Table of Contents

• DA AFḠĀNESTĀN TĀRĪḴ ṬŌLANA

  Cross-Reference

  See Anjoman-e Tāriḵ-e Afḡānestān.

• DĀ O DOḴTAR

  Hubertus Von Gall

  (lit. “Mother and daughter”), an important rock-cut tomb, probably of the early Hellenistic period, at the northwestern corner of the Mamasanī region of Fārs. Among all the rock-cut tombs of the former territory of Media and of Fārs, it most closely resembles the royal Achaemenid tombs.

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• DABBĀḠĪ

  ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  tanning, the process by which animal skins are made into leather.

• DABESTĀN

  Cross-Reference

  (elementary school). See EDUCATION.

• DABESTĀN JOURNAL

  Nassereddin Parvin

  (“school”), Persian monthly cultural journal published in Mašhad, 1922-27. 

• DABESTĀN-E MAḎĀHEB

  Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabāʾī

  (school of religious doctrines), an important text of the Āḏar Kayvānī pseudo-Zoroastrian sect, written between 1645 and 1658.

• DABĪR

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī, Hashem Rajabzadeh

  "secretary, scribe." i. In the pre-Islamic period. ii. In the Islamic period.

• DABĪR-AL-MOLK FARĀHĀNĪ

  Guity Nashat

  or Mīrzā Moḥammad-Ḥosayn (1810-80), director of the private royal secretariat under Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah.

• DABĪR-E AʿẒAM

  Cross-Reference

  See BAHRAMĪ, FARAJ-ALLĀH.

• DABĪRE, DABĪRĪ

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  a term designating the “seven scripts” supposedly used in the Sasanian period.

• DABĪRESTĀN

  Cross-Reference

  secondary school. See EDUCA­TION x. MIDDLE AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

• DABĪRESTĀN-E NEẒĀM

  Cross-Reference

  military secondary school. See pending entry MILITARY.

• DĀBŪYA DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E DĀBŪYA.

• DABUYIDS

  Wilfred Madelung

  the dynasty of espahbads ruling Ṭabarestān until its conquest by the Muslims in 144/761.

• DĀD (1)

  Mansour Shaki

  (Av. dāta- “law, right, rule, regulation, statute, command, institution, decision”), in the Zoroastrian tradition the most general term for law.

• DĀD (2)

  Jean During

  a vocal and instrumental gūša (motif), in reality more of a melodic type than a modal structure.  

• DĀD (3)

  Nassereddin Parvin

  (lit., “justice”), a Tehran afternoon newspaper, 1942-61.

• DĀD NASK

  Mansour Shaki

  (law book), one of the three divisions of the Avesta, comprising seven nasks, subdi­vided into the five strictly legal (dādīg) nasks (Nikātum, Duzd-sar-nizad, Huspāram, Sakātum, and Vidēvdād) and the two disparate nasks, Čihrdād and Bagān Yašt.

• DADA ʿOMAR ROŠENĪ

  Cross-Reference

  cofounder of the Ḵalwatī Sufi order. See DEDE ÖMER RUŞENĪ

• DADARSIS

  Muhammad A. Dandamayev

  Old Persian name derived from darš “to dare”; three men with this name are known.

• DADESTAN

  Mansour Shaki

  (dād “law,” with the formative suffix -stān), a Middle Persian term used with denota­tions and connotations that vary with the legal, reli­gious, philosophical, and social context.

• DĀDESTĀN Ī DĒNĪG

  Mansour Shaki

  (Religious judgements), Pahlavi work by Manūščihr, high priest of the Persian Zoroastrian community in the 9th century.

• DADESTAN Ī MENOG Ī XRAD

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  (Judgments of the Spirit of Wisdom), a Zoroastrian Pahlavi book in sixty-three chapters (a preamble and sixty-two ques­tions and answers).

• DĀDGĀH "COURT"

  Cross-Reference

  court of law. See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS v. JUDICIAL SYSTEM IN THE 20TH CENTURY.

• DĀDGĀH "TEMPLE FIRE"

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀTAŠ.

• DĀDGAR, ḤOSAYN

  Bāqer ʿĀqelī

  ʿAdl-al-Molk (b. Tehran ca. 1299/1881, d. 1349 Š./1970), at various times president of the Persian Majles, cabi­net minister, and senator under the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties.

• DĀDGOSTARĪ, WEZĀRAT-E

  Cross-Reference

  See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS.

• DĀDĪŠOʿ

  Erica C. D. Hunter

  (Syr. “beloved of Jesus”; Payne Smith, col. 824, s.v.; Pers. “given by Jesus”), catholicus of the Sasanian “Nestorian” church in 420/21-455/56.

• DADISOʿ QATRAYA

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  (late 7th century), Nestorian author of ascetic literature in Syriac.

• DĀḎMEHR b. FARROḴĀN

  Cross-Reference

  espahbad of Ṭabarestān. See Dabuyids.

• DADWAR, DADWARIH

  Mansour Shaki

  respectively judge, administrator of justice, lawgiver, lit., “bearer of law.”

• DADYSETH AGIARY

  Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

  in 1771 C.E. Dadibhai Noshirwanji Dadyseth established an agiary with an Ādarān fire for the sake of the soul of his first wife, Kunverbai, in the Fort district of Bombay.

• DADYSETH ATAS BAHRAM

  Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

  the oldest Ātaš Bahrām of Bombay, consecrated and installed according to Kadmi rites in the district of Fanaswadi on the day of Sarōš, month of Farvardīn 1153 A.Y./29 September 1783.

• DADYSETH, Dadibhai Noshirwanji

  Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

  (1734-99), a distinguished Parsi philanthropist.

• DAĒNA

  Cross-Reference

  See DĒN.

• DAF(F) AND DAYERA

  Jean During, Veronica Doubleday

  terms applied to types of frame drum common in both the art music and popular traditions of Persia. Such drums have long been known throughout Asia in various forms and under different names.  The term dāyera originally referred to the flat, circular drums of pre-­Islamic Arabia.

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• DAFTAR

  Hashem Rajabzadeh

  an administrative office, as well as a notebook or booklet, more especially an account book or correspondence regis­ter, used in such an office.

• DAFTAR-E ASNĀD-E RASMĪ

  Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmḡānī

  (Registry of of official documents), a government department where documents and records of transactions, contracts, marriages, divorces, and the like are kept and signa­tures verified.

• DAFTAR-ḴĀNA-YE HOMĀYŪN

  Hashem Rajabzadeh

  royal sec­retariat; a Safavid administrative unit headed by the daftardār, or chief secretary.

• DĀḠ

  Ṣādeq Sajjādī

  “brand.”  According to Rašīd-al-Dīn Fażl-Allāh, “The tamḡā was a special emblem or mark that the Turkish and Mongol peoples stamped on decrees and also branded on their flocks.”   Each of the twenty-four tribes of the Oḡuz Turkmen had its own tamḡā, with which it branded its flocks.

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• DĀḠESTĀN

  Gadzhi Gamzatovich Gamzatov, Fridrik Thordarson

  (Daghestan). The many-faceted relationship between Dāḡestān (ancient Albania), a region in the eastern Caucasus, and Persia since antiquity has yet to be studied as a whole, though there is considerable historical, linguis­tic, folkloric, literary, and art-historical evidence bear­ing on it.

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• DĀḠESTĀNĪ, FATḤ ʿALĪ KHAN

  Roger M. Savory

  b. Alqāṣ Mīrzā b. Ildirim Khan Šamḵāl, grand vizier (wazīr-e aʿẓam, eʿtemād-al-dawla) under Shah Solṭān-Ḥosayn I Ṣafawī (1105-35/1694-1722).

• DAGUERREOTYPE

  Chahryar Adle

  the first practical photo­graphic process, introduced into Persia in the early 1840s, shortly after its official presentation to the French Académie de Science in Paris in 1839. Acceptance of the medium of photography in Persia reflected the cultural value attached to painting in general and portraiture in particular.

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• ḎAHABĪYA

  Hamid Algar

  a Sufi order of Shiʿite allegiance, ultimately derived from the Kobrawīya order.

• DAHAE

  François de Blois, Willem Vogelsang

  i. The name. ii. The people.

• DAHAN-E ḠOLĀMĀN

  Gherardo Gnoli

  “Gateway of the slaves,” site  ca. 30 km southeast of Zābol in Sīstān. It is the sole large provincial capital surviving from the Achaemenid empire; excavations there have brought to light a combination of “imperial” elements, identified in the public buildings, and local elements.

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• DAHBĪDĪYA

  Hamid Algar

  a hereditary line of Naqšbandī Sufis centered on the shrine at Dahbīd, a village about 11 km. from Samarqand.

• DAHM YAZAD

  Mary Boyce

  the Middle Persian name of the Zoroastrian divinity (also known as Dahmān Āfrīn and Dahmān) who is the spirit or force inherent in the Avestan benediction called Dahma Vaŋuhi Āfriti, or Dahma Āfriti.

• DAHRĪ

  Mansour Shaki, Daniel Gimaret

  (< Ar.-Pers. dahr “time, eternity”), a theological term referring either to an atheist or to an adherent of the doctrine that the universe had no beginning in time.

• DAHYU

  Gherardo Gnoli

  country (often with reference to the people inhabiting it).

• DAʿĪ

  Farhad Daftary

  he who summons; a term used by several Muslim groups, especially the Ismaʿilis, to designate their propagandists or missionaries.

• DĀʿĪ

  Tahsin Yazici

  the pen name of Aḥmad b. Ebrāhīm b. Moḥammad, Turkish scholar and poet who wrote in both Persian and Turkish.

• DĀʿĪ BOḴĀRĪ

  Cathérine Poujol

  (d. 1885), poet from Bukhara, probably born during the reign of Amir Naṣr-Allāh (1827-60).

• DĀʿĪ ELAʾL-ḤAQQ, ABŪ ʿABD ALLĀH MOḤAMMAD

  Wilfred Madelung

  b. Zayd b. Moḥammad b. Esmāʿīl b. Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb (d. 287/900), brother and successor of Ḥasan b. Zayd, founder of Zaydī rule in Rūyān and Ṭabarestān.

• DĀʿĪ JĀN NĀPELʾON

  Nasrin Rahimiyeh

  lit., “Uncle Napoleon”, a satirical novel written in 1348-49 Š./1969-70 by Īraj Pezeškzād, who was already known in Persia for writing such satirical novels.

• DĀʿĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ

  Ḏabīḥ-Allāh Ṣafā

  AL-DĀʿĪ ELAʾLLĀH SAYYED NEẒĀM AL DĪN MAḤMŪD(1407-65), poet, preacher, and leader of the Neʿmat-Allāhī Sufi order in Fārs.

• DĀʿĪ-AL-ESLĀM, SAYYED MOḤAMMAD ʿALĪ

  M. Saleem Akhtar

  Per­sian scholar, preacher, and lexicographer, born 1295/1878 at Lārījān.

• DĀʿĪ-E KABĪR

  Cross-Reference

  See ḤASAN b. ZAYD.

• DĀʿĪ-E ṢAḠĪR

  Cross-Reference

  See ḤASAN b. QĀSEM ʿALAWĪ.

• DĀITYĀ, VAŊHVĪ

  Gherardo Gnoli

  the name of a river connected with the religious law, frequently identified in scholarly literature with the Oxus or with rivers of the northeastern region.

• DAIUKKU

  Cross-Reference

  See DEIOCES.

• DAIVA

  Clarisse Herrenschmidt and Jean Kelllens

  Old Iranian noun (Av. daēuua-, OPers. daiva-) corresponding to the title devá- of the Indian gods and thus reflecting the Indo-European heritage (*deiu̯ó-).

• DAIVADANA

  Gherardo Gnoli

  lit., "temple of the daivas," Old Persian term that appears in the “daiva inscrip­tion” of Xerxes at Persepolis.

• DAJJĀL

  Hamid Algar

  lit. "the great deceiver"; in Islamic tradition the maleficent figure gifted with supernatural powers whose advent and brief, though quasi-universal, rule will be among the signs heralding the approach of the resurrection.

