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BARRA, or Bāru, an Iranian loanword designating a tax in Babylonian texts, borrowed from Old Iranian bar- “to carry” (cf. Gk. phóros).The word appears nearly seventy times between 442 and 417 B.C. in the archives of the house of Murāšu in different spellings (bar-ra, ba-a-ri, ba-ar-ra) intended to indicate the…

BARRASĪHĀ-ye TĀRĪḴĪ, a journal of historical studies of Iran published in Tehran during 1966-78. Its publication in March of 1966 by the public relations office of the Iranian Armed Forces under General B. Āryānā was undertaken in pursuance of a decree issued by Shah Moḥammad Reżā Pahlavī, who on December…

BARŠABBĀ, legendary bishop of Marv and founder of the Christian church in eastern Iran. The only completely preserved versions of the legend are found in Arabic sources, in the “Chronicle of Seʿert” (ed. with French tr. by A. Seher, Patrologia Orientalis 5, Paris, 1909, pp. 253-58; German tr. and valuable…

BARṢAUMĀ, a 5th-century bishop of Nisibis of Aramaic extraction, according to some sources origi­nally from Bēt Qardū. Nothing is known of Barṣaumā prior to his studies at the School of Edessa. Here he belonged to the ardent supporters of Ḥībā, the head of the diophysite party, who became bishop of…

BARSĪĀN (also Bersīān, locally called Bīsyūn), a village in the dehestān of Barāʾān 45 km southeast of Isfahan on the north bank of the Zāyandarūd; it is situated on the old caravan route from Isfahan which, following the river, passed through Barsīān, Varzana, Ḵargūšī, Yazd, and further on to Ṭabas…

BARSḴĀN, or Barsḡān, a place in central Asia, on the southern shores of the Ïsïq-Göl, in the region known as Semirechye or Yeti-su “the land of the seven rivers,” in what is now the Kyrgyz Republic. In the medieval Islamic sources, the name seems also to have been applied, by…

BARSOM (Av. barəsman),sacred twigs that form an important part of the Zoroastrian liturgical appara­tus. The word barsom is the Middle Persian form of the Avestan barəsman,which is derived from the root barəz, Sanskrit bṛh “to grow high.” The barəsman twigs were twigs of the haoma plant or the pomegran­ate used…

BARSOM YAŠT, in the liturgical manuscripts of the Avesta the name of the second hād (chapter) of the Yasna. According to Darmesteter (I, p. 7), Yasna 2 as well as the following Yasna 3-4 (Srōš darūn) comple­ment Yasna 1, which announces to the gods the sacrifice. Yasna 2 draws their…

BARTANGĪ, a member of the Šuḡnī (q.v.) group or Šuḡnī-Rōšānī group of the East Iranian Pamir lan­guages. The other members are: Šuḡnī, Bajūī, Rōšānī, Ḵūfī, Orōšōrī, and Sariqōlī [qq.v.]. Bartangī is spoken in the Gorno-Badakhshanskaya Avtonomnaya Oblast’ of Soviet Tajikistan in the middle part of the Bartang valley (i.e., Bār-tāng…

BARTHĒLEMY, ADRIEN, French Orientalist, born in Paris on 24 August 1859, died at Emancé (Rambouillet) on 18 December 1949. He was a devoted linguist, who learned Sanskrit, Avestan, Turkish, Per­sian, and Arabic at a very young age. Early in his career he became interested in Persian grammar, and after 1878…

BARTHOLD, VASILIĭ VLADIMIROVICH, Russian Orientalist (1869-1930). He was born on 15 November 1869 in St. Petersburg, to a Russianized German family; his baptized name was Wilhelm, which he used in his works published in western European languages. In the years 1887-91 he studied at the Faculty of Oriental Languages of…

BARTHOLOMAE, CHRISTIAN, German scholar of Iranian and Indo-European studies (1855-1925). 1. Life. Bartholomae was born the son of a forester in Forst ob Limmersdorf (today Forstleithen near Limmersdorf), Upper Franconia, on 21 January 1855. After receiving his general education in Bayreuth he first studied the classical languages at Munich and…

BARTHOLOMAE’S LAW, the name given to a rule of phonetic assimilation in the Indo-Iranian and probably also the proto-Indo-European languages first noted by Christian Bartholomae in 1882. The law is as follows: When a voiced aspirate consonant is followed by a voiceless one, the latter becomes voiced, taking over the…

BARTUS, BERNARD AUGUST THEODOR LUDWIG (b. Lassan, 30 January 1858; d. Berlin, 28 January 1941), technician and a key figure of the Turfan expeditions because of his autodidactical development of methods of removing inscriptions and works of art from rock walls and ruins without their getting damaged, as well as…

BĀRŪ, (or Bāra), fortress in general, defensive wall, rampart. The word is not attested in the oldest sources and goes back at most only to the Sasanian period (communication from W. Eilers). The concept must be distinguished from various other old types of fortification used in Iran to protect parts…