Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, the name in Arabic sources of one of the major groups of the Berber population which dominated the greater part of the Mag̲h̲rib in the 4th/10th and then in the 7th-9th/13th-15th centuries. Al-Masʿūdī was one of the first to compile an inventory of the nomads ( bawādin ) of his time, including a list of the names of Berber groups, twenty-seven in number, among which he located, in second place, the Zanāta. A century later, al-Bakrī supplies information regarding the geo-political characteristics of the group, with part…

, an Iranian pastoral tribe of the eastern central Zagros, from which sprang a dynasty that ruled western Persia 1164-1209/1751-94. The Zand belonged to the Lakk group of Lurs [see īlāt ], centred on the villages of Parī and Kamāzān near Malāyir. In 1144/1732 Nādir S̲h̲āh [ q.v.] launched punitive raids on several Zagros tribes and deported thousands of Bak̲h̲tiyārī and a number of Zand families to northern K̲h̲urāsān. After Nādir’s assassination in 1160/1747, they made their way home, the Bak̲h̲tiyārī under ʿAlī Mardān K̲h̲ān and the Zand u…

[see zindīḳ ].

(a.), a term found in Arabic literature, ¶ but apparently of non-Arabic origin, denoting the peoples of Black Africa, and especially those with whom the Arabs came into contact through their voyages and trade in the western part of the Indian Ocean and living in the eastern parts of Africa. For the territories in question, the term bilād al-Zand̲j̲ was used. 1. As a territorial term. Here, it forms the second of al-Idrīsī’s four divisions of the eastern coast of Africa. The term first occurs in Strabo (A.D. 6), who uses a Greek form Azania ; in Latin, Pliny (A.D. 79) writes of Azania as north of …

, a town of northwestern Persia, situated on the Zand̲j̲ān Rūd, a right-bank affluent of the Safīd Rūd [ q.v.]. It lies on the highway from Tehran and Ḳazwīn to Tabrīz at a distance of 314 km/195 miles from Tehran and 302 km/188 miles from Tabrīz, and at an altitude of 1,625 m/5,330 feet (lat. 36° 40′ N., long. 48° 30′ E.). The mediaeval geographers mostly placed Zand̲j̲ān in D̲j̲ibāl province, usually linking it with Abhar [ q.v.] or Awhar some 80 km/50 miles to its south-east, but they usually stated that it was on the frontier with Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, and some authoriti…

[see Suppl.].

, ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Ḵh̲arad̲j̲ī (often given as: al-Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲ī) al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, Abu ’l-Maʿālī ( fl. in the middle of the 7th/13th century), grammarian and adīb , who ca. 625/1228 wrote a celebrated treatise on morphology ( ṣarf [ q.v.]), Mabādiʾ al-taṣrīf or ( Kitāb ) al-Taṣrīf al-ʿIzzī , extant in numerous mss. and the subject of many commentaries, the most popular one being that of al-Taftāzānī (see Bibl .). The Kitāb al-Taṣrīf was the third grammatical treatise (after Ibn al-Ḥād̲j̲ib’s Kāfiya and the Ād̲j̲urrūmiyya ) …

(or al-zand̲j̲abār ), officially spelt Zanzibar , is an island in lat. 6° S., with a capital of the same name. It is about 53 miles in length and 24 miles at its broadest. The area is about 640 sq miles. A channel about 20 miles wide separates it from the Tanzanian mainland. Its history and economy are bound up with the prevailing winds, the south-west and north-east monsoons, which set in with clockwork regularity. The south-west monsoon begins in March, bringing the Masika , or Long Rains, which last with decreasing vigour for about three months. The Mvuli , or Short R…

, Abu ’l-Muẓaffar ʿImād al-Dīn b. Ḳasīm al-Dawla Aḳsunḳur b. Il-Turg̲h̲ān, Turkmen commander, governor of ʿIrāḳ, later ruler of al-Mawṣil and Aleppo (521-41/1127-46) and founder of the Zangid dynasty, d. 541/1146. Early youth. Born in Aleppo in 480/1087-8, he was the last surviving son of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ commander Aḳsunḳur [ q.v.], who became governor of Aleppo 480-7/1087-94. After his father’s death in 487/1094, Zangī was raised at the court of the governors of al-Mawṣil [ q.v.] and distinguished himself in the internal warfare of rival Sald̲j̲ūḳ princes and the wars ag…

or Zangī Bābā , Ṣūfī saint of Central Asia, d. 657/1259. He was a shepherd from Tas̲h̲kent, with swarthy colouring from his Arab origins, whence his name ( zangī “black”). His father Tās̲h̲ Ātā was a descendant of Arslān Bāb, the master of the great saint of Central Asia, Aḥmad Yasawī [ q.v.]. Zangī Ātā was first of all initiated by his own father into the mystical way, and then, after his father’s death he became the disciple of Ḥakīm Ātā, Aḥmad Yasawī’s famous k̲h̲alīfa . ¶ At Ḥakīm Ātā’s death, he went on pilgrimage to his tomb in K̲h̲wārazm, and married Anbar Bībī, the saint’s widow. The …

