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EBN AŠTAR, the name usually given to Abu Noʿmān Ebrāhim b. Mālek al-Aštar b. al-Hāreṯ al-Naḵaʿi (i.e., of al-Naḵaʿ, a branch of the South Arabian Maḏḥej tribal group), Arab chief and Shiʿite military leader (d. at Maskin on the Tigris, in Jomādā I 72/September-October 691). His father Mālek Aštar was…

EBN BĀBĀ KĀŠĀNĪ (Qāšānī), ABU’L-ʿABBĀS (d. Marv, 510/1116-17), Persian writer and boon-companion (nadīm), whose manual for courtiers preserves otherwise lost information on the later Ghaznavids. Presumably a native of Kāšān, Ebn Bābā worked in western Persia, Baghdad, and finally Khorasan, probably at the court of the Saljuqid Sultan Sanjar. His…

EBN BĀBAWAYH (Bābūya), family of Persian builders, luster potters, and tile makers, descended from the Shiʿite scholar Ebn Bābūya al-Ṣadūq (d. 382/991) and active in the 6th to 8th/12th to 14th centuries in central Persia. Several members are known. 1. Emām Jamāl-al-Dīn Bābūya Rāfeʿī, a builder (meʿmār), who in 572/1176-77…

EBN BĀBAWAYH (Bābūya), SHAIKH ṢADŪQ ABŪ JAʿFAR MOḤAMMAD b. Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī … Mūsā Qomī (b. Qom after 305, probably about 311/923; d. Ray, 381/991), author of one of the authoritative four books of Imami Shiʿite Hadith, Man lā yaḥżoroho’l-faqīh. Life. Ebn Bābawayh was the most eminent traditionist and jurist of…

EBN BAQIYA, MOḤAMMAD b. MOḤAMMAD b. BAQIYA, ABU ṬĀHER, called Naṣir-al-Dawla and Nāṣeḥ “Counselor,” vizier of the Buyids in Iraq, b. 314/926, d. 367/978. He was born at ʿAwāna to the north of Baghdad of peasant stock; later in his career, detractors would accuse him of promoting base men to…

EBN BAṬṬŪṬA, ŠAMS-AL-DĪN ABŪ ʿABD-ALLĀH MOḤAMMAD (b. Tangier, 17 Rajab 703 /25 February 1304; d. Morocco, 770/1368-9), the most famous Muslim traveler. A Berber from Tangier, he claims to have traveled extensively in Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and China. His Toḥfat al-noẓẓār fī ḡarāʾeb al-amṣār wa…

EBN BAZZĀZ, DARVĪŠ TAWAKKOLĪ b. Esmāʿīl b. Ḥājī Ardabīlī, author of the Ṣafwat al-ṣafāʾ, a biography of Shaikh Ṣafī-al-Dīn Esḥāq Ardabīlī (d. 935/1334), founder of the Safavid order of Sufis and the eponym of the Safavid dynasty. Ebn Bazzāz was a disciple of Shaikh Ṣadr-al-Dīn Ardabīlī (d. 794/1391-92), the son…

EBN BĪBĪ, NĀṢER-AL-DĪN ḤOSAYN b. Moḥammad b. ʿAlī Jaʿfarī Roḡadī, Persian historian and man of letters. He was the son of the scribe (monšī) Majd-al-Dīn Moḥammad, who had worked under Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad, grandfather of ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Jovaynī. His mother Bībī Monajjema was the daughter of Kamāl-al-Dīn Semnānī and granddaughter of the…

EBN BOḴTĪŠŪʿ, prominent family of physicians of Gondēšāpūr at court during the early ʿAbbasid period. Notwithstanding their continued oral competence in Persian and the Persian aspects of their identity, the Boḵtīšūʿ family used Syriac and Arabic in their medical writings. Eminent members of this family are the following: 1. Jewarjīs…

EBN DĀROST, MAJD-AL-WOZARĀʾ MOḤAMMAD b. Manṣūr (d. Ahvā, 467/1074), vizier to the ʿAbbasid caliph al-Qāʾem from 15 Rabīʿ II 453/9 May 1061 to 4 Ḏu’l-ḥejja 454/9 December 1062. He seems to have been a native of Fārs, where he had been a wealthy merchant connected with the Buyid Abū Kālījār…

EBN DĀROST, TĀJ-AL-MOLK ABU’L-ḠANĀʾEM MARZBĀN b. Ḵosrow-Fīrūz Šīrāzī (438-86/1046-93), last vizier of the Great Saljuq Sultan Malekšāh (r. 465-85/1072-92). Born of a secretarial family in Fārs, he served the Saljuq slave amir Qoṭb-al-Dīn Sāvtegīn in southern Persia and Iraq during the early part of Malekšāh’s reign. Sāvtegīn commended him to…

EBN DĀʿĪ RĀZĪ, ABŪ TORĀB ṢAFĪ-AL-DĪN MORTAŻĀ b. Dāʿī b. Qāsem Rāzī Ḥosaynī (or Ḥasanī), known as ʿAlam-al-Hodā (d. after 525/1132), Imami traditionist and author of a heresiography in Persian. He and his brother Mojtabā transmitted Hadith directly from Jaʿfar b. Moḥammad Dūryastī and, through ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān b. Aḥmad Nīšābūrī, from…

EBN DOROSTAWAYH (Dorostūya), ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ʿABD-ALLĀH b. Jaʿfar b. Dorostawayh b. Marzbān (b. Fasā, 258/871; d. Baghdad, Ṣafar 347/May 958), grammarian and lexicographer of Persian origin. Though he shared his father’s interest in Hadith (Taʾrīḵ Baḡdād IX, p. 429), his main pursuits were philological. No books by him have survived…