• ḎAKAʾ-AL-MOLK

  Cross-Reference

  See FORŪḠĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ʿALĪ; FORŪḠĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ḤOSAYN.

• DAKANĪ, REŻĀ ʿALĪŠĀH

  Javad Nurbakhsh

  also known as Shah ʿAlī-Reżā (1683-1799), leader (qoṭb, lit., “pole”) in the years 1741-99 of the Neʿmat-­Allāhī Sufi order in Hyderabad (Deccan), India.

• DAKANĪ, SAYYED MĪR ʿABD AL ḤAMĪD MAʿSḭŪM ʿALISĀH

  Hamid Algar

  (ca. 1738-97), the “renewer” (mojadded) of the Neʿmat-Allāhī Sufi order in Persia and thus the initiatory ancestor of all present­-day Neʿmat-Allāhīs.

• DAḴĪL

  Ḥosayn-ʿAlī Beyhaqī

  lit. “interceder”; a piece of rag or cord or a lock fastened (daḵīl bastan) on a sacred place or object, for example, the railing around a saint’s tomb or grave or a public fountain (saqqā-ḵāna), the branch of a tree considered sacred, or another plant, in order to obtain a desired benefit.

• ḎAḴĪRA-YE ḴᵛĀRAZMŠĀHĪ

  ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  early 13th-century Persian ency­clopedia of medical knowledge compiled by Sayyed Esmāʿīl b. Ḥosayn Jorjānī.

• DAḴMA

  Cross-Reference

  See CORPSE.

• DALMĀ TEPE

  Robert H. Dyson, Jr.

  an archeological site in western Azerbaijan.

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• DALQAK

  Farrokh Gaffary

  buffoon, court jester, also sometimes known as masḵara.

• DAL’VERZIN TEPE

  G. A. Pugachenkova

  a large site in southern Uzbekistan located not far from the bank of the Surkhan­darya river near Denau, a small city approximately 60 km northeast of Termez; it has yielded valuable data on the civilization and arts of northern Bactria and Tokharistan.

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• DAM (1)

  Cross-Reference

  See BAND.

• DAM (2)

  Klaus Fischer

  archeological site in Afghanistan, 30°55’ N, 62°01’ E, located approximately 20 km east of the Helmand delta.

• DĀM PEZEŠKĪ

  Mansour Shaki, Ḥasan Tājbaḵš, and Ṣādeq Sajjādī

  veterinary medicine.

• DĀM-DĀRĪ

  Jean-Pierre Digard

  animal husbandry. In gen­eral, livestock raising in the Persian-speaking world is dominated by small animals, with a large proportion of goats, which in certain provinces of Persia itself are even more numerous than sheep. Cattle and equines, especially donkeys, are far less important.

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• DĀMĀD, MĪR(-E), SAYYED MOḤAMMAD BĀQER

  Andrew J. Newman

  b. Mīr Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥosaynī Astarābādī (d. 1041/1631), leading Twelver Shiʿite theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet of 17th-century Persia.

• DAMASCUS, Zoroastrians at

  Mary Boyce

  The earliest evi­dence for the presence of Zoroastrians at Damascus is provided by Berossus (q.v.), who stated that this was one of the cities of the Achaemenid empire at which Artaxerxes II (q.v.; 404-358 b.c.e.) had a statue set up for “Anaitis”

• DAMASPIA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  name of a Persian queen, wife of Artaxerxes I and mother of his legal heir, Xerxes II (424/3 B.C.E.).

• DAMĀVAND

  Bernard Hourcade, Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  mountain, town, and administrative district (šahrestān) in the central Alborz region.

• DĀMDĀD NASK

  D. N. MacKenzie

  the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) name of one of the lost nasks of the Avesta. 

• DAMELĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See DARDESTĀN.

• DĀMḠĀN

  Chahryar Adle

  (Damghan) Persian town located on a plain south of the Alborz range, 342 km east of Tehran. Situated on the main highway from Tehran to Nīšāpūr, Mašhad, and Herat, it  also dominates less important roads north to Sārī and Gorgān, as well as tracks leading south to Yazd and Isfahan via Jandaq.

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• DĀMḠĀNĪ (1)

  EIr

  nesba of a leading family of jurists of Persian origin, descendants of Abū ʿAbd-Allāh Moḥammad Kabīr (b. Dāmḡān 1007, d. Baghdad 1085), a well-known exponent of Hanafite law, who served as the chief magistrate (qāżī al-qożāt) of Baghdad.

• DĀMḠĀNĪ (2)

  Sheila S. Blair

  nesba of a father and two sons from Dāmḡān who worked as engineers, builders, and stucco carvers in the early 14th century.

• DĀMḠĀNĪ, ABŪ ʿALĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See ABŪ ʿALĪ DĀMḠĀNĪ.

• DĀMI

  Jean Kellens

  Avestan word, probably the noun of agency connected with Old Avestan dāman- “stake," thus “the one who drives the stake.”

• DAMIRI, MOḤAMMAD

  G. A. Russell

  b. Musā b. ʿIsā Kamāl al-Din Ebn Elyās b. ʿAbd-Allāh al-Damiri (b. Cairo, A.H. 745/A.D. 1342, d. Cairo, A.H. 808/ A.D. 1405), a tailor turned Shāfiʿi theologian, is best known for his Ḥayātal-ḥayawān (Animal Life).

• DAMPOḴT(AK)

  Mohammad R. Ghanoonparvar

  or DAMĪ, terms referring to rice cooked in a single pot.

• DANCE

  A. Shapur Shahbazi, Robyn C. Friend

  (raqṣ). Single dancers or groups of dancers represented on pottery from prehistoric Iranian sites (e.g., Tepe Siyalk, Tepe Mūsīān) attest the antiquity of this art in Iran. According to Duris of Samos (apud Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae), the Achaemenid Persians learned to dance, just as they learned to ride horseback.

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• DANDĀN ÖILÏQ (“ivory houses”)

  Gerd Gropp

  lit. “ivory houses”; ruined city located about 50 km north of the Domoko oasis in the eastern portion of the oasis complex of Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.

• DANDĀNQĀN

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a small town of medieval Khorasan, in the Qara Qum, or sandy desert, between Marv and Saraḵs, 10 farsaḵs from the former, on which it was administratively dependent.

• DĀNEŠ (1)

  ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  pen name of MOʿĪN-AL-WEZĀRA MĪRZĀ REŻĀ KHAN ARFAʿ (Arfaʿ-al-Dawla; ca. 1846-1937), also known as Prince Reżā Arfaʿ, diplomat and poet of the late Qajar period.

• DĀNEŠ (2)

  Nassereddin Parvin

  lit., “knowledge”; title of seven newspa­pers and journals published in Persia and the Indian subcontinent, presented here in chronological order.

• DĀNEŠ, AḤMAD MAḴDŪM

  Vincent Fourniau

  b. Mīr b. Yūsof ḤANAFĪ ṢEDDĪQĪ BOḴĀRĪ (1242-1314/1827-97), known as Aḥmad Kallā and Mohandes (lit., “engineer”), a historian and progressive Tajik writer of Bukhara.

• DĀNEŠ, ḤOSAYN

  Peter J. Chelkowski

  (b. Istanbul 1870, d. Ankara 1943), a leading Turco-Persian poet, journalist, and scholar who wrote on literary, political, and social issues for many Persian newspapers.

• DĀNEŠ, TAQĪ

  Īraj Afšār

  (b. Tabrīz, 1861, d. Tehran 24 February 1948), poet and govern­ment official.

• DĀNEŠ-NĀMA YE ʿALĀʾĪ

  Hamid Dabashi

  Persian philosophical treatise written by Avicenna (980-1037).

• DĀNEŠ-NĀMA-YE ĪRĀN WA ESLĀM

  Ehsan Yarshater

  Encyclopedia of Iran and Islam.

• DĀNEŠ-NĀMA-YE QADAR KHAN

  Solomon Bayevsky

  (Book of knowledge [dedicated to] Qadar Khan), a Persian dictionary compiled by Ašrāf b. Šaraf Moḏakker Fārūḡī primarily in Malwa, India, and completed in 1405.

• DĀNEŠ-SARĀ-YE ʿĀLĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See EDUCATION; TEACHERS' TRAINING.

• DĀNEŠ-SARĀ-YE MOQADDAMĀTĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See EDUCATION.

• DĀNESF(AH)ĀN

  Ehsan Yarshater

  locally Donesbon, a village located at 49°45′ E, 35°47′ N in the southern part of the Rāmand district of Qazvīn province, 30 km west and slightly north of Būyīn; it has a population of a little over 3,000.

• DĀNEŠGĀH

  Cross-Reference

  See EDUCATION; entries on indi­vidual universities.

• DĀNEŠGĀH-E JANG

  Cross-Reference

  See MILITARY.

• DĀNEŠKADA

  Nassereddin Parvin

  a monthly literary journal published from April 1918 to April 1919 in Tehran by the distinguished poet, literary critic, and scholar Moḥammad-Taqi Malek-al-Šoʿarāʾ Bahār, considered the leading Persian literary figure of his time.

• DĀNEŠKĀDA

  Cross-Reference

  See EDUCATION; FACULTIES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TEHRAN.

• DĀNEŠKĀDA-YE AFSARĪ

  Cross-reference

  See MILITARY.

• DĀNEŠKADA-YE EṢFAHĀN

  N. Parvin

  a monthly literary journal and the organ of a society of the same name, published in two series in Isfahan by the poet and calligrapher Mirzā ʿAbbās Khan Dehkordi Šeydā (1882-1949).

• DĀNEŠMAND

  Tahsin Yazici

  , Amir Ḡāzī Taylu Gümüš tigin Aḥmad (or Moḥammad) (d. 1104), founder of a Turkman dynasty in northern Cappadocia toward the end of the 11th century.

• DĀNEŠMAND BAHĀDOR

  Peter Jackson

  Mongol com­mander (d. 1306).

• DĀNEŠMAND-E ḤĀJEB

  Peter Jackson

  Muslim officer in Mongol service in the first half of the 13th century.

• DANESTAMA

  Klaus Fischer

  a mud-brick structure on diaper masonry foundations located on the left bank of the Sorḵāb river, 34 km north of Doāb-e Mīḵzarīn on the road to Došī.

• DĀNG

  Cross-Reference

  See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

• DĀNĪĀL B. MOŠEH QŪMESĪ

  Amnon Netzer

  Persian Jewish scholar and exegete of the Karaite sect, the members of which rejected rabbinical writings later than the Bible itself.

• DĀNĪĀL-E NABĪ

  Amnon Netzer, Nicholas Sims-Williams, Parvīz Varjāvand, Amnon Netzer

  the Old Testament prophet Daniel, in the Persian tradition.

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• DANISH-IRANIAN RELATIONS

  Cross-Reference

  See DENMARK.

• DAQĀYEQĪ MARVAZĪ, ŠAMS-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  b. ʿAlī, the supposed author of a version of the Baḵtīār­nāma, who lived from the late 12th to the 13th century.

• DAQĪQĪ, ABŪ MANṢŪR AḤMAD

  Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh

   b. Aḥmad, one of the famous poets of the last years of the Samanid (819-1005) dynasty.

• DAQQĀQ, ABŪ ʿALĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See ABŪ ʿALĪ DAQQĀQ.

• ḎARʿ

  cross-reference

  See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

• DĀR AL- ḤARB

  Hamid Algar

  “the realm of war”; lands not under Islamic rule, a juridical term for certain non-­Muslim territory, though often construed, especially by Western writers, as a geopolitical concept implying the necessity for perpetual, even if generally latent, warfare between the Muslim state and its non-Muslim neighbors.

• DĀR AL-FONŪN

  John Gurney and Negin Nabavi

  lit., “polytechnic college”; a college founded in Tehran in 1268/1851 by Mīrzā Ṭāqī Khan Amīr-e Kabīr, which marked the begin­ning of modern education in Persia.

• DĀR AL-ŠŪRĀ-YE KOBRĀ

  Cross-Reference

  See WEZĀRAT.

• DĀR AL-ŻARB

  Cross-Reference

  See ŻARRĀB-ḴĀNA.

