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(a.), pl. ruʾasāʾ , from raʾs , “head”, denotes the “chief, leader” of a recognisable group (political, religious, juridical, tribal, or other). The term goes back to pre-Islamic times and was used in various senses at different periods of Islamic history, either to circumscribe specific functions of the holder of the office of “leadership” ( riʾāsa ) or as a honorific title ( laḳab [ q.v.]). 1. In the sense of “mayor” in the central Arab lands. Here, the raʾīs most commonly referred to was the head of a village, a city or a city-region. He emerged as…

(a.), sing, marfiḳ , “bribes, douceurs”, literally, “benefits, favours”. In mediaeval Islamic society, various terms in addition to this are found, such as ras̲h̲wa / ris̲h̲wa , manāla , d̲j̲aʿāla , hadiyya , etc., with varying degrees of euphemism, for the inducements given either directly to a potential bestower of benefits or as an inducement for a person’s intercession or mediation ( s̲h̲afāʿa , wasāṭa ). In the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, this form of bribery became institutionalised in the caliphate of al-Muḳtadir (295-320/908-32 [ q.v.]), when the vizier Ibn al-Furāt [ q.v.] institute…

, one of the major rivers of Siberia, which flows from sources in the Altai Mountains to the Gulf of Ob and the Kara Sea of the Arctic Ocean. Its course is 3,680 km/2,287 miles long and 5,410 km/3,362 miles long if its main left-bank affluent, the Irtysh [see irtis̲h̲ in Suppl.] is included. Its whole basin covers a huge area of western Siberia. In early historic times, the lands along the lower and middle Ob were thinly peopled with such groups as the Samoyeds and the Ugrian Voguls and Ostiaks (in fact, the indigenous population of these regions today, only…

(t.), from older Turkish yug̲h̲ur -, Ottoman yog̲h̲urmaḳ / yoǧurmak “to knead [dough, etc.], yoghourt, a preparation of soured milk made in the pastoralist, more temperate northern tier of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans, appearing as yog̲h̲urt / yog̲h̲rut in Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī ( Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk , tr. Atalay, i, 182, ii, 189, iii, 164, 190; Brockelmann, Mitteltürkischer Wortschatz , 92. Cf. also Radloff, Ver such eines Worterbuch der Türk-Dialecte , iii/1, 412-13; Doerfer, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersichen , iv, 173-5 no. 1866; Clauson, An …

, a region in the heart of Inner Asia, to the south of the Pamir [ q.v.] range, essentially a long and narrow valley running east-west and watered by the upper Oxus or Pand̲j̲a and the Wak̲h̲ān Daryā, its southernmost source. The length of Wak̲h̲ān along the Oxus is 67 miles and of the Wak̲h̲ān Daryā (from Langar-kis̲h̲ to the Wak̲h̲d̲j̲īr pass) 113 miles. Afg̲h̲an sources put the distance from Is̲h̲kās̲h̲im to Sarḥadd at 66 kurōh (=22 farsak̲h̲s ). ¶ To the south of Wak̲h̲ān rises the wall of the Hindū Kus̲h̲, through which several passes lead to the lands of the upper In…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim al-Faḍl , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 334-63/946-74, son of al-Muḳtadir [ q.v.] by a Ṣaḳlabī slave concubine called Mas̲h̲ʿala, brother of al-Rāḍī and of al-Muttaḳī [ q.vv.]. Al-Muṭīʿ was a bitter enemy of al-Mustakfī [ q.v.] and therefore went into hiding on the latter’s accession, and after Muʿizz al-Dawla [ q.v.] had become the real ruler, al-Muṭīʿ is said to have taken refuge with him and incited him against al-Mustakfī. After the deposition of the latter in D̲j̲umādā II or S̲h̲aʿbān 334/January or March 946) al-Muṭīʿ was recognis…

, a town, also the centre of a taḥṣīl , in the Meerut [see mīrat́h ] District of northwestern India, now in the Uttar Pradesh State of the Indian Union. The town is situated in lat. 29° 09′ N., long. 77° 36′ E. and lies some 19 km/12 miles to the northwest of Meerut town. ¶ It achieved fame in the later 18th century, when Walter Reinhardt, called Sombre or Samrū, of Luxemburg origin, after having been a mercenary in both French and British service, received from Mīrzā Nad̲j̲af K̲h̲ān, general of the Mug̲h̲al Emperor S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam II [ q.v.], the pargana [ q.v.] of Sardhanā [ q.v.]. This became, after …

