Table of Contents

  • AMLĀK

    E. Hooglund

    (plural of melk), privately owned agricultural estates; the term (of Arabic origin) designates a form of rural land tenure pattern that existed simultaneously in Iran with various other types of land holdings over several centuries. 

  • AMLĀK-E ḴĀṢṢA

    Cross-Reference

    See ḴĀṢṢA.

  • AMLAŠ

    Multiple Authors

    i. Geography.  ii. Excavations.

  • AMLAŠ i. Geography

    Marcel Bazin

    small town and district in the southeastern part of Gilān Province.

  • AMLAŠ ii. Excavations

    R. H. Dyson

    small village in southeastern Gilān which, since 1959, has given its name to a large assortment of archeological artifacts derived from illegal, clandestine excavations in the nearby valleys of the Alborz range.

  • ʿĀMMA

    E. Kohlberg

    (pl. ʿawāmm), a common Emāmī Shiʿite appellation for the Sunnites. 

  • ʿAMMĀRA

    Cross-Reference

    See ʿAMĀRA.

  • ʿAMMĀRLŪ

    P. Oberling

    a Kurdish tribe of Gīlān and Khorasan. 

  • AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS

    M. L. Chaumont

    historian who provides important information on the Sasanians (b. ca. 330-35).

  • AMMITMANYA

    M. Mayrhoffer

    an Iranian, to whom were entrusted 215 (?) BAR of grain provided for provisions at Tukraš.

  • AMMŌ, MĀR

    J. P. Asmussen

    Manichean apostle, outstanding figure in the missionary history of Manicheism during the 3rd century CE.

  • AMOGHAPĀŚAHṚDAYA

    R. E. Emmerick

    “the heart or essence of the Amoghapāśa ritual,” the name of a Buddhist text belonging to the Mahayanist Tantric tradition. 

  • ĀMOL

    C. E. Bosworth, S. Blair, E. Ehlers

    a town on the Caspian shore in the southwest of the modern province of Māzandarān, medieval Ṭabarestān.

  • ĀMOL (ĀMŪYA)

    C. E. Bosworth

     town situated three miles from the left bank of the Oxus river (Āmū Daryā).

  • AMOL WARE

    Y. Crowe

    Amol wares are mainly fine bowls with flaring walls and straight rims and larger dishes with flattened, everted, or straight rims. Some of these have been greatly restored, so that they feel much heavier than they once were, and their coarser base rings lack the sureness of potting that typifies better-preserved specimens.

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  • ĀMOLI

    David O. Morgan

    Shiʿite scholar and author, died at Shiraz in 1352-53, when it was under the control of the Inju ruler Abu Esḥāq Jamāl-al-Din.

  • ĀMOLĪ, SAYYED BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN

    E. Kohlberg

    early representative of Imamite theosophy (b. 720/1320, or perhaps 719/1319).

  • ĀMORAʾĪ

    P. Lecoq

     the dialect spoken in Āmora, a village in the šahrestān of Tafreš.

  • AMORDĀD

    Cross-Reference

    See AMURDĀD.

  • AMORGES

    A. Sh. Shahbazi

    Greek form of the name of several notable Iranians of the Achaemenid period.

  • AMPELIUS, LUCIUS

    Philip Huyse

    author of a short encyclopaedic work Liber memorialis in fifty chapters covering such diverse subjects as cosmography (and astronomy), geography and ethnography, theology and especially history.

  • AMPHIBIANS

    S. C. Anderson

    Twenty species occur in Iran: six salamanders in three genera in two families and fourteen frogs and toads in four genera in four families. The amphibian fauna is most diverse in the northwestern provinces, which have the greatest rainfall and running water throughout the year.

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  • ʿAMR B. LAYṮ

    C. E. Bosworth

    ṢAFFĀRĪ, military commander and second ruler of the Saffarid dynasty of Sīstān (r. 879-900).

  • ʿAMR B. ʿOBAYD

    J. van Ess

    early Muʿtazilite theologian and traditionist (d. probably 144/761).

  • ʿAMR B. YAʿQŪB

    C. E. Bosworth

    great-grandson of the co-founder of the Saffarid dynasty and ephemeral boy amir in Sīstān, 299-301/912-13.

