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(a., pl. azwād̲j̲ ), basically “two draught animals yoked together”, from which, in both literary and dialectal Arabic usage, a number of senses have developed, including “piece of land which a yoked pair of beasts can plough in a determined time”, “two things”, “pair, couple”, from which verbal forms have also developed. At the side of “one part of a pair”, “half of a couple” (especially “spouse”, and often with the fern, ending -at “wife”), the signification “couple, pair”, though rejected by the purists, is attested from mediaeval Islamic tim…

, Egypt A. The eponym of Egypt B. The early Islamic settlements developing out of the armed camps and the metropolises of the conquered provinces C. The land of Egypt: the name in early Islamic times 1. Miṣr as the capital of Egypt: the name in early Islamic times 2. The historical development of the capital of Egypt i. The first three centuries, [see al-fusṭāṭ ] ii. The Nile banks, the island of Rawḍa and the adjacent settlement of D̲j̲īza (Gīza) iii. The Fāṭimid city, Miṣr al-Ḳāhira, and the development of Cairo till the end of the 18t…

, later form Marg̲h̲elān , a town of Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.] in Central Asia, situated to the south of the Ṣi̊r Daryā [ q.v.] or Jaxartes, on a small river now called the Margelan Say. ¶ It was a place of modest importance in the first Islamic centuries as one of the main towns, with inter alia Andid̲j̲ān [ q.v.], of the district of Farg̲h̲āna known as Lower Nasyā; according to al-Mukaddasī, 272 (see also Le Strange, Lands , 479; Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 513-14, tr. 491; al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , facs. ed. f. 522a), it had a Friday mosque and markets. Coins were first minted there …

, Abū Ayyūb Sulaymān b. Mak̲h̲lad (the nisba stemming from Mūriyān in Ahwāz, see Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Beirut, v, 221), secretary of the second ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr [ q.v.]. Various stories are given in the sources about how he came to enjoy al-Manṣūr’s confidence: that in the time of the last Umayyad caliph Marwān b. Muḥammad he had saved the ʿAbbāsid Abū D̲j̲aʿfar from a flogging for embezzling state funds (al-Yaʿḳūbī, al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī): that he was a freed slave of al-Saffah’s, taken into his successor’s service (…

an Indo-Muslim dynasty which ruled, latterly with decreasing effectiveness, 932-1274/1526-1858. 1. History. This article, like the section on History in hind, iv, above, aims at being no more than a guide to the numerous articles on the history of the Mug̲h̲al dynasty in India to be found elsewhere in the Encyclopaedia , and to relate these to a chronological framework. The Mug̲h̲als were given their first foothold in Indian territory in 800/1398 when Pīr Muḥammad, governor of Kābul and a grandson of Tīmūr, attacked Uččh and Multān, and established a gov…

, Narmāsīr , a town and a district of eastern Kirmān [ q.v.] in mediaeval Islamic Persia, lying to the south-east of Bam [ q.v.], adjacent to the southern end of the Das̲h̲t-i Lūṭ and on the road connecting Kirmān with Sīstān. The classical Islamic geographers list the district as one of the five kūras of Kirmān and describe the town as prosperous and populous, the resort of merchants who travelled from K̲h̲urāsān to ʿUmān and an emporium for Indian goods. It had a protective wall with four gates, a citadel and a congregationa…

, a small town in the s̲h̲ahrastān of Ardakān [ q.v.] in the modern Persian ustān or province of Yazd, situated 32 miles/48 km. to the northwest of Yazd. The mediaeval geographers (e.g. Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 263, 287, tr. Kramers and Wiet, 260, 281; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 29, § 29.45; Le Strange, Lands , 285) describe it as being on the Iṣfahān-Yazd road, 10 farsak̲h̲s from Yazd. Lying as it does on the southern fringe of the Great Desert, its irrigation comes from ḳanāts [ q.v.] (see Lambton, Landlord and peasant in Persia 1, 219). Its population in ca. 1950 was 3,798. (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography I…

, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, Persian poet, littérateur and historian, of Kurdish origin ( ca. 697-759/ ca. 1298-1358), who wrote during the last decades of the Īl-K̲h̲ānid era. His general history, the Mad̲j̲maʿ al-ansāb fi ’l-tawārīk̲h̲ , exists in a number of versions. The first redaction, dedicated to the Īl-K̲h̲ānid Abū Saʿīd’s vizier G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn, was produced in 733/1332-3 but was lost in the destruction of the vizier’s house in 736/1336. S̲h̲abānkāraʾī completed a second redac…

, Ik̲h̲tiyār al-Dīn , Afg̲h̲ān adventurer and commander active in the Muslim conquest of northern India under the generals of the G̲h̲ūrids [ q.v.] and the one who first established Muslim power in Bengal. Having failed to find preferment in G̲h̲azna with Sultan Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām [ q.v.] of G̲h̲ūr and then in Dihlī, allegedly on account of his unprepossessing appearance, Muḥammad Bak̲h̲tiyār began as a local g̲h̲āzī leader in the districts of Badāʾūn and Awadh [ q.vv.] until he was able, under the aegis of Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Aybak [ q.v.] of Dihlī, to make important conquests in Bihār ca. …

(a.), correctly muns̲h̲iʾ , a secretary, an exponent of the high-flown epistolary style general in mediaeval Islamic chanceries from the 2nd/8th century onwards and known as ins̲h̲āʾ [ q.v.]. In the Persian and Indo-Muslim worlds, the term muns̲h̲ī was used for secretaries in the ruler’s chancery, e.g. among the Ṣafawids, for the whom the State Scribe, the muns̲h̲ī al-mamalīk , was a very important official who apparendy shared responsibility for the S̲h̲āh’s correspondence with the wāḳiʿa-nuwīs or Recorder (see Tad̲h̲kirat al-mulūk , tr. Minorsky, Lond…

, a people or tribe ostensibly of Turkish origin and living in western Turkistān and then in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān during the pre-Mongol Islamic period. 1. History . The Islamic geographers of the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries place the K̲h̲alad̲j̲ amongst the tribes of the Turks. Thus Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih, 28, 31, includes them in a list of Turkish tribes in the Central Asian steppeṣ; he states that their winter quarters were beyond the Syr Daryā in the Talas region, adjacent to the lands of the Ḳarluḳ, but also that t…

, an ancient Indian, and then mediaeval Indo-Muslim town of the southwestern Pand̲j̲ab, subsequently coming within the Bahāwalpūr [ q.v.] Native State and now in Pākistān. It is situated some 56 km/35 miles to the west of Bahāwalpūr town and not far from the junction of the Indus and Chenab-Jhelum rivers (lat. 27° 18’ N., long. 71° 12’ E.). 1. History Alexander the Great seems to have founded a city called in the Greek sources Ussa-Alexandria. Uččh ¶ was certainly an ancient Hindu centre, known up to the 12th century as Dēōgaŕh "stronghold of the gods", and it is only th…

(a. pls. sufun , safāʾin , safīn ), a word used in Arabic from pre-Islamic times onwards for ship. Seamanship and navigation are in general dealt with in milāḥa , and the present article, after dealing with the question of knowledge of the sea and ships in Arabia at the time of the birth of Islam, not covered in milāḥa, will be confined to a consideration of sea and river craft. 1. In the pre-modern period. (a) Pre-Islamic and early Islamic aspects. The most general word for “ship” in early Arabic usage was markab “conveyance”, used, however, …

