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ii. Ossetic Loanwords in Hungarian One of the features of Ossetic is the number of lexical traces that show ancient contacts with many, often very diverse, ethnic groups. Conversely, Ossetic loanwords can also be observed in the languages of those groups. One of these languages is Hungarian, whose speakers came…

OSSETIC LANGUAGE, an Iranian language spoken in the Central Caucasus, mainly in the North Ossetic Republic (Alaniya) of the Russian Federation and in the South Ossetic (until 1990, autonomous) area of Georgia. In addition, minor Ossetic settlements exist at various places in the North Caucasus. An Ossetic-speaking population is also…

OSTANES, legendary mage in classical and medieval literature. He is first mentioned by Hermodorus, as quoted in Diogenes Laertius (Prooemium 2, as punctuated by R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3rd ed., Leipzig, 1927, p. 172; the common attribution of this reference to Xanthos of Lydia must be mistaken, for he…

OSTOVĀ (also A/Āstovā; Ostov), a rural district (rostāq) of northern Khorasan, considered in medieval Islamic times to be an administrative dependency of Nišāpur. According to Yāqut (Boldān, Beirut, I, pp. 175-76), it comprised ninety-three villages. It lay across the road going north from Nišāpur to Nasā on the edge of…

OTANES, Greek form (Otánēs) of the name OPers. Utāna(DB IV 83 u-t-a-n, rendered as Elam. Hu-ud-da-na, Bab. Ú-mi-it-ta-na-na-ʾ), which often is interpreted as “having good descendants”; since by that etymology the long vowel is not explained sufficiently, this interpretation is no more than a possibility (cf. recently Schmitt, 2011, pp….

OTRĀR, a medieval town of Transoxania, in a rural district (rostāq) of the middle Jaxartes River (Syr Darya), apparently known in early Islamic times as Fārāb/Pārāb/Bārāb. The latter two forms are found in the 10th-century geographers (e.g., Moqaddasi [Maqdesi], pp. 263, 273; Ebn Ḥawqal, pp. 510-11, tr. Kramers and Wiet,…

OTTOMAN-PERSIAN RELATIONS i. UNDER SULTAN SELIM I AND SHAH ESMĀʿIL I The dynamics of Ottoman-Safavid relations during the almost contemporaneous reigns of Sultan Selim I and Shah Esmāʿil I (r. 1501-24) are closely connected with the general socio-political and socio-religious conditions prevailing in Anatolia, Persia, and the border regions between…

OTTOMAN-PERSIAN RELATIONS ii. AFSHARID AND ZAND PERIODS At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Ottoman conflicts with European powers overshadowed relations with the Safavids. Following the 1718 Passarowitz Treaty between Austria and the Ottoman empire, Sultan Aḥmad III dispatched a mission to Isfahan to conclude an agreement with Shah Solṭān…

OUPHARIZES (Greek name or appellative Wahriz), general of cavalry in the time of Ḵosrow I. He fought in Lazica against the Byzantines and their local allies (Agathius 3.28). It is uncertain whether this is the same person as Phabrizos (Procopius II. 28. 16-17; 29.2ff.; 30.32, 42ff.), a Persian officer sent…

OUSELEY, Sir Gore, entrepreneur, diplomat, and orientalist (b. 24 June 1770, Monmouthshire, Wales; d. 18 November 1844, Hall Barn Park, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England). He was the younger brother of the officer and orientalist William Ouseley (1767-1842). The Ouseleys were an Anglo-Irish family who, although impoverished, afforded their two sons a…

OUSELEY, Sir WILLIAM, officer and orientalist (b. 1767 in Monmouthshire, Wales; d. September 1842, Boulogne, France). He was the elder brother of the entrepreneur, diplomat, and orientalist Sir Gore Ouseley (1770-1844; q.v.) and a cousin of the Methodist preacher and missionary Gideon Ouseley (1762-1839). The Ouseleys were an Anglo-Irish family,…

OXATHRES, Persian masculine name, attested only in the Greek forms Oxáthras and Oxáthrēs (sometimes transformed by popular etymology as Oxyáthrēs [see OXYATHRES] and Oxyártēs [see OXYARTES]), which reflects OIr. *Huxšaθra- being the onomastic equivalent of the attested Avestan epithet huxšaθra- ‘of good reign’ (see, recently, W. Hinz, Altiranisches Sprachgut der…

OXUS TRUMPET, an artifact mostly found in the border area between northern Afghanistan and southern parts of the former USSR, with a few stragglers further south in eastern Iran (see map, Figure 1). Oxus trumpets were used ca. 2200–1800 BCE. They are shorter (ca. 10 cm in length) than modern…