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ṬABAQĀT-E NĀṢERI, an extensive general history composed in Persian by  b. Serāj-al-Din Jowzjāni, who for the first part of his career lived in Ḡur under the Ghurid sultans and latterly in Muslim India under the Moʿezzi or Šamsi Delhi sultans (b. 589/1193 in Ḡur, d. at Delhi in India apparently…

ṬABARI, ABU JAʿFAR MOḤAMMAD B. JARIR (224-310/839-923), one of the most eminent Iranian scholars of the early Abbasid era, author of a celebrated commentary on the Qorʾān as well as the most important of the classical Arabic historical texts still extant. BIOGRAPHY Sources. Despite Ṭabari’s intellectual fame and enduring significance,…

ṬABĀṬABĀʾI, Sayyed MOḤAMMAD-ḤOSAYN (b. Šādābād, a village near Tabriz, 29 Du’l-ḥejja 1321/17 March 1904; d. Qom, 18 Moḥarram 1402/16 Nov. 1981, Figure 1), eminent Twelver Shiʿite philosopher and author of the famous exegesis, al-Mizān.  His esteem amongst Shiʿites is such that they often refer to him solely by the honorific…

TABRIZ x. Monuments x(1). Blue Mosque The Blue Mosque (Pers. Masjed-e kabud), also known as Masjed-e Moẓaffariya, was built during the rule of the Qarā Qoyunlu dynasty (1351-1469) and completed in 1465.  The only major Qarā Qoyunlu structure still standing in the dynasty’s capital, it illustrates the artistic brilliance of…

TABRIZ v. The city in the 19th century  By the beginning of the Qajar era (1785-1925), Tabriz, the capital of the province of Azerbaijan, had lost much of the importance it had in earlier eras.  That was recouped, however, soon after its incorporation into the new empire, and in the…

TADAYYON, Sayyed Moḥammad Birjandi (b. Birjand, 1881; d. United States, December 1951), early 20th-century educationist and politician. Sayyed Moḥammad Birjandi was born in a village in the vicinity of the town of Birjand in Khorasan. He lost both his parents in infancy and was raised by his maternal uncle. At the…

TAḎKERA-YE NAṢRĀBĀDI, a compilation of short biographical notices on some one thousand poets of the Safavid period, compiled by the poet and literary historian Mirza Moḥammad Ṭāḥer Naṣrābādi (b. Mārbin of Naṣrābād, in the vicinity of Isfahan, 1027/1618) and presented to the Safavid Shah Solaymān (r. 1666-1694). Naṣrābādi embarked upon…

TAḎKERAT al-AWLIĀʾ(Saints’ Lives), a hagiographic account of the sayings and miraculous deeds (karāmāts) of eminent sufis and other religious figures from the early Islamic centuries by the famous mystical poet Farid-al-Din ʿAṭṭār (q.v.; 1145-1221). It is his only surviving work in prose and was probably written in early 13th century….

TAḎKERAT al-MOLUK (Memorial for kings), Persian manual from the transitional period between the collapse of the Safavid empire at the end of the reign of Shah Solṭān Ḥosayn (r. 1694-1722) and the early Afghan period in Persia. Together with Dastur al-moluk, it constitutes a pre-eminent source of the Safavid administrative…

TADWIN, AL-, brief popular title of Ketāb al-tadwin fi ḏekr ahl al-ʿelm be-Qazvin, a local biographical dictionary of Qazvin in Arabic compiled by ʿAbd-al-Karim b. Moḥammad Rāfeʿi Qazvini (b. Qazvin 555/1160; d. Qazvin, 623/226). A number of points in the text itself make it clear that Rāfeʿi was working on…

TAFAŻŻOLI, AḤMAD (b. Isfahan, 16 Āḏar 1316 Š./7 December 1937; d. Tehran, 24 Dey 1375/13 January 1997, Figure 1), a prominent scholar and philologist in the field of Middle Iranian studies.   Tafażżoli’s father, a rug merchant, moved with his family to Tehran when Aḥmad was six years old.  Aḥmad…

TAFT, town and district in Yazd province. The town is located 20 km southwest of Yazd, on the road to Abarquh, at an altitude of 1,560 m. The district, formerly known as Piškuh, is an arid piedmont consisting of the rural districts of Piškuh, Šurkuh, ʿAliābād, Naṣrābād, Dehšir, Bonādkuk, Zardin,…

TAHERIDS (Pers. Āl-e Ṭāher), name of a prominent family of the early Abbasid period and more particularly a line of governors of Khorasan (205-59/821-73) from that family. The first of these governors (sing. amir) and the eponym of the family was Ṭāher b. Ḥosayn, known as Ḏu’l-Yaminayn (“the ambidextrous”) or…

ṬAHMĀSP I, second ruler of the Safavid dynasty (b. village of Šāh-ābād near Isfahan, 22 February, 1514; d. Qazvin, 14 May, 1576). Introduction. Given that the 52-year reign of Abu’l-Fatḥ Ṭahmāsp (posthumously referred to as ḵāqān-e jannat-makān) was the longest of all Safavid rulers, the absence of any full-scale biography…

TĀJ AL-SALĀṬIN, a book in the genre of Mirror for Princes written in Malay by Boḵāri Jawhari (fl. early 17th cent.). It is based on the patterns of the Persian andarz genre in Persian literature, was highly influential in subsequent Malay Islamic literature. Aside from Nur-al-Din Rāniri’s (d. 1658) similar work,…