Table of Contents

  • DARBAND

    Erich Kettenhofen

    (Ar. Bāb al-Abwāb), ancient city in Dāḡestān on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, located at the entrance to the narrow pass between the Caucasus foothills and the sea.

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  • DARBAND EPIGRAPHY

    Multiple Authors

    epigraphic remains on the walls of Darband, from Sasanian through Medieval Islamic times.

  • DARBAND EPIGRAPHY i. MIDDLE PERSIAN INSCRIPTIONS

    Murtazali Gadjiev

    Thirty-two Pahlavi inscriptions of the mid-6th century CE are engraved on the defensive walls of the city of Darband.

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  • DARBAND EPIGRAPHY ii. DAR-E QIĀMAT SHRINE

    Murtazali Gadjiev

    a medieval Muslim cultic site, now forgotten and non-functioning, in Darband.

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  • DARBAND QUARTER

    Bernard Hourcade

    a former village in the summer resort (yeylāq) of Šamīrān, situated at an elevation of 1,700 m on the extreme northern edge of the capital, where the Alborz foothills begin.

  • DARBANDĪ, MULLA ĀQĀ

    Hamid Algar

    b. ʿĀbed b. Ramażān, commonly known as Fāżel Darbandī (d. Tehran, 1869-70), Shiʿite scholar and preacher of the Qajar period, renowned for his disputatious and irascible character.

  • DARBĀR -E AʿẒAM

    Guity Nashat

    lit., “the great court”; a council of ministers established in October 1872 as one of several experiments undertaken in the reign of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah (1848-96) to reorganize and rationalize the Persian administration on the model of Western cabinet government.

  • DĀRČĪNĪ

    Hūšang Aʿlam

    lit., “Chinese tree/wood."

  • D'ARCY, JOSEPH

    Kambiz Eslami

    (Pers. “Mester Bārūt,” “Qūlūnel Khan,” “Qonsūl Khan”; b. Portsmouth, England, 14 March 1780, d. Lymington, England, 17 February 1848), major (later lieutenant colonel) in the British Royal Artillery who arrived in Persia in 1226/1811 with the ambassador Sir Gore Ouseley; he was one of a group of British officers and enlisted men who were to reform and equip the Persian army.

  • D'ARCY, WILLIAM KNOX

    Fuad Rouhani

    (b. Newton Abbot, Devonshire, England, 11 October 1849, d. Stanmore, Middlesex, England, 1 May 1917), petroleum entrepreneur and founder of the oil industry in Persia and the Middle East.

  • DARD, ḴᵛĀJA MĪR

    Annemarie Schimmel

    (b. Delhi, 13 September 1721; d. 11 January 1785), poet and author of prose works on mystical theology.

  • DARDESTĀN

    NIGEL J. R. ALLAN, D. I. EDEL’MAN

    The toponym Dardestān is a social and political construct. Its currency toward the end of the 19th century in many ways reflected an attempt by supporters of imperial India to link the Indian northwestern frontier tracts to Kashmir, with which the British had treaties.

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  • DĀREMĪ, ABŪ SAʿĪD ʿOṮMĀN

    Josef van Ess

    b. Saʿīd b. Ḵāled SEJESTĀNĪ, Persian traditionist and jurist (b. ca. 816, d. February 894).

  • DARGĀHĪ, MOḤAMMAD

    Bāqer ʿĀqelī

    (b. Zanjān, 1899, d. Tehran, 1952), first chief of the state police under Reżā Shah.

  • DARGĀHQOLĪ KHAN ḎU’L-QADR

    M. Saleem Akhtar

    also known as Moʿtaman-al-Dawla Moʿtaman-al-Molk Sālār-Jang Ḵān-e Dawrān Nawwāb (b. Sangamnēr, Deccan, 1710, d. Awrangābād, 22 October 1766), Persian official at Hyderabad and Awrangābād, best known for his description of Delhi.

