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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…

Čaki̊rd̲j̲i̊-Bas̲h̲i̊

(142 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, chief falconer, a high official of the Ottoman court. In the Ḳānūnnāme of Meḥemmed II ( TOEM Supp. 1330 A.H., 12) he is mentioned among the ag̲h̲a s of the stirrup, immediately before the čas̲h̲nagīr-bas̲h̲i̊ [ q.v.]. During the 16th century the numbers and sub-divisions of the ag̲h̲as of the hunt ( s̲h̲ikār ag̲h̲alari̊ ) increased greatly, and the Čaki̊rd̲j̲i̊-bas̲h̲i̊ is joined by separate officers in charge of the peregrines, lanners, and sparrow-hawks ( S̲h̲ahind̲j̲i-bas̲h̲i̊ , Dog̲h̲and̲j̲i̊-bas̲h̲i̊ , and Atmad̲j̲ad̲j̲i̊-bas̲h̲i̊ ). Until the ti…

Abu ’l-K̲h̲attāb Muḥammad b. Abī Zaynab Miḳlaṣ al-Ad̲j̲daʿ al-Asadī

(493 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Muslim heresiarch. According to al-Kas̲h̲s̲h̲ī, his father was Miḳlaṣ b. Abi ’l-Ḵh̲aṭṭāb, and he himself used the kunyas Abū Ismāʿīl and Abu ’l-Ẓubyān. He was a Kūfan and a mawlā of the tribe of Asad. In the Nuṣayrī writings he is also called al-Kāhilī. He was one of the chief dāʿīs of the Imām Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Ṣādik, but fell into error and taught false doctrines, as a result of which he was repudiated and denounced by the Imām. Seventy of his followers, assembled in the mosque of Kūfa, were attacked by order of the governor …

Bāb-i Mas̲h̲īk̲h̲at

(418 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, (also s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-islām kapi̊si̊ , bāb-i fetwā and fetwāk̲h̲āne ), a name which became common in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century for the office or department of the S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Islām [ q.v.], the Chief Muftī of Istanbul. Until 1241/1826 the Chief Muftīs had functioned and issued their rulings from their own residences or, if these were too distant, from rented quarters. In that year, after the destruction of the Janissaries, Sulṭān Maḥmūd II gave the former ¶ residence of the Ag̲h̲a of the Janissaries, near the Süleymāniyye Mosque, to the Chief Muftī, who …

Bas̲h̲s̲h̲ār al-S̲h̲aʿīrī

(317 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, S̲h̲īʿite heretic, flourished in the second century A.H. He lived in Kūfa and earned his living by selling barley ( s̲h̲aʿīr ), whence his name. According to the Minhād̲j̲ and the Muntahā , he was sometimes mistakenly referred to as al-As̲h̲ʿarī, instead of the correct al-S̲h̲aʿīrī. According to traditions related by al-Kas̲h̲s̲h̲ī, he was repudiated and disowned by the Imām D̲j̲aʿfar al-Ṣādiḳ ( Rid̲j̲āl 252-4; cf. 197, where ʿAbū Bas̲h̲s̲h̲ār al-As̲h̲ʿarīʾ is denounced as a liar, together with such notorious heretics as al-Mug̲h̲īra …

Bahāʾī Meḥmed Efendi

(573 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Ottoman jurist and theologian. Born in Istanbul in 1004/1595-6, he was the son of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Efendi, a Ḳāḍīʿasker of Rumelia, and the grandson of the historian Saʿd al-Dīn. Entering upon the cursus honorum of the religious institution, he became mudarris and molla and was appointed ḳāḍī first in Salonica and then, in 1043/1633-4, in Aleppo. A heavy smoker, he was reported by the Beylerbey Aḥmed Pas̲h̲a, with whom he was on bad ternis, and in 1044/1634-5 was dismissed and exiied to Cyprus as a punishment for w…

ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Zand̲j̲ī

(468 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, known as ṣāḥib al-zand̲j̲ , was the leader of the Zand̲j̲ [ q.v.], the rebel negro slaves who for fifteen years (255-270/868-83) terrorised southern ʿIrāḳ and the adjoining territories. He was born in Warzanīn, a village near Rayy, and is said by some authorities to have been of Arab origin, being descended from ʿAbd al-Ḳays on his father’s side and from Asad on his mother’s. His name is generally given as ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm. According to Ibn al-Ḏj̲awzī ( al-Muntaẓam , Hyderabad 1357, v, 2, 69) his real name was ¶ Bihbūd̲h̲. Al-Bīrūnī ( Chronology , 332;…

Baraḳ Baba

(476 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, a Turkish dervish who acquired some celebrity in the time of the Il-Ḵh̲āns. He is said to have been a disciple of the famous Sarǐ Saltuk [ q.v.], and is mentioned in connexion with the Bābāʾī, Bektās̲h̲ī, and Mewlewī movements. His followers were called Baraḳīs; his Ḵh̲alīfa was Ḥayrān Emird̲j̲i. A story preserved by Yazǐd̲j̲ǐog̲h̲lu ʿAlī makes him a Sald̲j̲ūḳ prince, converted to Christianity by the Greek patriarch and then reconverted to Islam by Sarǐ Saltuk, who transmitted his supernatural powers to him and gave h…

Efendi

(995 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, an Ottoman title of Greek origin, from αὐθέντης, Lord, Master, (cf. authentic), probably via a Byzantine colloquial vocative form, afendi (G. Meyer, Türkische Studien , i, in SBAk . Wien (1893), 37; K. Foy in MSOS, i/2 (1898), 44 n. 3; Psichari, 408). The term was already in use in Turkish Anatolia in the 13th and 14th centuries. Eflākī indicates that the daughter of Ḏj̲alāl al-Dīn Rūmī was known as Efendipoulo—the master’s daughter (Cl. Huart, Les saints des derviches tourneurs , Paris 1922, ii, 429; on the later Karaite family name Afendopoulo or Efendipoulo see Z. Ankori, Karaites in Byza…