• DĀR(- E) TANHĀ

  Ernie Haerinck

  lit., “the lonely tree”; an ar­cheological site in the district of Badr, near the village of Jabar, ca. 70 km east-southeast of Īlām, in the province of Pošt-e Kūh.

• DAR-E MEHR

  Mary Boyce

  a Zoroastrian term first recorded in the Persian Rivāyats and Parsi Gujarati writings.

• DĀRĀ

  Michael Weiskopf

  the name of a Parthian city and of a Byzan­tine garrison town of the Sasanian period.

• DĀRĀ

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E BĀVAND.

• DĀRA, MIRZĀ

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿABDALLĀH MĪRZĀ DĀRĀ.

• DĀRĀ ŠOKŌH

  Annemarie Schimmel

  (b. near Ajmer, 20 March 1615, d. Delhi, 12 August 1659), first son of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahān and his wife Momtāz Maḥall, religious thinker, mystic, poet, and author of a number of works in Persian.

• DĀRĀ(B) (1)

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  or DĀRĀB, the name of two kings of the legendary Kayanid dynasty.

• DĀRĀB (2)

  Massoud Kheirabadi, Dietrich Huff, Georgina Herrmann

  the name Dārāb refers both to a šahrestān (subprovince) of Fārs province and to its chief city.

• DĀRĀB-NĀMA

  William L. Hanaway

  prose romance of the 12th century, by Abū Ṭāher Moḥammad b. Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Mūsā Ṭārsūsī (or Ṭarṭūsī), in which the adventures of the legendary Kayanid king Dārāb, son of Bahman (also called Ardašīr) and Homāy, variously identified as the daughter of king Sām Čāraš of Egypt or of Ardašīr (=Bahman), are recounted.

• DĀRĀBGERD

  Cross-Reference

  See Dārā(b) II.

• DĀRĀBĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See CITRUS FRUITS.

• DĀRĀBĪ SAYYED JAʿFAR

  Andrew J. Newman

  b. Abī Esḥāq Mūsawī Borūjerdī Kašfī (b. Eṣṭahbānāt in Fārs, 1775, d. Borūjerd 1851), religious scholar, nephew of the Aḵbārī Yūsuf b. Aḥmad Baḥrānī and father of Sayyed Yaḥyā Waḥīd Dārābī.

• DĀRĀBĪ SAYYED YAḤYĀ

  Moojan Momen

  (b. Yazd, ca. 1811, d. Neyrīz, 1850), Babi leader usually known as Waḥīd (unique), a title given him by the Bāb; the eldest son of Sayyed Jaʿfar Kašfī Eṣṭah-bānātī, he received a Muslim religious education and, like his father, was associated with the Qajar court.

• DARABPAHLAN, DASTUR

  Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa

  Zoroastrian priest and author (b. Navsari, Gujarat, 1668, d. Navsari, 1 September 1734), eldest son of Pahlan Fredoon, who was accorded the title “dastur” (high priest) and the privilege of occupying the second chair in the Zoroastrian assembly of the small port of Navsari in 1670 or perhaps earlier.

• DARAFŠ -E KĀVĪĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See DERĀFŠ-E KĀVĪĀN.

• DĀRĀʾĪ, WEZĀRAT

  Cross-Reference

  See FINANCE MINISTRY.

• DARĀMAD

  Jean During

  lit., “introduction”; an episode in the course of a musical performance, the nature and length of which vary with the material introduced.

• DARARIĀN, Vigen

  Morteżā Ḥoseyni Dehkordi

  (1929-2003) renowned pop singer and performer on the guitar.

• DARĀZ-DAST

  Cross-Reference

  See DERĀZ-DAST; ARDAŠĪR; BAHMAN (2).

• DARB -E EMĀM

  Parvīz Varjāvand

  large shrine complex in the old Sonbolestān quarter of Isfahan. The main structure, consisting of entrance portal (sar-dar), vestibule, and tomb, was built in 1453 and expanded and modified several times during the Safavid period.

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• DARBĀ

  Cross-Reference

  See BĀR; COURTS AND COURTIERS.

• DARBAND (1)

  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 (2)

  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 region where Dardic languages are spoken.

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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, q.v.), 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

  (Gk. dareikós statḗr), Achaemenid gold coin of ca. 8.4 gr, which was introduced by Darius I (r. 522-486 BCE) toward the end of the 6th century. The daric and the similar silver coin, the siglos (Gk. síglos medikós), represented the bimetallic monetary standard that the Achaemenids developed from that of the Lydians.

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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

  (b. London, 8 May 1919, d. Cambridge, 6 February 1998), teacher and scholar of Persian, Lecturer in Persian at Cambridge University ‘s Faculty of Oriental Studies from 1961 to 1982.

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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, ʿABD-AL-MAJĪD ṬĀLAQĀNĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿABD-AL-MAJĪD ṬĀLAQĀNĪ.

• DARVĪŠREŻAÚ

  Kathryn Babayan

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

• DARYĀ

  Xavier de Planhol

  sea or river.

• DĀRYĀ

  Nassereddin Parvin

  a Tehran morning daily of news and politics, published with a number of interruptions from May 1944 to March 1951.

• DARYĀ-YE ḴAZAR

  Cross-Reference

  See CASPIAN SEA.

• DARYĀ-YE MĀZANDARĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See CASPIAN SEA.

• DARYĀ-YE NŪR

  Yaḥyā Ḏokāʾ

  lit., “sea of light”; one of the largest diamonds in the world, kept and exhibited in the Jewel museum of the Central bank of Persia (Bānk-e markazī-e Īrān).

• DARYĀ-YE ʿOMĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿOMĀN, SEA OF.

• DARYĀ-YE SĪĀH

  Cross-Reference

  See BLACK SEA.

• DARYĀBEYGĪ

  Guity Nashat

  lit. "sea lord"; originally an Ottoman naval title dating from the 15th century.

• DARYĀČA

  Cross-Reference

  For individual lakes, see entries under the respective names.

• DĀRZĪN

  Mehrdad Shokoohy

  village on the road between Kermān and Bam on the site of a large, early medieval town. Ruins of  buildings of different periods still stand. The earliest are probably three small forts of similar form, built of straw-tempered rectangular mud bricks, which may date from the 8th or 9th century.

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• DĀŠ ĀKOL

  SOHILA SAREMI

  a story in the first collection of short stories by Sadeq Hedayat.

• DASĀTĪN

  Jean During

  the term for modes in early musical theory, translated into Arabic as aṣābeʿ (fingers) and sometimes also as mawājeb “obligations, laws.”

• DASĀTĪR

  Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabaʾī

  the most important tract of the Āḏar Kayvānī sect, almost certainly the work of its founder, Āḏar Kayvān.

• DASCYLIUM

  Michael Weiskopf

  Achaemenid satrapy in northwestern Anatolia, part of the Persian empire until the 330s BCE. The borders varied, extending as far south as the Mysian plain and the southern Troad and east into the land of the Bithynian peoples; some satraps controlled both sides of the Hellespont.

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• DASKARA(T AL- MALEK)

  Cross-reference

  or DASKARAT AL-MALEK. See DASTGERD.

• DAŠLĪ

  Pierre Amiet

  or Dashly; oasis situated south of the Āmū Daryā, on the desert plain of northern Afghanistan, ancient Bactria, now in the province of Jūzjān ca 35 km northeast of Āqča.

• DAŠNAK

  ARAM ARKUN

  short name for Hay Yełapʿoxakan Dašnakcʿutʿiwn (Armenian revolutionary federation [A.R.F.]) or its members.

• DAŠT

  Eckart Ehlers

  lit. "plain, open ground"; Persian term for a very specific type of landscape, the extended gravel piedmonts and plains that are almost ubiquitous in arid central Persia.

• DAŠT-E ARŽAN

  Sayyed ʿAlī Āl-e Dāwūd

  (also Arjan, Arzan, lit., “plain of the mountain or bitter almond”), a mountain basin ca. 14 x 5-6 km situated 1,500 m above sea level on the road from Shiraz to Kāzerūn.

• DAŠT-E MOḠĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See MOḠĀN.

• DAŠT-E NĀWOR

  Gérard Fussman

  lit. “plain of the lake”; a depression (average elev. 3,100 m) 60 x 15 km with a brackish lake in the center, located at 33° 41’ N and 67° 46’ E, about 60 km west of Ḡaznī.

• DAŠT-E QALʿA

  Henri-Paul Francfort

  lit., “plain of the fortress”; small bāzār village on an irrigation canal near the junction of the Kōkča and Āmū Darya rivers in the province of Badaḵšān, northeastern Afghanistan, the site of several earlier settlements.

• DASTA

  Peter J. Chelkowski

  the most common term for a ritual procession held in the Islamic lunar month of Moḥarram and the following month of Ṣafar, both periods of mourning for Imami Shiʿites. The procession commemorates the tragic death of Ḥosayn (q.v.), grandson of the prophet Moḥammad and the third imam of the Shiʿites.

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• DAŠTAKĪ, ʿAṬĀ-ALLĀH

  Andrew J. Newman

  (d. 1506, 1511, or 1520), a scholar of Hadith in Khorasan in the late Timurid and early Safavid periods.

• DAŠTAKĪ, GĪĀṮ-AL-DĪN

  Andrew J. Newman

  b. Ṣadr-al-Dīn Moḥammad Šīrāzī Ḥosaynī (1462-1541), scholar, philosopher, and motakallem (theologian) of the late Timurid and early Safavid period, and, for a brief interval under Shah Ṭahmāsb, one of two ṣadrs (chief clerical overseers).

• DASTĀN

  Jean During

  a term used in three different contexts in Persian music- melody, narrative composition, and fingering system.

• DASTĀN (1)

  Cross-Reference

  See ZĀL.

• DĀSTĀN (2)

  Cross-Reference

  story, tale, parable. See FICTION.

• DĀSTĀN-SARĀʾĪ

  William Hanaway

  (storytelling), term used for written and oral genres of fictional narrative.

• DAŠTESTĀN

  Jamšīd Ṣadāqat-Kīš

  or šahrestān, lit. "subprovince" on the Persian Gulf coast in Būšehr province, bounded on the north and east by Fārs province, on the south by the šahrestān of Daštī, and on the west by the šahrestāns of Būšehr, Tangestān, and Ganāva.

• DASTGĀH

  Jean During

  modal system in Persian music, representing a level of organization at which a certain number of melodic types (gūšas) are regrouped and ordered in relation to a dominant mode (māya).

• DASTGERD

  Philippe Gignoux

  lit. “made by hand, handiwork”; a term originally designating a royal or seigneurial estate.

• DAŠTĪ (musical mode)

  Jean During

  one of the twelve modal systems in the repertoire of traditional music (radīf); it is an āvāz, or auxiliary modal system, derived from or attached to the dastgāh Šūr.

• DAŠTĪ (subprovince)

  Jamšīd Ṣadāqat-Kīš

  šahrestān (subprovince) on the Persian Gulf in Būšehr province, corresponding approximately to the area referred to as Māndestān and Sīf Āl Moẓaffar in early sources.

• DAŠTĪ, ʿALĪ

  J. E. KNÖRZER

  (ca. 1894–1982), man of letters, journalist, and politician. Perhaps his innovative and “personal” studies of the principal Persian classical poets will prove the most enduring of his writings; they broke sharply with traditional Persian literary criticism focused on anecdotes, prosody, and explication de textes.

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• DASTJERDĀNĪ, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN

  David O. Morgan

  Il-khanid bureaucrat.

• DASTŪR

  Mansour Shaki

  in the Sasanian period dastwar had a wide range of meanings, primarily denoting “one in authority, having power”; from that time, the semantic range was increasingly widened to convey different meanings at different times.

• DASTŪR AL-AFĀŻEL FĪ LOḠĀT AL-FAŻĀʾEL

  Solomon Baevsky

  lit. "manual of the learned for learned words"; an early Persian-to-Persian dictionary (farhang-nāma), compiled in India in 1342, during the reign of Moḥammad b. Tōḡloq Shah by Ḥājeb Ḵayrāt Rafīʿ, a poet from Delhi, for his patron Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Aḥmad b. ʿAlī Jajnīrī.

