Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, the name in mediaeval Turkish usage for the Ural River, whence Russian Y̲a̲ika. The river rises in the Ural Mountains separating modern European from Asiatic Russia and flows past the recent cities of Orenburg [see örenḳalʿe , in Suppl.] and Kral’sk into the northern end of the Caspian Sea east of the Volga estuary, having a total course of 2,430 km/1,510 miles. The Greek sources record it as Daix (Ptolemy, 2nd century A.D.), Daikh (Menander Protector, 6th century) and Gēekh (Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 10th century). The name was perhaps originally…

(t., originally yaylag̲h̲ ), “summer quarters”, applied to the summer residences of the old Turkish ḳag̲h̲ans or the summer pastures of nomadic or transhumant tribes of Inner Asia, its antonym being ki̊s̲h̲laḳ [ q.v.] “winter quarters”. The origin of the word is from yay “summer” (but this originally meant “spring”, cf. Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk, Tkish. tr. Atalay, iii, 160-1, though already in the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions it means “summer”, and it comes to mean this in most Turkic languages, with yaylamaḳ “to spend the summer”, cf. Sir Gerard Clauson, An etymological dicti…

, an influential clan in pre-Islamic Ḥaḍramawt, first attested about the middle of the 5th century A.D. by inscriptions (with the spelling Yzʾn ) in the Wādī ʿAmāḳīn, in the Ḥabbān area. A little later they emerge as closely allied with the important Sabaean clan Gdn , and by the early 6th century they were probably the most powerful family in the Himyarite kingdom [see Ḥimyar ; tubbaʿ ], claiming “lordship” (signified by the prefix D̲h̲ū) over virtually the whole of what had been, up to around 300 A.D., the ancient kingdom of Ḥaḍramawt, to…

, a city of central Persia, and capital of the province of the same name. It is situated on the Persian plateau at lat. 31° 54′ N. and long. 54° 24′ E. (at an elevation of 1,230m/4,240 feet), in an elongated interior basin stretching from near Kās̲h̲ān to Bāfḳ and bordered by the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr. It was known in early times as Kat̲h̲a (Le Strange, Lands , 285; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, London 1937, 128, 380), after a fortress and prison alleged to have been founded by Alexander (Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn b. al-Kātib, Tārīk̲h̲-i d̲j̲adīd-i Yazd , ed. Īrad̲j̲ Afs̲h̲ār, Tehran…

, in Persian, Yazdagird, son of S̲h̲ahriyār, son of K̲h̲usraw Aparwīz, the last Sāsānid emperor (reigned from the end of 632 or beginning of 633 till his murder at Marw in 31/651). It was in the early years of his reign that the Arabs started raiding into ʿIrāḳ, defeating the Sāsānid army at al-Ḳādisiyya [ q.v.] and in other battles, capturing the capital Ctesiphon-al-Madāʾin in March 637, and gradually extending across the Iranian plateau to occupy the whole of Persia. For further details, see sāsānids , at Vol. IX, 80.

, Mīrzā Muḥammad (Farruk̲h̲ī) (1889-1939), Persian poet, journalist, and one-time Mad̲j̲lis deputy in the post-Constitutional and early Pahlawī periods. Born of modest origins in Yazd, he spent a few years in the traditional maktab s and briefly attended a school founded in Yazd by English missionaries. The Constitutional movement (1905-9) attracted him to politics, and his “patriotic musammaṭ ” poem of 1909 so enraged Ḍirg̲h̲am al-Dawla Ḳas̲h̲ḳāʾī, the governor of Yazd, that he ordered the sewing together of his lips, an event wh…

(Dīnār), Abu ’l-ʿAlāʾ, secretary and governor under the Umayyads. He was a mawlā , not by manumission (presumably by conversion), of T̲h̲aḳīf [ q.v.], and foster-brother and secretary, but not mawlā, of al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ [ q.v.] (thus al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī and al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ). He ran the dīwān al-rasāʾil for al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ and took charge of the taxes of ʿĪrāḳ when the latter died in 95/714, but was dismissed and jailed on Sulaymān’s accession in 96/715. His cruelty was so notorious that ʿUmar II reputedly left him i…

b. Ḥarb b. Umayya, Arab commander of the conquests period, son of the Meccan leader Abū Sufyān [ q.v.] by his wife Zaynab bt. Nawfal and half-brother of the subsequent caliph Muʿāwiya I [ q.v.], d. 18/639 without progeny (Ibn Ḳutayba, Maʿārif ed. ʿUkās̲h̲a, 344-5). With his father and brother, he became a Muslim at the conquest of Mecca in 8/630, took part in the ensuing battle of Ḥunayn [ q.v.] and was one of “those whose hearts are won over”, receiving from the Prophet a gift of 100 camels and 40 ounces of silver (Ibn Saʿd, ii/1, 110, vii/2, 127; al-Wāḳidī, iii, 944-5; and see al-muʾallafa ḳulūbuh…

[see yazīd b. abī muslim ].

[see muhallabids. (iv)].

al-T̲h̲aḳafī ( fl. first half of the 2nd/8th century). Arab poet, member of the circle around the caliph al-Walīd b. Yazīd [ q.v.]. He was a mawlā of the tribe of T̲h̲aḳīf in al-Ṭāʾif; according to the philologist al-Aṣmaʿī [ q.v.], who knew him, his Arabic was nonetheless pure ( Ag̲h̲ānī , vii, 103). Since his father died when he was still young, he became known as Ibn Ḍabba after his mother, who as the dry nurse of the children of al-Mug̲h̲īra b. S̲h̲uʿba [ q.v.] and of his son ʿUrwa was a woman of some standing. He seems to have befriended al-Walīd early on, since on account …

[see muhallabids. (i)].

