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QAWL, Yezidi, a type of poetry that plays a central role in the religious life of the Yezidis. These hymns are chanted to music on solemn religious occasions, and are an important source of Yezidi religious knowledge. Traditionally the qawls are transmitted orally, mainly in families of hereditary professional “reciters”…

QAYDĀFA, a female character in various Islamic versions of the Alexander Romance.  She is Candace of the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes (bk III, secs. 18-23; see Hanaway). In the Persian tradition the forms of the name include Qaydāfa/Qayḏāfa (Mojmal al-tawāriḵ, ed., p. 57; MS, fol. 22r) and Fandāqa Ṭarsusi, II, p. 517,…

QĀŻI SAʿID QOMI, Moḥammad-Saʿid b. Moḫáammad-Mofid, Shiʿite philosopher, jurist, and mystic of the Safavid period (b. 1049/1640, d. after 1107/1696). Qāżi Saʿid was a close confidant of, and personal physician to, Shah ʿAbbās II (r. 1052-77/1642-66). He was known in his lifetime as a teacher of philosophy and a physician….

QAZI, Mohammad (Moḥammad Qāżi, b. Mahābād, Kurdistan, 3 August 1913; d. Tehran, 14 January 1998), noted translator. Qazi’s childhood was fraught with tragic events. His father, ʿAbd-al-Ḵāleq, died when he was five years old. A year later his mother, Āmena, remarried and Qazi was sent to live with his paternal…

QAZVINI, MOḤAMMAD B. ʿABD-AL-WAHHĀB (محمد عبدالوهاب قزوینی, b. Tehran, 15 Rabiʿ I 1294/30 March 1877; d. Tehran, 6 Ḵordād 1328 Š./27 May 1949), distinguished scholar of Persian history and literature.  Qazvini’s life story is related in a number of sources, including an autobiography composed in 1924 but published in 1928…

QĀʾĀNI, pen name of Mirzā Ḥabib-Allāh Širāzi (b. Shiraz, 29 Šaʿbān 1223/20 October 1808; d. Rayy, 5 Šaʿbān/3 May 1270/1854; Figure 1), one of the most prominent poets of the Qajar era and a well-known practitioner of the Literary Return (bāzgašt-e adabi) style. A panegyrist who served many patrons, Qāʾāni…

QĀʾENI, Shaikh Moḥammad-ʿAli (b. Now Ferest, a village near Qāʾen, 3 Moḥarram 1277/20 July 1860; d. Ashkabad, April 1924), prominent Bahai apologist and director of the Bahai school in Ashkabad. His father, Mollā Ḥosayn, a Bahai, was brother of Nabil-e Akbar Moḥammad Qāʾeni. Soon after completing his studies in Islamic…

QEPČĀQ, the name of a Turkic nomadic confederation (Turkic Qïpčaq), which, in ca. 1030-1237, dominated the Dašt-e Qepčāq—the steppe zone stretching from the Pontic region to Khwarazm (Ḵʷārazm; see CHORASMIA) and western Siberia—until its conquest by the Mongols. The Qepčāqs played a vital role in the history of Rus’ (Russia),…

QESHM ISLAND (Jazira-ye Qešm, Ar. Jazira-al-Ṭawila); the largest island (ca. 122 km long, 18 km wide on average, 1,445 sq km) in the Persian Gulf, about 22 km south of Bandar-e ʿAbbās. Separated from the mainland by the straits of Ḵurān (Clarence Strait), Qeshm runs virtually parallel to the Persian…

QODDUS, Moḥammad-ʿAli Bārforuši (b. Bārforuš, 1238/1822; d. Bārforuš, 23 Jomādā II 1265/16 May, 1849), a prominent Bābi (see BABISM) figure who accepted the Bābi religion when still a young clergyman of 22 years and was later given the spiritual title “Qoddus” (lit. ‘absolutely holy’ or ‘the most holy’) by the…

QODSI MAŠHADI, ḤĀJI MOḤAMMAD JĀN (b. Mashad, ca. 1582; d. Lahore, 1646), Persian poet of the first half of the 17th century. The earliest biographical notices depict Qodsi as a prosperous and prominent community leader in Mashad, the city of his birth (Karvān-e Hend II, p. 1096). By his mid-thirties,…

QOFṢ, the Arabised form of Kufiči, lit. “mountain dweller,” the name of a people of southeastern Iran found in the Islamic historians and geographers of the 10th-11th centuries (on the etymology of their name, see Bosworth, 1976, p. 9). They are frequently linked in these sources with the Baluch, as…

QOHESTĀNI, ABU ESḤĀQ Ebrāhim, one of the most prominent Nezāri Ismaʿili dāʿis and authors of the early Anjedān period in Nezāri history.  He was born around the middle of the 9th/15th century in Moʾmenābād, a district to the east of Birjand, in southeastern Khorasan, a region known as Qohestān (Pers….

QOHRUD, mountainous river, village, and district, with attractive architectural monuments; on a caravan station from Kashan to Isfahan. i. Historical geography  The district is in the Karkas chain and is clearly named after its river (from kōh-rōd “mountain river”). First mentioned in the 11th century Maḥāsen-e Eṣfahān (Māfarruḵi, p. 17),…