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BANĪ ṬOROF (Banu Turuf), a large Shiʿite Arab tribe of Howayza (Ḥawīza) district in Ḵūzestān, mostly sedentary, centered north of Howayza between Sūsangerd and Bostān (Besaytīn). In the early years of this century their population was put at 20,000 (Lorimer, Gazetteer II, p. 119), and in the 1930s at 8,000…

BANISTER, Thomas (d. Arrash, 20 July 1571), British merchant and traveler to Persia who commanded the fifth voyage from Britain to Persia via Russia for the purpose of establishing trade. There is no record of his parentage or early education. Banister married Elisabeth Gamadge, a widow, on 3 March 1549….

BĀNK-e MARKAZĪ-e ĪRĀN (Central Bank of Iran), a bank established under the Iranian Banking and Monetary Act of 7 Ḵordād 1339 Š./28 May 1960 to undertake the central banking activities in the country. Its functions and powers were expanded and consolidated by the Monetary and Banking Law of 18 Tīr…

BANKING in IRAN. i. History of banking in Iran. ii. Banking in the Islamic Republic of Iran.   i. History of Banking in Iran Introduction. This article traces the historical development of banking in Iran, from the establishment of the first modern banks, by foreign concerns in the late 1880s,…

BANNĀʾĪ (construction). Though the subject of monumental architecture in Iran has been the focus of a number of studies and analyses (see, for example, architecture), popular building crafts have received considerably less scholarly attention. The treatment of “domestic architecture,” which is accorded a mere ten pages in A Survey of…

BANNERS (ʿalam, derafš). In the earliest surviving Persian lexicon, the Loḡat-e fors (ed. Dabīrsīāqī, p. 70), Asadī Ṭusī glosses the word derafš, or banner, as a signaling or guiding device (ʿalāmat). Jamālī Yazdī, the author of a popular encyclopedia entitled Farroḵ-nāma (ed. Ī. Afšār, Tehran, 1344 Š./1965, p. 318) more…

BĀNŪ, originally “lady,” now also in common use as an alternative to ḵānom “Madam, Mrs.” (from Turkish xan-ım “my lord”). The Middle Persian form of the word was bānūk (bānūg). Compounds with bānū include kad-bānū “mistress of the house” (Pahl. katak-bānūk) and šāh-bānū “shah’s wife, queen,” the latter introduced under…

BANŪ AMĀJŪR (or MĀJŪR), ABU’L-QĀSEM ʿABD-ALLĀH (ʿAlī according to Ebn Yūnes) b. (A)Mājūr Torkī and his son Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī, astronomers. The descendants of a Turk from Farḡāna named Amājūr or Mājūr, Abu’l-Qāsem and his son came from Herat. The suggestion made by A. Sayılı (pp. 101-03) that they were connected…

Search terms:  بنو لخم  banou lakhm banoo lakhm    

Search terms:  بنو ماجور banou majour  banoo maajor banou majoor banoo maajour banu majur     

BANŪ MONAJJEM , a family of intellectuals, closely connected to the caliphs of the 3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries and claiming descent from an ancient Iranian lineage. Their genealogy is given by Ebn al-Nadīm (ed. Flügel, pp. 143-44), from whom it is in part copied and supplemented by Ebn Ḵallekān (tr. de Slane,…

BANŪ MŪSĀ, the name applied to three brothers, ʿAbbasid astronomers whose father was Mūsā b. Šāker, said to have been a robber in his youth in Khorasan and who became an astronomer (monajjem) and companion of the caliph al-Maʾmūn while the latter was still in Marv, before becoming caliph in…

Search terms:  (بنو امیّه (بنی امیه banou omayeh bano omaye  

BĀNŪ PARS, “Lady of Pārs,” the name of a Zoroastrian shrine in the mountains at the northern end of the Yazd plain. The sacred rock is on a natural platform above a riverbed, usually dry but filled in rainy seasons with flood waters off the mountains. Two other river courses…

BANŪ SĀJ, more correctly Āl Abi’l-Sāj, a family named after its ancestor Abu’l-Sāj which served the ʿAbbasid caliphate from the reign of al-Maʾmūn or al-Moʿtaṣem and later ruled Azerbaijan (279-317/892-929). It originated from two neighboring villages, Jankākaṯ and Sūydak, in Ošrūsana (Ebn Ḥawqal, p. 506) and was probably, as suggested…