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(Pahlavi, Frēdun; ancient Iranian, Thraētaona), the son of Abtiyān or Abtīn, one of the early kings of Īrān. The most complete text on the subject is the account of his reign by Firdawsī, in verse; some of the sources for it will be found in pre-Islamic texts. §§ 130-8 of the Yasht s of the Avesta reveal the names of the first kings of Īrān in their original order (the first being Yima [see d̲j̲ams̲h̲īd ]), whose conqueror and murderer, Azhī-Dahāka, was overthrown in his turn and put to death by Thraētaona; the latter was rewarded by a share of the aureole of glory ( hvareno ) …

This poetical name ( tak̲h̲alluṣ ) is probably that of two poets born at Ṭūs (Ḵh̲urāsān): abū naṣr aḥmad b. manṣūr al-ṭūsī and his son ʿali b. aḥmad . According to the extremely doubtful statement of Dawlats̲h̲āh, the father was the pupil of Firdūsī (born ca. 320-2/932-4), while the epic composed by ʿAlī b. Aḥmad is precisely dated 458/1066; H. Ethé concludes from this that it is impossible to attribute to the same author the works placed under the name of Asadī. Thus Abū Naṣr, about whom it is only known that he died during the rule of Masʿūd al-G̲h̲aznawī. becomes the author of the Munāẓarāt …

, Arabic form of the surname of Chosroës I (al-Ṭabarī, I, 862) [see kisrā], in Pahlawi anos̲h̲ag̲h̲-ruvān , in Pazand anos̲h̲-ruān “possessed of an immortal soul”, then in Persian Nūs̲h̲īravān (Nūs̲h̲īrvān), which is popularly explained as nūs̲h̲īn-ravān “possessed of sweet soul” ( Burhān-i Ḳāṭiʿ ). Several persons in Islam bore this name (Zambaur mentions four), particularly a son of Manūčihr and of a daughter of Maḥmūd al-G̲h̲aznawī, who was amīr of Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ān from 420/1029 to 434/1042 (Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, IX, 262), and Anūs̲h̲arwān b. Ḵh̲āli…

, s̲h̲ams al-dīn muḥammad , Persian poet, born in Tabrīz, died in 779 or in 784/1382-3; he was one of the panegyrists of the prince Uways [ q.v.] and is chiefly known for his poem Mihr u Mus̲h̲tarī , at the end of which he gives the date of its completion (10 S̲h̲awwāl 778/1377); this poem consists of 5,120 distichs and was later translated into Turkish. In the words of Ethé ( Gr. I. Phil.), it is "the story of a love, free from every frailty and pure from every sensual lust, between Mihr, the son of S̲h̲ābūrs̲h̲āh, and the comely stripling Mus̲h̲tarī". (H. Massé) Bibliography Von Hammer. Gesch. d. sch…

, Fakhr al-Dīn Asʿad , author of the first known courtly romance in Persian: Wīs and Rāmīn . In the opinion of Z. Safa (ii, 361) his achievement is to have introduced a literary genre which is now represented by a series of works, several of which are worthy of note. What is known of his life is limited to the little that he reveals in his poem. The accounts given by his biographers are negligible but agree in attributing to him the authorship of the poem (with the exception of Dawlat S̲h̲āh, who erroneously att…

, Aḥmad b. ʿUmar b. ʿAlī , took the tak̲h̲alluṣ of Niẓāmī and the honorific Nad̲j̲m al-Dīn (or Niẓām al-Dīn); he was usually called ʿArūḍī (the “prosodist”) to distinguish him from other Niẓāmīs (particularly the great Niẓāmī of Gand̲j̲a [ q.v.], cf. the anecdote quoted by E.G. Browne, Lit . hist . ofPers., ii, 339). According to Browne, Niẓāmī is one of the most interesting and remarkable Persian writers of prose: “one of those who throw most light on the intimate life of Persian and Central Asian Courts in the twelfth century of our era”. He was a court poet who served faithfully the G̲h̲ūrid [ q.…

, Iranian author of a geography written in Arabic, who lived in the 3rd/9th century. Nothing is known of his life and only one of his works survives, in an abridged form. De Goeje introduced his edition of this work with an authoritative preface in which he reproduced the information, of varying reliability, which Ibn al-Nadīm and the geographer al-Muḳaddasī provide on Ibn al-Faḳīh. According to the Fihrist of the former (154), “he produced a Kitāb al-Buldān of a thousand folios, a compilation from various works, in particular that of al-D̲j̲ayhānī…