, the name of a mediaeval Hindu power which covered large parts of the Deccan from the mid-14th century to the later 17th century and which is relevant to this Encyclopaedia because of the incessant warfare between its Rād̲j̲ās (some sixty of whom, from various, distinct lineages, issued royal inscriptions claiming sovereignty over India south of the Krishna river) and the Muslim sultanates of the Deccan. It appears in Indo-Muslim sources as Bid̲j̲anagar. The name Vid̲j̲ayanagara, meaning “City of victory”, was that of the state’s original capital on the upper Tungab…

, the coastal region of southern Balūčistān, extending roughly from the Somniani Bay in the East to the eastern fringes of the region of Bas̲h̲kardia [see bas̲h̲kard in Suppl.] in the west. The modern political boundary between Pakistan and Iran thus bisects the mediaeval Makrān. The east-to-west running Siyāhān range of mountains, just to the north of the Mas̲h̲kēl and Rak̲h̲s̲h̲ān valleys, may be regarded as Makrān’s northern boundary. In British Indian times, this range formed the boundary between the southwestern part of the Kalāt native state [see kilāt ] and the K̲h̲ārān one [ q.v.]…

, modern Turkish Simav , a town of northwestern Anatolia, lying on the river of the same name and just to the south-east of the Simav Gölü, 90 km/58 miles as the crow flies to the southwest of Kütahya [ q.v.] and on the road connecting Balıkesir with Usak (lat. 39° 05′ N., long. 28° 59′ E., altitude 823 m/2,700 feet). In later Ottoman times, it was the chef-lieu of a ḳaḍāʾ of the same name, and is now the centre of the ilçe or district of Simav in the il or province of Kütahya. One should not confuse it, as did Babinger in his EI 1 art., with Simāwnā in eastern Thrace, the birthplace of the early Ot…

(a.) “equality”, the maṣdar of form III of the verb sawiya “to be equal to, be worth”, with the same sense as form I; in modern times, it has been ¶ used for the political concept of human equality (Ottoman Turkish müsāwāt , modern Turkish mūsavat , Persian musāwāt , barābārī ). The root is found frequently in the Ḳurʾān, though only once in form III (XVIII, 95/96), in the sense “to make level, even up”. In the literary and cultural controversies of the ʿAbbāsid period, those of the S̲h̲uʿūbiyya [ q.v.], the non-Arabs seeking social equality with the ruling class of Arabs were sometimes known as the a…

, in mediaeval times a district and town, now a district only, of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān in northwestern Persia. It lies to the south of Ardabīl, and is bounded on the east by that part of the Elburz chain which separates Gīlān and Tālis̲h̲ in the Caspian coastlands from the upland interior of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, the mountains here rising to over 10,000 feet. Much of the district is drained by the left-bank tributaries of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Uzun affluent of the Safīd-Rūd. In mediaeval times it adjoined on the east the district of Ṭārom and was part of the general region called Daylam [ qq.v.]. The actual name…

, a former Native State of British India, when three of its component districts fell within Rād̲j̲pūtānā and three in Central India, with its centre in the town of the same name (lat. 26° 10’ N., long 75° 50’ E.). The former Tonk State is now a District of Rād̲j̲āst̲h̲ān in the Indian Union. Tonk was founded by Amīr K̲h̲ān (d. 1834 [ q.v.]), a Pathan from Bunēr who rose, first in the service of the Rohillas [ q.v.] and then in the army of D̲j̲aswant Singh Holkar (1798). He submitted to the British in 1817. During the Sepoy Mutiny, his son Wazīr Muḥammad K̲h̲ān remained lo…

(Turkish “black lake”), ḳarakul , the name of various lakes in Central Asia and of a modern town in the Uzbek SSR. The best-known lake is that lying at the western extremity of the Zarafs̲h̲ān River in Sog̲h̲dia (modern Uzbekistan), midway between Buk̲h̲ārā and Čārd̲j̲ūy (mediaeval Āmul-i S̲h̲aṭṭ, see āmul . 2). The basin in which it lay was known as the Sāmd̲j̲an basin, see Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 315, and Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, 485, tr. Kramers and Wiet, 466. In Nars̲h̲ak̲h̲ī’s Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Buk̲h̲ārā , ed. Schefer, 17, tr. Frye, 19, the lake is given both the Tur…

(I) bi ’llāh , Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Muḥammad , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 248-52/862-6, grandson of the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim [ q.v.] and the son of a slave concubine of Ṣaḳlabī origin named Muk̲h̲āriḳ. When his cousin al-Muntaṣir [ q.v.] died, the Turkish commanders in Sāmarrā plucked al-Mustaʿīn from a life of obscurity (he is said to have made a living as a copyist of manuscripts) to become caliph (6 Rabīʿ II 248/9 June 862). The choice aroused discontent in Sāmarrā and unrest broke out among those who supported al-Muʿtazz [ q.v.] which was only put down after much bloodshed and fina…

, the name of an eastern Iranian dynasty which flourished as an independent power in the 6th/12th century and the early years of the 7th/13th century and which was based on the region of G̲h̲ūr [ q.v.] in what is now central Afg̲h̲ānistān with its capital at Fīrūzkūh [ q.v.]. 1. Origins and early history. The family name of the G̲h̲ūrid Sultans was S̲h̲anasb/S̲h̲ansab (< MP Gus̲h̲nasp; cf. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 282, and Marquart, Das Reich Zābul , in Festschrift E. Sachau , 289, n. 3), and in the time of their florescence, attempts were made to at…

bi ’llāh , Abu ’l-Ḳāsim ʿAbd Allāh , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 333-4/944-6, son of the caliph al-Muḳtafī [ q.v.] by a Greek slave concubine called G̲h̲uṣn. When the commander-in-chief of the Turkish soldiery in Bag̲h̲dād, Tūzūn, deposed and blinded al-Muttaḳī b. al-Muḳtadir [ q.v.], he raised to the throne one of the latter’s cousins as al-Mustakfī in Ṣafar 333/September-October 944, al-Mustakfī being then aged 41. The situation in ʿIrāḳ was unpropitious for the new ruler. The caliphs were puppets in the hands of the Turkish troops, whose…

, a town in northern Bihār State of the Indian Union (lat. 26° 7′ N.,85° 24″ E.), and also the name of a District of which it is the administrative centre; the District covers the ancient region of Tirhut between the Ganges and the southern border of Nepal. The region was attacked in the 8th/14th century by the Muslim rulers of Bengal; in the next century it passed to the S̲h̲arḳī rulers of D̲j̲awnpur [ q.v.], and then to Sikandar Lōdī of Dihlī. The town of Muẓaffarpur enshrines the name of its founder, the Emperor Akbar’s commander Muẓaffar Khān, dīwān or head of revenue and finance [see dīwān. v] a…

, conventional form Syr Darya, a river of Central Asia and the largest in that region. The Turkish element in the name, si̊r , is not actually found before the 10th/16th century; in the following century, the K̲h̲īwan ruler and historian Abu ’l-G̲h̲āzī Bahādur K̲h̲ān [ q.v.] calls the Aral Sea “the Sea of Sir” (Si̊r Teñizi). 1. In the early and mediaeval periods. The Si̊r Daryā flows through the present republics of Kirgizia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan down from the northwestern slopes of the Tien Shan Mountains to the Aral Sea [ q.v.]. It is formed by the confluence in the e…

