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means etymologically “a patch of ground marked out from adjoining land by a difference in colour, etc.” or “a low-lying region with stagnant water” (see Lane, s.v.); the latter sense is obviously at the base of the plural Biḳāʿ [ q.v.] to designate the (originally) marshy valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges in Syria, and doubtless at that of the name al-Buḳayʿa for a settlement near the Lake of Ḥimṣ [ q.v.] (see Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems , 352). From these senses it acquires the broader one of “province, region, tract of la…

, Abū Kālīd̲j̲ār Marzubān, S̲h̲ams al-Milla (353-88/964-98), Buyid amir and eldest son of ʿAḍud al-Dawla [ q.v.]. On his father’s death in S̲h̲awwāl 372/March 983, Ṣamṣām al-Dawla succeeded to power as amīr al-umarāʾ , but his position was immediately disputed by another brother, S̲h̲araf al-Dawla S̲h̲īrzīl, who seized Fārs and Ḵh̲ūzistān. From his base in ʿIrāḳ, Ṣamṣām al-Dawla had also to combat the Kurdish chief Bād̲h̲, ancestor of the Marwānid dynasty [see marwānids ] of Diyār Bakr, who had seized various towns in al-Ḏj̲azīra and who even for a while held Mawṣil.…

, D̲j̲abal , a mountainous and, in early Islamic times, apparently wooded region of the Kirmān province in Iran, described by the mediaeval historians and geographers as the haunt of predatory peoples like the Kūficīs or Ḳufṣ and the Balūč [see balūcistān , kirmān and ḳufṣ ]. It is the steepsided granite chain running in a NW-SE direction from the mountain massif of central Kirmān (sc. the massif which culminates in such peaks as the Kūh-i Hazār and the Kūh-i Lālazār), to the south of the towns of Bam [ q.v.] and Fahrad̲j̲; the geographers count it as amongst the garmsīrāt or warm regions [see ḳi̊s…

, Ṣadr al-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Nāṣir b. ʿAlī , author of the late Sald̲j̲ūḳ period and early decades of the 7th/13th century, whose work is known to us through its incorporation within an anonymous history of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs and succeeding Atabegs of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, the Ak̲h̲bār al-Dawla al-sald̲j̲ūḳiyya (ed. Muhammad Iqbal, Lahore ¶ 1933; Tkish. tr. Necati Lugal, Ankara 1943; cf. Brockelmann, I2, 392, Suppl. I, 554-5). Al-Ḥusaynī apparently composed the Zubdat al-tawārīk̲h̲ , ak̲h̲bār al-umarāʾ wa ’l-mulūk al-sald̲j̲ūḳiyya , which forms the first…

, the Arabic name for the Jordan River, used also from early Islamic times onwards to designate the regions adjacent to the river’s course. 1. The river This appears in Arabic as the nahr al-Urdunn , in Old Testament and later Hebrew as ha-ϒardēn , and in the Septuagint and the classical geographers as ô ’Ιορδάνης. After the Crusading period, local Arabic usage often referred to it as al-S̲h̲arīʿa [ al-kabīra ] “the [Great] watering-place”. It was, and still is, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims, by Christians in particular on account of…

(a.), pl. ṣawāʾif (< ṣayf ‘‘summer”), summer raid or military expedition (see Lane, 1756; Dozy, Supplément, i, 857). 1. In the Arab-Byzantine warfare. The term is used by the early Islamic historians to denote the raids of the Arabs into Byzantine Anatolia. These were normally mounted annually, over a period of some two centuries, beginning during the governorship in Syria of Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān [ q.v.], i.e. from ca. 640 onwards. They tailed off in the 3rd/9th century as the ʿAbbāsid caliphate became racked by internal discord and as the Macedonian emperors i…

, Ruwāndiz , a town of Kurdish ʿIrāḳ, the chef-lieu of a ḳaḍāʾ in the liwāʾ of Irbil. In ca. 1940 it had a population of 7,000. It lies in lat. 36° 37ʹ N. and long. 44° 33ʹ E. at an altitude of ca. 914 m/3,000 feet on a route which connects Mawṣil and Irbil [ q.vv.] via the Garū S̲h̲inka pass (1,830 m/6,000 feet) with Mahābād/Sāwd̲j̲-Bulāḳ [ q.vv.]. The route was described in early Islamic times only by Yāḳūt, enumerating seven stages from Mawṣil to Sāwd̲j̲-Bulāḳ. History. It will be evident that Rawāndiz, situated at the intersection of the communications of…

