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AJINA TEPE, the present-day name of the mound covering the ruins of an early medieval Buddhist monastery (sarighārāma). It is situated twelve km east of the town of Kurgan Tube (Tajik SSR), in the Wakhsh valley (the river Wakhsh is one of the main tributaries of the river Panj, i.e.,…

AJMER (Aǰmēr, from Skt. Ajayameru), a city in Rajasthan, western India, of great strategic, commercial, and cultural importance from the 6th/12th to the 12th/18th centuries. It was the single most important site for the transfer of elements of Islamic (mainly Persian) culture to the Rajput nobility, especially by way of…

ĀJŪDĀN-BĀŠĪ, a Persian term translating the French military title adjudant-en-chef; the first half of the term is borrowed from the French, while the rest is rendered by Tk. bāšī. In the military organization of the Qajar period, the āǰūdān-bāšī was aide and deputy to the army commander (amīr-e neẓām). The…

ĀKAUFAČIYĀ (a-k-u-f-č-i-y-a), name of a tribe resident in the southeastern part of the Achaemenid empire, attested only once (in nom. plur.) in the list of countries and peoples in sec. 3 of Xerxes’ so-called “daiva inscription” XPh 27 (Kent, Old Persian, p. 151), where these *Ākaufaka-inhabitants (cf. as a morphological…

AḴAWAYNĪ BOḴĀRĪ, ABŪ BAKR RABĪʿ B. AḤMAD, 4th/10th century physician who worked in Boḵārā presumably all his life; author of Hedāyat al-motaʿallemīn fi’l-ṭebb, his only extant book and sole source of information about him. He names Abu’l-Qāsem Ṭāher b. Moḥammad b. Ebrāhīm Maqāneʿī Rāzī, a student of Moḥammad b. Zakarīyāʾ…

AḴBĀR AL-AḴYĀR, the most reliable taḏkera of early Indian Sufis, by Shaikh ʿAbd-al-Ḥaqq Moḥaddeṯ Dehlavī (d. 1052/1642). The book has been so carefully pruned of factual errors and legendary accretions that the shaikh appears to have applied oṣūl-e esnād, the yard-stick of Hadith scholarship, to the study of medieval saints…

AḴBĀR AL-DAWLAT AL-SALJŪQĪYA, an Arabic chronicle on the history of the Great Saljuq dynasty in Iran and Iraq, conventionally ascribed to the person mentioned at the head of the work as “al-Amīr al-Sayyed al-Emām al-Aǰall al-Kabīr Ṣadr-al-dīn Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-Sayyed al-Aǰall al-Emām al-Šahīd Abu’l-Fawāres Nāṣer b. ʿAlī al-Ḥosaynī;” this…

AḴBĀR AL-ṬEWĀL, KETĀB AL- (“The book of the long historical narratives”), title of a historical work by the Persian writer of ʿAbbasid times Abū Ḥanīfa Aḥmad b. Dāwūd b. Wanand Dīnavarī, d. ca. 282/894-95 or, at the latest, by 290/902-03. Although very few of his numerous works have survived (the…

AKBAR SEPAHDĀR-E AʿẒAM, FATḤALLĀH KHAN, prime minister of Iran from Ābān, 1299 Š./October, 1920 to Esfand, 1299 Š./February, 1921. At different times he was known by his successive titles as Bēglerbēgī, Sālār-e Afḵam, Sālār-e Aʿẓam, Sardār-e Manṣūr (from 1320/1902-03), and Sepahdār-e Aʿẓam (from 1333/1914-15). A rich notable of Gīlān, he…

AKBAR I, ABU’L-FATḤ JALĀL-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD (949-1014/1542-1605), third and greatest of the Mughal emperors of India. Akbar established the patterns of Mughal government and culture during his forty-nine year reign. While he worked successfully to establish his empire as one of the major sovereign states of the Islamic world, independent of…

AKBAR KHAN ZAND (d. 1196/1782), youngest son of Zakī Khan Zand. Cruel and ambitious, Akbar never rose to primacy, but he played an active and violent role in the internecine power struggle that followed the death of Karīm Khan Zand in 1193/1779. Zakī Khan, who first seized power, left Akbar…

AḴBĀR-E MOḠOLĀN, an original and independent source prepared by Qoṭb-al-Din Širāzi (1236-1311) on the reign of the Il-Khan Hulāgu Khan and his immediate successors, Abaqa and Aḥmad Tegüdār. The Aḵbār-e Moḡolān, penned, though not necessarily authored or endorsed, by Širāzi, recounts the rule of Hulāgu Khan and his son Abaqa and the travails and ultimate demise and death of Abaqa’s brother…

AKBAR-NĀMA, the official history of the reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (964-1015/1556-1605), including a statistical gazetteer of sixteenth century North India, compiled by Abu’l-Fażl ʿAllāmī. One of the fundamental source materials for the history of Mughal India, the Akbar-nāma is divided into three books. The first book presents Akbar’s…

AḴBĀRĪ, MĪRZĀ MOḤAMMAD (1178-1233/1765-1818), a leading exponent of the Aḵbārī school of feqh and a violent polemicist against its opponents. He was born in Akbarābād, India, but settled in the ʿatabāt in 1198/1784, after performing the ḥaǰǰ. There he engaged in bitter and sometimes scurrilous controversy with the adherents of…