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HERAUS, Central Asian clan chief of the Kushans, one of the five constituent tribes of the Yuezhi confederacy in the early first century C.E. He struck tetradrachms and obols in relatively good silver (80 to 87 percent fine) to a reduced Attic weight standard of 15 to 16 gm, instead…

HĒRBED (or Hērbad, Ērvad), a Zoroastrian priestly title, at present used for a “priest in minor orders,” that is, a man of priestly family who has undergone the initiatory Nāwar ceremony and is qualified to officiate at lower rituals. The Middle Persian form hērbed derives from Av. aēθrapaiti, which denoted…

HĒRBEDESTĀN (school for priests, religious school), a Middle Persian term designating (1) Zoroastrian priestly studies and (2) an Avestan/Pahlavi text found together with the Nērangestān manuscripts. The term hērbedestān, which derives from Middle Persian hērbed (q.v.), is generally translated as “courses of (advanced) priestly studies” or “religious studies.” It refers…

HERBELOTde MOLAINVILLE, BARTHÉLEMY D’ (1625-95), French orientalist whose monumental four-volume encyclopedia, the Bibliothèque orientale (1697), was published posthumously by Antoine Galland (1646-1715), himself a noted orientalist and the first European translator of The Thousand and One Nights (see ALF LAYLA WA LAYLA). Writing at a time when Europeans regarded “the…

HERBERT, SIR THOMAS, author of the first English account of Persia. Herbert was born in York in 1606 of a minor aristocratic family connected with business interests. He made a name for himself in London in court circles and accompanied the royal embassy of Sir Dodmore Cotton from King Charles…

HERBERT, Sir Thomas  (b. York, 2 November 1606; d. York, 1 March 1682), English soldier, traveler and antiquarian who traveled to Persia (FIGURE 1). Thomas Herbert, the son of Christopher Herbert and Jane Ackroyd, came from a family of merchants and aldermen. His grandfather had been Governor of the Merchant…

HERDS and FLOCKS. In the Iranian world, domestic herbivores have long been raised exclusively on natural grazing, as it is still true in many places, especially among the nomadic tribes. The herd or flock (galla) is the basis of all the techniques of this type of breeding (Bonte). It is…

HERMAS, THE SHEPHERD OF, title of an early Christian paraenetic apocalypse (Lat. title: Pastor [Hermae], Gk.: Poimēn “Shepherd”), composed in Greek by a certain Hermas, who presents himself as an emancipated slave and then a Roman businessman. According to the Canon Muratori he was the brother of the Roman bishop…

HERMELIN, AXEL ERIC (b. Svanshals, June 22, 1860; d. Lund, November 8, 1944), Swedish author and prolific translator of Persian works of literature. He was born into an aristocratic family in Svanshals, south Sweden, and had a traditional education, at the end of which he spent a couple of years…

HERMENEUTICS of pre-modern Islamic and Shiʿite exegesis, the principles and methods, or philosophy, of scriptural interpretation, as distinct from the act of interpretation (e.g., tafsir, taʾwil, for which see exegesis ii., iii., vi., and vii.). While the term hermeneutics began to rise to its current prominence in literary criticism and…

HERMES, the Greek god of boundaries, the ‘trickster’ of the Greek pantheon, and the guide of souls (psychopompos; Figure 1). Hermes was the inventor of fire and sacrifice, the first player of the lyre, the divine thief who stole the cattle of Apollo, and the messenger of the gods. Because…

HERMIPPUS OF SMYRNA, third-century B.C.E., Greek grammarian who wrote on “Zoroaster’s writings.” He lived in Alexandria and was a close associate of Callimachus (hence also referred to as Kallimacheios: Athenaeus 2.58 F; 5.213 F). He published extensive biographies (bioi) of eminent men and their disciples (e.g. Pythagoras, Aristotle, Gorgias), and…