Bozorgmehr
Encyclopedia
Vizier
A vizier or in Arabic script ; ; sometimes spelled vazir, vizir, vasir, wazir, vesir, or vezir) is a high-ranking political advisor or minister in a Muslim government....
of Khusro I Anōšīravān (dadgar) (reign 531–578) attested in the literature and legend of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. According to Persian and Arabic sources, he was a man of "exceptional wisdom and sage counsels" and later became a characterisation of the expression. His name has appeared in some of the important work in Persian literature, most notably in the Shahnameh
Shahnameh
The Shahnameh or Shah-nama is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c.977 and 1010 AD and is the national epic of Iran and related societies...
.
The historian Arthur Christensen has suggested that Bozorgmehr was the same person as Borzūya the physician
Burzoe
Borzūya was a Persian physician in the late Sassanid era, at the time of Khosrow I.He translated the Indian Panchatantra from Sanskrit into the Middle Persian language of Pahlavi. But both his translation and the original Sanskrit version he worked from are lost...
, but historigraphical studies of post-Sassanid Persian literature, as well as linguistic analysis show otherwise. However, the word "Borzūya" can sometimes be considered a shortened form of Bozorgmehr.
An early reference to Bozorgmehr is found in the 'Aydāgār ī Wuzurgmihr', in which he is called an argbed—a high-ranking title in the Sassanid and Parthian periods. Later mention of him is made in the Shahnameh, and also very briefly in Ṯaʿālebī’s Ḡorar and Masʿūdī’s Morūj.