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BAḤRĪ, MAḤMŪD B. BĀQER QĀDERĪ, Sufi and poet of the Deccan who flourished in the late 11/17th century. The son of a provincial qadi, Baḥrī spent his first twenty years in his native Gogi, a small town in the ʿĀdelšāhī kingdom of Bijapur (895/1490-1097/1686). There he studied Sufism with a…

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BAILEY, Harold Walter (b. Devizes, Wiltshire. Dec. 16, 1899; d. Cambridge, Jan. 11, 1996), one of the greatest scholars in the field of the comparative study of Iranian languages, especially notable for much ground-breaking work on the Middle Iranian Saka language of Khotan (FIGURE 1). Bailey was second of the…

BĀJ, a principal Zoroastrian observance meaning primarily “utterance of consecration;” reference to bāj has been current in Mazdean literature since at least Sasanian times, spelled in Book Pahlavi wʾc, Middle Persian wāz, Parthian wāj, and variously wāj, wāž, bāj, bāž, bāz in New Persian. Boyce and Kotwal, in their exhaustive…

BĀJ, a term denoting tribute to be paid by vassals to their overlord, in which sense it is also used as a generic term “tax,” or as referring to road tolls. Its original meaning may have been “portion, share” (from the root bag “to apportion,” AirWb., col. 921). The term…

BĀJALĀN, a Kurdish tribe which has settled in the dehestāns of Qūratū, Ḏohāb and Jagarlū in the šahrestān of Qaṣr-e Šīrīn, on the Iraqi border (Kayhān, Joḡrāfīā II, p. 60). According to H. C. Rawlinson, the tribe moved from the Mosul area to the Ḏohāb area in the eighteenth century…

BĀJARVĀN, a town in the medieval Islamic province of Mūḡān (q.v.), i.e., the area southwest of the Caspian Sea and south of the Kor (Kura) and Aras (Araxes; qq.v.) rivers. Its site is unknown, but it must have lain in what is now the extreme northeastern tip of the modern…

BĀḴARZ or Govāḵarz, a district of the medieval Islamic province of Qūhestān/Qohestān (q.v.) in Khorasan, lying to the west of the middle, northerly-flowing course of the Harīrūd, with Ḵᵛāf on its west, Jām on its north, Pūšang on its east and the desert on its south. A popular etymology derived…

BĀḴARZĪ ḴORĀSĀNĪ, RAʾĪS ABU’L-QĀSEM ʿALĪ B. ḤASAN B. ABI’L-ṬAYYEB, an Iranian littérateur of the 5th/11th century who composed poems in both Persian and Arabic and won a name for skill in the art of letter-writing (tarassol). After preliminary studies at Bāḵarz, his birthplace in Khorasan, he went to Nīšāpūr and…

BAKHSHIEV MISHI (Baxşijəv Mişi in the Judeo-Tat Roman alphabet used in 1929-38; 1910, Derbent-1972, Makhach-Qaḷʿa), Judeo-Tat author. A shoemaker’s apprentice at the age of 11 and afterwards a fisherman, he was sent in 1928 as a Komsomol (communist youth union) activist to study at a rabfak (pre-higher school for workers)…

BAḴŠĪ, a Buddhist lama or scholar, in particular during Mongol hegemony in Iran; subsequently, by extension, any kind of scribe or secretary. The word, which is Turkish, is derived from Chinese po-shih (man of learning) and not, as once believed, from Sanskrit bhikṣu, which itself denotes a Buddhist lama. Jovaynī,…

BAḴT “fate, destiny.” i. The term. ii. The concept.   i. The Term BAḴT (Middle and New Persian) “fate, lot,” often with the positive sense of “good luck”(ḵᵛošbaḵtī), though the related NPers. verb bāḵtan means “to lose” (as opposed to bordan “to win”) in a game or gamble. The Avestan…

BAḴTAGĀN LAKE, part of the Lake Nīrīz basin situated about 1,525 m above sea level in the province of Fārs, approximately 50 km east of Shiraz. Originally identical with the Nīrīz lake itself, it has been repeatedly mentioned by medieval geographers (e.g., Eṣṭaḵrī, pp. 100, 101, 102; Ebn Ḥawqal, pp….

BAḴTAK, a folkloric she-creature of horrible shape, personifying a nightmare. Baḵtak was believed to have been one of Alexander’s slave girls who accompanied him on his expedition in search of the water of life (āb-e ḥayāt; see āb ii). According to the legend, after the water was found, it was…