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HORMOZD (Ormisdas), a brother of the Sasanian great king Šāpur II (r. 307-79 C.E.), who participated in the emperor Julian’s Persian expedition of 363 C.E. He was one of the eight known sons of Hormozd II (q.v.), and was imprisoned by the nobles who had done away with two of…

HORMOZD I (r. 272-73 C.E.; Ōhrmazd in the Sasanian inscriptions, the name of both the king and the supreme deity, from OPers. Auramazdā, Av. Ahura Mazdā, q.v.), the throne name of Šāpur I’s (Šābuhr I) son and successor Hormozd-Ardašēr (Ōhrmazd-Ardaxšahr), spelled ʾwhrmzd-ʾrthštr in the Middle Persian version of Šāpur I’s…

HORMOZD II, Sasanian great king (r. 303-09 C.E.). In his Middle Persian inscription at Ṭāq-e Bostān, Šāpur II (r. 309-79) calls himself “son of the Mazda-worshiping Majesty (bay), Oḥrmazd, king of kings of Ērān and Anē-rāŋ,” grandson of Narseh (Herzfeld, I, p. 123; Back, pp. 490-91). Agathias (4.25), Ṭabari (I,…

HORMOZD III, Sasanian great king (r. 457-59 C.E.). He was the eldest son and heir of Yazdegerd II (Łazar, tr., p. 159; Ełišē, tr., Thomson, p. 242; Movsēs Dasxurancʿi 1.10, tr. p. 9), and “was king of Sejestān” (Ṭabari, I, p. 871). When Yazdegerd “died in Pārs” (Łazar, loc. cit.)…

HORMOZD IV, Sasanian great king (r. 579-90 C.E.). He succeeded Ḵosrow I Anōširavān just as the latter was negotiating a peace treaty with the Byzantine empire, hoping to leave a stable and prosperous state as his inheritance (Menander Protector, tr., p. 153). Anōširavān had appointed Hormozd as his heir after…

HORMOZD V, Sasanian great king (r. 630-32 C.E.). In the turbulent years following the murder of Ḵosrow II Parvēz (628), nearly a dozen rulers (including two daughters) of Ḵosrow and one great general Farroḵān Šahrvarāz came to the throne and were slain after a short while (Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser,…

HORMOZD KUŠĀNŠĀH, Sasanian prince governor of Kušān. There may have been two rulers of this name, but the emphasis here is on the one whom we now follow Herzfeld and Bivar in identifying as a son of Bahrām I (q.v.) thereby retracting our objection in EIr. II, p. 516. He…

HORMOZDGĀN (also Hormozgān, Arabicized Hormozjān), BATTLE OF, the engagement which brought the Sasanians to power. It was fought between Ardašir I (q.v.) and his Parthian overlord Ardavān (Artabanus) V (IV according to the new reckoning; see EIr. II, p. 649), on 30 Mehr/28 April 224 C.E.; Ardavān was killed and…

Hormozi Saʿid title Hormozi Saʿid genre/topic Āvāz-e Afšāri language   performer Hormozi Saʿid, setar instrument Setār composer   author/poet   first line of poem   recorded by   place of recording   date of recording   duration 2:19 source  Setār Ostād Saʿid Hormozi. Mahoor Institute of Culture and Art, 1999…

HORMOZI, SAʿID, setār and tār virtuoso (b. Tehran, 1907; d. Tehran, 1976; Figure 1). He was a student of Darviš Khan (q.v.), who near the end of his life taught and recorded his repertoire of setār at the Center for the Preservation and Distribution of Traditional Persian Music (Markaz-e ḥefẓ o…

HORMUZ (Hormoz, Ormuz, Ormus), an island and a strategic strait (Tanga-ye Hormoz) in the Persian Gulf, linking it to the Gulf of Oman, as well as the name of a medieval port near the strait. This entry will be treated in the following two periods: i. Pre-Islamic period. ii. Islamic…

HORMUZ ii. ISLAMIC PERIOD Figure 1. Map of the Strait of Hormuz, adapted from Map of Islamic Republic of Iran, scale 1: 1,6000,000. Courtesy of the Gitashenasi Geographical and Cartographic Institute, Tehran, 2002. Hormuz fell to the Arabs in 650-51. In the 10th century, the town of Hormuz was the…

HORN, PAUL, German philologist and specialist in Iranian and Turkish languages (b. 14 January 1863 in Halle an der Saale, d. 11 November 1908 in Strassburg). He began his studies of Sanskrit, Avestan, Persian, and comparative linguistics in 1883 at the university in Halle. Here he obtained his doctor’s degree…

HOROSCOPE (Pahl. zāyc, modem Pers. zāyca, Ar. zāʾeja/zāʾrja), the horoscopic diagram or theme which depicts the positions of the planets in the zodiacal signs and of the zodiacal signs relative to the local horizon at a given time. Horoscopic astrology in which such diagrams are the basis for predictions was developed in Hellenistic Egypt at…