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EḴTĪĀR MONŠĪ, ḴᵛĀJA, a master calligrapher of the chancery taʿlīq style from Herat (fl. mid 10th/16th cent.). Eḵtīār never left his native city and worked, according to Qāżī Aḥmad, for thirty years on the chancery documents of the Safavid prince Sultan Moḥammad Ḵodā-banda, who was appointed governor of Khorasan in…

EḴTĪĀR-AL-DĪN, the citadel of Herat (referred to in the sources as qalʿa, ḥeṣār), located on an elevation adjacent to the north wall of the old city (Esfezārī, I, p. 77), and actually consisting of two parts, the stronghold proper—a rectangle of fired brick measuring about 18 x 42 m, and…

EḴTĪĀRĀT (choices, elections), a term used in Islamic divination and astrology in at least four principle meanings: 1. It refers to hemerologies in which each of the thirty days of a month, either synodic or conventional (e.g., the Persian hemerology), is characterized as being good (saʿd) or bad (naḥs) for…

EḴWĀN AL-MOSLEMĪN, JAMʿĪYAT AL- (Society of Muslim bretheren), the first modern religio-political movement in the Islamic world, founded in 1928 by Ḥasan Bannāʾ (1906-49) in Esmāʿīlīya Egypt. Mass membership and a forceful stance against the corrupt ruling elite and for national sovereignty gave the Eḵwān considerable influence in Egyptian political…

EḴWĀN AL-ṢAFĀʾ, a self-professed brotherhood of piously ascetic scholars. In order to advertise and propagate their special mix of philosophy and religion, the Eḵwān al-Ṣafāʾ wrote a lengthy account of all the known sciences and how the study of each in turn contributes to help liberate the soul and set…

ELĀHĪ, ḤĀjj NŪR ʿALĪ (or ʿAlīšāh; 1895-1974; Plate I), innovative and charismatic leader of one branch of the Ahl-e Ḥaqq (q.v.) and author of several texts on its teachings. i. Biography ii. Teachings iii. Music   i. Biography Nūr-ʿAlī Elāhī was born in the village of Jeyḥūnābād, some twelve kilometers…

ELĀHĪ HAMADĀNĪ, SAYYED MĪR ʿEMĀD-AL-DĪN MAḤMŪD b. Ḥojjat-Allāh Asadābādī, a poet of the 17th century from Asadābād, a village near Hamadān. He spent a few years in Shiraz studying and then moved to Isfahan, where he stayed for about two years, working at a coffeehouse and associating with poets like…

ELĀHĪ QOMŠA’Ī, MAHDĪ b. Abu’l-Ḥasan, poet and professor of Islamic law and philosophy (b. in Qomša, ca 1320/1902; d. in Tehran, 1354 Š./1975). His ancestors had emigrated from Bahrain to Qomša (present-day Šahreżā) near Isfahan during the reign of Nāder Shah (1148-60/1735-47). Mahdī learned the basics of Islamic sciences under…

ELAHI, BIJAN (بیژن الهی, Bijan Elāhi, b. Tehran, 16 Tir 1324Š./ 7 July 1945; d. Tehran, 10 Āḏar 1389Š./ 1 December 2010; Figure 1, Figure 2), modernist poet and translator. LIFE Bijan Elahi was the only child born into the affluent family of ʿAli Moḥammad and Qodsi Elahi. He abandoned…

ELAM, ancient country encompassing a large part of the Persian plateau at the end of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. but reduced to the territory of Susiana in the Achaemenid period. The name Elam is derived from Greek Aylam, itself borrowed from Hebrew ʿElām; the Elamites called their country Ha(l)tamti/Hatamti “lord…

ELAM i. The history of Elam For a long time scholars confused Elam with Susiana, equivalent to the plain and lower Zagros foothills in the present Persian province of Ḵūzestān. Two important factors have recently modified this understanding, however. First, Tal-e Malyan (Mālīān) in Fārs has been identified as the…

ELAM ii. The archeology of Elam The archeological use of the term “Elam” is based on a loose unity recognizable in the material cultures of the period 3400-525 B.C.E. at Susa in Ḵūzestān, at Anshan (q.v.) in Fārs, and at sites in adjacent areas of the Zagros mountains, particularly in…

ELAM iii. Proto-Elamite “Proto-Elamite” is the term for a writing system in use in the Susiana plain and the Iranian highlands east of Mesopotamia between ca. 3050 and 2900 B.C.E., a period generally considered to correspond to the Jamdat Nasr/Uruk III through Early Dynastic I periods in Mesopotamia. This span…