Search

, a province in the empire of the caliphs, bounded on the S. E. by al-Ḏj̲ibāl (the ancient Media), on the S. W. by the eastern part of the province of Ḏj̲azīra (the ancient Assyria), on the W. by Armenia, on the N. by the province of Arrān (the countries of the Caucasus), and on the E. by both shore-lands of the Caspian Sea, Mūg̲h̲ān and Gīlān. Nowadays under Ād̲h̲ar-baid̲j̲ān is understood the northwestern province of Persia which borders on Turkey and on the Russian Caucasus and which mainly c…

, or Bād̲j̲armaḳ, name of a district east of the Tigris between the lower Zāb in the North and the Ḏj̲abal Ḥamrīn in the South whose chief town in the middle ages was Kerkūk (Syr. Karkhā de Bēth Slōk̲h̲). During the caliphate it formed a district of the province of Mosul (cf. Ibn Ḵh̲ordād̲h̲beh, 97, 7). Bād̲j̲armā is an Arabic rendering of the Aramaic Bēth (Be)-Garmai while Bād̲j̲armaḳ goes back to some Middle Persian form of the name of the ¶ district, like Garmakān. The latter word comes from the Gurumu, a nomadic people mentioned ia cuneiform inscriptions, the Γαραμαĩοι of Ptolemy. (Streck) Bi…

, a township in ʿIrāḳ (Babylonia) according to Yāḳūt east (to be more accurate north-east) of Bag̲h̲dād, 6 parasangs = about 21 miles distant from Ḥulwān. According to Ibn Ḵh̲ordād̲h̲beh and Ibn Serapions’s more exact description it was situated on the bank of the great Ḳāṭūl-Nahrawān canal which was led from the Tigris and in the central section of it, the so-called Nahr Tāmarrā, probably very near where a cross-canal called al-Ḵh̲āliṣ left the Tāmarrā to join the Tigris at Baradān [q.v.] above…

, in the Arab middle ages, a small strongly fortified town in Mesopotamia, south of Ḥarrān, some distance east of Balīk̲h̲ situated, on the road to Raʾs al-ʿAin, with famous gardens. It appears at the present day to be no longer in existence. The Aramaic name () denotes “house of fortune”; cf. perhaps, an ʿAin-gaddā = “source of fortune” in the Damascene and the Gadda of the Tabula Peutingeriana in Syria. See thereon Nöldeke in the Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., xxix, 441. (Streck) Bibliography Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am (ed. Wüstenfeld), i. 453 Belād̲h̲orī (ed. de Goeje), p. 174, 72, whe…

(old Armenian Arčçč), old town in Armenia, now in ruins, situated on the N. E. shore of the lake of Wan under 39° N. Lat. and 43° 20′ E. Long. Now as well as in antiquity the continuation of the lake of Wan to the North East takes its name from this town. In the Middle Ages the entire lake of Wan was called by the Arabs lake of Ard̲j̲īs̲h̲, as appears e. g. from the Persian geographer al-Mustawfī (wrote about 740 = 1340). From the x. century onwards Ard̲j̲īs̲h̲ usually shares the history of the Muslim principality of Ak̲h̲lāṭ [q. v. and the art. armenia]; the town was destroyed by the Georgians in …

, province in Western Persia, situated between Ād̲h̲arbaid̲j̲ān in the North, Lūristān in the South and ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī in the East, with an area of ca. 24 730 square miles. It is occupied by the chains of the Zagros, a range of mountains on the Western border of Irān; the ciimate is severe and only a few valleys are capable of cultivation; for the rest the district is remarkable for its extensive forest (especially oaks). A number of important rivers have their rise in Ardilān, thus in the Nort…

(also Astrābād̲h̲, Istarābād̲h̲, Starābād̲h̲), name of a North-Persian town and province. 1. The town of Astarābād̲h̲, chief town of the same name; situated 36° 40′ N. Lat. and 54½° E. Long. (Greenw.), and near the south-eastern corner of the Caspian Sea (23 mls. east of it). It stands on an insignificant eminence (380 ft. above seq-level) at the foot of a very high and thickly-wooded chain, a spur of the Elburs, and on the margin of a large and in many parts marshy plain, which though fertile is but littl…

, ‘the Arab country’, modern official designation, used almost to the exclusion of the old name, of the Persian district which formerly was mostly called Ḵh̲ūzistān. For further particulars see article k̲h̲ūzistān. Following the Persian usage ʿArabistān denotes occasionally the Arabian peninsula. (Streck)

, town in Ḏj̲ibāl (Media), 7 parasangs or a day’s journey to the west of Hamad̲h̲ān, on the western slope of the Alwand-Kōh (Elwend), at the entrance to a fruitful, well-tilled plain (5659 ft. high). As a permanent caravan-station on the famous, ancient highway Hamad̲h̲ān (Ekbatana)-Bag̲h̲dād (or Babylon), it is a settlement reaching back into antiquity, and (according to Tomaschek) is probably the ʾΑδραπάνα of Isidor of Charax and the Beltra of the Tabula Peutingeriana (cf. in this connection Weissbach, in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencykl. d. klass. Altertumswissensch., Ill, 264). In…

, a canal south of Baṣra (called after a freed-man of Caliph al-Manṣūr), the most important of the canals, which in theMiddle Ages, flowing from the west, fell into the main branch of the Tigris, the Did̲j̲la al-ʿAwrāʾ of the Arabian authors and the present S̲h̲aṭṭ al-ʿArab. Its bed still exists. It is on the shore of this canal that the Zand̲j̲ rebels built in the 9th century the large fortress al-Muk̲h̲tāra. (Streck) Bibliography G. le Strange, . The lands of the Eastern Caliphate (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 47-48 Streck, Babylonien nach den arab. Geogr. (Leyden, 1900), i. 42. ¶

