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BANŪ SĀSĀN, a name frequently applied in medieval Islam to beggars, rogues, charlatans, and tricksters of all kinds, allegedly so called because they stemmed from a legendary Shaikh Sāsān. A story frequently found in the sources, from Ebn al-Moqaffaʿ onward, states that Sāsān was the son of the ancient Persian ruler…

Search terms:  بنوعبّاس banou abbas  banoo abbaas banoo abbas  

Search terms:  بنو عناز banou annaz banou annaaz banouanaz  

BAQĀʾ WA FANĀʾ, Sufi term signifying “subsistence and passing away.” The Sufi teaching of passing away from worldly reality and being made subsistent in divine reality describes the apex of mystic experience and union with God. As a correlative pair of notions, in which fanāʾ logically precedes baqāʾ, it is…

BĀQELĀ (also pronounced bāqālā or bāqālī; in Arabic texts, bāqellā[ʾ], broad beans, i.e., the grains of Vicia faba L. Older Iranian dialectal names recorded by Abū Bakr b. ʿAlī Kāsānī in his Persian version of Bīrūnī’s Ṣaydana (1st half of the 8th/15th century), I, p. 116: Sajzī (= Sīstanī) kālūsak…

BĀQER KHAN SĀLĀR-e MELLĪ, one of the popular heroes of the Constitutional Revolution during the defense of Tabrīz in the period of the Lesser Autocracy (estebdād-e ṣaḡīr, Jomādā I, 1326-Rabīʿ II, 1327/June, 1908-July, 1909). Son of Ḥājī Reżā, he was born in Tabrīz in the 1870s and was a bricklayer…

AL-BĀQER, ABŪ JAʿFAR MOḤAMMAD B. ʿALĪ B. ḤOSAYN B. ʿALĪ B. ABĪ ṬĀLEB, the fifth imam of the Twelver Shiʿites. His mother was Omm ʿAbd-Allāh Fāṭema, Ḥasan b. ʿAlī’s daughter, who is described as a saintly woman. His honorary name al-Bāqer is commonly held to refer to his “splitting open…

BĀQĪBELLĀH NAQŠBANDĪ, ḴᵛĀJA ABU’L-MOʾAYYAD RAŻĪ-AL-DĪN OWAYSĪ, born in Kabul in 971/1563-64 or 972/1564-65 as a son of the qāżī of that city, ʿAbd-al-Salām; studied the traditional theological sciences under Ṣādeq Ḥalwāʾī whom he followed to Transoxiana. Already at an early age he seems to have mastered very thoroughly these sciences,…

BĀQLAVĀ (or Baqlavā) i. The word. ii. The sweet.   i. The Word The etymology of the word bāqlavā, found in Arabic (baqlāwa), Turkish (baklava), and Greek (mpaklabâs), has not yet been determined. According to G. Doerfer (p. 255), the word does not seem to be from Turkish. A Persian…

Search terms:  بقلی، روزبهان baghli rozbahan baqli rouzbehan baghli roozbahan  

BAQQĀL-BĀZĪ (lit. grocer play), a form of improvised, popular slapstick comedy, the origins of which can be traced to buffoons who performed at the courts of kings, to such merry, grotesque pageants as the bar nešastan-e kūsa (beardless man’s mount) and the mīr-e nowrūzī (prince of the New Year) from…

BĀR (audience). The royal audience was one of the most important and enduring of the court ceremonies practiced in Iran. Initially it was influenced, in certain details of the ceremonial, by similar Egyptian and Assyrian practices, and subsequently it in turn influenced the practices of imperial Rome, medieval Europe, and…

Search terms:  ابن عبری  ebn abri    

BAR KŌNAY, THEODORE (Kēwānay = Saturninus, not Kōnī, according to Cambridge University Library ms. Add. 1998; cf. Burkitt, p. 14 n. 1), an 8th-9th-century Nestorian teacher (doctor, malfānā, in a ms. from Mosul; Pognon, p. 105) and writer from Kaškar in Mesopotamia (Babylonia; cf. Alfaric, p. 24 n. 7), not…

Search terms:  بر مهر bar e mehr