(in Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 16, Ṭabarstarān), a district of the eastern Caucasus, essentially the basin of the Rūbās river which runs into the Caspian Sea just south of Darband [see derbend ], the early Islamic Bāb al-Abwāb [ q.v.]. It now comes within the southernmost part of Dāg̲h̲istān (see map in ḳabḳ , at IV, 344). Its population comprises Caucasian mountaineers plus a considerable admixture of Iranian speakers of Tātī dialect [see tāt ]. At the time of the Umayyad prince Marwān b. Muḥammad’s raids through the Caucasus, there was a Ṭabarsarān S̲h̲āh (known a…

, a district of eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, ¶ thus designated in the Islamic sources of the later mediaeval period, deriving its name from its urban centre Lamg̲h̲ān (later form, Lag̲h̲mān). It comprises the fertile plain of the middle course of the Kābul River, much of it lying to the north and east of Kābul city [ q.v.] itself. It is bounded on the north by the mountains of Kāfiristān [ q.v.], modern Nūristān, and includes the lower reaches of the Alingār and Alis̲h̲ang Rivers; on the south and east, it adjoins, and was sometimes considered (e.g. by Bābur) to includ…

(a.), literally, “something made obscure, hidden”. 1. In the sense of word puzzle, riddle [see lug̲h̲z ]. 2. In the sense of secret writing, code. Codes were regularly used in classical Antiquity. Thus the skytalē…

(…

, a line of military commanders who governed the northwestern provinces of the caliphate (Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. Arrān and Armenia) in the later 3rd/9th and early 4th/10th centuries on behalf of the ʿAbbāsids. The Sād̲j̲ids were just some of several commanders, originally from the Iranian East and Central Asia, who came westwards to serve in the early ʿAbbāsid armies. The family seems to have originated in Us̲h̲rūsana [ q.v.] on the middle Syr Darya in Transoxania, the region where the Afs̲h̲īns [ q.v.] were hereditary princes until at least the end of the 3rd/9th century, and w…

…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. D̲j̲aʿfar , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 252-5/866-9, and son of the earlier caliph al-Mutawakkil [ q.v.] by his favourite slave concubine Ḳabīḥa. The reign of al-Muʿtazz’s predecessor, his cousin al-Mustaʿīn [ q.v.], ended in strife and violence stirred up by the Turkish guards in Sāmarrā. Al-Mustaʿīn was forced to abdicate at Bag̲h̲dād, and on 4 Muḥarram 252/25 January 866, al-Muʿtazz, having been brought out of jail, was hailed as caliph. The first part of the succession arrangements envisaged towards t…

, a district and fortress of northern Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, famous as being the headquarters of the Ḵh̲urramī rebel Bābak [ q.v.] in the first decades of the 3rd/9th century. The exact site is uncertain, but it must have lain in the modern Ḳarad̲j̲a-Dag̲h̲, older Maymad, the ancient Armenian region of Pʿaytakaran, to the north of Ahar and south of the Araxes River, near Mount Has̲h̲tād-Sar, at some spot between the modern districts of Hārand, Kalaybar and Garmādūz (V. Minorsky, Studies in Caucasian history, London 1953, 116 and Addenda et corrigenda slip). Bābak’s fortress there…

b. Mart̲h̲ad b. Ḥāzim al-ʿAbsī al-G̲h̲aṭafānī . governor of Egypt 90-6/709-14 for the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik. Ḳurra came from the group of North Arab tribes which had settled extensively in northern Syria and the D̲j̲azīra and which were in the forefront of the warfare along the Taurus Mountains with Byzantium. He himself came from the region of Ḳinnasrīn [ q.v.] to the south of Aleppo, and was thus a member of the experienced and capable cadre of Syrian Arabs whom the Umayyads liked to appoint to high civil and military office; the fact …

