Table of Contents

• MENTOR and MEMNON

  Ernst Badian

  Rhodian brothers, condottieri of the late Achaemenid period.

• MEʿRĀJ

  Multiple Authors

  The term meʿrāj means “instrument of ascension,” more specifically associated with the Prophet Mohammad's “heavenly or celestial ascent”.

• MEʿRĀJ i. DEFINITION

  Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi

  Derived from the Arabic instrumental form mefʿāl, the term meʿrāj means “instrument of ascension,” either a “ladder” or a “stairway;” it can also designate the place one revolves or from where one climbs. However, in a technical sense and often accompanied by the article al-, it designates “heavenly or celestial ascent,” more specifically that which Muslim tradition attributes to the Prophet Mohammad, an ascension soon associated with the “nocturnal or night journey” (esrāʾ) of the latter.

• MEʿRĀJ ii. Illustrations

  Christiane J. Gruber

  From the turn of the 14th century onward, depictions of the Prophet Moḥammad’s night journey (esrāʾ) and heavenly ascent (meʿrāj) were integrated into illustrated world histories and biographies.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• MESKAWAYH, ABU ʿALI AḤMAD

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  ABU ʿALI AḤMAD b. Moḥammad, Persian chancery official and treasury clerk of the Buyid period, boon companion, litterateur and accomplished writer in Arabic.

• MESOPOTAMIA i. Iranians in Ancient Mesopotamia

  Muhammad Dandamayev

  an overview of the presence of Medes, Persians, and other Iranian-speakers in Mesopotamia prior to the Achaemenid empire.

• MESSINA, GIUSEPPE

  Carlo G. Cereti

  (1893-1951), SJ, Italian scholar of Middle and Modern Iranian studies.

• METALWORK

  Linda Komaroff

  perhaps the most continuous and best-documented artistic medium from Iran in the Islamic period.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• Meʿyār-e Jamāli wa meftāḥ-e Abu Esḥāqi

  Solomon Bayevsky

  (‘Jamāl’s touchstone and Abu Esḥāq’s key’), a dictionary of the Persian language (comp. ca. 745/1344).

• MEYBOD

  Ali Modarres

  name of a sub-province (šahrestān) and town in Yazd Province (32°14′45″ N, 54°2′10″ E; elev. 3,637 ft.) on the road to Tehran, at a short distance south of Ardakān (see ARDAKĀN-e YAZD) and about 48 km northwest of the city of Yazd.

• MEYBODI, ABU'L-FAŻL RAŠID-AL-DIN

  Annabel Keeler

  (fl. early 12th cent.), Sunni scholar, mystic and author of a monumental Persian Sufi commentary on the Qurʾān.

• MEYMA i. The District

  Habib Borjian

  The district rests on a high plain on the western foothills of the Kargas range, which separates Meyma from Naṭanz on the east.

• MEYMA ii. The Dialect

  Habib Borjian

  district is at the heart of the area where the Central dialects are spoken.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• MEYMANA

  Cross-Reference

  City of northwestern Afghanistan. See FĀRYĀB.

• MICHAEL THE SYRIAN

  Florence Jullien

  Jacobite patriarch of Antioch (1166-99), who wrote a universal chronicle (from the Creation until 1195) in Syriac. It includes much information concerning the history of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran—for instance, persecutions under the Sasanian king Ḵosrow II and the 6th-century wars between the Romans and the Persians.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• MICROCOSM and MACROCOSM

  Philippe Gignoux

  in pre-Islamic Iranian thought: the theory of the correspondence between the different parts of the human being and those of the cosmos.

• MIDDLE PERSIAN LITERATURE i. PAHLAVI LITERATURE

  Carlo G. Cereti

  the writings of the Zoroastrians in the Middle Persian language and Book Pahlavi script, which were compiled in the 9th and the 10th centuries CE.

• MIHR YAŠT

  Almut Hintze

  Middle Persian form of the name of the tenth of the 21 Yašts of the Avesta; It constituted the seventh Fargard of the Avestan Bagān Yašt Nask, of which a Pahlavi summary survives in the Dēnkard. The Mihr Yašt is the hymn of the sixteenth day of the 30-day month of the Zoroastrian cal­endar.

• MĪKĀL DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E MĪKĀL.

• MILĀN

  Pierre Oberling

  a Kurdish tribe in western Persian Azerbaijan.