• DASTŪR AL-KĀTEB FĪ TAʿYĪN AL-MARĀTEB

  David O. Morgan

  administrative manual written by Moḥammad Naḵjavānī (ca. 1280-after 1366), son of Faḵr-al-Dīn Hendūšāh b. Sanjar Naḵjavānī, author of Tajāreb al-salaf.

• DASTUR AL-MOLUK

  M. Ismail Marcinkowski

  a manual of administration in Persian from the end of the Safavid period.

• DASTŪR-E DABĪRĪ

  Hashem Rajabzadeh

  comprehensive manual of letter writing by Moḥammad Meyhanī, consisting of an introduction (dībāča) and two chapters (qeṣm; comp. December 1189-January 1190).

• ḎĀT-AL-SALĀSEL

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  lit., “provided with chains”; place near Obolla in southern Iraq where in 633 C.E., one of Ṭabarī’s informants, Ḵāled b. Walīd and an Arab force of about 18,000 men defeated a small Sasanian garrison led by a frontier commander named Hormoz.

• DĀTA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Old Iranian term for “law” attested both in Avestan texts (Old and Younger Av. dāta-) and in Achaemenid royal inscriptions.

• DĀTABARA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  title of a high official in the Achaemenid legal and juridical system.

• DATAMES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  Iranian personal name, reflecting Old Iranian *Dātama- or *Dātāma-, either a two-stem shortened form *Dāta-m-a- from a compound name like *Dātamiθra- or an unabridged compound *Dātāma-from *Dāta-ama-“to whom force is given.”

• 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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• DAVĀNĪ, JALĀL-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD

  Andrew J. Newman

  b. Asʿad Kāzerūnī Ṣeddīqī (b. Davān, q.v., near Kāzerūn in Fārs, 1426-27, d. 1502), often referred to as ʿAllāma Davānī, leading theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet of late 15th-century Persia.

• DĀVAR

  Cross-Reference

  See DĀTABARA.

• DĀVAR, ʿALĪ-AKBAR

  Bāqer ʿĀqelī

  (b. Tehran, 1885, d. Tehran, 10 February 1937), journalist, politician, statesman, and founder of the modern Persian judicial system, as well as of several state enterprises in the time of Reżā Shah.

• DĀVARĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ, Mīrzā Moḥammad

  ʿAbd-al-Wahhāb Nūrānī Weṣāl

  (b. Shiraz 1822-23, d. Shiraz, 1866), poet, calligrapher, and painter of some renown in Qajar Persia and a contemporary of Moḥammad Shah and Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah.

• DAVĀZDAH EMĀMĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See SHIʿITE DOCTRINE; IRAN ix. Relgions in Iran (2) Islam in Iran.

• DAVĀZDAH ROḴ

  Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh

  lit. "twelve combats"; designation of a relatively long episode in the Šāh-nāma (2,500 verses), in which a battle takes place on the borders of Tūrān between Iranians under the command of Gūdarz and Turanians under the command of Pīrān.

• DAVID OF ASHBY

  Peter Jackson

  (fl. 1260-75), Dominican friar and visitor to Il-khanid Persia.

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• DAVID, JACOB

  Eden Naby

  (1873-1967) Assyrian pastor and relief worker.

• DAWĀ

  Cross-Reference

  See DRUGS.

• DAWĀMĪ, ʿABD-ALLĀH

  DĀRYŪŠ ṢAFVAT

  (b. Ṭā near Tafreš, 1891; d. Tehran, 10 January 1981), a master of classical Persian vocal music with a perfect command of the radīf (repertoire), as well as a gifted player of the Persian drum (tonbak) and a virtuoso of rhythmic (żarbī) pieces and songs (taṣnīf).

• DAWĀNUS

  Dariush Kargar

  the name of a man seen in the other world by Ardā Wirāz, as described in both the Middle Persian and the Zoroastrian Persian versions of the Ardā Wirāz-nāmag.

• DAWĀT

  LINDA KOMAROFF

  lit. "inkwell"; a utilitarian receptacle that also served as a symbol or metaphor for the instrument of state, with a long history in Islamic Persia. Inkwells were characterized in Persian poetry and historical works from the 10th century on as symbols of royal and by extension ministerial office.

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• DAʿWAT AL-ESLĀM

  Nassereddin Parvin

  A biweekly Persian journal published in Bombay by Ḥājj Sayyed Moḥammad Dāʿī-al-Eslām from 19 October 1906 until the end of 1909.

• DAʿWAT-E ESLĀMĪ

  Nassereddin Parvin

  lit. "the Islamic call"; a monthly religious journal published in Kermānšāh from November-December 1927 to June 1936.

• DAWĀTDĀR

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  lit. “keeper, bearer of [the royal] inkwell or inkstand”; title of various officials in medieval Islamic states.

• DAWLATĀBĀD

  Daniel Balland

  name of several localities in Afghanistan that have grown up around civil or military government buildings.

• DAWLATĀBĀDĪ, SAYYED ʿALĪ-MOḤAM-MAD

  Cyrus Amir-Mokri

  (b. Dawlatābād, 1868, d. Tehran, Šawwāl May-June 1923), prominent politician and deputy of the Persian parliament.

• DAWLATĀBĀDĪ, SAYYED YAḤYĀ

  Abbas Amanat

  (b. Dawlatābād. near Isfahan, 8 January 1863, d. Tehran, 26 October 1939), celebrated educator, political activist, and memoirist of the constitutional and postconstitutional periods.

• DAWLATĀBĀDĪ, ṢEDDĪQA

  Mehranguiz Manoutchehrian

  (b. Isfahan, 1883, d. Tehran, 28 July 1961), journalist, educator, and pioneer in the movement to emancipate women in Persia.

• DAWLATḴĒL

  Daniel Balland

  tribal name common among the eastern Pashtun at various levels of tribal segmentation.

• DAWLATŠĀH, AMIR

  ḎABĪH-ALLĀH ṢAFĀ

  b. Amīr ʿAlāʾ-al-Dawla Boḵtīšāh Ḡāzī SAMARQANDĪ (b. ca. 1438, d. 1494 or 1507), author of Taḏkerat al-šoʿarāʾ (Memorial of poets), a book containing biographies of about 150 poets with specimens of their poetry, as well as historical information.

• DAWLATŠĀH, MOḤAMMAD-ʿALĪ MĪR-ZĀ

  Abbas Amanat

  (1789-1821), eldest son of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah and powerful prince-governor of western provinces of Persia.

• DAWLATZĪ

  Daniel Balland

  (singular Dawlatzay), ethnic name common among the eastern Pashtun on both sides of the Durand Line.

• DAWR (1)

  Farhad Daftary

  (Ar. and Pers.), period, era, or cycle of history, a term used by Ismaʿilis in connection with their conceptions of time and the religious history of mankind.

• DAWR (2)

  Jean During

  (Ar. and Pers. lit. “circle”), a term applied to scales and also to rhythmic cycles, both commonly diagramed as circles (dāʾera, dawr) in the classical musicology of Persian, Arab, and Turkish groups.

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• DAWRAQ

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  or Dawraq al-Fors; name of a district (kūra), also known as Sorraq, and of a town that was sometimes its chef-lieu in medieval Islamic times.

• DAWTĀNĪ

  Daniel Balland

  or Daftānī, sg. Dawtānay/Daftānay; Pashtun tribe of the Lōdī confederation, still mainly nomadic.

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• DĀWŪD

  Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabāʾī

  or DĀʾŪD; the biblical David, mentioned in a number of passages in the Koran as the hero who fought with and killed Jālūt, the prophet who received the Book of Psalms (Zabūr) from God, and the king who was given the power to rule, enforce justice, and distinguish between truth and falsehood.

• DĀWŪD B. MOʾMEN

  Cross-Reference

  See JEWISH PERSIAN LITERATURE.

• DĀWŪD KHAN, MOḤAMMAD

  Barnett Rubin

  (b. Kabul, 1909; d. Kabul, 27 April 1978), prime minister (1953-63) and first president of Afghanistan (1973-78). During his tenure as minister (known as “Dāwūd’s decade”),  he transformed the Afghan state.Throughout his career he combined a strong desire to modernize the country with a close identification with the military.

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• DAY

  W. W. Malandra

  (Av. daδuuah-, Pahl. day “creator”), an epithet of Ahura Mazdā that became the name of the tenth month, as well as of the eighth, fifteenth, and twenty-third days in each month of the Zoroastrian calendar.

• DĀYA

  Mahmoud Omidsalar and Theresa Omidsalar

  wet nurse.

• DĀYA, NAJM-AL-DĪN ABŪ BAKR ʿABD-ALLĀH

  Moḥammad-Amīn Rīāḥī

  b. Moḥammad b. Šāhāvar b. Anūšervān Rāzī (1177–1256), mystic and author.

• DAYEAKUTʿIWN

  Robert G. Bedrosian

  a form of child rearing practiced in Armenia and other parts of the Caucasus.

• DĀYERAT AL-MAʿĀREF-E FĀRSĪ

  Dāryūš Āšūrī

  the first general encyclopedia in Persian compiled along modern lines.

• DAYLAMITES

  Cross-Reference

  people inhabiting a shifting region in northern Persia and adjacent territories, including the Deylamān uplands. See DEYLAMITES; BUYIDS.

• DAYR

  QAMAR ĀRYĀN

  monastery; in early Islamic Arabic and Persian literature usually a building in which Christian monks (rāheb) lived and worshiped.

• DAYR AL-ʿĀQŪL

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  lit., “the monastery at the bend in the river”; a medieval town in Iraq situated on the Tigris 15 farsangs (= 80 km) southeast of Baghdad.

• DAYR-E GAČĪN

  Mehrdad Shokoohy

  lit., “gypsum hospice”;  Sasanian caravansary situated in the desert halfway between Ray and Qom, on the ancient route from Ray to Isfahan. It is recorded in most early Muslim geographies. Over time, it underwent major reconstruction at least twice.

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• DAYSAM

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  b. Ebrāhīm KORDĪ, ABŪ SĀLEM, Kurdish commander who ruled sporadically in Azerbaijan between 938 and 955 after the period of Sajid domination there.

• DA’TID BAHRANA

  Eden Naby

  (with the Persian title Āyanda-ye rowšan “Bright future”), Assyrian bilingual periodical published in Tehran in 1951.

• DE BRUIN, CORNELIS

  Willem Floor

  or de Bruyn, also known as Corneille Le Brun or Le Bruyn (b. The Hague 1652, d. Utrecht 1726 or 1727), Dutch painter and author of two accounts of his travels in Persia and other eastern lands.

• DE GOEJE, MICHAİL JAN

  A. J. M. Vrolijk

  (b. Dronrijp, Friesland, 18 August 1836, d. Leiden, 17 May 1909), Dutch orientalist and chief editor of Ṭabari’s world history, Taʾriḵ al-rosol wa’l-moluk.

• DE MORGAN, Jacques

  Pierre Amiet

  (b. Huisseau-sur-Cosson, near Blois, 3 June 1857, d. Marseilles, 14 June 1924), French archeologist and prehistorian.

• DEAD SEA SCROLLS

  Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin

  parchment and papyrus scrolls written in Hebrew, mainly of the 1st centuries B.C.E. and C.E., found in caves around Qomrān on the northwest coast of the Dead Sea and considered to represent a sect of Judaism.

• DEATH (1)

  Mary Boyce

  AMONG ZOROASTRIANS

• DEATH (2)

  Cross-Reference

  IN RELIGIONS OTHER THAN ZOROASTRIANISM. See CORPSE and BURIAL.

• DECCAN

  Carl W. Ernst, Priscilla P. Soucek

  or Dakhan, Pers. Dakan; the south-central plateau of India, bounded on the north by the Narbada river, on the west by the Sea of Oman, on the east by the Bay of Bengal, and on the south by the Tungabhadra river.

