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BĀBĀ ṬĀHER, known as ʿORYĀN, a dervish poet from the area of Hamadān. This is almost all that is known of him; even his dates are a matter of dispute, estimates ranging from the 4th/10th to the 7th/13th centuries. His tomb in Hamadān, where his companion Fāṭema is also buried,…

BĀBĀ-YE DEHQĀN (Boboi Dehqon “Forefather Farmer”), also known as Ḵᵛāja Dehqān, Bābā-ye Ādam, Ḵᵛāja ʿAbd-Allāh Dehqān, Šāh ʿAbd-Allāh, Ḵᵛāja Ḵeżr, and Šoguni, a mythological and ritual character whose cult has been reported in agrarian communities of mountainous and lowland Tajikistan, North Afghanistan and adjacent rural areas of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and…

Search terms:  بباجائی babajaei babaajaaei babajae

BĀBAK (Mid. Pers.: Pābag), reformer of the Sasanian military and in charge of the department of the warriors (Diwān al-moqātela) during the reign of Ḵosrow I Anušervān in the 6th century CE.  Ṭabari, who mentions him as a man of noble birth known for his magnanimous qualities and capability, records…

BĀBAK (Mid. Pers. Pāpak, Pābag), a ruler of Fārs at the beginning of the third century, father of Ardašīr, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty. There are several traditions regarding the relationship of Bābak to Sāsān, who gave his name to the dynasty. One tradition, reported by Ṭabarī (I, p….

BĀBAK ḴORRAMĪ (d. Ṣafar, 223/January, 838), leader of the Ḵorramdīnī or Ḵorramī uprising in Azerbaijan in the early 3rd/9th century which engaged the forces of the caliph for twenty years before it was crushed in 222/837. The fullest account of Bābak’s career comes from a lost Aḵbār Bābak by Wāqed…

Search terms:  بابکیه babakiyeh babakeiyeh baabakiye baabakiyeh        

BABAN (or Bavan), a small town in the medieval Islamic province of Bāḏḡīs, to the north and west of Herat, more particularly, in the district of Ganj Rostāq (q.v.), which formed the eastern part of Bāḏḡīs. It must have been within the Herat welāyat of modern Afghanistan, just south of…

BĀBĀN (or Baban) name of a Kurdish princely family who from their center at Solaymānīya ruled over an area in Iraqi Kurdistan and western Iran (early 11th/17th—mid-13th/19th century) and was actively involved in the Perso-Ottoman struggles. The name occurs in Western travel accounts of the early nineteenth century variously as…

Search terms: بابان  baban baabaan al e baban aal e baabaan آل بابان      

BĀBAY, catholicos (d. 502) elected at the synod at Seleucia in 497. Bābay was of Seleucia and had served as a secretary of the marzbān of Bēt Arāmāyē. He was quite advanced in years when he was elected catholicos in 497. As far as the outer conditions were concerned, his…

BĀBAY OF NISIBIS (BĀBAY BAR NṢIBNĀYE), also known as Bābay the Less, Christian Syriac writer who flourished about the beginning of the seventh century CE. He was the author of a number of hymns and poems, almost none of which have been published. A Sogdian version of one of his works, a…

BĀBAY THE GREAT (d. 628), the head of the Nestorian church in Iran under Ḵosrow II. Bābay, to whom the Nestorian church gave the epithet Rabbā “the Great,” is the most eminent personality in Syrian monasticism and ecclesiastical life as well as in the area of literary culture in Iran…

BĀBĀʾĪ BEN FARHĀD, eighteenth-century author of a versified history of the Jews of Kāšān with brief references to the Jews of Isfahan and one or two other towns. Next to nothing is known about him except that he was probably a leader of the Jewish community in Kāšān and that…

BĀBĀʾĪ BEN LOṬF, the Jewish poet and historian of Kāšān during the first half of the 11th/17th century (d. after 1073/1662). According to his own words, he, along with the Jews of Kāšān, was forced to embrace Islam and was, for some years, openly a Muslim while retaining secretly his…