, Nak̲h̲čuwān , the name of a town in Transcaucasia which is also the chief town of a region of the same name, until the early 19th century a largely independent khanate and in former Soviet Russian administrative geography part of the Azerbaijan SSR but an enclave within the Armenian Republic. Both town and region lie to the northwest of the great southern bend of the Araxes river, since 1834 here the frontier between Persia and Russian territory. The town of Nak̲h̲čiwān is …

(a.), active participle of the form III verb nādā “to call”, hence crier, herald. In the Ḳurʾān, munādī is used (L, 40/41) for the one who will proclaim the Last Day and give the summons to Judgement, in popular Islam usually identified with the angel Isrāfīl [ q.v]; in another context where one might expect it, the story of Joseph, we find instead muʾad̲h̲d̲h̲in used for Joseph’s herald (XII, 70). In the towns of the pre-modern Islamic world, the munādī or town crier performed a vital function of communication in an age when there were no newspapers or, when these did ten…

(a.), pl. arzāḳ , literally, “anything granted by someone to someone else as a benefit”, hence “bounty, sustenance, nourishment”. 1. As a theological concept. Rizḳ , and the nominal and verbal forms derived from it, are very frequent in the Ḳurʾān, especially in reference to the rizḳ Allāh , God’s provision and sustenance for mankind from the fruits of the earth and the animals upon it (e.g. II, 20/22, 23/25, 57/60, etc.) (see further, section 2. below). Hence one of God’s most beautiful names [see al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā ] is al-Razzāḳ , the All-Provider. The ultimat…

b. t̲h̲ābit al-anṣārī , poet of Medina and Damascus in the early Islamic period and son of the more famous eulogist of the Prophet, Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit [ q.v.]. He seems to have been born in ca. 6/627-8 or 7/628, and apart from visits to the Umayyad capital, to have spent most of his life in Medina. He died there, according to Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Tahd̲h̲īb , vi, 162-3, in ca. 104/722-3 at the age of 98 lunar years, long-lived like his father. ¶ His father had latterly become a strong advocate of vengeance for ʿUt̲h̲mān and a supporter of Muʿāwiya’s cause, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān likewise …

, a town said to be the capital of the king of China in the account of the Arab traveller and littérateur Abū Dulaf Misʿar b. Muhalhil [ q.v.] purporting to describe his participation in an embassy of the Chinese king Ḳālīn b. al-S̲h̲ak̲h̲īr returning from the court of the Samānid amīr Naṣr b. Aḥmad (301-31/914-43 [ q.v.]) at Buk̲h̲ārā. Abū Dulaf describes it as an immense city, one day’s journey across, with walls 90 cubits high and an idol temple bigger than the sacred mosque at Jerusalem ( First Risāla , Fr. tr. G. Ferrand, in Relations de voyages ... relatifs à l’Extrême Orient du VIII e au XVIII e s…

, a people mentioned in the Arabic and Persian historical and geographical sources of the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries as dwelling in the Buttaman Mts. at the heads of the valleys running southwards through K̲h̲uttal and Čag̲h̲āniyān down to the course of the upper Oxus. The Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (372/982) describes them as professional brigands and as linked with a smaller group, the Kand̲j̲īna Turks. In fact, these two peoples must be remnants of some earlier waves of invaders from Inner Asia, left behind in the Pamir region, probably of the Hephthalites [see hayāṭila …

, Nawāb , a title used in Muslim India. The form must be a hypercorrection from A. nuwwāb , pl. of nāʾib [ q.v.], used, as often in Persian usage (cf. arbāb “master”, ʿamala “workman”, and see D.C. Phillott, Higher Persian grammar, Calcutta 1919, 65) as a singular. The title was originally granted by the Mug̲h̲al emperors to denote a viceroy or governor of a province, and was certainly current by the 18th century, often in combination with another title, e.g. the Nawāb-Wazīr of Oudh (Awadh), the Nawāb-Nāẓim of Bengal. A nawāb might be subordi…

