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Argots and jargons are attested in Western Europe from later mediaeval times onwards. Both terms stem from the French linguistic region. Within the Arab Islamic world, they are known from the time of al-Jāḥiẓ (third/ninth century) onwards but are best attested in the following century in the shape of the qaṣīda sāsāniyya of Abū Dulaf al-Khazrajī (fl. middle decades of the fourth/tenth century), a lengthy poem written for the Būyid wazīr, the Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād, placed in the mouths of a group of wandering tricksters and beggars, the Banū Sāsān. A good part of the po…

ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭāhir (c. 182–230/798–845) was a son of the ʿAbbāsid general Ṭāhir Dhū l-Yamīnayn, governor of Khurāsān and the eastern lands of the caliphate for the seventeen years 213–30/828–45, the most illustrious of the Ṭāhirid line of governors there, and the outstanding patron of Arabic culture and literature of his time in the Iranian lands. The Ṭāhirid family were originally of Iranian mawlā stock and had risen in the service of the first ʿAbbāsid caliphs. ʿAbdallāh early distinguished himself at the side of his father in military campaigns during th…

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…

a dynasty of Deylamite origin. Its original center of power was at Šamirān in the district of Ṭārom on the middle course of the Safidrud river in the region of Deylam, but it subsequently extended its authority over a large part of northwestern Iran. MOSAFERIDS (also Sallarids or Kangarids; this last form is more probable than that of Langarids; see Kasravi, pp. 36-37), a dynasty of Deylamite origin that ruled in northwestern Iran in the 4th-5th/10th-11th centuries. Its original center of power was at Šamirān in the d…

(ŠIRVĀN, ŠARVĀN), a region of Eastern Transcaucasia, known by this name in both early Islamic and more recent times, and now (since 1994) substantially within the independent Azerbaijan Republic. ŠERVĀN (ŠIRVĀN, ŠARVĀN), a region of Eastern Transcaucasia, known by this name in both early Islamic and more recent times, and now (since 1994) substantially within the independent Azerbaijan Republic, being bounded by the Islamic Republic of Iran on the south, the independent Armenian Republic on the west, and D…

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a slave commander of the Samanids and the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty in eastern Afghanistan. SEBÜKTEGIN, ABU MANṢUR NĀṢER-AL-DIN Wa’l-DAWLA, a slave commander of the Samanids (q.v.) and the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty in eastern Afghanistan. The Turkish name Sebüktegin means “beloved prince,” but the second element ( tegin “prince”) had declined in status from Orkhon Turkish times, becoming part of the onomastic of Turkish slave ( …

b. Moḥammad, Abu Aḥmad (d. 399/1009), Amir in Sistān of the “second line” of Saffarids, who ruled between 352/963 and 393/1003 and may be termed “the Khalafids” after an ancestor (the grandfather of the restored Amir Abu Jaʿfar Aḥmad). A version of this article is available in print Volume XV, Fascicle 4, pp. 362-363 b. Moḥammad, Abu Aḥmad (d. 399/1009…

an Arab dynasty that ruled in central Iraq with their capital at Ḥira for roughly three centuries, from about 300 to 602 CE, generally but intermittently as the allies and clients of the Sasanian kings of Persia. LAKHMIDS, an Arab dynasty that ruled in central Iraq with their capital at Ḥira for roughly three centuries, from about 300 to 602 CE, generally but intermittently as the allies and clients of the Sasanian kings of Persia, with especially close links in the sixth century, when the Lakhmids were bulwarks of the Sasanian pos…

a dynasty of medieval Islamic eastern Iran which ruled from 247/861 to 393/1003. From a base in their home province of Sistān, the first Saffarids built up a vast if transient military empire, at one point invading Iraq and threatening Baghdad. SAFFARIDS, a dynasty of medieval Islamic eastern Iran which ruled from 247/861 to 393/1003. From a base in their home province of Sistān, the first Saffarids built up a vast if transient military empire which at one point stretched from the borders of Afghanistan and India in the east to Fārs, Ahvāz and the fringes of Iraq in the west, at one point invading Iraq and threatening Baghdad. Even after the fall of the second Saffarid Amir, ʿAmr b. Layṯ, his immediate successors retained control of al…

(also Mokrān) the coastal region of Baluchistan, extending from the Somniani Bay to the northwest of Karachi in the east westwards to the fringes of the region of Bashkardia/Bāšgerd in the southern part of the Sistān and Balučestān province of modern Iran. MAKRĀN (also Mok…

vizier to the Ghaznavid sultans Mawdud b. Masʿud and ʿAbd-al-Rašid b. Maḥmud, remaining in official service under the latter’s successor Farroḵzād b. Masʿud. ʿABD-AL- RAZZĀQ b. AḤMAD b. ḤASAN MEYMANDI, vizier to the Ghaznavid sultans Mawdud b. Masʿud and ʿAbd-al-Rašid b. Maḥmud, remaining in official service under the latter’s successor Farroḵzād b. Masʿud. He was the son of the celebrated vizier of Sultan Maḥmud of Ghazna (see Aḥmad b. Ḥasan Maymandi). His birth date is unknown but he may have been closely associated with his father in official duties, since he was imprisoned at Nandana or Nardin in the Panjaab with Aḥmad b. Ḥasan when the latter fell from power in 416/1025, and only released with him on the accession of sultan Masʿud b. Maḥmud in 421/1030 (Beyhaqi, ed. Fayyāż, p. 182; Bosworth, p. 35). He was apparently close to the new sultan, a…

the administrative center of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (NAR) with its own elected representative assembly, within the Republic of Azerbaijan but separated from it by Armenia. NAḴJAVĀN, present-day Nakhchivan (lat 39°12′ N, long 45°24′ E), the administrative center of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (NAR) with its own elected representative assembly, within the Republic of Azerbaijan but separated from it by Armenia. The region covers 5,363 square miles and has a total population of 398,000, in which Nakhchivan city’s population is 71,200 (2009 figures). The city li…