Table of Contents

  • BARĀQ KHAN

    cross-reference

    See NOWRŪZ AḤMAD KHAN.

  • BARAQĪ

    H. Algar

    ḴᵛĀJA ʿABD-ALLĀH, 12th-century Sufi of Bukhara.

  • BARAŠNOM

    M. Boyce

    the chief Zoroastrian purification rite, consisting of a triple cleansing, with gōmēz (cow’s urine), dust, and water, followed by nine nights’ seclusion.

  • BARĀ’A

    E. Kohlberg

    an Imami theological term denoting dissociation from the enemies of the imams. During the conflict between ʿAlī and Moʿāwīa, formulas of dissociation were used by both parties.

  • BĀRBAD

    A. Tafażżolī

    minstrel-poet of the court of the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II Parvēz (r. 591-628 A.D.).

  • BARBARO, GIOSAFAT

    A. M. Piemontese

    Venetian merchant, traveler, and diplomat (1413-94), appointed Venetian ambassador to Persia (1473-78); author of a travel account.

  • BARBAṬ

    J. During

    the prototype of a family of short-necked lutes characterized by a rather flat, pear-shaped sound box.

  • BARBERRY

    EIr

    (zerešk; Berberis spp., family Berberidaceae). Species of this genus are found in the northern, eastern, and southeastern highlands of Iran.

  • BARBIER DE MEYNARD, CHARLES ADRIEN CASIMIR

    Ch. Pellat

    French orientalist (1826-1908). Among his works, the Tableau littéraire du Khorassan and Dictionnaire géographique attest the excellence of his Persian scholarship.

  • BARD-E BAL

    L. Vanden Berghe

    a necropolis excavated in 1969-70 by the Belgian archeological mission in Iran, Īlām Province.

  • BARD-E BOT

    Cross-Reference

    See ELYMAIS.

  • BARD-E NEŠĀNDA

    K. Schippmann

    a complex of ancient ruins in Ḵūzestān, situated 18 km northwest of the town of Masjed-e Solaymān (where similar ruins exist) at 675 m altitude on the edge of the Baḵtīārī mountains.

  • BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI

    Multiple Authors

    Slaves and slavery.  i. In the Achaemenid period. ii. In the Sasanian period. iii. In the Islamic period up to the Mongol invasion. iv. From the Mongols to the abolition of slavery. v. Military slavery in Islamic Iran.

  • BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI i. Achaemenid Period

    Muhammad A. Dandamayev

    At the beginning of the Achaemenid period, the institution of slavery was still poorly developed in Iran. In Media a custom existed whereby a poor man could place himself at the disposal of a rich person if the latter agreed to feed him. The position of such a man was similar to that of a slave.

  • BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI ii. In the Sasanian period

    Maria Macuch

    The most commonly used expressions designating slaves in the Middle Persian sources are anšahrīg, literally “foreigner,” and bandag, literally “bound.” The latter term does not exclusively designate the slave but is used of every subject of the sovereign.

  • BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iii. In the Islamic period up to the Mongol invasion

    C. E. Bosworth

    Early Islamic society was essentially a slave-holding one, and it seems likely that Iranian society of the time exhibited two of the types of slavery known elsewhere in the pre-modern Old World—agricultural/industrial slavery and domestic slavery.

  • BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iv. From the Mongols to the abolition of slavery

    Willem Floor

    After the Mongol period, the manner in which white slaves were obtained basically remained unchanged, that is, warfare and raids continued to be the main slave-producing activities.

  • BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI v. Military slavery in Islamic Iran

    C. E. Bosworth

    Military slavery may have been known in the Sasanian period, but, as the Sasanian army was based essentially on the free, mailed cavalryman, any slaves within it can only have been in the little-regarded following of infantrymen.

  • BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI vi. Regulations Governing Slavery in Islamic Jurisprudence

    Hamid Algar

    Slavery is designated in feqh (religious law) as reqq “weakness.” The weakness in question is extrinsic to the person of the slave and results from his legal debarment (ḥejr).

  • 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.

  • 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 “SNOW”

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

    On the tropical margins of the Irano-Afghan plateau, snow is in fact exceptional below an altitude of 1,000 meters. Not that it cannot fall in abundance there, but then it is a memorable event. In the remaining two-thirds of the territory of Iran and Afghanistan snow is a common occurrence.

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  • BĀRFORŪŠĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ʿALĪ

    D. M. MacEoin

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

  • 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

    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.

  • BARLEY

    M. Bazin, D. Balland

    The cultivation of barley in Iran, like that of wheat, goes back to the origin of agriculture itself. Both botanical and archeological data locate the beginning of the “Neolithic revolution” in the Fertile Crescent, where both wild barley, Hordeum spontaneum, and a wide-grain kind of wild wheat, Triticum dicoccoides can still be found.

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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.  

    This Article Has Images/Tables.
  • 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 electrification of individual government build­ings appears to have begun during the reign of Nāṣer-al-­Dīn Shah with the state armory and the shah’s residence in Tehran It was only in 1900 that the first electrical plant (of 6,6 kw) was built in Iran, in the city of Mašhad.

    This Article Has Images/Tables.
  • 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.