(Pahlawī: čūbikān ; other forms: čūygān (attested in Ibn Yamīn); čūlgān (cf. čūl , in Vullers, Lexicon persico-latinum ; compare Arabic sawlad̲j̲an ); Greek: τξυκάνιον, French: chicane ), stick used in polo ( bolo : Tibetan‘ ball ’, introduced into England around 1871); used in a wider sense for the game itself, ( gūy-u ) čawgān bāzī , "game of (ball and) čawgān "; also used for any stick with the end bent back, particularly those for beating drums. The čawgān is not the same as the mall ( malleum ), which is a hardwood sledge-hammer. According to Quatremère ( Mamluks , i, 123), the sawlad̲j̲ān …

, the tak̲h̲alluṣ of several Indian poets. The Riyāḍ al-wifāḳ of D̲h̲u ’l-Fiḳār ʿAlī, biographies of Indian poets who wrote in Persian, and the Tad̲h̲kira of Yūsuf ʿAlī K̲h̲ān (analysed by Sprenger, A catalogue of the Arabic, Persian and Hindustan mss… of the King of Oudh , i, 168, 280) mention five of them. The first, a native of Kas̲h̲mīr, lived in Dihlī in the reign of Muḥammad S̲h̲āh (1719-48): his g̲h̲azal s were sung by the dancing-girls.—The most celebrated, however, was Saʿādat Yār K̲h̲ān of Dihlī. His father, Ṭahmāsp Beg K̲h̲ān Tūrānī,…

, zayn al-dīn abū bakr b. ismāʿīl al-warrāḳ , Persian poet who, according to Ethé, died in 527/1132-33 or in 524/1130; but Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḳazwīnī has shown ( Čahār Maḳāla , 175 ff.) that he died certainly before 465/1072-3. He wrote a Dīwān which, among other poems, contains panegyrics on Ṭug̲h̲āns̲h̲āh b. Alp Arslan, the governor of Harāt (not, as is often stated, of Nīs̲h̲āpūr), and on Amīrāns̲h̲āh, the son of Ḳāwurd [ q.v.], the first Sald̲j̲ūḳid sultan of Kirmān. His verses comprise outstanding ḳaṣīdas and ḳiṭʿas ; he excels in descriptive poetry but is s…

b. Muḥammad Hādī b. Ismāʿīl Kamāl, Persian scholar and man of letters, “l’un des hommes les plus spirituels et les plus aimables que j’aie rencontrés dans aucune partie du monde” (Gobineau). A descendant of the poet Kamāl Ḵh̲ud̲j̲andī [q. v.], the grandfather of Riḍā Ḳulī, chief of the notables of Čardeh Kelateh (district of Dāmg̲h̲ān), was put to death by the partisans of Karīm Ḵh̲ān Zand against whom he supported the Ḳād̲j̲ārs (cf. Relation de l’ambassade au Kharezm, transl. Schefer, p. 203). His father became one of the dignitaries of the court of the Ḳād̲j̲ārs; in 12…

( Ṭarṭūsī , Ṭūsī ) Muḥammad b. Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Mūsā , a person otherwise unknown, said to be the author of several novels in prose, prolix in style and of great length, a confused mixture of Arab and Persian legendary traditions, written in Persian and afterwards translated into Turkish. These include Ḳahramān-nāma (about Ḳahramān, a hero from the epoch of Hūs̲h̲ang, semi-mythical king of Īrān), Ḳirān-i Ḥabas̲h̲ī (the story of a hero from the time of the Kayānid king Kay Ḳubād), Dārāb-nāma (history of Darius and Alexander). (H. Massé) Bibliography Firdawsī, Livre des des rois, ed. and tra…

Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd Allāh , Persian writer. His sixth ancestor was Ḥusayn al-Aṣg̲h̲ar, traditionist and son of the Imām Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn. His family lived for a long time in Balk̲h̲. He was a contemporary of Nāṣir-i Ḵh̲usraw, whom he may have known and about whom he gives us the earliest information available. ¶ From two passages of his only work Ch. Schefer assumed that he was at the court of the G̲h̲aznawid Sultan Masʿūd III when he composed his Bayān al-Adyān , dated 485/1092, the earliest known work on religions in the Persian language. The first two …

