The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1502 page)

bade the Sikhs to ignore them and bring their offerings direct to the Gur
.

 
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(Heb., ‘likeness, fable’). Short Jewish moral tale normally with animal characters. In their earliest form, among the
rabbis
, they resemble the
parables
of Jesus, including many of the form, ‘To what can the kingdom of God be likened?’

 
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Mashhad
or Meshed
.

Capital of the Iranian province of Khur
s
n and the most important place of pilgrimage for Persian Shi‘ites. It is here that the eighth Im
m of the
Ithna ‘Ashar
yya
(Twelvers) ‘Al
al-Ri
b. M
sa (d. 818 (AH 203)) is buried. Around his tomb grew a large town. Mashhad contains a sacred area, called
Bast
, which can only be entered through two gates, and is strictly forbidden to non-Muslims.
Since mashhad means ‘a place where one has borne witness’, i.e. died as a
martyr
, the word may be used of any place where this has occurred. Notable examples are
Karbal
’
,
Najaf
, Kazimain (near Baghdad, with the tombs of the 7th and 9th Imams of the Twelvers, Ithn
‘Ashar
yya, namely Musa al-Kazim and Mu
ammad al-Jaurad), and Samarra (10th and 12th, ‘Ali al-Hadi and Hasan al-Askari).