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, a large river in Central Asia. It is formed by the two rivers Tekes and Kunges, which rise on the northern slopes of the T’ien-Shan Mts.; the united stream of the Ili then flows for some 950 kms. across the northern part of the region known in mediaeval times as “the land of the seven rivers”, Yeti-su or Semirečye, into Lake Balk̲h̲as̲h̲. The lower course of the Ili falls within the Soviet Kazakhstan Republic, whilst the eastern part of the Ili river system belongs to the Chinese Sinkiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Ili is first mentioned in the history of the Chinese T’ang dynast…

, Takīn (t.), in the oldest known Turkish tégin , an ancient Turkish title with the original meaning of “prince”. In the early Türk empire, it denoted the legitimate son or grandson of the Supreme Ḳag̲h̲an. It appears as such in the Ork̲h̲on [ q.v.] inscriptions, one of which is known as that of Kül Tigin (literally “the younger brother [of Elteris̲h̲ Ḳag̲h̲an], the crown prince”), cf. Talât Tekin, A grammar of Orkhon Turkic , Bloomington 1968, 237. G. Doerfer ( Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen , Wiesbaden 1963-7, ii, 533-41, no. 922) and Sir Gerard Clauson ( A dictionary o…

or Banū rawwād , a minor dynasty of northwestern Persia which flourished during the period which Minorsky characterised as the “Iranian intermezzo” between the decline of Arab power there and the incoming of Turkish peoples like the Sald̲j̲ūḳs, essentially during the 4th-5th/10th-11th centuries. Although the Daylamīs [see daylam ] were the most prominent in this upsurge of northern Persian mountain peoples, the part of other races like the Kurds was not negligible. The Rawwādids (the form “Rawād” later becomes common in …

, Banū , a family of officials in caliphal service, especially noted as secretaries and viziers to the ʿAbbāsids during the 3rd/9th and early 4th/10th centuries. The majority of sources state that the family came from Wāsiṭ and were of Nestorian Christian origin before converting to Islam, nevertheless claiming a pure Arabic origin going back to the Yemeni tribe of Balḥārit̲h̲ of Nad̲j̲rān. The Wahbīs thus belong to the tradition of servants of the caliphs with Nestorian backgrounds who were prominent in the administrations of the 3rd/9th century (cf. L. Massignon, La politique islamo-c…

(a.), the verbal noun of the form II verb ḥaṣṣala “to collect together, acquire”. In Indo-Muslim usage, this term—taken over from previous régimes— denoted in the British Indian provinces of Bombay, Madras and the United Provinces the collection of revenue and, thence, the administrative area from which this taxation was collected. Thus ¶ in the above-mentioned provinces, the taḥṣīl was a subdivision of a District ( taʿalluḳa , corruptly, tālūḳ ) with an area of up to 600 square miles. Hence in size, a taḥṣīl came between the pargana [ q.v.] and the sarkār of the Mug̲h̲al empire [see mug̲h̲al…

(p.), lit. “upper frontier, boundary”, a general geographical term specifically applied in southeastern Persia to the mountain region in the modern Persian province of Balūčistān and Sīstān adjoining the frontier with Pākistānī Balūčistān. Its mountain chains run generally from northwest to southeast, and include the volcanic (still partially active) Kūh-i Taftān (4,042 m/13,262 feet), the highest point, but there are also east-west-running outliers, such as the Kūh-i Bazmān (3,489 m/11,478 feet) which connects the Sarḥadd with the D̲j̲abal Bāriz [ q.v. in Suppl.]. The only…

b. Malik S̲h̲āh , ʿAḍud al-Dawla Abu ’l-Ḥārit̲h̲ Aḥmad, Sald̲j̲ūḳ malik in K̲h̲urāsān 490-511/1097-1118 and then supreme sultan of the Great Saldjuḳs, ruling K̲h̲urāsān and northern Persia till his death in 552/1157; he accordingly ruled for some 60 years. The name Sand̲j̲ar, which occurs for other members of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family and elsewhere in the Turkish world, seems to mean in Turkish “he who pierces, thrusts”, cf. M.Th. Houtsma, Ein türkisch-arabisches Glossar , Leiden 1894, text 29, glossary 78, 80, and the detailed discussion by P. Pelliot, in Oeuvres posthumes, ii, Paris 19…

