Table of Contents

• DA AFḠĀNESTĀN TĀRĪḴ ṬŌLANA

  Cross-Reference

  See Anjoman-e Tāriḵ-e Afḡānestān.

• DĀ O DOḴTAR

  Hubertus Von Gall

  (lit. “Mother and daughter”), an important rock-cut tomb, probably of the early Hellenistic period, at the northwestern corner of the Mamasanī region of Fārs. Among all the rock-cut tombs of the former territory of Media and of Fārs, it most closely resembles the royal Achaemenid tombs.

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• DABBĀḠĪ

  ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  tanning, the process by which animal skins are made into leather.

• DABESTĀN

  Cross-Reference

  (elementary school). See EDUCATION.

• DABESTĀN JOURNAL

  Nassereddin Parvin

  (“school”), Persian monthly cultural journal published in Mašhad, 1922-27. 

• DABESTĀN-E MAḎĀHEB

  Fatḥ-Allāh Mojtabāʾī

  (school of religious doctrines), an important text of the Āḏar Kayvānī pseudo-Zoroastrian sect, written between 1645 and 1658.

• DABĪR

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī, Hashem Rajabzadeh

  "secretary, scribe." i. In the pre-Islamic period. ii. In the Islamic period.

• DABĪR-AL-MOLK FARĀHĀNĪ

  Guity Nashat

  or Mīrzā Moḥammad-Ḥosayn (1810-80), director of the private royal secretariat under Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah.

• DABĪR-E AʿẒAM

  Cross-Reference

  See BAHRAMĪ, FARAJ-ALLĀH.

• DABĪRE, DABĪRĪ

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  a term designating the “seven scripts” supposedly used in the Sasanian period.

• DABĪRESTĀN

  Cross-Reference

  secondary school. See EDUCA­TION x. MIDDLE AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

• DABĪRESTĀN-E NEẒĀM

  Cross-Reference

  military secondary school. See pending entry MILITARY.

• DĀBŪYA DYNASTY

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀL-E DĀBŪYA.

• DABUYIDS

  Wilfred Madelung

  the dynasty of espahbads ruling Ṭabarestān until its conquest by the Muslims in 144/761.

• DĀD (1)

  Mansour Shaki

  (Av. dāta- “law, right, rule, regulation, statute, command, institution, decision”), in the Zoroastrian tradition the most general term for law.

• DĀD (2)

  Jean During

  a vocal and instrumental gūša (motif), in reality more of a melodic type than a modal structure.  

• DĀD (3)

  Nassereddin Parvin

  (lit., “justice”), a Tehran afternoon newspaper, 1942-61.

• DĀD NASK

  Mansour Shaki

  (law book), one of the three divisions of the Avesta, comprising seven nasks, subdi­vided into the five strictly legal (dādīg) nasks (Nikātum, Duzd-sar-nizad, Huspāram, Sakātum, and Vidēvdād) and the two disparate nasks, Čihrdād and Bagān Yašt.

• DADA ʿOMAR ROŠENĪ

  Cross-Reference

  cofounder of the Ḵalwatī Sufi order. See DEDE ÖMER RUŞENĪ

• DADARSIS

  Muhammad A. Dandamayev

  Old Persian name derived from darš “to dare”; three men with this name are known.

• DADESTAN

  Mansour Shaki

  (dād “law,” with the formative suffix -stān), a Middle Persian term used with denota­tions and connotations that vary with the legal, reli­gious, philosophical, and social context.

• DĀDESTĀN Ī DĒNĪG

  Mansour Shaki

  (Religious judgements), Pahlavi work by Manūščihr, high priest of the Persian Zoroastrian community in the 9th century.

• DADESTAN Ī MENOG Ī XRAD

  Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  (Judgments of the Spirit of Wisdom), a Zoroastrian Pahlavi book in sixty-three chapters (a preamble and sixty-two ques­tions and answers).

• DĀDGĀH "COURT"

  Cross-Reference

  court of law. See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS v. JUDICIAL SYSTEM IN THE 20TH CENTURY.

• DĀDGĀH "TEMPLE FIRE"

  Cross-Reference

  See ĀTAŠ.

