Table of Contents

• BARḎAʿA

  C. E. Bosworth

  or BARDAʿA (Arm. Partav, Georgian Bardavi, Mid. Pers. Pērōzāpāt), the chief town until the 10th century of the Islamic province of Arrān, the classical Caucasian Albania.

• BARDAŠĪR

  cross-reference

  old name of the city of Kermān (q.v.).

• BARDESANES

  P. O. Skjærvø

  (Syr. Bar Dayṣān, Ar. Ebn Dayṣān), gnostic thinker (154-222) who occupies a position between the Syriac gnostic systems of the first two centuries A.D. and the Iranian gnostic system of Mani of the third century.

• BARDIYA

  M. A. Dandamayev

  the younger son of Cyrus the Great. Tarius in his Behistun inscription (DB 1.30-33) says that Cambyses, after becoming king, but before his departure to Egypt, slew Bardiya and that the assassination was kept a secret from the people.

• BAṚĒC(Ī)

  D. Balland

  a Pashtun tribe in southern Afghanistan. Location of the Baṛēc at the southern extremity of Pashtun territory and at the limits of the Baluch has allowed multiple contacts with the latter and Brahui, including intermarriages, as well as linguistic or even genealogical assimilation.

• BARĒLVĪ, AḤMAD ŠAHĪD

  Q. Ahmad

  Indo­-Muslim saint, author of Persian works, known for his reformist ideas, military ventures, and eventual martyr­dom (1786-1831).

• BARƎSMAN

  Cross-Reference

  See BARSOM.

• BĀREZĀNĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See BĀRZĀNĪ.

• BARF

  D. Balland, B. Hourcade, and C. M. Kieffer

  “snow.”  On the tropical margins of the Irano-Afghan plateau, snow is exceptional below an altitude of 1,000 meters. Not that it cannot fall in abundance there, but then it is a memorable event and as such duly recorded by local chroniclers.

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• BĀRFORŪŠĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ʿALĪ

  D. M. MacEoin

  , MOLLĀ, important figure in early Babism (1823-49).

• BARG-E BŪ

  A. Parsa

  (or deraḵt-e ḡār; Eng. laurel and sweet bay), Laurus nobilis, the most popular species of the family Lauraceae, the one used for laurel wreaths. The tree is common in Persian gardens.

• 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

  Indo-Muslim kings of the Deccan plateau, ruled from 1491-92 to 1619 in one of the five successor states to the Bahmanid kingdom (1347-1538).

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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.

• BARLEY

  M. Bazin, D. Balland

  Persian jow (from OIran. *yawa-, cf. Av. yauua- “grain,” Pahl. ǰōrdā “barley”), Pashto wərbəša. The cultivation of barley in Iran, like that of wheat, goes back to the origin of agriculture itself.

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• BARM-e DELAK

  L. Vanden Berghe

  a site with a spring about 10 km southeast of Shiraz, where three panels bearing two Sasanian rock reliefs are carved in the mountain at a height of about 6.5 m above the ground.  

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• BARMAKIDS

  I. Abbas

  or Barāmeka,  fam­ily stemming from Balḵ, secretaries and viziers under the early ʿAbbasids, not before Hešām b. ʿAbd al-Malek (723-42), until 802 (under Hārūn al-Rašīd).

• BĀRMĀN

  Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

  the son of Vīsa, one of the Turanian heroes mentioned in the Šāh-nāma as a member of the army that Afrāsīāb led into Iran during the reign of Nowḏar.

• BARMĀYA

  Dj. Khaleghi Motlagh

  in the traditional history, the name of a cow associated with Ferēdūn and eventually killed by Żaḥḥāk.

• BARNĀMA-RĪZĪ

  F. Daftary

  “planning.” Among the countries of the Middle East Iran has a relatively long history of economic development planning. By the time of the revolution in 1979, five development plans of various durations had been implemented in ran over a thirty-year period.

• BARNAVĪ, ʿALĀ-AL-DĪN ČEŠTĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See ČEŠTĪYA.

• BARQ

  W. Floor and B. Hourcade, D. Balland

  the modern Persian term for electricity, borrowed from Arabic barq “lightning, flash of lightning.”  i. In Iran.  ii. In Afghanistan.  The electrification of individual government build­ings appears to have begun during the reign of Nāṣer-al-­Dīn Shah (ca. 1887) with the state armory and the shah’s residence in Tehran. In 1900 the first electrical plant (of 6,6 kw) was built in Iran, in the city of Mašhad.

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• BARQ newspapers

  L. P. Elwell-Sutton

  (Lightning), the name of three Persian newspapers, 1910-17,  1943, 1950s.

