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AZERBAIJAN xi. Music of Azerbaijan History. The art music of Azerbaijan is connected with the Irano-Arabo-Turkish art of the maqām, of which the great theoreticians were notably Ṣafī-al-dīn Ormavī (d. 693/1294) and ʿAbd-al-Qāder b. Ḡaybī Marāḡī (d. 838/1435), who were originally from Urmia and Marāḡa in Azerbaijan. According to Hajibekov,…

AZERBAIJAN xii. MONUMENTS The Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan, both West and East, possess a large number of monuments from all periods of history. In the following the more significant buildings, rock reliefs, and archeological sites are enumerated, classified according to cultural periods. i. pre-history and early history until the 1st…

AZES, the name of two Indo-Scythian kings of the major dynasty ruling an empire based on the Punjab and Indus valley from about 50 BCE to CE 30. Regarded as Parthian by some scholars and Scythian by others, the dynasty is probably Scytho-Parthian, a composite people using both Śaka and…

AẒFARĪ GŪRGĀNĪ, MOḤAMMAD ẒAHĪR-AL-DĪN MĪRZĀ ʿALĪ BAḴT, B. SOLṬĀN MOḤAMMAD-WALĪ (Walīy) also called MĪRZĀ-YE KALĀN, Indo-Persian poet and lexicographer. He was of royal descent, born 1172/1758 in the Red Fort at Delhi, where he was brought up and educated. He escaped from the Fort on 3 Rabīʿ I 1203/2 December…

AZHAR B. YAḤYĀ B. ZOHAYR B. FARQAD, nicknamed AZHAR-E ḴAR “Azhar the ass,” third cousin, and military commander of the Saffarid amirs Yaʿqūb and ʿAmr b. Layṯ; like them, he was provided by the author of the Tārīḵ-e Sīstān (p. 204) with a patently spurious genealogy going back to the…

AZILISES, Indo-Scythian king of the dynasty of Azes in the Indus valley about the beginning of the Christian era. Rare joint coins have the name of Azes as “great king of kings” in Greek or Kharoṣṭhī script and Azilises as “great king of kings” in the second legend (Whitehead, Punjab, p….

ĀZĪN (ĀḎĪN) JOŠNAS, a military commander of the Sasanian Hormazd IV (r. A.D. 579-90), killed in Hamadān on his way to fight the rebellious general Bahrām Čōbēn (Ṭabarī, I, p. 995; Yaʿqūbī, I, p. 190; Baḷʿamī, Tārīḵ, p. 1079; Šāh-nāma [Moscow] VIII, pp. 394, 428). He has also been referred…

ĀŽĪR “Alarm bell,” a radical leftist Persian newspaper which was printed at Tehran from Ḵordād, 1322 Š./May, 1943, to Ḵordād, 1324 Š./June, 1945. The holder of the publication license was Sayyed Jaʿfar Pīšavarī (q.v.), a veteran revolutionary and communist (b. 1893 at Ḵalḵāl in Iranian Azerbaijan, d. 1948? at Baku)….

AZIŠMĀND, one of the few Middle Persian exclusively legal terms designating “obstructed or hampered justice” (see Shaki, “The Obstruction of Justice,” Archív Orientální 45, 1977, pp. 48-53). The Mādayān ī hazār dādestān, our only source of information, offers various instances of this juridical case and its judicial consequences in twenty-odd…

AZRAQĪ HERAVĪ, the pen-name of Abū Bakr b. Esmāʿīl Warrāq of Herat, a Persian poet of the 5th/11th century. His personal name is given as Abū Bakr by Neẓāmī ʿArūżī (Čahār maqāla, ed. M. Qazvīnī and M. Moʿīn, Tehran, 1333 Š./1954, p. 69), as Šaraf-al-zamān Abu’l-Maḥāsen by ʿAwfī (Lobāb al-albāb…

ĀZŪITI-, an Avestan word (cf. Skt. āhuti-) meaning “oblation of fat.” It occurs twice in the Gāθās, once together with ižā- (Y. 49.5), once, it seems, with particular reference to the ritual offering to fire (Y. 29.7; see ātaš-zōhr). In the younger Avesta milk and āzūiti- are reverenced together as…

AʿLAM, HUŠANG (b. Tehran, 1928; d. Tehran, 2007), eminent scholar of the history of science. Hušang began his primary education at home, where he was taught by his father, Naṣr-Allāh Aʿlam-al-Saltạna, who disapproved of the way children were taught at schools. He himself had studied medicine at the Dār al-fonun…

AʿLAM, MOẒAFFAR, Sardār Enteṣār (b. Trabzon, 1261 Š./1882, d. Tehran, 1352/1973), provincial governor, minister of foreign affairs, military minister plenipotentiary. His father, Mirzā ʿAli-Akbar Khan Moʿtamed-al-Wezāra Qazvini, was a ranking officer in the ministry of foreign affairs and held consular positions in Baku, Istanbul, Damascus and Baghdad. Moẓaffar received his…