Table of Contents

  • MĀ WARĀʾ AL-NAHR

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    the classical designation for Transoxania or Transoxiana. It was defined by the early Arabic historians and geographers as the lands under Muslim control lying to the north of the middle and upper Oxus or Āmu Daryā.

  • MAʿĀYEB AL-REJĀL

    Afsaneh Najmabadi

    a treatise written in 1894 by Bibi Ḵānom Estarābādi/Astarābādi as a counterargument to the anonymous Taʾdib al-neswān/Taʾdib al-nesāʾ, a tract on how to discipline women, published in the mid-19th century.

  • MACHALSKI, FRANCISZEK

    Anna Krasnowolska

    (1904-1979), Polish Iranist. Some of his best papers are devoted to cultural and political life in Pahlavi Persia.

  • MACKENZIE, DAVID NEIL

    Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst

    Believing that the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies would be the institution most suited to his interests, Mackenzie enrolled there in September 1948. Because Pashto was not offered, he chose Persian, and completed the three-year B.A. course in 1951.

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  • MADĀʾEN

    Michael Morony

    the Sasanian metropolitan area of several contiguous cities, on both sides of the Tigris and connected by floating bridges, about 35 km southeast of Abbasid Baghdad.

  • MADĀR AL-AFĀŻEL

    Solomon Bayevsky

    dictionary of the Persian language compiled in 1001/1593 by the poet and historian Allāh-dād Fayżī b. Asad al-ʿOlamāʾ ʿAli-šir Serhendi.

  • MĀDAR-E SOLAYMĀN

    Cross-Reference

    "Solaymān's mother," local name of the tomb of Cyrus. See CYRUS v. The Tomb of Cyrus

  • MĀDAYĀN Ī HAZĀR DĀDESTĀN

    Maria Macuch

    (Book of a Thousand Judgements), Pahlavi Law-Book from the late Sasanian period (first half of the seventh century).

  • MĀDDA TĀRIḴ

    Paul Losensky

    chronogram poem, a poetic genre characterized by the inclusion of the year in which an event occurred.

  • MADRASA

    Cross-Reference

    school for the study of the Islamic sciences and related subjects.  For the institution, see under entry EDUCATION: iv. The Medieval Madrasa, v. The Madrasa In ShiʿIte Persia; vi. The Madrasa In Sunni Kurdistan. Other entries contain passing references to madrasas in relation to specific mosques; see, e.g., GOWHAR-ŠĀD MOSQUE, BĪBĪ KHANOM MOSQUE.   For the architecture of madrasas, see ISFAHAN x. Monuments x(4). Madrasa.

  • MAFĀTIḤ AL-ʿOLUM

    George Saliba

    (Keys to sciences) by  Ḵᵛārazmi, a book in which key terms used by various classes of scholars, artisans, state officials, and others are explained (comp. ca. 366/976).

  • MAGI

    Muhammad A. Dandamayev

    the only recorded designation of priests of all western Iranians during the Median, Achaemenid, Parthian (mgw), and Sasanian periods.

  • MAGIC i. MAGICAL ELEMENTS IN THE AVESTA AND NĒRANG LITERATURE

    Antonio Panaino

    The presence of magical elements in the strict sense  in Avestan literature has been considered rare.

  • MAGIC ii. IN LITERATURE AND FOLKLORE IN THE ISLAMIC PERIOD

    Mahmud Omidsalar

    Magic can be briefly described as the art of influencing the course of events by the occult control of natural phenomena through the application of ritual observances acquired through a study of esoteric and often closely guarded corpus of knowledge and traditions.

  • MAGOPHONIA

    Muhammad A. Dandamayev

    An appropriate Iranian word for magophonia is the Sogdian mwγzt- (killing of the Magi).

  • MĀH YAŠT

    William W. Malandra

    one of what have been termed ‘minor Yašts’  of the Avesta; it is dedicated to the moon.