• DĀDGAR, ḤOSAYN

  Bāqer ʿĀqelī

  ʿAdl-al-Molk (b. Tehran ca. 1299/1881, d. 1349 Š./1970), at various times president of the Persian Majles, cabi­net minister, and senator under the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties.

• DĀDGOSTARĪ, WEZĀRAT-E

  Cross-Reference

  See JUDICIAL AND LEGAL SYSTEMS.

• DĀDĪŠOʿ

  Erica C. D. Hunter

  (Syr. “beloved of Jesus”; Payne Smith, col. 824, s.v.; Pers. “given by Jesus”), catholicus of the Sasanian “Nestorian” church in 420/21-455/56.

• DĀDIŠOʿ

  Florence Jullien

  (d. ca. 604), head of the Great monastery on Mount Izla in Ṭur ʿAbdin, north of Nisibis. He completed the monastic reform (6th-7th century) with his own rules, reinforcing the cenobitic way of life.

• DADISOʿ QATRAYA

  Nicholas Sims-Williams

  (late 7th century), Nestorian author of ascetic literature in Syriac. Pre­sumably a native of Qaṭar, as his surname suggests, he lived for a time at the monastery of Rabban Šābūr, near Šostar  in Ḵūzestān. His writings included commentaries on the Paradise of the Fathers and on the 26 “discourses” of Abbā Isaiah; fragments of the latter are found in Sogdian translation.

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• DĀḎMEHR b. FARROḴĀN

  Cross-Reference

  espahbad of Ṭabarestān. See Dabuyids.

• DADWAR, DADWARIH

  Mansour Shaki

  respectively judge, administrator of justice, lawgiver, lit., “bearer of law.”

• DADYSETH AGIARY

  Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

  in 1771 C.E. Dadibhai Noshirwanji Dadyseth established an agiary with an Ādarān fire for the sake of the soul of his first wife, Kunverbai, in the Fort district of Bombay.

• DADYSETH ATAS BAHRAM

  Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

  the oldest Ātaš Bahrām of Bombay, consecrated and installed according to Kadmi rites in the district of Fanaswadi on the day of Sarōš, month of Farvardīn 1153 A.Y./29 September 1783.

• DADYSETH, Dadibhai Noshirwanji

  Mary Boyce and Firoze M. Kotwal

  (1734-99), a distinguished Parsi philanthropist.

• DAĒNA

  Cross-Reference

  See DĒN.

• DAF(F) AND DAYERA

  Jean During, Veronica Doubleday

  terms applied to types of frame drum common in both the art music and popular traditions of Persia. Such drums have long been known throughout Asia in various forms and under different names.  The term dāyera originally referred to the flat, circular drums of pre-­Islamic Arabia.

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• DAFTAR

  Hashem Rajabzadeh

  an administrative office, as well as a notebook or booklet, more especially an account book or correspondence regis­ter, used in such an office.

• DAFTAR-E ASNĀD-E RASMĪ

  Aḥmad Mahdawī Dāmḡānī

  (Registry of official documents), a government department where documents and records of transactions, contracts, marriages, divorces, and the like are kept and signa­tures verified.

• DAFTAR-ḴĀNA-YE HOMĀYŪN

  Hashem Rajabzadeh

  royal sec­retariat; a Safavid administrative unit headed by the daftardār, or chief secretary.

• DĀḠ

  Ṣādeq Sajjādī

  “brand.”  According to Rašīd-al-Dīn Fażl-Allāh, “The tamḡā was a special emblem or mark that the Turkish and Mongol peoples stamped on decrees and also branded on their flocks.”   Each of the twenty-four tribes of the Oḡuz Turkmen had its own tamḡā, with which it branded its flocks.

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• DĀḠESTĀN

  Gadzhi Gamzatovich Gamzatov, Fridrik Thordarson

  (Daghestan). The many-faceted relationship between Dāḡestān (ancient Albania), a region in the eastern Caucasus, and Persia since antiquity has yet to be studied as a whole, though there is considerable historical, linguis­tic, folkloric, literary, and art-historical evidence bear­ing on it.

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• DĀḠESTĀNĪ, FATḤ ʿALĪ KHAN

  Roger M. Savory

  b. Alqāṣ Mīrzā b. Ildirim Khan Šamḵāl, grand vizier (wazīr-e aʿẓam, eʿtemād-al-dawla) under Shah Solṭān-Ḥosayn I Ṣafawī (1105-35/1694-1722).