, Abū Ḥāzim al-Mak̲h̲zūmī, called al-Aʿrad̲j̲ “the Lame” (d. ca. 140/757), traditionist and judge in Medina, regarded as a protein Ṣūfī mystic; he was of Persian origin. Various aphorisms ( ḥikam ) and elegant sayings of his are preserved in citations, and also his answers to questions put to him by the Umayyad caliph Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik [ q.v.]; also, a collection of his masāʾil [see al-masāʾil wa ’l-ad̲j̲wiba ] is extant in manuscript. (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography Zirikli, Aʿlām, iii, 171-2 Sezgin, GAS, i, 634-5 R. Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion. Eine Studie zum Umayyaden…

, the mountain massif of central Afg̲h̲ānistān, being the westwards and southwards extension of the Pamirs “knot” and the Hindū Kus̲h̲ [ q.v.] of north-eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān. The name Kūh-i Bābā is properly given to the east-west chaîne magistrale running westwards from Kābul and lying to the south of the upper Herī Rūd, with outliers running southwards and westwards through the regions of the G̲h̲ōrāt and Hazārad̲j̲āt [see g̲h̲ūr and hazārad̲j̲āt in Suppl.] between such river valleys as those of the Helmand, Arg̲h̲andāb and Tarnak. On the northern side of the He…

, Ḥamza b. Yūsuf al-Ḳuras̲h̲ī al-D̲j̲urd̲j̲ānī. Abu ’l-Ḳāsim (b. at an unknown date towards the middle of the 4th/10th century, d. 427/1038 at Nīs̲h̲āpūr), traditionist and legal scholar. A native of Gurgān [ q.v.] in the Caspian coastlands, where he was a k̲h̲aṭīb and preacher, his major work, and apparently the sole surviving one, is his Taʾrīk̲h̲ D̲j̲urd̲j̲ān or Kitāb Maʿrifat ʿulamāʾ ahl D̲j̲urd̲j̲ān , essentially a rid̲j̲āl [ q.v.] work devoted to the scholars and muḥaddit̲h̲ūn of his native province, to which is prefixed (ed. Ḥaydarābād 1369/…

, the name of a wadi and of a settlement in western Arabia, and also of a settlement in northern Arabia. 1. The wadi. This runs in a northeasterly direction from the mountains of the Sarāt [ q.v.] to the south of al-Ṭāʾif and past the setdement of Turaba, when it becomes the Wādī Ṣubayʿ. It flows through a region of ḥarras [ q.v.] through the Ṣubayʿ [ q.v.] country and disappears into the ʿArḳ al-Ṣubayʿ of Nad̲j̲d. The mediaeval Islamic geographers describe it as being three nights’ journey long and as having date palms, trees, fruits and cultivation. They place…

(a.), the verbal noun of a form II verb ḳassaṭa “to distribute”, especially used as a term of early Islamic financial administration. It denoted the allocation or distribution amongst the taxpayers of the global amount of taxation due. The synonyms ḳasṭ/ḳisṭ are also found. The term could also denote the total amount of taxation due or the instalments by which it was paid. See the references given by F. Løkkegaard, Islamic taxation in the classic period, with special reference to circumstances in Iraq , Copenhagen 1950, 127, and also H.F. Amedroz, Abbasid administration in its decay, from …

, modern form Mezzé, a village lying, according to the mediaeval geographers, half-a-farsak̲h̲ (i.e. about 4 km./2½ miles) to the west of Damascus [see dimas̲h̲ḳ ], described as extensive, populous and agriculturally rich, being irrigated by one of the streams of the Baradā river. It was also known as Mizzat Kalb, having been in the Umayyad period a locality heavily settled by South Arabian, Kalbī supporters of the Sufyānids, and being also the spot where the Companion of the Prophet Diḥya b. K̲h̲alīfa al-Kalbī was reputedly buried (al-Harawī, Ziyārāt , 11/27).…

, the site of a battle about 617 A.D. between most sections of the two Medinan tribes of Aws and Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲. It lay in the south-eastern quarter of the Medinan oasis in the territory of the Banū Ḳurayẓa. The battle was the climax of a series of internal conflicts. The Aws, whose position had deteriorated, were joined by the two chief Jewish tribes, Ḳurayẓa and al-Naḍīr, and by nomads of Muzayna; their leader was Ḥuḍayr b. Simāk. The opposing leader ʿAmr b. al-Nuʿmān of Bayāḍa was supported by most of the Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲, and by some nomadic D̲j̲uhayna and As̲h̲d̲j̲aʿ, but ʿAbd Allāh b. Ubayy [ q.v.] a…

, Abū Manṣūr , the author of a history in Arabic, the Taʾrīk̲h̲ G̲h̲urar al-siyar or al-G̲h̲urar fī siyar al-mulūk wa-ak̲h̲bārihim , which he dedicated to the G̲h̲aznawid Abu ’l-Muẓaffar Naṣr b. Sebüktigin, governor of K̲h̲urāsān, d. 412/1021. According to Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa, tr. Flügel, iv, 319 no. 8592, this universal history comprised four volumes, going from the Creation to Mahmud of G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] in the author’s own time. From the first part, H. Zotenberg published a text and French translation, Histoire des rois de Perse , Paris 1900. It is espec…

, a district and town of K̲h̲urāsān. The town (modern Turbat-i Ḥaydarī or Ḥaydariyya, see below) is some 140 km/88 miles south of Mas̲h̲had on the road to Gunābād and lies at an altitude of approximately 1,280/4,200 feet (lat. 35° 16’ N., long. 59° 08’ E.). Al-Muḳaddasī, 319 n. a, describes it as being just a rural district with no town, but Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 128, names its ḳaṣaba as Ruk̲h̲k̲h̲ or Rīk̲h̲. In Il-K̲h̲ānid times, the town of Zāwa seems to have flourished, with 50 villages dependent on it, producing silk and fruits (Mustawfī, Nuzha , ed. Le St…

, the putative title borne by a line of rulers in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān in pre- and early Islamic times, who opposed the extension of Muslim arms into their region for some two centuries. In the Arabic historical texts, there is uncertainty about the vocalisation of the name, with forms like *Rutbīl and *Ratbīl, etc. given. The origin of the title is quite obscure. Marquart was probably correct in seeing in it a theophoric name which included the element Zūn [ q.v.] or Z̲h̲ūn, the name of the god mentioned in the Arabic sources as worshipped in the region of Zamīndāwar [ q.v.]; but other, less …

, Ningrahār , the name of the province of modern Afg̲h̲ānistān (post-1964 administrative organisation) which covers essentially the basin of the middle Kābul River from the Pakistan frontier near Land́ī Kōtal to a short distance to the west of the province’s administrative centre, D̲j̲alālābād [ q.v. in Suppl.] and the mountain regions on each bank. Before Lag̲h̲mān and Kunaŕ provinces were carved out from it in 1964, Nangrahār province extended northwards to include Nūristān (L. Dupree, Afghanistan , Princeton 1973, 156-7). The name itself goes back to the pre-Islamic perio…