, the form found in Islamic sources for the capital of Georgia, Tiflis or modern Tbilisi. The city is situated on hilly ground in the Kura river valley [see kur ] (lat. 41° 43′ N., long. 44° 49′ E.), and has a strategic position controlling the routes between eastern and western Transcaucasia which has ensured it a lively history. The city is an ancient one, being founded in A.D. 455 or 458 when the capital of Georgia was transferred thither from nearby Mtsk̲h̲eta. For the subsequent history of the city, from Byzantine and Sāsānid times through the long…

, the name of a mysterious potentate, said to be a Nestorian Christian and inimical to Islam, whom the Christians of medieval Europe placed beyond the Islamic lands in Inner or Far Asia. The name Presbyter Johannes first occurs in the chronicle, called Historia de duabus civitatibus, of the German prelate Otto, Bishop of Freising, in which he describes, on the authority of a meeting in 1145 with the Latin Bishop Hugh of D̲j̲abala (= ancient Byblos, in Lebanon), how Prester John was a monarch, of the lineage of the Magi of the Gospels, living in the Far East ( in extremo oriente) beyond Persia an…

, ʿAbd al-Bāḳī b. Abī Bakr Kurd, Indo-Muslim historian of the Mug̲h̲al period (978-after 1046/1570-after 1637). Of Kurdish origin from D̲j̲ūlak near Nihāwand [ q.v.], he served the Ṣafawids as a tax official and eventually became a wazīr in the administration. But then he fell from grace, and like many Persians of his age, decided to migrate to India, and entered the service of the K̲h̲ān-i K̲h̲ānān [ q.v.] Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, one of Akbar’s generals, subsequently holding official posts in the Deccan and Bihar. The K̲h̲ān-i K̲h̲ānān asked him to write a biography of himself, the Maʾāt̲h̲ir…

, a small town in the Persian province of Fārs (lat. 29° 16′ N., long 53° 13′ E., alt. ¶ 1,597 m/5,238 ft.), some 80 km/50 miles to the southeast of S̲h̲īrāz on the road to Nayrīz [ q.v.]. It seems to be identical with the K̲h̲awristān of the early Arab geographers, but first appears under the name Sarwistān (“place of cypresses”) in al-Muḳaddasī at the end of the 4th/10th century. It is notable for the tomb and shrine of a local saint, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Yūsuf Sarwistānī, dated by its inscription to 682/1283, and for a nearby mysterious building situated on the S̲h̲īrāz-F…

(“land of the unbelievers”), the name of a mountainous region of the Hindu Kush massif in north-eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, until 1896 very isolated and politically independent, but since the Afg̲h̲ān conquest of that date and the introduction of Islam known as Nūristān (“land of light”). Some older European writers mentioned what might be termed a “greater Kāfiristān”, comprising such regions as Kāfiristān in the restricted sense (see below), Lag̲h̲mān, Čitral, Swāt, Bad̲j̲awr, Gilgit, etc. This cor…

, the name of three Ottoman princes. The name would appear to originate in the Old Turkish (especially, Eastern Turkish) word saw “word, piece of discourse, utterance”, found as early as the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions, then in the Turfan Uyg̲h̲ur texts, in the late 5th/11th century Ḳutadg̲h̲u bilig [ q.v.] and up to the 8th/14th century, after which it is not attested as a separate word (Clauson, An etymological diet, of pre-thirteenth century Turkish, 782-3). Cf. also the name of the slave commander of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Alp Arslan, Sāwtigin. Sawd̲j̲i̊ would according…

, today the north-easternmost ustān or province of Persia, with its administrative capital at Mas̲h̲had [ q.v.]. But in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, the term “K̲h̲urāsān” frequently had a much wider denotation, covering also parts of what ¶ are now Soviet Central Asia and Afg̲h̲ānistān; early Islamic usage often regarded everywhere east of western Persia, sc. D̲j̲ibāl or what was subsequently termed ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī, as being included in a vast and ill-defined region of K̲h̲urāsān, which might even extend to the Indus Valley …

, a city of northern India in the uppermost part of the Ganges-D̲j̲amnā Doʾāb (lat. 29° 57′ N., long. 77° 33′ E.), now in the extreme northwestern tip of the Uttar Pradesh State of the Indian Union. It was founded in ca. 740/1340, in the reign of Muḥammad b. Tug̲h̲luḳ [ q.v.] and was named after a local Muslim saint, S̲h̲āh Haran Čis̲h̲tī. The city and district suffered severely during the invasion of Tīmūr; in 932/1526 Bābur traversed them on his way to Pānīpat, and some local Mug̲h̲al colonies trace their origin to his followers. Muslim influe…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Aḥmad b. Ḥasan , called S̲h̲ams al-Kufāt "sun of the capable ones", vizier of sultans Maḥmūd and Masʿūd of G̲h̲azna [ q.vv.]. He was a foster-brother of Maḥmūd, and had been brought up and educated with him. His father had been ʿāmil of Bust under Sebüktigin, and apparently stemmed from Maymand in Zābulistān; but on a charge of misappropriation of the revenue, he was put to death. In 384/994, when the Amīr Nūḥ b. Manṣūr the Sāmānid conferred on Maḥmūd the command of the troops of Ḵh̲urāsān, Maḥmūd put …

, early ʿAbbāsid prince and uncle of the first ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Saffāḥ and al-Manṣūr [ q.vv.], d. at Baṣra in D̲j̲umādā II 142/October 759 aged 59 (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 141). He was appointed governor of Baṣra, including also eastern Arabia and western Persia, by al-Saffāḥ in 133/750-1 ( ibid., iii, 73), and remained in this important power base until forced out of the governorship in 139/756. As one of the ʿumūma or paternal uncles, whose position vis-à-vis their nephews the caliphs was ambiguous, Sulaymān sheltered for many years the failed rebel ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī [ q.v.], until ʿAbd All…

, Nīrīz , the name of a mediaeval Islamic region and of a town of Fārs in southern Persia. The Nayrīz plain is essentially a landlocked region in the southern Zagros mountains, drained by the Kūr and Pulwār rivers which rise in the Zagros and flow southeastwards into the shallow lake known in mediaeval Islamic times as the Lake of Nayrīz and in more recent ones as Lake Bak̲h̲tigān [ q.v., and also E. Ehlers, art. Bak̲tagān Lake , in EIr ]; although the lake itself is salt, the plain forms an agriculturally prosperous region, and in ancient times was the…

(t.), thence in Mongolian, orda , “the royal tent or residence, the royal encampment”, a term which became widespread in the mediaeval Turco-Mongol and then in the Persian worlds, acquiring from the second meaning that of “army camp”. 1. In early Turkish and then Islamic usage The word ordu appears in some of the earliest known texts of Turkish, sc. in the Kül-tigin inscription (Talât Tekin, A grammar of Orkhon Turkish , Bloomington 1968, 237), and may have passed from such an Inner Asian people as the Hsiung-nu into Chinese as wo-lu-to (* oludu = ordu) (G. Doerfer, Türkische und mongolische El…

b. Aḥmad Farīd Pas̲h̲a (1284-1338/1867-1919), Egyptian nationalist politician, active in the first two decades of the 20th century. Of aristocratic Turkish birth, he had a career as a lawyer in the Ahliyya courts and then as a supporter of Muṣṭafā Kāmil Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.], leader of the nationalist opposition to the British protectorate over Egypt and founder in 1907 of the Nationalist Party ( al-Ḥizb al-Waṭanī ) [see ḥizb. i. In the Arab lands]. When Muṣṭafā Kāmil died at the beginning of 1908, Muḥammad Farīd succeeded him as leader of the party, but being by temperame…

