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ḤOJJAT-AL-ESLĀM (lit. Proof of Islam), a title awarded to Shiʿite scholars, originally as an honorific but later as a means of indicating their status in the hierarchy of the learned. Its first recorded use came in a Sunni context, when it was applied to Abu Ḥāmed Moḥammad Ḡazāli (d. 1111,…

ḤOJJATIYA, a Shiʿite religious lay association founded by the charismatic cleric Shaikh Maḥmud Ḥalabi (q.v) to defend Islam against the Bahai missionary activities. Ḥojjatiya exerted considerable, albeit indirect and unintended, influence on the education and world-view of the lay elite leadership of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The association was founded…

HOJVIRI, ABU’L-ḤASAN ʿALI B. ʿOṮMĀN B. ʿALI AL-ḠAZNAVI AL-JOLLĀBI, popularly known in the Indian subcontinent as Ḥażrat-e Dātā Ganjbaḵš (“bestower of treasures”), was born and raised in Jollāb and Hojvir, suburbs of Ḡazna (see ḠAZNI) in Zābolestān, and died in Lahore in around 465/1071-72 (see Nicholson, pp. x-xi), both towns…

HOLDICH, Colonel Sir THOMAS HUNGERFORD, British Army officer and Anglo-Indian surveyor (b. Dingley, Northamptonshire, 1842; d. Merrow, Surrey, 1929; Figure 1). The son of a country parson, Holdich was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1862. He joined the Survey of India in 1865 and was Superintendent of Frontier Surveys…

ḤOLWI, JAMĀL-AL-DIN MAḤMUD, biographer of the leaders of the Ḵalwati Sufi order and minor poet (b. Istanbul, 982/1574, d. 1064/1654). In 996/1588 at the age of fourteen, he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca with his father, Aḥmad Āqā, who was the head of the court confectioners (ḥalwāči-bāši), and his future…

HŌM YAŠT, name given to a section of the Avestan Yasna, namely, Y. 9-11.11, which thus, technically, is not one of the Yašts at all. (There is a very brief, two-stanza Hōm Yašt found as Yašt 20.) However, like the Srōš Yašt (Y. 57), Y. 9-11.11 contains a sustained collection…

HOMĀM-AL-DIN B. ʿALĀʾ TABRIZI, Persian poet of the Il-Khanid period. His name can be established on the basis of one of his ḡazals (Divān, ḡazal no. 85, pp. 97-98). His birthplace is unknown, as are the specific details of his early life and education. The introduction to Homām’s divān, which…

HŌMĀN, son of Vēsa, and one of the most celebrated heroes of Turān. His name, spelt Ḵomān in Ṭabari (I, p. 610), is explained by Ferdinand Justi (Namenbuch, p. 132) as “derived from Hom < Haoma" (q.v.), which, despite the attestation of Hōm in Sasanian proper names (Gignoux, pp. 96-99),...

HOMĀY ČEHRZĀD (or Čehrāzād), a Kayānid queen; she was daughter, wife, and successor to the throne of Bahman, son of Esfandiār (qq.v.), according to the Iranian traditional history. The length of her reign is given as thirty years in the Bundahišn (ed. Ankelsaria, 36.8; tr., p. 308) and historical sources,…

HOMĀYUN (lit. “auspicious”), an important modal system (dastgāh, q.v.) in traditional Persian music in a typical scale centered on G: D Ep F G Ap B C D Eb (p) F. In the first phases of modal development, the polarized note is primarily Ap, reached through the low-pitched (E p…

HOMĀYUN PĀDEŠĀH, NĀṢER-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD, posthumously known as Jahānbāni Jannat-āšiāni (1508–56), second Mughal emperor in Kabul (1530–56) and northern India (1530–40 and 1555–56). The eldest son of Bābor (q.v.), the founder of the Mughal empire, born of Mahïm Begim (Begom) on 4 Ḏu’l-qaʿda 913/ 6 March 1508 in Kabul, he succeeded…

HOMMAIRE de HELL, IGNACE XAVIER MORAND, French engineer, geographer, traveler (b. Altkirch, Haut-Rhin, 24 November 1812; d. Isfahan, 29 August 1848). Despite his short life and constant ill health, he carried out pioneering scientific research in the Ottoman empire, southern Russia, and Persia. He graduated as an engineer at the…

HOMOSEXUALITY i. In Zoroastrianism. ii. In Islamic law. iii. In Persian literature. iv. In modern Persia. See Supplement.