  • MAḤALLĀTI, Moḥammad

    Javad Golmohammadi

    a master calligrapher of the Timurid period, known only through three surviving works on wood and stone (a cenotaph, a door, and a stone plaque), which reflect the stylistic influence of the Timurid prince and master calligrapher Ḡiāṯ-al-Din Bāysonqor (d. 1493).

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  • MĀHĀNI, ABU ʿABD-ALLĀH MOḤAMMAD

    Bijan Vahabzadeh

    mathematician and astronomer from Māhān, near Kerman, Iran, who flourished in the second half of the 9th century; he was a learned arithmetician and geometer, generally recognized among his peers.

  • MAHĀRLU LAKE

    Karāmat-Allāh Afsar

    a picturesque, rather extensive body of water to the southeast of Shiraz.

  • MAḤĀSEN EṢFAHĀN

    David Durand-Guédy

    (The beauties of Isfahan), a book extolling Isfahan, written by Mofażżal b. Saʿd Māfarruḵi during the reign of the Saljuq sultan Malekšāh.

  • MAHDAVI, Yaḥyā

    Moḥammad Ḵᵛānsāri and EIr

    Mahdavi continued his education at Tehran Teachers College from 1928 until 1931, from which he was among the first to graduate with a bachelor's degree. In 1931, he received a scholarship from the state to continue his education in France until his graduation in 1938, writing his doctoral thesis under André Lanlande and Emile Bréhier.

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  • MAHDI

    Cross-Reference

    “the rightly-guided one”  in Arabic, designation of the descendant of the Prophet who is expected to return to rule the world.

    See in entry ISLAM in IRAN:
    vi. THE CONCEPT OF MAHDI IN SUNNI ISLAM;
    vii. THE CONCEPT OF MAHDI IN TWELVER SHIʿISM;
    viii. THE OCCULTATION OF MAHDI;
    ix. THE DEPUTIES OF MAHDI.

  • MAḤFEL-E RUḤĀNI

    Moojan Momen

    current designation of the Bahai governing councils elected at local and national level.

  • MAHJUB, MOHAMMAD JA’FAR

    Mahmoud Omidsalar

    prominent scholar of Persian literature, essayist, translator, university teacher, and one of the founders of the discipline of folklore in Iran.

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  • MAḤJUBI, Morteżā

    Morteżā Ḥoseyni Dehkordi and EIr

    (1900-1965), composer and pianist,  noted for his use of the piano to perform traditional Iranian music.

  • MAḤJUBI, Reżā

    Morteżā Ḥoseyni Dehkordi and EIr

    (1898-1954) composer and violinist, brother of Morteżā.

  • MAḤMUD B. SEBÜKTEGIN

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    the first fully independent ruler of the Turkish Ghaznavid dynasty, who reigned (388-421/998-1030) over what had become by his death a vast military empire.

  • MAḤMUD MIRZĀ

    Dominic Parviz Brookshaw

    (b. 1799, d. between 1854 and 1858), fifteenth son of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah Qajar (r. 1797-1834), calligrapher, poet, and anthologist.

  • MAHMUD, AHMAD

    Saeed Rezaei and Maryam Seyedan

    (1931-2002), Iranian contemporary novelist and short story writer.

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  • MAJALLA-ye JAMʿIYAT-e NESWĀN-e WAṬANḴᵛĀH-e IRĀN

    Nassereddin Parvin

    magazine of the women's association of that name, 1923-26.

  • MAJALLA-ye RASMI-e ṮABT

    Nassereddin Parvin

    official journal of the Ministry of Justice from 1928.

  • MAJD, Loṭf-Allāh

    Morteżā Ḥoseyni Dehkordi and EIr

    r player known for his brilliant virtuosity and distinctive style (1917-1978).

  • MAJD-AL-ESLĀM KERMĀNI

    Maryam Kamali

    Shaikh Aḥmad (1871-1923), journalist, participant/observer in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-11. One of his basic concerns  was to spread knowledge, a notion expressed through foreign and national news coverage in the newspaper Adab. 

