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MOʿIN-E MOṢAVVER (معین مصوّر, lit. Moʿin the painter), Safavid manuscript and album painter, arguably the most prominent Safavid artist of the second half of the 17th century (b. ca. 1610-1615; d. probably 1104/1693). LIFE AND STYLE Moʿin’s extant work, which includes more than 300 paintings and drawings, spans almost sixty…

MOʿJEZ ŠABESTARI (Šabostari), Mirzā ʿAli (b. Šabestar, 26 February 1874 d. Šāhrud, 3 September 1934), a satirical poet in Azerbaijani whose works were not published for a long time; he remained fairly unknown during his lifetime. His father, Ḥāji Āqā, was a merchant of declining fortune, but Mirzā ʿAli managed…

MUGH, MOUNT (Kuh-e moḡ ‘Magus Mount’), site of the 7th-8th-century refuge of the rulers of Panjikant in Sogdiana, where an important archive of documents written in Sogdian was discovered in 1930s. The castle was built on a mound overlooking the confluence of the Zerafshan (Zarafšān) and the Qom rivers, at a…

MUHAMMADIEV,Fazliddin, Tajik writer (b. Samarkand, 15 June 1928, d. Dushanbe, 6 October 1986). Born into a family of modest circumstances, he was drawn to journalism and began his career as a correspondent for the official daily, Tojikistoni Surkh (1947-49). On completing studies at the Central Komsomol School in Moscow in…

MÜLLER, FRIEDRICH, Austrian scholar of linguistics and ethnography (b. Jemnik,  Bohemia, 5 March, 1834; d. Vienna, 25 May 1898; Figure 1). The son of a chemist and head of a sulphur firm, he enrolled in 1853 at Vienna University for classical studies as well as Sanskrit and comparative philology, in…

MÜLLER, Friedrich W. K. (b. January 21, 1863 in Neudamm, present day Debno in Poland; d. April 18, 1930 in Berlin), a scholar of oriental cultures and languages who, confronted with the texts discovered by the four German expeditions to Central Asia (1902-1914), was able to make groundbreaking discoveries about…

MUNICH, PERSIAN ART IN Schatzkammer der Residenz (Treasury of the Munich Residence). The collecting of Persian art in Munich goes back at least to the reign of Duke Albrecht V (r. 1516-75), who, according to a document dated 19 March 1565, acknowledged the possessions of the ruling House of the…

MURAL PAINTING. The tradition of wall painting in the Iranian world, extending back at least to the Parthian period (late 3rd century BCE to 226 CE; see ARSACIDS), apparently continued through all historical eras.  Textual sources suggest that Achaemenid palaces, temples and house walls were decorated with figural scenes (Marshak,…

MUSĀ YABḠU (Bayḡu in some sources), the son of Saljuq Sü-bašï [Sobāši], the eponymous strongman of a Ḡozz clan, whose nephew Toḡrel founded the Saljuq dynasty. It is debated whether his second name is pronounced “yabḡu” (an old Turk. title) or “payḡu” (bïgu, baygu, paygu:a bird of prey). There is no…

MUSHFIQI, ABDURAHMON (Mošfeqi, ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān), Tajik poet (b. Bukhara, ca. 1525; d. Bukhara, 1588). Little is known about his life. Orphaned as a child, he was taken in by an artisan family in Bukhara and thus he grew up among the working population of the city, a circumstance that deeply influenced…

MUSHKI, TALL-E,  an early Pottery Neolithic site in Fars Province, southwest Iran. Located approximately 11 km southeast of Persepolis, this eponymous site for the Mushki culture forms a small and low mound, occupying an area of about 75 m by 70 m and rising approximately 2 m from the surrounding…

MUSIC IN IRANIAN LANDS, HISTORY i. PRE-ISLAMIC IRAN In the narrowest sense, music history deals with notated or recorded material that can be traced back some centuries (see IRAN xi. PERSIAN MUSIC). But in a wider sense it comprises all musical culture, and this history spans a vastly longer period,…

MUSIC HISTORY ii. CA. 650 TO 1370 CE When in 31/651 Yazdgerd III, the last Sasanian king, left Iran fleeing from the Arab troops, he took with him “1,000 cooks and 1,000 musicians” (Ṯaʿālebi, Ḡorar,p. 742; Ḥamza Eṣfahāni, Taʾriḵ seni I, p. 63). This statement, along with other historical accounts,…

M ENTRIES: CAPTIONS OF ILLUSTRATIONS   online entry caption text MACKENZIE, DAVID NEIL Figure 1. Photograph of David Neil Mackenzie. MAḤALLĀTI, MOḤAMMAD Figure 1. Undated cenotaph in Emāmzāda Ḥabib b. Musā in Kāšān; inscription on the sides starts with “Āyat al-korsi” verse (Qurʾān 2.256). Photograph courtesy of the author. MAḤALLĀTI,…

NABIL-AL-DAWLA, ʿALIQOLI (Ali Kuli) KHAN (b. Kashan, ca. 1879; d. Washington, D.C., April 1966; Figure 1), Iranian diplomat and translator of Bahai scriptures.  His father, Mirzā ʿAbd-al-Raḥim Khan (d. ca. 1894), a member of the notable Żarrābi family of Kashan, had become a Bābi in 1866 and later a Bahai…