, Othman poet and man of letters, was the son of Saiyid Muḥammad, a prince of the Mag̲h̲rib who had fled to Constantinople in the reign of Sulṭān Aḥmad I, and had married the daughter of Muḥammad Pas̲h̲a, brother of the Grand Vizier Ḵh̲alīl Pas̲h̲a. He was brought up by the latter, who had entrusted his education to S̲h̲aik̲h̲ Mahmūd of Scutari, accompanied him as tad̲h̲kirèd̲j̲i (“editor”) when during his second vizierate he was given the command of the troops in the Persian campaign, was appointed raʾīs al-kuttāb in 1037 (1627/28) in place of Muḥammad Efendi who had just died an…

[See sari ʿabd Allāh.]

, S̲h̲aik̲h̲ Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn (d. 751 = 1350), a famous Persian author (not to be confused with the famous Ṣūfī S̲h̲aik̲h̲ Abū Turāb Nak̲h̲s̲h̲abī, d. 245 = 860). Very little is known of his career. His nisba suggests that he came from Nak̲h̲s̲h̲ab [q. v.] but he went to India where he became a murīd of S̲h̲aik̲h̲ Farīd, a descendant of the celebrated S̲h̲aik̲h̲ Ḥamīd al-Dīn Nāgūrī. The Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār of ʿAbd al-Ḥaḳḳ Dihlawī (Dihlī 1309, p. 104—107) says that he died in Badāʾūn after a long and contemplative life and that his tomb is there. Nak̲h̲s̲h̲abī was a …

Aḥmed Tāʾib, a notable Ottoman poet, scholar and historian of the end of the xviith and first third of the xviiith century. The son of the rūz-nāmed̲j̲i (māliye tezkered̲j̲i) of the pious foundations, ʿOt̲h̲mān Efendi, he took up a theological career. The year of his birth is not recorded. From 1099 (1687) he held the post of müderris in various medreses in Constantinople. At intervals he also worked in other places. For example in 1107 (1695) he went to Damascus with Kemānkes̲h̲ Meḥmed Pas̲h̲a when the latter was appointed governor there. In 1124 (1712) he was appointed müderris at the Sul…

A. — I. Historical and Ethnographical Survey. The word Turk (Chin. Tu-küe, Greek Τοῦρκοι) first appears as the name of a nomad people in the sixth century a. d. In this century a powerful nomad empire was founded by the Turks, which stretched from Mongolia and the northern frontier of China to the Black Sea. The founder of the empire, called Tu-men by the Chinese (in the Turkish inscriptions: Bu-mi̊n) died in 552; his brother Istämi (Chin.S̲h̲e-tie-mi, Greek ΔιζάβουλοΣ, ΔιλζíβουλοΣ and ΣιλζíβουλοΣ; in al-Ṭabarī, i. 895 and…

, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUbaid Allāh b. Aḥmad, Abu ’l-Sarī, an Arab poet ¶ of the clan of ʿĀmir b. Taim Allāh of Ḵh̲at̲h̲ʿam. Very little is known of his life. In the Kit. al-Ag̲h̲ānī it is related that he treacherously slew Muzāḥim b. ʿAmr, a relative of his wife Ḥammāʾ who had relations with her and had reviled him in a poem, and then strangled Ḥammāʾ and beat to death her little daughter. Ibn al-Dumaina was arrested on the accusation of Ḏj̲anāḥ, the murdered man’s brother, but was released for want of evidence. A long time afterwards…

, descendants of the Mongol prince S̲h̲aibān, a brother of Bātū Ḵh̲ān [q. v.]. The naines of the twelve sons of S̲h̲aibān and their earlier descendants are given by Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn ( Ḏj̲āmiʿ al-Tawārīk̲h̲, ed. Blochet, p. 114 sqq., with notes by the editor from the anonymous Muʿizz al-Ansāb; on its importance as a source see W. Barthold, Turkestan v epok̲h̲u mongolskago nas̲h̲estwiya, ii, 56). Later writers give information on S̲h̲aibān and his descendants which is more legendary than historical; the bias of these tales is decided by the political conditio…