, a town of northern Afg̲h̲ānistān lying in the lowland region to the south of the upper Oxus at an altitude of 1,400 ft./450 m. and in lat. 36° 42′ N. and long. 67° 41′ E.; it is situated some 30 miles/50 km. to the east of modern Mazār-i S̲h̲arīf and, according to the mediaeval Islamic geographers, two marḥala s or 10 farsak̲h̲ s to the east of Balk̲h̲ [ q.v.]. It further lies on the K̲h̲ulm River which flows down a narrow valley from the Hindu Kus̲h̲ past the town of Haybak and then K̲h̲ulm itself until it peters out short of the Oxus. It is possible that this river is the Artamis of the Greek geographers. T…

, modern Kütahya , a town of north-western Anatolia, lying at an altitude of 3,251 feet/991 m. in lat. 39° 25′ north and long. 29° 59′ east. It is in the south-western corner of the well-cultivated plain of the Porsuk Çay, which eventually runs into the Sakarya river; the old town nestles on the slopes of the hill called ʿAd̲j̲em Dag̲h̲, which is crowned by the ruined citadel. In classical times it was Cotyaeum, the city of Cotys, and the largest city of Phrygia Salutaris, an early centre of Christianity and then in Byzantine times the seat of an archbishopric. Kutāhiya was taken by the Turkme…

or Muʾnis al-K̲h̲āzin , commander of the ʿAbbāsids, prominent during the caliphates of al-Muʿtaḍid, al-Muktafī and al-Muḳtadir [ q.vv.], i.e. the end of the 3rd/9th and the opening of the 4th/10th centuries. He was called “the stallion” ( al-faḥl ) to distinguish him from his more celebrated contemporary Muʾnis al-K̲h̲ādim (“the eunuch”) [see muʾnis al-muẓaffar ]. Muʾnis al-Faḥl was ṣāḥib al-ḥaras or commander of the guard for al-Muʿtaḍid, and was sent by the caliph on various punitive expeditions against unruly Bedouin and other re…

, Persian author of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ period who wrote a local history and topographical account of his native province Fārs, the Fārs-nāma . Nothing is known of him save what can be gleaned from his book, nor is the exact form of his name known, but his ancestors came from Balk̲h̲. His grandfather was mustawfī or accountant for Fārs under Berk-yaruḳ b. Malik S̲h̲āh’s governor there, the Atabeg Rukn al-Dawla or Nad̲j̲m al-Dawla Ḵh̲umārtigin, and Ibn al-Balk̲h̲ī acquired his extensive local knowledge of Fārs through accompanying hi…

, conventionally Irtysh, a river of Siberia and the main left-bank affluent of the Ob [ q.v.]. It rises from glaciers on the southern slopes of the Altai mountains near the modern frontier of the Mongolian Republic and Chinese Turkestan or Sinkiang [ q.v.] through the Zaysan lake into the Kazakhstan Republic, then out of it into the Omsk oblast of the Russian Federation and joins the Ob at Khanty Mansiysk, its complete course being 3,720 km/2,312 miles, the greater part of it navigable. The Irtis̲h̲ is mentioned, as ärtis , in the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions (Kültégin…

, a town of northwestern Persia, situated on the Zand̲j̲ān Rūd, a right-bank affluent of the Safīd Rūd [ q.v.]. It lies on the highway from Tehran and Ḳazwīn to Tabrīz at a distance of 314 km/195 miles from Tehran and 302 km/188 miles from Tabrīz, and at an altitude of 1,625 m/5,330 feet (lat. 36° 40′ N., long. 48° 30′ E.). The mediaeval geographers mostly placed Zand̲j̲ān in D̲j̲ibāl province, usually linking it with Abhar [ q.v.] or Awhar some 80 km/50 miles to its south-east, but they usually stated that it was on the frontier with Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, and some authoriti…

(a.), noun of place from the verb s̲h̲ahida “to witness, be present at” > “be a martyr, s̲h̲ahīd’ ‘ (a post-Ḳurʾānic semantic development which Goldziher thought was influenced by Eastern Christian Syriac parallel usage; see Muh . Studien , ii, 387-9, Eng. tr. ii, 350-2). In post-Ḳurʾānic times also, the noun mas̲h̲had developed from its designating any sacred place, not necessarily having a construction associated with it, but often in fact a tomb in general, the burial place of an earlier prophet, saint or forerunner of Muḥammad or of any Muslim who had had pronounced over him the s̲h̲ahād…

