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Biñbas̲h̲i̊

(326 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, ‘head of a thousand’, a Turkish military rank. The word appears at an early date among the Western Turks, and is already used in connexion with the military reorganisation said to have been made by Ork̲h̲ān in 729/1328-9 ( e.g., Saʿd al-Dīn, Tād̲j̲ al-Tawārīk̲h̲ , i, 40— ‘onbas̲h̲i̊s , yüzbas̲h̲i̊s , and biñbas̲h̲i̊s were appointed to them ...’). In the form miñbas̲h̲i̊ the term also occurs among the Eastern Turks, and is used, for example, of a rank in the Ṣafawid forces in Persia (V. Minorsky, Tad̲h̲kirat al-Mulūk , London 1943, 36, 74, 155). The title miñ-begi , wi…

al-ʿAyyās̲h̲ī

(192 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, abu ’l-naṣr muḥammad b. masʿūd b. muḥammad b. ʿayyās̲h̲ , a S̲h̲īʿite writer of the 3rd/9th century. He was a native of Samarḳand, and was said to have been descended from the tribe of Tamīm. Originally a Sunnī, he was converted while still young to S̲h̲īʿism, and studied under the disciples of ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan b. Faḍḍāl (d. 224/839-al-Ṭūsī 93) and of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Ḵh̲ālid al-Ṭayālisī (al-Astarābādī, 211). He spent his patrimony of over 300,000 dīnārs on scholarship and…

Ḥukūma

(18,623 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B. | Ahmad, F. | Lambton, A.K.S. | Vatikiotis, P.J. | Tourneau, R. le | Et al.
, in modern Arabic “government”. Like many political neologisms in Islamic languages, the word seems to have been first used in its modern sense in 19th century Turkey, and to have passed from Turkish into Arabic and other languages. Ḥukūma comes from the Arabic root ḥ.k.m , with the meaning “to judge, adjudicate” (cf. the related meaning, dominant in Hebrew and other Semitic languages, of wisdom. See ḥikma ). In classical usage the verbal noun ḥukūma means the act or office of adjudication, of dispensing justice, whether by a sovereign, a judge, …

ʿAyn Ḏj̲ālūt

(947 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, spring of Goliath, mentioned by the mediaeval geographers as a village between Baysān and Nābulus, in the Ḏj̲und of Filasṭīn. It stood at the head of the Wādī Ḏj̲ālūt, and is said to have owed its name to a tradition that by it David slew Goliath (cf. A. S. Marmardji, Textes géographiques arabes sur la Palestine , Paris 1951, 152; G. Le Strange, Palestine, 384, 461). In the chronicles of the Crusaders the neighbourhood is called Tubania or Tubanie. It first achieves mention in ḎJ̲um. II 578/Sept. 1183, when the armies of Saladin and of the Franks camped th…

al-Ḥaramayn

(811 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, the two holy places, usually referring to Mecca and Medina, occasionally, in both Mamlūk and Ottoman usage, to Jerusalem and Hebron [see al-ḥaram al-s̲h̲arīf , al-k̲h̲alīl , al-ḳuds , al-madīna , makka . On the title Servant (or Protector) of the two holy places see k̲h̲ādim al-Ḥaramayn ]. The following article deals with the administration of Ottoman waḳfs in favour of the Holy Places. Such waḳfs were established, from early times by the Ottoman Sultans and by members of their household and court, and in the 9th/15th century were already administered by spe…

ʿArūs Resmi

(383 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, also resm-i ʿarūs, resm-i ʿarūsāne, ʿādet-i ʿarūsī, etc., in earlier times gerdek deg̲h̲eri and gerdek resmi; an Ottoman tax on brides. The standard rates were sixty aspers on girls and forty or thirty on widows and divorcees. There are sometimes lower rates for persons of medium and small means. In some areas the tax is assessed in kind. Non-Muslims are usually registered as paying half-rates, but occasionally double rates. On timar lands the tax was normally payable to the timar-holder, thou…

Tafarnud̲j̲

(497 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
(a.), from Ifrand̲j̲ [ q.v.], lit. “adopting, imitating or aping the manners and customs of the Franks, i.e. the Europeans”. The term was used by the pioneer journalist Ḵh̲alīl al-Ḵh̲ūrī in his satirical novella Way id̲h̲an lastu bi-Ifrand̲j̲ī (“Alas then, I am not a European”), published in the magazine Ḥadīḳat al-Ak̲h̲bār in 1860, and may be older. The Turkish alafranga [ lik ], from Italian alla franca, and the Persian g̲h̲arbzada [ ], literally “West-struck[ness]”, convey the same meaning. The latter term has been variously rendered as “Westosis” and “Westoxication”. During the…

