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ĀDURFRĀZGIRD, a brother of the Sasanian king Šāpūr II (A.D. 309-79) who is mentioned in the Syriac Acts of the Persian Martyrs (q.v.; G. Hoffmann, Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer, Leipzig, 1880, p. 24). The name is spelled ʾdrprzgrd; Hoffmann vocalized it, with emendation, as “Āḏurafrōzgerd.” The above reading,…

AELIANUS, CLAUDIUS, a sophist of the first third of the 3rd century A.D., from Praenest near Rome. Although he was a pure Roman, he spoke and wrote Greek fluently. Of his compositions in Greek, two are preserved: a treatise “On the Nature of Animals” and a collection entitled “Various Histories”…

AĒŠMA “wrath” in Younger Avestan: Gathic aēšəma-, Middle Persian (x)ēšm, Pāzand and New Persian ḵašm, ḵešm. (On the word’s root and its derivatives in Old Iranian and Old Indic, see F. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, Berlin, 1863, p. 139; S. Wikander, Der arische Männerbund, Lund, 1938, pp. 59-60.) The term indicates…

ĀFARĪN LĀHŪRĪ, SHAH FAQĪRALLĀH, Panjabi Persian poet (b. ca. 1070/1660, d. 1154/1741). Born in Lahore where he passed his whole life, he is said to have belonged to the Jūya, a Shiʿite tribe of the Guǰar community (Āzād Belgrāmī, Ḵezāna-ye ʿamera, Cawnpore, 1287/1871, p. 28). He was given a standard…

ĀFARĪN-NĀMA, a poem in the motaqāreb meter by the 4th/10th century poet Abū Šakūr Balḵī. The scattered extant verses, some 320 bayts in taḏkeras, dictionaries, and other books, indicate that in addition to purely didactic and homiletic material, the work probably contained stories as well. Three of the verses make…

AFḠĀNĪ, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN (1254-1314/1838 or 39-97; Figure 1), an outstanding ideologist and political activist of the late 19th century Muslim world, whose influence has continued strong in many Muslim countries. Although for much of his life he claimed to be of Afghan origin, probably in order to present himself as a Sunni…

AFGHAN (afḡān), in current political usage, any citizen of Afghanistan, whatever his ethnic, tribal, or religious affiliation. According to the 1977 constitution of the Republic of Afghanistan (1973-78), all Afghans are equal in rights and obligations before the law. In an attempt to alleviate the inevitable tensions and conflicts of an…

AFGHANI (afḡānī), the unit of currency in modern Afghanistan. Throughout the 19th century, Afghanistan’s unit of currency was the rupee (rūpya). In Qandahār, each rupee was equal to one-half miskal (2.3 gr.) pure silver or 36 paisa (paysa), and in Kabul each rupee was equal to one miskal pure silver…

AFGHANISTAN i. Geography. ii. Flora. iii. Fauna. iv. Ethnography. v. Languages. vi. Paṧto. vii. Parāčī. viii. Archeology. ix. Pre-Islamic Art. x. Political History. xi. Administration. xii. Literature. xiii. Forests and Forestry.

AFGHANISTAN i. Geography Natural regions. Afghanistan is a fan-shaped country extending from the Wāḵān “handle” in the northeast at about 70° east longitude, out through the highlands to the southwest desert border with Iran at about 61° 3l’ east longitude. From north to south the country extends from about 38°…

AFGHANISTAN ii. Flora Ecological conditions. Meteorological records on Afghanistan have been available since the late 1950s. The findings of the meteorological centers have been applied in climatic studies, maps, and tables of precipitation (see bibliog.); and these have shown the importance of precipitation and altitude as conditioning factors for the…

AFGHANISTAN iii. Fauna The complex geography of Afghanistan supports a particularly diversified fauna. The Hindu Kush mountains have been a barrier to a westward dispersal of most elements of the Indian fauna realm, and as a result most of the fauna is typically Palearctic. This overlap of two major zoogeographic…

AFGHANISTAN iv. Ethnography In their ethnolinguistic and physical variety the people of Afghanistan are as diverse as their country is in topography (see Figure 17). Basically, however, they may be described as of Muslim religion, speakers of Indo-European languages, and of the Mediterranean sub-stock of the great Caucasoid human stock…

AFGHANISTAN ix. Pre-Islamic Art Small, simple clay statues from the Neolithic period, which may be protective divinities, can be found in all sites from the Middle East to India; in Afghanistan one sees them in such places as Mondīgak (J. M. Casal, Fouilles de Mundigak, Paris, 1961), Nād-e ʿAlī (G….

AFGHANISTAN v. Languages It would be impossible to summarize here all the specialized research that has been carried out in linguistic and related ethnological fields. With few exceptions, dialectology and ethnology have proceeded independently; any attempt to provide a synthesis would reveal gaps at every stage and disparities that could…