  • DARGAZĪNĪ

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    nesba (attributive name) for Dargazīn (or Darjazīn), borne by several viziers of the Great Saljuqs in the 12th century.

  • DARĪ

    GILBERT LAZARD

    name given to the New Persian literary language at a very early date and widely attested in Arabic and Persian texts since the 10th century.

  • DARĪ IN AFGHANISTAN

    Cross-Reference

    See AFGHANISTAN v. LANGUAGES

  • ḎARĪʿA elā TAṢĀNĪF al-ŠĪʿA

    Etan Kohlberg

    a comprehensive bibliography of Imami Shiʿite works in twenty-five volumes compiled by Shaikh Moḥammad-Moḥsen Āqā Bozorg Ṭehrānī (1876-1970); it contains about 55,000 entries for works written up to 1950-51.

  • DARIC

    Michael Alram

    Achaemenid gold coin which was introduced by Darius I toward the end of the 6th century.

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  • DARĪGBED

    Richard N. Frye

    title of a low-ranking official at the Sasanian court.

  • DARIUS

    Multiple Authors

    (NPers. Darīūš, Dārā), name of several Achaemenid and Parthian rulers and princes.

  • DARIUS i. The Name

    Rudiger Schmitt

    the common Latin form of Greek Dareîos, itself a shortened rendering of Old Persian five-syllable Dārayavauš, the throne name of Darius the Great and two other kings of the Achaemenid dynasty, which thus enjoyed considerable popularity among noblemen in later periods

  • DARIUS ii. Darius the Mede

    Richard N. Frye

    In the Old Testament Book of Daniel Darius the Mede is mentioned (5:30-31) as ruler after the slaying of the “Chaldean king” Belshazzar.

  • DARIUS iii. Darius I the Great

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    third Achaemenid king of kings (r. 29 September 522-October 486 BCE). Once he gained power, Darius placed the empire on foundations that lasted for nearly two centuries and influenced the organization of subsequent states, including the Seleucid and Roman empires.

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  • DARIUS iv. Darius II

    Heleen Sanchisi-Weerdenburg

    the sixth Achaemenid king of kings (r. February 423- March 403 B.C.E.). He had been satrap of Hyrcania. Darius was his throne name; his given name is reported in classical sources as Ochus.

  • DARIUS v. Darius III

    EIr.

    (b. ca. 380 BCE, d. mid-330), the last Achaemenid king. The lack of sources is especially severe for his life and reign. There are no Persian royal texts or monuments, and what is known comes almost solely from the Greek historians, who depicted his career mainly as a contrast to the brilliant first few years of Alexander the Great.

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  • DARIUS vi. Achaemenid Princes

    Rudiger Schmitt

    the name of two Achaemenid princes in addition to the emperors who bore it.

  • DARIUS vii. Parthian Princes

    Rudiger Schmitt

    In 64 B.C.E. while his father, Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus (ca. 121/20-63 B.C.E.), was fighting his last, losing campaign against the troops of the Roman general Pompey (106-48 B.C.E.), the child Darius was taken prisoner, along with several brothers and his sister Eupatra, in Phanagoria

  • DARIUS viii. Darius Son of Artabanus

    Marie Louise Chaumont

    A son of the Parthian king Artabanus II named Darius was sent as a hostage to Rome shortly after an interview between Artabanus and the Roman legate for Syria, Vitellius, in 37 C.E.

  • DARJAZĪN

    Parviz Aḏkāʾī

    (or Dargazīn), name of two rural subdistricts (dehestāns) and a village in the Razan district (baḵš) of Hamadān province.

  • DARKE, Hubert Seymour Garland

    John Perry

    In 1961 Darke was appointed University Lecturer in Persian at Cambridge, where he taught language and literature for the next twenty years. His particular interests were Early New Persian and Persian prosody. His major research achievement was the definitive edition and translation of the Siar al-moluk, a manual of government by the celebrated Saljuq vizier Neẓām-al-Molk.