, a town in central Palestine, the name of which is derived from that of Flavia Neapolis built in honour of Vespasian. Its Old Testament predecessor was Shechem, which however lay more to the east on the site of the present village of Balāṭa (the name is explained by S. Klein, in ZDPV, xxxv, 38-9; cf. R. Hartmann, in ibid., xxxiii, 175-6, as “platanus”, from the evidence of the pilgrim of Bordeaux and the Midras̲h̲ Gen. rb ., c. 81, § 3). According to Eusebius, the place where the old town stood was pointed out in a suburb of Neapolis. The correctne…

(in Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 111, 121, Ruk̲h̲ud̲h̲; in al-Muḳaddasī, 50, 297, Ruk̲h̲ūd, perhaps to be read as Ruk̲h̲wad̲h̲), the name given in early Islamic times to the region of southeastern Afghanistan around the later city of Ḳandahār [ q.v.] and occupying the lower basin of the ¶ Arg̲h̲andāb river (see D. Balland, EIr art. Arḡandāb ). The Islamic name preserves that of the classical Arachosia, through which Alexander the Great passed on his Indian expedition in 330 B.C. (see PW, ii/1, cols. 367-8 (W. Tomaschek)), which is itself a hellenisation of Old Pers. Harak̲…

, in mediaeval Turkish “[the land of] the seven rivers”, rendered in recent times by Russian scholars as Semirečʾe, a region of Central Asia. It comprised essentially the lands north of Transoxania [see mā warāʾ al-nahr ] which stretched from the basin of the I̊ssi̊k-Kol [ q.v.] lake northwards to Lake Balk̲h̲as̲h̲ [ q.v.], and it derived its name from the numerous rivers draining it, such as the Ču [ q.v.], which peters out in the desert to the northeast of the middle Si̊r Daryā [ q.v.], and several rivers flowing into Lake Balk̲h̲as̲h̲ such as the Ili [ q.v.], which rises in Dzungaria and f…

, Mug̲h̲īt̲h̲ al-Dunyā wa ’l-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḳāsim , Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ Sultan in western Persia and ʿIrāḳ 511-25/1118-31. The weakening of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ central power in the west, begun after Malik-S̲h̲āh’s death in the ¶ period of the disputed succession between Berk-yaruḳ and Muḥammad [ q.vv.], but arrested somewhat once Muḥammad had established his undisputed authority, proceeded apace during Maḥmūd’s fourteen-year reign. This arose in part from the latter’s initial youthfulness (he came to the throne, at the age of 13 and as the eldest …

, the regnal name of the Kas̲h̲mīr Sultan S̲h̲āhī K̲h̲ān b. Iskandar, greatest of the line of S̲h̲āh Mīr Swātī, hence called Bud S̲h̲āh “Great King”, r. 823-75/1420-70. It was his merit to put an end to the persecutions of his father Sikandar But-S̲h̲ikan [ q.v.], who had forcibly converted Hindus and destroyed their temples. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn now in effect abolished the d̲j̲izya , allowed the rebuilding of temples, etc. The realm was secured by strong military policies, and internal prosperity secured by such measures as the digging of …

, prince of the Ziyārid dynasty in Persia and author of a well-known “Mirror for Princes” in Persian, the Ḳābūsnāma . ʿUnṣur al-Maʿālī Kay Kāʾūs was the penultimate ruler of the line of Ziyārids [ q.v.] who ruled in the Caspian provinces of Ṭabaristān or Māzandarān and Gurgān in the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries. His main claim to fame lies in the Ḳābūs-nāma , written in 475/1082-3, when the author was 63 years old, for his favourite son and intended successor, Gīlān-S̲h̲āh. The little that we know of his life must be gleaned from historical sources like Ibn Isfandiyār’s Tāʾrīk̲h̲-i Ṭabaris…

