Table of Contents

• MOOREY, Peter Roger Stuart

  John Curtis

  (1937-2004), British archeologist and curator at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

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• MOQANNAʿ

  Patricia Crone

  (lit. “the veiled one,” d. 163/780 or later), leader of a rebellious movement in Sogdiana.

• MORḠ-E SAḤAR

  Morteza Hosayni Dehkordi and Parvin Loloi

  (Dawn bird), a taṣnif (song) in māhur mode,  probably written for its music around 1921, when the first signs of dictatorship were appearing.

• MORGENSTIERNE, Georg Valentin von Munthe af

  Fridrick Thordarson

  Norwegian linguist and orientalist, specializing in Indo-Iranian languages, particularly those spoken in Afghanistan, the Pamirs, and the northwest of the Indian subcontinent (1892-1978).

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• MOSAFERIDS

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a dynasty of Deylamite origin.  Its original center of power was at Šamirān in the district of Ṭārom on the middle course of the Safidrud river in the region of Deylam, but it subsequently extended its authority over a large part of northwestern Iran.

• MOSHFEQ-e KAZEMI, SAYYED MORTAZA

  Ḥasan Mirʿābedini

  (1904-1978), author of Iran’s first social novel.

• MOSHIRI, FEREYDUN

  Saeid Rezvani

  poet (1926-2000). The majority of his most celebrated poems are composed in Nimaic meters; they are usually romantic in imagery and tone, and contain beautiful and easily accessible images.

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• MOSTA’AN, Hosayn-Qoli

  Ḥasan Mirʿābedini

  (1904-1983), noted serial writer, journalist, and translator.

• MOTʿA

  Shahla Haeri

  in Islamic law, the word (lit. “pleasure”) used as a technical term for a marriage contracted for a definite period of time.

• MOVSĒS XORENAC‘I

  Nina Garsoïan

  from the later Middle Ages, and down to the present, honored as the “Father of Armenian History” (Patmahayr). According to his own words, he was a pupil of St. Maštoc‘, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet, writing in the 5th century CE. 

• MO’AYYERI, Mohammad Hasan

  Kāmyār ʿĀbedi

  (1909-1968), prominent poet and lyricist, better known as Rahi.

• MUELLER, Friedrich W. K.

  Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst

  (1863-1930), scholar of oriental cultures and languages, a major contribution to the establishment of the philological and historical study of texts in Middle Iranian and Old Turkish.

• MUGH, MOUNT

  Gregory Semenov

  site of the 7th-8th-century refuge of the rulers of Penjikent in Sogdiana, where an important archive of documents written in Sogdian was discovered in the 1930s.

• MUHAMMADIEV, Fazliddin

  Keith Hitchins

  Tajik writer (1928-1986). Numerous works of his were translated into Russian and other languages of the Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe.

• MUNICH, PERSIAN ART IN

  Avinoam Shalem

  The collecting of Persian art in Munich goes back at least to the reign of Duke Albrecht V (r. 1516-75). Artifacts of oriental origin were mainly registered as exotica. For example, between 1545 and 1550, Hans Mielich (1516-73), the court painter of Albrecht V, provided the duke with an illustrated inventory of the varied treasures in the court, among which is depicted an Ottoman vessel decorated with precious stones.

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• MUSĀ YABḠU

  Osman G. Özgüdenli

  the eponymous strongman of a Ḡozz clan, whose nephew Toḡrel founded the Saljuq dynasty.

• MUSHFIQI, ABDURAHMON

  Keith Hitchins

  (Mošfeqi, ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān), Tajik poet (1525-1588).

• MUSIC HISTORY i. Pre-Islamic Iran

  Bo Lawergren

  The documentation is largely archeological with a sprinkling of textual sources, and some evidence is here assembled to outline Iran’s pre-Islamic music history.

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• MUSIC HISTORY ii. CA. 650 TO 1370 CE

  Eckhard Neubauer

  When in 31/651 Yazdgerd III, the last Sasanian king, left Iran, fleeing from the Arab troops, he took with him “1,000 cooks and 1,000 musicians.”