, [Balād̲h̲urī gives the form Māyazdiyār < *Māh-yazd-yār], the last of the Ḳārinid rulers of Ṭabarīstān, leader of the rising against the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim. Origins. The Ḳarīn-wand dynasty claimed descent from Ḳarīn b. Sūk̲h̲rā, whom Ḵh̲usraw Anus̲h̲irwān had established in Ṭabarīstān and who was descended from the legendary smith Kāwa, who saved Farīdūn. The hereditary fief of the dynasty was the “mountain of Ḳarīn” [or of Windād Hurmuz], Ṭabarī, iii. 1295. The capital of this region was probably Lapūra (cf. Lafūr on…

, a province to the south of the Caspian Sea bounded on the west by Gīlān, on the east by the province of Āstarābād (q. v., formerly Gurgān). The name. If Gurgān to the Īrānians was the “Land of the Wolves” ( vəhrkāna), the region to its west was peopled by “Māzainian dēws” (Bartholomae, Altir. Wörterbuch, col. 1169 under māzainya daēva). Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, ii. 373, note 32, thought that Māzandarān was a “comparative of direction” ( *Mazana-tara; cf. s̲h̲ūs̲h̲ and S̲h̲ûs̲h̲tar) but Nöldeke’s hypothesis is the more probable ( Grundr. d. iron. Phil., ii. 178) who thinks that Māz…

, Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḏj̲uʿfī, Arab author, born 13th S̲h̲awwāl 194 = 21st July 810 at Buk̲h̲ārā, the grandson of a Persian, named Bardīzbah. He began the study of the Traditions at the early age of eleven and in his sixteenth year made the pilgrimage and attended the lectures of the most famous teachers of Tradition in Mecca and Medīna. He then went to Egypt as a Ṭālib al-ʿIlm and spent the next sixteen years, of which five were spent in Baṣra, in wandering through all Asia. He then returned to his native town where he died on the 30th Ramaḍān 256 (31st August 870); he is buri…

, abu ’l-Ḳāsim Maḥmūd b. ʿOmar, a Persian born Arabic scholar, theologian and philologist. Born in Ḵh̲wārizm on 27th Rad̲j̲ab 467 (March 8, 1075), in the course of his travels as a student he came to Mecca, where he stayed for some time as a pupil of Ibn Wahhās, hence his epithet Ḏj̲āru ’llāhi. He must however have achieved a literary reputation before this; when he passed through Bag̲h̲dād on the pilgrimage he was welcomed there by the learned ʿAlid Hibat Allāh b. al-S̲h̲ad̲j̲arī. As a theologian he followed the teachings of the Muʿtazila; as a p…

, Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Salāma b. ʿAbd al-Malik al-Azdī al-Ṭaḥāwī al-Had̲j̲rī. His nisba Ṭaḥāwī is derived from the name of a village in Upper Egypt named Ṭaḥā. He is considered the greatest Ḥanafī lawyer which Egypt has produced. His ancestors had settled in Upper Egypt and his grandfather Salāma when the news of the rebellion ¶ of Ibrāhīm b. al-Mahdī reached Egypt threw off, with others, the allegiance to the caliph al-Maʾmūn. The rebels appointed ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Azdī in place of al-Sarī b. al-Ḥakam, who fled at first, …

, the name of a line of robber chiefs who made themselves masters of a considerable part of Ḵh̲urāsān; their subjects are also known as Serbedārs. This state, a regular republic of brigands, in which military considerations and the influence of S̲h̲īʿī dervishes predominated, was formed during the troubles that succeeded the death of the Īlk̲h̲ān Abū Saʿīd; it collapsed before the great Timūr. The name Serbedār, which one might translate “gallows-bird” (or perhaps better “desperado”), goes back, according to the historian Ḵh̲wānd-amīr, to a saying of the first chief, ʿAbd al-Razzāḳ: “a…

