Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

b. Kočḳar , Turkish slave commander of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs and governor for them in Ḵh̲wārazm with the traditional title of Ḵh̲wārazm-S̲h̲ah [ q.v.] in 490/1097. He was the successor in this office of Anūs̲h̲tigin G̲h̲arčaʾī, the founder of the subsequent line of Ḵh̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs who made their province the centre of a great military empire in the period preceeding the Mongol invasions. According to Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, x, 181-2, Ekenči was one of Sultan Berk-Yaruḳ’s slaves (but according to Ḏj̲uwaynī, ii, 3, tr. Boyle, i, 278, one of Sand̲j̲ar’s slaves), and was appointed to Ḵh̲wārazm by Berk-…

, Red̲j̲āʾīzāde Maḥmūd (1847-1914), Turkish writer, poet and critic, one of the leading personalities in the victory of the modern school of poetry over traditional dīwān -poetry. Born in Vaniköy, a suburb of Istanbul on the Bosphorus, he was the son of Red̲j̲āʾī Efendi, director of the Government Press, a poet and scholar of some distinction. He attended various schools until the age of fifteen and, like most of his contemporaries, continued his education as an apprentice clerk in the chancellery o…

[see maʿmūrat al-ʿazīz ].

(T. él-basan ‘[fortress] which subdues the land’), town of central Albania (41° 06′ N., 20° 06′ E.) on the site of the ancient Scampis on the Via Egnatia, a strategic position controlling the fertile valley of the Shkumbî (anc. Genysos), which here emerges from the mountains. The fortress, round which the town grew up, was built with great speed at the command of Meḥemmed II while Krujё (Kroya [ q.v.]) was being unsuccessfully besieged in the summer of 1466, as a base for future operations against Iskandar Beg [ q.v.]; it resisted a siege in the following spring. At first administer…

, Abulustayn or Ablistayn in the ancient Arabic writers, Āblistān in the Persian, Ablasta in the Armenian, Plasta in the Byzantine, ¶ and Albistān or Elbistān in more recent times: a town in south-eastern Anatolia, 38°15′ N., 37° 11′ E., at an altitude of 1150 m., on the Sögütlü Dere, one of the sources of the Ceyhan, the Pyramos of antiquity. It is situated in a wide plain which is rich in water and enclosed by high mountains of the eastern Taurus, at the foot of the S̲h̲ar Dag̲h̲i̊ (1300 m. = 4265 ft.). It is the capital of a kaza in the vilâyet of Maras̲h̲. In 1950, it had 7,477 inhabitants, and the kaza…

[see alburz ].

[see als̲h̲ ]. ¶

, a Turkish word meaning envoy, from el or il, country, people, or state, with the occupational suffix či (= d̲j̲i ). In some eastern Turkish texts the word appears to denote the ruler of a land or people; its normal meaning, however, since early times, has been that of envoy or messenger, usually in a diplomatic, sometimes, in mystical literature, in a figurative religious sense. In Ottoman Turkish it became the normal word for an ambassador, together with the more formal Arabic term sefīr . From an early date the Ottoman sultans exchanged occasional diplo…

, Turkish archeologist and historian, was born on 24 (?) June 1861 in Istanbul. He was the youngest son of the grand vizier Ibrāhīm Edhem Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.]. After completing his primary school course in Istanbul, he continued, from 1876, his secondary education in Berlin, and later studied chemistry and natural sciences in the University of Zurich and at the Polytechnic School of Vienna. In 1885 he received the Ph. D. degree from the University of Berne. Back in Istanbul he was appointed to an office in the Ministry of War …

[see adwiya ].

[see mart̲h̲iya ].

[see fīl ].

[see gāwilgarh ].

, Iličpur , modern Ačalpur , a town of the mediaeval Islamic province of Berār [ q.v.] in southern Central India, lying near the headwaters of the Purnā constituent of the Tāptī River in lat. 21° 16ʹ N. and long. 77° 33ʹ E. Up to 1853, Eličpur was generally regarded as the capital of Berār, after when Amraotī became the administrative centre. The pre-Islamic history of Eličpur is semi-legendary, its foundation being attributed to a Jain Rād̲j̲ā called Il in the 10th century. By Baranī’s time (later 7th/13th century), it could be described as one of the fam…

[see ilyās ].

[see alīsāʿ ].

[see al-k̲h̲āṣṣa wa’l-ʿāmma ].

[see al-iksīr ].

[see alkāṣ mirza ].

[see elurā ].