, a Turkmen dynasty which reigned over Syria, Diyār Muḍar and Diyār Rabīʿa [ q.vv.] from 521-2/1127-8 onwards, in the tradition of Turkmen-Sald̲j̲ūḳ collective familial sovereignty: in Aleppo until 579/1183, in al-Mawṣil until 631/1233, and with minor branches in Sind̲j̲ār, D̲j̲azīrat Ibn ʿUmar and in S̲h̲ahrazūr. ¶ The progenitor Aḳsunḳur [ q.v.], a Turkish mamlūk commander in the service of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Malik S̲h̲āh, was appointed governor of Aleppo in 480/1087-8. During the wars of succession following the sultan’s assassination, Aḳsunḳur was executed in 487/1094. His …

, the name for a popular cult of spirits found in northeastern Africa and such adjacent regions as the Arabian peninsula. 1. In the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. The zār ritual or practice seems to have originated in the Horn of Africa and, especially, in Ethiopia. According to E. Cerulli, the word (Ar. zār, Amharic zar , Somali saar , etc.), may be said to derive from “the name of the supreme god of the pagan Cushitic peoples, the Sky-God called in Agaw (Bilen) d̲j̲ār , and in the Sidamo languages (Kaffa) yarō and (Buoro) darō” . The Italian scholar further …

[see mad̲j̲ūs ].

(a.), pls. zarāfāt , zarāfī , zarāʾif , zurāfa , the giraffe (in Persian, us̲h̲tur-gāw-palang “camel-cow-leopard”), a large African mammiferous animal, one of the two representatives of the Giraffid family and well ¶ known through its western type Giraffa camelopardalis or cameleopard. In Antiquity, and according to all the ancient writers on natural history, the giraffe was considered as a hybrid coming from crossings of wild species of camelids, bovines and felines, male or female, and because of its long front legs and short back ones, as involving a limping and jerky gait. It is ast…

, conventionally Zerafshan , a landlocked river of Central Asia, now coming within Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In early Islamic times, it was known as “the river of Sogdia”, Nahr Ṣug̲h̲d [see ṣug̲h̲d ] or “the river of Buk̲h̲ārā” (see al-Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān , 293-4, tr. Wiet, 1 lull; al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 319-21; Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, ii, 495-7, tr. Kramers and Wiet, ii, 475-7; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 55, 73, comm. 198, 211). It flowed westwards from sources in what the geographers called the Buttamān mountains, in fact, between what are…

[see zarang ].

, Arabised as Zarand̲j̲, the main town of the early Islamic province of Sīstān. Its ruins lie a few miles north of what was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the administrative centre of Persian Sīstān, Nuṣratābād or Nāṣirābād, modern Zābul. Its remaining traces are visible within the vast ruined site known as Nād-i ʿAlī, to the east of the present course of the Hilmand river [ q.v.] before it peters out in the Hāmūn depression [see zirih ] just inside Afg̲h̲an Sīstān; the site has, however, been much depleted by periodic flooding and the re-us…

(a., pl. ẓurūf ), lit. “vessel, container”, in grammar denotes a subset of nouns of place or time in the dependent ( naṣb , vulgo “accusative”) form indicating when or where the event occurs, e.g. d̲j̲alastu yawm-a-n warāʾ-a-hu “I sat one day behind him”. Because of their dependent form, the Arab grammarians classify them as objects of the verb, specifically as the “object of location”, mafʿūl fīhi , lit. “thing in which something is done”. Neither of the western terms “adverb” or “preposition” can properly be applied to these elements, wh…

(a.), pl. ẓurafāʾ , denotes in mediaeval Islamic social and literary life a person endowed with Ẓarf “elegance”, “refinement”, also translatable as “man of the world”, “dandy”, or, in the plural, “refined people”. The ẓarīf (or mutaẓarrif ) is generally considered as a type of adīb , indeed taẓarruf is viewed as an intensification of certain features, intellectual, literary, social, and personal, that are held to characterise the man of adab [ q.v.]. Interestingly, ẓarf was not deemed gender-specific: Ibn al-Was̲h̲s̲h̲āʾ (d. 325/936-7) refers to baʿḍ mutaẓarrifāt al-ḳuṣūr ( K. al-Mu…

, conventionally Zarka or Zerka, a city of modern Jordan, situated 23 km/15 miles to the northeast of the capital ʿAmmān (lat. 32° 04’ N., long. 36° 06’ E., altitude 619 m/2,030 feet). It lies on a plateau bordering the desert and intersected by various small valleys which, in the winter, pour water into the Zarḳāʾ river, the main east-bank tributary of the Jordan after the Yarmūk river. The site is also known for its underground water and springs, recognised by mediaeval geographers and travellers, and Pilgrimage caravans used to halt there to replenish their water supplies. There does not…