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DAḴĪL “interceder,” a piece of rag or cord or a lock fastened (daḵīl bastan) on a sacred place or object, for example, the railing around a saint’s tomb or grave or a public fountain (saqqā-ḵāna), the branch of a tree considered sacred, or another plant (e.g., Šahrī, V, p. 113,…

ḎAḴĪRA-YE ḴᵛĀRAZMŠĀHĪ, a Persian ency­clopedia of medical knowledge compiled by Sayyed Esmāʿīl b. Ḥosayn Jorjānī and dedicated to his patron, the ruler of Ḵᵛārazm, Qoṭb-al-dīn Moḥammad Ḵᵛārazmšāh (r. 490-521/1097-1127). It is the most comprehensive medical treatise written in Persian up to that date, incorporating the findings of earlier phy­sicians recorded…

DALMĀ TEPE, an archeological site in western Azerbaijan. It is a small mound located about 5 km southwest of Ḥasanlū Tepe just north of the modern village of Dalmā in the Soldūz valley at the southwestern edge of Lake Urmia. The mound rises about 4 m above the plain level…

DALQAK, buffoon, court jester, also sometimes known as masḵara. The earliest extant study of buf­foons is that of Athenaeus (bks. 1, 6, 12) from the 2nd century CE, though it seems that clowns, comic actors, jugglers, conjurors, and acrobats were not yet clearly distinguished (Welsford, p. 4). The absence of…

DAL’VERZIN TEPE, a large site in southern Uzbekistan located not far from the bank of the Surkhan­darya river near Denau, a small city approximately 60 km northeast of Termez; it has yielded valuable data on the civilization and arts of northern Bactria and Tokharistan. The excavations were sponsored by the…

DAM, archeological site in Afghanistan, 30°55’ N, 62°01’ E, located approximately 20 km east of the Helmand delta, 10 km south of the Hāmūn-e Aškīn ʿĀm (the southeastern part of the Hāmūn-e Sīstān, on Afghan territory), and 10 km north of the extensive ruins of Kordū, in the desert on…

DĀM-PEZEŠKĪ, veterinary medicine. i. In the pre-Islamic period. ii. In Islamic Persia. i. In the Pre-Islamic Period Widespread and developed animal husbandry, which was a prominent feature of Iranian economic and social life in ancient times, could not have prospered as it did without commensurate veterinary practice. The horse (see…

DĀM-DĀRĪ (animal husbandry). The first known domestication of certain animals took place in various parts of Persia: Kurdistan, where sheep were domesticated ca. 9000 B.C.E., and goats ca. 7000 B.C.E. (see boz), and the Zagros mountains, where the ox was domesticated ca. 5000 B.C.E. (Flannery, passim; Reed, passim). In the…

DĀMĀD, MĪR(-E), SAYYED MOḤAMMAD-BĀQER b. Mīr Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥosaynī Astarābādī (d. 1041/1631), leading Twelver Shiʿite theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet of 17th-century Persia. He inherited the title Dāmād (son-in-law) from his father, who had married the daughter of the famous Shiʿite theologian Shaikh ʿAlī b. Ḥosayn Karakī, known as Moḥaqqeq-e…

DAMASCUS, Zoroastrians at. The earliest evi­dence for the presence of Zoroastrians at Damascus is provided by Berossus, who stated (Jacoby, Fragmente IIIC, frag. 65) that this was one of the cities of the Achaemenid empire at which Artaxerxes II (404-358 b.c.e.) had a statue set up for “Anaitis” (q.v.). “At”…

DAMASPIA (Gk. Damáspiā or -píā), name of a Persian queen, wife of Artaxerxes I and mother of his legal heir, Xerxes II (424/3 b.c.e.). She was named only once by Ctesias (in Jacoby, Fragmente, vol. III.C, p. 468, frags. 15, 47); according to the excerpts from his text (where Xérxēs is…

i. Geography. ii. In Iranian mythology.   Geography The mountain Mount Damāvand is a recent volcano with regular contours, part of the traditional landscape of Tehran and the Persian plateau that it dominates. The peak, the highest elevation in the entire Near East (5,671 m), is perpetually covered with snow….

DĀMDĀD NASK, the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) name of one of the lost nasks of the Avesta. It is probably the traditional “learned” rendering of an Avestan word *dāmi.dāti- “the creating of the cre­ation,” as a real derivative of this word would have become *dāmyād (see dāmi-). Alternatively it may be…