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Abū l-Sāj Dīwdād b. Dīwdast (d. 266/879) was a commander under ʿAbbāsid caliphs and progenitor of a short-lived line of Sājid governors in Azerbaijan (r. 276–317/889–929). He was born at an unknown date in the early-third/ninth century and died in Rabīʿ II 266/December 879. His Iranian names and those of his father indicate the probable origin of the family in Sogdia, or possibly, as Ibn Ḥawqal states, in the adjacent region of Ushrūsana ( K. ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. J. H. Kramers (Leiden 1938–9), 2:506; trans. Kramers and Wiet, 2:484; cf. Barthol'd, 169, and Minorsky, 111). G…

ʿAmīd , literally “mainstay, support,” was a title of high civilian dignitaries, such as secretaries, treasurers, and wazīrs. It appears in fourth/tenth century ʿAbbāsid administrative contexts, when, according to the historian ʿArīb b. Saʿīd al-Qurṭubī (d. c. 370/980), al-Ḥusayn b. al-Qāsim (in office 319–20/931–2), the wazīr of al-Muqtadir (d. 320/932), appears with the laqab or honorific of ʿAmīd al-Dawla (cited in Dominique Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside (Damascus 1959–60), 2:464). In the early fifth/eleventh century, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan al-Rūdhbārī, a wazīr of the Fā…

Bahrām Shāh b. Masʿūd (III) b. Ibrāhīm, Abū l-Muẓaffar Yamīn al-Dawla wa-Amīr al-Milla (d. c.552/1157), was a Ghaznawid sultan who reigned in eastern Afghanistan and northwestern India 511–45/1117–50 and c. 547–52/1152–7. Sultan Masʿūd III (d. 508/1115) left numerous sons, and on his death there was a struggle for power amongst rival contenders. The designated heir, his second son Shīrzād, reigned only one year and was then overthrown and killed in 509/1116 by his brother Malik Arslān, or Arslān Shāh (r. 509–11/1116–8), Masʿū…

Balāsāghūn, a town of mediaeval Central Asia (also spelt Balāsāqūn; known by the Turks as Quz Ordu or Quz Ulus (encampment or territory of the Ghuzz)), was the chief centre in early Islamic times of “the land of the seven rivers” (Turkish, Yeti Su; Russian, Semirechye). (See Barthold, Zwölf Vorlesungen, 81.) It was probably founded by Sogdian merchants whose trade routes took them into the steppes. Early Islamic sources on the Turks locate it here in the Çu river valley, but only the geographer al-Maqdisī (ed. de Goeje (Leiden 1906), 275) give…

Alptekin (Alptegīn, d. 352/963) was a Turkish ghulām, or military slave commander, of the Sāmānids of Transoxania, who founded a centre of Turkish power in eastern Afghanistan that subsequently developed into the Ghaznavid state. (Alptigin (Turk.) literally means “hero prince”; however, by the fourth/tenth century, the second element, tigin, had undergone a downward social shift and was commonly found in the names of slaves.) Nothing is known of Alptekin’s origins, but it appears that he had been purchased as a slave from Inner Asia and entered the Sāmānid army as a ghulām of Amīr Aḥm…

Akhlāṭ, or Khilāṭ (Greek Khleat, Armenian Khlatʿ)—modern-day Hilat in the Turkish Republic—is a town in eastern Anatolia situated on the northwestern shore of Lake Van (38o 45'N., 42o 28'E.). Its history probably goes back to pre-Christian times and the Khald people of the Urartian kingdom. One of the caliph ʿUmar’s (r. 12–23/634–44) commanders, ʿIyāḍ b. Ghanm (d. 20/641), made a peace treaty with the people of Akhlāṭ in 20/641. Over the next four centuries, it fell administratively within the province of Armenia/Armīniya and was ruled at …

