Table of Contents

  • NIGHTINGALE

    Cross-Reference

    See BOLBOL.

  • NĪRANGDĪN CEREMONY

    Firoze M. Kotwal and Philip G. Kreyenbroek

    a Zoroastrian ritual to consecrate gōmēz, or bull’s urine; the consecrated liquid is known as nīrang or nīrangdīn.

  • NISA

    Antonio Invernizzi

    New Nisa, capital of ancient Parthia, occupies a large area enclosed within stout mud-brick fortifications, which enclose a citadel. Excavations here have brought to light a monumental funerary building of the Parthian era with a flat, crenellated roof, a façade, and wall decoration with terracotta plates.

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  • NISĀBURI, ḤASAN

    David Pingree

     b. Moḥammad al-Aʿraj, Neẓām-al-Din Qommi, astronomer; d. after 1311.

  • NISĀYA

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    the Old Iranian name of several Iranian regions and places, which cannot easily be distinguished from one another.

  • NISHAPUR i. Historical Geography and History to the Beginning of the 20th Century

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    Nishapur (Nišāpur) was, with Balḵ, Marv and Herat, one of the four great cities of the province of Khorasan.  It flourished in Sasanid and early Islamic times, but after the devastations of the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, subsided into a more modest role until it revived in the 20th century.

  • NISHAPUR vi. Archeology

    Rocco Rante

    A major crossroad on the international trade route and silk road, the archeological area in Nishapur has two main sections which have been subjects of discoveries during different eras.

  • NISHAPUR vii. Excavations by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Marika Sardar

    The MMA started expeditions in Iran in 1935 in Qaṣr-e Abu Naṣr, continued to Nishapur, and ended in 1948 after six seasons.

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  • NISIBIS

    Samuel Lieu

    city in northern Mesopotamia, a major focus of military confrontations between the Roman and Sasanian empires an center of theological studies for the Church of the East. Once in Sasanian hands, the city’s role was reversed to that of advanced Persian base of operations against Roman and Byzantine frontier defenses.

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  • NÖLDEKE, THEODOR

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Nöldeke could convincingly prove the thesis already proposed by Niels Ludvig Westergaard (1815-1878) that Middle Persian was not an Irano-Semitic hybrid language, but an authentic Iranian dialect, the phonetic forms of which were “obscured by a partly cryptographic, partly extremely historicizing spelling.”

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