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NIĀZI, FĀTEḤ (Foteh Niyozī in Tajik orthography; b. Samarqand, 18 April 1914; d. Dushanbe, 1991), Tajik prose writer. Fāteḥ Niāzi was born into a family of white-collar workers and prepared himself for a teaching career. Apparently, from an early age he was bilingual in Tajik and Uzbek. He enrolled in…

NIETZSCHE AND PERSIA Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), the great German thinker, is best known as a philosopher of culture. His insightful critique of Western civilization in its different stages, classical, medieval, and modern, bears witness to his vast erudition and profound concern regarding the historical development of human culture, particularly…

NĪRANGDĪN CEREMONY, a Zoroastrian ritual to consecrate gōmēz, or bull’s urine; the consecrated liquid is known as nīrang or nīrangdīn. The ceremony is briefly discussed or referred to in the Pahlavi Vendidād (9.32, 19. 21-2), the Epistles of Manušcihr (I.7.15.18; II.3.12), and most comprehensively in a hitherto unpublished Pahlavi Text…

NISA, an Arsacid city and ceremonial center in Parthia (FIGURE 1). Nisa is situated in modern Turkmenistan, about 18 km to the west from its capital Ashgabat (ʿEšqābād, see ASHKHABAD), at the foot of the Kopet Dagh, the chain of mountains that divides the Iranian plateau from the Turkmen plain, beyond…

NISĀBURI,ḤASAN b. Moḥammad al-Aʿraj, Neẓām-al-Din Qommi, Astronomer; d. after 1311. Nisāburi composed commentaries on several works on astronomy by Naṣir-al-Din Ṭusi (597-672/1201-1274). His commentary on the Taḥrir al-mejesṭi was completed in Šaʿbān 704/March 1305; glosses on it were written by Qāḍizāda Rumi (d. ca. 835/1431-32). The commentary, entitled Kašf-e ḥaqāʾeq,…

NISĀYA (later MPers. Nisāy, NPers. Nesā, Ar. Nasā), the Old Iranian name of several Iranian regions and places, which cannot easily be distinguished from one another. They are mentioned in a variety of sources from antiquity and the Middle Ages, and already Moqaddasi (24.17) listed Nisā (Nasā) among the names…

NISHAPUR i. Historical Geography and History to the Beginning of the 20th Century Nishapur (Nišāpur) was, with Balḵ, Marv and Herat, one of the four great cities of the province of Khorasan. It flourished in Sasanid and early Islamic times, but after the devastations of the Mongol invasions of the…

NISHAPUR vi. Archeology The area of the archeological site in Nishapur is situated in a fertile plain belonging to the northern boundary of the Iranian Plateau.  The plain is divided into two parts separated by Šurarud (also Šurirud), which, endorheic, ends in the large desert of Dašt-e Kavir.  It is…

NISHAPUR vii.  Excavations by the Metropolitan Museum of Art At the time that the Metropolitan Museum of Art started its work at Nishapur in 1935, it was active in excavations at several sites across the Middle East, motivated by a desire to enhance its collections and to provide a context…

NISIBIS, a city in northern Mesopotamia (Figure 1); later a major focus of military confrontations between the Roman and Sasanian Empires, and a renowned center of theological studies for the Church of the East (see CHRISTIANITY). Early history. Nisibis is the Greek name for a city of great antiquity, sited…

NÖLDEKE, THEODOR ii. AS AN IRANIST As a pupil of Heinrich Ewald (1803-1875), Theodor Nöldeke (FIGURE 1) had the benefit of a sound training in Oriental philology, linguistics, and history, all of which contributed to his becoming the most renowned Oriental scholar in the second German Reich. It was fortuitous…

NOMADISM, a way of life and human existence that is connected with permanent and more or less regular movements of people between different locations. The migrational movements of nomads are connected with clearly defined routes and destinations where the nomads spend equally clearly defined periods of time with the ultimate…

NOṢAYRIS, followers of Nusayrism, a syncretistic religion with close affinity to Shiʿism, whose adherents live mostly in Syria and southeastern Turkey. In Syria, they constitute the country’s largest minority, numbering more than one million (i.e., about 12 percent of the population). They live chiefly in the mountainous areas of Latakia…