Medieval Names from Inscriptions at Siraf, Iran

Ursula Georges

This article collects medieval names found on funerary monuments in Siraf, a medieval port city in southern Iran. The names date to the tenth through fourteenth centuries. My source is Nicholas M. Lowick, Siraf XV: The Coins and Monumental Inscriptions (London: The British Institute of Persian Studies, 1985). The text of the monuments is in Arabic, and the names follow typical Arabic patterns. In particular, most men are identified by patronymics using the abbreviation for bin or ibn, 'son', and women are identified as their father's daughters using the words bint or ibnat, 'daughter'. Some given names are Arabic and Islamic in origin, while others are etymologically Persian.

Transliteration and Notation

The standard scholarly method of transliterating Arabic into English uses small dots below letters to represent certain Arabic sounds. Since many standard fonts do not include these small dots, I have represented them by a period: for instance, the period in Muh.ammad represents a small dot below the 'h'. I have also used the period in the standard abbreviation b. for ibn 'son', and in the ellipsis ... , which indicates missing portions of an inscription.