Table of Contents

• BARĀDŪST

  A. Hassanpour

  name of a Kurdish tribe, region, mountain range, river, and amirate. The tribespeople, mostly settled now, are Shafeʿite Sunnis and speak the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish mixed with the neighboring Sorani dialects.

• BARAḠĀNĪ, MOḤAMMAD-TAQĪ

  D. M. MacEoin

  QAZVĪNĪ, ŠAHĪD-E ṮĀLEṮ, MOLLĀ, an important Shiʿite ʿālem of Qazvīn (d. 1847).

• BARAK

  T. Bīneš

  a kind of firm and durable woven cloth used for coats, overcoats (labbāda), shawls (in Afghanistan), čūḵas (surcoats for shepherds) and leggings.

• BARAKĪ BARAK

  C. M. Kieffer

  locality in the province of Lōgar, Afghanistan,  the abode of the country’s last Ōrmuṛī speakers.

• BĀRAKZAY DYNASTY

  cross-reference

  See AFGHANISTAN x. Political History ; and DORRĀNĪ.

• BĀRAKZĪ

  D. Balland

  (singular Bārakzay), an ethnic name common among the Pashtun of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Baluch of southeastern Iran. The oldest settlement area is between Herat and the approaches to the Helmand valley.

• BARĀMEKA

  Cross-Reference

  See BARMAKIDS.

• BĀRĀN

  D. Balland

  It is interesting to note that in modern Iranian languages violent and dangerous rainfall events are often designated by borrowings from Arabic (ṭūfān for typhoon, barq for lightning, raʿd for thunder, sayl for sudden deluge), whereas for phenomena considered beneficial a terminology of Iranian origin has been preserved.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• BARANĪ, ŻĪĀʾ-AL-DĪN

  P. Hardy

  Indian-born Muslim historian who wrote in the period of the Delhi sultanate (ca. 1285-1357).

• BARĀQ BĀBĀ

  H. Algar

  (b. 1257-58, d. 1307-08), a crypto-shamanic Anatolian Turkman dervish close to two of the Mongol rulers of Iran.