Table of Contents
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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.
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DĪNĀVARĪYA
Werner Sundermann
in Manichean usage originally “the elect.”
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DINKHA TEPE
Cross-Reference
See DENḴĀ TEPE.
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DINON
Wolfgang Felix
(fl. approximately 360-30 B.C.E.), author of a historical work on the Ancient Orient.
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DĪNŠĀH
Cross-Reference
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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.
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DIO CHRYSOSTOM
Cross-Reference
See DIO COCCEIANUS.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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DIPLOMACY
Cross-Reference
See under individual countries; see also FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
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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.
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DĪRGHANAKHA-SŪTRA
Yutaka Yoshida
a Buddhist text in which the Buddha expounds the merits of observing the eight commandments to a parivrājaka named Dīrghanakha.
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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.
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DĪV
Mahmoud Omidsalar
demon, monster, fiend; expresses not only the idea of “demon,” but also that of “ogre,” “giant,” and even “Satan.”
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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.
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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.
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DĪVĀN
François de Blois
archive, register, chancery, government office; also, collected works, especially of a poet.
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DĪVĀN-E KEŠVAR
Cross-Reference
See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS v. Judicial System in the 20th Century.
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DĪVĀNA NAQQĀŠ
Priscilla P. Soucek
15th-century painter whose work is known primarily from single-page paintings preserved in the Topkapı Sarayı library, Istanbul.
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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.
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DĪVĀNĪ, ḴAṬṬ-E
Cross-Reference
See CALLIGRAPHY.
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DĪVDĀD
Cross-Reference
See BANŪ SĀJ.
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DIVINATION
Mahmoud Omidsalar
the art or technique of gaining knowledge of future events or distant states by means of observing and interpreting signs.
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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.
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DIZK
Cross-Reference
See JIZAK.
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DJANBAZIAN, Sarkis
Maria Sabaye Moghaddam
After graduating from high school, Djanbazian went to Leningrad to study dance. He graduated from Vaganova Dance Academy of Leningrad in 1936 and from Lesgaf University with a Masters of Arts degree in 1936. After graduation, he worked as a principal dancer, choreographer, and artistic director in Kirov Theatre.
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DJEITUN WARE
Cross-Reference
See CERAMICS i.
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DO-BARĀDARĀN
Cross-Reference
See JĀMI.
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DO-BAYTĪ
Stephen Blum
a quatrain of sung poetry in many Persian dialects.
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DOʿĀ
Hamid Algar
the act of offering supplicatory or petitionary prayer, a principal manifestation of Muslim piety.
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DOʿĀ-NEVĪSĪ
Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmḡānī
the act of writing charms against various evils.
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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.
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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.
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DŌDĀ-BĀLĀÇ
Cross-Reference
See BALUCHISTAN iii/II.
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DODDER
Cross-Reference
See AFTĪMŪN.
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DOERFER, GERHARD
Michael Knüppel
German scholar of Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungus languages. He divided the Turkic elements in Persian into three layers: (1) an older, “pure” Turkic layer, which consists of southern and eastern Turkic elements; (2) a Middle Mongolian and Turkic layer, which includes Mongolian and southern and eastern Turkic elements; and (3) a later, “pure” Turkic layer, which comprises southern Turkic elements only.
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DOG
Mahmoud Omidsalar and Teresa P. Omidsalar, Mary Boyce, Jean-Pierre Digard
Canis familiaris; i. In literature and folklore. ii. In Zoroastrianism. iii. Ethnography.
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DOḠLAT, MĪRZĀ MOḤAMMAD ḤAYDAR
Cross-Reference
See Supplement.
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DOGONBADAN
Cross-Reference
See GAČSARĀN.
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DOJAYL
Cross-Reference
See KĀRŪN.
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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.
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DOKKĀN
Cross-Reference
See BĀZĀR i.
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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.
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DOḴTAR-E NŌŠERVĀN
MARKUS MODE
lit., “daughter of Nōšervān”; rock-cut architectural complex with important wall paintings, in northern Afghanistan. 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.
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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.
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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.
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DOLAFIDS
Fred M. Donner
family of Arab origin that became politically prominent in western Persia during the 9th century.