a Turkic tribe of Azerbaijan, Khorasan, Kermān, and Fārs.  

• BAHĀRVAND

  P. Oberling

  a Lur tribe now living mostly in the dehestāns (districts) of Kargāh and Bālā Garīva, south and southwest of Ḵorramābād.  

• BAHDĪNĀN

  A. Hassanpour

  (Kurdish Bādīnān), name of a Kurdish region, river, dialect group, and amirate.  

• BAḤĪRĪ FAMILY

  R. W. Bulliet

  a major Shafiʿite family of Nishapur in the eleventh century.  

• BAHMAʾĪ

  P. Oberling

  a Lur tribe of the Kohgīlūya (Kūh[-e] Gīlūya).  

• BAHMAN (1)

  J. Narten, Ph. Gignoux

  the New Persian name of the Avestan Vohu Manah (Good Thought) and Pahlavi Wahman.

• BAHMAN (2) SON OF ESFANDĪĀR

  Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

  son of ESFANDĪĀR, a Kayanian king of Iran in the national epic.  

• BAHMAN (3)

  cross-reference

  author of Qeṣṣa-ye Sanjān.

• BAHMAN (4)

  cross-reference

  “avalanche." See BARF.

• BAHMAN JĀDŪYA

  M. Morony

  (or Jāḏōē), Sasanian general engaged in the defense of the Sawād of ʿErāq during the Muslim conquest in the 630s.  

• BAHMAN MĪRZĀ

  ʿA. Navāʾī

  (d. 1883-84), the fourth son of ʿAbbās Mīrzā and brother of Moḥammad Shah (r. 1834-48). Throughout his relatively long exile, he enjoyed the protection and support of the Czarist government.

• BAHMAN MĪRZĀ BAHĀʾ-AL-DAWLA

  ʿA. Navāʾī

  37th son of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah, born 1811 of Golbadan Bājī, originally a (Georgian?) slave girl of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah’s mother Mahd-e ʿOlyā. His diary contains notes on Qajar history.

• BAHMAN YAŠT

  W. Sundermann

  Middle Persian apocalyptical text preserved in  Pahlavi script, a Pāzand (i.e., Middle Persian in Avestan script) transliteration, and a garbled New Persian translation.

• BAHMAN-ARDAŠĪR

  M. Morony

  (or Forāt Maysān), ancient and medieval town and subdistrict in Maysān in lower Iraq. The town of Forāt is known from the first century A.D. as a fortified terminus for caravan trade on the left bank of the lower Tigris, eleven or twelve miles downstream from Charax.

• BAHMAN-NĀMA

  W. L. Hanaway, Jr.

  epic poem in Persian of about 9,500 lines recounting the adventures of Bahman son of Esfandīār.

• BAHMANAGĀN

  cross-reference

  See BAHMANJANA.

• BAHMANID DYNASTY

  N. H. Ansari

  dynasty (1347-1528) in the Deccan, the tableland region in India. The Bahmanid kingdom was not only the first independent Muslim kingdom in southern India, but it was also one of the greatest centers of Iranian culture in the subcontinent.

• BAHMANJANA

  Z. Safa

  Arabicized form of Mid. Pers. Bahmanagān, one of the Zoroastrian festival days which Muslim Iranians observed down to the Mongol invasion in 1219.

• BAHMANŠĪR

  X. de Planhol

  the name of the distributary which branches off the left bank of the Kārūn river in the Ḵūzestān plain a short distance above Ḵorramšahr, and of a dehestān near this town.

• BAHMANYĀR, AḤMAD

  J. Matīnī

  scholar, educator, and man of letters (1884-1955). His written works are characterized by clarity and simplicity of language.

• BAHMANYĀR, KĪĀ

  H. Daiber

  RAʾĪS ABU’L-ḤASAN B. MARZBĀN AʿJAMĪ ĀḎARBĀYJĀNĪ (d. 1066), one of Ebn Sīnā’s pupils and known mainly as a commentator and transmitter of Ebn Sīnā’s philosophy.