Table of Contents

  • BARR, KAJ

    J. P. Asmussen

    Danish orientalist (1896-1970). Among his publications are an edition from F. C. Andreas’s papers of the Pahlavi Psalter fragments discovered at Turfan and a collaboration with A. Christensen and W. B. Henning to publish Andreas’s notes on Iranian dialects.

  • BARRA

    G. Cardascia

    or bāru, an Iranian loanword designating a tax in Babylonian texts. The word appears nearly seventy times between 442 and 417 B.C. almost exclusively in tax receipts.

  • BARRASĪHĀ-YE TĀRĪḴĪ

    N. Parvīn

    journal of historical studies of Iran, 1966-78. Some of the articles, particularly those bearing on the eighteenth and nineteenth cen­turies and descriptive geography, were well researched and original. The journal also published a number of historical documents.

  • BARŠABBĀ

    N. Sims-Williams

    legendary bishop of Marv and founder of the Christian church in eastern Iran. The only completely preserved versions of the legend are found in Arabic sources.

  • BARṢAUMĀ

    A. Vööbus

    a 5th-century bishop of Nisibis. As a convinced Nestorian, he believed that the Persian church should follow this course, as it was in the interest of the Sasanian state to wean the church away from the West.

  • BARSĪĀN

    W. Kleiss

    a village in the dehestān of Barāʾān 45 km southeast of Isfahan on the north bank of the Zāyandarūd; situated on the old caravan route from Isfahan to Yazd, it prospered quickly in Saljuq times.

  • BARSḴĀN

    C. E. Bosworth

    or Barsḡān, a place in Central Asia, on the southern shores of the Ïsïq-Göl, in the region known as Semirechye or Yeti-su “the land of the seven rivers,” in what is now the Kyrgyz Republic.

  • BARSOM

    M. F. Kanga

    (Av. barəsman), sacred twigs that form an important part of the Zoroastrian liturgical apparatus. The number varies according to the ceremony to be performed. Today brass or silver wires are used in place of twigs.

  • BARSOM YAŠT

    P. O. Skjærvø

    in the liturgical manuscripts of the Avesta the name of the second hād (chapter) of the Yasna.

  • BARTANGĪ

    G. Buddruss

    The first text in Bartangī, a specimen of folk poetry, was published by Zarubin in 1924. The text corpus available now is limited: Zarubin, 1937 (poetry; prose text in Bartangī and Rōšanī); Sokolova, 1953 (text with versions in Šuḡnī, Rōšānī, Ḵūfī, and Bar­tangī); Sokolova, 1960.

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  • BARTHÉLEMY, ADRIEN

    F. Richard

    French orientalist (1859-1949). A devoted linguist, he published a study of the Pahlavi Gujastag Abāliš, before a career in diplomacy led him to a monumental dictionary of eastern Arabic dialects.

  • BARTHOLD, VASILIĭ VLADIMIROVICH

    Yu. Bregel

    Russian orientalist (1869-1930). He was the first who put the study of the history of Central Asia on a firm scholarly basis and actually founded this branch of Oriental studies. But he never studied Central Asia in isolation.

  • BARTHOLOMAE, CHRISTIAN

    R. Schmitt

    German scholar of Iranian and Indo-European studies (1855-1925). Bartholomae devoted the main part of his life and work to Iranian linguistics, his chief endeavor being directed toward the integration of Iranian into the framework of Indo-European languages.

  • BARTHOLOMAE’S LAW

    M. Mayrhofer

    the name given to a rule of phonetic assimilation in the Indo-Iranian and probably also the proto-Indo-European languages first noted by Christian Bartholomae in 1882.

  • BARTUS, BERNARD AUGUST THEODOR LUDWIG

    Aloïs van Tongerloo

    (1858-1941), technician and a key figure of the Turfan expeditions because of his autodidactical development of methods of removing inscriptions and works of art from rock walls and ruins without their getting damaged, as well as methods of their conservation and preservation.

  • BĀRŪ

    W. Kleiss

    (or bāra), fortress in general, defensive wall, rampart. Defensive walls and earthworks dating from the start of human settlement in Iran still survive. Their forms evolved in parallel with the development of offensive and defensive weapons.

  • BARUCH

    Sh. Shaked

    scribe and disciple of the prophet Jeremiah, at the time of the first Jewish exile to Babylonia (586 B.C.).  Baruch was identified with Zoroaster by some Syriac authors, followed by some Arab historians.

  • BĀRŪT

    W. Floor

    “gunpowder.” Guns and cannon, and thus gunpowder, probably were first introduced in Iran during Uzun Ḥasan Āq Qoyunlū’s reign; in 1473 he asked Venice for “artillery, arquebuses, and gunners.”

  • BARZAN

    W. Eilers

    part of a town, quarter (maḥalla), street (kūča). In modern Iranian place names the forms Varzan and Varzana are common.

  • BĀRZĀNĪ

    W. Behn

    a Kurdish tribe from Bārzān, a town of northeastern Iraq. The shaikhs of Bārzān came to prominence in the disorder following sup­pression of the semi-independent Kurdish principalities in the mid-19th century.

  • BARZĪN

    Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh

    (from Pahlavi Burzēn), the name of several figures in the Šāh-nāma.

  • BAŠĀKERD

    B. Spooner

    a roughly rectan­gular mountainous district (dehestān) east of Mīnāb and north of Jāsk. The topography and the natural conditions are similar to Makrān to the immediate east.

  • BASAWAL

    Sh. Kuwayama

    the site of a Buddhist cave temple complex in eastern Afghanistan. The caves, 150 in all, are partly hewn out in two rows and arranged in seven groups, which presumably corre­spond to the seven monastic institutions of Buddhist times.

