Table of Contents

  • DASTUR AL-MOLUK

    M. Ismail Marcinkowski

    a manual of administration in Persian from the end of the Safavid period.

  • DASTŪR-E DABĪRĪ

    Hashem Rajabzadeh

    comprehensive manual of letter writing by Moḥammad Meyhanī, consisting of an introduction (dībāča) and two chapters (qeṣm; comp. December 1189-January 1190).

  • ḎĀT-AL-SALĀSEL

    A. Shapur Shahbazi

    lit., “provided with chains”; place near Obolla in southern Iraq where in 633 C.E., one of Ṭabarī’s informants, Ḵāled b. Walīd and an Arab force of about 18,000 men defeated a small Sasanian garrison led by a frontier commander named Hormoz.

  • DĀTA

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Old Iranian term for “law” attested both in Avestan texts (Old and Younger Av. dāta-) and in Achaemenid royal inscriptions.

  • DĀTABARA

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    title of a high official in the Achaemenid legal and juridical system.

  • DATAMES

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Iranian personal name, reflecting Old Iranian *Dātama- or *Dātāma-, either a two-stem shortened form *Dāta-m-a- from a compound name like *Dātamiθra- or an unabridged compound *Dātāma-from *Dāta-ama-“to whom force is given.”

  • DĀTAMIΘRA

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Iranian personal name resulting from an inversion of Miθra-dāta- “given by Mithra” and continued in the New Persian Dādmehr.

  • DATAPHERNES

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    name of an Iranian (perhaps Bactrian) officer in the entourage of Bessos, murderer of Darius III (336-30 B.C.E.).

  • DATE PALM

    Hūšang Aʿlam

    indigenous to the geobotanical “Sahara-Sind region,” a desert or semidesert belt extending from the Indus valley to North Africa. It is believed by some authorities to be native to the Persian Gulf area and by others to have been derived from the the wild or date-sugar palm of western India.

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  • DATES AND DATING

    D. N. MacKenzie

    in Old and Middle Iranian. The only dating formulas preserved in an Old Iranian language are those found in Old Persian in the Bīsotūn inscriptions of Darius I; by the time of the earliest dated Middle Iranian documents, the Parthian ostraca from Nisa of the 1st century B.C.E., the Zoroastrian (so-called Avestan) calendar was in use.

  • DATIS

    Rüdiger Schmitt

    Iranian personal name.

  • DAULIER DESLANDES

    ANNE KROELL

    (b. Montoire-sur-le-Loir, 1621, d. Paris, 23 October 1715), author of Les Beautez de la Perse ..., a brief but valuable description of Safavid Persia in the years 1075-76/1664-65.

  • DAURISES

    R. Schmitt

    name of a Persian general during the Ionian revolt, a son-in-law of Darius I (522-486 B.C.E.).

  • DAVĀL-PĀ(Y)

    Hūšang Aʿlam

    or dovāl-pā, an imaginary evil anthropoid creature characterized by flexible legs (pā) resembling leather straps, which he uses as tentacles to grip and enslave human beings, who then have to carry him on their shoulders or backs and labor for him until they die of fatigue.

  • DAVALLU

    Cross-Reference

    See QAJAR TRIBES.

  • DAVĀN

    Hamid Mahamedi

    village located 12 km northeast of Kāzerūn in Fārs; a distinctive dialect is spoken there. Arable land is very limited and located mostly in the foothills; dry farming is the prevailing form of agriculture. Products include barley, wheat, and fruits—grapes, figs, pomegranates, and pears.

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  • DAVĀNĪ, JALĀL-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD

    Andrew J. Newman

    b. Asʿad Kāzerūnī Ṣeddīqī (b. Davān, q.v., near Kāzerūn in Fārs, 1426-27, d. 1502), often referred to as ʿAllāma Davānī, leading theologian, philosopher, jurist, and poet of late 15th-century Persia.

  • DĀVAR

    Cross-Reference

    See DĀTABARA.

  • DĀVAR, ʿALĪ-AKBAR

    Bāqer ʿĀqelī

    (b. Tehran, 1885, d. Tehran, 10 February 1937), journalist, politician, statesman, and founder of the modern Persian judicial system, as well as of several state enterprises in the time of Reżā Shah.

  • DĀVARĪ ŠĪRĀZĪ, Mīrzā Moḥammad

    ʿAbd-al-Wahhāb Nūrānī Weṣāl

    (b. Shiraz 1822-23, d. Shiraz, 1866), poet, calligrapher, and painter of some renown in Qajar Persia and a contemporary of Moḥammad Shah and Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah.