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, Persian historian, lived probably in the 16th-17th centuries. Entering into government service in Fūman, the old capital of Gīlān (Ch. Schefer, Christ . pers ., ii, 93) he was appointed controller of accounts by the vizier of the place, Behzād-beg, about 1018 or 1019/1609-10. After serving under several other vizers, he was taken to ʿIrāk by ʿĀdil S̲h̲āh. He wrote in Persian Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Gīlān , a history of Gīlān from 923/1517 to 1038/1628. This book, published by B. Dorn (with a résumé in his introduction), completes the histories of Ẓahīr al-Dīn [ q.v.] and ʿAlī b. S̲h̲ams al-Dīn [ q.v.]. (…

(or, more often, fidāwī ), one who offers up his life for another, a name used of special devotees in several religious and political groups. Among the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs it was used of those members who risked their lives to assassinate the enemies of the sect. They acted also on behalf of political allies of the Nizārīs, sometimes at a price. At Alamūt they may have become, in later years, a special corps; but normally tasks of assassination seem to have been assigned to anyone…

, in Turkish ‘castle, fortress, citadel, stronghold’, a common component of place-names in Turkey. The best-known are the two castles which control the narrowest point of the Bosphorus [see bog̲h̲az-i̇či̇ ]: on the Asiatic side Anadolu Ḥiṣārī [ q.v.], also called in earlier times Güzel Ḥiṣār (ʿbeautiful castle’), on the European side Rumeli Ḥiṣāri̊ [ q.v.], also called Bog̲h̲az-Kesen (ʿthe barrier of the Bosphorus’). The former, situated between Kandilli and Kanhca, was built by the Ottoman sultan Bāyezīd I in 797/1395 in preparation for the siege o…

(Old Persian: Ahuramazda, “wise lord”; Pahlavi: Auharmazd; Persian: Hurmazd, Hurmuzd, Hurmuz), supreme god of the ancient Iranians, whose name was later given to the planet Jupiter and to the first day of each month of the ¶ Zoroastrian year. In the works of Muslim writers (especially the Iranians and particularly the poets) are found allusions which display a very imprecise knowledge of Mazdaism; although there occurs the name of Zoroaster (Zardus̲h̲t), one searches in vain for the name of Hurmuzd (cf. M. Moīn, Mazdayasna , parts 7 & 8 and the introd. by …

(originally dew , Avestan daeva , Sanskrit dēva ), in Persian the name of the spirits of evil and of darkness, creatures of Ahriman, the personification of sins; their number is legion; among them are to be distinguished a group of seven principal demons, including Ahriman, opposed to the seven Ams̲h̲aspand (Av. aməša spənta , the “Immortal Holy Ones”). “The collective name of the daiva designates ... exclusively the inimical gods in the first place, then generally other supernatural beings who, being by nature evil, are opposed to the good and true faith .... These daiva, these dēv …

(Hebr. S̲h̲ēt̲h̲), Seth the third son of Adam and Eve (Gen. IV, 25-6, V, 3-8), regarded in Islamic lore as one of the first prophets and, like his father, the recipient of a revealed scripture. He is not mentioned in the Ḳurʾān, but plays a considerable role in the subsequent Ḳiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ [ q.v.] literature (see below). He is said to have been born when his father was 130 years of age, five years after the murder ¶ of Abel. When Adam died, he made him his heir and executor of his will. He taught him the hours of the day and of the night, told him of the Flood to come…

, the name of the grey mule of the Prophet, which had been given to him by the Muḳawḳis [ q.v.], at the same time as the ass called Yaʿfūr/ʿUfayr. After serving as his mount during his campaigns, she survived him and died at Yanbuʿ so old and toothless that in order to feed her the barley had to be put into her mouth. According to the S̲h̲īʿī tradition, ʿAlī rode upon her at the battle of the Camel [see al-d̲j̲amal ] and at Ṣiffīn. As Duldul in Arabic means a porcupine, it is possible that she derived her name from her gait, but This is far from certain. For…

