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ĀZĀD BELGRĀMĪ, MĪR ḠOLĀM-ʿALĪ B. MOḤAMMAD NŪḤ ḤOSAYNĪ WĀSEṬĪ, major eighteenth century Indo-Muslim poet, biographer, and composer of chronograms, also known as Ḥassān-al-Hend (fl. 1116-1200/1704-86). Born into a family of scholars in Belgrām, he studied with his maternal grandfather, Mīr ʿAbd-al-Jalīl Belgrāmī, a noted scholar and poet of Persian, Arabic,…

ĀZĀD FĪRŪZ, governor of Bahrain and the surrounding area in the time of Ḵosrow (probably Ḵosrow II Parvēz). His name occurs as Āzād Ferūz (variants Azād Afrūz, Azād Fīrūz, both unpointed; Ṭabarī, I, p. 985), Azād Fīrūz (Ebn al-Aṯīr [repr.], I, p. 468), Dād Ferūz (Ḥamza, pp. 138, 143), and…

ĀZĀD KHAN AFḠĀN (d. 1195/1781), a major contender for supremacy in western Iran after the death of Nāder Shah Afšār (r. 1148-60/1736-47). Āzād was the son of Solaymān of the Ḡalzay (also written Ḡalīčāʾī, Ḡalījī) Pashtuns of Kabul. He joined Nāder Shah’s army, probably after the fall of Kabul in…

ĀZĀD TABRIZI, MIRZĀ ḤOSAYN (also spelled Hocéne-Azad; “Ḥasan” in Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, p. 207, is a misprint), physician, anthologist, and translator (b. Tehran, ca. 1854; d. Paris, 1936). His father, Mirzā Yusof Khan Mostašār-al-Dawla (d. 1895), who served as a Persian diplomat in Saint Petersburg, Tbilisi and Paris, sympathized with the political…

ĀZĀD, MOḤAMMAD-ḤOSAYN, scholar and writer in Urdu and Persian, born about 1834 in Delhi. Āzād cultivated literary and Islamic studies under his father, Mawlānā Moḥammad-Bāqer, a leading journalist in north India, and under the poet Moḥammad-Ebrāhīm Ḏawq. After the Mutiny of 1857, which resulted in his father’s execution by the…

ĀZĀD, ʿABD-AL-QADIR (b. 1272 Š./1893, d. 1352 Š./1973), journalist, politician, Majles deputy, member of opposition groups (FIGURE 1). The son of a farmer in Sabzevār in the province of Khorasan, ʿAbd-al-Qadir received his elementary education and then studied Persian literature, Islamic law and mathematics in his hometown. He was first…

ĀZĀDA, name of a Roman slave-girl of Bahrām Gōr. According to Ferdowsī (Šāh-nāma [Moscow] VII, p. 273, vv. 153ff.) and Ṯaʿālebī (Ḡorar, pp. 541f.) Bahrām Gōr, during his stay as a young man at the court of his Arab mentor the Lakhmid Monḏer b. Noʿmān, became the owner of Āzāda…

‘AZADARAN-E BAYAL (ʿAzādārān-e Bayal; The mourners of Bayal, Tehran, 1964; Figure 1), a collection of short stories by Ḡolām-Ḥosayn Sāʿedi (see SA’EDI, Gholam-Hosayn; 1936-1985), the prolific engagé writer of drama and fiction.  The collection comprises eight interconnected stories, called Qeṣṣa. Sharing characters and not unlike a novel (ʿOmrāni, p. 81;…

ĀZĀḎBEH B. BĀNEGĀN (MĀHĀN?) B. MEHR-BONDĀD, a dehqān (landowner) of Hamadān, marzbān (governor) in the former Lakhmid capital of Ḥīra in central Iraq during the years preceding the Arab conquest of that province. Ṭabarī’s account of his governorship cites as source Hešām b. Moḥammad Kalbī and this same historian says…

ĀZĀDĪ (Freedom) was the name of the following Persian journals: (1) A journal published at Tehran during the estebdād-e ṣaḡīr (lesser autocracy, June 1908-July 1909). No copies have been found and no details are available. (2) A journal published at Istanbul in 1909. No copies are known to have been…

ĀZĀDĪSTĀN (ĀZĀDĪESTĀN), the title of a Persian educational magazine which came out at Tabrīz in Jawzā, 1299/June-August, 1920. The magazine was in fact the mouthpiece of Shaikh Moḥammad Ḵīābānī’s rebel government in the educational-cultural field. Ḵīābānī seized power in Tabrīz in April 1920 and controlled the provincial government of Azerbaijan…

ĀZĀDSARV. Two bearers of this name are known. 1. A mōbad in the reign of Ḵosrow I Anōšīravān and one of the emissaries whom Ḵosrow sent to all corners of the kingdom in search of a dream interpreter (Šāh-nāma [Moscow] VIII, p. 111 vv. 990f.). Āzādsarv went to Marv, found…

ĀZĀDVĀR (or ĀZAḎVĀR), a small town of Khorasan in the district (kūra, rostāq) of Jovayn, which flourished in medieval Islamic times, apparently down to the Il-khanid period. It lay eight farsakhs from Jājarm and at the western end of the very fertile Jovayn corridor between the Kūh-e Čaḡatāy to the…

AZAL, Arabic theological term derived from Pahlavi a-sar “without head” and meaning, already in early Muʿtazilite kalām, “eternity a parte ante,” as opposite to abad, “eternity a parte post.” It corresponds to the Greek term ánarchon. The etymology frequently brought up by Arab lexicographers which connects azal with lam yazal…

AZALI BABISM, designation of a religious faction which takes its name from Mīrzā Yaḥyā Nūrī Ṣobḥ-e Azal (about 1246-1330/1830-1912), considered by his followers to have been the legitimate successor to the Bāb. A son of Mīrzā Bozorg Nūrī, a court official in the reign of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah, Yaḥyā was converted…