• DAGH BARY

  Murtazali Gadjiev

  part of the defensive system in the eastern Caucasus constructed during the reign of Ḵosrow I (r. 531-79).

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• DAGUERREOTYPE

  Chahryar Adle

  the first practical photo­graphic process, introduced into Persia in the early 1840s, shortly after its official presentation to the French Académie de Science in Paris in 1839. Acceptance of the medium of photography in Persia reflected the cultural value attached to painting in general and portraiture in particular.

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• ḎAHABĪYA

  Hamid Algar

  a Sufi order of Shiʿite allegiance, ultimately derived from the Kobrawīya order.

• DAHAE

  François de Blois, Willem Vogelsang

  i. The name. ii. The people.

• DAHAN-E ḠOLĀMĀN

  Gherardo Gnoli

  “Gateway of the slaves,” site  ca. 30 km southeast of Zābol in Sīstān. It is the sole large provincial capital surviving from the Achaemenid empire; excavations there have brought to light a combination of “imperial” elements, identified in the public buildings, and local elements.

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• DAHBĪDĪYA

  Hamid Algar

  a hereditary line of Naqšbandī Sufis centered on the shrine at Dahbīd, a village about 11 km. from Samarqand.

• DAHM YAZAD

  Mary Boyce

  the Middle Persian name of the Zoroastrian divinity (also known as Dahmān Āfrīn and Dahmān) who is the spirit or force inherent in the Avestan benediction called Dahma Vaŋuhi Āfriti, or Dahma Āfriti.

• DAHRĪ

  Mansour Shaki, Daniel Gimaret

  (< Ar.-Pers. dahr “time, eternity”), a theological term referring either to an atheist or to an adherent of the doctrine that the universe had no beginning in time.

• DAHYU

  Gherardo Gnoli

  country (often with reference to the people inhabiting it).

• DAʿĪ

  Farhad Daftary

  he who summons; a term used by several Muslim groups, especially the Ismaʿilis, to designate their propagandists or missionaries.

• DĀʿĪ

  Tahsin Yazici

  the pen name of Aḥmad b. Ebrāhīm b. Moḥammad, Turkish scholar and poet who wrote in both Persian and Turkish.

• DĀʿĪ BOḴĀRĪ

  Cathérine Poujol

  (d. 1885), poet from Bukhara, probably born during the reign of Amir Naṣr-Allāh (1827-60).

• DĀʿĪ ELAʾL-ḤAQQ, ABŪ ʿABD ALLĀH MOḤAMMAD

  Wilfred Madelung

  b. Zayd b. Moḥammad b. Esmāʿīl b. Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb (d. 287/900), brother and successor of Ḥasan b. Zayd, founder of Zaydī rule in Rūyān and Ṭabarestān.

• DĀʿĪ JĀN NĀPELʾON

  Nasrin Rahimiyeh

  lit., “Uncle Napoleon”, a satirical novel written in 1348-49 Š./1969-70 by Īraj Pezeškzād, who was already known in Persia for writing such satirical novels.

• DĀʿĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ

  Ḏabīḥ-Allāh Ṣafā

  (1407-65), poet, preacher, and leader of the Neʿmat-Allāhī Sufi order in Fārs.

• DĀʿĪ-AL-ESLĀM, SAYYED MOḤAMMAD ʿALĪ

  M. Saleem Akhtar

  Per­sian scholar, preacher, and lexicographer, born 1295/1878 at Lārījān.

• DĀʿĪ-E KABĪR

  Cross-Reference

  See ḤASAN b. ZAYD.

• DĀʿĪ-E ṢAḠĪR

  Cross-Reference

  See ḤASAN b. QĀSEM ʿALAWĪ.

• DĀITYĀ, VAŊHVĪ

  Gherardo Gnoli

  the name of a river connected with the religious law, frequently identified in scholarly literature with the Oxus or with rivers of the northeastern region.

• DAIUKKU

  Cross-Reference

  See DEIOCES.

• DAIVA

  Clarisse Herrenschmidt and Jean Kelllens

  Old Iranian noun (Av. daēuua-, OPers. daiva-) corresponding to the title devá- of the Indian gods and thus reflecting the Indo-European heritage (*deiu̯ó-).

