Table of Contents

• 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.