Search

(a.), an administrative-military term in the mediaeval eastern Islamic world. From the end of the 3rd/9th century, the term, which in a general sense meant a body of armed men, sufficing for the guarding and control of a town or district on the part of the sultan, is occasionally found in the specific sense of the s̲h̲urṭa [ q.v.] (Tyan, L’organisation judicaire en pays d’Islam , Paris 1938-43, ii, 366, n. 5). As the designation for a military governor of a town or province, the term s̲h̲iḥna belongs primarily to the period of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs, though Ab…

, a town and district north-west of Tehran and south of Gīlān. The town is situated in 36° 15 N. and 50° E., at a height of 4,165 ft. above sea level, about 90 miles from Tehran, on the edge of a wide alluvial plain with mountains about five miles to the north. It stands on the site of an ancient city built by S̲h̲āpūr II, which according to tradition was in turn on the site of a city built by S̲h̲āpūr b. Ardas̲h̲īr (Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī, Taʾrīk̲h̲-i guzīda , ed. E. G. Browne and R. A. Nicholson, 1910-13, 830, French tr. Barbier de Meynard, Description historique de la ville de Kazvin , in JA (1857)). Its po…

(a.), pasture. 1. In nomadic Arab life. The word marʿā is used only twice in the Ḳurʾān, where it has the purpose of praising the divine power (LXXIX, 31, and LXXXVII,4). In ḥadīt̲h̲ there are also two uses of this substantive to be noted (cf. Wensinck, Concordance ); one of them touches incidentally on the problem of the exploitation of pastures, but ḥadīt̲h̲ is more explicit with reference to kalaʾ , dry and green forage. In fact, a tradition asserts that “the Muslims are united ( s̲h̲urakāʾ ) in three things: water, forage and fire”; it is the principle of…

(a), official court ceremonies, both processional and non-processional. The whole range of ceremonial, including protocol and etiquette, is called also

(a) Woman. 1. In the Arab world. For a long time, the problem of woman has been avoided or dealt with only partially or in a biased way, but now a general twinge of conscience has brought it to the focus of our attention. Not just one but many different problems confront the Arab woman and affect how she is seen by society. There is the legal aspect, defining the precise relationship between divine and human law; there is the collection of “distorted pictures” (the expression used by Etiemble ¶ with which literature in particular presents the “myth” of woman; and there is feminine b…

, a town and province in western Persia. The province is situated between lat. 34° N. and 35° N. long. 44° 5′ to 48° 0′ E. It lies to the east and north of ʿIrāḳ and Lurīstān-i Kūčik (or Pus̲h̲t-i Kūh) and to the south and west of Kurdistān and Asadābād. In the early 20th century the province was divided into nineteen bulūks . These were Bālādih, Wastām, Miyān Darband or Bīlawar, Pus̲h̲t-i Darband or Bālā Darband, Dīnawar, Kuliyāʾī Saḥna, Kanguwār, Asadābād, Harsīn, Čamčamāl, Durū Faramān, Māhīdas̲h̲t, Hārūnābād, Gūrān, ¶ Kirind, Zuhāb, Aywān and Hulaylān (Government of India, Gen

, agriculture. Falḥ , the act of cleaving and cutting, when applied to the soil has the meaning of “to break up in order to cultivate”, or “to plough”. Fallāḥ “ploughman”, filāḥa “ploughing”. But from pre-Islamic times the word filāḥa has assumed a wider meaning to denote the occupation of husbandry, agriculture. In this sense it is synonymous with zirāʿa , to which the ancients preferred filāḥa (all the earlier writers called their works on agriculture Kitāb al-Filāḥa ). At the present time this latter word is very widely used in North Africa, both …

( kačar “marching quickly”, cf. Sulaymān Efendī, Lug̲h̲at-i Čag̲h̲atai , Istanbul 1298, 214; P. Pelliot, Notes sur l’histoire de la horde d’or, Paris 1950, 203-4), a Turcoman tribe, to which the Ḳād̲j̲ār dynasty of Persia belonged; also a village in the Lītkūh district of Āmul [ q.v.]…

is used to designate both the desc…

, Persian statesman, was the third son of Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Hās̲h̲im, the headman, or kadk̲h̲udā-bās̲h̲ī , of the Ḥaydarīk̲h̲āna quarters of S̲h̲īrāz in the reign of Nādir S̲h̲āh. His ancestors were said to have been converts to Islam from Judaism. One of them emigrated from Ḳazwīn to Iṣfahān and is said to have married into the family of Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Qawām al-Dīn S̲h̲īrāzī. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Maḥmūd ʿAlī, Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ibrāhīm’s grandfather, was a wealthy merchant of S̲h̲īrāz. After the death of Mīrzā Muḥammad, the kalāntar of S̲h̲īrāz in 1200/1786, D̲j̲aʿfar K̲h̲ān Zand made Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ibrāhīm kal…