(or Āb-i Ruknī: the water of Rukn al-Dawla), a canal ( ḳanāt) which runs from a mountain (called Ḳulaiʿa: P. Schwarz, Iran im Mittelalter, ii. 48, N°. 7) about six miles from S̲h̲īrāz. Enlarged by a secondary canal, it follows for a part of the way the road from Iṣfahān to S̲h̲īrāz. Its waters reach as far as the vicinity of the town towards the cemetery in which Ḥāfiẓ is buried, when they are not entirely absorbed for irrigation purposes. According to Ḥasan Fasāʾī ( Fārs-nāme-i Nāṣirī, part ii., p. 20), “all the waters of the plain of S̲h̲īrāz come by subterranean channels excep…

Several Indian poets have used this tak̲h̲alluṣ. The Riyāḍ al-wifāḳ of Ḏh̲u ’l-Fiḳār ʿAlī, biographies of Indian poets who wrote in Persian, and the Tad̲h̲kira of Yūsuf ʿAlī Ḵh̲ān (analysed by Sprenger, A Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian and Hindustan Mss… of the King of Oudh, i. 168 and 280) mention five of them. The first, a native of Kas̲h̲mīr, lived in Dihlī in the reign of Muḥammad S̲h̲āh (1719-1748); his g̲h̲azels were sung by the dancing-girls. — The most celebrated, however, was Saʿādat Yār Ḵh̲ān of Dihlī. His father, Ṭahmāsp Beg Ḵ…

Aḥmad b. ʿUmar b. ʿAlī took the tak̲h̲alluṣ of Niẓāmī and the honorific Nad̲j̲m al-Dīn (or Niẓām al-Dīn); he was usually called ʿArūḍī (the “prosodist”) to distinguish him from other Niẓāmīs (particularly the great Niẓāmī; cf. the anecdote quoted by E. G. Browne, Lit. Hist. of Pers., ii. 339) According to Browne, Niẓāmī is one of the most interesting and remarkable Persian writers of prose: “one of those who throw most light on the intimate life of Persian and Central Asian Courts in the xiith century of our era”. He was a court poet who served faithfully the G̲h̲ōrid [q. v.] p…

, daughter of al-Ḥusain b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and of Rabab bint Imrʾ al-Ḳais b. ʿAdī b. ʿAws the poetess, who gave her daughter the name of Sukaina (sometimes called: Sakina, but the Ḳāmūs has: Sukaina). Her real name was Umaima (according to Ibn al-Kalbī quoted by Ibn Saʿd and the Ag̲h̲ānī) or Umaina but more probably Āmina or Amīna (according to the Ag̲h̲ānī). The date of her birth is not known; but she was a little girl at the time of her father’s death (definitely stated by Ṭabarī, ii. 232, 10, and by Ibn al-At̲h̲īr in telling of the death of Ḥusain, Kāmil, iv. 73; the same writer says that Yaz…

, Mīrzā Muḥammad Mahdī Astarābādī b. Muḥammad, historian of Nādir S̲h̲āh of Persia, whose deeds he recorded in the Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Ḏj̲ahān Gus̲h̲āy-i Nādirī; this work written in Persian is an excellent complement to those by James Fraser and Jonas Hanway on the conqueror. In it Mahdī Ḵh̲ān details the life of Nādir from his birth to his death while other Persian writers only deal with periods of it (e. g. Muḥsin b. Ḥanīf records only the expedition to India in his Ḏj̲awhar-i Ṣamṣam; ʿAbd al-Karīm Kas̲h̲mīrī in his Bayān-i Wāḳiʿ confines himself to the period from this expedition to 178…

, Ḥamīd al-Dīn Abū Bakr ʿUmar b. Maḥmūd , born in Balk̲h̲, died in 559/1164, a ḳāḍī who in 551/1156 began to compile his collection of twenty-three Ḥamīdian sessions (or scenes) ( maḳāmāt-i Ḥamīdī ) to serve as a pendant in the Persian language to the celebrated Arabic Maḳāmāt of al-Hamad̲h̲ānī and al-Ḥarīrī, as he states in his preface. Like these authors, he subordinated matter to form, above all endeavouring in his writings to show himself as a consummate stylist. For the most part, his maḳāmāt describe some episode in his adventures or travels; others d…

, mythical king of Iran who appears in several of the Yas̲h̲t of the Avesta; the first lawful king and the protégé of the gods, he reigned over the seven climes of the world, over the demons and the sorcerers; according to these texts, he resided in the countries situated to the south of the Caspian Sea. His place in the series of the mythical kings (Pīs̲h̲dādiyān) is vague: sometimes he is the contemporary of Ṭahmūrat̲h̲ [ q.v.], sometimes his successor; sometimes Gayumard comes before both of them. The Pahlavi texts add little to the Avestan texts. The Arabic texts, wh…