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Bārgīrī is a New Persian term seemingly of transparent meaning: ‘the taking up of loads’. As such, it is listed by Steingass, with various special meanings ‘Conviction, criminal charge; taking-in of a ship's cargo’, none of which covers its full, or perhaps most important, semantic range. Moreover, the word is of note both for its relation to the nomadic life-style, and its interest to Orientalist scholarship. It seems worth collecting the references to provide a wider setting.
Leyla Azami (sister of the Iranian folklorist, Cheragh Ali Azami), recently discussed the word in connexion with the transhumant life of the Sangsarī tribe in the south-eastern Elburz. Here it is defined as tahiya-i muqaddamāt-i safar ‘the preparation of the preliminaries for a journey’, events which take place ‘in the third decade of the month of Urdibihisht’—the second month of the Iranian calendar, April–May, when the pastoralists assemble, preparing for their move to high ground with the advent of spring.
- Type
- Notes and Communications
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , October 1991 , pp. 571 - 573
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- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1991
References
1 Steingass, F., A comprehensive Persian-English dictionary (1892, repr. Beirut, 1970), 142Google Scholar.
2 Leyla, Azami, ‘Dar-āmadī bar ā'īn-i chādur-nishīnī-yi Sangsariyān’ (An introduction to the nomadic routine of the Sangsarīs), Nāme-i Farhang-i Īrx0101n, II, 51, 1.4Google Scholar.
3 The lands of the eastern Caliphate (Cambridge, 1905; repr. 1930), 183; cf. V. Minorski, Ḥudūd al-'Ālam (London, 1937), 143, para. 12: ‘KHOY, BARGRĪ, ARJĪJ, AKHLĀT’.
4 Amedroz, H. F., ‘The Marwānid dynasty at Mayyāfāriqīn in the tenth and eleventh centuries A.D.’, JRAS, 1903, 124Google Scholar.
5 Ibn al-Athiri chronicon quod perfectissimum inscribitur, ed. Tornberg, C. J., VIII (Leiden, 1862), 173, 1. 3Google Scholar.
6 Chester Beatty MS 301. Humay nāma, edited with an introduction by Arberry, A. J., calligraphy by Sharaf al-din Khurasani, British Institute of Persian Studies (London, 1963)Google Scholar.
7 Arberry, A. J., ‘An early Persian epic’ in Mélanges d'Orientalisme offerts à Henri Massé (Publications de l'Université de Tehran, no. 843, Tehran, 1963), 11–16Google Scholar.
8 cf. Claude, Cahen, Pre-Oltoman Turkey (London, 1968), 305Google Scholar, ‘There is epigraphic evidence relating to Suleyman b. Esref dating from about c. 1290 on a repaired gate in the fortifications of Beysehir. To the same town, renamed Sulaymansehir, he gave a mosque whose deed of foundation survives.’ Previously, Zambaur, E. vonDie Münzprägungen des Islams (Wiesbaden, 1968), 147Google Scholar, had been inclined to identify Sulaymanshahr, which he reports to have issued coins in 697/1297–8 and 699/1299–1300, with Gümüshbāzār in the province of Amasiya.
9 ‘The armies of the Ṣaffārids’ BSOAS, XXXI, 3, 1968, 545Google Scholar.
10 Nisbas from Persian place-names ending in yā' present certain difficulties. The formal Arabic nisba from the city-name of Sārī is al-Sārawī, but there are cases in Persian usage of the unmodified city-name attached with the iẓāfa, as with the famous carpenter known always as Aḥmad-i Sārī. The Arabic nisba from Bārgīrī seems unknown, but might possibly be Bārgīrī, rather than a clumsy form such as Bārgīrawī. Thus the father of Aḥmad might have been known as (Ar.) Fulān al-Bārgīrī or (NP) Fulān-i Bārgīrī, with the nisba, as occasionally happened, coming to be substituted for the personal name.
11 He further notes that Kurdish attests a word bārgīr ‘beast of burden’, evidently connected with our term (cf. Joyce, Blau, Dictionnaire Kurde-Français-Anglais, Brussel 1965, 12)Google Scholar.
12 As assumed by Sinclair, T. A., Eastern Turkey, 1, 266Google Scholar but so far without documentation that would definitely establish the origin.