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BĀB-E HOMĀYŪN (august [royal] gate), name of a gate and its connecting street in the Qajar citadel (Arg) of Tehran (Figure 4). The southern half of the Arg housing the royal quarter was separated from the ministerial area in the north by a lane called Kūča Darb(-e) Andarūn, while a…

BĀBĀ AFŻAL-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD B. ḤASAN MARAQĪ KĀŠĀNĪ, known as Bābā Afżal, poet and author of philosophical works in Persian. Several dates have been suggested for his death, the most likely being 610/1213-14 (M.-T. Modarres Rażawī, Aḥwāl wa āṯār-e . . . Naṣīr-al-Dīn [Ṭūsī], Tehran, 1354 Š./1975, p. 207; cf. J….

BĀBĀ FAḠĀNĪ, a Persian poet in the 9th/15th and early 10th/16th centuries. Born and brought up at Shiraz, he began work as a cutler in his father’s and brother’s shop. For this reason he chose the pen-name Sakkākī, but later on he used Faḡānī instead. After the sultan Yaʿqūb Bāyondorī…

BĀBĀ ḤĀTEM, 5/11th-century mausoleum in northern Afghanistan, popularly known as Bābā Ḥātom, at some 40 miles west of Balḵ (A. S. Melikian-Chirvani, “Remarques préliminaires sur un mausolée ghaznévide,” Arts Asiatiques 17, 1968, pp. 59-92). It follows the simple plan of the earliest Islamic mausoleums standing in the Iranian world, consisting…

BĀBĀ JĀN ḴORĀSĀNĪ, also known as Ḥāfeẓ Bābā Jān Torbatī, calligrapher, poet, and craftsman the first half of the 10th/16th century. He was the son of Ḥāfeẓ ʿAbd-al-ʿAlī Torbatī, a religious figure connected with the court of Sultan Ḥosayn Bāyqarā. Bābā Jān’s brother Ḥāfeẓ Qāsem was a noted singer and…

BĀBĀ JĀN TEPE (Tappa), an archeological site in northeastern Luristan (34° north latitude, 47° 56’ east longitude), on the southern edge of the Delfān plain at approximately 10 km from Nūrābād, important primarily for excavations of first-millennium B.C. levels conducted by C. Goff from 1966-69. Work concentrated on two mounds…

BĀBĀ KŪHĪ, popular name of Shaikh Abū ʿAbdallāh Moḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿObaydallāh Bākūya Šīrāzī, Sufi of the second half of the 4th/10th and the first quarter of the 5th/11th century, also (more correctly) known as Ebn Bākūya. Despite frequent references to him in Sufi literature, next to nothing is…

BĀBĀ ŠAMAL, weekly satirical periodical founded by Reżā Ganjaʾī (b. 1918 in Tabrīz) in Farvardīn, 1322 Š./April, 1943. It was published regularly until Mehr, 1324 Š./October, 1945, when Ganjaʾī left for Europe. A further fifty issues were published until Esfand, 1326 Š./March, 1947, after his return. The magazine, which was…

BĀBĀ SAMMĀSĪ, ḴᵛĀJA MOḤAMMAD, Central Asian Sufi of the line known as selsela-ye ḵᵛājagān (line of the masters) which was inaugurated by Ḵᵛāja Abu Yaʿqūb Hamadānī. Born in Sammās (or Sammāsī), a village in the region of Rāmītan, three farsaḵs distant from Bukhara, Sammāsī became a follower of Ḵᵛāja ʿAlī…

BĀBĀ SANKŪ (or SANGŪ), ecstatic Central Asian dervish of disorderly habits, contemporary with Tīmūr and one of several Sufis with whom Tīmūr chose to associate for reasons of state. The name Sankū does not yield any obvious meaning, and should perhaps be read as Süngü (Turk. “pike”); the dervish in…

BĀBĀ SHAH ESFAHĀNĪ, calligrapher and poet who lived in Isfahan and Baghdad where he died in 996/1587-88. He was famous as a writer of the nastaʿlīq script. Said to have had an ascetic temperament, he also wrote poetry under the taḵalloṣ “Ḥālī.” Virtually nothing is known about his personal life…