(popular pronunciation Tikrīt , cf. Yāḳūt), a town of ʿIrāḳ on the right bank of the Tigris to the north of Sāmarrāʾ 100 miles from Bag̲h̲dād divertly, and 143 by river, and at the foot of the range of the D̲j̲abal Ḥamrīn (lat. 34° 36′ N., long. 43° 41′ E., altitude 110 m/375 feet). Geographically, this is the northern frontier district of ʿIrāḳ. The land is still somewhat undulating; the old town was built on a group of hills, on on…

, Turkestan , a Persian term meaning “land of the Turks”. 1. As a designation for the Central Asian lands to the north of modern Persia and Afg̲h̲ānistān. This roughly corresponded to the older Transoxania or Mā warāʾ al-nahr [ q.v.] and the steppe lands to its north, although these last were from Mongol times onwards (sc. the 13th century) often distinguished as Mog̲h̲olistān [ q.v.]. To the Persians, of course, only the southern frontier of the land of the Turks, the frontier against Īrān, was of importance and this frontier naturally depended on political conditions. On ¶ their very firs…

, the Arabic form of the name of the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, situated on the classical River Cydnus, the Nahr Baradān of early Islamic times and the contemporary Turkish Tarsus Çay, in the rich agricultural plain of the modern Çukurova. The ancient city appears first firmly in history under the Assyrian kings, then as being in the Persians’ sphere of influence, then as disputed by the Seleucids and Ptolemies, being for a while styled Antioch-onthe-Cydnus in honour of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1…

Meḥmed Ṣāḥib Efendi (1085-1162/1674-1749), Ottoman S̲h̲eyk̲h̲ al-Islām [ q.v.] in Istanbul and the pioneer translator into Turkish of Ibn K̲h̲aldūn. Ibn K̲h̲aldūn’s Muḳaddima was quite early known in Ottoman Turkey, being cited by e.g. Maḥmūd b. Aḥmed Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn (d. 937/1550) and by Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa in his Kas̲h̲f al-ẓunūn . But during the years 1138-43/1725-30 Pīrī-zāde translated the Muḳaddima from the beginning to the end of the fifth chapter, i.e. about two-thirds of the whole, and this was lithographed at Cairo in 1275/1859, with Aḥmed D̲j̲ewdet Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.] shortly …

(a.), a word which is originally an abstract noun meaning “power, authority”, but which by the 4th/10th century often passes to the meaning “holder of power, authority”. It could then be used for provincial and even quite petty rulers who had assumed de facto power alongside the caliph, but in the 5th/11th century was especially used by the dominant power in the central lands of the former caliphate, the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs [see sald̲j̲ūḳids. II, III.l], who initially overshadowed the ʿAbbāsids of Bag̲h̲dād. In the Perso-Turkish and Indo-Muslim worlds especially, the feminine form sulṭāna…

, Tibbat , Tibat , the most frequent vocalisations in the medieval Islamic sources for the consonant ductus T.b.t denoting the Inner Asian land of Tibet (with Tubbat , e.g. in Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, ii, 10, also preferred by Minorsky in his Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 92-3, and his edition and tr. of Marwazī, see below). The origin of the name has recently been examined by L. Bazin and J. Hamilton in a very detailed and erudite study, L’origine du nom Tibet , in Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde , xxvi [1991], 244-62, repr. in Bazin, Les Turcs , des mots, des hommes, Paris 1994. They…

, Gurd̲j̲ , Gurd̲j̲istān , the names in Islamic sources for the province of Georgia in western Caucasia. Georgia comprises four distinct regions: Mingrelia and Imereti in the north-west; Samtask̲h̲e in the south-west (adjoining the Black Sea coastal region of Lazistān [see laz ], inhabited by a people closely related to the Georgians); Kartli in the north, with the capital Tiflis [ q.v.], Georgian Tbilisi; and Kak̲h̲eti in the east. Topographically, much of Georgia comprises mountains, hills and plateaux, with lowland only on the Black Sea coastal plain an…

, a minor seaport, modern Bandar-i Linga, on the northern shore of the Persian or Arab Gulf, in lat. 26° 34′ N. and long. 54° 53′ E., to the south of Lāristān [see lār , lāristān ] and facing the islands of Ḳis̲h̲m [ q.v.] and the Ṭūnbs. Linga has a harbour of some depth, allowing traffic by dhows and coastal craft; behind the town lies a salt marsh, and then the Band-i Linga mountains, which rise to 3,900 ft./1,190 m. The population, formerly largely Arab, is now predominantly Persian, but with strong admixtures of Arabs, Baluchis, India…

(p.), commander. From the older Pahlavi sardār there arose as early as the Sāsānid period the form sālār with the well-known change of rd to l and compensatory lengthening of the a (cf. Grundr. d. Iran. Phil ., i,a 267, 274). The synonymous word in modern Persian sardār is not a survival of the ancient sardār, but is a modern formation; indeed, the elements from which the ancient word was composed still exist in the modern language. The old Armenian took over the Pahlavi sālār in the form sałar ; the form sardār which would give * sardar in Armenian is not found in the…

, Abu ’l-Fatḥ , s̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn wa ’l-Dawla , Ḳuṭb al-Millā , sultan of the G̲h̲aznawid [ q.v.] dynasty, reigned 432-40/1041-winter of 1048-9. ¶ He was probably born in 401/1010-11 or 402/1011-12 as the eldest son of Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd [ q.v.], and during his father’s reign was closely associated with the sultan on various military expeditions. When Masʿūd was deposed and then killed in D̲j̲umādā I 432/January 1041, Mawdūd made himself the avenger against the rebellious commanders and their puppet, his uncle Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd. He marche…

, a vague term used in the West for the Arabs and, eventually, other Islamic peoples of the Near East, in both pre-Islamic and mediaeval times. 1. Earlier usage. Saracens was one of the many terms that Classical authors and ecclesiastical writers, used for the Arabs, the others being Arabes, Skēnitai, Ṭayyāyē, Ismailitai and Hagarēnoi. It became the most common of all these terms, although it was one that the Arabs did not use in referring to themselves. The term was a coinage composed of *Sarak and the Greek suffix ēnos , and both its etymology and denotation are controversial. Many etyma …

(a.) nickname, and at a later date under Islam and with a more specific use, honorific title (pl. alḳāb ). For suggestions about its etymology, see L. Caetani and G. Gabrieli, Onomasticon arabicum . i. Fonte-introduzione , Rome 1915, 144-5; and for its place in the general schema of the composition of Islamic names, see ism. The laḳab seems in origin to have been a nickname or sobriquet of any tone, one which could express admiration, be purely descriptive and neutral in tenor or be insulting and derogatory. In the latter case, it was often termed nabaz , pl. anbāz , by-form labaz …

or Banū S̲h̲addād , a minor dynasty of Arrān and eastern Armenia which flourished from the 4th/10th to the 6th/12th century ( ca. 340-570/ ca. 951-1174), with a main line in Gand̲j̲a and Dwīn [ q.vv.] and a junior, subsequent one in Ānī [ q.v.] which persisted long after the end of the main branch under Sald̲j̲ūḳ and latterly Ildeñizid suzerainty. There seems no reason to doubt the information in the history of the later Ottoman historian Müned̲j̲d̲j̲im Bas̲h̲i̊ that the S̲h̲addādids were in origin Kurdish. Their ethnicity was complicated by the fact that…