• DAIVADANA

  Gherardo Gnoli

  lit., "temple of the daivas," Old Persian term that appears in the “daiva inscrip­tion” of Xerxes at Persepolis.

• DAJJĀL

  Hamid Algar

  lit. "the great deceiver"; in Islamic tradition the maleficent figure gifted with supernatural powers whose advent and brief, though quasi-universal, rule will be among the signs heralding the approach of the resurrection.

• ḎAKAʾ-AL-MOLK

  Cross-Reference

  See FORŪḠĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ʿALĪ; FORŪḠĪ, MOḤAMMAD-ḤOSAYN.

• DAKANĪ, REŻĀ ʿALĪŠĀH

  Javad Nurbakhsh

  also known as Shah ʿAlī-Reżā (1683-1799), leader (qoṭb, lit., “pole”) in the years 1741-99 of the Neʿmat-­Allāhī Sufi order in Hyderabad (Deccan), India.

• DAKANĪ, SAYYED MĪR ʿABD AL ḤAMĪD MAʿṢŪM ʿALISĀH

  Hamid Algar

  (ca. 1738-97), the “renewer” (mojadded) of the Neʿmat-Allāhī Sufi order in Persia and thus the initiatory ancestor of all present­-day Neʿmat-Allāhīs.

• DAḴĪL

  Ḥosayn-ʿAlī Beyhaqī

  lit. “interceder”; a piece of rag or cord or a lock fastened (daḵīl bastan) on a sacred place or object, for example, the railing around a saint’s tomb or grave or a public fountain (saqqā-ḵāna), the branch of a tree considered sacred, or another plant, in order to obtain a desired benefit.

• ḎAḴĪRA-YE ḴᵛĀRAZMŠĀHĪ

  ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  early 13th-century Persian ency­clopedia of medical knowledge compiled by Sayyed Esmāʿīl b. Ḥosayn Jorjānī.

• DAḴMA

  Cross-Reference

  in Zoroastrian practice, enclosure or structure for the exposure of the dead. See CORPSE.

• DALMĀ TEPE

  Robert H. Dyson, Jr.

  The excavations revealed a mass of handmade, chaff-­tempered pottery with fine grit inclusions, fired to orange or pink, frequently with a gray core. A few sherds have smoothed, undecorated surfaces and have been labeled “Dalma plain ware.”

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• DALQAK

  Farrokh Gaffary

  buffoon, court jester, also sometimes known as masḵara.

• DAL’VERZIN TEPE

  G. A. Pugachenkova

  a large site in southern Uzbekistan located not far from the bank of the Surkhan­darya river near Denau, a small city approximately 60 km northeast of Termez; it has yielded valuable data on the civilization and arts of northern Bactria and Tokharistan.

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• DAM (1)

  Cross-Reference

  See BAND.

• DAM (2)

  Klaus Fischer

  archeological site in Afghanistan, 30°55’ N, 62°01’ E, located approximately 20 km east of the Helmand delta.

• DĀM PEZEŠKĪ

  Mansour Shaki, Ḥasan Tājbaḵš, and Ṣādeq Sajjādī

  veterinary medicine.

• DĀM-DĀRĪ

  Jean-Pierre Digard

  animal husbandry. In gen­eral, livestock raising in the Persian-speaking world is dominated by small animals, with a large proportion of goats, which in certain provinces of Persia itself are even more numerous than sheep. Cattle and equines, especially donkeys, are far less important.

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• DĀMĀD, MĪR(-E), SAYYED MOḤAMMAD BĀQER

  Andrew J. Newman

  b. Mīr Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥosaynī Astarābādī (d. 1041/1631), leading Twelver Shiʿite theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet of 17th-century Persia.

• DAMASCUS, Zoroastrians at

  Mary Boyce

  The earliest evi­dence for the presence of Zoroastrians at Damascus is provided by Berossus, who stated that this was one of the cities of the Achaemenid empire at which Artaxerxes II (404-358 b.c.e.) had a statue set up for “Anaitis”

• DAMASPIA

  Rüdiger Schmitt

  name of a Persian queen, wife of Artaxerxes I and mother of his legal heir, Xerxes II (424/3 B.C.E.).

