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ALBUQUERQUE, ALFONSO DE (ca. 1460-1515), admiral in the Indian Ocean (1504, 1506-08), second governor of Portuguese India (1509-15), a great conqueror, and the real founder of the Portuguese empire in the Orient. Appointed head of the “fleet of the Arabian and Persian sea” in 1506, Albuquerque resolved to conquer the…

ALCHASAI, a sectarian in the early Christian Church, 1st-2nd centuries A.D., in the time of Trajan. His historical existence is still disputed, but is certainly taken for granted by Manichean tradition. In Mesopotamia (Babylonia), then part of the Iranian empire of the Arsacids, Alchasai founded a Jewish Christian baptist community,…

ĀLČĪ (“sealer”), a Turkish term (from āl “red seal”) designating an il-khanid chancery official. In Rašīd-al-dīn’s account of Ḡāzān’s administrative reforms, āḷčīs occur in the section concerned with preventing the misuse of yarlīḡs (edicts) and pāyīzas (tablets of authority); they are forbidden to receive anything from anyone for affixing the…

ALDANMIŠ KÄVAKEB, Azeri Turkish title of a narrative by Āḵūndzāda (q.v.; 1812-78). The original text, written in 1857 and published in Tiflis in 1859, was translated into Persian by Mīrzā Moḥammad Qarāǰadāḡī, who also translated Āḵūndzāda’s plays, and published in Tehran in 1291/1874 under the title Ḥekāyat-e Yūsof Šāh yā…

ALESSANDRI, VINCENZO DEGLI, d. after 1595, Venetian secretary and diplomat, author of an important report on Safavid Persia. Between 1560 and 1570 he was a member of the Venetian chancellery in Constantinople, where he studied Turkish and became acquainted with the country. Elected notaro estraordinario of the Council of the…

ALEXANDER OF LYCOPOLIS, apparently a Neoplatonic philosopher living in Egypt about 300 CE. He is known exclusively from his Greek treatise, Against the Doctrines of Mani (ed. A. Brinkmann, Alexandri Lycopolitani contra Manichaei opiniones disputatio, Leipzig, 1895), an account of the Manichean system and a criticism of it based on…

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (356-323 B.C.). Ascending the throne on the assassination of his father Philip II in 336, Alexander quickly took up Philip’s grand scheme to land an army in Asia and “liberate the Greek cities from the Achaemenid yoke;” but from the first his territorial ambitions appear to have…

ALEXANDER THE GREAT ii. IN ZOROASTRIAN TRADITION The heritage of the Sasanian period includes two widely divergent storylines about Alexander, both of which were presumably transmitted by Zoroastrians and can therefore be labelled “Zoroastrian.” One of these, which portrays Alexander in a positive light and is continued in the later…

ALEXANDER, PRINCE (known in Persian as ESKANDAR MĪRZĀ), pro-Persian member of the royal family of Georgia (b. 1770, d. after 1830). Following the death of his father, Heraclius (Irakliĭ) II, king of Georgia (1798), Alexander, suspecting that the Russian presence in his country would lead to eventual annexation, was lured…

ALEXANDRIA, general designation of cities whose foundation is credited to Alexander the Great (356-23 B.C.). Pseudo-Plutarch mentions seventy of these, which must have included purely military settlements; among those whose existence seems well attested, thirteen were in the Iranian territories. They were founded for administrative, military, or commercial purposes and…

ALEXANDROPOLIS, name of a number of cities. According to certain historians, these cities were founded after Alexander’s death; others call some of these same cities Alexandria. It is impossible to tell whether the name Alexandropolis is a mere variant or a new name given to reestablished cities. Three cities by…

ALF LAYLA WA LAYLA, “One thousand nights and one night,” Arabic title of the world-famous collection of tales known in English as The Arabian Nights. The first published translation, by Antoine Galand (Les mille et une Nuits, contes arabes traduits en françois, Paris, from 1704), appeared gradually because of the…

ALFARIC, PROSPER (1876-1955), French historian of religions. The son of a farmer, Alfaric was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1900 and taught in the seminaries of Bayeux, Bordeaux, and Albi. Drawn away from the faith by his philosophical and historical studies, he quietly left the church in 1910. In…