, a line of Turkish commanders and governors, originally of slave origin, for the Sāmānids in 4th/10th-century K̲h̲urāsān. The founder, Abū ʿImrān Sīmd̲j̲ūr, was the amīr Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad’s [ q.v.] ceremonial ink-stand bearer ( dawātī ). He became Sāmānid governor of Sīstān [ q.v.] in 300-1/913-14 when the local dynasty of the Ṣaffārids [ q.v.] were temporarily driven out. Thereafter, the family was prominent as governors of K̲h̲urāsān for the amīrs , involved in warfare with the Sāmānids’ rivals in northern Persia such as the Būyids, and they …

(a.), the verbal noun of the form III verb ḳāṭaʿa , with the basic meaning “to come to an agreement on the basis of a certain sum”. This might be in regard to a peace agreement, ṣulḥ , muṣālaḥa , cf. the Glossarium to al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 90; or for the collection of taxation, a ḳabāla [ q.v.] contract; or for the carrying-out of a certain piece of work, cf. al-K̲h̲ wārazmī, Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm , 70, where a special measure, the azala , is the basis of a piecework agreement for the excavation of canals and other irrigation works. In general, see the citations from the sources in Dozy, Supplément, ii, 3…

(a.), board, plank; tablet, table. Both ranges of meaning are found in other Semitic languages such as Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac and Ethiopie, and Jeffery thought that, whilst the sense “board, plank” might be an original Arabism, the second sense was almost certainly from the Judaeo-Christian cultural and religious milieu (see The foreign vocabulary of the Qur’ān , Baroda 1938, 253-4). The word occurs five times in the Ḳurʾān. The first meaning is found in sūra LIV, 13, where Noah’s ark is called d̲h̲āt alwāḥ . The second meaning is that of lawḥ as writing material, e.g. the tablets of the lawḥ…

(a.), the pl. of ṭalīḳ , which means “a person loosed, set free, e.g. from imprisonment or slavery” (Lane, 1874). The plural becomes a technical term in earliest Islam for denoting the Meccans of Ḳurays̲h̲ who, at the time when Muḥammad entered Mecca in triumph (Ramaḍān 8/January 630), were theoretically the Prophet’s lawful booty but whom he in fact released (al-Ṭabarī, i, 1642-3: ḳāla ’d̲h̲habū fa-antum al-ṭulaḳāʾ . Gf. Glossarium , p. CCCXLII, and Mad̲j̲d al-Dīn Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, Nihāya , ed. al-Zāwī and al-Ṭannāḥī, Cairo 1383/1963, iii, 136). It was subsequently used opprobriousl…

, modern Turkish Sapanca, a town in northwestern Anatolia, in the classical Bithynia, situated on the southeastern bank of the freshwater lake of the same name and to the west of the Sakarya river (lat. 40° 41′ N., long. 30° 15′ E.). Almost nothing is known of its pre-Islamic history, although there are Byzantine remains; the name may be a popular transformation of Sophon. According to Ewliyā Čelebi, the town was founded by a certain Ṣaband̲j̲ī Ḳod̲j̲a, but this last must be merely an eponymous hero. It seems to appear in history only i…

, ʿAlī b. Ṭirād (or Ṭarrād ) b. Muḥammad, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim S̲h̲araf al-Dīn, vizier to the two ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Mustars̲h̲id and al-Muḳtafī [ q.vv.] in the first half of the 6th/12th century, b. 462/1069-70, d. 538/1144. The nisba refers to descent from Zaynab bt. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAbbās, and this ʿAbbāsid descent doubtless helped al-Zaynabī’s father Ṭirād or Ṭarrād, called D̲h̲u ’l-S̲h̲arafayn, to secure in 453/1061 the office of naḳīb [see naḳīb al-as̲h̲rāf ] of the Hās̲h̲imī s̲h̲arīf s and also to pursue a career in diplomacy on beha…

, Muḥammad b. al-Ḳāsim al-Iskandarānī, local historian of his home Alexandria, who lived in the 8th/14th century but whose precise dates are unknown. Between 767/1365-6 and 775/1373-4 he wrote a three-volume history of the city, the K. al-Ilmām fīmā d̲j̲arat bihi ’l-aḥkām al-maḳḍiyya fī wāḳiʿat al-Iskandariyya purporting to describe the calamity of Muḥarram 767/October 1365 when the Frankish Crusaders, led by Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, descended on Alexandria, occupied it for a week and sacked it (see S. Runciman, A history of the Crusades , London …

bi ’llāh , Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Hārun al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 255-6/869-70. After al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ’s death, a number of officials wished to pay homage to the young Muḥammad, son of the deceased caliph and a Greek slave; instead, however, al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ’s brother al-Mutawakkil [ q.v.] was proclaimed his successor and only after the deposition and murder of the unfortunate al-Muʿtazz ¶ (1 S̲h̲aʿbān 255/15 July 869) did Muḥammad ascend the throne on 7-8 S̲h̲aʿbān/21-2 July with the name al-Muhtadī. His ideal was the Umayyad ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzī…

, Taḳī ’l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān , ḳāḍī , official and author of the Mamlūk period in Egypt. His precise dates are unknown, but he was apparently the son of another ḳāḍī who had been controller of the army in the time of Sultan al-Nāṣir Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḳalāwūn, and he himself served in the Dīwān al-Ins̲h̲āʾ under such rulers as al-Manṣūr Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Muḥammad (762-4/1361-3) and his successor al-As̲h̲raf Nāṣir al-Dīn S̲h̲aʿbān (764-78/1363-76). His correspondence was apparently collected into a mad̲j̲mūʿ , for al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī [ q.v.] quotes four letters from it, to external …

, Ḳaṣr , the name of a palace of the early ʿAbbāsids in Bag̲h̲dād, so-called because of its being compared in splendour with the d̲j̲annat al-k̲h̲uld “garden of eternity”, i.e. Paradise. It was built by the founder of the new capital Bag̲h̲dād, al-Manṣūr [ q.v.], in 158/775 on the west bank of the Tigris outside the walled Round City, possibly on the site of a former Christian monastery (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 273; Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, ii, 382). It was strategically placed between the two great military areas of the Ḥarbiyya and al-Ruṣāfa on the eastern side [see al-ruṣāfa. 2.] and adjacent …

, Gomal , a river of the Indus valley system and the North-West Frontier region of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. It rises in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān some 40 miles/62 km. east of the Āb-i Istāda lake. Flowing eastwards, it is joined from the south by the Kundar and Z̲h̲ōb rivers, and forms the southern boundary of the South Wazīristān tribal agency of the former North-West Frontier Province of British India (now Pakistan). Below the settlement of Murtaḍā, it leaves the mountains and enters the lower-lying lands of the Dēra Ismāʿīl Ḵh̲ān district [see dērad̲j̲āt ], …

, a fortress of mediaeval India, lying to the south of Mālwa and east of K̲h̲āndes̲h̲ [ q.vv.], and in the extreme northern part of Berār [ q.v.], just to the south of the headwaters of the Tāptī River. It is in fact some 50 miles west of modern Deogaŕh; in British India it fell within the Central Provinces, now Madhya Pradesh. The foundation of the fortress is attributed to a Rād̲j̲put rād̲j̲ā , the last of whose line is said to have been killed by a commander of the Dihlī Sultans, perhaps in the time of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī; but the fortre…

or Mug̲h̲almārī , a place near Midnapūr in the southern part of West Bengal, the site of a battle in 982/1574 between Akbar’s finance minister and commander Rād̲j̲ā T́ōd́ar Mal [ q.v.] and the young ruler of Bengal, Dāwūd K̲h̲ān Kararānī [ q.v.], who had repudiated Mug̲h̲al suzerainty. Dāwūd K̲h̲ān was beaten by a ruse [see ḥarb. vi, at Vol. III, 202b] and forced to flee, allowing Akbar formally to annex Bihar, Bengal and Orissa. (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography See that to dāwūd k̲h̲ān kararānī, and also J.F. Richards, The Mughal empire (= The New Comb. hist, of India, I. 5), Cambridge 1993, 33.

