Explore Iranica

BĪḠAMĪ, MAWLĀNĀ SHAIKH ḤĀJĪ MOḤAMMAD b. Shaikh Aḥmad b. Mawlānā ʿAlī b. Ḥājī Moḥammad Ṭāherī (or Ṭāmerī), oral storyteller of the 8th/14th century, narrator of the romance Dārāb-nāma. The oldest manuscript of Dārāb-nāma is dated Ḏu’l-ḥejja, 887/January-February, 1483, and internal evidence strongly suggests that Bīḡamī was alive at that time…

BĪGĀR, BĪGĀRĪ, a term of taxation in Iran and central Asia, generally meaning “corvée,” the duty of supplying workers without pay for the construction and repair of irrigation systems, roads, fortresses, palaces, and other public buildings, as well as sometimes for agricultural work on the estates of rulers and landlords….

BĪGDELĪ (or Bēgdelī, also Bagdīlū), a former Turkish tribe. Name and origin. The tribe is mentioned in Maḥmūd Kāšḡarī’s Dīwān loḡāt al-Tork as one of the twenty-two Oghuz tribes (ed. Dankoff and Kelly, I, p. 101). Their traditional brand mark was xxx and their totem was the golden eagle. The…

BIHAR (Behār), a state in northeastern India, bounded by Nepal in the north, West Bengal in the east, Orissa in the south, and Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in the west. This article treats the influence of Persian language and culture in Bihar. While there was an Achaemenid influence on…

BĪJĀPŪR, capital city and domain of the ʿĀdelšāhī dynasty (895-1097/1489-1686). It was located on the western Deccan plateau, bounded on the north by the Western Ghats and on the south by the Tunga­bhadra river and extending to approximately 78° east longitude. Under the name Vijayāpūra (City of victory), the capital…

BĪJĀR, a town and a šahrestān (county) in the Kurdistan province of Iran. The town, which has the highest elevation in Iran (1,920 m), lies ca. 120 miles north-northwest of Hamadān, on the old route from this city to Tabrīz, and is a center of an important and internationally renowned…

BILGETIGIN (Turkish bilge “wise man, counselor,” an element found in the onomastic of the Orkhon inscriptions, e.g., Bilge Kaḡan, plus tigin “prince”; cf. Clauson, Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish, Oxford, 1972, pp. 340, 483), in the sources written Belkātekīn. 1. The name of a Turkish governor in Ḡazna in…

BILIMORIA, NUSHERWANJI FRAMJI (b. 2 June 1852-d. 15 August 1922), Zoroastrian journalist, editor, and publisher. Among the newspapers to which he contributed are Yazdan Parasta, the Parsi Punch (later the Hindi Punch), the Gnyan Vardhak, the Bombay Gazette, and the Times of India. During 1888-90 he attacked the Rahnumae Mazdayasnan…

BĪMA (bīme), insurance, a word probably of Indian origin that seems to have been used for the first time in written Persian by ʿAbd-al-Laṭīf Šūštarī in his Toḥfat al­-ʿālam in the sense of “insuring somebody” (Maḥbūbī Ardakānī, II, p. 181). “Insurance” activities are re­ferred to for the first time in…

BĪMĀRESTĀN, hospital (from Persian bīmār “sick,” Pahlavi wēmār, with the suffix denoting place -stān). Both bīmārestān and the shorter form mārestān entered Arabic, as did various Persian terms for hospital officials, e.g., mehtar(-e) šarāb-ḵāna, applied to a head of dispensary (Qalqašandī, Ṣobḥ al-aʿšā VI, Cairo, p. 170). 1. Hospitals before…

BĪNĀLŪD, KŪH-E, mountain range in northeast­ern Iran between Mašhad in the east and Nīšāpūr in the west with elevations of up to 3,211 m. Geologically, the Bīnālūd ranges are of special importance as the orographic link between the Paropamisus mountains (be­longing to the Hindu Kush system) and the Alborz of northern…

BĪNAMĀZĪ, NPers. “the state of being without prayer,” term for the state of a menstruant woman. i.In Zoroastrianism. ii. In Islam.   i. In Zoroastrianism All bodily discharges are regarded by Zoroastrians as violations of the wholeness of the person, therefore the result of evil and ritually unclean; bloodshed is…