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  • MAJD-AL-MOLK II

    M. Dabirsiāqi

    Majd-al-Molk was a learned man with a knowledge of Persian and Arabic literature. He was knowledgeable in philosophy and religious sciences and was an expert in calligraphy, engraving, and all kinds of secretarial craft. As a poet, he followed the style of past masters. Samples of his poetry mentioned by Ebrāhim Khan Madāyeḥnegār.

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  • MAJDUʿ, ESMĀʿIL

    Ismail K. Poonawala

    (d. 1769-70), an Ismaʿili scholar from India, well-known for his Bibliography (Fehrest) of extant Ismaʿili manuscripts.

  • MAJLESI, Moḥammad-Bāqer

    Rainer Brunner

    (b. 1627; d. 1699 or 1700), an eminent Twelver Shiʿite jurist in Safavid Iran (1501-1722) and one of the most important hadith scholars of Twelver Shiʿism.

  • MAJLESI, MOḤAMMAD-TAQI

    Rainer Brunner

    b. Maqṣud-ʿAli Eṣfahāni, commonly referred to as Majlesi-ye Awwal, an important Twelver Shiʿite jurist and Hadith scholar of the Aḵbāri school.

  • MAḴDUM ŠARIFI ŠIRĀZI

    Kioumars Ghereghlou

    (1540-41 to 1587), Sunni bureaucrat and polemicist; he held office as ṣadr or minister of religious affairs and endowments at the court of Shah Esmāʿil II Ṣafawi, and eventually fled to the Ottoman Empire.

  • MAKRĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    (also Mokrān) the coastal region of Baluchistan, extending from the Somniani Bay to the northwest of Karachi in the east westwards to the fringes of the region of Bashkardia/Bāšgerd in the southern part of the Sistān and Balučestān province of modern Iran.

  • MAKTAB

    Cross-Reference

    See EDUCATION iii. The Traditional Elementary School.

  • MĀKŪLĀ DYNASTY

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀL-E MĀKŪLĀ.

  • MALABĀRI, BEHRĀMJI MERWĀNJI

    Firoze M. Kotwal and Jamsheed K. Choksy

    Malabari began his journalistic and editorial career after Sir Cowasji Jehangir, an eminent Parsi businessman, introduced him to Martin Woods, then the editor of the Times of India. Malabari also began writing a serial column for the Indian Spectator, an English language weekly magazine.

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  • MALAKUT

    Saeed Honarmand

    the highly acclaimed and the only published novella by the noted modernist fiction writer Bahram Sadeqi.

  • MALARIA

    Mohammad Hossein Azizi

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2013, Iran, after several decades of fighting against the disease, has now entered the pre-eliminated stage of malaria control; it is anticipated that, by 2025, malaria will be completely eradicated in Iran.

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  • MALEKŠĀH

    David Durand-Guédy

    the Great Saljuq sultan, during whose reign the Saljuq empire attained its maximum extension.

  • MALIĀN

    Kamyar Abdi

    an important archeological site in the Kor River basin in central Fārs, identified as ancient Anshan, the highland capital of Elam. At nearly 200 ha, Maliān is the largest pre-Achaemenid settlement in Fārs and one of largest archeological sites in Iran.

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  • MĀLIK, DĀWĪD GĪWARGĪS

    David G. Malick

    (1861-1931), Assyrian poet and historian, born in the village of Sipūrḡān in the Urmia plain; served as secretary of the Patriarchal Church Committee.

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  • MĀLIK, GĪWARGĪS DĀWĪD

    David G. Malick

    (1836-1909), Assyrian writer, educator, and missionary, born in the village of Sipūrḡān in the Urmia plain, Azerbaijan; his work with Americans and Europeans enabled him to travel widely in the Middle East and Europe.

