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, a town in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān situated 90 miles/145 km. south-west of Kābul in lat. 68° 18′ E. and long. 33° 44′ N. and lying at an altitude of 7,280 feet/2,220 m. The original form of the name must have been * Ganzak < gand̲j̲a “treasury”, with a later metathesis in eastern Iranian of -nz-/-nd̲j̲- to -zn-, and this etymology indicates that G̲h̲azna was already in pre-Islamic times the metropolis of the surrounding region of Zābulistān. The parallel forms G̲h̲aznī (in present-day use) and G̲h̲aznīn must go back to forms like G̲h̲aznīk and G̲h̲aznēn the geograph…

, Sāʾid (a., pls. asyād , sāda , sādāt , abstract nouns siyāda , suʾdad , etc.), originally, chief, e.g. of an Arabian tribe, and then, in Islamic times, a title of honour for descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad, being in this respect in many ways coterminous with the term s̲h̲arīf . Sayyid was used in ancient South Arabian, where it appears as s 1 wd “chieftain” (A.F.L. Beeston, etc., ¶ Sabaic dictionary, Louvain-Beirut 1982, 129), but the root seems to be largely absent from North-Western Semitic, being only dubiously attested in Elephantine Aramaic (J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling, Dictionar…

(a.), Ḳismet (t.), a term used for “fate, destiny”. In Arabic, ḳisma means literally “sharing out, distribution, allotment”, and one of its usages is as the arithmetical term for “division of a number”. It later came to mean “portion, lot”, and was then particularised to denote “the portion of fate, good or bad, specifically allotted to and destined for each man”. It is in this final sense, and especially via Turkish, that ḳismet has become familiar in the West as a term for the fatalism popularly attributed to the oriental (the first attestati…

, Europeanised form Seringapatam , a town of South India (lat. 12° 25′ N., long. 76° 42′ E.). In British India, it came within the princely state of Mysore [see mahisur , maysūr ], and is now in the Mysore District, the southernmost one of the Karnataka State of the Indian Union. It is situated on an island in the Cauvery River to the north-north-east of Mysore city. Named after its shrine to the Hindu god Śri Raṅga (Viṣṇu), it became in the 17th century the capital of the Hindu Rād̲j̲ās of Mysore and then, after 1761, of the Muslim sultans Ḥaydar ʿAlī and Tīpū Sulṭān [ q.vv.]. The latter’s oppositio…

, a line of Turkmen derebey s [ q.v.] or local lords who controlled the region round Payās [ q.v.], which was strategically situated near the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta (and now in the modern Turkish il or province of Hatay), and, for a while, Adana in Cilicia [ q.vv.] for almost a century. The founder, K̲h̲alīl Bey Küčük ʿAlī Og̲h̲lu, appears ca. 1770 as a bandit chief based on Payās, preying on shipping (including the ships of European powers) in the Gulf and on the land traffic which had to pass through the narrow gap between the Gâvur Daği mountain…

, Nāyin , a small town (lat. 53° 05’ E., long. 32° 52’ N., altitude 1,408 m/4.620 feet) on the southwestern edge of the Great Desert of central Persia and on the road connecting Yazd with Iṣfahān and Ḳum. The town seems to have a pre-Islamic history, but nothing is known of this. The mediaeval Islamic geographers place it in the sardsīr or cooler upland regions and describe it as administratively within Fārs (al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī) but as dependent on either Yazd or Iṣfahān. According to Mustawfī, Nuzha , 69, tr. 77, its citadel (whose ruins are still visible) had w…

or Sūrī dynasty, a line of Dihlī Sultans (947-62/1540-55) founded by the Afg̲h̲ān commander S̲h̲īr S̲h̲āh Sūr b. Miyān Ḥasan [ q.v.], who had been in the service of the preceeding Lōdī sultans [ q.v.]. This brief Indian dynasty’s period of rule spanned the interval between the first reign of the Mug̲h̲al Humāyūn [ q.v.] (937-47/1530-40) and his second reign and the final consolidation of Mug̲h̲al rule (962/1555). From a base in Bihār, S̲h̲īr S̲h̲āh in the 1530s made himself master of northern India, including Bengal, and twice repelled invasions from Agra by Hum…

