Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, a name derived from the ancient Egyptian Timinhur, the city of Horus. It is not surprising that a number of cities of this name are to be found, almost all in the Nile Delta. I. Damanhūr al-S̲h̲ahid. Damanhūr “of the Martyr”, one of the northern suburbs of Cairo. This was the name still used by Yāḳūt, but the village was later known as Damanhūr S̲h̲ubrā. a name which was however already known to al-Muḳaddasī. Ibn Mammātī calls it simply Damanhūr. The two names are sometimes inverted and certain authors speak of S̲h̲ubrā Damanhū…

[see maʿdin ].

[see dimas̲h̲ḳ ].

, the highest point in the mountains on the borders of Northern Persia (cf. Alburz ), somewhat below 36° N. Lat. and about 50 miles north-east of Tehran. According to de Morgan it rises out of the plateau of Rēhne to a height of 13,000 feet above it. The various estimates of its height differ: Thomson estimates it at 21,000 feet (certainly too high), de Morgan at 20,260 feet, Houtum Schindler at 19,646, Sven Hedin at 18,187, and in the last edition of Stieler’s Handatlas (1910) it is given as 18,830 feet. Its summit, perpetually snow-clad and almost always…

a town on the main highway between Tehran and Mas̲h̲had, some 344 km. east of Tehran; also, a station on the railway between Tehran and Mas̲h̲had. At an altitude of n 15 metres, it has a population of 9,900 (1950). One km. to the south of the town is the mound called Tappa Ḥiṣār where excavations conducted by the University of Pennsylvania in 1931 uncovered prehistoric burials and the plaster-decorated remains of a building of the Sāsānid period. The oldest Islamic structure—possibly the earlies…

[see dimyāṭ ]. ¶

[see naḥw ].

, Muḥammad b. Mūsā b. ʿĪsā Kamāl al-dīn , was born in Cairo about the beginning of the year 742/1341 (according to a note in his own handwriting quoted by al-Sak̲h̲āwī, 59) and died there in 808/1405. Later dates of his birth, as given in some sources (745/1344 or 750/1349), would hardly be consistent with certain details of his biography. His nisba is derived from the northernmost of the two townlets both called Damīra near Samannūd in the Delta. After first gaining his livelihood as a tailor in his native town he decided to become a professional theologian, choosing as h…

[see Ḥaraka ].

, a port on the Persian Gulf and capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The name formerly designated a tower fort, located at 26° 27′ 56′′ N., 50° 06′ 06′′ E., on a reef near the ¶ shore north of the present town. The origin of the fort is not known, although the structure razed in 1957 to make way for a small-craft pier appeared to date from the time of the redoubtable D̲j̲alāhima sea captain Raḥma b. D̲j̲ābir [ q.v.]. Ibn D̲j̲ābir built a fort at al-Dammām after allying himself with Āl Saʿūd about 1809, but the Saʿūdīs destroyed it in 1231/1816 when he deserted th…

( Demnate , Demnat ), a small Berber town situated on the edge of the Great Atlas in Morocco, 120 km. east of Marrākush, at an altitude of 960 m., on a small hill overlooking the fertile valley (barley, beans) of the Oued Tassawt, the slopes of which are covered with olive-trees and vines. The town is surrounded by a rectangular wall and includes a məllāḥ (Jewish quarter); in fact almost half the population, which stands at about 4,000, consists of Jews, whose numbers however are diminishing regularly. Local trade on a large scale in oil…

Aḥmad , Egyptian historian of the 12th/18th century. Nothing is known of his life beyond the fact that he held the post of katk̲h̲udā of the ʿAzabān regiment in Cairo, but he may have been a relative of the rūznāmed̲j̲i Ḥasan Efendi al-Damurdās̲h̲ī, who flourished in the early 11th/17th century, and about whose doings he is well informed). His chronicle, al-Durra al-muṣāna fī ak̲h̲bār al-kināna , covers the period 1099-1169/1688-1755. It reveals unfamiliarity with Arabic, and the sense is sometimes garbled or obscure. Nevertheless it is …

[see sikka ].

[see danḳalī ].

[see raḳṣ ].

, Dandānaḳān , a small town in the sand desert between Marw and Sarak̲h̲s in mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān and 10 farsak̲h̲ s or 40 miles from the former city. The site of the settlement is now in the Turkmenistan SSR, see V.A. Zhukovsky, Razvalini̊ Starago Merva , St. Petersburg 1894, 38. The geographers of the 4th/10th century mention that it was well-fortified and was surrounded by a wall 500 paces in circumference, the baths and a ribāṭ or caravanserai lying outside this wall (Ibn Ḥawḳal2 , 436-7, 456, tr. Kramers-Wiet, 422, 440; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 105). Whe…

, Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd b. ʿUmar al-Umawī , Mālikī lawyer and above all, “reader” of the Ḳurʾān, born at Cordova in 371/ 981/2. After having made his pilgrimage to Mecca and spent some time in Cairo between 397/1006 and 399/1008, he returned to his birthplace but was soon forced to flee, first to Almeria and finally to Denia (Dāniya, whence his nisba ), where he settled down and died in 444/1053. Among more than 120 works which he wrote and enumerated himself in an urd̲j̲ūza , only about ten are known (see Brockelmann, I, 407, S I, 719); two of them deal …

[see dāniyāl ]

[see d̲j̲āmiʿa ].

, a Turcoman dynasty which reigned in northern Cappadocia from the last quarter of the 5th/11th century until 573/1178. The origins and first conquests of its founder, Amīr Dānis̲h̲mend, are obscure. Appearing in Cappadocia during the years of anarchy which followed the death, in 781/1085, of the Sald̲j̲ūḳid Sulaymān b. Kutlumi̊s̲h̲, he became involved in the events of the First Crusade. When historians became interested in him they resorted to legends or imagination to fill the gaps in their kn…