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  • MĀLIK, NISṬŌRĪS GĪWARGĪS

    David G. Malick

    (1864-1927), Assyrian priest, educator, and writer was born in the village of Sipūrḡān in the Urmia plain, Azerbaijan; he succeeded in persuading Norwegian Lutherans to sponsor missionary work aimed at supporting, rather than converting, the Church of the East.

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  • MALKŪS

    Kianoosh Rezania

    a malignant demon in Zoroastrian Pahlavi literature, of pestilential nature and a descendant of the Turanian Brādarōrēš, who killed Zarathustra.

  • MAMIKONEAN FAMILY

    Nina Garsoian

    the most distinguished family in Early Christian Armenia after the ruling Arsacid house. Their power survived the fall of the dynasty in 428 and began to wane only from the end of the 6th century.

  • MAMMALS

    Multiple Authors

    "warm-blooded" vertebrate animals that have hair and produce milk to nourish their young.

  • MAMMALS i. Mammals of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

    Steven C. Anderson

    an account of mammals in history, literature, biodiversity, and biogeography.

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  • MAMMALS ii. Species List: Mammals of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia

    Steven C. Anderson

    taxonomy of the mammals of the area, with their common names and range. 

  • MAMMALS iii. The Classification of Mammals and the Other Animal Classes according to Zoroastrian Tradition

    Mahnaz Moazami

    The first written information about certain animals in Iran comes from the Zoroastrian literature, according to which the entire animal kingdom is divided into two classes: “beneficent animals” and “evil animals.”

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  • MAMSIRATI, DÄBE

    F. Thordarson

    (Russian: Dabe Mamsurov), Ossetic author (1909-1966).

  • MAʾMUN

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    (786-833), Abu’l-ʿAbbās ʿAbd-Allāh, the seventh Abbasid caliph (r. 813-833), son of Hārun-al-Rašid (d. 809) by a Persian concubine.

  • MANDAEANS i. HISTORY

    Edmondo F. Lupieri

    an ethnic group (also called Nasoreans or Ar. Ṣābeʾin) belonging to one of the less represented religions of the Near East.

  • MANDAEANS ii. THE MANDAEAN RELIGION

    Kurt Rudolph

    A major characteristic of the Mandaeans is the frequent ritual use of (running) water (for baptisms and ritual purifications); another is the possession of a rich literature in their own eastern Aramaic language and script, “Mandaic”.

  • MANDAEANS iii. INTERACTION WITH IRANIAN RELIGION

    Kurt Rudolph

    assimilation and corresponding processing of Iranian (Persian) components within the Mandaean religion can be demonstrated on different levels: in the vocabulary, in the mythology or theology, in the cultic-ritual realm, and in the calendar.

  • MANDAEANS iv. COMMUNITY IN IRAN

    Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley

    According to the 15 September 2004 United States Department of State International Religious Freedom Report for Iran, Section 1, the current Mandaean population in Persia comprises between 5,000 and 10,000 persons.

  • MANDAEANS v. MANDAIC LANGUAGE

    Christa Müller-Kessler

    Mandaic is the term for the Aramaic dialect of the last remaining non-Christian Gnostics from Late Antiquity, the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Ḵuzestān). It belongs to the Southeastern Aramaic dialect group with Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic and Koiné Babylonian Aramaic.

  • MANDAEANS vi. NEO-MANDAIC LANGUAGE

    Charles Häberl

    or modern Mandaic, the contemporary form of Mandaic, the language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. As such, it is the only known form of any of the classical literary dialects of Aramaic to survive to the present date, but it is severely endangered today.

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  • MANDANE

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    name of a daughter of the Median king Astyages.

  • MANGHITS

    ANKE VON KÜGELGEN

    self-denomination of Mongol and Turkic tribes which played an eminent role in the Golden Horde.

  • MANI

    Werner Sundermann

    the founder of the religion of Manicheism in the 3rd century CE. His life, being the central human subject of Manichean salvation history, necessarily underwent hagiographical stylization.