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  • DARMESTETER, JAMES

    Mary Boyce and D. N. MacKenzie

    (b. Château-Salins, Alsace, 12 March 1849, d. Paris, 19 October 1894), the great Iranist, was the son of a Jewish bookbinder, who in 1852 moved to Paris to improve his children’s educational opportunities.

  • DARRA-YE BARRA

    Remy Boucharlat

    lit. "Valley of the lamb", a locality in Fārs province, 2.5 km east-northeast of the Achaemenid royal tombs at Naqš-e Rostam. Several rock-cut monuments are scattered on steep scree and in the cliff on the north side of the valley. The most outstanding feature is the tallest fire altar so far found in Fārs.

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  • DARRA-YE NŪR

    Daniel Balland

    name of a small tributary valley on the right bank of the Konar river in eastern Afghanistan and the corresponding subdistrict of Nangrahār province.

  • DARRA-YE ṢŪF

    Daniel Balland

    name of a valley in northern Afghanistan, drained by a tributary of the right bank of the Balḵāb, and of the adjoining mountain district and its administrative center in Samangān province.

  • DARRAGAZ

    Massoud Kheirabadi, Philip Kohl

    or DARGAZ (Valley of the tamarisks), a fertile valley about 50-55 km east-west and 30-35 km north-south in the Kopet Dagh range in northern Khorasan, at about 450 m above sea level, in which are located a šahrestān (subprovince) and a town of the same name.

  • DARRAŠŪRĪ

    Pierre Oberling

    one of the five major tribes of the Qašqāʾī tribal confederation.

  • DARRŪS

    Sayyed ʿAlī Āl-e Dāwūd, JOHN CURTIS

    district in northern Tehran east of Qol-hak and south of Qayṭarīya, all former suburbs of the city; it is located about 8 km from the center of the modern city.

  • DĀRŪ

    Cross-Reference

     See DRUGS.

  • DĀRŪḠA

    Cross-Reference

    See CITIES iii.

  • DARVĀZ

    Jan-Heeren Grevemeyer

    a largely autonomous principality with territory on both sides of the upper course of the Āmū Daryā, known as the Panj, until the partition between czarist Russia and the Afghan kingdom in the last quarter of the 19th century.

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  • DARVĀZA

    Wolfram Kleiss

    (gateway), generally an entrance opening wide enough to permit passage of vehicles, in contrast to doorways, which are smaller openings to permit passage through a wall or fence. 

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  • DARVĀZA TEPE

    Linda K. Jacobs

    (or Tall-e Darvāza), a village site in the southeastern Kor river basin, in Fārs province, occupied in three stages from 1800 B.C.E. to 800 B.C.E., according to radiocarbon dates of the finds, and characterized by an essential continuity in both architecture and other aspects of material culture.

  • DARVĪŠ

    Mansour Shaki, Hamid Algar

    a poor, indigent, ascetic, and abstemious person or recluse.

  • DARVĪŠ AḤMAD QĀBEŻ

    M. E. Subtelny

    (d. 1507), Timurid vizier.

  • DARVĪŠ ʿALĪ BŪZJĀNĪ

    Cross-Reference

    See BŪZJĀNĪ.

  • DARVĪŠ ʿALĪ, AMĪR NEẒĀM-AL-DĪN KüKäLTĀŠ KETĀBDĀR

    M. E. Subtelny

    Timurid amir under Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā (1469-1506) and younger brother of ʿAlī-Šīr Navāʾ.

  • DARVĪŠ KHAN, ḠOLĀM-ḤOSAYN

    Margaret Caton

    (b. Tehran, 1872, d. Tehran, 23 November 1926), master musician, renowned teacher, and innovative composer of Persian classical music.

  • DARVĪŠ REŻĀ

    Kathryn Babayan

    (d. 1040/1631), a qezelbāš functionary who claimed to be the awaited Mahdī.