Explore Iranica

EBĀḤĪYA (or EBĀḤATĪYA), a polemical term denoting either antinomianism or groups and individuals accused thereof. It occurs generally in the context of condemning pseudo-Sufis, although it is sometimes used in connection with a variety of other religious deviants. The word is derived from ebāḥat, which in the terminology of Islamic…

EBER-NĀRI (Aram. Abar Naharā, “Beyond/Across the river”), the Akkadian name used in Assyrian and Babylonian records of the 8th-5th centuries B.C.E. for the lands to the west of the Euphrates—i.e., Phoenicia, Syria, and Palestine (Parpola, p. 116; Zadok, p. 129; see ASSYRIA ii). These regions apparently passed from Neo-Babylonian to…

EBERMAN, VASILIĬ ALEKSANDROVICH (b. St. Petersburg, 1899, d. Orel, 1937), scholar of early Persian poets writing in Arabic. Born in the family of a surgeon of German origin, Eberman studied Arabic and Persian in 1917-21 at the Department of Oriental Languages at the University of Petrograd. As a researcher he…

EBLĀḠ (lit. “communication”), title of five Persian language newspapers. 1. A Constitutionalist weekly published in Tabrīz by the printer Maḥmūd Eskandānī, who also published Naẓmīya (1326/1908). The first issue was published on Thursday, ʿĪd-e Ḡadīr, 18 Ḏu’l-Ḥejja, probably in 1325, corresponding to 22 January 1908 (Rabino, no. 1, gives 1326/1909,…

EBLĪS in Persian Sufi Tradition. The word Eblīs, a Koranic designation for the devil, appears to derive ultimately from the Greek diabolos. Some authorities have nonetheless imaginatively connected it with Arabic ublisa (“he was rendered hopeless”), with reference to the accursedness that befell Eblīs as a result of his rebellion…

EBN ABHAR, MOḤAMMAD-TAQĪ (1270-1337/1854-1919), Bahai teacher and one of the “hands of the cause” (see AYĀDĪ-E AMR-ALLĀH). He was one of two Bahai sons of Mirza ʿAbd-al-Raḥīm Eṣfahānī (d. 1290/1872), the Shiʿite mojtahed, a crypto-Babi and Bahai, and Belqīs Ḵānom. His zealous Bahai teaching in Zanjān, Qazvīn, Tehran, Yazd, Kermān,…

EBN ABĪ JOMHŪR AḤSĀʾĪ, Moḥammad b. Zayn-al-Dīn Abi’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ḥosām-al-Dīn Ebrāhīm (b. ca. 837/1433-34; d. after 25 Ḏu ʾl-Qaʿda 904/4 July 1499), Shiʿite thinker. He lived and taught in his home town of Aḥsā in Baḥrayn, Najaf, and Mašhad during the last half of the 15th century. His best…

EBN ABĪ ṢĀDEQ, ABU’L-QĀSEM ʿABD-al-RAḤMĀN b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad NAYŠĀBŪRĪ (Nīšāpūr, 5th/11th century), medical author known in the century after his death, at least in Khorasan, as “the second Hippocrates” (Bayhaqī, p. 107), and reportedly a student of Avicenna (Ebn Abī Oṣaybeʿa, II, p. 22). His commentaries on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms…

EBN ABĪ ṬĀHER ṬAYFŪR, ABU’L-FAŻL AḤMAD (204-80/819-93), littérateur (adīb) and historian of Baghdad, of a Khorasani family. His extensive adab works include treatises on poets and singing, praised by Abu’l-Faraj Eṣfahānī in his Ketāb al-aḡānī, and the partially extant literary anthology Ketāb al-manṯūr wa’l-manẓūm (Cairo, 1326/1908), used by, among others, Abū…

EBN AL-AṮĪR, ʿEZZ-AL-DĪN ABU’L-ḤASAN ʿALĪ b. Moḥammad Jazarī (b. Jazīrat Ebn ʿOmar [modern Cizre, in eastern Turkey] 4 Jomādā I 555/13 May 1160; d. Mosul, Šaʿbān 630/June 1233), major Islamic historian and important source for the history of Persia and adjacent areas from the Samanids to the first Mongol invasion….

EBN AL-BALḴĪ, conventional name for an otherwise unknown author of Fārs-nāma, a local history and geography of the province of Fārs written in Persian during the Saljuq period, so-called because his ancestors came from Balḵ in eastern Khorasan (Balḵī-nežād, p. 3; the form “Ebn al-Balḵī” is used in Kašf al-ẓonūn,…

EBN AL-BAYṬĀR, ŻĪĀʾ-AL-DĪN ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ʿABD-ALLĀH b. Aḥmad (not Aḥmad-al-Dīn as in EI ² III, p. 737), Andalusian botanist and pharmacologist. He was born in Malaga (Ar. Mālaqa; hence his nesba Mālaqī) in the second half of the 6th/12th century, and died in Damascus in 646/1248 (for the scanty biographical…