, more accurately Māl-i Amīr, a ruined site in Lūristān. It lies in the centre of a flat plain about 3,100 feet above sea-level, in 49° 45’ East Long, and 31° 50’ N. Lat., 3-4 days’ journey east of S̲h̲ūstar [q. v.] and marks the site of a mediaeval town for which during the caliphate the name Īd̲h̲ad̲j̲ (sometimes vocalized hid̲h̲ad̲j̲) was exclusively used. The modern name Māl-i Amīr seems to be first used in the Mongol period; at least the first known occurrence is in the first half of the xivth century in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (ii. 29) in the Arabic form Māl al-Amīr = “estate of the prince”…

Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Ḳādir al-Ḥusainī Taḳī al-Dīn, Arabic historian, b. 766 (1364) at Cairo, grandson of the Ḥanafī Ibn al-Ṣāʾig̲h̲ who educated him according to his school; but on attaining his majority he went over to the S̲h̲āfiʿīs, attacked the Ḥanafīs and even showed Ẓāhirī tendencies. He began his career as deputy ḳāḍī in Cairo and rose to be head of the al-Ḥākimīya mosque and teacher of tradition at the al-Muʾaiyadīya madrasa. In 811 (1408) he was transferred as administrator of the waḳf at the Ḳalānisīya and at the Nūrī hospital and also as teacher at th…

(original Iranian form Tōs, in Arabic transcription Ṭūs), a district in Ḵh̲urāsān. In the historical period Tūs was the name of a district containing several towns. The town of Nawḳān flourished down to the end of the third (ninth) century. The form Nawḳan < Nōḳan is confirmed by the present name of the Mes̲h̲hed quarter Noug̲h̲ān (where the dipthong ou corresponds to the old wāw-i mad̲j̲hūl, i. e. ō). At a later date, the other town Ṭābarān became more important and was considerably extended so that the original Ṭābarān seems to have become one of the faubourgs…

1, known also under the Kurdish name of Nāw Člā (between mountains), ḳaḍā of the sand̲j̲aḳ of Ḥaḳḳāri, in the wilāyet of Wān, is one of the least explored regions of Central Kurdistān. Its boundaries are: — on the north, the ḳaḍā of Guiawar; on the south, Barādost and Barzān (maḥall of Rawāndīz); on the west, Oramār (nāḥiya of the sand̲j̲aḳ of Guiawar); on the east, the Persian districts, dependencies of Urmiya: Des̲h̲t, Merguiawar and Us̲h̲nū. Situated between 37° and 38° N. and 44° and 45° E. (Greenwic…

, a mediaeval Arab town or rather a group of towns in al-ʿIrāḳ (Babylonia) about 20 miles S. E. of Bag̲h̲dād lying on either side of the Tigris in two almost equal portions. The name al-Madāʾin (plur. of al-Madīna) „the towns” is explained from the fact that the two capitals situated opposite one another, Seleucia on the west, the Greek city founded by Seleucus I between 312 and 301 B. C, and Ctesiphon on the east (the first reference to which is in 221 B. C), the winter residence of the Parthian and Sāsānian kings, with several oth…

(Těhrān), 1. the capital of Persia. The name. The Arab spelling Ṭihrān survived down to the beginning of the xxth century. The Arabs frequently rendered by ṭ the initial t of Persian names (aspiration?). The Arab Yāḳūt however admits the pronunciation Tihrān; the Persian Zakarīyā Ḳazwīnī only gives this form. The short i in modern Persian is regularly pronounced like a short e, whence the European transcriptions Teheran etc. (already in Clavijo and della Valle; Chardin: Théran). The pronunciation Tährān is unknown in Persia but the Turks of Constantinople,…

Russ. Ferganskaya oblast, a territory in Russian Turkestan, in the valley of the Sir-Daryā. The name strictly is only applicable to the valley itself, bounded in the north by the Čotkal range, in the east by the mountains of Farg̲h̲āna, in the south by the Alai range; in the west the boundary is less sharply defined by the approach of the mountain chains to the river bank, which causes the river to alter its course, which in Farg̲h̲āna is predominantly southwesterly, first to a western then to a northwestern ¶ direction. Between the mountains and the stream there is here, particular…