, a family which flourished in the service of the early Ottoman sultans in the 8th/14th and early 9th/15th centuries, the most celebrated of its members being the general and wezīr Tīmūrtās̲h̲ b. Ḳara ʿAlī Beg, d. 806/1404. In the early Ottoman historical sources, it is called the Āl-i Tīmūrtās̲h̲. Ḳarā ʿAlī Beg’s father Ayḳut Alp (d. 725/1325) had been in the service of the somewhat shadowy founding figures of the Ottoman dynasty, Ertog̲h̲rul and ʿOt̲h̲mān I [ q.v.]. In the first year of Ork̲h̲an’s reign (726/1326), Ḳarā ʿAlī Beg took the fortress of Hereke on the Gulf o…

, Arabic orthography, K̲h̲wāḳand, later written K̲h̲uḳand (which is given a popular etymology, k̲h̲ūḳ + kand = town of the boar), a town in Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.], where see also for the other spellings and the foundation of an independent Özbeg kingdom with K̲h̲oḳand as capital in the 12th/18th century. The accession of the first ruler of this Miñ dynasty, S̲h̲āhruk̲h̲, was followed by the building of a citadel; another citadel later called Eski Urda was built by his son, ʿAbd al-Karīm (d. 1746). ʿAbd al-Karīm and his nephe…

(a.) “the land which lies beyond the river”, i.e. beyond the Oxus or Āmū-Daryā [ q.v.], the classical Transoxiana or Transoxania, so-called by the conquering Arabs of the 1st/7th century and after in contrast to Mā dūn al-Nahr, the lands of K̲h̲urāsān [ q.v.] this side of the Oxus, although the term K̲h̲urāsān was not infrequently used vaguely to designate all the eastern Islamic lands beyond western Persia. 1. The name The frontiers of Ma warāʾ al-nahr on the north and east were where the power of Islam ceased and depended on political conditions; cf. the statemen…

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, Abū Ibrāhīm , called al-Amīr al-Māḍī or al-Amīr al-ʿĀdil, the first member of the Sāmānid family effectively to rule all Transoxania and Farg̲h̲āna as an independent sovereign. Born in 234/849, he spent 20 years as governor of. Buk̲h̲ārā on behalf of his brother Naṣr, who himself resided at Samarḳand (260/874-279/892). The unsettled conditions in Ḵh̲urāsān during the years between the fall of the Ṭāhirids and the final establishment there of ʿAmr b. al-Layt̲h̲ [ q.v.] were reflected in Transoxania also. Ismāʿīl had in Buk̲h̲ārā to fight off an invading army from Ḵh̲wārazm under one Ḥ…

the ancient capital of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.], situated on the east bank of the main channel of the Amū Daryā or Oxus a short distance from modern K̲h̲īwa. According to Yāḳūt, Buldān , iv, 222, Kāt̲h̲ meant in K̲h̲wārazmian a wall or rampart within the steppe, even if it enclosed no buildings, but there is nothing in what we know of K̲h̲wārazmian to confirm this; it is conceivable that there is some connection with Sogdian kat̲h̲ , kant̲h̲ , “town”, though this is wholly conjectural. The site of Kāt̲h̲ was affected by changes in the channels of the river, and was accordingly moved at various times. Little is known of Kāt̲h̲ in the pre-Islamic period. Markwart conjectured that in the early 5th century A.D. Bahrām Gūr’s brother Narseh may have been established in Kāt̲h̲ as marzbān or warden of the northeastern Iranian territories newly conquered from the Turkish Ḳag̲h̲an ( A catalogue of the provincial capitals of Ërāns̲h̲ahr …

, Quetta , a town and district of northern Balūčistān, now in Pakistan. In both the former British India and now in Pakistan, Quetta and Pīs̲h̲īn, some 20 miles to its north, have formed an administrative district. The region is geologically complex and is very mountainous, with peaks rising up to nearly 12,000 feet/3,850 metres, and it is centred upon the basin of the Pīs̲h̲īn-Lora river and its tributaries. The climate is temperate, with cold winters. Crops—wheat being the chief rabīʿ or spring crop and sorghum the chief k̲h̲arīf or autumn one—can only be grown in the alluvial river bottoms, and then by irrigation; at present, there are about 300 kārīzs or ḳanāts [ q.v.], plus a reservoir and a canal, for this. The surrounding mountains furnish chromite and also coal (in the Sor range near Quetta and at Mač in the Bolān Pass area), whose exploitation now employs several thousand men, including Swati migrant labour and Pathan and Balūč nomads in the off-herding seasons. In mediaeval Islamic times, the history of the Quetta-Pīs̲h̲ī…