K̲h̲ādim al-Ḥaramayn

(960 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
(a.), “servant of the two holy places” (sc. Mecca and Medina), a title used by a number of Muslim monarchs. Adopted by the Ottoman Sultan Selīm I after the conquest of Egypt in 922/1517 and used by some of his suc…

Berātli̊

(308 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, i.e., holder of a berāt, a name given in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to certain non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, who held berāts conferring upon them important commercial and fiscal privileges. These berāts were distributed by the European diplomatic missions, in abusive extension of their rights under the capitulations. O…

Dīwān-i Humāyūn

(2,300 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, the name given to the Ottoman imperial council, until the mid 11th/17th century the central organ of the government of the Empire. Evidence on the dīwān under the early Sultans is scanty. According to ʿĀs̲h̲iḳpas̲h̲azāde (ch. 31; ed. N. Atsız, Osmanlı tarihlerı , Ist…

Ashām

(501 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
(Turkish eshām ), plural of Arabic sahm (Turkish sehim), share. In Turkey the word was used to designate certain treasury issues, variously described as bonds, assignats, and annuities. The es̲h̲ām are called annuities by Hammer ( Leibrenten ) and also in the Ottoman budget of 1862-3, where they are mentioned as rentes viagčres . The description is not strictly accurate, as although the eshām reverted to the state on the death of the holder, they could be sold, the state claiming a duty ¶ of one year’s income on each such transfer. According to Muṣṭafā Nūrī Pasha, the eshām were introduced in the early years of the reign of Muṣṭafā III, when assignats on the proceeds of the customs of Istanbul and other revenues were issued to creditors of the state and other applicants, with an annual income of 5%. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Wefīḳ remarks that most of the proceeds were spent in the war with Russia beginning 1182/1768. The handling of the eshām , he says, was at first entrusted to a

Ḥas̲h̲īs̲h̲iyya

(1,058 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, a name given in mediaeval times to the followers in Syria of the Nizārī branch of the Ismāʿīlī sect. The name was carried from Syria to Europe by the Crusaders, and occurs in a variety of forms in the Western literature of the Crusades, as well as in Greek and Hebrew texts. In the form ‘assassin’ it eventually found its way into French and English usage, with corresponding forms in Italian, Spanish and other languages. Af first the word seems to have been used in the sense of devotee ¶ or zealot, thus corresponding to fidāʿī [ q.v.]. As early as the 12th century Provençal poets compare themselves to Assassins in their self-sacrificing devotion to their ladies (F. M. Chambers, The troubadours and the Assassins, in Modern Language Notes , lxiv (1949), 245 ff.; D. Scheludko, Über die arabischen Lehnwörter im Altprovenzalischen , in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie , xlvii (1927), 423). But soon it wa…

Aḥmad Midḥat

(940 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Ottoman Turkish writer, was born in Istanbul in 1260/1844, the son of a poor draper called Sulaymān Ag̲h̲a and a Circassian ¶ mother. He lost his father in early childhood, and was for a while apprenticed to a shopkeeper. When he was 10 years old the family moved to Vidin, where his half-brother Ḥāfiẓ Ag̲h̲a was the mudïr of a kaḍā . Ḥāfiẓ, however, fell into disgrace, and in 1859 Aḥmed returned to Istanbul, where he began his schooling. In 1277/1861 Ḥāfiẓ Ag̲h̲a, having won the favour of Midḥat Pas̲h̲a, was reinstated and given an appointment in Nish, to which he brought the family. Aḥmed entered the Rüs̲h̲diyye school there, and graduated in 1280/1863. In 1281/1864, when Midḥat Pas̲h̲a took over the newly constituted wilāyet of Tuna, the family followed him to its capital, Rusčuk, where Aḥmed was apprenticed as a clerk in the provincial chancery ( wilāyet mektūbī ḳalemi ). While working, he continued his studies privately, and also studied French and western knowledge under the guidance of a Christian colleague. He won the favour of Midḥat Pas̲h̲a, who gave him his own name, and, after appointing him to various offices, made him, at the age of 24 or 25, editor-in-chief of the

ʿAbbāsids

(8,421 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
( Banu ’l-ʿAbbās ), the dynasty of the Caliphs from 132/750 to 656/1258. The dynasty takes its name from its ancestor, al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib b. Hās̲h̲im, the uncle of the Prophet. The s…

Daryā-Begi

(237 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Deryā-beyi , sea-lord, a title given in the Ottoman Empire to certain officers of the fleet. In the 9th/15th century the term deryā-beyi or deñiz-beyi is sometimes used of the commandant of Gallipoli [see gelibolu ], who had the rank of Sand̲j̲aḳ-beyi, and was the naval commander-inchief until the emergence of the Kapudan Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.]. In the 10th/16th century the Kapudan Pas̲h̲a became, as well as an admiral, the governor of an eyālet , which consisted of a group of ports and islands [see d̲j̲azā’ir-i baḥr-i safīd ]. This province, like others, was divide…

Bāb-i Serʿaskeri

(312 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
or serʿasker kapi̊si̊ , the name of the War Department in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. After the destruction of the Janissaries in 1241/1826, the Ag̲h̲a of the Janissaries was replaced by a new commanding officer, the Serʿasker [ q.v.]. The title was an old one, given to army commanders in former times. As applied by Maḥmūd II, it came to connote an officer who combined the functions of commander in-chief and minister of war, with special responsibility for the new style army. In addition, he inherited from the Ag̲h̲a of…
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