• DECORATION

  Priscilla P. Soucek

  , the use of consciously designed patterns to embellish building surfaces and objects for aesthetic effect. Despite progress in identifying or classifying the features of Persian decorative patterns, few scholars have attempted to explain why particular designs were used in specific periods, regions, or circumstances, even though it can be observed that in a given area or epoch the form and character of ornament are often consistent within a particular craft or different media.

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• DECORATIONS

  Yaḥyā Šahīdī

  , honors granted by the Persian government. In Persia there were no orders in the Western sense, but only decorations and medals. The practice of awarding such honors was initiated by Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah (r. 1797-1834), who introduced the Lion and sun (nešān-e šīr o ḵoršīd) in 1808, apparently inspired by the Red Crescent adopted by the Ottoman sultan Salīm III (r. 1789-1807).

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• DEDE BEG ḎU’L-QADAR

  Cross-Reference

  See ABDĀL BEG.

• DEDE ʿOMAR RŪŠANĪ

  Tahsın Yazici

  (b. Güzel Ḥeṣār, Aydın province, in western Anatolia, at an indeterminate date; d. Tabrīz, 1487), Turkish Sufi who wrote poetry in both Persian and Turkish.

• DEDE YŪSOF SĪNAČĀK

  Tahsın Yazici

  (b. Yenice on the Vardar in Ottoman Māqadūnīā [modern Macedonia] at an indeterminate date, d. Istanbul, 1546), Mawlawī Sufi shaikh, poet, and author.

• DĒDMARĪ, ḴᵛĀJA MOḤAMMAD-AʿẒAM

  Shamsuddin Ahmad

  (1691-1765), historian, poet, and Sufi of Kashmir.

• DEER

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀHŪ, RED DEER.

• DEFRÉMERY,Charles-François

  Francis Richard

  (b. Cambray, France, 18 December 1822, d. St.-Valéry-en Caux, France, 18 August 1883), French orientalist and scholar.

• DEH

  Daniel Balland and Marcel Bazin

  village, in Persia and Afghanistan.

• DEH MORĀSĪ ḠONDAY

  Jim G. Shaffer

  a Bronze Age archeological site located at 34° 90’ N, 65° 30’ E, adjacent to the village of Deh Morāsī, approximately 27 km southwest of Qandahār and 6.5 km east-southeast of Pahjwāʾī in southeastern Afghanistan.

• DEH-BOKRĪ

  Pierre Oberling

  Kurdish tribe of Kurdistan.

• DEH-E NOW

  Hubertus von Gall

  site of a group of four rock-cut tombs of the 4th-3rd centuries BCE, located about 25 km south of Bīsotūn in Kermānšāhān. It is possible that at least the two smaller tombs were astōdāns.

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• DEHBĪD

  Sayyed ʿAlī Āl-e Dāwūd

  town in the šahrestān of Ābāda, Fārs (30° 37’ N, 53° 12’ E), situated on the Shiraz-Isfahan road in a plain 191 km northeast of Shiraz.

• DEHESTĀN

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  (in modern Persian administrative usage a rural district consisting of a number of villages), the name of a region in medieval Gorgān and a town in Bādḡīs and another in Kermān.

• DEHESTĀNĪ , AʿAZZ-AL-MOLKNEẒĀM-AL-DĪN ABU’L-MAḤĀSEN ʿABD-AL-JALĪL

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  b. ʿAlī, twice vizier to the Saljuq sultan Barkīāroq (1094-1105).

• DEHESTĀNĪ, ḤOSAYN

  Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī

  b. Asʿad b. Ḥosayn Moʾayyadī, Persian translator of the Arabic work al-Faraj baʿd al-šedda by Abū ʿAlī Moḥassen (939-94), a collection of poems, anecdotes, sayings, and didactic remarks arranged in thirteen chapters on the general theme of joy following hardship.

• DEHḴODĀ, MĪRZĀ ʿALĪ-AKBAR QAZVĪNĪ

  ʿA.-A. SAʿĪDĪ SĪRJĀNĪ

  (ca. 1879–1956), scholar, poet, and social critic. In all his writing Dehḵodā was a perfectionist and a meticulous craftsman. He was a nationalist, outspoken in his convictions, indifferent to the wrath of powerful men, and a firm believer in Persian culture.

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• DEHḴᵛĀRAQĀN

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀẔARŠAHR.

• DEHLAVĪ, ŠĀH WALĪ-ALLĀH QOṬB-AL-DĪN AḤMAD ABU’L-FAYYĀŻ

  Marcia K. Hermansen

  (1703-62), leading Muslim intellectual of India and writer on a wide range of Islamic topics in Arabic and Persian; more than thirty-five of his works are extant.

• DEHLĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See DELHI SULTANATE.

• DEHLORĀN

  Frank Hole

  (Deh Lorān), the name of a šahrestān (subprovince) in Īlām province in southwestern Persia, and of the main town.

• DEHQĀN

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  arabicized form of Syriac dhgnʾ, borrowed from Pahlavi dehgān (older form dahīgān).

• DEIOCES

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (Gk. Dēïókēs), name of a Median king.

• DEIPNOSOPHISTAÍ

  Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin

  lit. "Banquet of the Sophists"; a miscellany in the form of dialogues ostensibly conducted at table, including approximately one hundred passages pertaining to Persia.

• DEITY

  Cross-Reference

  See under ACHAEMENID RELIGION; AHRIMAN; AHURA MAZDĀ; MANICHEISM ii. The Manichean Pantheon; ZOROASTRIANISM; SHIʿITE DOCTRINE.

• DEJLA

  Cross-Reference

  See ARVAND-RŪD; TIGRIS.

• ḎEKR

  Gerhard Böwering, Moojan Momen

  lit., “remembrance”; the act of reminding oneself of God.

• ḎEKRĪS

  Cross-Reference

  See BALUCHISTAN i.

• DELĀRESTĀQ

  Bernard Hourcade

  also Delārostāq, Dīlārostāq; dehestān (administrative district) in the šahrestān of Āmol (Lārījān baḵš), on the northeastern slope of Mount Damāvand in Māzandarān.

• DELBARJĪN

  Paul Bernard

  urban site 40 km northwest of Balḵ, on the northern limit of an oasis irrigated by the Balḵāb, near a defensive wall built during the Greek period (ca 329-130 BCE) to protect the oasis. The earliest stage of the citadel may date from the Achaemenid period.

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• DELDĀR,YŪNES MELA RAʾŪF

  Joyce Blau

  (b. in the sanjaq of Ḵoy in the Ottoman empire, 20 February 1918; d. Erbīl, Iraq, 12 October 1948), Kurdish poet and humanist.

• DELDĀR-ʿALĪ

  Juan R. I. Cole

  b. Moḥammad-Moʿīn NAṢĪRĀBĀDĪ, Sayyed Ḡofrān-maʾāb (b. Naṣīrābād near Lucknow, 1753, d. Lucknow ca. 1820), Shiʿite cleric of northern India who helped to establish the Shiʿite form of Friday prayers and propagated the rationalist Oṣūlī school of jurisprudence in the Avadh region.

• DÉLÉGATIONS ARCHÉOLOGIQUES FRANÇAISES

  Francine Tissot

  bodies established by the French government to conduct archeological investigations in Persia and Afghanistan respectively.

• DELHI SULTANATE

  Gavin R. G. Hambly, Catherine B. Asher

  Muslim kingdom established in northern India by Central Asian Turkish warlords at the turn of the 13th century and continuing in an increasingly persianized milieu until its conquest by Bābor in 1526. The political style of the rulers of Delhi reflected traditional concepts of Persian kingship, for Iltutmiš (r. 1211-36) and his successors lacked any other obvious tradition to draw upon.

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• DELĪKĀNLŪ

  Pierre Oberling

  tribe of the Ḵalḵāl region in eastern Persian Azerbaijan.

• DELKAŠ

  Erik Nakjavani

  stage name of ʿEṣmat Bāqerpur Panbaforuš (b. Bābol, Māzandarān, 1924; d. Tehran, 2004) popular Persian singer and actress of the mid-20th century.

• DELKAŠ (1)

  Cathérine Poujol

  (b. Bukhara at an indeterminate date, d. Bukhara, 1902), Tajik poet and musician known and revered for melodies performed on the tanbūr.

• DELKAŠ (2)

  Jean During

  an important modal unit (šāh gūša) linked to the dastgāh Māhūr, constituting one of its four main modulations, perhaps the most important in expressive function, which contrasts strongly with that of Māhūr itself.

• DELLA VALLE, PIETRO

  John Gurney

  (b. Rome, 11 April 1586, d. Rome, 21 April 1652), one of the most remarkable travelers of the Renaissance, whose Viaggi is the best contemporary account of the lands between Istanbul and Goa in the early 17th century.

• DELOUGAZ

  Ezat O. Negahban

  (b. Ukraine, 16 July 1901, d. Čoḡā Mīš, Persia, 29 March 1975), archeologist and excavator of the ancient site of Čoḡā Mīš in Persia.

• DELŠĀD ḴĀTŪN

  Charles Melville

  eldest daughter of the Chobanid Demašq Ḵᵛāja and Tūrsīn Ḵātūn, granddaughter of the Il-khanid sultan Aḥmad Takūdār.

• DEMARATUS

  RÜDIGER SCHMITT

  king of Sparta (from at least as early as 510 B.C.E.) who took refuge with Darius I.

• DEMAŠQ ḴᵛĀJA

  Charles Melville

  third son of the amir Čobān, possibly born in 1300, when his father was on campaign in Damascus.

• DEMETRIUS

  A. D. H. Bivar

  name of two Greco-Bactrian kings.

• DEMOCEDES

  RÜDIGER SCHMITT

  (Gk. Dēmokḗdēs), Greek physician attached to the court of Darius I and praised as “the most skillful physician of his time” by Herodotus.

• DEMOCRACY

  Cross-Reference

  See ANJOMAN; CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION i-v; ELECTIONS.

• DEMOCRAT PARTY

  Cross-Reference

  See CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION v.

• DEMOGRAPHY

  Bernard Hourcade, Daniel Balland

  , the statistical study of characteristics of human populations. Since World War II Persia, formerly a rural and tribal country dominated by elderly notables and with low population growth, has come to have a majority of young urban dwellers, mostly literate and multiplying rapidly. In 1979, the proportions of urban dwellers and individuals classified as literate both passed the threshold of 50 percent.

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• DEMOTIC CHRONICLE

  Edda Bresciani

  Egyptian papyrus document of the early 2nd century B.C.E. in which anti-Persian themes, especially focused on Cambyses, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes III, were elaborated in Ptolemaic Egyptian sacerdotal and intellectual surroundings.

• DEMOTTE ŠĀH-NĀMA

  Priscilla P. Soucek

  illustrated manuscript, now dispersed, of Ferdowsī’s epic poem, often identified by the name of a former owner, the Paris dealer Georges Demotte (active ca. 1900-23). It is generally believed to have been produced for a patron associated with the Il-khanid court and is renowned for the  quality of its paintings.

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• DĒN

  Mansour Shaki

  theological and metaphysical term with a variety of meanings:  “the sum of man’s spiritual attributes and individuality, vision, inner self, conscience, religion.”

• DĒN YAŠT

  Jean Kellens

  a relatively short text, consisting for the most part of repetitive or formulaic sentences.

• DĒN-DIBĪRĪH

  Cross-Reference

  See DABĪRE, DABĪRĪ.

• DĒNAG

  Philippe Gignoux

  name of several Sasanian queens; it was not feminine by derivation but was clearly reserved for feminine prosopography.

• DENIKE

  Anatol Ivanov

  (b. Kazan, 15 January 1885, d. Moscow, 13 October 1941), the first Russian historian of the medieval art of the Near and Far East.

• DENḴA TEPE

  Oscar White Muscarella

  a Bronze and Iron Age site situated in the Ošnū valley of Azerbaijan, southwest of Lake Urmia, and 15 miles west of the major Iron Age site of Hasanlu (Ḥasanlū) in the Soldūz valley.

• DĒNKARD

  Philippe Gignoux

  lit., “Acts of the religion”; written in Pahlavi, a summary of 10th-century knowledge of the Mazdean religion; the editor, Ādurbād Ēmēdān, entitled the final version “The Dēnkard of one thousand chapters.”

