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AḴBĀRĪYA, a school in Imamite Shiʿism which maintains that the traditions (aḵbār) of the Imams are the main source of religious knowledge, in contrast to the Oṣūlī school. As long as the Imams were present and could wield their authority, their utterances, transmitted orally or set down in writing by…

AKES (Greek Akēs), a river in Central Asia, the modern Tejen or Harī-rūd (q.v.). According to Herodotus (3.117), before the Achaemenids the Chorasmians possessed the valley of the Akes, which through five separate channels irrigated fields belonging to the tribes of Hyrcanians, Parthians, Sarangians, Thamanaeans, and Chorasmians. When these tribes…

AḴESTĀN, Jalal-al-dīn Abu’l-Moẓaffar b. Manūčehr b. Farīdūn, also called Ḵāqān-e Kabīr. one of the rulers of the Šervānšāh dynasty and the patron of the poet Ḵāqāni Šervānī. The variant Aḵetsān found in some manuscripts and printed works is erroneous (see Qazvīnī, Yāddāšthā V, p. 216). Nothing is known about the…

AKHAVAN-E SALESS, MEHDI (Mehdi Aḵavān-e Ṯāleṯ; b. Mashad, Esfand 1306 Š./February 1928; d. Tehran, 4 Šahrivar 1369 Š./25 August 1990), prominent poet (Figure 1, Figure  2). LIFE Akhavan was born to ʿAli, an apothecary (ʿaṭṭār) from Fahraj in Yazd province, and Maryam, a native of Khorasan (Akhavan, 1969, pp. 17-18). …

AḴLĀQ “ethics” (plural form of ḵoloq “inborn character, moral character, moral virtue”). Although no ethical document has come down from pre-Islamic Iran, it is certain that practical ethics or practical wisdom formed an aspect of both Zoroastrian religious literature (see Andarz) and the literature that entered into the Islamic tradition…

AḴLĀQ AL-AŠRĀF (“The ethics of the aristocracy”), a satire composed in 740/1340-41, the most important work of ʿObayd Zākānī. This finely crafted amalgam of scholastic prose and ribald poetry is divided into seven chapters, each devoted to one or more of the traditional virtues: wisdom (ḥekmat); bravery (šaǰāʿat); decency (ʿeffat);…

AḴLĀQ-E JALĀLĪ, also known as Lawāmeʿ al-ešrāq fī makārem al-aḵlāq, an “ethical” treatise in Persian by Moḥammad b. Asʿad Jalāl-al-dīn Davānī (Davvānī), dedicated to the Āq Qoyunlū Uzun Ḥasan and written for his son Sultan Ḵalīl. It was possibly ten years in the making (872-82/1467-77), though its character would not…

AḴLĀQ-E MOḤSENĪ (less commonly known as Jawāher al-asrār), an ostensibly serious treatise on ethics by the prolific prose-stylist Kamāl-al-dīn Ḥosayn Wāʿeẓ Kāšefī, completed in 900/1494-95 and titled after Abu’l-Moḥsen, the son of his patron Sultan Ḥosayn Mīrzā Bāyqarā. (The translation of the title as Morals of the Beneficent seems to…

AḴLĀQ-E NĀṢERĪ, by Ḵᵛāǰa Naṣīr-al-dīn Ṭūsī, the principal treatise in Persian on ethics, economics, and politics, first published according to the author in 633/1235. It is based, particularly in its First Discourse, on the Arabic Tahḏīb al-aḵlāq of Ebn Meskawayh (d. 421/1030); but it transcends that work both in scope…

AḴLĀṬ (or Greek Khliat, Khleat, Armenian Khlaṭʿ), a town and medieval Islamic fortress in eastern Anatolia, in the former Armenian district of Bzunikʿ, and now in the modern Turkish vilayet of Van. It lies on the northwestern shore of Lake Van, between the mountain massifs of Sipan Dağğ and Nimrud…

AḴNŪḴ, Enoch, in Manichean texts. According to the Cologne Mani Codex, the outstanding Greek Mani-vita, the prophet grew up in a Judeo-Christian environment, in the sect founded by Elkhasai (*Alkhasā in a Parthian text) in Eastern Syria about 100 A.D. Given this background it can be assumed that in Mani’s…

AKŌMAN, “Evil Mind,” a term personified as a demon in Zoroastrianism. It is apparently not yet wholly personified in the Gāthās. In two of its four occurrences there the term applies to human attitudes: drəgvå . . . ahyā šyaothanāiš akāṱ ā šyas manaŋhō, “since the deceitful man lives by…

AḴSĪKAṮ (AḴSĪKANT, later medieval form AḴSĪ), in early medieval times the capital of the then still Iranian province of Farḡāna; according to the Ḥodūd al-ʿālam (p. 112, tr. Minorsky, p. 116), it was “the residence of the amīr and his local representatives (ʿommāl).” At the time of the Arab conquests…