, al-ḳās̲h̲ī , Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, called Ibn Bāba or Bābā, Persian author of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ: period, and boon-companion or nadīm by profession. He apparently flourished in the second half of the 5th/11th century and early years of the next one; Bagdatli Ismail Paşa, Īḍāḥ al-maknūn , ¶ i, 546, says that he died in 510/1116-7, and this is approximately confirmed by Yāḳūt, who says that he died at Marw. Only Samʿānī, Ansāb , ff. 80a, 437b, and Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, i, 412, iv, 296-7, have any significant information on him. It seems that he w…

1. The name of a land and a city in China mentioned in the mediaeval Arabic geographer Ḳudāma b. D̲j̲aʿfar [ q.v.], 264, here borrowing material from the lost part of his predecessor Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih [ q.v.]. According to Ḳudāma, Alexander the Great, in company with the Emperor of China, went northwards from China and conquered the land of S̲h̲ūl, founding there two cities, K̲h̲.mdān and S̲h̲ūl and ordering the Chinese ruler to place a garrison ( rābita ) of his troops in the latter place. K̲h̲umdān is well-attested in other Islamic sources (e.g. Gardīzī; Marwazī, tr. Minors…

, Persian, “army chief”, the Islamic form of a military title used in the pre-Islamic Persian empires and surviving in the Caspian provinces of Persia down to the Mongol invasions. In Achaemenid times the spād̲h̲apati was the commander-in-chief of the army. In the Arsacid period, the office of spāhpat was apparently hereditary in one of the great Parthian families; the Armenian geographer Moses of Choren (8th century A. D.) says that when Kos̲h̲m or Koms̲h̲, daughter of King Ars̲h̲avir (se. Phraates IV) married the comma…

b. Rāfiʿ al-S̲h̲aʾn b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam I, S̲h̲ams al-Dīn, great-grandson of the great Mug̲h̲al emperor Awrangzīb [ q.v.] and one of the ephemeral emperors in the last decades of independent Mug̲h̲al rule, reigning for some four months in the spring of 1131/1719. After Awrangzīb’s death in 1118/1707, the main power in the empire was that of the Bārha Sayyids [ q.v. in Suppl.], who in 1124/1712 raised to the throne Farruk̲h̲-siyar b. ʿAẓīm al-S̲h̲aʾn Muḥammad ʿAẓīm [ q.v.] but deposed him in Rabīʿ II 1131/February 1719 and substituted for him Rāfi ʿ al-Darad̲j̲āt; but in June…

, the name of a small, right-bank affluent (Grk. Singas, Modern Tkish. Keysun Çayı, a tributary of the Gök Su) of the upper Euphrates and of a small town on it, both coming in mediaeval Islamic times within the northern part of Diyār Muḍar [ q.v.]. The Sand̲j̲a river runs into the Euphrates between Sumaysāṭ and Ḳalʿat al-Rūm [ q.vv.]. It was famed for its bridge, said by the Arabic geographers to have been composed of a single arch of 200 paces’ length constructed from dressed stone, and to have been one of the wonders of the world (cf. Yāḳūt, Buldān , iii, 264-5). It was …

, a small town in Persia lying some 15 km/9 miles to the northeast of Ardistān, on the southwestern edge of the central desert of the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr (long. 52° 25’ E., lat. 33° 30’ N.). It falls administratively within the ustān or province of Iṣfahān and is the chef-lieu of a canton or dihistān . In ca. 1951 it had a population of 5,400; and according to the census of 1375/1996-7, one at that time of 7,710, representing 1,911 households. This small and isolated place has played no role in wider Persian history, but is of significance for its ¶ surviving architecture. It clearly enjoyed prosp…

, Abū Naṣr Ḵh̲usraw-Fīrūz , Būyid amīr , d. 450/1058. When Abū Kālīd̲j̲ār, ruler in K̲h̲ūzistān. Fārs, Kirmān, ʿUmān and Baṣra in parallel with his uncle D̲j̲alāl al-Dawla [ q.v.] of Bag̲h̲dād, died in 440/1048, the eldest of his ten or so sons, K̲h̲usraw-Fīrūz. succeeded as amīr with the title, unwillingly extracted from the caliph, of al-Malik al-Raḥīm. However, his succession was challenged by various of his brothers, and especially by Fūlād-Sutūn, and during his seven years’ reign, K̲h̲usraw-Fīrūz reigned undisputedly only in ʿIrāḳ, wit…

