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L ENTRIES: CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS   online entry caption text LAYARD, AUSTEN HENRY Figure 1. Henry Layard. Undated woodburytype, published in Men of Mark: A Gallery of Contemporary Portraits of Men Distinguished in the Senate, the Church, in Science, Literature and Art, the Army, Navy, Medicine, etc., photographed from life…

MĀ WARĀʾ AL-NAHR (lit. “what lies beyond the river”), the classical designation for Transoxania or Transoxiana.  It was defined by the early Arabic historians and geographers as the lands under Muslim control lying to the north of the middle and upper Oxus or Āmu Daryā, in contrast to Iran proper…

MACHALSKI, FRANCISZEK, Polish Iranist (b. Braddock, Pennsylvania, 1904; d. Krakow, Poland, 1979). Machalski was born to a Polish peasant family that was working in the United States. When he was six his parents returned to their small farm in Żołynia, near Łańcut in southern Poland. In 1924, in spite of…

MACKENZIE, DAVID NEIL (b. 8 April 1926, London- d. 13 October 2001, Bangor, Wales), distinguished British scholar of Middle and Modern Iranian languages with an impressive record of publications (FIGURE 1). He was always called Neil to be distinguished from his father who was also named David. He went to…

MADĀR AL-AFĀŻEL (The orbit of the learned), a dictionary of the Persian language compiled in 1001/1593 by the poet and historian Allāh-dād Fayżī b. Asad al -ʿOlamāʾʿAli-šir Serhendi, who lived in India during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1606) and wrote a brief history of his reign,…

MĀDAYĀN Ī HAZĀR DĀDESTĀN (Book of a Thousand Judgements), Pahlavi Law-Book from the late Sasanian period (first half of the seventh century). This text has been transmitted in a single manuscript and is unique in several respects: it is the only exclusively legal work on pre-Islamic Iranian jurisprudence which has…

MADĀʾEN (lit. the cities; Ar. sing. Madina, cf. Aram. pl. Māḥozē or Medinātā), the Sasanian metropolitan area of several contiguous cities, on both sides of the Tigris and connected by floating bridges, about 35 km southeast of Abbasid Baghdad. At the end of the Sasanian period, this metropolis served as…

MĀDDA TĀRIḴ (plural mawādd-e tawāriḵ-, also known simply as tāriḵ- or tawāriḵ-), chronogram poem, a poetic genre characterized by the inclusion of the year in which an event occurred. Since the beginning of the classical tradition, Persian poets have used various devices to mark significant dates in their works. The…

MAFĀTIḤ AL-ʿOLUM (Keys to sciences), a book in which key terms used by various classes of scholars, artisans, state officials, etc. are explained.  It was composed around 366/976 by Abu ʿAbd-Allāh Moḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Yusof Kāteb Ḵᵛārazmi, who died about 380/990-91 (Esmāʿil Pasha, II, col. 1756) or in 387/998…

MAGI (OPers. magu-, Baby. maguš,  Gr. mágos [μάγος], Lat. magus),  the only recorded designation of priests of all western Iranians during the Median, Achaemenid, Parthian (mgw), and Sasanian periods. During Sasanian times the superior priest bore the title mowbed (

MAGIC i. MAGICAL ELEMENTS IN THE AVESTA AND NĒRANG LITERATURE The presence of magical elements in the strict sense (i.e., doctrine or formulas supposed to produce a radical modification or a strong impact on physical objects) in Avestan literature has been considered rare. This is in keeping with the basic…

MAGIC ii. IN LITERATURE AND FOLKLORE IN THE ISLAMIC PERIOD General Introduction. Magic can be briefly described as the art of influencing the course of events by the occult control of natural phenomena through the application of ritual observances acquired through a study of esoteric and often closely guarded corpus…

MAGOPHONIA (slaughter of the Magi).  According to Herodotus (3.79: τα μαγοφóνια; see also Ctesias, frag. 15: μαγοφονι α), when Darius [I] (see DARIUS iii) and his noble companions in 522 BCE murdered the impostor Smerdis (called “Gaumāta the Magus” in DB 1.36; see GAUMĀTA), who with the help of his…