, a Turkish dynasty which ruled in the lands of Central Asia straddling the T’ien-s̲h̲an Mountains, scil . in both Western Turkestan (Transoxania or Mā warāʾ al-Nahr) and in Eastern Turkestan (Kās̲h̲g̲h̲aria or Sin-kiang), from the 4th/10th to the early 7th/13th centuries. 1. Introductory. The name “Ilek-K̲h̲āns” or “Ilig-K̲h̲āns” stems from 19th century European numismatists. The element Ilek/Ilig (known in Hunnish, Magyar and Uyg̲h̲ur Turkish onomastic) is commonly found on the dynasty’s coins, but is by no means general. The complete phrase Ilek-K̲h̲ān/Ilig-K̲h̲ān …

, the name of various Sald̲j̲ūḳ rulers. 1. Malik-S̲h̲āh I b. Alp Arslan , D̲j̲alāl al-Dawla Muʿizz al-Din Abu ’l-Fatḥ , Great ¶ Sald̲j̲uḳ sultan, born in 447/1055, reigned 465-85/1072-92. During his reign, the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ empire reached its zenith of territorial extent—from Syria in the west to K̲h̲urāsān in the east—and military might. Alp Arslan [ q.v.] had made Malik-S̲h̲āh his walī ’l-ʿahd or heir to the throne in 458/1066, when various governorships on the eastern fringes were at this same time distributed to several members o…

, a town of western peninsular India, 21 km/15 miles from the Arabian Sea coast and 32 km/20 miles to the north-north-east of Bombay (lat. 90° 14′ N., long. 73° 02′ E.; see the map in gud̲j̲arāt , at Vol. II, 1126). Thānā was in pre-Muslim times the centre of a great Hindu kingdom, but was conquered in 718/1318 by the Sultan of Dihlī Mubārak S̲h̲āh K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī It soon afterwards became an outpost of the Bahmanid sultanate of the Deccan, but was at times disputed by the Sultans of Gud̲j̲arāt, who seized it, e.g. in 833/1430 (see hind, iv, at Vol. III, 418b). By 1529 it was tribute to the Por…

(t., orthography ṣ.w.f.t.h ), a name given to students of the theological, legal and other sciences in the madrasa [ q.v.] system of Ottoman Turkey. A parallel form is sūk̲h̲te , in Persian literally “burnt, aflame (i.e. with the love of God or of learning)”, which seems to be the earlier form; the relationship between the two words, if any, is unclear (see S̲h̲. Sāmī, Ḳāmūs-i turkī , Istanbul 1318/1900-1, ii, 839 col. 3; Redhouse, Turkish and English dict., 1087, 1192). The term ṣofta was applied to students in the earlier stages of their education; when a student became qualified to act as a muʿ…

(p.), the name for Muslim rulers, especially emperors. The Persian term pād-i s̲h̲āh , i.e. (according to M. Bittner, in E. Oberhummer, Die Türken und das Osmanische Reich , Leipzig 1917, 105) “lord who is a royalty” in which the root pad is connected with Sanskrit patis , lord, husband, fern, patni , Greek πότνια and δεσ-πότης, Lat. potens (G. Curtius, Griech . Etymol ., 377), was originally a title reserved exclusively for the sovereign, which in course of time and as a result of the long intercourse of the Ottomans with the states of…

, Z̲h̲ūn , the name of a deity of the district of Zamīndāwar [ q.v.] in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, whose shrine there figures in historical accounts of the Arabs’ and Ṣaffārids’ penetration of the region. In 33/654-5 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Samura, governor of Sīstān for ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿĀmir [ q.v.], raided into Zamīndāwar and attacked the “hill of Zūn” ( d̲j̲abal al-Zūn ), entered the shrine and partially despoiled the idol there, telling the local marzbān that his sole object was to demonstrate the idol’s impotence (al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 394). Over two centuries late…

, Arabised form of M. Pers. rōstāg , meaning “rural district, countryside”, and given the broken pl. rasātīḳ . (1) In the mediaeval Islamic usage of the Arabic and Persian geographers and of the Arabic writers on finance and taxation, rustāḳ is used both as a specific administrative term and in a more general sense. Thus, reflecting the more exact usage, in Sāsānid and early Islamic ʿIrāḳ, each kūra [ q.v.] or province was divided into ṭassūd̲j̲ s or sub-provinces, and these last were in turn divided into rustāḳs, districts or cantons, centred on a madīna or town. According to Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, K.…

, the name of the wives of various Turkish rulers of the eastern Islamic world in mediaeval (essentially pre-Mongol) times. In old Turkish, terken was a royal title, often but not invariably applied to females, and in these cases being roughly equivalent to “queen”. It may be a loan word in Turkish, being found, according to G. Doerfer, amongst the Kitan or Western Liao, the later Ḳara K̲h̲itay [ q.v.] of Central Asian Islamic history (see his Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen , Wiesbaden 1963-7, ii, 495-8 no. 889; Sir Gerard Clauson, An etymological dictionary of pre-…

, Sāmānid amīr of Transoxania and K̲h̲urāsān (301-31/914-43), given after his death the honorific of al-Amīr al-Saʿīd (“the Fortunate”). Naṣr was raised to the throne at the age of eight on the murder of his father by the Turkish g̲h̲ulāms of the army, with a regency of the vizier Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad D̲j̲ayhānī [see al-d̲j̲ayhānī in Suppl.]. The early years of his reign were seriously disturbed by rebellions at Samarḳand, at Nīs̲h̲āpūr and in Farg̲h̲āna by various discontented members of the Sāmānid family, and the amīrate was not at peac…

, Persian historian and poet of the Tīmūrid period, born at Yazd, died in 858/1454. He was a favourite of the Tīmūrid ruler S̲h̲āh Ruk̲h̲ [ q.v.] and of his son Mīrzā Abu ’l-Fatḥ Ibrāhīm Sulṭān, governor of Fārs, and in 832/1429 became tutor to the captured young Čingizid Yūnus K̲h̲ān. to whom he dedicated many poems. He was then in the service of the Tīmūrid prince Mīrzā Sulṭān Muḥammad in ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī or western Persia, and narrowly escaped death when that prince rebelled in 850/1447. After S̲h̲āh Ruk̲h̲’s death he …

, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUt̲h̲mān, poet and political claimant of the second half of the 4th/10th and the first years of the 5th/11th centuries, who claimed descent from the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ [ q.v.]. His younger contemporary al-T̲h̲aʿālibi gives specimens of his verses plus biographical information ( Yatīma , ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, iv, 192-3). Al-Wāt̲h̲iḳī began his career in ʿIrāḳ and al-D̲j̲azīra as a court witness and preacher, but became involved in political intrigues. He fled eastwards to the Transoxanian lands of the Ḳarak̲h̲ānids [see ilek-k̲h̲āns …