Ḏj̲umhūriyya

(1,646 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, in Turkish d̲j̲ūmhūriyyet , republic, also republicanism, a term coined in Turkey in the late 18th century from the Arabic d̲j̲umhūr , meaning the crowd, mass, or generality of the people, and first used in connexion with the first French Republic. In classical Arabic, as for example in Arabic versions and discussions of Greek political writings, the usual equivalent of the Greek πολιτεία or Latin res publica, i.e., polity or commonweal, was madīna ; thus, the ‘democratic polity’ of Plato’s classification is called, by Fārābī and others, madīna d̲j̲amāʿiyya (Fārābī, Arāʾ ahl al-madī…

Ifrand̲j̲

(2,995 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B. | Hopkins, J.F.P.
or Firand̲j̲ , the Arabic term for the Franks. This name, which probably reached the Muslims via the Byzantines, was originally used of the inhabitants of the empire of Charlemagne, and later extended to Europeans in general. In medieval times it was not normally applied to the Spanish Christians [see andalus , d̲j̲illīḳiyya and below], the Slavs [see ṣaḳāliba ] or the Vikings [see mad̲j̲ūs ii], but otherwise was used fairly broadly of continental Europe and the British Isles. The land of the Franks was called ifrand̲j̲a (Persian and Turkish Firangistān ). The earliest Muslim notions o…

Di̇lsi̇z

(371 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, in Turkish tongueless, the name given to the deaf mutes employed in the inside service ¶ ( enderūn ) of the Ottoman palace, and for a while also at the Sublime Porte. They were also called by the Persian term bīzabārī , with the same meaning. They were established in the palace from the time of Meḥemmed II to the end of the Sultanate. Information about their numbers varies. According to ʿAṭāʾ, three to five of them were attached to each chamber ( Kog̲h̲us̲h̲ ); Rycaut speaks of ‘about forty’. A document of the time of Muṣṭafā II (d. 1115/1703), cited by U…

ʿĀs̲h̲iḳ

(282 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, an Arabic word meaning lover, frequently in the mystical sense. Among the Anatolian and Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ānī Turks, from the late 9th/15th or 10th/16th century, it is used of a class of wandering poet-minstrels, who sang and recited at public gatherings. Their repertoire included religious and erotic songs, elegies and heroic narratives. At first they followed the syllabic prosody of the popular poets, but later were subjected to Persian influence, both directly and through the Persian-influenced…

Daftar

(4,995 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, a stitched or bound booklet, or register, more especially an account or letter-book used in administrative offices. The word derives ultimately from the Greek διφθέρα “hide”, and hence prepared hide for writing. It was already used in ancient Greek in the sense of parchment or, more generally, writing materials. In the 5th century B.C. Herodotus (v, 58) remarks that the lonians, like certain Barbarians of his own day, had formerly written on skins, and still applied the term diphthera to papyrus rolls; in the 4th Ctesias ( in Diodorus Siculus ii, 32; cf. A. Christensen, Heltedigtning og …

Čes̲h̲mīzāde

(199 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Muṣṭafā Ras̲h̲īd , Ottoman historian and poet, one of a family of ʿulamāʾ founded by the Ḳāḍīʿasker of Rumelia, Čes̲h̲mī Meḥmed Efendi (d. 1044/1634) A grandson of the S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Islām Meḥmed Ṣāliḥ Efendi, and the son of a ḳāḍī in the Ḥid̲j̲āz, he entered the ʿIlmiyye profession, and held various legal and teaching posts. After the resignation of the Imperial historiographer Meḥmed Ḥākim Efendi [ q.v.], he was appointed to this office, which he held for a year and a half. He then returned to his teaching career, which culminated in his appointment as müderris at…