• DENMARK

  Fereydun Vahman, Jes P. Asmussen

  : relations with Persia. Danish-Persian relations have been concentrated in three main areas: politics and diplomacy; trade and other economic relations; and Iranian studies in Denmark, including collections of Persian art in Danish museums.

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• DENŠAPUH

  James Russell

  short form of Vehdenšapuh; Sasanian hambārakapet (quartermaster) involved in the campaign of Yazdagerd II (438-57) to force Christian Armenians to abjure their faith and return to Zoroastrianism; a gem bearing his name is preserved in the British Museum in London.

• DENTISTRY

  Ṣādeq Sajjādī

  (dandān-pezeškī) in Persia.

• DEOBAND

  Barbara Daly Metcalf

  country town northeast of Delhi in what is now the Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, India, where an influential Dār al-ʿolūm was founded by a group of religious scholars in 1867 as an expression of a major religious reform movement partly inspired by British educational models.

• DEPORTATIONS

  A. Shapur Shahbazi, Erich Kettenhofen, John R. Perry

  forced transfers of population from one region to another.

• DERAFŠ

  A. Shapur Shahbazi

  lit. “banner, standard, flag, emblem,” in ancient Iran. In the Avesta Bactria “with tall banners,”  a fluttering “bull banner,” and enemy banners are mentioned. In the Achaemenid period each Persian army division had its own standard (Herodotus, 9.59), and “all officers had banners over their tents"  (Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.5.13). 

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• DERAFŠ-E KĀVĪĀN

  Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh

  the legendary royal standard of the Sasanian kings.

• DERAḴT

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  tree, shrub.

• DERAḴT-E ANJIR-E MAʿĀBED

  LOQMĀN TADAYON-NEŽĀD

  the last and highly acclaimed work of fiction by Ahmad Mahmud.

• DERĀZ-DAST

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  having long hands.

• DERBEND

  Cross-Reference

  See DARBAND.

• DERHAM

  Cross-Reference

  See DIRHAM.

• DERHAM B. NAŻ

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  or Naṣr or Ḥosayn; commander of ʿayyārs or moṭawweʿa, orthodox Sunni vigilantes against the Kharijites in Sīstān during the period immediately preceding the rise of the Saffarid brothers to supreme power there.

• DEŚANĀ

  Hiroshi Kumamoto

  Khotanese term with two meanings: “showing," that is, “preaching” the law, and “profession” of faith or “confession” of sins.

• DESERT

  Brian Spooner

  bīābān. As throughout most of the arid zone agriculture and settlement depend upon sustained investment, Persians generally expect to find bīābān where ābādī (settled, irrigated agriculture) ends. The term bīābān covers a broad range of different types of desert, from completely barren expanses to plains with significant percentages of vegetation cover.

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• DESMAISONS, JEAN-JACQUES-PIERRE

  CATHÉRINE POUJOL

  or Petr Ivanovich Demezon (b. Chambéry, in the kingdom of Sardinia, 1807, d. Paris, 1873) diplomat and compiler of an important Persian-French dictionary.

• DEUTSCHES ARCHÄOLOGISCHES INSTITUT

  Wolfram Kleiss

  or D.A.I., research institution administered by the German foreign ministry, with a number of branches, including the Abteilung Teheran in Persia.

• DĒV

  Cross-Reference

  See DAIVA, DĒW, DĪV.

• DEVECSERI, Gábor

  ANDRÁS BODROGLIGETI

  (1917-1971), Hungarian poet, scholar, and translator. 

• DEVIL

  Cross-Reference

  See AHRIMAN; DĪV; EBLĪS.

• DĒW

  A. V. Williams

  lit. "demon" in the Pahlavi books.

• DĒWĀŠTĪČ

  Boris Marshak

  ruler of Sogdia (706?-22), referred to as “prince of Panč” (Panjīkant) and as “king of Sogdia, ruler of Samarkand” in the portion of his archives discovered at the castle on Mount Mug (Mōḡ), east of Samarkand, on the upper course of the Zarafšān river.

• DEYHĪM

  Cross-Reference

  See CROWN.

• DEYLAM, BANDAR-E

  Sayyed ʿAlī Āl-e Dāwūd

  a port on the Persian Gulf (30° 3’ N, 50° 9’ E) in the province of Būšehr at an elevation a little above 1 m.

• DEYLAM, JOHN OF

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  or Yoḥannān Daylomāyā (d. 738), Eastern Syrian saint and founder of monasteries in Fārs.

• DEYLAMĀN (Melody)

  Jean During

  melody (gūša) incorporated into the radīf of Āvāz-e Daštī by Abu’l-Ḥasan Ṣabā (1957), who borrowed it from the regional repertoire of northern Persia.

• DEYLAMĀN (District)

  Ezat O. Negahban

  or Daylamān, district and town in Gīlān.

• DEYLAMĪ, ʿABD-AL-RAŠĪD

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿABD-AL-RAŠĪD DAYLAMĪ.

• DEYLAMĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ḤASAN

  Etan Kohlberg

  b. Abi’l-Ḥasan (b.) Moḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd-Allāh (or Moḥammad), Shiʿite author and traditionist.

• DEYLAMĪ, ABUʾL-ḤASAN ʿALĪ

  Gerhard BÖWERING

  b. Moḥammad (fl. 10th century), an obscure yet important author on the early Persian Sufism prevalent in Fārs.

• DEYLAMĪ, ABU’L-FATḤ NĀṢER

  Wilferd Madelung

  b. Ḥosayn b. Moḥammad b. ʿĪsā b. Moḥammad b. ʿAbd-Allāh b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd-Allāh b. ʿAlī b. Ḥasan b. Zayd b. Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb, Zaydī imam with the title Nāṣer le-Dīn Allāh (d. 1052-53).

• DEYLAMĪ, ŠAMS-AL-DĪN ABŪ ṮĀBET MOḤAMMAD

  Gerhard Böwering

  b. ʿAbd-al-Malek ṬŪSĪ (d. ca. 1197), original though obscure Sufi author of the 12th century.

• DEYLAMITES

  Wolfgang Felix, Wilferd Madelung

  people inhabiting a shifting region in northern Persia and adjacent territories, including the Deylamān uplands.

• DEYM

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀBYĀRĪ; AGRICULTURE In Iran; BĀRĀN; FARMING.

• DEZ

  Cross-Reference

  or DEŽ, (fortress, castle; Mid. Pers. diz; OPers. didā- “wall, fortress”; Av. daēz-; Yidgha lizo“fort”). See BĀRŪ; CASTLES.

• DEŽ

  Nasseraddin Parvin

  a weekly of news and politics associated with the Tudeh Party that began publication on 27 May 1943 in Tehran and continued with some interruptions until June 1953.

• DEŽ Ī NEBEŠT

  Mansour Shaki

  (Mid. Pers. diz ī nibišt “fortress of archives,” lit. “writing”), supposedly one of two repositories in which copies of the Avesta and its exegesis (zand) were deposited for safekeeping.

• DEZ River

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀB-E DEZ.

• DEŽ-E BAHMAN

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  lit. "fortress of Bahman"; according to legend a fortress in Azerbaijan conquered by the Kayānian king Kay Ḵosrow, son of Sīāvaš and grandson of Kāvūs, king of Iran.

• DEŽ-E GONBADĀN

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  lit. "fortress of Gonbadān"; a fortress where the Iranian hero Esfandīār, son of the Kayānian king Goštāsb, was imprisoned.

• DEŽ-E RŪYĪN

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  or Rūyīn-dež, lit. "brazen fortress"; castle belonging to the Turanian king Arjāsb and conquered by Esfandīār, son of the Kayanid king Goštāsb.

• DEŽ-E SAFĪD

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  lit. "white fortress"; Iranian fortress located near the border with Tūrān and conquered by Sohrāb, son of the Iranian hero Rostam by the Turanian princess Tahmīna.

• DEZFŪL

  Massoud Kheirabadi, Colin MacKinnon

  or Dez-pol, lit. "fortress bridge"; šahrestān (subprovincial administrative unit) and city in northern Ḵūzestān province.

• DEZKŪH

  Farhad Daftary

  or Šāhdez; a medieval mountain fortress situated in central Persia on the summit of Mount Ṣoffa, about 8 km south of Isfahan.

• DHABHAR, BAHMANJI NUSSERWANJI

  Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

  (b. 1869, Navsari, d. 1952, Bombay), eminent Parsi scholar of Bhagaria stock.

• DHALLA, DASTUR MANECKJI NUSSERWANJI

  Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa

  (b. 22 September 1875, Surat; d. 25 May 1956, Karachi), Parsi priest and scholar.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DHĀR, QĀŻĪ KHAN BADR

  Cross-Reference

  See DHĀRVĀL.

• DHĀRAṆĪ

  Hiroshi Kumamoto, Yutaka Yoshida

  magic spells in the Buddhist Mahāyānist and Tantric (esoteric) traditions.

• DHARMAŚARĪRA-SŪTRA

  Hiroshi Kumamoto

  a short Buddhist text belonging to the Mahāyānist tradition.

• DHĀRVĀL, QĀŻĪ KHAN BADR MOḤAMMAD DEHLAVĪ

  M. Saleem Akhtar

  or DHĀR, 15th-century Persian lexicographer in India, so named because he settled in Dhār (hence his nesba Dhārvāl), capital of the Ghurid principality of Malwa.

• DHŪTA-SŪTRA

  Yutaka Yoshida

  name of a Buddhist Sogdian text discovered at Tun-huang.

• DHYĀNA TEXT

  Yutaka Yoshida

  designation of a Buddhist Sogdian text of 405 lines discovered at Tun-huang.

• DĪA

  Khalid Abu El Fadl

  the prescribed blood money or wergild paid in compensation for a wrongful death or certain other physical injuries.

• DIAKONOFF, Igor’ Mikhaĭlovich

  Muhammad Dandamayev

  or D’YAKONOV (b. Petrograd, 30 December 1914/12 January 1915; d. St. Petersburg, 2 May 1999), Russian orientalist of international standing, one of the greatest scholars in the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DĪĀLA

  Cross-Reference

  river. See ARVAND-RŪD.

• DIALECTOLOGY

  GERNOT L. WINDFUHR

  the terms dialect and language overlap; in general, language refers to the more or less unified system of the phonology, grammar, and lexicon that is shared by the speakers of a country, or geographic region, or a socially defined group, whereas dialect (Pers. lahja, gūyeš) focuses on varieties of a language.

• DĪĀRBAKR

  Cross-Reference

  See AMIDA.

• DIASPORA

  Mary Boyce, Fariba Zarrinbaf-Shahr, H. Hakimian, Yitzhak Nakash, Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Mehdi Bozorgmehr, Grant Farr, Čangīz Pahlavān

  Iranian. i. In Pre-Islamic times. ii. Persians in India. iii. Persians in Southeast Asia. iv. Persians in Ottomon Turkey. v. Persians in the Caucasus and Central Asia in the late 19th and early 20th century. vi. Persians in Iraq. vii. Persians in Southern ports of the Persian Gulf. viii. In the Post-revolutionary period. ix. Afghan refugees in Pakistan. x. Afghan refugees in Persia.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DIATESSERON

  Cross-reference

  Persian translation of the four Gospels, based on a Syriac original. See BIBLE vii. Persian Translations.

• DĪBĀ

  Cross-Reference

  See ABRĪŠAM.

• DĪBĀ, MAḤMŪD KHAN

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿALĀʾ-al-MOLK.

• DIBĪR

  Cross-Reference

  See DABĪR.

• DICHŌR

  Erich Kettenhofen

  city conquered by Šāpūr I (240-70) during his second campaign against Rome in 253, as recorded in his inscription at Kaʿba-ye Zardošt.

• DICKSON, MARTIN BERNARD

  Kathryn Babayan

  (b. Brooklyn, 22 March 1924, d. Princeton, 14 May 1991), Iranist and Central Asianist who specialized in Safavid history.

