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AMMŌ, MĀR (Mid. Ir. mry ‘mw), Manichean apostle, outstanding figure in the missionary history of Manicheism during the 3rd century A.D. Exact biographical details are not known, but his name (from ʿAmmānūēl) may indicate Aramaean origin (H. H. Schaeder, “Iranica,” Abh. Gött. Gesell. Wiss., phil-hist. Kl. 3, 10, Berlin, 1934,…

AMOGHAPĀŚAHṚDAYA, “the heart or essence (Sanskrit hṛdaya) of the Amoghapāśa ritual,” the name of a Buddhist text belonging to the Mahayanist Tantric tradition. Amoghapāśa is the name given to a manifestation of the well-known Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, who in this work recites the spell known as Amoghapāśahṛdaya. The Sanskrit text was…

ĀMOL, a town on the Caspian shore, situated in 36° 25’ north latitude and 52° 35’ east longitude in the southwest of the modern province of Māzandarān, medieval Ṭabarestān. It lies on the left bank of the Harāz river, some twelve miles from the sea. i. History. ii. Islamic monuments….

ĀMOL (ĀMŪYA), a town situated in 39°5’ north latitude and 63°41 ° east longitude, one farsaḵ or three miles from the left bank of the Oxus river (Āmū Daryā). In medieval Islamic times it fell administratively within the province of Khorasan; today it is Čārǰūy/Čardzou (“Four irrigation canals”), one of…

AMOL WARE, a kind of pottery apparently dating from the 6th-7th/12th-13th centuries (Plate XXXVI). Like other examples of incised, or sgraffito, pottery, Amol wares are made of reddish clay and covered with a white slip which, when dry, is deeply incised in a variety of decorative motifs; a transparent glaze…

ĀMOLI, ŠAMS-AL-DIN MOḤAMMAD B. MAḤMUD, Shiʿite scholar and author, died at Shiraz in 753/1352-53, when it was under the control of the Inju ruler Abu Esḥāq Jamāl-al-Din (q.v.). He had taught in the Solṭāniya Madrasa during the reign of the Ilkhan Öljeitü (703-16/1304-16). He was the author of a commentary…

ĀMOLĪ, SAYYED BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN ḤAYDAR B. ʿALĪ B. ḤAYDAR AL- ʿOBAYDĪ AL-ḤOSAYNĪ, early representative of Imamite theosophy (b. 720/1320, or perhaps 719/1319). He studied first in his home town of Āmol, then in Astarābād and Isfahan. Returning to Āmol in his late twenties, he was made a confidant, then a minister,…

ĀMORAʾĪ or Āmorī, the dialect spoken in Āmora, a village of some 1000 inhabitants (1969) in the district of Ḵalaǰestān, in šahrestān of Tafreš, and one of a number of closely similar dialects spoken in the villages of the Tafreš area, all forming a transitional group between Central Dialects and…

AMORGES, Greek form of the name of several notable Iranians of the Achaemenid period. This, and the Lycian Humrkhkha (variant Umrgga) attested in a text from around 400 B.C. on the “Inscribed Pillar” at Xanthus, render an Old Iranian *Humarga “having excellent meadows” (cf. Av. “marəga; Sogd. mrγ and NPers….

AMPELIUS, LUCIUS author of a short encyclopaedic work Liber memorialis in fifty chapters covering such diverse subjects as cosmography (and astronomy), geography and ethnography, theology and especially history. Not much is known about the author; he probably lived around the turn of the third century C.E. In some of the…

AMPHIBIANS. Twenty species occur in Iran: six salamanders in three genera in two families and fourteen frogs and toads in four genera in four families. The amphibian fauna is most diverse in the northwestern provinces, which have the greatest rainfall and running water throughout the year. Almost every geographic region…

AMR BE MAʿRŪF, Arabic al-amr be’l-maʿrūf wa’l-nahy ʿan al-monkar “enjoining what is proper or good and forbidding what is reprehensible or evil,” one of the principle religious duties in Islam. The Koran addresses the Muslims stating “You are the best community brought forth for mankind, enjoining what is proper and…

AMRĀNLŪ, a small Turkic tribe which has settled down in the village of Galūgāh, 27 km east of Behšahr (Ašraf), in Māzandarān. According to J. M. Jouannin, in the early 1800s it comprised at most 4,000 individuals (see his list of tribes in A. Dupré, Voyage en Perse, Paris, 1819,…

AMRĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ, ABU’L-QĀSEM MOḤAMMAD (d. 999/1590-91 [?], poet and Sufi from Kūhpāya, a village near Isfahan. In one of his poems he mentions serving the Safavid Shah Ṭahmās b I for thirty years before falling into disfavor in 973/1565-66 (Haft eqlīm II, pp. 431-32); thus he was probably born in…