• BARQĀNĪ, ABŪ BAKR AḤMAD

  H. Schützinger

  B. MOḤAMMAD B. AḤMAD B. ḠĀLEB (948-1034), a traditionist (moḥaddeṯ), philologist, and lawyer of the Shafeʿite school.

• BARR, KAJ

  J. P. Asmussen

  Danish orientalist (1896-1970). Among his publications are an edition from F. C. Andreas’s papers of the Pahlavi Psalter fragments discovered at Turfan and a collaboration with A. Christensen and W. B. Henning to publish Andreas’s notes on Iranian dialects.

• BARRA

  G. Cardascia

  or bāru, an Iranian loanword designating a tax in Babylonian texts. The word appears nearly seventy times between 442 and 417 B.C. almost exclusively in tax receipts.

• BARRASĪHĀ-YE TĀRĪḴĪ

  N. Parvīn

  journal of historical studies of Iran, 1966-78. Some of the articles, particularly those bearing on the eighteenth and nineteenth cen­turies and descriptive geography, were well researched and original. The journal also published a number of historical documents.

• BARŠABBĀ

  N. Sims-Williams

  legendary bishop of Marv and founder of the Christian church in eastern Iran. The only completely preserved versions of the legend are found in Arabic sources.

• BARṢAUMĀ

  A. Vööbus

  a 5th-century bishop of Nisibis. As a convinced Nestorian, he believed that the Persian church should follow this course, as it was in the interest of the Sasanian state to wean the church away from the West.

• BARSĪĀN

  W. Kleiss

  a village in the dehestān of Barāʾān 45 km southeast of Isfahan on the north bank of the Zāyandarūd; situated on the old caravan route from Isfahan to Yazd, it prospered quickly in Saljuq times.

• BARSḴĀN

  C. E. Bosworth

  or Barsḡān, a place in Central Asia, on the southern shores of the Ïsïq-Göl, in the region known as Semirechye or Yeti-su “the land of the seven rivers,” in what is now the Kyrgyz Republic.

• BARSOM

  M. F. Kanga

  (Av. barəsman), sacred twigs that form an important part of the Zoroastrian liturgical apparatus. The number varies according to the ceremony to be performed. Today brass or silver wires are used in place of twigs.

• BARSOM YAŠT

  P. O. Skjærvø

  in the liturgical manuscripts of the Avesta the name of the second hād (chapter) of the Yasna.

• BARTANGĪ

  G. Buddruss

  a member of the Šuḡnī group or Šuḡnī-Rōšānī group of the East Iranian Pamir lan­guages.

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• BARTHÉLEMY, ADRIEN

  F. Richard

  French orientalist (1859-1949). A devoted linguist, he published a study of the Pahlavi Gujastag Abāliš, before a career in diplomacy led him to a monumental dictionary of eastern Arabic dialects.

• BARTHOLD, VASILIĭ VLADIMIROVICH

  Yu. Bregel

  Russian orientalist (1869-1930). He was the first who put the study of the history of Central Asia on a firm scholarly basis and actually founded this branch of Oriental studies. But he never studied Central Asia in isolation.

• BARTHOLOMAE, CHRISTIAN

  R. Schmitt

  German scholar of Iranian and Indo-European studies (1855-1925). Bartholomae devoted the main part of his life and work to Iranian linguistics, his chief endeavor being directed toward the integration of Iranian into the framework of Indo-European languages.

• BARTHOLOMAE’S LAW

  M. Mayrhofer

  the name given to a rule of phonetic assimilation in the Indo-Iranian and probably also the proto-Indo-European languages first noted by Christian Bartholomae in 1882.

• BĀRŪ

  W. Kleiss

  (or bāra), fortress in general, defensive wall, rampart. Defensive walls and earthworks dating from the start of human settlement in Iran still survive. Their forms evolved in parallel with the development of offensive and defensive weapons.

• BARUCH

  Sh. Shaked

  scribe and disciple of the prophet Jeremiah, at the time of the first Jewish exile to Babylonia (586 B.C.).  Baruch was identified with Zoroaster by some Syriac authors, followed by some Arab historians.

• BĀRŪT

  W. Floor

  “gunpowder.” Guns and cannon, and thus gunpowder, probably were first introduced in Iran during Uzun Ḥasan Āq Qoyunlū’s reign; in 1473 he asked Venice for “artillery, arquebuses, and gunners.”

• BARZAN

  W. Eilers

  part of a town, quarter (maḥalla), street (kūča). In modern Iranian place names the forms Varzan and Varzana are common.

• BĀRZĀNĪ

  W. Behn

  a Kurdish tribe from Bārzān, a town of northeastern Iraq. The shaikhs of Bārzān came to prominence in the disorder following sup­pression of the semi-independent Kurdish principalities in the mid-19th century.