Abū Saʿīd b. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Maḥmūd Gardīzī (fl. first half of the fifth/eleventh century) is important as an historian of the eastern Islamic world, in particular, for the first four centuries or so of Islam. His life and career are very obscure, with neither his birth nor death dates known. His family presumably came from Gardīz and the region of Zamīndāwar in eastern Afghanistan. He probably held some function at the Ghaznavid court or in the bureaucracy; the title of his book, the Zayn al-akhbār (“Ornament of histories”) seems to be an allusion to the laqab (honorific) of th…

Nāʾīn (Nāyin) is a small town (lat. N 32°52′ long. E 53°05′, elev. 1,408 metres) on the southwestern edge of the Great Desert of central Iran, on the road connecting Yazd with Isfahan and Qum. The town, known for its large citadel and its congregational mosque, seems to have had a pre-Islamic history, but nothing is known of it. The mediaeval Islamic geographers place it in the sardsīr (cooler upland regions) and describe it as located administratively within Fārs but as dependent on either Yazd or Isfahan. According to Mustawfī (69, trans. 77), its citadel, wh…

province of Iran located between Fars and Sistan va Balučestān; also the name of its principal city and capital.A version of this article is available in printVolume XVI, Fascicle 3, pp. 246-315 KERMAN (Kermān), a province in southeastern Iran; also the name of one of its sub-provinces as well as that of its principal city and capital.KERMAN i. Geography Physical geography. Kerman province is situated in southeast Iran, to the southwest of the Kavir-e Lut (see DESERT). Covering an area of 182,000 km2 (70,000 square miles), Kerman is the largest province in Persia, constitutin…

an Islamic dynasty of Turkish slave origin 977-1186, which in its heyday ruled in the eastern Iranian lands, briefly as far west as Ray and Jebāl; for a while in certain regions north of the Oxus, most notably, in Kᵛārazm; and in Baluchistan and in northwestern India.A version of this article is available in printVolume X, Fascicle 6, pp. 578-583 GHAZNAVIDS, an Islamic dynasty of Turkish slave origin (366-582/977-1186), which in its heyday ruled in the eastern Iranian lands, briefly as far west as Ray and Jebāl; for a while in certain regions north of th…

Name of (1) a small town in northern Fārs province, and (2) a medieval town near the northern shore of Lake Baḵtegān in Fārs.A version of this article is available in printVolume I, Fascicle 1, pp. 51i. Town in Northern FārsThe name of a small town in northern Fārs province, lying to the northeast of the chaîne magistrale of the Zagros at an altitude of 2,011 m/6,200 ft in 52°40 ′ east longitude and 31°11 ′ north latitude. It is on the easterly (formally the winter, now the all-weather) main Isfahan-Shiraz highway, 204 km from the former and 280 km fr…

region on the lower reaches of the Oxus (Amu Darya) in western Central Asia.A version of this article is available in printVolume V, Fascicle 5, pp. 511-520 CHORASMIA (Gk. Chorasmiē < OPers. (H)uwārazmiš, Av. Xᵛāirizəm, later Ḵᵛārazm [Khwārazm], generally derived from * hwāra-zam/zmī-, either “nourishing land” [Burnouf, p. cviii; Sachau, p. 473; Geiger, p. 29;  Pauly-Wissowa III/2, cols. 2406-8] or “lowland” [Lerch, p. 447; Veselovskiĭ, p. v; Kiepert, no. 60; MacKenzie,  Camb. Hist. Iran III/2, p. 1244; Bogolyubov, p. 370, has suggested “land with good cattle enclo…