, a district of the upper Oxus region mentioned at the time of the Arab invasions. It lay near the head waters of the Kāfirnihān and Surkhān rivers, hence in the upper mountainous parts of Čag̲h̲āniyān and K̲h̲uttalān [ q.vv.]. In Chinese sources such as Hiuen-Tsang, it appears as Su-man. In al-Ṭabarī, ii, 1179, 1181, where the conquests of the governor Kutayba b. Muslim [ q.v.] in upper K̲h̲urāsān during 86/705 are being described, S̲h̲ūmān is linked with Ak̲h̲arūn or K̲h̲arūn as being under a local prince, whose name seems to be the Iranian one *Gus̲h̲tāspā…

, conventionally Zerafshan , a landlocked river of Central Asia, now coming within Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In early Islamic times, it was known as “the river of Sogdia”, Nahr Ṣug̲h̲d [see ṣug̲h̲d ] or “the river of Buk̲h̲ārā” (see al-Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān , 293-4, tr. Wiet, 1 lull; al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 319-21; Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, ii, 495-7, tr. Kramers and Wiet, ii, 475-7; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 55, 73, comm. 198, 211). It flowed westwards from sources in what the geographers called the Buttamān mountains, in fact, between what are…

(a. “wells, springs”), modern Biyārd̲j̲umand, a small town on the northern edges of the Great Desert, the Das̲h̲t-i Kavīr, of Persia. The mediaeval geographers describe it as being three days’ journey from Bisṭām and 25 farsak̲h̲s from Dāmg̲h̲ān, and as falling administratively within the province of Ḳūmis [ q.v.], although in Sāmānid times (4th/10th century) it seems to have been attached to Nīs̲h̲āpūr in Ḵh̲urāsān. It was the terminus of an only-moderately frequented route across the northeastern corner of the desert to Turs̲h̲īz in Ḳūhistān. We have in Muḳaddasī, 356-7, 372, …

(thus in Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn and Mustawfī), popular pronunciation with assimilation Lam(m)asar < Lambasar, the name of one of the Ismāʿīlī ¶ fortresses in northwestern Iran taken over from a local chief by Ḥasan-i Sabbāḥ’s lieutenant and eventual successor Kiyā Buzurg-Ummīd, according to D̲j̲uwaynī in 495/1102 [see alamūt , ismāʿīliyya ]. Its still-extensive ruins lie on a site sloping at 30°, whose surface resembles in shape a truncated cone and which measures some 1,500 ft./480 m. by 600 ft/190 m., with easily defensible slopes, in the Rūdbār di…

, a region of the North-West Frontier region of what is now Pākistān, lying roughly between lats. 34° 30′ and 35° 50′ N. and long. 72° and 73° E. It is bounded on the north-west by Čitrāl, on the west by Dīr, on the east by Bunēr and Hazāra and on the south by Mardān. It comprises essentially the basin of the Swāt River, from its headwaters down to the Malakand Pass, after which it runs into the Kabul River below Pes̲h̲awar and near Naws̲h̲ēra. The nor…

(a.), the verbal noun of form II of d̲j̲-m-r meaning basically “to come together”. In early Islamic military and administrative ¶ usage, d̲j̲ammara had the meaning of “to keep the troops quartered on distant frontiers, far away from their families” (see LʿA 1, v, 217). The caliph ʿUmar is said to have disapproved of this, as leading to discontent and rebelliousness amongst the Arab warriors. But once the initial phase of the Arab conquests was over, the muḳātila found themselves fighting in distant, climatically and topographically difficult environ…

, S̲h̲aʿyā (?), author in the 4th/10th century of a concise Arabic encyclopaedia of the sciences the D̲j̲awāmiʿ al-ʿulūm “Connections of the sciences”. The author wrote in the upper Oxus lands, and dedicated his work to the Muḥtād̲j̲id amīr of Čag̲h̲āniyān [ q.v.], Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Muẓaffar (d. 344/955). Minorsky surmised from his name (if this has been interpreted correctly) that he was a scion of the Farīg̲h̲ūnids [ q.v.] in northern Afg̲h̲ānistān, rulers of the district of Gūzgān [ q.v.] as tributaries of the Sāmānids, and latterly, of the G̲h̲aznawids; a co…

