Explore Iranica

ASB iv. In Afghanistan The lands in northern Afghanistan and the upper Oxus valley—Čaḡānīān, Ḵottal, and Vaḵš on the right bank, and Ṭoḵārestān and Badaḵšān on the left bank—were well-provided with good pasture lands in the valleys running up into the mountains, and seem to have been famed for their…

ASB-SAVĀRĪ (Horse-riding). The Iranian lands, in the course of their long history, have been the source of major advances in the techniques of equitation. The Parthian cataphractaries (horsemen clad in coats of mail) with their arched saddle-bows prefigured the heavy cavalry of later times (R. Ghirshman, “La selle en Iran,”…

AŠBANAKKUŠ (Elamite áš-ba-na-ak-ku-iš), name of an Iranian in the Persepolis Fortification Tablets (ed. R. T. Hallock, Chicago, 1969, p. 485, no. 1782) who received 9 BAR of grain supplied by Mu-iz-ri-ya. The name clearly contains Iranian aspa- “horse” but the second part has not yet been satisfactorily explained. E. Benveniste…

AŠEʿʿAT AL-LAMAʿĀT (The rays of the flashes), a detailed commentary by Nūr-al-dīn ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Jāmī (817/1414-898/1492) on the Lamaʿāt (The flashes) of the mystic poet Faḵr-al-dīn Ebrāhīm ʿErāqī (610/1213-688/1289). The Lamaʿāt, ʿErāqī’s most important work, is a relatively short composition in twenty-eight chapters containing about 8,000 words of highly elaborate prose…

ASFĀD JOŠNAS (Arabicized form of Middle Persian *Aspād-gušnasp), a native of Ardašīr-ḵorra (Gūr, Fīrūzābād) who commanded the supporters of Šērōya (Šērōē; r. ca. 628 A.D.), whom he helped remove his father Ḵosrow II Parvēz from the throne (Ṭabarī, I, p.1046; Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser, pp. 362ff.). After the imprisonment of…

ASFAND (or Ašfand, Ašbanḏ), a medieval district (kūra) of the quarter (robʿ) of Nīšāpūr of Khorasan province. Only a few medieval writers mention this district. It consisted of many villages (Yāqūt gives the number of 83) but had no city (madīna) proper according to Moqaddasī (p. 319), whose remarks on…

Search terms:  اسفانور  asfanur asfaanour asfanoor        

AL-ASFĀR AL-ARBAʿA (The four journeys), or, more completely, al-Ḥekmat al-motaʿālīa fi’l-asfār al-ʿaqlīya al-arbaʿa (The sublime wisdom in the four rational journeys), the title of the magnum opus of Moḥammad b. Ebrāhīm titled Ṣadr-al-dīn Šīrāzī, commonly known as Mollā Ṣadrā or simply Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1641). The work was written, according to the…

ASFĀR B. ŠĪRŪYA (Asfār is a local Caspian form of Mid. Pers. aswār, NPers. savār “rider, cavalryman;” Justi, Namenbuch, p. 46), a military leader from Lāhīǰān in Gīlān. In the early decades of the 4th/10th century, after the breakdown of caliphal control in northwestern Persia, he carved out a momentary…

ASFEZĀR (or ASFŌZAR), designation of a district (kūra) and later its chief town in the Herat quarter of Khorasan. The town was more recently known as Sabzavār of Herat (to distinguish it from the Sabzavār of Khorasan near Nīšāpūr, medieval Bayhaq), and at the present time is called Šīndand. Since…

ASFEZĀRĪ, ABŪ ḤĀTEM MOẒAFFAR B. ESMĀʿĪL, 5th/12th-century astronomer, of whose life almost nothing is known. His nesba indicates that he was from Asfezār, a town in Sīstān between Herat and Farāh. According to Ebn al-Aṯīr (X, p. 98) he was among the leading astronomers commissioned by the Saljuq Sultan Malekšāh…

ASFĪJĀB (or ASBĪJĀB, ESBĪJĀB) a town and district of medieval Transoxania, essentially comprising the basin of the Syr Darya’s right-bank affluent, the Ares (Russian Arys’) river. The town of Asfīǰāb lay upstream from Čemkant and corresponds to the 19th-century Sayrām (in the territory of the present Soviet Kazakhstan). The district…

ASHKHABAD (Russian; Persian ʿEšqābād), since 1924 the capital of the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan. It lies 40 km north of the Iranian frontier and is a station on the Central Asian Railway from Krasnovodsk (on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea) to Tashkent, built in the years 1885-99. Formerly…