(Pas̲h̲to; cf. H.G. Raverty, A dictionary of the Puk̲h̲to , Pus̲h̲to , or language of the Afg̲h̲āns , London 1867, 330b), an informal tribal assembly of the Pafhàns in what are now Afg̲h̲ānistān and Pakistan, with competence to intervene and to adjudicate in practically all aspects of private and public life among the Pat́hāns. In the course of his abortive mission to S̲h̲āh S̲h̲u-d̲j̲āʿ and the Durrānī court of Kabūl in 1809 [see Afg̲h̲ānistān . v. History (3) (A)], Mountstuart Elphinstone described the d̲j̲irga system as alive and vital, with assemblies…

, Persian, “army commander”, Arabized form isfahsalār , iṣbahsalār : the title given to commanders-in-chief and general officers in the armies of many states of the central and eastern mediaeval Islamic world. On the component sālār and its Middie Persian origins, see sālār. The compound spāhsālār is already attested in Pāzand (i.e. Middle Persian transcribed from Pahlavi into Avestan script), e.g. in the 9th century ¶ S̲h̲kand-gumānik vičār (Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik , 235). i. The Islamic world excepting India The Ispahsālār as a military leader appears to be the …

, a rural district ( rūstāḳ , nāḥiya ) of the mediaeval Islamic province of D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.], sc. western Persia. The geographers describe it as a fertile plain below the Kūh-i Alwand, containing 93 villages and producing high-quality saffron which was exported through the nearby towns of Hamad̲h̲ān and Nihāwand. The chef-lieu of the district, in which was situated the d̲j̲āmiʿ and minbar , was known as Karad̲j̲-i Rūd̲h̲rāwar, characterised in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 132, § 31.8-9, as prosperous and the resort of merchants. The site of this seems…

, Abū Ḥarb, Umayyad commander and governor, the third of the many sons of Abū Sufyān’s bastard son Ziyād b. Abīhi [ q.v.], d. 73/692. The family of Ziyād already had a firm grip on the East in the later years of Muʿāwiya’s caliphate, and when Yazīd I came to the throne, he appointed Salm as governor of Ḵh̲urāsān (61/681), and the latter nominated another of his brothers, Yazid b. Ziyād, as his deputy in Sīstān. Salm proved himself a highly popular governor with the Arab troops in Ḵh̲urāsān. largely on account of his mil…

or Sumrū , Bēgam , the originally Muslim Indian wife of the European adventurer Walter Reinhardt Sombre or Samrū, who held the pargana [ q.v.] of Sardhanā [ q.v.] in northwestern India under the later Mug̲h̲al Emperor S̲h̲āh ʿAlam II [ q.v.]. On Reinhardt’s death in 1778, Bēgam Samrū kept up what was virtually a petty principality of Sardhanā, with an army which included some 300 European and half-breed mercenaries, and in 1792 married a French soldier of fortune Levassault. Toppled from control of Sardhanā in 1793 by a son of ¶ Reinhardt’s, Ẓafar-yāb Ḵh̲ān, in w…

, an old Turkish word which came, in Islamic times, to mean “slave boy, male slave”, defined by Maḥmūd Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-Turk , ed. Kilisli Rifʿat Bilge, i, 282, tr. Atalay, i, 336-7, as ʿabd . However, the original meaning of ḳul in Orkhon Turkish was rather “servant, vassal, dependent” (the masculine counterpart of kün “female servant, etc.”, the two words being linked in the Kültegin inscription, text references in Talât Tekin, A grammar of Orkhon Turkish, Bloomington, Ind. 1968, 347), since slavery in the Islamic juridical sense did not exist among the ancient Turks. The…

, in post-Mongol times increasingly known as K̲h̲īwa, the province lying along the lower course of the Amū Daryā [ q.v.] or Oxus, classical Chorasmia. In the early Islamic period, the southern boundary of K̲h̲wārazm was considered to be at Ṭāhiriyya, five days’ journey downstream from Āmul-i S̲h̲aṭṭ (modern Čārd̲j̲ūy), the crossing-place of the K̲h̲urāsān-Buk̲h̲ārā caravan route. Ṭāhiriyya lay just to the south of the gorge of the “lion’s mouth”, Dahān-i S̲h̲īr, where the river narrows at modern Düldül Atlag̲h̲ān near Pitnyak. H…

, the mediaeval Islamic form for the land of Nubia, lying to the south of Egypt, and its peoples. 1. Definition The names Nubia, Nubian, Nūba are commonly used without scientific precision and it is only in the linguistic sense that they have an unambiguous meaning. The frontier separating Nubia from Egypt proper is well defined as the first cataract of the Nile in the neighbourhood of Aswān, and the area where Nubian is spoken nowadays ends in the vicinity of the 18th parallel, but the southern limit of Nubia is so…

, the Messiah; in Arabic (where the root m-s-ḥ has the meanings of “to measure” and “to wipe, stroke”) it is a loanword from the Aramaic, where m e s̲h̲īḥā was used as a name of the Redeemer. Horovitz ( Koranische Untersuchungen , 129) considers the possibility that it was taken over from the Ethiopic ( masīḥ ). Muḥammad of course got the word from the Christian Arabs, amongst whom the personal name ʿAbd al-Masīḥ was known in pre-Islamic times, but it is doubtful whether he knew the true meaning of the term (see K. Ahrens, Christliches im Qoran , eine Nachlese , in ZDMG, lxxxiv [1930], 24-5; A. Je…

, Abū S̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dunyā ¶ wa ’l-Din, Sald̲j̲uḳ sultan in western Persia 548-55/1153-9. The death in 547/1152 of Sultan Masʿūd b. Muḥammad [ q.v.] without direct male heir instituted a period of confusion for the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultanate, in that there were left several Sald̲j̲ūḳ princes with claims to the throne, including Masʿūd’s brother Sulaymān-S̲h̲āh and the sons of his brothers Maḥmūd and Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l. All but Muḥammad, out of these contenders, were of mediocre abilities, and were largely dependent on the Turkish Atabegs and other amīrs , …

(p.) “White River”, a river system of northwestern Persia draining the southeastern part of Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān and what was, in mediaeval Islamic times, the region of Daylam [ q.v.]. The geographers of the 4th/10th century already called it the Sabīd/Sapīd̲h̲ Rūd̲h̲, and Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī (8th/14th century) clearly applies it to the whole system. In more recent times, however, the name tends to be restricted to that part of the system after it has been formed from the confluence at Mard̲j̲il of its two great ¶ affluents, the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen [ q.v.] coming in from the left and the S̲h̲āh…

, a town of Central India in what was the mediaeval Islamic sultanate of Mālwā [ q.v.] and at times its capital. It is now a fair-sized town in the westernmost part of Madhya Pradesh State in the Indian Union (lat. 23° 11′ N., long. 75° 50′ E.). Renowned since Mauryan and Gupta times as a sacred site for Hindus, it also played a leading role in Indian astronomy, since the ancient Indians came to calculate longitudes from the meridian of Ud̲j̲d̲j̲ayn [see al-Ḳubba ]. Hence the town appears in Ptolemy’s Geography as Ozēnē, in the geographical section of Ibn Rusta’s encyclopaedia as ʾdh. y. n for Uzza…