, Abu ’l-Fatḥ G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dunyā wa ’l-Din , Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan in ʿIrāḳ and western Persia 529-47/1134-52. Like the other sons of Muḥammad b. Malik-S̲h̲ah [ q.v.], Masʿūd was entrusted as a child to the tutelage of Turkish Atabegs [see atabak ], latterly with Ay-Aba D̲j̲uyūs̲h̲ Beg acting thus, and given the appanage of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and al-D̲j̲azīra: at D̲j̲uyūs̲h̲ Beg’s prompting, Masʿūd unsuccessfully rebelled in 514/1120 at the age of 12 against his elder brother Sultan Maḥmūd b. Malik-S̲h̲āh [ q.v.], but was pardoned. When Maḥmūd died in 525/1131, a period of confusio…

, Dungans , in Chinese, T’ung-kan, the Turkic name given to those Hui (i.e. ethnically Chinese Muslims) settled within Chinese Turkestan or Sinkiang [ q.v.], especially in the northern Sinkiang regions of Dzungaria and Kumul, but numerous also in the northwestern provinces of China proper such as Kansu [ q.v.] (Gansu), Ninghsia [ q.v.], Shensi [ q.v.] (Shaanxi) and Tsinghai. The Tungans in Sinkiang were estimated at 92,000 in the mid-1940s, and played a considerable political and military role there during the Chinese Republican or Kuomintang period (191…

, a forested, mountain area of Inner Asia which had a special religious and moral significance for the early Turkish peoples. It seems to have been located in the eastern part of the Khangai Mts. around the headwaters of the Orkhon and Tamir rivers (the latter river corresponding, according to R. Giraud, L’Empire des Turcs célestes . Les règnes d’Elterich , Qapghan et Bilga ( 680-734), Paris 1960, 207, to the i̊duḳ yer sub “sacred places and watercourses” of the old Turkish inscriptions), generally along the co-ordinates of…

, a mediaeval Islamic town in eastern Anatolia/western Armenia. It lay, at a site whose definite location is unknown, on the left bank of the southern headwater of the upper Euphrates, the classical Arsanias, modern Murad Su. Its location was, according to Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 362-3, between Bālūya (modern Palu) and Hiṣn Ziyād or K̲h̲artpirt [ q.v.] (modern Harput), and it is not to be confused with Sumaysāṭ [ q.v.] on the Euphrates further south. It was in the borderland between the Arabs and the Greeks, and possession of it must have oscillated between…

, the Uyg̲h̲ur Turkish leader of a Muslim rebellion at Ḳomul [ q.v. in Suppl.] in Eastern Turkistan or Sinkiang [ q.v.] during the 1930s, b. 1888, d. ? in the mid-1970s. In 1928 the second Republican Chinese governor of Sinkiang, Chin Shu-jen, overthrew the last autonomous k̲h̲ānate of Central Asia, that of Ḳomul in the extreme eastern end of the province, adjacent to the frontiers ¶ with Mongolia and Kansu. His anti-Muslim policies provoked a rebellion there in April 1931 of the Uyg̲h̲urs, and possibly some of the Tungans [ q.v.], under the joint leadership of Yulbārs K̲h̲ān, who had…

, the later form of a word Tāzīk or Tāžīk used in the Iranian and Turkish worlds. In Islamic usage, it eventually came to designate the Persians, as opposed to the Turks. 1. Etymology and early linguistic development of the term. The traditional explanation of the term goes back at least to E. Quatremère, Histoire des sultans mamelouks de l’Egypte , ii/2, Paris 1845, 154-5, and was set forth, e.g., in Barthold’s EI 1 art. This derives Tāzīk, etc./Tād̲j̲īk from the name of the Arab tribe of Ṭayyiʾ [ q.v.], Syriac Ṭayyāyē, meaning “Arabs”, said to have been the first Arab tribe encoun…

b. Umayya b. Ḥārit̲h̲a al-Sulamiyya, an early supporter of Muḥammad’s cause at Mecca and an associate of his. She was the daughter of a man of Sulaym [ q.v.] who had come to Mecca and had become a confederate there of ʿAbd Manāf, and of a woman of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf; hence K̲h̲awla was related maternally to the Prophet himself. She was an early convert to the new teaching, in company with her husband, the ascetic ʿUt̲h̲mān b. Maẓʿūn [ q.v.]. When he died in 3/624-5, K̲h̲awla is said to have “offered herself” ( wahabatnafsahā ) to Muḥammad, but the latter “put her off” ( ard̲j̲aʾahā …