, Indo-Muslim commander and Nawwāb [ q.v.] of Bengal 1760-4, died in 1777. ¶ Mīr Ḳāsim’s rise to power was an episode in the British East Indian Company’s extension of power in eastern India in the latter decades of the 18th century. Since the Nawwāb of Bengal Mīr D̲j̲aʿfar [see d̲j̲aʿfar , mīr ] was unable to fulfill financial obligations contracted to the Company, he was in October 1760 deposed in favour of his son-in-law Mīr Ḳāsim, who now became Nawwāb but had to cede the districts of Burdwan, Midnapur and Chittagong to the British. However, he now attempted to build up…

, Sāsānid emperor 591-628, and the last great ruler of this dynasty before the invading Arabs overthrew the Persian empire. The MP name Parwīz “victorious” is explained in al-Ṭabarī, i, 995, 1065, as al-muẓaffar and al-manṣūr ; the ¶ name was Arabised as Abarwīz (see Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 19). For the main events of his long reign (dominated by the struggles with the Byzantines over the buffer-state Armenia and over control of the Fertile Crescent in general, culminating in the Persian invasion of Egypt in 619, but then the riposte by t…

, a term often used in the sources for Sald̲j̲ūḳ history to designate the partisans and protégés of the great vizier Niẓām al-Mulk [ q.v.], after his death attached to and operating with the sons and descendants of Niẓām al-Mulk. The influence of these partisans was especially notable in the years just after Sultan Malik S̲h̲āh’s death in 485/1092, when they actively promoted the cause of and secured the sultanate for Berk-yaruḳ b. Malik S̲h̲āh [ q.v.] against his infant half-brother Maḥmūd, the candidate of Mālik S̲h̲āh’s widow Terken K̲h̲ātūn and her ally the vizier T…

, Abū Ṭālib Rustam b. Fak̲h̲r al-Dawla ʿAlī , Kahf al-Umma , ruler of the northern Būyid amīrate of Ray and Ḏj̲ibāl (387-420/997-1029). When Fak̲h̲r al-Dawla [ q.v.] died in S̲h̲aʿbān 387/August-September 997, his young son Rustam succeeded him at the age of eight (thus according to the anonymous Mud̲j̲mal al-tawārīk̲h̲ wa ’l-ḳiṣaṣ , ed. Bahār, Tehran 1318/1939, 396, giving Rustam’s birth-date as Rabīʿ II 379/July-August 989, and Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, ed. Beirut, ix, 69, but according to al-Rūd̲h̲rāwarī, in Eclipse of the ʿAbbasid caliphate, iii, 297, and Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, ix, 132, at…

, Tawwaz , a town in the western part of the mediaeval province of Fārs in Persia. It lay on or near the S̲h̲āpūr river midway between Kāzarūn [ q.v.] and the Gulf coastland, but the place fell into ruin by later mediaeval times and its site is no longer known for sure. For further details on the town, see s̲h̲āpūr , river, to whose Bibl. should be added Sir Arnold Wilson, The Persian Gulf , London 1926, 74-5; J. Markwart-G. Messina, A catalogue of the provincial capitals of Ērānsahr , Rome 1931, 94-5; Barthold, An historical geography of Iran , Princeton 1984, 163. (C.E. Bosworth)

, Indo-Muslim historian and stylist whose exact dates of both birth and death are unknown but who flourished in the 11th/17th century under the Mug̲h̲al emperors S̲h̲āh Ḏj̲ahān and Awrangzīb [ q.vv.]. He may have been the younger brother of the historian and littérateur ʿInāyat Allāh Kańbō (d. 1082/1671 [ q.v.]), if Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s reference to this last person, his master and patron, as birādar-i kalān “elder brother” is to be taken literally. Virtually nothing is known of his life, but he was ¶ a government official in Lahore, where his tomb still exists and where in 1079/1…

