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BEGTUZUN, Pers. Baktūzūn (tuzun being from the Orkhon Turkish tōḏun, a title of high military rank in the Gök Turkish empire, see G. Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish, Oxford, 1972, pp. 350-51), a Turkish slave general of the Samanids prominent in the confused struggles for power during…

BEH “quince, Cydonia” i. The word. ii. The tree. iii. Culinary uses of the fruit. i. The Word Beh, from Mid. Pers. bēh or bīh (byh), also written bahī or behī (with ī from īk), cannot be traced further back than Mid. Pers., and an attempt to reconstruct older forms…

BEH-ARDAŠĪR (Mid. Pers. Vēh-Ardaxšēr, Ar. Bahorasīr), name of two cities founded by the first Sasanian king of kings, Ardašīr I (r. 226-41), one west of the Tigris river opposite Ctesiphon and another (called Bardasīr and Bardašīr by the Arabs) in Kermān. The former, founded in about 230 a.d., was one…

BEH-QOBĀD (Mid. Pers. Vēh-Kavāt), an administrative district created by the Sasanian king Qobād I in the early sixth century along the Babylon branch of the Euphrates. It lay below Beh-Ardašīr and began where the Euphrates divided into two branches six farsaḵs (ca. 36 km) below the offtake of the Nahr…

BEHĀFARĪD, Zoroastrian heresiarch and self-styled prophet, killed 131/748-49. His name is given variously as Behāfarīd b. Farvardīnān, “Behāfarīd the son of Farvardīn” (Ḵᵛārazmī, Mafātīḥ al-ʿolūm, p. 38; Bīrūnī, Āṯār al-bāqīa, p. 210). ʿAwfī (fol. 213b) mentions him among false prophets and mistakenly identifies him as Māhāfarīn but elsewhere (fol. 336a)…

BEḤĀR AL-ANWĀR (Oceans of light) by Mollā Moḥammad-Bāqer b. Moḥammad-Taqī Majlesī (d. 1110 or 1111/1699 or 1700), an encyclopedic compilation in Arabic of Imamite traditions (references are to the lithograph edition unless otherwise indicated). This project, which occupied Majlesī for most of his adult life, grew from a modest work…

BEHBAHĀN (also pronounced Behbehān), Iranian city and county (šahrestān) in the province of Ḵūzestān. The county of Behbehān was defined in 1330 Š./1951 (Razmārā, Farhang VI, p. 62) as bordering on the Mārūn river to the north, the county of Ahvāz and Ḵorramšahr to the west, the Persian Gulf to…

BEHBAHAN (Behbahān, also pronounced Behbehān), a city and sub-province in Khuzestan province. This entry is divided into the following two articles: i. City and sub-province. ii. Population.   Search terms:  بهبهان behbahan behbahaan   

BEHBAHAN ii. Population, 1956-2011 This article deals with the following population characteristics of Behbahan city: population growth from 1956 to 2011, age structure, average household size, literacy rate, and economic activity status for 2006 and/or 2011 (different dates for the above categories are determined by the availability of census data)….

BEHBAHĀNĪ, AYATOLLAH MOḤAMMAD (1291-1383/1874-1963), a leading mojtahed of Tehran who played a role of some importance in the events of the first two postwar decades. He was born to Shaikh ʿAbd-Allāh Behbahānī, the celebrated ʿālem who was later to become a leader of the Constitutional move­ment, on 9 Jomādā II…

BEHBAHĀNĪ, ĀQĀ SAYYED MOḤAMMAD-­BĀQER, Shiʿite mojtahed and champion of the Oṣūlī school in Shiʿite law (feqh). Often designated as Waḥīd-e Behbahānī (Behbahānī the unique) or Moḥaqqeq-e Behbahānī (Behbahānī the investigator), he is common­ly regarded as the “renewer” (mojadded) of the twelfth Islamic century (see opinion of Fāżel-e Darbandī quoted by…

BEHBAHĀNĪ, ĀQĀ MOḤAMMAD-ʿALĪ B. MOḤAMMAD-BĀQER (1144-1216/1731-1801), Shiʿite mojtahed celebrated primarily for his ferocious hatred of Sufis. He was a son of the celebrated Āqā Mo­ḥammad-Bāqer Behbahānī who was also his first teacher. He was born and received most of his training in Karbalāʾ, but he is said also to have…

BEHBAHANI, SIMIN (Simin Behbahāni, b. Tehran, 28 Tir 1306 Š./1927, d. Tehran 28 Mordād, 1393 Š./2014; Figure 1, Figure 2), eminent Iranian poet and human rights activist, who is noted for her innovative treatment of the ghazal (ḡazal) and her distinctive poetic voice, at once traditional and provocatively contemporary. i. Life….

BEHBAHANI, SIMIN i. Life Siminbar Ḵalili (سیمینبر خلیلی, known by the surname of her first husband, Ḥassan Behbahani, بهبهانی) was born to ʿAbbās Ḵalili, (Figure 1) the novelist, translator, and founder of the newspaper Eqdām, and Faḵr-e ʿOẓmā Arḡun (1898-1966; Figure 2), a culturally engaged and progressive woman who founded…

BEHBAHANI, SIMIN ii. Poetry Simin Behbahani’s initial engagement with poetry coincided with a tumultuous period in the country’s literary history, marked by the emergence of an increasing number of poets who, following in the footsteps of Nima Yushij, did not adhere to the metrics and regularity of rhyme visible and…