, Abū Muʿāwiya al-Baṣrī, traditionist of Baṣra, b. 101/720 and d. in Baṣra S̲h̲awwāl 182/Nov.-Dec. 798. His father had been governor of al-Ubulla [ q.v.], presumably under the later Umayyads. He is described as the outstanding muḥaddit̲h̲ of Baṣra in his time, a t̲h̲iḳa and ḥud̲j̲d̲j̲a , and was the teacher of the historian and biographer K̲h̲alīfa b. K̲h̲ayyāṭ [see ibn k̲h̲ayyāṭ ]. Ibn Saʿd says that Yazīd was a supporter of the ʿUt̲h̲māniyya [ q.v.]. (Ed.) Bibliography Ibn Saʿd, vii/2, 44 Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Tahd̲h̲īb, xi, 325-8 Ziriklī, Aʿlām 2, ix, 235.

, Yazīdiyya , the name of a mainly Kurdish-speaking group whose communal identity is defined by their distinctive religious tradition. Appellations and definitions. The Kurdish appellation generally used by the community itself is Ēzdī , with a variant Ēzīdī . Most Western scholars now hold that the word derives from the name of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya [ q.v.]; a derivation from Old Iranian yazata , Middle Persian yazad “divine being”, was once widely accepted and is still preferred by many Yazīdīs. Popular etymologies include a derivation of the term from ez dā , which…

, Abū Muḥammad Yaḥyā b. al-Mubārak b. al-Mug̲h̲īra al-ʿAdawī al-Baṣrī al-Bag̲h̲dādī, with the laḳab or s̲h̲uhra of al-Yazīdī (so named after Yazīd b. Manṣūr al-Ḥimyarī, d. 165/781, maternal uncle of the caliph al-Mahdī), Ḳurʾān teacher, grammarian, lexicographer, poet and man of letters, d. 202/817-18. 1. Al-Yazīdī, the father. Born around 128/745-6 in Baṣra (?) as a client of the Banū ʿAdī b. ʿAbd Manāt, he frequented the local philologists, particularly Abū ʿAmr b. al-ʿAlāʾ, Yūnus b. Ḥabīb and al-K̲h̲alīl b. Aḥmad [ q.vv.]. He became the main transmitter of the seven canoni…

, the second Umayyad caliph ( r. 60-4/680-3). He was named as his successor by his father [see muʿāwiya i ]. His mother was Maysūn, a sister of the Kalbī leader Ibn Baḥdal [see Ḥassān b. mālik ]. The Banū Kalb [see kalb b. wabara ] were strong in the southern regions of Syria, and Muʿāwiya appointed Yazīd as his successor in preference to an older half-brother, ʿAbd Allāh, born of a Ḳuras̲h̲ī mother. Yazīd’s kunya , Abū K̲h̲ālid, refers to one of his own younger sons [see k̲h̲ālid b. yazīd ]. During his father’s caliphate, Yazīd commanded expeditions ( ṣawāʾif see Ṣāʾifa . 1…

, the ninth Umayyad caliph, r. 101-5/720-4. He was born in Damascus ca. 71/690-1. His mother was ʿĀtika bt. Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, and he was named after his Sufyānī grandfather, the caliph Yazīd I. Thus Yazīd II joined in his person the Marwānid and the Sufyānid branches of the Umayyad family, making him a natural candidate for the succession. Like most other Umayyad princes, he appears to have travelled outside of Syria only to the Ḥid̲j̲āz. Also, he seems to have received neither administrative nor military …

b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān I, Umayyad caliph for approximately six months in 126/744. He is known in tradition as al-Nāḳiṣ (the Depriver, or the Deficient; various explanations are given). He is said to have boasted that through his mother, one of Yazdagird Ill’s granddaughters captured in Transoxania, he had inherited both Sāsānid and Byzantine blood. He has a reputation for asceticism and piety, and was accepted as a righteous Imām not only by his immediate supporters but by some later theorists too (al-Ḳāḍī ʿAbd al-D̲j̲abbār, Mug̲h̲nī , Cairo n.d., xx/2, 150). Yazīd obtained the cal…

, the name of a famous Lebanese Maronite family from Kafr S̲h̲īmā eminent in the Arab literary renaissance ( Nahḍa [ q.v.]) of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 1. al-S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Nāṣīf b. ʿAbd Allāh (1800-71), the son of a physician and founder of the family’s fame, who although he received no formal education, became a teacher, revered philologist and poet. During the first half of his life he held secretarial positions such as that to the Greek Catholic Patriarch (1816-18). He worked closely with American missionaries who…

(t.), lit. “writer, secretary” < Tkis̲h̲. yaz- “write”, hence the Turkish equivalent of kātib , dabīr and muns̲h̲ī . The term was used in Ottoman times for the clerks in the various government departments, such as the ¶ treasury, with a bas̲h̲ yazi̊d̲j̲i̊ at their head. It could also be used for the secretaries of high court and military officials, e.g. of the Ḳi̊zlar Ag̲h̲asi̊ “Chief Eunuch of the Women”, who was also, in the 10th/16th century, in charge of the ewḳāf for the Ḥaramayn, Mecca and Medina, and other great mosques of the empire [see Ḥaramayn , at Vol. III, 175b]. (Ed.) Bibliography Gi…