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  • MANICHEAN ART

    Zsuzsanna Gulacsi

    term referring to objects with aesthetic appeal made for, and/or used in association with,  the Manichean religion. Apart from a rock-crystal seal in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris,  no other item of Manichean art is known from Sasanian Mesopotamia, where the religion originated.

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  • MANICHEAN SCRIPT

    Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst

    a right-to-left Semitic script, used by adherents of Manicheism to write texts in Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Early New Persian, Bactrian, and Uighur (Old Turkish). It is closely related to the Palmyrene script of Aramaic and the Estrangelo script of Syriac.

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  • MANICHEISM

    Multiple Authors

    the religion founded by Mani, who regarded his doctrine not as the religion of a region, a state, or a chosen people, but as the completion of the preceding great religions of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism.

  • MANICHEISM i. GENERAL SURVEY

    Werner Sundermann

    Manicheism is the only world religion that has become completely extinct. Its founder, Mani, lived in the third century CE. His religion spread over the continents from the Atlantic to the Chinese Sea.

  • MANICHEISM ii. THE MANICHEAN PANTHEON

    Werner Sundermann

    In this article, the gods of the Manicheans are considered collectively with regards to their names and functions.

  • MANICHEISM iii. THE MANICHEAN PANDAEMONIUM

    Werner Sundermann

    demons and demonology in Manicheism.

  • MANICHEISM iv. BUDDHIST ELEMENTS IN

    P. Bryder

    Mani, who came to be considered himself to be the seal of the prophets, named Buddha, Zarathustra, and Jesus as his forerunners.

  • MANICHEISM v. MISSIONARY ACTIVITY AND TECHNIQUE

    Werner Sundermann

    The main primary sources on the beginning of Manichean missionary work are the Cologne Mani Codex and the Kephalaia.

  • MANICHEISM vi. IN CHINA

    Sammuel L.C. Lieu

    Manicheism arrived in China in the sixth century, but its history in there was little known until the first decade of the 20th century, when a genuine Manichean text in Chinese was discovered in the Cave of Thousand Buddhas in Tun-huang.

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  • MANJIL

    Marcel Bazin

    town in the Rudbār district, Gilān province. Located at lat 36°44′ N, long 49°24′ E, where the Qezel-owzan (Kızıl-uzun) and Šāhrud rivers unite into the Safidrud.

  • MANNEA

    Ran Zadok

    (Neo-Assyrian Mannāyu), name refering to a region southeast of Lake Urmia centered around modern Saqqez.

  • MANṢUR B. NUḤ

    C. Edmund Bosworth

    the name of two of the later Amirs of the Samanids (q.v.), the first ruling in both Transoxiana and Khorasan, and the second in Transoxiana only.

  • MANSURI, ZABIH-ALLAH

    Ḥassan Mirābedini

    (d. 1986), a prolific Iranian journalist, writer, and translator who wrote under the pseudonyms  “Nāṣer” and “Pištāz”.

  • MAPLE

    Cross-Reference

    See AFRĀ.

  • MĀR ABĀ

    Manfred Hutter

    Zoroastrian convert to Christianity, catholicos for the Church of the East, 540-52 CE.

  • MĀR MĀRI

    Florence Jullien

    the Christian apostle, considered as the first missionary in the Arsacid Empire.

  • MARĀ BEBUS

    Morteza Hosayni Dehkordi and EIr.

    (Kiss me), the title of one of the most popular songs (taṣnif) of mid-twentieth century Iran.

  • MARATHI LANGUAGE, PERSIAN ELEMENTS IN

    S. H. Qasemi and EIr

    the southernmost Indo-Aryan language, is spoken by more than 40 million speakers, including inhabitants of Bombay and the state of Maharashtra (Mahāraštrā) in west-central India.

  • MARD-E ĀZĀD

    Nassereddin Parvin

    a daily newspaper published in Tehran  to support Reżā Khan (the future Reza Shah) in his bid for power, 1923.

