Search

designation of a fantastic, frightening creature in the Perso-Arabic lore. A version of this article is available in print Volume XI, Fascicle 4, pp. 393-395 ḠUL, designation of a fantastic, frightening creature in the Perso-Arabic lore. It is a hideous monster with a feline head, forked tongue, hairy skin, and deformed legs that resemble the limp and skinny legs of a prematurely born infant (Nöldeke, p. 670). To the Arabs, ḡuls (Ar. pl. ḡilān, aḡwāl) were the most dangerous and harm-ful variety of jinns who inhabited deserts and thickets and misled and destroyed men. The term ḡul is a fem…

a kind of story often defined as “an animal tale with a moral"; there is no exact Persian equivalent of the term, but the words afsāna, dāstān, hekāyat, qeṣṣa, and samar are used to refer to such stories. A version of this article is available in print Volume IX, Fascicle 2, pp. 137-138 FABLE, a kind of story often defined as “an animal tale with a moral” ( Funk and Wagnalls, s.v. “Fable”; cf. Thompson, 1977, p. 10). There is no exact Persian equivalent of the term, but the words afsāna, dāstān, hekāyat, qeṣṣa, and samar are used to refer to such stories. Joseph Jacobs defined the fable as “a sho…

i. In Persian tradition and folk belief. ii. Domestication in Iran. A version of this article is available in print Volume VII, Fascicle 5, pp. 495-498 DONKEY i. In Persian tradition and folk belief The donkey ( Equus hydrunitinus, Equus asinus asinus, etc.; Pers. ḵar, darāz-gāš), domesticated species descended from the wild ass ( Equus africanus; Uerpmann), probably first bred in captivity in Egypt and western Asia, where by 2500 B.C.E. the domesticated donkey was in use as a beast of burden (Clutton-Brock, p. 65). Because of its jolting gait, it w…

Canis familiaris; i. In literature and folklore. ii. In Zoroastrianism. iii. Ethnography. A version of this article is available in print Volume VII, Fascicle 5, pp. 461-470 DOG ( Canis familiaris; Pers. sag; sagtūla “puppy”; Av. span-, Median * spaka-; Loṟī say, lās “bitch,” sayu “puppy” [Digard, 1981, p. 34]; Pašto spay, spie “bitch” [Dupree, p. 49]; Semnānī esbá; Sang. əsbá; Kajalī of Ḵalḵāl esbé; Ṭālešī of Vīzna səba; Abyānaī kuyā). Bibliography J.-P. Digard, Techniques des nomades Baxtyâri, Cambridge and Paris, 1981. L. Dupree, Afghanistan, Princeton, N.J., 1978; repr. Pri…