Table of Contents

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DAWLA, ABŪ NAṢR FĪRŪZ

  cross-reference

  See BUYIDS.

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN ʿĀMELĪ

  E. Kohlberg

  (1547-1621), SHAIKH MOḤAMMAD B. ḤOSAYN BAHĀʾĪ, Imami scholar and author, a prolific writer, in Imami circles regarded as one of the leading lights of his age.

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN BAḠDĀDĪ

  Z. Safa

  (d. after 1289), MOḤAMMAD B. MOʾAYYAD, a master of the art of Persian letter-writing (tarassol).

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN ḴARAQĪ

  D. Pingree

  (d. 1138-39), ABŪ BAKR MOḤAMMAD, author of a work was on astronomy, geography, and chronology.

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD WALAD

  H. Algar

  B. ḤOSAYN B. AḤMAD ḴAṬĪB BALḴĪ (1151-1231), scholar, father of the great Sufi poet Mawlānā Jalāl-al-Dīn Rūmī.

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN NAQŠBAND

  H. Algar

  (1318-91), ḴᵛĀJA MOḤAMMAD B. MOḤAMMAD BOḴĀRĪ, eponym of the Naqšbandīya, one of the most vigorous and widespread Sufi orders.

• BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN SOLṬĀN WALAD

  M. I. Waley

  (1226-1312), MOḤAMMAD, Sufi shaikh and poet, son and eventual successor of Mawlānā Jalāl-al-Dīn Rūmī.

• BAHĀʾ-ALLĀH

  Juan Cole

  (1817-92), MĪRZĀ ḤOSAYN-ʿALĪ NŪRĪ,  founder of the Bahai religion or Bahaism. 

• BAHĀDOR

  C. Fleischer

  a Turco-Mongol honorific title, attached to a personal name, signifying “hero, valiant warrior.”

• BAHĀDOR JANG, AMIR

  A. Gheissari

  ḤOSAYN PASHA KHAN, the head of the royal guards (kešīkčībāšī) and minister of court under Moẓaffar-al-Dīn Shah (r. 1896-1907).

• BAHĀDOR KHAN

  cross-reference

  See ABŪ ḠĀZĪ.

• BAHĀDOR SHAH I, II

  cross-reference

  See MUGHALS.

• BAHĀʾI TABRIZI

  Tahsin Yazici

  (1874-1925), AḤMAD, Persian calligrapher and poet.

• BAHAISM

  Multiple Authors

  or Bahai faith, a religion founded in the nineteenth century by Bahāʾ-Allāh that grew out of the Iranian messianic movement of Babism and developed into a world religion with internationalist and pacifist emphases.

• BAHAISM ii. Bahai Calendar and Festivals

  A. Banani

  The Bahai year consists of 19 months of 19 days each, i.e., 361 days, with the addition of four intercalary days between the 18th and the 19th months in order to adjust the calendar to the solar year. The Bāb named the months after the attributes of God.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• BAHAISM iii. Bahai and Babi Schisms

  D. M. MacEoin

  Although it never developed much beyond the stage of a sectarian movement within Shiʿite Islam, Babism experienced a number of minor but interesting divisions, particularly in its early phase.

• BAHAISM iv. The Bahai Communities

  P. Smith

  Bahai expansion beyond the Middle East and the Iranian diaspora only began after the passing of Bahāʾ-Allāh (1892) and the succession of his son, ʿAbd-al-Bahāʾ (1844-1921), as leader. In the 1890s, an active community developed in North America, Americans in turn establishing Bahai groups in England, France, Germany, Hawaii, and Japan.

  This Article Has Images/Tables.

• BAHAISM v. The Bahai Community in Iran

  V. Rafati

  With the Declaration of the Bāb in 1844, followed by his being accepted as the promised Qāʾem (the Hidden Imam) by a handful of early believers, the first Babi community was born in the city of Shiraz.

• BAHAISM vi. The Bahai Community of Ashkhabad

  V. Rafati

  Attracted by religious freedom and economic opportunities unavailable to them in Iran, Iranian Bahais began to settle in Ashkhabad around 1884; the community prospered and reached its peak during the period 1917-28.

• BAHAISM vii. Bahai Persecutions

  D. M. MacEoin

  Bahai persecutions were a pattern of continuing discriminatory measures against adherents and institutions of the Bahai religion, punctuated by outbreaks of both random and organized violence.

• BAHAISM viii. Bahai Shrines

  J. Walbridge

  Of the Bahai sites of pilgrimage and visitation, the most important are the tombs of Bahāʾ-Allāh and the Bāb in Israel and the houses of the Bāb and Bahāʾ-Allāh in Shiraz and Baghdad.

• BAHAISM xiv. Nineteen Day Feast

  Moojan Momen

  a gathering of the Bahai community every nineteen days that has devotional, administrative, and social aspects and is the core of community life.

• BAHAISM i. The Faith

  J. Cole

  Bahaism as a religion had as its background two earlier and much different movements in nineteenth-century Shiʿite Shaikhism (following Shaikh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī) and Babism.

• BAHAISM xii. Bahai Literature

  D. M. MacEoin

  This article is concerned primarily with poetry and belles lettres rather than apologetic, didactic, historiographical, liturgical, or scriptural materials.

