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ANŪŠTIGIN ḠARČAʾĪ, Turkish slave commander of the Saljuqs; in the late 5th/11th century, under Sultans Malekšāh and Berkyaruq (Barkīāroq), he bore the traditional title of Ḵᵛārazmšāh. Ḵᵛārazm had passed into Saljuq hands with the flight of the son of the Oḡuz Yabḡū Šāh Malek of Jand in 433/1042 and had…

ANWĀR-E SOHAYLĪ, a collection of fables by the Timurid prose-stylist Ḥosayn Wāʿeẓ Kāšefī. Written under the patronage of Sultan Ḥosayn Mīrzā Bāyqarā, it was titled after his vizier and commander, Aḥmad Sohaylī, though there is also of course a pun on Sohayl, the brilliant star Canopus. Its precise date is…

ANWARĪ, AWḤAD-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD (or ʿALĪ), poet at the court of the Saljuqs in the 6th/12th century. His first name and the name of his father vary even in the earliest sources: According to ʿAwfī (Lobāb II, p. 125) he was called Moḥammad b. Moḥammad; Moḥammad Ẓāher Samarqandī (author of the…

ANZALĪ, town in Gīlān (lat 37°28′ N, long 49°28′ E) at the mouth of the lagoon (mordāb) bearing the same name, at a distance of 40 km from Rašt (see RASHT). i. The town. ii. The lagoon (mordāb).   i. The town First mentioned at the end of the 9th/15th century,…

AOGƎMADAĒČĀ, a small prayer and meditation on death, made up of twenty-nine Avestan quotations (one of them Gathic) embedded in a sermon in Pārsī (Pahlavi in Arabic script). It is named after its first word, meaning “we are called” and itself extracted, with the following two, from a sentence in…

APADĀNA, Old Pers. term referring to audience halls, now specifically to the audience hall in Persepolis. i. Term. ii. Building.   i. Term Apadāna (masc.), which is rendered as Elamite ha-ba-da-na and Babylonian ap-pa-da-an in the parallel versions, occurs only in some building inscriptions of Darius II and Artaxerxes II…

APĄM NAPĀT (Son of the Waters), Zoroastrian divinity of mysterious character whose true identity, like that of his Vedic counterpart, Apām Napāt, has been much debated. Both the Avestan texts and Zoroastrian cult suggest that he is a great divinity, who has become partly overshadowed. No hymn survives in his…

APAMĀ, name of several noble women of the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods, probably related to the Av. apama- “the latest,” hence “the youngest [child], nestling” (W. Hinz, Altiranisches Sprachgut der Nebenüberlieferungen, Wiesbaden, 1975, p. 31). The bearers of this name include: 1. A daughter of Artaxerxes II, whom the king…

APARIMITĀYUḤ-SŪTRA, the name of a Buddhist text belonging to the Mahāyāna tradition. It is concerned with the merit obtained by recalling the Buddha called Aparimitāyurjñānasuviniścitarāja. The Sanskrit text has been edited by S. Konow and M. Walleser. Tibetan and Chinese translations are extant. S. Konow edited and translated the Khotanese…

APARNA (Gk. Aparnoi/Parnoi, Lat. Aparni or Parni), an east Iranian tribe established on the Ochos (modern Taǰen, Teǰend) and one of the three tribes in the confederation of the Dahae (Dahā in the inscription of Xerxes, Ph 26, see Kent, Old Persian, p. 151). Their original homeland may have been…

APASIACAE, name of a nomadic tribe belonging to the Scythian Massagetae, not attested in Iranian sources; the Apasiacae lived between Oxus and Tanais according to Polybius 10.48.1 (with the variant reading Aspasiákai preferred, e.g., by Altheim and Stiehl) and Stephanus Byzantius, i.e., on the eastern coast of the Aral Sea,…

APHORISM, “short sentences drawn from long experience” to Cervantes, “the wisdom of many, the wit of one” to Lord Russell, the terms proverb, aphorism, maxim have evaded strict definition and demarcation one from another. Aphorism in its literal sense, as a “sententious statement of the principles of physical science” ultimately…

APOCALYPTIC (that which has been revealed): i. In Zoroastrianism. ii. In Muslim Iran.   i. In Zoroastrianism The use of the term apocalyptic to define a particular type of prophetic utterance is a development of Judaeo-Christian studies, in which a need was felt to mark a distinction between the ancient…