Table of Contents

• DĀTAMIΘRA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Iranian personal name resulting from an inversion of Miθra-dāta- “given by Mithra” and continued in the New Persian Dādmehr.

• DATAPHERNES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  name of an Iranian (perhaps Bactrian) officer in the entourage of Bessos, murderer of Darius III (336-30 B.C.E.).

• DATE PALM

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  (deraḵt-e ḵormā, naḵl; Phoenix dactylifera L., fam. Palmaceae). It is indigenous to the geobotanical “Sahara-Sind region,” a desert or semidesert belt extending from the Indus valley to North Africa. It is believed by some authorities to be native to the Persian Gulf area and by others to have been derived from the the wild or date-sugar palm of western India.

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• DATES AND DATING

  D. N. MacKenzie

  in Old and Middle Iranian. The only dating formulas preserved in an Old Iranian language are those found in Old Persian in the Bīsotūn inscriptions of Darius I; by the time of the earliest dated Middle Iranian documents, the Parthian ostraca from Nisa of the 1st century B.C.E., the Zoroastrian (so-called Avestan) calendar was in use.

• DATIS

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Iranian personal name.

• DAULIER DESLANDES

  ANNE KROELL

  (b. Montoire-sur-le-Loir, 1621, d. Paris, 23 October 1715), author of Les Beautez de la Perse ..., a brief but valuable description of Safavid Persia in the years 1075-76/1664-65.

• DAURISES

  R. Schmitt

  name of a Persian general during the Ionian revolt, a son-in-law of Darius I (522-486 B.C.E.).

• DAVĀL-PĀ(Y)

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  or dovāl-pā, an imaginary evil anthropoid creature characterized by flexible legs (pā) resembling leather straps, which he uses as tentacles to grip and enslave human beings, who then have to carry him on their shoulders or backs and labor for him until they die of fatigue.

• DAVALLU

  Cross-Reference

  See QAJAR TRIBES.

• DAVĀN

  Hamid Mahamedi

  village located 12 km northeast of Kāzerūn in Fārs; a distinctive dialect is spoken there. Arable land is very limited and located mostly in the foothills; dry farming is the prevailing form of agriculture. Products include barley, wheat, and fruits—grapes, figs, pomegranates, and pears.

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