• DAMĀVAND

  Bernard Hourcade, Aḥmad Tafażżolī

  mountain, town, and administrative district (šahrestān) in the central Alborz region.

• DĀMDĀD NASK

  D. N. MacKenzie

  the Middle Persian (Pahlavi) name of one of the lost nasks of the Avesta. 

• DAMELĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See DARDESTĀN.

• DĀMḠĀN

  Chahryar Adle

  (Damghan) Persian town located on a plain south of the Alborz range, 342 km east of Tehran. Situated on the main highway from Tehran to Nīšāpūr, Mašhad, and Herat, it  also dominates less important roads north to Sārī and Gorgān, as well as tracks leading south to Yazd and Isfahan via Jandaq.

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• DĀMḠĀNĪ (1)

  EIr

  nesba of a leading family of jurists of Persian origin, descendants of Abū ʿAbd-Allāh Moḥammad Kabīr (b. Dāmḡān 1007, d. Baghdad 1085), a well-known exponent of Hanafite law, who served as the chief magistrate (qāżī al-qożāt) of Baghdad.

• DĀMḠĀNĪ (2)

  Sheila S. Blair

  nesba of a father and two sons from Dāmḡān who worked as engineers, builders, and stucco carvers in the early 14th century.

• DĀMḠĀNĪ, ABŪ ʿALĪ

  Cross-Reference

  See ABŪ ʿALĪ DĀMḠĀNĪ.

• DĀMI

  Jean Kellens

  Avestan word, probably the noun of agency connected with Old Avestan dāman- “stake," thus “the one who drives the stake.”

• DAMIRI, MOḤAMMAD

  G. A. Russell

  b. Musā b. ʿIsā Kamāl al-Din Ebn Elyās b. ʿAbd-Allāh al-Damiri (b. Cairo, A.H. 745/A.D. 1342, d. Cairo, A.H. 808/ A.D. 1405), a tailor turned Shāfiʿi theologian, is best known for his Ḥayātal-ḥayawān (Animal Life).

• DAMPOḴT(AK)

  Mohammad R. Ghanoonparvar

  or DAMĪ, terms referring to rice cooked in a single pot.

• DANCE

  A. Shapur Shahbazi, Robyn C. Friend

  (raqṣ). Single dancers or groups of dancers represented on pottery from prehistoric Iranian sites (e.g., Tepe Siyalk, Tepe Mūsīān) attest the antiquity of this art in Iran. According to Duris of Samos (apud Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae), the Achaemenid Persians learned to dance, just as they learned to ride horseback.

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• DANDĀN ÖILÏQ (“ivory houses”)

  Gerd Gropp

  lit. “ivory houses”; ruined city located about 50 km north of the Domoko oasis in the eastern portion of the oasis complex of Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.

• DANDĀNQĀN

  C. Edmund Bosworth

  a small town of medieval Khorasan, in the Qara Qum, or sandy desert, between Marv and Saraḵs, 10 farsaḵs from the former, on which it was administratively dependent.

• DĀNEŠ (1)

  ʿAlī-Akbar Saʿīdī Sīrjānī

  pen name of MOʿĪN-AL-WEZĀRA MĪRZĀ REŻĀ KHAN ARFAʿ (Arfaʿ-al-Dawla; ca. 1846-1937), also known as Prince Reżā Arfaʿ, diplomat and poet of the late Qajar period.

• DĀNEŠ (2)

  Nassereddin Parvin

  lit., “knowledge”; title of seven newspa­pers and journals published in Persia and the Indian subcontinent, presented here in chronological order.

• DĀNEŠ, AḤMAD MAḴDŪM

  Vincent Fourniau

  b. Mīr b. Yūsof ḤANAFĪ ṢEDDĪQĪ BOḴĀRĪ (1242-1314/1827-97), known as Aḥmad Kallā and Mohandes (lit., “engineer”), a historian and progressive Tajik writer of Bukhara.

• DĀNEŠ, ḤOSAYN

  Peter J. Chelkowski

  (b. Istanbul 1870, d. Ankara 1943), a leading Turco-Persian poet, journalist, and scholar who wrote on literary, political, and social issues for many Persian newspapers.

• DĀNEŠ, TAQĪ

  Īraj Afšār

  (b. Tabrīz, 1861, d. Tehran 24 February 1948), poet and govern­ment official.