(a.), used in a personal sense, with an extended ¶ meaning from Arabic “breast” > “foremost, leading part of a thing”, denotes an eminent or superior person or primus inter pares, whence its use for a chief, president or minister; cf. the Ottoman Turkish Grand Vizier’s title ṣadr-i aʿẓam [ q.v.]. The title was especially used in the Persian world for a high religious dignitary whose function ( ṣadārat , ṣidārat ) was concerned essentially with the administration of religious affairs. In the first mentions of the title and in the structural evolution of the office in the post-II Ḵh̲ānid period, the titles and prerogatives of the ṣadr evolve…

b. Abi ’l-ʿAṣ , Abu ’l-Ḳāsim and then Abū ʿAbd al-Malik, first caliph of the Marwānid branch of the Umayyad dynasty [ q.v.], reigned for several months in 64-5/684-5. Marwān, born of al-Ḥakam’s wife Āmina bt. ʿAlḳama al-Kināniyya, stemmed from the same branch of the Umayyad clan of Ḳurays̲h̲, se. Abu ’l-ʿĀṣ, as the Rightly-guided caliph ʿUt̲h̲mān, and was in fact ʿUt̲h̲mān’s cousin. The sources generally place his birth in A.H. 2 or 4 ( ca. 623-6), but it may well have occurred before the Hid̲j̲ra in any case, he must have known the Prophet and was accounted a Companion. He became secretary to ʿUt̲h̲mān when he already had a considerable reputation for his profound knowledge of the Holy Book (al-Madāʾinī, in al-Balād̲h̲uri. A…

, Naṣībīn , classical Nasibis, modern Turkish form Nusaybin, a town in upper Mesopotamia, now in modern Turkey. It is situated on the modern Görgarbonizra Çayi, the classical Mygdonios river, the early Arabic Hirmās, Syriac Nehar Māsā or Mās̲h̲ī, in the plain to the south of the mountain region of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn [ q.v.], and today faces the Syrian town of al-Ḳāmis̲h̲lī. Naṣībīn is an ancient town, its name being probably Semitic. In classical sources we find the form Νάσιβις and on coins ΝΕΣΙΒΙ. In Armenian, it is usually Mcbin, Nsepi or Nsepin. The countryside between Naṣībīn and the Tigris was known to the Syriac Christians as Bēt̲h̲ ʿArbāyā and to the Armenians as Arvastan. The town is mentioned as early as Assyrian times under the name of Naṣibina and was subsequently …

, one of many Arabic words used to express the concept of “gift”, and the preferred legal term for it, see following article. The giving of gifts, that is, the voluntary transfer of property, serves material and psychological purposes. In the pre-history of man, it probably antedates the contractual payment for goods and services. In Islam, it has retained its inherited functions as an important component of the social fabric and has exercised a considerable influence on political life. Literature (in the narrow sense of the term) tells us more about gifts than it does about commercial transactions. ¶ A Muslim definition of “gift”, attested fo…

, Abū Manṣūr , Daylamī soldier of fortune who played an important part in the tortuous politics and military operations in northern Persia, involving local Daylamī chiefs, the ʿAlids of Ṭabaristān and the Sāmānids, during the first half of the 4th/10th century. The house of Kākī were local rulers of As̲h̲kawar in Rānikūh, the eastern part of Gīlān in the Caspian coastlands. Mākān rose to prominence in Ṭabaristān in the service of the ʿAlid princes there, and as the ʿAlids themselves dissolved into internecine rivalries, he became the co…

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, a small town of mediaeval India in the extreme north of the former Hyderabad State of British India. It is situated in lat. 19° 49′ N. and long. 77° 58′ E. just to the south of the Pengangā river, a left-bank affluent of the Godavari, where it forms the boundary between the former regions of northern Hyderabad [see …

or bāʾ-i fārsī or bāʾ-i ʿad̲j̲amī , i.e. the bāʾ with three points subscript, invented for Persian as supplement to the Arabic bāʾ and to represent the unvoiced, as opposed to the voiced, bilabial plosive (for the voiced b, see bāʾ). It is sometimes interchangeable with bāʾ (e.g. asp and asb , dabīr and dapīr ) and, more frequently, with fāʾ (e.g. sapīd and safīd , Pārs and Fārs ). The regular use of the letter in manuscripts is comparatively modern, but it is found in good ones of the 7th/13th century while at the same time it is often omitted in manuscripts of much later date ( GIPh …