(p.), the bearded vulture ( Gypaetus barbatus), the largest of the birds of prey of the Old World, which is usually found in the regions of perpetual snow; it carries off the bones of dead animals, breaks them on rocks and eats the fragments, which led the Persian poet Saʿdī to say that the humā was superior to all the other birds because instead of feeding on ¶ living flesh it ate only bones ( Gulistān , i, story 15). It was thought that anyone who intentionally killed a humā would die within forty days. That this bird was considered to be of good omen is illustrated by another verse of the Gulistān (i, …

Gīlān-s̲h̲āh , ispahbad of Ṭabaristān, known as the Great ( buzurg ) and the Virtuous ( d̲h̲u ’l-manāḳib ), son of Dābūya, conquered Māzandarān and restored peace to the frontiers. When defeated by the Daylamīs in their revolt, he fled to Āmul and entrenched himself in the castle of Fīrūzābād; he saved himself by the ruse of making his besiegers believe that he had enormous stocks of bread. He gave asylum to the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲īs when they were being pursued by al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲, but fought aga…

( Amīr ) b. ʿAlaʾ al-Dawla Bak̲h̲tīs̲h̲āh , a Persian writer from a family owning estates at Isfarāʾ in in the K̲h̲urāsān. His father was one of the most intimate courtiers of S̲h̲āh-Ruk̲h̲. son of Tīmūr; he himself took part in the battle fought by the Timurids Abu’l-G̲h̲āzī Sulṭan Ḥusayn and Sulṭan Maḥmūd near Andak̲h̲ūd. He was about fifty years of age when he began to write his Tad̲h̲kirat al-s̲h̲uʿarāʾ (“Memorial to the Poets”), which he finished in about 892/1487 towards the end of his life, the date of his death being unknown. In his Mad̲j̲ālis al-nafāʾis (chap…

, daughter of Aḥmad Pas̲h̲ā, wife of Sulaymān Pas̲h̲a Mizrāḳli̊ ("Abū Laylā"), Ottoman governor of Bag̲h̲dād. During the lifetime of her husband she took part in the government of the province, holding audiences where the petitions were presented to her through the intermediary of an eunuch. She had also a mosque and a caravanseray built, bearing her name. When on the death of Sulaymān (1175/1761) power was about to slip from her hands, she stirred up against his successor, ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a, first t…

(Avestan Yima K̲h̲s̲h̲aēta “Yima the brilliant”), in abbreviated form Ḏj̲am , an Iranian hero who has “remained alive in popular and literary tradition, from Indo-Iranian times until our own day (see the texts collected, translated and commented upon by A. Christensen, Le premier homme et le premier roi dans l’histoire légendaire des Iraniens , ii). To the Indian hero Yama, son of Vivasvant, sometimes immortal man become god, sometimes the first human to have suffered death and to have become its god ( Rig-Veda Mahābhārata , Atharva-Veda cf. the texts in Christensen, op. cit.) there cor…

, the third mythical ruler of the Iranian dynasty of the Kayānids [ q.v.], corresponding to Kavi Haosrovah of the religious tradition (see A. Christensen, Les Kayanides , Copenhagen 1931, 90-2 and index). He is reckoned as the son of Siyāwus̲h̲/Siyāwak̲h̲s̲h̲ [ q.v.] and the grandson, through his mother, of Afrāsiyāb [ q.v.], and according to the national tradition (Christensen, 114-17) was born after his father’s death and was brought up amongst the mountain shepherds of Ḳalū near Bāmiyān, in ignorance of his illustrious origin. This, however, s…