, Kuram , the name of a river which flows down from the western end of the Safīd Kūh or Spīn G̲h̲ar range of the Hindū Kus̲h̲-Koh-i Bābā massif of eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān and which joins the Indus River in modern Pakistan just below ʿĪsā K̲h̲ēl. The lower course of the river flows through Bannū [ q.v.], and the middle reaches through the northernmost part of Wazīristān [ q.v.]. The upper valley, beyond the railhead of Thāl, forms what in British India and now in Pakistan is the administrative region of the Kurram Agency, a thin wedge of territory some 70 miles lo…

, Sultan of the G̲h̲aznawid dynasty [ q.v.], reigned 388-421/998-1030 in the eastern Islamic lands. Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Maḥmūd was the eldest son of the Turkish commander Sebüktigin, who had risen from being one of the slave personal guards of the Ḥād̲j̲ib-i buzurg or commander-in-chief Alptigin [see alp takīn ] under the Sāmānids to becoming the virtually independent amīr of a principality centred on G̲h̲azna [ q.v.], at that time on the far eastern fringe of the Sāmānid empire. Maḥmūd was born in 361/971, his mother being from the local Iranian (?) gentry stock of Zābulistān [ q.v.], the distri…

, the ancient Rag̲h̲ā, a city in the old Persian region of Media, during Islamic times in the province of D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.]. Its ruins may be seen about 5 miles south-southeast of Tehran [ q.v.] to the south of a spur projecting from Elburz into the plain. The village and sanctuary of S̲h̲āh ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm lie immediately south of the ruins. The geographical importance of the town lies in the fact that it was situated in the fertile zone which lies between the mountains and the desert, by which from time immemorial communication ha…

, an important settlement in Nad̲j̲d during mediaeval times, now a village, situated in lat. 27° 8’ N. and long 42° 28’ E. It lies on a plain in the borderlands between the two regions of the D̲j̲abal S̲h̲ammar to the north-west and al-Ḳaṣīm [ q.v.] to the south-east, some 80 miles/130 km. south-east of Ḥāʾil [ q.v.]. The early Islamic geographers locate it in the territory where the pasture grounds of the B. Ṭayyiʾ and the B. Asad marched together, near to the frequently-mentioned “two mountains of Ṭayyiʾ”, sc. Salmā and Ad̲j̲āʾ. Bakrī, followed by Samhūdī, describes it as a famous ḥimā [ q.v.] o…

, Nirāḳ , a small town of Persia (lat. 34° 00′ N., long. 50° 49′ E.), in the modern province of Ḳum, 60 km/38 miles to the west of Kās̲h̲ān and at the northwestern end of the Kūh-i Kargas. It is not mentioned in the classical Islamic geographers, but has some fame as the origin of the scholar Muḥammad Mahdī b. Abī D̲h̲arr Nirāḳī (d. ?1209/1794-5), author of Persian and Arabic works on rhetoric, the S̲h̲īʿī martyrs, mathematics, etc. (Storey, i, 219-20, iii, 213; Brockelmann, S II, 824) and of his son Mullā Aḥmad Nirāḳī (d. 1244/1828-9), theologian and poet with the tak̲h̲alluṣ of Ṣafāʾī (Browne, LHP…

, Abū Ḥassān al-Ḥasan b. ‘Ut̲h̲mān al-S̲h̲īrāzī (this nisba from some apparent connection with the Persian city; see Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 381), judge, traditionist and historian of the early ʿAbbāsid period, b. 156/773 in Bag̲h̲dād and died there Rad̲j̲ab 242/Nov.-Dec. 856 (al-Ṭabarī, iii, ¶ 1434, and al-K̲h̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī) or the following year. A traditionalist in his views and associate of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, he was questioned under the Miḥna [ q.v.] at the end of al-Maʾmūn’s reign (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 1121-5, 1128, 1132). But he came into his own under th…

