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DRESDEN, MARK JAN (b. Amsterdam, 26 April 1911; d. Philadelphia, 16 August 1986), American iranist of Dutch origin. He was born to a family of eminent musicians and studied classics and Indology at the University of Amsterdam, receiving a master’s degree in 1937. He then transferred to the University of…

DREYFUS-BARNEY, joint surname adopted by two leading Bahai figures of the 20th century. i. Hippolyte Dreyfus-Barney. ii. Laura Clifford Dreyfus-Barney.   i. HIPPOLYTE DREYFUS-BARNEY Hippolyte Dreyfus (b. Paris, 12 April 1873, d. Paris, 20 December 1928), son of a prominent French Jewish family, became a leading Bahai scholar, translator, and…

DRIWAY- (or Driβi-), Younger Avestan noun from the Vidēvdād; it is not a substantive but an adjective in -i- referring to a defect of the body defined as “the mark of Aŋra Mainiiu” (see AHRIMAN; Vd. 2.29) or, in the compound akaranəm.driβi- “eternal driβi,” to the fly that embodies the…

DRIYŌŠĀNJĀDAG-GŌW UD DĀDWAR, Middle Persian title of a Sasanian official, “intercessor and judge of the poor.” The first word is the source of Persian dervish (see DARVIŠ), which has the meaning “worthy poor, one who lives in holy indigence.” The terms jādag-gōw and dādwar belong to the legal vocabulary and…

DṚNABĀJIŠ, name of the fifth month (July-August) of the Old Persian calendar, equivalent to Akkadian Ābu and Elamite Zillatam (several attestations in the Persepolis tablets only; see Hinz and Koch, pp. 1164, 1299-1300, 1305; cf. CALENDARS i). It is one of three month names that are not attested in the…

DRŌN (Mid. Pers. drōn, Bk. Pahl. dlwn < Av. draonah- “portion of food”; Gujarati Parsi darūn), Zoroastrian ritual term originally meaning “sacred portion” and designating a ritual offering to divine beings (Y. 33.8), for example, the portion of a sacrificial animal presented to the yazata Haoma (Hōm; Y. 11.4). In...

DRUGS (Pers. dārū, Pers-Ar. dawā, pl. adwīa), in medieval Muslim literature any vegetable, mineral, or animal substance that acts on the human body, whether as a medicament, a poison, or an antidote. Pre-Islamic Persia. Information on drugs in the pre-Islamic period is very scarce and, apart from clues in sources…

DRUJ-, Avestan feminine noun defining the concept opposed to that of aṧa-. Controversies about the meaning of the latter word have naturally had implications for the understanding of druj-. The corresponding verbal root in Indic (druh: drúhyati) seems to have the basic meaning “to blacken” (Mayrhofer, Dictionary II, pp. 79…

DRUMS, large group of percussion instruments. Structure. Persian drums can be classified in three families, according to structure. The first group consists of tambourines, or wooden frame drums, of various dimensions. In antiquity they were frequently represented in a variety of contexts, though more such representations survive from western than…

DRUSTBED (Pahl. drwdstpt; Syr. lw. drwstbyd; Margoliouth, p. 94; Ar. lw. drwst’bḏ) “chief physician” in the Sasanian period. As the title does not occur in the early Sasanian sources and those who are known to have held it were all recorded as having lived toward the end of this period,…

DRVĀSPĀ (or Drwāspā, Druuāspā, lit., “with solid horses”), Avestan goddess. Her name suggests that she must have been a divinity responsible for the health of horses. From the time of James Darmesteter, it has been customary to compare her to the Celtic Epona (Avesta, tr. Darmesteter, II, pp. 431-40). Nevertheless,…

DRYPETIS (Gk. Drýpĕtis [Arrian] or Drypêtis [Diodorus]), daughter of Darius III Codomannus (Arrian, 7.4.5) and younger sister of Stateira (Diodorus, 17.107.6); in the collective wedding arranged by Alexander the Great at Susa in 324 B.C.E. she was given in marriage to Hephaestion (Arrian, 7.4.5; Diodorus, 17.107.6). After Alexander’s death, which was…

DU MANS, FATHER RAPHAEL (b. Jacques Dutertre, Le Mans, France, where he was baptized 27 August 1613 at the cathedral of St.-Julien, d. Isfahan, 1 April 1696), author of important descriptions of Persia. His father was a lawyer attached to the presidial court of Le Mans, a member of the…

ḎŪ QĀR, watering place near Kūfa in Iraq where a battle was fought between Arab tribesmen and Persian forces in the early 7th century. In the 6th century the Sasanians relied on the Arab Lakhmid dynasty, with its capital at Ḥīra in Iraq, for defense of their southwestern frontier against…

ḎŪ-BAḤRAYN, a term in Persian and Arabic prosody designating a poem that can be scanned according to two or more different meters (baḥr). Traditionally it has been considered a rhetorical embellishment (badīʿ; q.v.) and known as šeʿr-e molawwan or motatawwan (lit., “variegated poem”). In Persian poetry the two meters ramal…