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ARAXA (Elamite ḫa-rak-qa, Akkadian a-ra-ḫu), Old Persian form of the name of a leader of a Babylonian rebellion against Darius I (DB 3.76ff.). He arose in the district Dubala, in south Babylonia, or (according to the Akkadian version of the Bīsotūn (Behistun) inscription) in Ur. After occupying the capital of…

ARAXES (ARAS) RIVER. i. Geography. ii. Historical perspective.   i. Geography The Araxes river (Figure 5) forms the international boundary between northwest Iran and the USSR from a point east of Mount Ararat (which lies very close to the river) for some 250 miles to Tāzakendīm on the western edge…

AL-ĀRĀʾ WA’L-DĪĀNĀT, doxographical work, famous especially for its information about non-Islamic religions and Greek philosophy, written by Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbaḵtī (d. between 300/912 and 310/922), the Imamite theologian who also composed the Ketāb feraq al-šīʿa. The book was never finished (cf. Ebn al-Nadīm, Fehrest, Tehran2, p. 225) but enjoyed…

ARBĀB, the plural of the Arabic noun rabb “owner, master, the Lord,” used in Persian to signify any sort of owner or master. In modern Persian (in addition to a purely honorific application to eminent Zoroastrians), it indicates a proprietor of rural land, and the adjective arbābī is applied to…

ARBĀB, ĀQĀ MOḤAMMAD-MAHDĪ B. ĀQĀ MOḤAMMAD-REŻĀ ARBĀB EṢFAHĀNĪ, a prominent merchant and scholar of Isfahan (fl. ca. 1234/1818 to 1314/1896-97). His ancestor was reportedly a Baghdadi Jew converted to Islam after migrating to Isfahan (Bāmdād, Reǰāl III, p. 450). In the early 1850s (before 1269/1852-53) he went to Bombay where…

ARBACES, Greek form of an Old Iranian proper name. 1. Arbaku (Ar-ba-ku), ruler of the Median district Arnasia, one of the many Median chiefs who paid tribute to the Assyrian king Sargon II in 713 B.C. (See Justi, Namenbuch, pp. 20-21; H. Winckler, Die Keilschrifttexte Sargons II II, Leipzig, 1889,…

ARBĀYISTĀN, name of a Mesopotamian province in the Sasanian empire. It is known from Šāpūr I’s inscription on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt (Gk. 2 ARABIAN, Parth. 1 [ʾrb]ystn), Pahl. Vendidad 1.77 (Arwāstān), and as a loanword in Armenian (Arvastan, Hübschmann, Armen. Etymologie, p. 27). There is also a term ʿArab, meaning…

ARBAʿĪN, fortieth day after ʿĀšūrāʾ . A day of mourning, preferably at the shrine of Imam Ḥosayn, Arbaʿīn forms part of a cycle of days commemorating the burial of the imam and his companions and the various stages of the return journey of the women captives to Medina. Many pious…

ARBELA (Assyrian Arbailu, Old. Pers. Arbairā, Gk. Arbēla, Ar. Erbīl, locally Erbel), capital of an ancient northern Mesopotamian province located between the two Zab rivers. An important junction point on major east-west and north-south caravan routes, the town was an occupied site since remote antiquity, and is the only large…

ARBERRY, ARTHUR JOHN, British orientalist. Born at Portsmouth on 12 May 1905, he went to Cambridge University in 1924 with a classics scholarship and subsequently studied Persian and Arabic with R. A. Nicholson and other noted scholars. After graduation and a study year in Cairo, during which time he also…