Table of Contents

• DĪNAVARĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ʿABD-ALLĀH

  Josef van Ess

  b. Mobārak (d. first half of the 10th century), author of a tafsīr (koranic exegesis) entitled al-Wāżeḥ fī tafsīr al-Qorʾān, which is preserved in several manuscripts.

• DĪNĀVARĪYA

  Werner Sundermann

  in Manichean usage originally “the elect.”

• DINKHA TEPE

  Cross-Reference

  See DENḴĀ TEPE.

• DINON

  Wolfgang Felix

  (fl. approximately 360-30 B.C.E.), author of a historical work on the Ancient Orient.

• DĪNŠĀH

  Cross-Reference

  See IRANI, DINSHAH JIJIBHOY.

• DIO CASSIUS

  Marie Louise Chaumont

  (more correctly, Cassius Dio; b. Nicea, Bithynia, ca. 160, d. Nicea, after 229), Roman official whose Rhomaikē Historia is important for the study of Parthian history.

• DIO CHRYSOSTOM

  Cross-Reference

  See DIO COCCEIANUS.

• DIO COCCEIANUS

  Roger Beck

  surnamed Chrysostom ("golden-mouthed"), a traveling scholar who in his 36th Oration (known as the “Borysthenian” or “Olbian” from its dramatic setting), written about 100 C.E., purports to summarize a hymn composed by Zoroaster and sung by the magi in secret rites.

• DIODORUS SICULUS

  Ernst Badian

  Greek historian from Agyrium in Sicily, hence called Siculus (the Sicilian) who came to Rome in the middle of the first century B.C.E. and there wrote his Bibliotheca Historica, a universal history in forty books, from the origins to the age of Caesar.

• DIODOTUS

  Osmund Bopearachchi

  satrap of Bactria-Sogdiana, who revolted against his Seleucid soverign Antiochus II and proclaimed himself king, thus laying the foundation of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom. The date of his revolt has been  placed between 256 and 239 B.C., the majority of scholars arguing for about the year 250.

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• DIOGENES LAERTIUS

  Wolfgang Felix

  author of a biographically arranged history of Greek philosophy in ten books that also deals with the Persian Magi, especially in the first book on the origins of philosophy.

• DIONYSIUS

  RüDIGER SCHMITT

  (Gk. Dionýsios) of Miletus, Greek historiographer, who may have lived in the 5th century B.C.E. and is said to have written a book about Persian history after the death of Darius I.

• DIPLOMACY

  Cross-Reference

  See under individual countries; see also FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

• DĪRAKVAND

  Pierre Oberling

  Lor tribe belonging to the Bālā Garīva group and inhabiting a mountainous area between Ḵorramābād and Dezfūl in the Pīš-Kūh region of Lorestān.

• DĪRGHANAKHA-SŪTRA

  Yutaka Yoshida

  a Buddhist text in which the Buddha expounds the merits of observing the eight commandments to a parivrājaka named Dīrghanakha.

• DIRHAM

  Philippe Gignoux, Michael Bates

  a unit of silver coinage and of weight. The dirham retained a stable value of about 4 g throughout the entire pre-Islamic period. The tetradrachm, or stater (> Pahl. stēr), was equivalent to 4 drachmas and was already in circulation in the Achaemenid period at the time of Alexander’s departure for Persia.

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• DĪV

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  demon, monster, fiend; expresses not only the idea of “demon,” but also that of “ogre,” “giant,” and even “Satan.”

• DĪV SOLṬĀN

  Roger M. Savory

  title of ʿALĪ BEG RŪMLŪ, a qezelbāš officer first mentioned at the battle of Šarūr (1501), in which the Safavid Esmāʿīl I defeated the Āq Qoyūnlū prince Alvand.

• DĪVĀL-E ḴODĀYDĀD

  Klaus Fischer

  an extensive area of historic remains in the center of an ancient canal system fed by the rivers Helmand and Ḵāšrūd and located between the eastern border of the Hāmūn-e Aškīnʿām and the lower Ḵāšrūd, about 45 km to the northeast of Zaranj in southwest Afghanistan.

• DĪVĀN

  François de Blois

  archive, register, chancery, government office; also, collected works, especially of a poet.

• DĪVĀN-E KEŠVAR

  Cross-Reference

  See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS v. Judicial System in the 20th Century.

• DĪVĀNA NAQQĀŠ

  Priscilla P. Soucek

  15th-century painter whose work is known primarily from single-page paintings preserved in the Topkapı Sarayı library, Istanbul.

• DĪVĀNBEGĪ

  Shiro Ando, Roger M. Savory

  originally, the designation for the highest-ranking officer in the Timurid office of finance and justice; in the Safavid administrative system, the dīvānbegī was one of the high-ranking amirs residing at court.

