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BAḎḎ or BAḎḎAYN (perhaps two places), a mountainous region (kūra) in Azerbaijan and a center of Ḵorramīs (Ebn al-Nadīm, ed. Tajaddod, pp. 406-07). There was located the castle of Baḏḏ, which became the residence and headquarters of Bābak-e Ḵorramī (q.v.) during his revolt against the ʿAbbasid caliphate (201/816-222/837). Baḏḏ was…

BĀDENJĀN “eggplant, aubergine.” i. The plant. ii. Uses in cooking.   i. The Plant Bādenjān (or bādemjān), the eggplant or aubergine, Solanum melogena L. of the Solanaceae family. Persian terms which perhaps denote particular varieties of the eggplant, e.g., kahparak (Borhān-e qāṭeʿ; Farhang-e Nafīsī), kahlam (Borhān-e qāṭeʿ; Steingass), and some…

BĀDGĪR (wind-tower), literally “wind catcher,” a traditional structure used for passive air-conditioning of buildings. Wind catchers are found throughout the Middle East, from Pakistan to North Africa (Coles and Jackson, “A Wind-Tower House in Dubai,” pp. 1-25; idem, “Bastakia Wind-Tower Houses,” pp. 51-53) where they have been built since antiquity….

BĀḎḠĪS, also BĀDḠĪS, region in eastern Khorasan, between Herat and the middle course of the Harīrūd in the south, and Marv al-Rūḏ and the headwaters of the Morḡāb in the north; the southern part now falls administratively into the Herat and Bādḡīsāt provinces of northwestern Afghanistan, and the northern part…

BĀDHĀ ḴABAR AZ TAḠYIR-e FAṢL MIDĀDAND (The winds presaged the changing of season, Tehran, 1967, Figure 1), a novel by the eminent fiction writer and literary critic, Jamal Mirsadeqi (Jamāl Mirṣādeqi; b. 1933) Bādhā ḵabar az taḡyir-e faṣl midādand is set in the 1960s in Tehran and revolves around the turbulent…

BADĪHA-SARĀʾĪ, composition and utterance of something improvised (badīh), usually in verse. Among the Arabs, poetic improvisation (ertejāl, a term used in Persian also) was practiced and admired from pre-Islamic times (Nicholson, pp. 75, 418, 436). Among the Iranians, it has been a mark of poetical talent and skill. It has…

BADĪLĪ, SHAIKH AḤMAD, a Sufi shaikh in 6th/12th-century Sabzavār, renowned for his mastery of the exoteric as well as the esoteric science. The designation Badīlī—which was also his taḵalloṣ—appears to have arisen from the belief that he was a badīl (substitute), one of a seven or, more commonly, forty-member class…

BADĪʿ, rhetorical embellishment. The Arabic word badīʿ refers in general to the concept of novelty. In the Koran the Creator is named badīʿ al-samawāt wa’l-arż (2:117; 6:101), which implies that the act of creation was without precedent and not dependent on any model. As an adjective with a passive meaning,…

BADĪʿ, designation of the calendar system of Babism and Bahaism, originally introduced by the Bāb in several works, including his Persian Bayān (5:3, pp. 152-54). It is based on a solar year of nineteen months, each of nineteen days, together with four or five intercalary days (whose positioning is a matter…

BADĪʿ BALḴĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD BADĪʿ B. MOḤAMMAD B. MAḤMŪD BALḴĪ, poet of the 4th/10th century, contemporary and panegyrist of Abū Yaḥyā Ṭāher b. Fażl b. Moḥammad Čaḡānī (d. 381/991), one of the rulers of the Čaḡānīān district in Transoxiana. Some verses by him are quoted in the Lobāb al-albāb of…

BADĪʿ, ĀQĀ BOZORG, son of Ḥājī ʿAbd-al-Majīd of Nīšāpūr, a young Bahai martyr who has gained a certain distinction in Bahai lore on account of his carrying a letter from Bahāʾ-Allāh to Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah and his subsequent execution (July, 1869).  

BADĪʿ-AL-ZAMĀN B. ḤOSAYN BĀYQARĀ, Timurid prince (mīrzā) of the line of ʿOmar Šayḵ. He was the eldest son of Sultan Ḥosayn Bāyqarā (r. Herat 873-911/1469-1506) and Begā Solṭān Begīm, the daughter of Sultan Moʿezz-al-Dīn Sanjar of Marv (Ḥabīb al-sīar (Tehran) IV, p. 320). His father had originally entrusted him with…

BADĪʿ-AL-ZAMĀN HAMADĀNĪ, ABU’L-FAŻL AḤMAD B. ḤOSAYN B. YAḤYĀ (b. Hamadān 358/968, d. Herat 398/1008), Arabic belle-lettrist and inventor of the maqāma genre. Abu’l-Fażl Aḥmad, known as Badīʿ-al-Zamān (Wonder of the age), studied in Hamadān with the great Arab philologist, Ebn Fāres (d. 395/1004). In 380/990-91 he went to Ray, where…

BADĪʿ-AL-ZAMĀN MĪRZĀ, by most accounts the last of the Chaghatay/Timurid rulers of Badaḵšān. He was either the grandson (by a daughter) of Solaymān Mīrzā (or Solaymān Shah) (Baḥr, f. 70b; Selselat al-salāṭīn, f. 167a), who was a cousin of Bābor and a direct descendant of Tīmūr (Lowick, 1965, p. 222),…