(ʿarabgīr), i.e. ‘conquest of the Arabs’, Armenian ʿArabkēr, town in Turkish Armenia, situated to the North of Malāṭiya on the road from Egin to Malāṭiya under 38° N.L. and 38½° E. of Greenwich. The town lies in a depression, closed in by rocks of basalt, at a short distance from the western bank of the Euphrates, a tributary of which called ʿArabkīr-Ṣu flows through it. The climate of ʿArabkīr owing to the high situation is inclement. The extensive orchards surrounding the town are worthy of no…

(ʿAḍēm), an eastern tributary of the Tigris. It is formed of the junction of several rivers, which have their sources in the mountain range east of and parallel to the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥamrīn, and which in their course from N. E. to S. W. break through deeply cut ravines. The most important of these rivers are: the river of Kerkūk — the Kaza (Kissa, Ḵh̲assa)-Čai; on our maps it figures also under the name of Ḳara-Ṣu, — which rises from several sources north of Kerkūk, further the river of Tāʾūk, the Tāʾū…

(“Camp of Mukram”), town in Ahwāz (Ḵh̲ūzistān), one of those places refounded by the Arabs which here and there in the time of the Umaiyads grew up out of fortified cantonments. Mukram, an Arab commander whom al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ had sent to Ahwāz to suppress a rebellion, pitched his camp near a town which the Arabs had destroyed of the name of Rustam Ḳawād̲h̲. (corrupted by the Arabs into Rustaḳubād̲h̲). From this camp there soon developed owing to the favourable natural situation a flourishing …

(„father of grain"; so called on account of the fertility of that region), the name of an extensive group of ruins, south-west of Bagdad and north-east of Musaiyib, a short distance from the east bank of the Euphrates. The excavations conducted there by H. Rassam in the years 1881 and 1882 proved that Abū Ḥabba is the site of the old Babylonian town of Sippar, which had formerly been sought for in the ruins of Sifēira (or Sifēra; Peters writes Sfeira), situated much more to the north, on accoun…

(Erd̲j̲iās, Erd̲j̲īs̲h̲-Dag̲h̲), the Argaeus of the ancients, the most important of a number of volcanic peaks in Cappadocia to ¶ the South of the Halys; rising to a height of 11 480 feet it represents the highest elevation of Asia Minor. The Ard̲j̲īs̲h̲-Dag̲h̲ is situated at a distance of about 2½ miles from Ḳaisarīya almost in the centre of a trachytic district which, extending from W.-S. W. to E.-N. E., forms an irregularly drawn-out oval with an area of about 760 square miles. The massif is characterised by a …

( Maʿaden), town situated half-way between Palu on the Murād-Čai in the N. and Diyārbekr in the S., under 38° 20′ N. Lat. and 40° E. Long. (Greenw.), which owes its name of Maʿādin (‘mines’) to the copper-mines found to the N. W. of it. It is situated on the ʿAlī-Dag̲h̲, a steep hill about 3250 feet in height; the number of inhabitants according to Brant was about 3500 in 1837; the greater half of these were Greeks and Armenians, the rest Turks; for the greater part they subsisted by labour in th…

, name of two towns: 1. A town north of the Damāwand, situated at 36° 25′ N. Lat., and about 52° east of Greenwich, at a distance of about 12 miles from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, in the district which, according to the accounts of the Ancients, was the home of the Μάρδοι (Αμάρδοι); Āmul is the regular Mod. Persian form of the (hypothetical) old Persian Āmardha. In the period of the Sāsānids Āmul together with Gēlān (the modern Gīlān) formed a Nestorian episcopal see, cp. Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellsch., XLIII, 407. The town is also mentioned several times in the S̲h̲āh-Nāme. …

(modern pronunciation also: Ardekūn), town in Persia situated under 32½° N. Lat. and 53° 50’ E. Long. (Greenw.) between Ad̲j̲dā (Aḳdā) and Maibūd, on the route leading along the border of the desert from Kās̲h̲ān to Yazd. The town is mentioned already by Ptolemy under the name of ʾΑρτακάνα. It is situated at a height of 3280 feet above the level of the sea and is fortified with walls and towers; there are several caravansaries and mosques and good bazars. Dupr£ who travelled in 1888 estimated that the town contained 1000 houses; the number of inhabitants was calculated by Houtum-Schindler¶ (1…

, site of ruins in Mesopotamia, on the Western bank of the Ḵh̲ābūr, to the South of the Ḏj̲ebel ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, situated under 36° 10’ N. Lat. and 40° 50’ E. Long. (Greenw.). The remains of the old town are hidden under several hills, after one of which the site is also called Tell ʿAd̲j̲ābe. It was here that H. A. Layard found several winged bulls with human heads, products of the genuinely Mesopotamian civilization which is closely related to that of ancient Babylonia. ʿArbān is probably identi…

, a Persian town which in the Arabic Middle Ages belonged to the province of al-Ḏj̲ibāl (Media). It was said to have been the native place of the Sāsānid king Ḵh̲osraw I Anōs̲h̲arwān (reigned 531—579). Ardistān, the modern name of which is Arūsūn (also Ardesūn) is situated to the North of Yazd at a height of 3575 feet, under 33½° N. Lat. and 54½ E. Long. (Greenw.). To the N. E. in the direction of Zuwāra are found Sāsānid remains (fire-temples etc.). (Streck) Bibliography Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am i. 198 Nöldeke, Gesch. d. Perser u. Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden (Leiden 1879) p. 145, note 2 Tomaschek, in t…