• DĪVĀNĪ, ḴAṬṬ-E

  Cross-Reference

  See CALLIGRAPHY.

• DĪVDĀD

  Cross-Reference

  See BANŪ SĀJ.

• DIVINATION

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  the art or technique of gaining knowledge of future events or distant states by means of observing and interpreting signs.

• DIVORCE

  Muhammad A. Dandamayev, Mansour Shaki, Sachiko Murata, Akbar Aghajanian, Jenny Rose, Mujan Momen

  legal termination of marriage. In the following series of articles only those communities are taken into consideration which are either Iranian or are focused in Persia. For this reason Jewish and Christian practices have not been included.

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• DIZK

  Cross-Reference

  See JIZAK.

• DJANBAZIAN, Sarkis

  Maria Sabaye Moghaddam

  After graduating from high school, Djanbazian went to Leningrad to study dance. He graduated from Vaganova Dance Academy of Leningrad in 1936 and from Lesgaf University with a Masters of Arts degree in 1936. After graduation, he worked as a principal dancer, choreographer, and artistic director in Kirov Theatre.

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• DJEITUN WARE

  Cross-Reference

  See CERAMICS i.

• DO-BARĀDARĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See JĀMI.

• DO-BAYTĪ

  Stephen Blum

  a quatrain of sung poetry in many Persian dialects.

• DOʿĀ

  Hamid Algar

  the act of offering supplicatory or petitionary prayer, a principal manifestation of Muslim piety.

• DOʿĀ-NEVĪSĪ

  Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmḡānī

  the act of writing charms against various evils.

• DOĀB-E MĪḴZARĪN

  Klaus Fischer

  a group of archeological sites with numerous pre-Islamic mud-brick ruins on either side of the Sorḵāb river, on the road from Bāmīān to Došī, opposite the entrance to the Kahmard valley.

• DOCUMENTS

  Mansour Shaki, Muhammad A. Dandamayev

  i. In pre-Islamic period. ii. Babylonian and Egyptian documents in the Achaemenid period. iii. In the modern period.

• DŌDĀ-BĀLĀÇ

  Cross-Reference

  See BALUCHISTAN iii/II.

• DODDER

  Cross-Reference

  See AFTĪMŪN.

• DOERFER, GERHARD

  Michael Knüppel

  German scholar of Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungus languages. He divided the Turkic elements in Persian into three layers:  (1) an older, “pure” Turkic layer, which consists of southern and eastern Turkic elements; (2) a Middle Mongolian and Turkic layer, which includes Mongolian and southern and eastern Turkic elements; and (3) a later, “pure” Turkic layer, which comprises southern Turkic elements only. 

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• DOG

  Mahmoud Omidsalar and Teresa P. Omidsalar, Mary Boyce, Jean-Pierre Digard

  Canis familiaris; i. In literature and folklore. ii. In Zoroastrianism. iii. Ethnography.

• DOḠLAT, MĪRZĀ MOḤAMMAD ḤAYDAR

  Cross-Reference

  See Supplement.

• DOGONBADAN

  Cross-Reference

  See GAČSARĀN.

• DOJAYL

  Cross-Reference

  See KĀRŪN.

• DOḴĀNĪYĀT

  Willem Floor

  tobacco projects; referring to the State tobacco-monopoly law (Qānūn-e enḥeṣār-e dawlatī-e doḵānīyāt) of 20 March 1909 and to the state monopoly of tobacco products itself.

• DOKKĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See BĀZĀR i.

• DOKKĀN-E DĀWŪD

  Hubertus von Gall

  lit., “shop of David"; rock-cut tomb of the Achaemenid period in the Zagros range a few kilometers southeast of Sar-e Pol-e Ḏohāb, in the province of Kermānšāhān. The relief of a priest with a barsom bundle probably belongs to the early Hellenistic period.

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• DOḴTAR-E NŌŠERVĀN

  MARKUS MODE

  lit., “daughter of Nōšervān”; rock-cut architectural complex with important wall paintings, in northern Afghanistan. Surrounding the deity’s head is a tripartite nimbus with attached animal protomes. This complex system seems to emphasize the supernatural force of the “king of gods” as ultimate creator of all life.

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• DOḴTARĀN-E ĪRĀN

  Nassereddin Parvin

  lit., “Daughters of Iran”; a monthly variety magazine for girls published in Shiraz from 23 July 1931 to November 1932.

• DOKUZ ḴĀTŪN

  Charles Melville

  (d. 16 June 1265), chief wife of the Il-khan Hülegü and granddaughter of Wang Khan, leader of the Nestorian Christian Kereyit tribe domiciled near present-day Ulan Bator.

• DOLAFIDS

  Fred M. Donner

  family of Arab origin that became politically prominent in western Persia during the 9th century.