Table of Contents
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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.
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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.
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DIPLOMACY
Cross-Reference
See under individual countries; see also FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
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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.
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DĪRGHANAKHA-SŪTRA
Yutaka Yoshida
a Buddhist text in which the Buddha expounds the merits of observing the eight commandments to a parivrājaka named Dīrghanakha.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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DĪVĀN
François de Blois
archive, register, chancery, government office; also, collected works, especially of a poet.