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APOLLODORUS OF ARTEMITA, historian. He was originally from the Greco-Parthian city of Artemita (Chalasar), in Apolloniatis. According to W. W. Tarn he flourished in the years between 130 and 87 B.C. (The Greeks in Bactria and in India, Cambridge, 1951, p. 47); later dates have also been suggested: the first…

APOPHTHEGMATA PATRUM (Maxims of the fathers), Graeco-Latin name customarily used to refer to a species of Christian literature consisting of sayings and edifying anecdotes of the monks and solitary ascetics who inhabited the deserts of Egypt during the early centuries of the Christian era. Such stories and sayings circulated widely…

APŌŠ, Middle Persian for Av. Apaoša, the demon of drought. He is the evil protagonist of Tištar (Av. Tišrya), the star Sirius. Earlier explanations of the name—*apa-uša- “burning away” (Justi, Bartholomae), *apa-vṛt(a)- “stemming the waters” (Wackernagel and subsequently communis opinio, but impossible for phonetical reason)—are now superceded by Forssman’s *a-pauša-…

APOSTOLIC CANONS, fragmentary Christian Sogdian text. The early Christian Church possessed many collections of “canons” (regulations governing the conduct of priests and laity both in sacred and in secular matters, Greek kanones), among which several claimed apostolic authorship, no doubt spuriously. One such collection of “Apostolic Canons” was translated from…

APPIANUS (APPIAN) OF ALEXANDRIA, historian, born probably toward the end of the 1st century A.D. Little is known of his career, except that he established himself in Rome, where he occupied the post of imperial procurator under Marcus Aurelius (161-69). His Roman History, which he must have composed before 165,…

APZUT KAWĀT WALL The Apzut Kawāt wall was a Sasanian defensive long wall mentioned by Anania Širakac‘i in the part of his geography dealing with the eastern Caucasus: “the long wall called Apzutkawat as far as the Alḷminon swamp and the sea” (Ananias of Shirak, p. 57; Moïse Corène, p….

ĀQ EVLĪ, a small Turkic tribe of Fārs. According to legend, the ancestors of the present-day Āq Evlīs were forced to migrate from Azerbaijan to Khorasan in Safavid times. One of the leaders of the tribe, Moḥammad-Ḥosayn Beg, served Nāder Shah Afšār (r. 1148-60/1736-47) with distinction in India and was…

AQ QOYUNLŪ or WHITE SHEEP, a confederation of Turkman tribes who ruled in eastern Anatolia and western Iran until the Safavid conquest in 907-08/1501-03. The confederation (īl or ūlūs) was led by members of the Bayandor (Bāyandor) clan, who traced their lineage to Bayandor Khan, the eponymous founder of one…

ĀQĀ (or ĀḠĀ), Mongolian title, essentially meaning “elder brother” and by extension “senior member of the family.” It was in the latter capacity that Batu convened the quriltai that elected Möngke as Great Khan (see P. Jackson, “The Dissolution of the Mongol Empire,” Central Asiatic Journal 22/3-4, 1978, p. 203…

ĀQĀ BĀLĀ KHAN SARDĀR, MOḤAMMAD-ʿALĪ KHAN, Qajar official in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of an obscure family, he joined the military at an early age. He rose rapidly after attracting the attention of Nāṣer-al-dīn Shah’s son, Kāmrān Mīrzā, minister of war and supreme commander of the armies….

ĀQĀ (or ĀḠĀ) BOZORG ṬEHRĀNĪ, SHAIKH MOḤAMMAD-MOḤSEN (1293-1389/1876-1970), Shiʿite scholar and bibliographer. He was born on 11 Rabīʿa I 1293/6 April 1876, into a mercantile family of Tehran that had strong religious interests; his father, Ḥāǰǰ ʿAlī, participated actively in the celebrated tobacco boycott of 1308/1891 and later wrote a…

ĀQĀ KHAN, title of the imams of the Nezārī Ismaʿilis since early 19th century. i. Āqā Khan I Maḥallātī. ii. Āqā Khan II. iii. Āqā Khan III. i. Āqā Khan I Maḥallātī Sayyed Ḥasan-ʿAlī Šāh Āqā Khan Maḥallātī (1219-1300/1804-81) was the last imam of the Nezārī Ismaʿilis to reside in…

ĀQĀ KHAN KERMĀNĪ, MĪRZĀ ʿABD-AL-ḤOSAYN (1270-1314/1854-55 to 1896), Iranian writer and intellectual, and an outstanding example of a first-generation secular nationalist. Born in 1270/1853-54 in Mašīz (Bardasīr), a village southwest of the city of Kermān. ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Khan (Figure 1), son of ʿAbd-al-Raḥīm, belonged to an important local family with a…