• DICTIONARIES

  ʿAlī Ašraf Ṣādeqī, John R. Perry, Ḥosayn Sāmeʿī

  i. Persian dictionaries. ii. Arabic-Persian dictionaries. iii. Bi/Multiligual dictionaries. iv. Specialized dictionaries. v. Slang dictionaries.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DIDYMA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  (Gk. tà Dídyma, probably of Carian origin), district ca. 20 km south of the Ionian Miletus and site of a pre-Greek sanctuary of Apollo, to which a famous oracle was attached.

• DIEU (Dutch orientalist)

  J.T.P. de Bruijn

  (b. Vlissingen, Flushing, April 7, 1590; d. Leiden, Dec. 23, 1642), Dutch orientalist.

• DIEULAFOY, JANE HENRIETTE MAGRE

  Jean Calmard

  (b. Toulouse, 29 June 1851, d. Château de Langlade, Haute-Garonne, 25 May 1916), French archeologist, explorer, folklorist, novelist, playwright, and journalist.

• DIEULAFOY, MARCEL-AUGUSTE

  Pierre Amiet

  (b. Toulouse, 3 August 1844, d. Paris, 25 February 1920), French archeologist.

• DIEZ, ERNST

  Jens Kröger

  (b. 27 January 1878, d. 8 July 1961), Austrian historian of Iranian and Islamic art.

• DIGOR

  F. Thordarson

  Ossetic tribal name.

• DILL

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  Anethum graveolens L. (fam. Umbellifera), an herb widely cultivated in Persia.

• DIMDIM

  Amir Hassanpour

  name of a mountain and a fortress where an important battle between the Kurds and the Safavid army took place in the early 17th century.

• DIMLĪ

  Garnik S. Asatrian

  or Zāzā; the indigenous name of an Iranian people living mainly in eastern Anatolia, in the Dersim region (present-day Tunceli) between Erzincan in the north and the Muratsu in the south, the far western part of historical Upper Armenia.

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• DĪN MOḤAMMAD KHAN

  EIr

  b. Olūs Khan, the Uzbek prince who, with his brother ʿAlī Solṭān, joined Shah Ṭahmāsb’s camp in 943/1536-37 during the latter’s campaign in Khorasan against ʿObayd-Allāh Khan, the Uzbek ruler of Bukhara.

• DĪN WA’L-ḤAYĀT, AL-

  Nassereddin Parvin

  a bi-weekly religious magazine published in Tabrīz, 1928-31, replacing another Tabrīz religious magazine, Taḏakkorāt-e dīnī.

• DINAR

  Philippe Gignoux, Michael Bates

  a gold coin, in pre-Islamic times struck mainly for purposes of prestige. In Arabic of the classical Islamic period, the word dīnār had the double sense of a gold coin and of a monetary unit which might not be precisely embodied by actual coins.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DĪNĀR, MALEK

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  b. Moḥammad (d. 1195), a leader of the Oghuz Turkmen in Khorasan and, in the latter years of the 12th century, ruler of Kermān.

• DĪNĀRĀNĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See BAḴTĪĀRĪ.

• DĪNAVAR

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  (occasionally vocalized Daynavar), in the first centuries of Islam an important town in Jebāl, now ruined.

• DĪNAVARĪ, ABŪ ḤANĪFA AḤMAD

  Charles Pellat

  b. Dāwūd b. Vanand (d. between 894 and 903), grammarian, lexicographer, astronomer, mathematician, and Islamic traditionist of Persian origin, who lived at Dīnavar and in several cities in Iraq in the 9th century.

• DĪNAVARĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ʿABD-ALLĀH

  Josef van Ess

  b. Ḥamdān b. Wahb b. Bešr (d. 902), traditionist and ḥāfeẓ (preserver of the Koranic text).

• 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.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• 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.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• 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.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DIZK

  Cross-Reference

  See JIZAK.

• DJANBAZIAN, Sarkis

  Maria Sabaye Moghaddam

  (1913-1963), the first male ballet master and a founder of a ballet academy in Iran.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• 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.

• DO-PAYKAR

  Cross-Reference

  See NOJŪM.

• 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.

• 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.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DOḴTAR-E NŌŠERVĀN

  MARKUS MODE

  lit., “daughter of Nōšervān”; rock-cut architectural complex with important wall paintings in the Ḵolm valley in northern Afghanistan, discovered in 1924. 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.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• 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.

• DOLDOL

  Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmḡānī

  or Doldūl, in Ar. lit., “large porcupine”; name of a female mule that Moqawqes, governor of Egypt, sent to the Prophet Moḥammad as a gift.

• DOLGORUKOV MEMOIRS

  Moojan Momen

  document published under the title Eʿterāfāt-e sīāsī yā yāddāšthā-ye Kenyāz Dolqorūkī (Political confessions or memoirs of Prince Dolgorukov) in the historical portion of the “Khorasan yearbook,” issued in Mašhad in 1943.

• DOLICHĒ

  Erich Kettenhofen

  city in the Roman province of Syria conquered together with the surrounding area by Šāpūr I  during his second campaign against Rome in 252 or 253.

• DOLMA

  M. R. Ghanoonparvar

  or dūlma; Turkish term for stuffed vegetable or fruit dishes common in the Middle East and in Mediterranean countries.

• DOLOMITAE

  Cross-Reference

  See DEYLAMITES i.

• DOMAN

  Erich Kettenhofen

  city in the Roman province of Cappadocia, conquered along with the surrounding area by the Sasanian Šāpūr I (240-70) during his second campaign against Rome.

• DOMES

  Bernard O’Kane

  circular vaulted roofs or ceilings. The variety of forms and decoration of Persian domes is unrivaled. Domes on squinches first appeared in Persia in the Sasanian period in the palace at Fīrūzābād in Fārs and at nearby Qalʿa-ye Doḵtar, both erected by Ardašir I (r. 224-40).

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DOMESTIC ANIMALS

  Daniel Balland and Jean-Pierre Digard

  This article is devoted to the principal characteristics of the predominant systems of domestication in Afghanistan and Persia, what they owe to neighboring or preceding systems, how they have departed from them, and whether or not it is possible to speak of a typically Iranian system of domestication.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DONALDSON, BESS ALLEN

  Peter Avery

  (1879-1974) and DWIGHT MARTIN (1884-1976), American Presbyterian missionaries and writers about Persia.

• DONBA

  M. R. Ghanoonparvar

  the fatty part of the sheep’s tail, traditionally used as a cooking fat, sometimes in melted form, or as an inexpensive meat substitute.

• DONBAK

  Cross-Reference

  See TONBAK.

• DONBĀVAND

  Cross-Reference

  See DAMĀVAND.

• DONBOLĪ

  ʿALĪ ĀL-E DĀWŪD and Pierre Oberling

  name of a turkicized Kurdish tribe in the Ḵoy and Salmās regions of northwestern Azerbaijan and of the leading family of Ḵoy since the 16th century.

• DONBOLĪ, ʿABD-AL-RAZZĀQ BEG

  Cross-Reference

  See ʿABD-AL-RAZZĀQ BEG.

• DONKEY

  Mahmoud Omidsalar and Teresa P. Omidsalar, Daniel T. Potts

  i. In Persian tradition and folk belief. ii. Domestication in Iran.

• DONKEY i. In Persian tradition and folk belief

  Mahmoud Omidsalar and Teresa P. Omidsalar

  domesticated species descended from the wild ass, probably first bred in captivity in Egypt and western Asia, where by 2500 B.C.E. the domesticated donkey was in use as a beast of burden.

• DONKEY ii. Domestication in Iran

  Daniel T. Potts

  The domestication of the African ass (Equus africanus) and the development of the donkey (Equus asinus) for transport and traction have been discussed in the scholarly literature for many years.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• DONYĀ

  Nassereddin Parvin

  lit., “The world”; name of several Persian journals and newspapers.

• DONYĀ-YE EMRŪZ

  Nassereddin Parvin

  lit. "Today’s world"; name of a weekly magazine published in Tehran and two weekly newspapers founded in Qazvīn and Isfahan, respectively.

• DOORS AND DOOR FRAMES

  Sheila Blair, Mortażā Momayyez

  in Persian architecture major foci of decoration, varying in size and elaboration with the function and importance of the building and the location of the entrance in relation to the total composition.

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• DŌRĪ

  Daniel Balland

  river in southern Afghanistan, the main tributary of the Arḡandā.

• DORN, JOHANNES ALBRECHT BERNHARD

  N. L. Luzhetskaya

  (1805-1881), pioneer in many areas of Iranian studies in Russia. He was particularly interested in the Pashtuns and published annotated editions and translations of texts on tribal history. Dorn never visited Afghanistan, but he nevertheless established the scientific basis for Afghan studies, particularly the first systematic description of Pashto.

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• DORNĀ

  Cross-Reference

  See CRANE.

• DORR

  Cross-Reference

  See PEARL i. Pre-Islamic Period and PEARL ii. Islamic Period.

• DORRĀNĪ

  Daniel Balland

  probably the most numerous Pashtun tribal confederation, from which all Afghan dynasties since 1747 have come. The Dorrānī confederation is a political grouping of ten Pashtun tribes of various sizes, which are further organized in two leagues of five tribes each.

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• DORRĀNĪ DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See AFGHANISTAN x.

• DORRĀNĪ, AḤMAD SHAH

  Cross-Reference

  See AFGHANISTAN x.

• ḎORRAT

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  maize or (Indian) corn, Zea mays L. (fam. Gramineae), with many varieties and hybrids.

• DORRAT AL-NAJAF

  Nassereddin Parvin

  lit. "Pearl of Najaf"; monthly religious journal published in Persian at Najaf in southern Iraq at the end of the first decade of the 20th century.

• DORRAT-AL-MAʿĀLĪ

  Afsaneh Najmabadi

  (b. Tehran, 1873, d. Tehran, Šahrīvar 1924), pioneer in female education in Persia.

• DORRI EFENDI

  Cross-Reference

  See DÜRRI EFENDI.

• DORŪD

  ʿALĪ ĀL-E DĀWŪD

  a town in Lorestān province, situated at the foot of Oštorānkūh, at an altitude of 1,460 m on the route from Tehran to Ḵorramābād at the confluence of the rivers Tīra and Mārbara.

• DŌŠĪ

  Daniel Balland

  small town and district on the northern slope of the central Hindu Kush in Afghanistan.

• DOŠMANZĪĀRĪ

  Pierre Oberling

  name of two Lor tribes in southern Persia, the Došmanzīārī-e Mamasanī and the Došmanzīārī-e Kūhgīlūya.

• DŌST MOḤAMMAD KHAN

  Amin H. Tarzi

  (b. Qandahār December 1792, d. Herat, 9 June 1863), first ruler of the Bārakzay/Moḥammadzay dynasty of Afghanistan. He was the first to bring the region that today constitutes Afghanistan under the control, occasionally tenuous, of a single central government.

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• DOTĀR

  Jean During

  long-necked lute of the tanbūr family, usually with two strings (do tār). The principal feature is the pear-shaped sound box attached to a neck that is longer than the box and faced with a wooden soundboard. Dotārs can be classified in several different types.

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• DOZĀLA

  Jean During

  kind of flute consisting of two parallel pipes pierced with holes and fitted with a removable vibrating mouthpiece made by cutting a U-shaped incision into a thin reed.

• DOZDĀB

  Cross-Reference

  See ZĀHEDĀN.

• DOZY, REINHARD PETRUS ANNE

  J. T. P. de Bruijn

  (b. Leiden, 21 February 1820, d. Leiden, 29 April 1883), Dutch orientalist renowned especially as a lexicographer of Arabic and a historian of Muslim Andalusia.

• DRAGON

  Cross-Reference

  See AŽDAHĀ.

• DRAINAGE

  Eckart Ehlers

  ,the carrying away of excess surface water through runoff in permanent or intermittent streams. Persia can be divided into four main drainage regions: the Caspian region, the Lake Urmia region, the Persian Gulf region, and the interior. Most of it is characterized by endorheic basins, that is, by interior drainage.

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• DRAMA

  M. R. Ghanoonparvar

  in formal Western terms a relatively new art form in Persia, though various types of dramatic performance, including religious plays and humorous satirical skits, have long been a part of Persian religious and folk tradition.

