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IVORY AND ITS USE IN PRE-ISLAMIC IRAN. Prior to the 1st millennium B.C.E. ivories are not commonly documented from excavations in Iran. Whether this reflects an actual unavailability of ivory and hence ivory carving, or is a result of the incompleteness of archeological recovery, is unknown. In Mesopotamia ivory carvings…

Untitled Document I ENTRIES: CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS   online entry caption text IBEX, PERSIAN Plate I. Twelve-year-old male Persian ibex in the Baḵtegān Wildlife Refuge, Fārs, 1975 (photograph courtesy of Hušang Żiāʾi). IL-KHANIDS ii. Architecture Plate I. Marāḡa, a panoramic view of the observatory complex. After Varjāvand, p. 401. IL-KHANIDS…

JĀ-YE ḴĀLI-E SOLUČ (Tehran, 1980; tr. Kamran Rastegar, Missing Soluch, 2007, FIGURE 1, FIGURE 2), Mahmud Dowlatabadi’s (Maḥmud Dowlatābādi, b. 1940, FIGURE 3, FIGURE 4), celebrated novel. Dowlatabadi, along with Behazin (Maḥmud Eʿtemādzadeh), Sadeq Chubak, Ebrāhim Golestān, Aḥmad Maḥmud, and Gholam-Hosayn Sa’edi, is credited with expanding the topographical expanse of…

JABA (Jebe; Jovayni uses the Turkish form Yeme), 13th-century Mongol general of the Besüt (Bisut) tribe under Čengiz Khan (q.v.). His original name was Jirḡoʾadai (“sixth”; Jirqutāy), but when, having deserted the Tayičiʾut tribe, he joined Čengiz Khan, the latter renamed him Jebe, a Mongolian term meaning “weapon” (Secret History,…

JABAL ʿĀMEL, SHIʿITE ULAMA OF, in the Safavid Period. Two decades after the establishment of the Safavid state in Persia in 1501, the Safavid monarchs sought prominent clerics who would strengthen their rule by promoting a standard urban system of Shiʿite worship and lend them political legitimacy against their Sunnite…

JABAL-E SERĀJ, a small town in the province of Parvān in Afghanistan, located at the mouth of the Sālang Valley in Kabul Kohestān to the north of the city of Charikar (Čārikār). On official maps, the name of the city was also given in the Arabic manner as Jabal al-Serāj….

JABBĀR ḴĒL (or Jabar Ḵēl or Khan Ḵēl), the leading lineage of the Solaymān Ḵēl Paxtun tribe of the Ḡalzi/Ḡilzi tribal confederation of eastern and southeastern Afghanistan. Ḵēl in Pashtu generally means a small (minimal lineage, 3-4 generations) or large (maximal lineage, 5 or more generations) segment of a tribe that…

JABBĀRA, a group of Shiʿite Arabs in Fārs province who, together with the Šaybāni. form the Arab tribe of the Ḵamsa tribal confederation (q.v.). In all likelihood, these Arabs came to southern Persia by way of the Fertile Crescent, for there is a tribe by the name of Jabbāra in…

JĀBER JOʿFI, ABU ʿABD-ALLĀH (or Abu Mo-ḥammad b. Yazid b. Ḥāreṯ), a Kufan traditionist and companion of the fifth and sixth Shiʿite Imams, Moḥammad al-Bāqer and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādeq. Jāber belonged to the to the first generation of Muslims after Moḥammed, likely dying in 128/745-46 (other reports date his death in…

JĀBERI, MIRZĀ SALMĀN, vizier and prominent statesman during the reigns of Shah Esmāʿil II (1576-77) and Shah Moḥammad Ḵodābanda (1577-88). Mirzā Salmān began training as an administrator under the tutelage of his father who was the vizier to the governor of Shiraz, Ebrāhim Khan, in the latter years of Shah…

JABḠUYA, Arabo-Persian form of the Central Asian title yabḡu. This article will be divided into two sections. i. Origin and early history. ii. In Islamic sources.   i. ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY Although yabḡu is best known as a Turkish title of nobility, it was in use many centuries before…

JACKAL, Golden or Asiatic (Canis aureus, MPers. tōrag, NPers. tura, šaḡāl [cf. Skt. śṛgāla- and related IAr. forms; Mayrhofer, 1976, p. 368]; FIGURE 1), a medium-size member of the dog family (Canidae) occurring throughout Afghanistan and Iran. It also extends east through India to Myanmar and Thailand and west through…

JACKSON, ABRAHAM VALENTINE WILLIAMS (b. New York City, 9 February 1862; d. New York City, 8 August 1937; FIGURE 1, FIGURE 2), pioneer of Iranian studies in America and prominent Iranist for half a century, twice president of the American Oriental Society, honorary president of the American Institute for Persian…

JACOBS, SAMUEL AIWAZ (b. Širābād, 12 February 1890; d. Yonkers, N.Y., 16 September 1971; Figure 1), Assyrian intellectual and publisher. His birthplace, the village of Širābād, is located north of Urmia along the Nazlu River (Razmārā, p. 311; Dehḵodā, s.v. [no. 5]). For several styles of his name and patronymic,…

JADE (nephrite; Pers. yašm, yašb, yašf, yaṣb). For at least two and a half millennia, Jade has been carved in the lands where Iranian languages have prevailed in various eras. The known material is often of extraordinary refinement, and testifies to an extensive influence on other jadecarving cultures, including the…