Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see d̲j̲ayḥūn ].

, a West African Yoruba empire in what is now Nigeria [ q.v.] and rivalling Ife, where kingship existed from at least the 12th century. Ọyọ grew in importance from the 16th century with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. The empire linked northern trade routes along the Niger with the Atlantic. Muslims from Borno, Hausa, Nupe and the former Mali and Songhay were resident in its capital and along the route to the sea, but the Alafin, the local chief, and the vast majority of the people followed their traditional religion. Struggle between central and provincial government produced a s…

, Turgut , modern Turkish statesman (1927-93). He was born in 1927 in the province of Malatya in south-eastern Turkey. After graduating as an electrical engineer in 1950, he served in a number of important technical and economic posts between 1967 and 1980, initiating a programme of liberalising economic reforms in January 1980. Following the coup d’état led by General Kenan Evren on 12 September of that year, Özal continued these policies as Deputy Prime Minister, but he was…

(t.), in Turkish society “troubadour poet/singer/story-teller”. The term comes from the verb oz- “to outstrip, go ahead in the race” (see Clauson, Etymological dictionary of pre-thirteenth century Turkish , 279), already attested in Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī’s [ q.v.] Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk (5th/11th century), as also in the living tongues of Kirgiz, Sagay and Koybol of Central Asia and in the Turkish of Anatolia. The term ozan was used for the singers who accompanied the army in Sald̲j̲ūḳ times. An Anatolian Turkish poet of the 9th/15th century c…

( ūzbak , ūzbīk ) (t.), a term with a variety of uses in pre-modern times. 1. Historical aspects (a) As a generic term, it was applied to the Turko-Mongol nomadic tribal groups in Central Asia, especially Trans- and Cis-Oxiana and K̲h̲wārazm, which from the mid-15th century onwards comprised the military support for D̲j̲ūčid-Čingīzid lineages such as the S̲h̲ībānids [ q.v.] (ʿArabs̲h̲āhids) of K̲h̲wārazm (16th and 17th centuries), the S̲h̲ībānids (Abu ’l-K̲h̲ayrids) of Trans- and Cis-Oxiana (16th century) and the Tuḳāy Tīmūrids (D̲j̲ānids [ q.v.]) in Trans- and Cis-Oxiana (17th…

, Muẓaffar al-Dīn (reigned 607-22/1210-25), the fifth and last Atabeg of the Ildegizid or Eldigüzid ¶ family [see ildeñizids ] who ruled in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān during the later Sald̲j̲ūḳ and K̲h̲wārazms̲h̲āhī periods. He married Malika K̲h̲ātūn, widow of the last Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l III (killed in 590/1194 [ q.v.]). During the early part of his career, he ruled in Hamad̲h̲ān as a subordinate of his brother Nuṣrat al-Dīn Abū Bakr, during the time when much of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī was falling into anarchy in the post-S…

[see uzbekistan ].

, Ottoman beylerbeyi (governor) of Yemen and, subsequently, of coastal Abyssinia (Ḥabes̲h̲ [ q.v.]), and the individual most instrumental in establishing the sultan’s authority in both provinces during the mid-10th/16th century. An Egyptian mamlūk of Circassian origin whose master is said to have been one Kaykāwūs S̲h̲ewkat Bey, Özdemir took service with the Ottomans after Selīm I conquered Egypt in 922-3/1517. He held a number of minor offices in the provincial administration until, by 945/1538, he had gained the position of kās̲h̲if (district prefect)…

, Özü, the Turkish name of three related features: the river Dnepr, the coastal fortress of Očakov (both in the Ukraine), and the Ottoman eyālet alternately called Özi or Silistre (roughly a coastal area bracketed by the lower Özi/Dnepr on the east and the lower Danube with the nearby river port city of Silistre on the south-west; its beylerbeyi resided at Aḳḳirmān or Silistre but not at Özi/Očakov, more often the seat of a sand̲j̲aḳ beyi ). Both the river and the fortress played an important but complex role in the history of the two Turkish Muslim powers in the Black S…

, ūzkend , sometimes written in the sources Yūzkand or Ūzd̲j̲and, a town of mediaeval Islamic Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.] in Central Asia, lying at the eastern end of the Farg̲h̲āna valley and regarded as being near the frontier with the pagan Turks. Already in the mid-3rd/9th century, Özkend had a local ruler called by the Turkish name K̲h̲ūrtigin (?Čūr-tigin) (Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih, 30). The geographers of the next century (i.e. that of the Sāmānids) describe it as having the tripartite pattern typical of eastern Islamic towns, with a citadel in the madīna or inner cit…