, cannanore, a port on the Malabar coast of southwestern peninsular India in lat. 11° 521 N. and long. 75° 221 E. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa sailed down this coast in 743/1342, and though he does not mention Kannanūr by name, ¶ it seems that his mention of the powerful ruler of D̲j̲urfattan, whose ships traded with the Persian Gulf, ʿUmān and South Arabia, refers to the local ruler there ( Riḥla , iv, 82-3). Aḥmad b. Mād̲j̲id (wrote ca. 895/1489-90) certainly speaks specifically of the “Bay of Kannanūr” in his account of the Malabar coastline (G. R. Tibbett, Arab navigation in the Indian Ocean before the …

(a.), usual pl. k̲h̲uzzān (the pl. k̲h̲azana is found in the Ḳurʾān in XXXIX, 71, 73, etc. for the angels who guard Paradise and Hell), literally, “he who keeps safe, stores something away”, a term of mediaeval Islamic administration for certain members of the financial departments (on which see bayt al-māl and, for Ottoman times, also k̲h̲azīne ) and also of the chancery. It was used in ʿAbbāsid times, for there was prominent in the early 4th/10th century Muʾnis al-K̲h̲āzin (so-called in the sources to distinguish him from the commander of the guard Muʾnis al-Muẓaffar [ q.v.], an associat…

(a.), literally “the wearers, or bearers, of black”, the name given to the partisans of the ʿAbbāsids at the time of the daʿwas of Abū Muslim al-K̲h̲urāsānī and Abū Salama al-K̲h̲allāl [ q.vv.], apparently from the black banners which these rebels against the Umayyads bore, so that they are described in some sources as the aṣḥāb al-rāyāt al-sawdāʾ . The origins of this use of black are obscure and have been much discussed. In the first place, the use of black may have been simply a mark of rebellion, for the anti-Umayyad rebel in K̲h̲urāsān and Transoxania, al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Surayd̲j̲ [ q.v.], act…

(t.), amongst the early Turks an emblem of royal authority, a standard or a drum (the former being used as a battle-flag and a rallying-point on the battle-field), known from the time of the Türges̲h̲ or Western Turks in Transoxania (see below) and of the Uyg̲h̲urs. 1. In older Turkish usage. The traditional old Turkish standard was a horse’s tail or a bunch of horse hair on a pole, or, in the regions of Inner Asia adjacent to Tibet, the tail of a yak ( ḳuṭās ). A great ruler would be described as having nine tug̲h̲s , the maximum ( toḳuz tug̲h̲lug̲h̲ k̲h̲an ). Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt…

, Turd̲j̲umān (a.), pls. tarād̲j̲im , tarād̲j̲ima , appearing in Ottoman Turkish as Terd̲j̲üman , interpreter. The word is of Aramaic origin, and is familiar in the form Targum for the Aramaic translations or paraphrases or interpretations of the Hebrew Old Testament which came into use when the use of Hebrew as a living, spoken language amongst ordinary people declined. The Arabic term, and the verb tard̲j̲ama “to translate”, was certainly in familiar usage by ʿAbbāsid times. 1. In the Arab lands in mediaeval times. We know of interpreters in the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, some of who…

, the name given in mediaeval Arabic geographical and travel literature to the port of Quilon at the southern extremity of the Malabar coast of southwestern peninsular South India, in ancient and modern Kerala (lat. 8° 53′ N. and long. 76°36′ E.). Quilon early became a centre of the St. Thomas Christians of South India, and is mentioned in a letter of the Nestorian Patriarch Īs̲h̲ūʿyāb of Adiabene (d. 660) to Simon, Metropolitan of Fārs, under the name of Colon and as lacking at that time a settled ministry (Assemanus, Bibliotheca orientalis, iii/2, Rome 1728, 437). The first mention …