(p.) “scribe, secretary”, the term generally used in the Persian cultural world, including the Indo-Muslim one (although in the later centuries it tended to be supplanted by the term munshī , so that Yule-Burnell, Hobson-Jobson , a glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and phrases, London 1886, 328, record “dubeer” as being in their time “quite obsolete in Indian usage”), as the equivalent of Arabic kātib and Turkish yazi̊d̲j̲i̊ ,. The word appears as dipīr / dibīr (Pahlavi orthography dpy ( w) r, see D.N. MacKenzie, A concise Pahlavi dictionary, London 1971, 26) in Sāsānid Per…

, S̲h̲ams al-Maʿālī Abu’l-Ḥasan (reigned 366-71/977-81 and ¶ 388-403/998 to 1012-13), fourth ruler of the Ziyārid dynasty which had been founded by Mardāwīd̲j̲ b. Ziyār [ q.v.] and which ruled in Ṭabaristān and Gurgān (Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ān). Like other families rising to prominence in the “Daylamī interlude” of Persian history, the Ziyārids endeavoured to attach themselves to the pre-Islamic Iranian past, and Ḳābūs’s grandson Kay Kāʾūs makes Ḳābūs’s ancestors rulers of Gīlān in the time of Kay K̲h̲usraw ( Ḳābūs-nāma , Preface). As under his predecessors, suze…

, Modern Hebrew Nāṣerat, Nazareth, the home of Jesus, a town of northern Palestine, since 1948 in Israel, situated in lat. 32° 42’ N. and long. 35° 17’E. at a height of 505 m/1,600 ft. It lies in a depression sloping to the south surrounded by hills in a fertile district. While the hills to the north and northeast are not very high, in the northwest the D̲j̲ebel al-Sīk̲h̲ rises to 1,600 feet above sealevel. The name of the town, which does not occur in the Old Testament, is found in the New and in the Greek fathers of the Church …

b. Ḵh̲anzal al-Kindī, Abu ’l-Miḳdām or Abū Naṣr (full nasab in Gottschalk, 331, from Ibn ʿAsākir), a rather mysterious mawlā or client who seems to have been influential as a religious and political adviser at the courts of the early Marwānid caliphs, from ʿAbd al-Malik to ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. His birth date is unknown, but he died in 112/730, probably around the age of seventy. According to one account, Rad̲j̲ahʾ’s family stemmed from Maysān in Lower ʿIrāḳ, hence from the local Nabaṭ or Aramaeans, where the bond of walā with the Arab tribe of Kinda [ q.v.] must have been made, the Kinda…

, the name of a group of peoples inhabiting the central mountains of Afghānistān; they form one of the principal population elements of the country, amounting perhaps to 900,000. The Hazāras are almost certainly an Ethnically mixed group, whose components may or may not be related to each other. In appearance, Hazāras are predominantly brachycephalous, with Mongoloid facial features, though this is by no means universal. There is therefore much in favour of Schurmann’s hypothesis that the Hazāras of the core region, the Hazārad̲j̲āt [ q.v. above], at least, are a mixed populatio…

(p.), a term denoting a rank of officer or commander in mediaeval Persian armies and paramilitary groups (cf. Vuller, Lexicon persicolatinum, ii, 261-2, 293; dux exercitus, praefectus ). Thus the sarhangs were leaders of bands of ʿayyārs [ q.v.] or Sunnī orthodox vigilantes combatting the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲īs in 3rd/9th century Sīstān, and Yaʿḳūb b. al-Layt̲h̲, founder of the Ṣaffārid dynasty [ q.v.], embarked on his rise to power by becoming a sarhang in the ʿayyār forces of a local leader in Bust, Ṣāliḥ b. al-Naḍr al-Kinānī ( Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Sīstān , ed. Bahār, passim; Gardīzī, Zayn al-ak̲h̲bār …

, D̲j̲abal al-Ḳabḳ (the most common rendering), al-Ḳabk̲h̲ ( e.g., Masʿūdī) or al-Ḳabd̲j̲ ( e.g. Ṭabarī, Yāḳūt), Turkish Kavkaz, the name given by the Muslims to the Caucasus Mountains. The form ḳabḳ may derive from Middle Persian kāfkōh “the mountain of Kāf”, Armenian kapkoh ; in Firdawsī we find the Caucasus called kūh-i ḳāf (Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik , i, 45, cf. Marquart, Ērānšahr , 94). A village called Ḳabḳ is also mentioned by Ibn Rusta, 173, tr. Wiet, 201, as being the first stage on the road from Harāt to Isfizār and Sīstān. 1. Topography and ethnology. The Caucasus became k…

