Table of Contents

  • BARḠAŠI, ABU’L MOẒAFFAR MOḤAMMAD b. EBRAHIM

    C. E. Bosworth

    vizier to two of the last Samanid Amirs of Transoxiana and Khorasan. 

  • BARGOSTVĀN

    A. S. Melikian-Chirvani

    horse armor, a distinctive feature of Iranian warfare from very early times on. The earliest known helmet (chamfron) has been excavated at Ḥasanlū from a 9th-century B.C. stratum.

  • BĀRHANG

    Hakim M. Said

    (also bārtang), plantain, general name for about 27 species of Plantago L. (family Plantaginaceae) in Iran, particularly the greater plantain,  the lesser plantain, and fleawort.

  • BARĪD

    C. E. Bosworth

    the official postal and intelligence service of the early Islamic caliphate and its successor states. The service operated by means of couriers mounted on mules or horses or camels or traveling on foot.

  • BARĪDŠĀHĪ DYNASTY

    R. M. Eaton

    The Barīdšāhī dynasty achieved its cultural apex in the mid-16th century, under the thirty-seven-year rule of ʿAlī Barīd. The first Barīdšāhī to adopt the title “king,” ʿAlī presided over the apogee of Barīdšāhī architecture, the most important specimens of which were his tomb and the Rangīn Maḥal, a palace adorned with wood carving and mother-of-pearl.

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  • BARIKĀNU

    M. A. Dandamayev

    a town in Media, which was conquered and forced to pay a tribute by the Assyrian king Sargon II ca. 716 B.C.

  • BARIŠ NASK

    P. O. Skjærvø

    one of the lost nasks of the Haδamąθra group of the Avesta, analyzed in Dēnkard 8.9.

  • BARKĪĀROQ

    C. E. Bosworth

    ROKN-AL-DĪN ABU’L-MOẒAFFAR B. MALEKŠĀH, Great Saljuq sultan (r. 1092-1105); his reign convention­ally marks the opening stages of the decline of Great Saljuq unity.

  • BARḴᵛARDĀR TORKMĀN

    R. D. McChesney

    MĪRZĀ, author of Aḥsan al-sīar, a history of Shah Esmāʿīl Ṣafawī, completed 1523-24 or 1530-31.

  • BARLAAM AND IOSAPH

    J. P. Asmussen

    Persian Belawhar o Būdāsaf, a Greek Christian or Christianized novel of Buddhist origins. All the manuscripts are later than 1500. Being extremely popular it received various accretions and was often translated.