Table of Contents

  • ĀBĀDĀN ii. The modern city

    X. de Planhol

    At the turn of this century the alluvial island of ʿAbbādān had a few peasant hamlets and a scattering of palm groves along the coast. The city which devel­oped after 1900 under a foreign impulse has a struc­ture unique among Iran’s urban forms.

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  • ĀBĀDĀN iii. Basic Population Data, 1956-2011

    Mohammad Hossein Nejatian

    the population growth from 1956 to 2011, age structure, average household size, literacy rate, economic activity status for 2006 and/or 2011, and population projection from 2014 to 2021.

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  • ĀBĀDĪ

    Ahmad Ashraf

    “Settlement, inhabited space,” Persian term usally applied to the rural environment; in colloquial usage it often refers to towns and cities as well.

  • ABĀLIŠ

    Aḥmad Tafażżolī

    Zoroastrian of the 9th century A.D. who apostatized to Islam.

  • ĀBĀN

    Mary Boyce

    Middle Persian term meaning “the waters” (Av. āpō). In Indo-Iranian the word for water is grammatically feminine; the element itself was always characterized as female and was represented by a group of goddesses, the Āpas.

  • ABĀN B. ʿABD-AL-ḤAMĪD

    I. Abbas

    late 2nd/8th century poet. He was of a Persian family, originally from Fasā, which had settled (probably at an early date) in Baṣra.

  • ĀBĀN MĀH

    Mary Boyce

    the eighth month of the Zoroastrian year, dedicated to the waters, Ābān.

  • ĀBĀN YAŠT

    Mary Boyce

    Middle Persian name of the fifth hymn among the Zoroastrian hymns to individual divinities. It is the third longest, with 131 verses.

  • ĀBĀNAGĀN

    Cross-Reference

    the name used by Bīrūnī (Āṯār, p. 224) for the Zoroastrian feast-day dedicated to the Waters, which was celebrated on the day Ābān of the month Ābān. See further under ĀBĀN MĀH.

  • ĀBĀNDOḴT

    W. L. Hanaway, Jr.

    Character in the prose romance Dārāb-nāma of Abū Ṭāher Moḥammad b. Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Ṭarsūsī, a storyteller of the Ghaznavid period.

  • ABAQA

    Peter Jackson

    (or ABAḠA, “paternal uncle” in Mongolian; ABĀQĀ in Persian and Arabic), eldest son and first successor of the Il-khan Hülegü.

  • ʿABAQĀT AL-ANWĀR

    ʿA.-N. Monzavi

    a large Persian and Arabic work by Mīr Ḥāmed Ḥosayn b. Moḥammad-qolī b. Moḥammad b. Ḥāmed of Lucknow on the legitimacy of the imamate and the defense of Shiʿite theology.

  • ABAR NAHARA

    Cross-Reference

    Aramaic name for the lands to the west of the Euphrates—i.e., Phoenicia, Syria, and Palestine (Parpola, p. 116; Zadok, p. 129; see ASSYRIA ii). These regions apparently passed from Neo-Babylonian to Persian control in 539 B.C.E. when Cyrus the Great conquered Mesopotamia. See EBER-NĀRĪ.

  • ABARKĀVĀN

    M. Kasheff

    Late Sasanian name of Qešm island in the Straits of Hormoz.

  • ABARQOBĀḎ

    C. E. Bosworth

    Ancient town of lower Iraq between Baṣra and Vāseṭ, to the east of the Tigris, in the region adjacent to Ahvāz, known in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times as Mēšūn (Mid. Pers. form) or Maysān/Mayšān (Syriac and Arabic forms).

  • ABARQUH

    Multiple Authors

    (or ABARQŪYA), a town in northern Fārs; it was important in medieval times, but, being off the main routes, it is now largely decayed.

  • ABARQUH i. History

    C. E. Bosworth

    In present-day Iran, Abarqūh is situated in the tenth ostān, that of Isfahan, and forms a baḵš or district of the šahrestān of Yazd.

  • ABARQUH ii. Monuments

    R. Hillenbrand

    Numerous pre-Safavid monuments survive in Abarqūh, but the lack of important later buildings suggests a sharp decline in the city’s wealth.

  • ABARŠAHR

    H. Gaube

    Name of Nīšāpūr province in western Khorasan. From the early Sasanian period, Nišāpur, which was founded or rebuilt by Šāpur I in the first years of his reign, was the administrative center of the province.

  • ABARSĀM

    E. Yarshater

    (APURSĀM in Middle Persian), a dignitary and high-ranking officeholder of the court of the Sasanian king Ardašīr I (A.D. 226-42).