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DARIUS vii. PARTHIAN PRINCES Darius was the name of several petty princes in the Parthian period. In 64 B.C.E. while his father, Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus (ca. 121/20-63 B.C.E.), was fighting his last, losing campaign against the troops of the Roman general Pompey (106-48 B.C.E.), the child Darius…

DARIUS viii. DARIUS SON OF ARTABANUS A son of the Parthian king Artabanus II (r. ca. 10-38 C.E.) named Darius was sent as a hostage to Rome (Josephus, Antiquitates 18.4.5) shortly after an interview between Artabanus and the Roman legate for Syria, Vitellius, in 37 C.E. (Suetonius, Caligula 14.3; idem,…

ḎARĪʿA elā TAṢĀNĪF al-ŠĪʿA, AL-, a comprehensive bibliography of Imami Shiʿite works in twenty-five volumes compiled by Shaikh Moḥammad-Moḥsen Āqā Bozorg Ṭehrānī (1293-1389=1349 Š. /1876-1970); it contains about 55,000 entries for works written up to 1370 Š./1950-51. Āqā Bozorg initially conceived the project as a response to the work of…

DARJAZĪN (or Dargazīn), name of two rural subdistricts (dehestāns) and a village in the Razan district (baḵš) of Hamadān province. The administrative center for the subdistrict of Upper Darjazīn (Darjazīn-e ʿolyā) is Razan, for Lower Darjazˊīn (Darjazīn-e soflā) Fāmenīn. The average altitude of the Razan plain is 1,830 m above…

DARKE, Hubert Seymour Garland (b. London, 8 May 1919, d. Cambridge, 6 February 1998), teacher and scholar of Persian, Lecturer in Persian at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Oriental Studies from 1961 to 1982 (FIGURE 1). Both his parents were professional musicians, and he developed an early skill and lifelong interest…

DARMESTETER, JAMES (b. Château-Salins, Alsace, 12 March 1849, d. Paris, 19 October 1894), the great Iranist, was the son of a Jewish bookbinder, who in 1852 moved to Paris to improve his children’s educational opportunities. Through the prompting of his elder brother Arsène, himself a distinguished philologist specializing in medieval…

DARRA-YE BARRA (Valley of the lamb), a locality in Fārs province, 2.5 km east-northeast of the Achaemenid royal tombs at Naqš-e Rostam. Several rock-cut monuments are scattered on steep scree and in the cliff on the north side of the valley. They include chambers either hollowed out of the cliff…

DARRA-YE NŪR (Pašaī Därē-i No: Herrlich et al., pp. 343, 858; lit., “valley of light”; a suggested Pashto etymology, in Bābor-nāma, tr. Beveridge, app., pp. xxiii-xxv, is to be rejected), name of a small tributary valley on the right bank of the Konar river in eastern Afghanistan and the corresponding…

DARRA-YEṢŪF, name of a valley in northern Afghanistan, drained by a tributary of the right bank of the Balḵāb, and of the adjoining mountain district and its administrative center in Samangān province. The direct caravan route from Bāmīān to Mazār-e Šarīf passed through the valley, which has sometimes been erroneously transcribed…

DARRAGAZ, DARGAZ (Valley of the tamarisks), a fertile valley about 50-55 km east-west and 30-35 km north-south in the Kopet Dagh range in northern Khorasan, at about 450 m above sea level, in which are located a šahrestān (subprovince) and a town of the same name. i. Šahrestān and town….

DARRAŠŪRĪ,one of the five major tribes of the Qašqāʾī tribal confederation (see CONFEDERATIONS, TRIBAL). According to Zīād Khan Darrašūrī, a former kalāntar (chief) of the tribe, whom the author interviewed in spring 1957, the name Darrašūrī comes from that of a valley, the Darra-ye Šūr (Valley of salt), in the…

DARRŪS,district in northern Tehran east of Qol-hak and south of Qayṭarīya, all former suburbs of the city; it is located about 8 km from the center of the modern city. i. City quarter. ii. Archaeological artifacts. i. CITY QUARTER Darrūs appears to be an ancient settlement, probably originally known as…

DARVĀZ, until partition between czarist Russia and the Afghan kingdom in the last quarter of the 19th century a largely autonomous principality with territory on both sides of the upper course of the Āmū Daryā, known as the Panj. Today the portion of the former territory of Darvāz that lies…