Elči

(636 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, a Turkish word meaning envoy, from el or il, country, people, or state, with the occupational suffix či (= d̲j̲i ). In some eastern Turkish texts the word appears to denote the ruler of a land or people; its normal meaning, however, since early times, has been that of envoy or messenger, usually in a diplomatic, sometimes, in mystical literature, in a figurative religious sense. In Ottoman Turkish it became the normal word for an ambassador, together with the more formal Arabic term sefīr . From an early date the Ottoman sultans exchanged occasional diplo…

al-ʿAskarī

(607 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAli b. Muḥammad. the tenth Imām of the Twelver S̲h̲īʿa. He is commonly known as al-Naḳī and al-Hādī. He was the son of the ninth Imām Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Riḍā [ q.v.], and was born in Medīna. Most S̲h̲īʿite authorities give the date of his birth as Rad̲j̲ab 214/Sept. 829, though others say that he was born in Ḏh̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 212 or 213/Feb.-March 828 or 829. His mother, according to some sources, was Umm al-Faḍl, the daughter of al-Maʾmūn; according to others she was a Mag̲h̲ribī Umm Walad called Sumāna or Sūsan. The latter story seems more l…

Babadag̲h̲i̊

(771 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
a town in the Dobrud̲j̲a, now part of Rumania. Its Turkish name refers to the semi-legendary dervish (Baba) Sari̊ Salti̊ḳ, who is said to have led a number of Anatolian Turcomans to the Dobrud̲j̲a in the mid-thirteenth century, and to have settled with them in the neighbourhood of Babadag̲h̲i̊. (On this settlement see Paul Wittek, Yazijiog̲h̲lu ʿAlī on the Christian Turks of the Dobruja , in BSOAS, 1952 xvi, 639 ff.). There are several tombs of Sari̊ Salti̊ḳ in various towns; the most generally accepted is that of Babadag̲h̲i̊. What appears to be the first refer…

Ḥasan Fehmī

(190 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, a Turkish journalist who achieved a brief celebrity in 1909 as editor of the newspaper Serbestī , in which he made violent attacks on the Committee of Union and Progress [see ittiḥād we teraḳḳī ]. His murder on the Galata bridge by an unknown assailant on the night of 6-7 April 1909 (n.s.) was blamed by both the liberals and the Muhammadan Union [see ittiḥād-i muḥammedī ] jon the Committee, and his funeral was made the occasion for hostile demonstrations and speeches. A period of mounting tension followed, culminating in the mutiny of troops of the First Army Corps on 31 March o.s. = 13 April n.s. (…

K̲h̲alaf b. Mulāʿib al-As̲h̲habī

(263 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, with the laḳab sayf al-dawla , ruler of Ḥimṣ and Afāmiya in the late 5th/11th century. He was ¶ accused of various misdeeds, including brigandage, and is said, during a siege of Salamiyya, to have thrown the S̲h̲arīf Ibrāhīm al-Hās̲h̲īmī against the tower from a mangonel. In 483/1090, complaints were sent to the Sultan Maliks̲h̲āh, who ordered his brother Tutus̲h̲, the ruler of Damascus, and other rulers of Syrian cities to proceed against him. A joint expedition captured Ḥimṣ, and K̲h̲alaf was sent in an iron c…

ʿĀsḳalān

(1,173 words)

Author(s): Hartmann, R. | Lewis, B.
, a town on the coast of southern Palestine, one (Hebrew: ʾAs̲h̲ḳelōn) of the five Philistine towns known to us from the Old Testament; in the Roman period, as oppidum Ascalo liberum , it was (according to Schrürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu 2, ii, 65-7) "a flourishing Hellenistic town famous for its cults and festal games" (Dercetis-Aphrodite-shrine); in the Christian period a bishop’s see (tomb of the tres fratres martyres Aegyptii ). ʿAsḳalān was one of the last towns of Palestine to fall into the hands of the Muslims. It was taken şulḥ an by Muʿāwiya shortly aft…

D̲j̲ānīkli Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲i ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a

(459 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Ottoman soldier and founder of a Derebey [ q.v.] family. He was born in Istanbul in 1133/1720-21, the son of Aḥmed Ag̲h̲a, a ḳapi̊d̲j̲i̊-bas̲h̲i̊ at the Imperial palace. As a youth he accompanied his elder brother Suleymān Pas̲h̲a to D̲j̲ānīk, where he eventually succeeded him as ruler with the title, customary among the autonomous derebeys, of muḥaṣṣil [ q.v.]. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1182/1768-1188/1774. he held a number of military commands. Serving first in Georgia, he was appointed in D̲j̲umādā II 1183/September-October 1769 to the staff …
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