, the name of a District and of ¶ its administrative centre, in the western Deccan of India. In British Indian times, these fell within the Bombay Presidency; within the Indian Union, they are now on the southeastern fringe of Mahāras̲h̲tra State. The town (lat. 17° 43′, long. 75° 56′ E.) was an early centre of the Marāt́hās [ q.v.]. In 718/1318 it came finally under the control of the Dihlī Sultans, being governed from Deogīrī or Dawlatābād [ q.v.], then under the Bahmanīs, then oscillating between the ʿĀdil S̲h̲āhīs of Bīd̲j̲āpur and the Niẓām S̲h̲āhīs of Ahmadnagar befo…

, Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad b. Mīkāʾīl (b. towards the end of the 10th century A.D., d. 455/1063), leading figure of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family and, with his brother Čag̲h̲ri̊ Beg Dāwūd [ q.v.], founder of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ Sultanate in Persia and ʿIraḳ. Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l and Čag̲h̲ri̊ must have been born when the Og̲h̲uz tribe [see g̲h̲uzz ] was still in the Central Asian steppes to the north of K̲h̲wārazm and Transoxania, and after their father’s death were apparently brought up in the D̲j̲and [ q.v. in Suppl.] region by their grandfather Sald̲j̲ūḳ b. Duḳāḳ, eponymous founder of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ…

(a., the noun of instrument from wat̲h̲iḳa “to trust, have confidence in”, or wat̲h̲uḳa “to be firm”, in usage the equivalent of the maṣdar mīmī or noun of place and time mawt̲h̲ik ), covenant, agreement, used 25 times in the Ḳurʾān and often linked with its synonym ʿahd [ q.v.]. In a few places, it refers to political compacts (IV, 92/90, 94/92, VIII, 73/72, and cf. the use of ʿāhada in VIII, 58/56), and once to the compact between husband and wife (IV, 25/21), but the majority of usages relate to compacts between God and various members of…

, the leader of a revolt in the Buk̲h̲ārā oasis, one with popular religious and social overtones, against Mongol domination (636/ 1238-9). Maḥmūd was a sieve-maker from the village of Ṭārāb or Tārāb, four farsak̲h̲s from the city of Buk̲h̲ārā on the K̲h̲urāsān road (see al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, ix, 5; Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 4; Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion 3 , 114 n. 9, 117, 132), who led a movement against the financial oppression of the Mongol basḳaḳs or tax-collectors and also, it appears, against local landowners a…

, Ottoman prince and eldest son of Bāyezīd I [ q.v.], ruler in Rumelia and a considerable part of northern and northwestern Anatolia in the confused years after Bāyezīd’s defeat and capture by Tīmūr at the Battle of Ankara in 804/1402, b. ?779/1377, d. 813/1411. He is heard of in 800/1398, when his father sent him against the Aḳ Ḳoyunlu Ḳara Yülük at Sivas, and he fought at Bāyezīd’s side, together with his brothers, at Ankara. He managed to escape to Europe with his retainers by being ferried across the Bosphorus by the Genoese. He had to…

, Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. Ḏj̲arīr b. Yazīd, polymath, whose expertises included tradition and law but who is most famous as the supreme universal historian and Ḳurʾān commentator of the first three or four centuries of Islam, born in the winter of 224-5/839 at Āmul, died at Bag̲h̲dād in 310/923. . 1. Life. It should be noted at the outset that al-Ṭabarī’s own works, in so far as they have been preserved for us, give little hard biographical data, though they often give us leads to his teachers and authorities and help in the evaluation of his per…

, a town of the Tarim basin, Eastern Turkestan, now coming within the Sinkiang/Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People’s republic of China and having in Chinese the (revived) name of So-chʾe/Shache (lat. 38° 27’ N., long. 77° 16’ E., altitude 1,190 m/3,900 feet). Yārkand lies on the river of the same name, which rises in the northern part of the Karakoram mountains near the imperfectly delineated border between Kas̲h̲mīr and China and then flows eastwards to join the Tarim river; with its perennial flow, it is the main source stream of …

