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DĪVĀNBEGĪ i. The Timurid period. ii. The Safavid period.   i. THE TIMURID PERIOD Dīvānbegī was the designation for the highest-ranking officer in the Timurid office of finance and justice (dīvān-e aʿlā). The dīvānbegī (cf. Pers. amīr-e dīvān) was responsible for placing the seal on decrees and was particularly concerned…

DIVINATION (Per. morvā, morḡvā, šogūn zadan, fāl, fāl gereftan/zadan, tafaʾʾol), the art or technique of gaining knowledge of future events or distant states by means of observing and interpreting signs. Various objects or events may serve as media of divination. Here we discuss only those interpretive acts which have the…

DIVORCE, legal termination of marriage. In the following series of articles only those communities are taken into consideration which are either Iranian or are focused in Persia. For this reason Jewish and Christian practices have not been included. i. In the Achaemenid period. ii. In the Parthian and Sasanian periods….

DJANBAZIAN (Jānbāziān), Sarkis (b. Armaveer, Armenia, 15 January 1913; d. Tehran, 11 December 1963), the first male ballet master, and a dancer, choreographer, and producer, as well as the founder of a ballet academy in Iran (FIGURE 1). He was also among the pioneer male ballet dancers who performed on…

DO-BAYTĪ, a quatrain of sung poetry in many Persian dialects. In popular speech and publications the quatrains are commonly described as tarānahā-yemaḥallī/rūstāʾī (regional/rural songs). Many of the verses, however, are widely diffused in Persia, in part through inexpensive printed collections. Regional differences are perhaps most pronounced in the melodies to…

DOĀB-E MĪḴZARĪN (Doab-i Mekhe Zarin; 35°15´-35°16´ N, 67°58´-68°01´ E), a group of archeological sites with numerous pre-Islamic mud-brick ruins on either side of the Sorḵāb river, on the road from Bāmīān to Došī, opposite the entrance to the Kahmard valley. There are remains of large fortresses on both banks of…

DOCUMENTS, production and registration of. i. In pre-Islamic periods. ii. Babylonian and Egyptian documents in the Achaemenid period. iii. In the modern period. See DAFTAR-E ASNĀD-E RASMĪ.   i. IN PRE-ISLAMIC PERIODS The function of a notarial institution is not explicitly set forth in the extant records for all pre-Islamic…

DOERFER, GERHARD (b. Königsberg, 8 March 1920; d. Göttingen, 27 December 2003), German scholar of Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungus languages. LIFE Life and academic career.  Gerhard Doerfer was born to Franz and Adina Doerfer, in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) in East Prussia. He attended the primary school in Königsberg until 1928,…