  • AMR BE MAʿRŪF

    W. Madelung

    Arabic al-amr be’l-maʿrūf wa’l-nahy ʿan al-monkar “enjoining what is proper or good and forbidding what is reprehensible or evil,” one of the principle religious duties in Islam.  

  • AMRANLU

    P. Oberling

    a small Turkic tribe which has settled down in the village of Galūgāh in Māzandarān.  

  • AMRĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ

    I. K. Poonawala

    (d. 999/1590-91 [?], poet and Sufi from Kūhpāya, a village near Isfahan.

  • AMṚTAPRABHADHĀRAṆĪ

    R. E. Emmerick

    name given by H. W. Bailey to a fifty-line text in Late Khotanese.

  • ĀMŪ DARYĀ

    B. Spuler

    river about 2,500 km long, regarded in ancient times as the boundary between Iran and Tūrān.

  • ʿAMŪOḠLĪ, ḤAYDAR KAN

    Cross-reference

    (ʿAMOḠLĪ). See ḤAYDAR KHAN ʿAMŪOḠLĪ.

  • AMURDĀD

    M. Boyce

    one of the seven great Aməša Spəntas of Zoroastrianism, the hypostasis of the concept of “not dying,” that is Long Life on this earth or Immortality in the hereafter.

  • ĀMŪYA

    Cross-Reference

    See ĀMOL.

  • AMYRTAEUS (II)

    E. Bresciani

    “The God Ammon has given him”, King of Egypt, 404-398 B.C., the only member of Manetho’s 29th dynasty.

  • AMYTIS

    R. Schmitt

    Median and Persian female name.

  • AN LU-SHAN

    E. G. Pulleyblank

    frontier general of mixed Sogdian and Turkish ancestry who rose to high rank during the latter part of the reign of Hsüan-tsung (713-56).

  • AN SHIH-KAO

    E. G. Pulleyblank

    or An Ch’ing, the earliest known translator of Buddhist texts into Chinese. 

  • AN-HSI

    E. G. Pulleyblank

    name by which the Parthian empire was known to the Chinese, a transcription of Aršak-, the name of the Parthian ruling house.

  • ANABASIS

    R. Schmitt

    title of ancient campaign accounts stylistically influenced by the so-called Periplus books.

  • ANĀHĪD

    M. Boyce, M. L. Chaumont, C. Bier

    Ardwīsūr Anāhīd, Middle Persian name of Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā, a popular Zoroastrian yazatā; she is celebrated in Yašt 5 (known as the Ābān Yašt) which is one of the longest and best preserved of the Avestan hymns. Sūrā and anāhitā are common adjectives, meaning respectively “strong, mighty” and “undefiled, immaculate.”

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  • ANĀMAKA

    R. Schmitt

    name of the tenth month (December-January) of the Old Persian calendar.

  • ANAND RAM MOKLES

    B. Ahmad

    Chronicler, lexicographer, and poet of the later Mughal period (1111-64/1699-1750.

  • ĀNANDRĀJ, FARHANG-E

    Cross-Reference

    Persian dictionary by Monšī Moḥammad Bādšāh, completed in 1306/1888. See FARHANG-E ĀNANDRĀJ.

  • ANANIAS OF SHIRAK

    Cross-Reference

    (7th century), scholar, to whom (or to a pseudo-MOVSĒS XORENAC‘I) is attributed the anonymous work Armenian Geography (Ašxarhac‘oyc‘). On this work, see MARKWART, JOSEF.

  • ANANIAS OF SHIRAK (ANANIA ŠIRAKAC‘I)

    Tim Greenwood

    Armenian scholar (ca. 600-670 CE), to whom is attributed a wide range of late Antique scientific texts, including the anonymous Armenian Geography (Ašxarhac‘oyc‘).

  • ANANTAMUKHANIRHĀRADHĀRAṆĪ

    R. E. Emmerick

    the name of a Buddhist text belonging to the Mahayanist Tantric tradition. 

  • ANAPHAS

    R. Schmitt

    Persian male name.

  • ANĀRAK

    C. E. Bosworth

    a baḵš and its town on the southern fringes of the Dašt-e Kavīr.

  • ANĀRAKI

    G. L. Windfuhr

    the dialect of Anārak, a town with 2,100 inhabitants in the Bīābānak region northeast of the city of Nāʾīn.

  • ANATOLIA

    Cross-Reference

    and its relations with Iran: see Asia Minor.