Table of Contents

• 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.