• DRANGIANA

  R. Schmitt

  or Zarangiana; territory around Lake Hāmūn and the Helmand river in modern Sīstān.

• DRÁPSAKA

  Frantz Grenet

  Greek name of a Bactrian city in northern Afghanistan, the first town captured by Alexander the Great after crossing the Hindu Kush.

• DRAWING

  M. L. Swietochowski

  , an art form primarily dependent on expressive line. The high quality of Persian drawings maintained from the late 13th to the early 20th century provides a clear indication that this art form was appreciated by the Persian cultural elite.

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• DRAXT Ī ĀSŪRĪG

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  lit. "The Babylonian tree"; a versified contest over precedence between a goat and a palm tree, composed in the Parthian language, written in Book Pahlavi script, and consisting of about 120 verses. 

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• DREAMS AND DREAM INTERPRETATION

  Hossein Ziai

  i. In pre-Islamic Persia. ii. In the Persian tradition.

• DRESDEN, MARK JAN

  Hiroshi Kumamoto

  (b. Amsterdam, 26 April 1911; d. Philadelphia, 16 August 1986), professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught Persian, then various Old and Middle Iranian languages from 1949 until his retirement in 1977.  He worked especially on Khotanese literary texts.

• DREYFUS-BARNEY

  Shapour Rassekh

  joint surname adopted by two leading Bahai figures of the 20th century.

• DRIWAY

  Jean Kellens

  (or Driβi-), Younger Avestan noun from the Vidēvdād; the word probably referred either to a skin disease or to drooling.

• DRIYŌŠĀN JĀDAG-GŌW UD DĀDWAR

  Philippe Gignoux

  Middle Persian title of a Sasanian official, “intercessor and judge of the poor.”

• DṚNABĀJIŠ

  RÜDIGER SCHMITT

  name of the fifth month (July-August) of the Old Persian calendar, equivalent to Akkadian Ābu and Elamite Zillatam.

• DRŌN

  Jamsheed K. Choksy

  Zoroastrian ritual term originally meaning “sacred portion” and designating a ritual offering to divine beings.

• DRUGS

  ṢĀDEQ SAJJĀDĪ

  in medieval Muslim literature any vegetable, mineral, or animal substance that acts on the human body, whether as a medicament, a poison, or an antidote.

• DRUJ-

  Jean Kellens

  Avestan feminine noun defining the concept opposed to that of aṧa-.

• DRUMS

  Jean During

  large group of percussion instruments.

• DRUSTBED

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  chief physician in the Sasanian period.

• DRVĀSPĀ

  Jean Kellens

  or Drwāspā, Druuāspā, lit., “with solid horses”; Avestan goddess.

• DRYPETIS

  RÜDIGER SCHMITT

  (Gk. Drýpĕtis [Arrian] or Drypêtis [Diodorus]), daughter of Darius III Codomannus and younger sister of Stateira; in the collective wedding arranged by Alexander the Great at Susa in 324 B.C.E. she was given in marriage to Hephaestion.

• DU MANS, RAPHAEL

  Francis Richard

  , FATHER (b. Jacques Dutertre, Le Mans, France, d. Isfahan, 1 April 1696), author of important descriptions of Persia.

• ḎŪ QĀR

  Ella Landau-Tasseron

  watering place near Kūfa in Iraq where a battle was fought between Arab tribesmen and Persian forces in the early 7th century.

• ḎŪ-BAḤRAYN

  Sīrūs Šamīsā

  a term in Persian and Arabic prosody designating a poem that can be scanned according to two or more different meters (baḥr).

• ḎU’L-ŠAHĀDATAYN

  Cross-Reference

  See AŠRAF ḠAZNAVĪ.

• DUALISM

  Gherardo Gnoli

  feature peculiar to Iranian religion in ancient and medieval times.

• DUBAI

  Sussan Siavoshi

  (Dobayy), second largest of the seven emirates constituting the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf.

• DUCK

  Hūšang Aʿlam

  technically any species of the family Anatidae but in Persian popular usage including similar waterfowl from other families, particularly some geese and grebes.

• DŪḠ

  M. R. Ghanoonparvar

  beverage made of yogurt and plain or carbonated water and often served chilled as a refreshing summer drink or with meals, especially with kebabs or čelow-kabāb.

• DŪḠ-E WAḤDAT

  Mahmoud Omidsalar

  lit. “beverage of unity”; concoction made from adding hashish extract (jowhar-e ḥaīš) to diluted yogurt.

• DUGDŌW

  D. N. MacKenzie

  the name of Zoroaster’s mother, which appears in several different spellings in the Pahlavi texts, mostly more or less corrupted from an original attempt at representing the Avestan form.

• ḎU’L-AKTĀF

  Cross-Reference

  See SHAPUR II.

• ḎU’L-FAQĀR

  Jean Calmard

  lit., “provided with notches, grooves, vertebrae”; the miraculous sword of Imam ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb, with two blades or points, which became a symbol of his courage on the battlefield.

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• ḎU’L-FAQĀR KHAN AFŠĀR

  J. R. PERRY

  governor (ḥākem) of Ḵamsa province (ca. 1763-80) under the Zand dynasty.

• ḎU’L-FAQĀR ŠĪRVĀNĪ

  Moḥammad Dabīrsīāqī

  MALEK-AL-ŠOʿARĀ QEWĀM-AL-DĪN ḤOSAYN b. Ṣadr-al-Dīn ʿAlī (d. ca. 691/1291), Persian poet and panegyrist of the Il-khanid period. 

• ḎU’L-JANĀḤ

  Jean Calmard

  Imam Ḥosayn’s winged horse, known from popular literature and rituals.

• ḎU’L-LESĀNAYN

  Hamid Algar

  lit. “possessor of two tongues”; epithet often bestowed upon bilingual poets.

• ḎU’L-NŪN MEṢRĪ, ABU’L-FAYŻ ṮAWBĀN

  Gerhard Böwering

  b. Ebrāhīm (b. Aḵmīm in Upper Egypt, ca. 791, d. Jīza [Giza], between 859 and 862), early Sufi master.

• ḎU’L-QADR

  Pierre Oberling

  (arabicized form of Turk. Dulgadır), a Ḡozz tribe that became established mainly in southeastern Anatolia under the Saljuqs.

• DU’L-QARNAYN

  Cross-Reference

  See ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

• ḎU’L-RĪĀSATAYN

  Cross-Reference

  See FAŻL B. SAHL.

• ḎU’L-RĪĀSATAYN

  Hamid Algar

  (b. Shiraz, 1873, d. Tehran, 15 June 1953), for thirty years qoṭb (leader) of a principal branch of the Neʿmatallāhī Sufi order. 

• DULAFIDS

  Cross-Reference

  See DOLAFIDS.

• DUMAQU

  Gerd Gropp

  or Domoko; administrative center of the eastern region of the Khotan oasis in Chinese Turkestan.

• DUMÉZIL, Georges

  Bruce Lincoln

   (1898-1986), French comparatist philologist and religious studies scholar. Among the most significant later modifications in Dumézil's views was his decision to abandon the claim that Indo-European society was originally divided into three functional groupings, whose defining characteristics were then inscribed in myth, ritual, and the structure of the pantheon. Rather, he came to regard the tripartite system as an “ideology,” a collective ideal.

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• DUNG

  Willem Floor

  human and animal excrement, widely used in Persia and Afghanistan for fuel and fertilizer.

• DUNHUANG

  Gunner Mikkelsen

  an oasis town situated in the northwest of the Chinese province of Gansu, is famous for its Mogao Caves (Mogaoku) or Caves of One Thousand Buddhas (Qianfodong).

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• DŪNQEŠLĀQ

  Klaus Fischer

  or Dong Qešlaq; group of pre-Islamic and Islamic archeological sites on the Emām Ṣāḥeb plain in the Qondūz province of Afghanistan, about 10 km south of the Oxus.

• DUPREE, LOUIS

  David B. Edwards

  (b. Greenville, N.C., 23 August 1925, d. Durham, N.C., 21 March 1989), American anthropologist who specialized in Afghan studies.

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• DURA EUROPOS

  Pierre Leriche, D. N. MacKenzie

  ruined city on the right bank of the Euphrates between Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris, founded in 303 BCE by Nicanor, a general of Seleucus I. Its military function of the Greek period was abandoned under the Parthians, but at that time it was an administrative and economic center.

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• DURAND, HENRY MORTIMER

  Rose L. Greaves

  (b. Sehore, Bhopal State, India, 14 February 1850, d. Polden, Somerset, England, 8 June 1924), British diplomat and envoy to Tehran at the end of the 19th century.

• DŪRAOŠA

  Jean Kellens

  Avestan word, attested once in the Older Avesta, in the Younger Avesta the preferred and exclusive epithet of haoma, the ritual liquid.

• DŪRĀSRAW

  D. N. MacKenzie

  according to the Pahlavi tradition the name of two legendary personages in the history of Zoroastrianism.

• DURIS OF SAMOS

  RÜDIGER SCHMITT

  (Gk. Doûris), (ca. 340-281/270 B.C.E.), Greek historiographer of the early Hellenistic period.

• DŪRMEŠ, KHAN

  Roger M. Savory

  or Dormeš; b. ʿAbdī Beg TAVĀČĪ ŠĀMLŪ, powerful Qezelbāš amir, brother-in-law and confidant of Shah Esmāʿīl I.

• DŪRNEMĀ-YE ĪRĀN

  Nassereddin Parvin

  weekly of politics and culture edited and published by the Persian writer, scholar, and filmmaker ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Sepantā in Bombay from 30 November 1928 to March 1929.

• DÜRRI EFENDI, AḤMAD

  Tahsin Yazici

  (or Dorrī Afandī; (b. Van, date unknown, d. Istanbul, 1722), Ottoman poet, civil servant, and diplomat who served as ambassador to Tehran and wrote Sefārat-nāma, the first Turkish account of Safavid Persia.

• DUSHANBE

  Muriel Atkin

  capital and most populous city of Tajikistan.

• DŪST MOḤAMMAD KHAN BĀRAKZĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See DŌST MOḤAMMAD KHAN.

• DŪST-ʿALĪ MOʿAYYER

  Cross-Reference

  See MOʿAYYER-AL-MAMĀLEK.

• DŪST-MOḤAMMAD HERAVĪ

  Chahryar Adle

  (d. probably Qazvīn, shortly after 1564), master calligrapher, the only artist whom Shah Ṭahmāsb I kept with him after having gradually dismissed all the others from his direct service.

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• DŪST-MOḤAMMAD MOṢAWWER

  Chahryar Adle

  (d. ca. 1560), master painter, known in the Indo-Persian world and even among the Ottomans as a painter (moṣawwer), paper cutter (qāṭeʿ), calligraphic tracer/outliner (moḥarrer), and perhaps binder (saḥḥāf) and gilder (moḏahheb).

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• DUTCH-PERSIAN RELATIONS

  Willem Floor

  , from the 16th century to the present. Until the 16th century the Dutch knew little of Persia and nothing of its language. Franciscus Raphelengius (1539-97), a professor at Leiden University, drew up a short list of Persian words based on the first Persian text ever printed, the translation of the Pentateuch published in Hebrew characters in Istanbul in 1546.

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• DŪZAḴ

  Mansour Shaki

  hell.

• DUŽYĀIRYA

  Antonio Panaino

  bad year or bad harvest.

• DVIN

  Erich Kettenhofen

  city in Armenia located north of Artaxata on the left bank of the Azat, about 35 km south of the present Armenian capital at Yerevan. It remained a significant center from the Sasanian period to the 13th century, and its pleasant climate was mentioned by many authors.

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• DYAKONOV, MIKHAIL MIKHAĬLOVICH

  Boris Litvinsky

  (b. St. Petersburg, 26 June 1907, d. Moscow, 8 June 1954), Russian scholar of Iranian studies.

• DYES

  Cross-Reference

  See CARPETS ii.

• D~ CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Cross-Reference

  list of all the figure and plate images in the letter D entries.