  • MARD-e EMRUZ

    Ḥasan Mirʿābedini

    a controversial and highly popular newspaper published weekly in Tehran, with frequent interruptions, from 19 August 1942 to 14 February 1947, by Mohammad Mas’ud.

  • MARDONIUS

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Name of several Persians in Achaemenid times, as OPers. M-r-du-u-n-i-y- /Mr̥duniya-/ (DB 4.84) is rendered in Greek (Mardónios) and Latin (Mardonius).

  • MARICQ, André

    Philippe Gignoux

    From 1953 to the summer of 1954, Maricq conducted extensive field research in the Near East. His aimed to collect casts of all seal collections in the Near East, to obtain impressions of the ŠKZ, and to survey a site in Commagene that Ernest Honigmann identified as the convent of the Nestorian bishop Barṣauma.

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  • MARIE ALEXANDRA VICTORIA

    Della L. Marcus

    (1875-1938), queen consort of Ferdinand I, king of Romania; she developed an understanding and sympathy for the Bahai faith.

  • MARITIME TRADE i. PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

    Daniel T. Potts

    In comparison with Mesopotamia, Persia has far less proof that maritime trade was an important factor in her ancient economy.

  • MARKAZ-E TAḤQIQĀT-E FĀRSI-E IRĀN WA PĀKESTĀN

    Arif Naushahi

    (Iran-Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies), an institute established as per an agreement signed between the Ministry of Culture and Art (Wezārat-e farhang wa honar) of Iran and Ministry of Education and Scientific Research of Pakistan.

  • MARKWART, JOSEF

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    (1864-1930), German historian and orientalist, specialist in historical geography. His monumental Ērānšahr (1901) is still an authoritative work and probably his most important. His books are full of profound and nearly inexhaustible erudition, revealing that their author was a learned historian, philologist, geographer, and ethnologist.

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  • MĀRLIK

    Kamyar Abdi

    an elite burial ground of the late 2nd-early 1st millennium BCE in the western Caspian basin. In total, fifty-three tombs were discovered. The grave goods, numbering over 25,000 individual items, constitute the largest collection discovered from any cemetery of the Early Iron Age anywhere in the Near East.

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  • MARR, NIKOLAĭ YAKOVLEVICH

    I. Yakubovich

    The most significant part of Marr’s scholarly legacy is his editions of Georgian, Armenian, and Arab manuscripts, some of which he discovered during expeditions to the monastery of Aphon (Mt. Athos) in 1898, and to Sinai and Jerusalem in 1902.

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  • MARRIAGE i. THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT IN THE PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD

    Ilya Yakubovich

    a formal, written agreement as part of the process of establishing a marriage bond between two families is documented in both eastern and western Iranian practice.

  • MARRIAGE ii. NEXT OF KIN MARRIAGE IN ZOROASTRIANISM

    Prods Oktor Skjærvø

    xwēdōdah, said to refer to marital unions of father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister (next-of-kin or close-kin marriage, nuclear family incest).

  • MARTYRS, BABI

    Peter Smith and Moojan Momen

    adherents of the Babi religion who were killed for their faith during the period up to about 1866, when the Bahai faith emerged.

  • MARTYRS, CHRISTIAN

    Christelle Jullien

    in the Iranian lands. The passion accounts are known from two sets of literary corpus: one in Syriac, and the other in Greek. Some of the Syriac Acts of the Persian Martyrs were first published with a Latin translation in 1748 by Stefano Evodio Assemani (1711-1782), on the basis of the ancient Vatican manuscript 160.

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  • MAʿRUFI, Jawād

    Morteżā Ḥoseyni Dehkordi and EIr

    Persian composer and pianist (1915-1993).

  • MARYAM KHANOM

    Dominic Parviz Brookshaw

    thirty-ninth wife of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah Qajar (r. 1797-1834), mother of Żiāʾ-al-Salṭana and Maḥmud Mirzā.