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DĪNWA’L-ḤAYĀT, AL-, a bi-weekly religious magazine published in Tabrīz, 1346-50/1928-31, replacing another Tabrīz religious magazine, Taḏakkorāt-e dīnī. Starting with its second year, it became a monthly magazine. Its owner and director, and probably also the writer of all of its articles, was Hājj Mīrzā ʿAlī Moqaddas, a Tabrīzī cleric about…

DINAR (NPers. dīnār, Mid. Pers dēnār < Lat. denarius aureus), a gold coin. i. In pre-Islamic Persia. ii. In Islamic Persia.   i. IN PRE-ISLAMIC PERSIA From the period of the Roman Republic the word denarius was used for coinage in the east, whereas in Rome and the west aureus...

DĪNĀR, MALEK b. Moḥammad (d. 591/1195), a leader of the Oghuz Turkmen in Khorasan and, in the latter years of the 12th century, ruler of Kermān. He is first mentioned as one of the Oghuz tribal chiefs who in 548/1153 brought about the downfall of the Saljuq sultan Sanjar (511-52/1118-57)…

DĪNAVAR (occasionally vocalized Daynavar), in the first centuries of Islam an important town in Jebāl, now ruined. Its site lies northeast of modern Kermānšāh, at 34° 35’ N, 47° 26’ E, on an upland plain (elev. 1,600 m) traversed by what the medieval traveler Abū Dolaf called the river of…

DĪNAVARĪ, ABŪ ḤANĪFA AḤMAD b. Dāwūd b. Vanand (d. between 281/894 and 290/903), grammarian, lexicographer, astronomer, mathematician, and Islamic traditionist of Persian origin, who lived at Dīnavar and in several cities in Iraq in the 9th century. There is little information on his life, but he is known to have attended…

DĪNAVARĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ʿABD-ALLĀH b. Ḥamdān b. Wahb b. Bešr (d. 308/902; incorrectly identified with ʿAbd-Allāh b. Mobārak Dīnavarī, by Brockelmann, GAL I, p. 204, Suppl. I, p. 334, and Sezgin, GAS I, p. 42), traditionist and ḥāfeẓ (preserver of the Koranic text). He conversed in the circle of Abū…

DĪNAVARĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ʿABD-ALLĀH b. Mobārak (d. first half of the 10th century), author of a tafsīr (koranic exegesis) entitled al-Wāżeḥfī tafsīr al-Qorʾān,which is preserved in several manuscripts (Brockelmann, GAL I, p. 204, S. I, p. 334; Sezgin, GAS I, p. 42, in both of which the author is incorrectly…

DĪNĀVARĪYA (Ar. and Pers.< Mid. Pers. dēnāwar “having religion, pious, upright”), in Manichean usage originally “the elect.” The term was ultimately derived from the Iranian substantive (attested in Mid. Pers. dēnawar, Parth. dēnāβar, and Sogd. δēnāβar and its feminine derivation δynʾβrʾnc, pl. δyʾβrʾšt). Judging from the Arabic form, the early...

DINON (fl. approximately 360-30 B.C.E., based upon a reference in his work to the reconquest of Egypt by Artaxerxes III in 343-42 B.C.E.; Jacoby, Fragmente IIIC, no. 690, fragm. 30), author of a historical work on the Ancient Orient. He was a citizen of Colophon in Asia Minor and father of…

DIO CASSIUS (more correctly, Cassius Dio; b. Nicea, Bithynia, ca. 160, d. Nicea, after 229), Roman official whose Rhomaikē Historia (ed. U. P. Boissevain, 3 vols., Berlin, 1896-1901) is important for the study of Parthian history. He was the son of a government official under Marcus Aurelius and during the…

DIO COCCEIANUS, surnamed Chrysostom (golden-mouthed), a travling scholar who in his 36th Oration (known as the “Borysthenian” or “Olbian” from its dramatic setting), written about 100 C.E., purports to summarize a hymn composed by Zoroaster and sung by the magi “in secret rites” (text and commentary in Bidez and Cumont,…