  • BĀṢERĪ

    F. Barth

    a pastoral nomadic tribe of Fārs belonging to the Ḵamsa confederacy. The nomads keep sheep, intermingled with 10-20 percent goats, and use donkeys for transport.

  • BĀŠGĀH-E AFSARĀN

    M. Ṣāneʿī

    (Officers’ Club), an impressive building in Tehran, built in 1939.

  • BĀŠGĀH-E ARĀMENA

    ʿA.-A. Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

    (the Armenian Club), a non-profit, non-political social club, founded 1 January 1918 by Armenians in Tehran.

  • BĀŠGĀH-E MEHRAGĀN

    Ḥ. Maḥmūdī

    (Mehragān Club), an organization of the Iran Teachers Association open to teachers, students, and other in­tellectuals in Tehran and eventually in the provinces, 1952-62.

  • BASIL

    Hušang Aʿlam

    Ocimum L. ssp. (fam. Labiatae), now commonly called rayḥān in Persian, an aromatic plant. Ocimum basilicum L., sweet basil or basil royal, is named šāh-esparam “the royal herb.”

  • BASILIUS OF CAESAREA

    J. P. Asmussen

    or Basilius the Great (ca. A.D. 330-79), bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia from 370, after Eusebius, who wrote regarding the Magi.

  • BAŠKARDI

    P. O. Skjærvø

    (Bašākerdī), collective designation for numerous dialects spoken in southeastern Iran from Bandar-e ʿAbbās eastward, forming a transition from the dialects spoken in Fārs and Lārestān to Baluchi.

  • BASKERVILLE, HOWARD C.

    K. Ekbal

    a teacher at the American mission in Tabrīz, killed 19 April 1909 during the siege of Tabrīz by royalist troops.

  • BĀSMA

    M. Dabīrsīāqī

     a Turkish word which originally referred to a design applied (e.g., with a wood block) in ink, silver, and gold to paper, cloth, and other materials.

  • BASRA

    F. M. Donner

    (Ar. al-Baṣra), town located near the Šaṭṭ al-ʿArab river in southern Iraq, predominantly Arab, possessing a rich political, cultural, and economic history. This article concentrates mainly on describing the town’s many significant ties with Iran.

  • BASSĀM-E KORD

    Z. Safa

    the Kharijite (fl. mid-9th century), one of the first poets in the New Persian language, active at the court of the Saffarids.

  • BAŠŠĀR-E MARḠAZĪ

    Z. Safa

    a Persian poet of the 10th century, apparently from Marv in Khorasan.

  • BAST

    J. Calmard

    (sanctuary, asylum), the designation of cer­tain sanctuaries in Iran that are considered inviolable and were often used by people seeking refuge from prosecution.

  • BASṬĀM, BASṬĀMĪ

    cross-reference

    See BESṬĀM, BESṬĀMĪ FAMILY.

  • BASTANEGĀR

    J. During

    a gūša in the instrumental repertory (radīf) of classical Persian music.

  • BASTŪR

    A. Tafażżolī

    (Mid. Pers. Bastwar, Av. Bastauuairi), a hero of the Iranian national epic, son of Zarēr, King Goštāsp’s brother.

  • BĀṬĀS

    R. M. Boehmer

    a village in Iraq, Arbīl province. The nearby rock relief, no longer in good preservation, may  depict Izates II, the king of Adiabene (ca. 36-62 A.D.), who was converted to Judaism. He is likely to have ordered the carving after the unexpected retreat of the Parthian king of kings, Vologases I.

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  • BĀṬEN

    B. Radtke

    (inner, hidden), the opposite of ẓāher (outer, visible). Both terms can be predicated of living beings. Most frequently, however, they are associated with the concept ʿelm (knowledge).

  • BĀṬENĪYA

    H. Halm

    a generic term for all groups and sects which distinguished the bāṭen (inner, hidden) and the ẓāher (outer, visible) of the Koran and the Islamic law (Šarīʿa).

  • BATHHOUSES

    W. Floor, W. Kleiss

    In 1890 there were 72 bathhouses in Isfahan, which were of different quality and cleanliness; this is possibly an estimate, because only 31 public baths have been identified as remaining historical monuments. However, around 1920 there were some 85 bathhouse keepers.

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  • BĀTMAN

    Yu. Bregel

    a measure of weight, the same as mann but more common in Central Asia, especially in modern times. There was a great variety of bātmans in different regions and for weighing different goods.

  • BATRAKATAŠ

    H. Koch

    place name, apparently the same as Pasargadae, which appears on the Elamite fortification tablets found at Persepolis.

  • BATS

    A. F. DeBlase

    (Pers. šabpara, mūš(-e)kūr; Ar. ḵoffāš). All but two Iranian bat species fall into one of three geographic groups in Iran. Rousettus aegyptiacus is known from Baluchistan, Qešm island, and three sites near Jahrom in Fārs. Records indicate that it ranges across southern Iran wherever dates and other fruits are grown.

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  • BAṬṬAI YAZDĀNĪ

    W. Madelung

    the 5th-century founder or reformer of the Kantheans, a sect related to the Mandeans.

  • BATTLE-AXES in Eastern Iran

    Boris A. Litvinsky

    Battle-axes made of bronze appeared in Eastern Iran during the Bronze Age. One such object comes from a burial at the Sapalli-tepa settlement in southern Uzbekistan.

  • BAUR, FERDINAND CHRISTIAN

    W. Sundermann

    (1792-1860), German theologian and scholar of Manicheism. Most important was Baur’s view of Manicheism, as a religion born at the watershed of the ancient and Christian worlds.

  • BAUSANI, ALESSANDRO

    Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti

    (1921-1988), prolific Italian orientalist in several fields: Persian literature, Islam, linguistics, the history of Islamic science, Urdu, Indonesian, and other Islamic literatures.