, a town of the mediaeval region of Ḳuhistān [ q.v.] in northeastern Persia. It lay some 80 km/50 miles west-north-west of the main town of the region, Ḳāʾin, and was often linked with it; Marco Polo speaks of Tunocain (Yule and Burnell, The Book of Ser Marco Polo , 2 London 1903, i, 83, 86), and Tūn wa Ḳāʾin still figures in the Bābur-nāma (tr. Beveridge, 296, 301). Tūn has no known pre-Islamic history, but was a flourishing town in the 4th/10th century, when the geographers describe it thus, mentioning especially its strong fortress. Nāṣir-i K̲h̲usraw was there…

, a town in the western part of mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān in Persia, now a town and also a bak̲h̲s̲h̲ or sub-district in the s̲h̲ahrastān or district of Bud̲j̲nurd in the K̲h̲urāsān ustān . It lies at the western end of the elongated plain which stretches almost from Bisṭām in the west almost to Nīs̲h̲āpūr in the east, which is drained by the largely saline Kāl-i S̲h̲ūr stream, and which is now traversed by the Tehran-Nīs̲h̲āpūr-Mas̲h̲had railway. The mediaeval geographers, up to and including Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī (see Le Strange, The lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 392-3…

, Muẓaffar al-Dīn (reigned 607-22/1210-25), the fifth and last Atabeg of the Ildegizid or Eldigüzid ¶ family [see ildeñizids ] who ruled in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān during the later Sald̲j̲ūḳ and K̲h̲wārazms̲h̲āhī periods. He married Malika K̲h̲ātūn, widow of the last Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l III (killed in 590/1194 [ q.v.]). During the early part of his career, he ruled in Hamad̲h̲ān as a subordinate of his brother Nuṣrat al-Dīn Abū Bakr, during the time when much of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī was falling into anarchy in the post-S…

, Ẓahīr al-Dawla , the second ruler of the Daylamī dynasty of the Ziyārids [ q.v.] of northern Persia, r. 323-56/935-67. Wus̲h̲mgīr is said to have meant “quail-catcher”, according to al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , ix, 30 = § 3603, cf. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 359. Wus̲h̲mgīr was the lieutenant of his brother Mardāwīd̲j̲ [ q.v.], and after his death was hailed at Rayy as his successor by the Daylaml troops. Until ca. 328/940 he held on to his brother’s conquests in northern Persia, but thereafter was drawn into warfare, in alliance with another Daylamī soldier of fortune, Mākān b. Kākī [ q.v.], w…

, ruler of the northern branch of the Hephtalite confederation which had in pre-Islamic times ruled both north and south of the Hindu Kush, from what is now Soviet Central Asia to northern India, that people known to the Arab historians as Hayṭal (<* Habṭal), pl. Hayāṭila [ q.v.] (see on them, R. Ghirshman, Les Chionites-Hephtalites , Cairo 1958, 69 ff.). It is unclear whether the Ṭarkhān element of his name is in fact a personal name or the well-known Central Asian title (on which see Bosworth and Sir Gerard Clauson, in JRAS [1965], 11-12). The power of the northern Hephthalites, whose d…

1. A former native state of the province of Sind in British India, now in Pakistan, lying to the east of the lower-middle Indus River between lat. 27°46′ and 26°10′ N. and between long. 68°20′ and 70°14′ E., and with an area of 6,018 sq. miles; it is also the name of a town, formerly the capital of the state, lying some 25 miles south-west of Sukkur and Rohri. The southeastern part of what was K̲h̲ayrpūr state is largely desert, but the alluvial plains in the north and west, adjacent to the Indus, are fertile and are irrigated by canals from the Indus valley, so …

, a minor dynasty which ruled in Kirmān in south-eastern Persia during the middle decades of the 4th/10th century. Their establishment there marks the final severance of Kirmān from direct Caliphal control, which had been restored earlier in the century after the collapse of the Ṣaffārid empire. The founder, Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad b. Ilyās, was a commander in the Sāmānid army and of Soghdian origin. He was involved in the revolt against the Sāmānid Amīr Naṣr b. Aḥmad of his brothers in 317/929, and when the rebellion collapsed in 320/932, he with…

, a port of the Persian Gulf which flourished in the early Islamic centuries as one of the main commercial centres of the Gulf, rivalling Baṣra. It lay on the coast of Fārs, near the modern village of Ṭāhirī, some 200 km/125 miles to the southeast ¶ of Bushire (Bū S̲h̲ahr [ q.v.]), in the garmsīr or hot region of the sīf or coasdand. Excavations carried out at the site of Sīrāf 1966-73 by a team sponsored by the British Institute of Persian Studies have shown that there was a Sāsānid port there, probably serving the inland centre of Ardas̲h̲īr K̲h̲urra, the latter Islamic Gūr or D̲j̲ūr [see fīrūzābād …

, the name of a Kurdish tribe and of their country in southern Persia during mediaeval Islamic times. Ibn al-At̲h̲īr spells the name S̲h̲awānkāra, whilst Marco Polo rendered it as Soncara. According to Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī, the S̲h̲abānkāra country was bounded by Fārs, Kirmān and the Persian Gulf. At present, it falls within the ustān or province of Fārs, and there are still two villages, in the s̲h̲ahrastāns of D̲j̲ahrum and Bū S̲h̲ahr respectively, bearing the name S̲h̲abānkāra (Razmārā (ed.), Farhang-i d̲j̲ug̲h̲rāfiyā-yi Īrānzamīn , vii, 139). Mustawfī says that the capital was…

, a Persian corruption of sog̲h̲uḳ bulaḳ “cold spring”, Kurdish Sā-blāg̲h̲, the name of a district in southwestern Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, to the south of Lake Urmiya, and also the former name of its chef-lieu, the modern Mahābād [ q.v.]. The district comprises essentially Mukrī Kurdistān, inhabited by the sedentary Mukrī and Debok̲h̲rī tribes of Kurds, speaking the Kurmānd̲j̲ī form of the Kurdish language (classically described by O. Mann in his Die Mundart der Mukri-Kurden . Kurdisch-persische Forschungen , 4th ser. vol. iii/1-2, Berlin 1906-9. Cf. Min…

, Muwaffaḳ al-Dīn Abū ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-K̲h̲azrad̲j̲ī al-Zabīdī , called Ibn Wahhās , South Arabian historian who wrote under the Turkish Rasūlid dynasty [ q.v.] in the Yaman, d. late 812/early 1410 aged over 70. The biographical dictionaries give virtually nothing on his life, except that Sak̲h̲āwī states that he met him in Zabīd and that his ancestor Ibn Wahhās had been praised for his learning by the commentator Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī. According to Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa, K̲h̲azrad̲j̲ī wrote three histories of the Yaman, impe…

, Mug̲h̲al prince and half-brother of the emperor Akbar [ q.v.], b. 960/1553, d. 993/1585. In 973/1566 he was governor of Kābul and eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān for Akbar, but when temporarily forced out of his capital by the Tīmūrids of Badak̲h̲ s̲h̲ān, he retreated towards India, where a group of dissident Özbeg nobles proclaimed him emperor at Ḏj̲awpūr and incited him to invade India. He beseiged Lahore with his forces, but had to retreat to Kābul. For over a decade, he posed a threat on Akbar’s northwestern front…

(p.), a form current in Muslim India, passing into Urdu and Hindi and derived from Pers. s̲h̲ikar “game, prey; the chase, hunting”, with the senses of “a native hunter or stalker, who accompanied European hunters and sportsmen”, and then of these last sportsmen themselves (see Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson , a glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and phrases, 2London 1903, 827-8, s.v. Shikaree , Shekarry ). The native hunters stemmed from the many castes in India whose occupation was the snaring, trapping, tracking, or pursuit of …