• BAHAISM ix. Bahai Temples

  V. Rafati and F. Sahba

  Although the faith originated in Iran, no Bahai temple was ever built in that country, due to local antagonism. However,  since the time of Bahāʾ-Allāh, the Bahais of Iran have gathered in private Bahai homes to pray and to read the writings of the faith.

• BAHAISM x. Bahai Schools

  V. Rafati

  The Bahai schools were a series of government-recognized educational institutions conducted on Bahai principles from 1897 until 1929 in Ashkhabad and until 1934 in Iran.

• BAHAISM xi. Bahai Conventions

  M. Momen

  The first Bahai convention in the world was probably the meeting convened by the Chicago Spiritual Assembly on 26 November 1907 for the purpose of choosing a site for the House of Worship that was to be built.

• BAHAISM xiii. Bahai Pioneers

  Moojan Momen

  “Pioneer” (in English) and mohājer (in Persian) are terms used in Bahai literature to designate those who leave their homes to settle in another locality with the intention of spreading the Bahai faith or supporting existing Bahai communities.

• BAHĀʾĪYA ḴĀNOM

  M. Momen

  (1846-1932), eldest daughter of Bahāʾ-Allāh, considered by Bahais as the “outstanding heroine of the Bahai Dispensation.”

• BAHĀR (1)

  Ḡ.-Ḥ. Yūsofī

  a Persian literary, scientific, political, and social-affairs monthly, 1910-11, 1921-22. Bahār represented a departure from traditional Persian journalism; readers found its willingness to discuss contemporary literature and literary criticism a refreshing change.

• BAHĀR (2)

  Esmāʿil Jassim

  a newspaper founded by Shaikh Aḥmad Tehrāni (d. 1957), known as Aḥmad Bahār, in 1917, in Mašhad.

• BAHĀR, MOḤAMMAD-TAQĪ

  M. B. Loraine, J. Matīnī

  poet, scholar, journalist, politician, and historian (1886-1951). i. Life and work. ii. Bahār as a poet.

• BAHĀR-E KESRĀ

  M. G. Morony

  “The spring of Ḵosrow,” one of the names of a huge, late Sasanian royal carpet measuring 60 cubits (araš, ḏerāʿ) square (ca. 27 m x 27 m). It was divided among the conquering Muslims after Madāʾen was captured in 637.

• BAHĀRESTĀN (1)

  G. M. Wickens

  (Spring garden, Abode of spring), an anecdotal and moralistic work of belles-lettres in prose (both plain and rhythmic-rhyming) and verse, by ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān Jāmī, composed in the poet’s old age, in 1487.

• BAHĀRESTĀN (2)

  ʿA.-A. Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  the name of a garden, public square, and complex of buildings in central Tehran.

• BAHĀRESTĀN-E ḠAYBĪ

  I. H. Siddiqui

  a detailed history in Persian of Bengal and Orissa for the period 1608-24 composed by Mīrzā Nathan ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Eṣfahānī.

• BAHĀRI

  Mortażā Varzi

  (1905-1995), (ʿALI-) AṢḠAR, master of the kamānča (long-necked bowed lute).

• BAHĀRLŪ

  P. Oberling

  a Turkic tribe of Azerbaijan, Khorasan, Kermān, and Fārs.  

• BAHĀRVAND

  P. Oberling

  a Lur tribe now living mostly in the dehestāns (districts) of Kargāh and Bālā Garīva, south and southwest of Ḵorramābād.  

• BAHDĪNĀN

  A. Hassanpour

  (Kurdish Bādīnān), name of a Kurdish region, river, dialect group, and amirate.  

• BAḤĪRĪ FAMILY

  R. W. Bulliet

  a major Shafiʿite family of Nishapur in the eleventh century.  

• BAHMAʾĪ

  P. Oberling

  a Lur tribe of the Kohgīlūya (Kūh[-e] Gīlūya).  

• BAHMAN (1)

  J. Narten, Ph. Gignoux

  the New Persian name of the Avestan Vohu Manah (Good Thought) and Pahlavi Wahman.

• BAHMAN (2) SON OF ESFANDĪĀR

  Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

  son of ESFANDĪĀR, a Kayanian king of Iran in the national epic.  

• BAHMAN (3)

  cross-reference

  author of Qeṣṣa-ye Sanjān.

• BAHMAN (4)

  cross-reference

  “avalanche." See BARF.

• BAHMAN JĀDŪYA

  M. Morony

  (or Jāḏōē), Sasanian general engaged in the defense of the Sawād of ʿErāq during the Muslim conquest in the 630s.  

• BAHMAN MĪRZĀ

  ʿA. Navāʾī

  (d. 1883-84), the fourth son of ʿAbbās Mīrzā and brother of Moḥammad Shah (r. 1834-48). Throughout his relatively long exile, he enjoyed the protection and support of the Czarist government.

• BAHMAN MĪRZĀ BAHĀʾ-AL-DAWLA

  ʿA. Navāʾī

  37th son of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah, born 1811 of Golbadan Bājī, originally a (Georgian?) slave girl of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah’s mother Mahd-e ʿOlyā. His diary contains notes on Qajar history.

• BAHMAN YAŠT

  W. Sundermann

  Middle Persian apocalyptical text preserved in  Pahlavi script, a Pāzand (i.e., Middle Persian in Avestan script) transliteration, and a garbled New Persian translation.