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GANJ-EŠAKAR, FARĪD-AL-DĪN MASʿŪD, popularly known as Bābā Farīd, a major Shaikh of the Češtīya (q.v.) mystic order, born in the last quarter of the 6th/12th century in Kahtwāl near Moltān, Punjab. His family, who held the office of local judges, had migrated from Kabul in Afghanistan to the Indus valley…

GANJ-NĀMA (lit. treasure book), location in a pass at an altitude of about 2,000 m across the Alvand Kūh (q.v.) leading westward to Tūyserkān, 12 km southwest of Hamadān (q.v.). Apparently, in the pre-Hellenistic period, this was the major east-west pass through the Alvand. On a vertically cut rock face…

GANJ-ʿALĪ KHAN, a military leader and governor of Kermān, Sīstān, and Qandahār under Shah ʿAbbās I (996-1038/1588-1629). He was present at the head of his Kermānī forces in many battles (e.g., against the Uzbeks in 1006/1597, in Khorasan in 1011/1602, against the Ottomans in 1013/1604). He also put down the…

GANJA (Ar. Janza), the Islamic name of a town in the early medieval Islamic province of Arrān (the classical Caucasian Albania, Armenian Alvankʿ; see ARRĀN). In imperial Russian times, the town was called Elisavetpol after 1813; in Soviet times, when it came within the Azerbaijan SSR, it was first called…

GANJAʾĪ, REŻĀ (b. Tabrīz, 9 Ābān 1397 Š./31 November 1918; d. Geneva, 17 Šahrīvar 1374 Š./8 Sept. 1995; Figure 1), journalist, cabinet member, and university professor. One of his ancestors, Jawād Khan Zīādlū, was the last Persian governor of Ganja and was killed with one of his sons when the Russians…

GANJĪNA-YE FONŪN, a biweekly magazine published in Tabrīz for a year (1 Ḏu’l-qaʿda 1320-15 Šawwāl 1321/30 January 1903-4 January 1904) by the joint efforts of Mīrzā Moḥammad-ʿAlī Tarbīat, Sayyed Ḥasan Taqīzāda, Mīrzā Yūsof Āštīānī Eʿteṣām (later Eʿteṣām-al-Molk, q.v.), and Mīrzā Sayyed Ḥosayn ʿAdālat, who operated from a bookstore owned by…

GANZABARA (treasurer), titleof provincial and sub-provincial financial administrators in the Achaemenid empire, extended to workers attached to Achaemenid treasuries; title of financial administrators in Parthian and Sasanian provinces; title of temple administrators in post-exile Judaism and in Hellenistic Babylonia. Title. The cluster -nz- (rather than -nd- or the unmetathesized -zn-)…

GANZAK (Ganja, Gk. Gazaca, Lat. Gaza, Ganzaga, Ar. Janza, Jaznaq), a town of Achaemenid foundation in Azerbaijan. The name means “treasury” and is a Median form (against Pers. gazn-), adopted in Persian administrative use (Hübchmann, pp. 231-32; Marquart, p. 160 n. 2; Henning, pp. 196-98). Like other towns similarly named,…

GAOTƎMA, an Avestan proper name only attested in Yt. 13.16: “An eloquent man will be born, who makes his words heard in verbal contests, whose judgment is sought after, who comes away from the discussion victorious over the defeated Gaotəma.” The word is a superlative formation of Av. gaṷ- “neat,…

ḠĀR (cave) (غار) and Stone Age cave dwellers in Iran. Caves and rock shelters were particularly attractive living places for the hunter gatherers of the early Paleolithic period and the geographic situation of the Iranian Plateau with its bordering mountain systems including the Zagros range on the west and the Alborz…