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BARBARO, GIOSAFAT, Venetian merchant, traveler, and diplomat (Venice, 1413-94). He was appointed Venetian ambassador to Persia (1473-78) in order to solicit its Āq Qoyunlū sovereign Uzun Ḥasan (“il signor Assambei;” d. Šawwāl, 892/January, 1478) to wage war upon the increasingly menacing power of the Ottoman Turks; but in the end…

BARBAṬ, the prototype of a family of short-necked lutes characterized by a rather flat, pear-shaped sound box which was carved with the neck out of a single piece of wood and covered by a wooden soundboard or table that came to have two holes either in the shape of a…

BARBERRY (zerešk; Berberis spp., family Berberidaceae). Species of this genus are found in the northern, eastern, and southeastern highlands of Iran (Alborz, Qaradāḡ in Azerbaijan, ranges of Khorasan, Bārez mountain in Kermān). They reach heights of 1 to 3 m, seldom reaching 4 m, and have long branches, copious thorns,…

BARBIER DE MEYNARD, CHARLES ADRIEN CASIMIR, French orientalist (1826-1908). He was born at sea on a voyage from Istanbul to Marseilles on 8 February 1826. His maternal grandfather was a doctor practicing medicine at Istanbul, and his mother came from Therapia (Tarabya); about the rest of his family nothing is…

BARD-e BAL, a necropolis excavated in 1969-70 by the Belgian archeological mission in Iran, along the banks of the Garāb river one km northwest of the ruined village of Čenārbāšī, and 54 km southeast of Īlām, province of Pošt-e Kūh. Seventy tombs, dating from the end of Iron Age I…

Search terms:  برد بوت bard e bot    

BARD-e NEŠĀNDA, a complex of ancient ruins in Ḵūzestān, situated 18 km northwest of the town of Masjed-e Solaymān (where similar ruins exist) at 675 m altitude on the edge of the Baḵtīārī mountains. The name means “erected stone.” The earliest mention of this site is in a brief statement…

BARDA and BARDADĀRĪ, “slaves and slavery.” i. In the Achaemenid period. ii. In the Sasanian period. iii. In the Islamic period up to the Mongol invasion. iv. From the Mongols to the abolition of slavery. v. Military slavery in Islamic Iran. vi. Regulations governing slavery in Islamic jurisprudence.

BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI i. In the Achaemenid Period At the beginning of the Achaemenid period, the institution of slavery was still poorly developed in Iran. In Media a custom existed whereby a poor man could place himself at the disposal of a rich person if the latter agreed to feed…

BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI ii. In the Sasanian Period The word wardag is first attested in the Sasanian inscriptions of the third century in the meaning of “slave”, or “captive.” Describing the campaigns of King Šāpūr I, the high priest Kirdēr (KARTĪR) tells how the army enslaved, burned, and devastated (u-šwardag…

BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iii. In the Islamic Period up to the Mongol Invasion Early Islamic society was essentially a slave-holding one, and it seems likely that Iranian society of the time exhibited two of the types of slavery known elsewhere in the pre-modern Old World—agricultural/industrial slavery and domestic slavery—certainly together…

BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iv. From the Mongols to the Abolition of Slavery 1. The Il-khanid, Timurid, Safavid, and Zand periods (1300-1800). Male slaves were referred to as ḡolām (in Arabic lit. a youth) or zar-ḵarīd (lit. bought by gold), while black slaves also were commonly called kākā sīāh.Female slaves were…

BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI v. Military Slavery in Islamic Iran Military slavery may have been known in the Sasanian period, but, as the Sasanian army was based essentially on the free, mailed cavalryman, any slaves within it can only have been in the little-regarded following of infantrymen, in which conscripted peas­ants…

BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI vi. Regulations Governing Slavery in Islamic Jurisprudence Slavery is designated in feqh (i.e., religious law, although not in the Koran or ḥadīṯ) as reqq “weakness.” The weakness in question is extrinsic to the person of the slave and results from his legal debarment (ḥejr) from ownership, guardianship, giving…

Search terms:  بردشیر bardeshir bardesheer