, ʿAbd allāh , Persian poet, son of Ḏj̲āmī’s sister, born in K̲h̲ard̲j̲ird in the district of Ḏj̲ām, a dependency of Herāt, died in 927/1521. He wrote a Timūr-nāma , an epic known also as Ẓafarnāma (lith. Lucknow 1869), on the subject of Tīmūr’s conquests. He had planned to write a K̲h̲amsa . a collection of five long poems, but this work he was unable to complete; of it we possess a S̲h̲īrīn and Farhād , a charming Laylī and Mad̲j̲nūn (ed. W. Jones, Calcutta 1788) and a Haft manẓar on the model of the Haft paykar of Niẓāmī. He was influenced by this poet (though not …

, Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad (or Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad), the poet to whom we owe the oldest known text of the national epic in the Persian language. His place of birth is uncertain (Ṭūs, Buk̲h̲ārā, Balk̲h̲ or Samarḳand); he was born between 318 and 329/930 and 940, for he was at least twenty years old when he became panegyrist to the amīrs of Čag̲h̲āniyān, then of the Sāmānid amīr Manṣūr b. Nūḥ (350-366/961-976); further, Firdawsī, who continued after him the composition of The Book of the Kings ( S̲h̲āhnāma ), assures us that Daḳīḳī was a young man when…

(κάλαμος, reed), the reed-pen used for writing in Arabic script. It is a tube of reed cut between two knots, sliced obliquely (or concave) at the thicker end and with the point slit, in similar fashion to the European quill and later the steel pen. The reed has to be very firm so that it does not wear away too quickly; the best kind comes from Wāsiṭ and grows in the marshes ( baṭāʾiḥ ) of ʿIrāḳ, but those from the swamps of Egypt (al-Muḳaddasī, BGA, iii, 203, 1. 13) or from Fāris were also recommended. Those from a rocky ground were called ṣuk̲h̲rī , those from the seashore baḥrī (Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi, al-ʿIḳd…

, generally known by his kunya , companion of the Prophet. It was in the ¶ house of Abū Ayyūb that the Prophet stayed on his emigration to Medina, before his own mosque and house were built. He took part in all the Prophet’s expeditions, was present at all the battles of early Islam and served under the command of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀsī during the conquest of Egypt. Later on he was appointed by ʿAlī to the governorship of Medina, but was obliged to rejoin ʿAlī in ʿIrāḳ when Busr b. Abī Arṭāt approched the town with a…

, an Arabic word borrowed from Aramaic (Syriac form kurseyāʾ , in Hebrew: kissé ; see Th. Nöldeke, Mandäische Grammatik , 128; Fraenkel, De vocabulis peregrinis, 22; L. Koehler, W. Baumgarten, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros, 446) which can signify seat, in a very general sense (chair, couch, throne, stool, even bench). In the daily life of mediaeval Muslims it refers more specifically to a stool (i.e. seat without back or arm-rests), and there are a number of other terms which are applied to a throne ( sarīr and tak̲h̲t , for example). Kursī is found on two o…

al-anṣāri , asʿad b. naṣr , minister and poet, hailing from Abzār, south of S̲h̲īrāz. He was in the service of Saʿd b. Zangī, atabeg of Fārs; was sent by his master as an ambassador to Muḥammad Ḵh̲wārizms̲h̲āh, refused the offers which were made to him, succeeded Rukn al-Dīn Salāḥ Kirmānī as minister and held his position until the death of Saʿd. Saʿd’s son and successor, Abū Bakr, had him arrested on the charge of having held a correspondence with the ruler of Ḵh̲wārizm and of having acted as a spy for him. He was imprisoned in the fortress of Us̲h̲kunwān, near Iṣṭak̲h̲r and …

(t. “Red River”), the ancient Halys (῞Αλυς) or Alys(῎Αλυς), the largest river in Asia Minor. It rises in the mountains which separate the wilāyet of Sīwās from that of Erzerūm, waters the towns of Zarra (4,530 feet high) and Sīwās (4,160 feet high), then enters the province of Anḳara where it meets the mountain of Ard̲j̲īs̲h̲ and the Ḳod̲j̲a Dāg̲h̲ range which force it to make an immense detour of over 160 miles. Its course is at first southeast, then it turns northwards, and finally it reaches t…