, a small town in South India (lat. 18° 26′ N., long. 77° 11′ E.), in British Indian times the chef-lieu of a taluk in the Bīdar District of Ḥaydarābād State [ q.v.], now coming within the Maharashtra State of the Indian Union. It has a fort dating back to the end of the 9th/15th century. It was part of the lands of the Barīd S̲h̲āhs of Bīdar [ q.vv.], and then of their successors the ʿĀdil S̲h̲āhs of Bīd̲j̲apur [ q.vv.] until it was besieged by S̲h̲āh Ḏj̲ahān’s army in 1044/1635 and then incorporated into the Mug̲h̲al empire. Its chief fame stems from the fiercely-fought ba…

, older orthography (e.g. in Ibn Rusta, 171) K̲h̲wāb, a rustāḳ or rural district of Ḳūhistān in eastern Persia, lying between the district of Bāk̲h̲arz [ q.v.] to the north and that of Ḳ…

, the name found in earlier mediaeval Islamic sources for the region along the southern banks of the middle and upper Oxus river, in the wider sense of the term (see below), with the ancient of the Balk̲h̲ as the centre of its western part and such towns as Ṭālaḳān, Andarāb and Walwālīd̲j̲ [ q.vv.] as its centres in the narrower acceptation of the term, sc. the eastern part. It comprised in its wider sense the modern Afg̲h̲an provinces of Fāryāb, D̲j̲ūzd̲j̲ān, Balk̲h̲, Sanan…

, the Greek Tripolis, called “of Syria” in the Arabic sources to distinguish it from Ṭarābulus al-G̲h̲arb [ q.v.] “of the West”, Tripoli in Libya, an historic town of the Mediterranean coast of the Levant, to the north of D̲j̲ubayl and Batrūn [ q.vv.]. It lies partly on and partly beside a hill at the exit of a deep ravine through which flows a river, the Nahr Ḳadīs̲h̲a (Arabic, Abū ʿAlī). West of it stretches a very fertile plain covered with woods, which terminate in a peninsula on which lies the port of al-Mīnā. The harbour is protect…

, Abū Muḥammad al-Marwazi al-Tamīmī, faḳīh who had been a pupil of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī. judge and counsellor of ʿAbbāsid caliphs, d. 242/857. A native of Marw, he became Grand Judge ( ḳāḍī ’l-ḳuḍāt ) of Bag̲h̲dād after having been being appointed judge in Baṣra by al-Ḥasan b. Sahl [ q.v.] in 202/817-18. He soon became a member of al-Maʾmūn’s court circle as an adviser and boon-companion, thus exemplifying a trend under this caliph to take legal scholars rather than administrators as political counsellors. He accompanied al-Maʾmūn to Syria and Egypt …

, in mediaeval Islamic times a town, now the city of Madurai, in South India. It lies on the Vaidai river in lat. 9° 55’ N., long. 78° 07’ E. in the region known to the mediaeval Muslims as Maʿbar and to later European traders as Coromandel. For the historical geography and Islamic history of this coastal province, roughly extending from Cape Comorin northwards to Madras, see maʿbar . In 734/1334 S̲h̲arīf Ḏj̲alāl al-Dīn Aḥsan [ q.v.], governor for the Dihlī Sultan Muḥammad b. Tug̲h̲luḳ [ q.v.], renounced his allegiance, and he and some seven of his successors ruled over a short-l…

, or Kākwayhids , a dynasty of Daylamī origin which ruled over part of D̲j̲ibāl or west-central Persia during the first half of the 5th/11th century as virtually independent sovereigns, and thereafter for more than a century as local lords of Yazd, tributary to the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. The rise of the Kākūyids is one aspect of the “Daylamī interlude” of Iranian history, during which hitherto submerged Daylamī and Kurdish elements rose to prominence. Under the dynamic leadership of the …