, a great and powerful Bedouin tribe of Central Arabia, second only in importance to the ʿAnaza or ʿUnayza [ q.v.], and playing a significant role in the history of Arabia in the last 150 years or so. Doughty describes them as having pasture grounds extending from al-Ṭāʾif [ q.v.] in the Ḥid̲j̲āz in the west to al-Ḳaṣīm [ q.v.] in northern Nad̲j̲d in the east. The name appears in various renderings in the travel accounts of Europeans, e.g. the ʿAteyba, pl. elʿAteybân of Doughty, and the ʾOṭeybah of Palgrave; according to J.J. Hess, the modern pronunciation use…

, the name found in early Islamic times for a region of what is now eastern Afg̲h̲anistān, roughly covering the modern Afg̲h̲ān provinces of G̲h̲aznī and Zābul. The early geographers describe what was a remote region on the far eastern frontiers of the Dār al-Islām in understandably vague terms as an extensive province with G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] as its centre. It thus emerges that it lay between Kābul and the Kābul river valley on the north and the territories around the confluence of the Helmand river and Arg̲h̲andāb known as Zamīndāwar and al-Ruk̲h̲k̲h̲ad̲j̲ [ q.vv.], but the boundaries her…

the nisba or gentilic of several Egyptian scholars of the Mamlūk and early Ottoman periods, the most important of whom are as follows: (1.) S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī (ʿAbd Allāh?) b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Fazārī al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, legal scholar and secretary in the Mamlūk chancery, and author of several books. The main sources for his life are the fairly brief mentions of him in biographical and historical sources of the late Mamlūk period by al-ʿAynī, al-Maḳrīzī, Ibn Tag̲h̲rībirdī, al-Sak̲h̲āwī and Ibn …

(a.) means basically "wood, piece of wood, plank, spar" (pls. aʿwād , ʿīdān ). I. In daily life 1. ʿŪd as perfume and incense and as a medicament In the Arabic materia medica it indicates the so-called "aloe wood". This designation, used in trade, is conventional but incorrect because aloe wood is called ṣabr [ q.v.]. ʿŪd has to do with certain kinds of resinous, dark-coloured woods with a high specific weight and a strong aromatic scent, which were used in medicine as perfume and incense ( ʿūd al-bak̲h̲ūr ) and were highly coveted because of their rarity and v…

b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams , ancestor of the Umayyads, the principal clan of the Ḳuraysh of Mecca. His genealogy (Umayya b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf b. Ḳuṣayy) and his descendants are given in Wüstenfeld, Geneal . Tabellen , U, V, and Ibn al-Kabbī, in Caskel-Strenziok, i, nos. 8 ff. Like all other eponyms of Arab tribes and clans, his actual existence and the details of his life have to be accepted with caution, but too great scepticism with regard to tradition would be as ill-advised as absolute faith in its statement…

(p.), the Peacock Throne, a name given to various highly-decorated and much bejewelled royal thrones in the eastern Islamic world, ¶ in particular, to that constructed for the Mug̲h̲al Emperor S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān (1037-68/1628-57 [ q.v.]). There are relevant accounts in the contemporary Indo-Muslim sources, e.g. in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Lāhawrī’s Bāds̲h̲āh-nāma and Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s ʿAmal-i Ṣāliḥ , and in the accounts of European travellers who claimed to have seen the throne, such as Tavernier, Bernier and Manucci. These last authorities, …

, siege. The following articles deal with siegecraft and siege warfare. On fortification see burd̲j̲ , ḥiṣn , ḳalʿa and sūr . i.— General Remarks Siege warfare was one of the essential forms of warfare when it was a matter of conquest, and not merely of plundering raids, in countries in which, from ancient times, most of the large towns had been protected by walls and where, during the Middle Ages, the open countryside was to an ever increasing extent held by fortresses [see ḥiṣn and ḳalʿa ]. Although the forces available were rarely sufficient to impose a co…