, Arab traveller in Central Asia in early ʿAbbāsid times and the only Muslim one who has left us a record of his visit to the capital of the Uyg̲h̲ur Turks (pre-840) on the Ork̲h̲on river [ q.v.] in Mongolia, most probably Ḳarabalg̲h̲asun, the Khara Balghasun of the modern Mongolian Republic. It may be assumed that Tamīm was an Arab, possibly one of those settled within K̲h̲urāsān, and his nisba implies that he had been a fighter for the faith against pagans. He certainly seems to have been a great traveller in the steppes, since he says that he also visited the Turkish Kimäk [ q.v.] and their king…

, ʿAbbāsid army commander who served al-Maʾmūn and al-Muʿtaṣim in the first half of the 3rd/9th century, d. 223/838. Nothing is recorded of his antecedents, but he seems to have been of Ḵh̲urāsānian or Transoxanian Arab stock; at the height of his career, he had a grant of the revenues of the market at Is̲h̲tīk̲h̲ān [ q.v. in Suppl.] near Samarḳand (Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, i, 196). He was originally a partisan of the rebel in Transoxania Rāfiʿ b. al-Layt̲h̲ [ q.v.], during the latter part of Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd’s reign, but went over to the caliphal side in 192/807-8 (al-Ṭa…

, a settlement in the Semirečye region of Central Asia [see yeti su ] mentioned in the history of the Early Turks and their connections with the adjacent Islamic lands. It apparently lay slightly to the north of the Ču river valley, hence just north of the modern Kirghizia-Kazakstan border. Minorsky suggested that the name means “canal ( āb ) on the Ču”. At the time of the Arab incursions into Central Asia, the chief ordu or encampment of the Türgesh ruler Su-lu was located at Sūyāb; it was sacked by the incoming Chinese army in 748, and then in 766 the site was occupied by the Ḳarluḳ [ q.v.] when they…

, Nūbandad̲j̲ān (also Nūband̲j̲ān, according to Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Beirut, v, 307), a town of the province of Fārs in mediaeval Islamic Persia. It lay in the district of S̲h̲ābūr K̲h̲urra roughly midway between Iṣṭak̲h̲r and Arrad̲j̲ān [ q.vv.] on the road linking S̲h̲īrāz with K̲h̲ūzistān. The geographers describe the town as populous and ¶ flourishing, with fine markets and a good running water supply. It flourished under the Būyids, was destroyed by the S̲h̲abānkāra Kurds of Abū Saʿd in the 5th/11th century, but was rebuilt by the Sald̲j̲ūḳ M…

, the name for two towns of the eastern Iranian world. 1. Sabzawār in western Ḵh̲urāsān was, together with Ḵh̲usrūd̲j̲ird, one of the two townships making up the administrative district of Bayhaḳ [ q.v.], the name by which the whole district was generally known in mediaeval Islamic times. It lay in the cultivable zone on the northern rim of the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr or Great Desert. Sabzawār itself is described in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 102, §23.2, as a small town and as the chef-lieu ( ḳaṣaba ) of a district; the Arabic geographers merely mention it as a stage along the roads of Ḵh̲urāsān and as a rūstāḳ…

, Kis̲h̲s̲h̲ , the later S̲h̲ahr-i Sabz , a town of mediaeval Transoxania, now in the Uzbekistan SSR and known simply as S̲h̲ahr, but in early times in the region of Soghdia (Ar. Ṣug̲h̲d [ q.v.]). It lay on the upper reaches of the landlocked K̲h̲as̲h̲ka Daryā in an area where several streams came down from the Sayām and Buttamān Mountains to the east, forming a highly fertile valley, intersected with irrigation canals. The town lay on the Samaḳand-Tirmid̲h̲ high road, two days’ journey from Samarḳand; after passing through Kis̲h…