, Banū , or Mazya…

, Ḳuzdār , the name of a town in mediaeval Islamic Balūčistān [ q.v.], modern town and district of Ḵh̲uzdār in the former Kalāt state [see kilāt ] in Pakistan. It lies in lat. 27° 48′ N. and long 66° 37′ E. at an altitude of 4,050 feet, some 85 miles south of Kalāt; the long, narrow valley of the Kolachi River in which it is situated is strategically important as a nodal point of communications, from Karāčī and Las Bēla [ q.vv.] in the south, from Kaččhī in the east, from Kalāt in the north, and from Makrān and K̲h̲ārān [ q.vv.] in the west. Ḳuṣdār was first raided by the Arabs…

, Banū , an Iranian dynasty which reigned in the districts of Rūyān and Rustamdār, the coastal plain and the mountainous interior respectively, of the western parts of the Caspian province of Māzandarān [ q.v.] in the second half of the 9th/15th century and in the 10th/16th century. The dynasty was in fact one of the two branches into which the ancient line of the Bādūspānids [ q.v.], whose genealogy went back to Sāsānid times, split in the middle years of the 9th/15th century. The Bādūspānids had been confined to the fortress of Nūr by the Caspian campaigns of Tīmūr in 794/139…

, a city and port of western India, on the south bank of the Tāptī and some 16 km/10 miles upstream from where the river debouches into the Gulf of Cambay (lat. 21° 10´ N., long 72° 54´ E.). The geographer Ptolemy (A.D. 150), speaks of the trade of Pulipula, perhaps Phulpāda, the sacred part of Sūrat city. Early references to Sūrat by Muslim historians must be scrutinised, owing to the confusion of the name with Sorath (Saurās̲h̲tra), but in 774/1373 F…

(A., also laṣş , luṣṣ , pl. luṣūṣ , with maṣdar s luṣūṣiyya , talaṣṣuṣ (see LA 1, viii, 355-6, and Lane, s.v.), one of the two main words in Arabic for thief robber (the other being sāriḳ ); in Persian we have duzd “thief”, duzdī “theft”, and in old Turkish og̲h̲ri̊ , Ottoman k̲h̲ayrsi̊z , modern hırsız . Arabic liṣṣ and the unassimilated variants li/a/uṣt must have appeared in the language during the Byzantine period, presumably via Syriac leṣtā , whilst there exists the form listīs , closer to the Greek original λῃστής in Mishnaic Hebrew and Palestine Jewish Aramaic (see S. Krauss, Griechische u…

(p.), literally “the holder of an ustān [ q.v.] or province”, an administrative term originally found in Sāsānid Persia for the governor of a province or for the official in charge of state domains (see Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber , 448). When the Arabs conquered ʿIrāḳ, the old Sāsānid state lands were taken over as ṣawāfī al-ustān and administered by ustāndārs for the caliph ʿUmar (see M.J. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest , Princeton 1984, 68-9 and index s.v. ustāndār). The title probably continued to be used meanwhile by local potentates in the un-Islami…

(t.), lit. rain stone, in Arabic texts appearing as ḥad̲j̲ar al-maṭar , this being a magical stone by means of which rain, snow, fog, etc., could be conjured up by its holder(s). In particular, knowledge and use of such stones has been widespread until very recent times in Inner Asia. Belief in the existence of stones and other means of controlling the weather has been widespread throughout both the Old and New Worlds (see Sir J.G. Frazer, The golden bough, a study in magic and religion, abridged ed., London 1922, 75-8). Belief in a stone seems to have been general amongst the e…

, a town and district in Central Asia, now the town and oblast of Leninabad in the Tadzhik SSR, the town lying in 40° 17′ lat. N. and 69° 37′ long. E. The mediaeval town was strung out along the left bank of the middle Si̊r Daryā at the southernmost bend of its course and at the entrance to the Farg̲h̲āna valley. It lay in the ill-defined borderlands between the Transoxanian districts of Īlāḳ [ q.v. in Suppl.] and Us̲h̲rūsana [ q.v.], and was generally reckoned as being connected administratively with one or other of these two in the early middle ages. Its destinies were, ho…