“country of the Balās,” designating a region located for the most part south of the lower course of the rivers Kor (Kura) and the Aras (Araxes), bordered on the south by Atropatene and on the east by the Caspian Sea. i. In pre-Islamic times. ii. In Islamic times.A version of this article is available in printVolume III, Fascicle 6, pp. 580-582i. In Pre-Islamic Times The country and its inhabitants. The heart of this country was the dašt i-Bałasakan “Balāsagān plain,” which the Armenian Geography of Pseudo-Moses of Khorene (Adontz, p. 124*) places in Albania and which is …

a baḵš and its town on the southern fringes of the Dašt-e Kavīr.A version of this article is available in printVolume II, Fascicle 1, pp. 2 ANĀRAK, a baḵš and its town on the southern fringes of the Dašt-e Kavīr (33° 20’ north latitude and 53° 35’ east longitude). It lies in a basin fifty miles northeast of Nāʾīn and seventy-seven miles north of Ardestān, with the low range of the Kūh-e Āšīn to its southwest. It does not seem to be mentioned by the classical Arabic and Persian geographers. Qanāts provide irrigation for a certain amount of cereal cultivation, and carpet weaving is a l…

(“The marvels of created things”), the name of a genre of classical Islamic literature and, in particular, of a work by Zakarīyāʾ b. Moḥammad Qazvīnī.A version of this article is available in printVolume I, Fascicle 7, pp. 696-699i. Arabic WorksWorks of this sort form part of a general interest by Muslim scholars in the monuments and buildings of classical antiquity, whether of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Persia; in physical and topographical phenomena, such as unusual springs and wells, mineral deposits, volcanoes, etc.; and in t…

A version of this article is available in printVolume VI, Fascicle 4, pp. 356-388COURTS AND COURTIERS i. In the Median and Achaemenid periodsAvailable information on the Median and Achaemenid imperial courts is very limited and not entirely reliable. From Herodotus’ report (1.114) of the child Cyrus’ playing at being king it seems that the Median court included bodyguards, messengers, the “king’s eye” (a kind of secret agent; see below), and builders, for it is likely that the game was modeled on the existing court (…

a town and medieval Islamic fortress in eastern Anatolia.A version of this article is available in printVolume I, Fascicle 7, pp. 725-727i. HistoryThe first contact with the Armenian town of Aḵlāṭ was made, according to Balāḏorī ( Fotūḥ, pp. 176, 199), during ʿOmar’s caliphate. In 24/645, during ʿOṯman’s reign, Moʿāwīa, governor of Syria, sent Ḥabīb b. Maslama into Armenia, and the local Armenian princes of the Lake Van region submitted to the Arabs. For the next four centuries, the town was ruled in turn by Arab governors, Armenia…

(Āḏarbāy[e]jān), historical region of northwestern Iran, east of Lake Urmia, since the Achaemenid era.A version of this article is available in printVolume III, Fascicle 2-3, pp. 205-257 AZERBAIJAN (Āḏarbāy[e]jān), historical region of northwestern Iran, east of Lake Urmia, since the Achaemenid era.The name Azerbaijan was also adopted for Arrān, historically an Iranian region, by anti-Russian separatist forces of the area when, on 26 May 1918, they declared its independence and called it the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. To allay …

ASB, “horse” ( equus cabullus, Av. aspa-, Old PerS. asa- and aspa-, Mid. and NPers. asp/b); uses and significance of horses in the Iranian world. A version of this article is available in printVolume II, Fascicle 7, pp. 724-737 ASB, “horse” ( equus cabullus, Av. aspa-, Old PerS. asa- and aspa-, Mid. and NPers. asp/b).i. In Pre-Islamic IranFrom the dawn of history the Iranians have celebrated the horse in their art and in their literature.There were horses closely related to (and also the progenitors of) present-day domesticated horses living in temperate Eurasia in th…

Nishapur (Nišāpur) was, with Balḵ, Marv and Herat, one of the four great cities of the province of Khorasan. It flourished in Sasanid and early Islamic times, but after the devastations of the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, subsided into a more modest role until it revived in the 20th century. i. Historical Geography and History to the Beginning of the 20th CenturyNishapur (Nišāpur) was, with Balḵ, Marv and Herat, one of the four great cities of the province of Khorasan. It flourished in Sasanid and early Islamic times, but after the devastations of …