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FARĀHĪ, ABŪ NAṢR BADR-al-DĪN MASʿŪD (or Moḥammad/Maḥmūd) b. Abī Bakr b. Ḥosayn b. Jaʿfar Farāhī, poet and litterateur (fl. 7th/13th cent.). He hailed from the city of Farāh (q.v.) in the province of Sīstān in what is now Afghanistan. Next to nothing is known of Farāhī’s life. Reportedly blind from…

FARĀHRŪD (Nahr Farah, Ar. translation of Farāhrūd, in Eṣṭaḵrī, pp. 244, 247; Ebn Ḥawqal, p. 420, tr. Kramers, p. 410; Moqaddasī, p. 329), river in southwestern Afghanistan, rising at about 3,300 meters above sea level in the Band-e Bayān (ḠÚōr), and, after a course of 712 km in a south-western…

FARAHVAŠI, Bahrām (b. Urmia, Iran, 30 March 1925; d. San Jose, U.S.A., 29 May 1992; Figure 1), scholar and professor of ancient Iranian languages at the University of Tehran. Bahrām Farahvaši was born into a family with a long tradition of literary and scholarly pursuits.  His father, ʿAli Moḥammad Farahvaši…

FARĀLĀVĪ, the conventional reading of the name of an early Persian poet. Our sole biographical source is Moḥammad ʿAwfī’s Lobāb al-albāb (II, p. 5), which includes him in the chapter on the poets of the Samanids and quotes two verses by him. According to ʿAwfī, his full name was Abū…

FARĀMARZ, son of Iran’s national hero Rostam (q.v.), and himself a renowned hero of the Iranian national epic. His adventures were very popular, especially during the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries (Balʿamī, ed. Bahār, I, p. 133; II, p. 687; Farroḵī, vv. 1027, 7654). According to the Tārīḵ-e Sīstān (p. 7),…

FARĀMARZ-NĀMA, a Persian epic recounting the adventures of the hero Farāmarz. According to the Tārīḵ-e Sīstān (p. 7) there was an account of Farāmarz (aḵbār-e Farāmarz) in twelve volumes, but this work, presumably in prose, has been lost. Instead, two Farāmarz-nāmas, both poems composed in the motaqāreb meter (ᴗ–), are…

FARĀMARZĪ, ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN (b.12 Rabīʾ I 1315/11 August 1897 in Gačūya, Farāmarzān, Fārs; d. 20 Tīr 1351 Š./11 July 1972, Tehran; Figure 1), an outspoken journalist, writer, educator, Majles deputy, and poet. Farāmarzī was the youngest son of Shaikh ʿAbd-al-Wāḥed, scholar, teacher, and chief of the Farāmarzī clan, who migrated to…

FARĀNAK, according to the Šāh-nāma, the mother of Ferēdūn; also the name of a wife of Bahrām V Gōr (q.v.).

FARANGĪ MAḤALL (FERANGĪ MAḤAL), family of Indian Muslim teachers, Hanafite scholars, and mystics active over the last 300 years. The family claims descent, through the well-known 11th-century Persian Hanbalite scholar and Sufi poet ʿAbd-Allāh Anṣāriī (q.v.) Heravī, from Abū Ayyūb Ḵāled Anṣārī (d. ca. 52/672), host of the Prophet Moḥammad…

FARANGĪS, eldest daughter of Afrāsīāb and wife of Sīāvaḵš. In the Bundahišn (TD2, 35.21) her name is Vīspān-fryā. In Ṭabarī (I, p. 604) it appears as Vasfāfarīd and Vasfafarah. In Ṯaʿālebī’s Ḡorar (p. 205), however, it is recorded as Kasīfarī. On that basis, one might speculate that the no longer…

FARAS-NĀMA, Persian term for a category of books and manuals dealing with horses and horsemanship. Topics treated in this literary genre include horse-breeding, grazing, dressage, veterinary advice, horseracing and betting, and the art of divination based on the mien and movements of horses. Persian literature in general abounds with references…