, a region of central Afg̲h̲ānistān spanning the modem (post-1964 reorganisation) provinces of Bāmiyān, Wardak, G̲h̲aznī, G̲h̲ōr and Uruzgān. The region is almost wholly mountainous, its northem backbone being formed by the Kūh-i Bābā range [ q.v.] and its outliers. There are consequently very few towns and these tend to lie in the river valleys, e.g. Dawlatyār on the upper Herī Rūd and Pand̲j̲āb or Pand̲j̲āō on the Pand̲j̲āb tributary of the upper Helmand. The sedentary agriculturist Hazāras [ q.v. below] are the main Ethnic element of the region, but there are also Pas̲h…

b. Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd S̲h̲āh, Bengal Sultan of the restored Ilyās S̲h̲āhī line, r. 864-79/1460-74. Bārbak was one of the most powerful of the medieval rulers of Bengal, achieving a great reputation from his warfare against the Hindu rulers of Orissa and northern and eastern Bengal, regaining Silhet [ q.v.] (Sylhet) and also Chittagong [ q.v.] from the Arakanese. He recruited for his armies Ḥabas̲h̲ī military slaves and Arab mercenaries, and popular hagiographical tradition attributed many of Bārbak’s conquest to one of this latter group, the warrio…

b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib , Abū Muḥammad, Companion and paternal cousin of the Prophet Muḥammad and younger brother of the famed scholar and reciter of traditions ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAbbās [ q.v.], born in the year of the Hid̲j̲ra , died in the reign of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya or in 85/704 or in 87/706. He was further related to the Prophet in that his mother Umm al-Faḍl bt. al-Ḥārit̲h̲ al-Hilāliyya was the sister of Muḥammad’s wife Maymūna [ q.v.] (Ibn Ḳutayba, Maʿārif , ed. ʿUkās̲h̲a, 121, 367; al-Balād̲h̲urī, Ansāb al-as̲h̲rāf , iii, ed. al-Dūrī, 447). Unlike his brother,…

, Arabic orthography Ḳūn, a Turkish tribe of Inner Asia known in the pre-Mongol period, but only in a shadowy fashion. The earliest mention of the Ḳun is in Bīrūnī’s K. al-Tafhīm (420/1029), ed. R. R. Wright, London 1934, 145, and he places them in the Sixth Clime, in the territory of the eastern Turks between the Ḳāy and the K̲h̲irkīz [see ḳāyi̊ and ḳi̊rgi̊z ]. The tribe is not, however, mentioned in Bīrūnī’s al-Ḳānūn al-Masʿūdī ( pace Pelliot, À propos des Comans , in JA, Ser. 11, Vol. xv [1920], 134-5). Nor are the Ḳun given in Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī (who does however deal with the ot…

(p.), lit. “head [of] affairs”, a term used in Mug̲h̲al Indian administration and also in the succeeding British Indian domination of the subcontinent. 1. In the structure of Mug̲h̲al provincial government, as elaborated under the Emperor Akbar [ q.v.] in 989/1580, there was a hierarchy of the ṣūba [ q.v.] or province, under the ṣūbadār [ q.v.] (also called sipāhsālār , nāẓim and ṣāḥib-i ṣūba ); the sarkār , or district, under the fawd̲j̲dar [ q.v.], who combined both administrative and military functions, corresponding to the two separate officials of British India, t…

(p.), the NP form of MP S̲h̲āhpūr “king’s ¶ son”, usually Arabised as S̲h̲ābūr, Sābūr, Syriac S̲h̲ābhōr, Greek Σαπώρης or Σαβουρ (see Justi, Iranisches Mamenbuch , 284 ff.), the name of various monarchs of the Sāsānid dynasty in pre-Islamic Persia. For the detailed history of their reigns, see sāsānids . Here, only such aspects as impinged on the Arabs will be noted. S̲h̲āpūr I, son of Ardas̲h̲īr Pāpakān (r. 239 or 241 to 270 or 273) is known in Arabic sources as S̲h̲āpūr al-D̲j̲unūd “S̲h̲. of the armies” (e.g. in al-Ṭabarī, i, 824, tr. Nöldeke, Gesch . der Perser und Amber …