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AḤRĀR, KǰᵛĀJA ʿOBAYDALLĀH B. MAḤMŪD (806-96/1404-90), influential Naqšbandī of Transoxania. Surprisingly little is known of his career, and the sources are often contradictory or biased. He was born in 806/1404 at Bāḡestān in the welāyat of Tashkent, into a family of hereditary shaikhs with agricultural and commercial interests. He studied…

AHRIMAN (Avestan: Angra/Aŋra Mainyu; not attested in Old Persian), demon, God’s adversary in the Zoroastrian religion. He seems to have been an original conception of Zoroaster’s; and the scanty evidence in the Gathas on this point may perhaps be supplemented from later sources. But the notion of Ahriman did not…

AHRIŠWANG, a learned transcription of the Avestan nominative Ašiš vaŋuhī, the goddess “Good Recompense.” In the Gathas the word aši- denotes “due recompense” as well as its personification. According to M. Boyce (Zoroastrianism I, p. 226) in YAv. Aši vaŋuhī the epithet vaŋuhī “good” underlines the Zoroastrian nature of the…

AḤSAN AL-TAQĀSĪM FĪ MAʿREFAT AL-AQĀLĪM, a celebrated geographical work in Arabic written towards the end of the 4th/10th century by Šams-al-dīn Abū ʿAbdallāh Moḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr al-Bannāʾ al-Šāmī al-Maqdesī al-Baššārī (thus named in one of the two surviving principal manuscripts of his work). The form al-Maqdesī is…

AḤSAN AL-TAWĀRĪḴ, a chronological history of Iran and the neighboring countries written by Ḥasan Beg Rūmlū (b. 937/1530-31), a qūṛčī in the service of the Safavid Shah Ṭahmāsb. The first volume includes the historical events of Iran, the Ottoman empire, and Transoxania from 807/1405, the accession of the Timurid Šāhroḵ,…

AḤSĀʾĪ, SHAIKH AḤMAD B. ZAYN-AL-DĪN, 1166-1241/1753-1826, Shiʿite ʿālem and philosopher and unintending originator of the Šayḵī school of Shiʿism in Iran and Iraq. Life. He was born in Raǰab, 1166/May, 1753 in the small Shiʿite village of al-Matayrafī in the oasis of al-Aḥsā (al-Ḥasā) near the east coast of the…

AHU, two homonymous Avestan terms. 1. “Existence, life.” This word occurs in a range of religious phrases: (a) Both the Gathas and the Younger Avesta contrast ahu-astvat- “material existence” (lit., “existence inhering in the bones, bone-existence”) and ahu- manaŋhō “spiritual existence” (see Yasna 28.2, 40.2, 43.3, 53.6, 57.25; Pursišnīhā 40;…

ĀHŪ, gazelle. i. The gazelle in Iran today. ii. The gazelle in literature.   i. The Gazelle in Iran Today Two species of gazelle occur in Iran, Gazella sub-gutturosa, represented by one subspecies, G. s. sub-gutturosa, the goitered gazelle; and G. dorcas, represented by two subspecies, G. d fuscifrons, the…

AHUNWAR, Middle Persian form of Avestan Ahuna Vairya, name of the most sacred of the Gathic prayers (Y. 27.13, etc.). It is so named after the opening phrase, yaθa ahū vairyō. Its text contains important points of Zarathuštra’s teaching (cf., especially, Y. 29 and 53.9), but its precise total sense…

AHURA, designation of a type of deity inherited by Zoroastrianism from the prehistoric Indo-Iranian religion. In the Rig Veda, asura denotes the “older gods,” such as the “Father Asura” (10.124.3), Varuṇa, and Mitra, who originally ruled over the primeval undifferentiated Chaos. The emergence of the dualistic cosmos was a process…

AHURA MAZDĀ (Old Persian Ahuramazda, Parth. Aramazd, Pahl. Ohrmazd/Hormizd, NPers. Ormazd), the Avestan name with title of a great divinity of the Old Iranian religion, who was subsequently proclaimed by Zoroaster as God. His Indian counterpart, it has been argued, was the nameless, exalted Asura of the Rigveda; but this…

AHURA.ṰKAĒŠA, an infrequent Avestan adjective meaning “following the Ahuric doctrine.” Its oldest occurrence is probably in the Fravarānē, the Zoroastrian confession of faith, which begins (Y. 12.1), fravarānē mazdayasnō zaraθuštriš vīdaēvō ahura.ṱkaēšō . . . “I profess myself a worshiper of Mazdā, a Zoroastrian, rejecting the daēvas, following the Ahuric…

AHURĀNĪ, feminine deity of the waters. A complete yašt, hidden in the Yasna as chapter 68, is dedicated to her. (Similar cases are: Y. 9-11, the Hōm Yašt and Yašt 57, the Srōš Yašt.) Ahurānī is not one of the “official” yazatas and has no day in the calendar—possibly because…

AHVĀZ, a city of southwestern Iran. Located in the province of Ḵūzestān at 31°19′ north latitude and 48°46′ east longitude, elevation 82 feet, Ahvāz lies on the Kārūn (early Islamic Doǰayl) river below its confluence with the Dezfūl river or Āb-e Dez in the Ḵūzestān plain, but at a point where the river…

AHVĀZ i. History Ahvāz was apparently a flourishing town in pre-Islamic times, to be identified either with the Aginis of the Greek geographers or, more probably, with the Achaemenid Tareiana, where the royal road from Susa to Persepolis and the heartland of Fārs crossed the river on a bridge of…