Search

1. The word. Zindīḳ , pl. zanādiḳa , abstract/collective noun zandaḳa , is an Arabic word borrowed (at least in the first instance) from Persian, and used in the narrow and precise meaning “Manichaean” (synonym: …

(a., pl. tarād̲j̲im ), verbal noun of the verb tard̲j̲ama “to interpret, translate, write the biography of someone ( lahu )”. For the function of interpreter, see tard̲j̲umān . ¶ 1. In literature. Here, it may form part of the title of a biography, or, especially in contemporary North Africa, the biography (or autobiography) itself. Hence ʿilm al-tarād̲j̲im is a branch of historical research, sometimes equated by the Twelver S̲h̲īʿa with ʿilm al-rid̲j̲āl [ q.v.]. The term dates to at least the early 5th/11th century, where it appears in the titles of three works by al-T̲h̲aʿālibī (350-429/961-1038 [ …

(p.) “province”, “provincial capital”, “[large] town”. The word continues Middle Persian s̲h̲ahrestān , which has the same meanings, though it is certainly possible that it goes back even further to an unattested Old Persian * xšaça-stāna- . In any case, it is derived from s̲h̲ahr [ q.v.]—or its ancestor—and -stāna “place” (in compounds); a s̲h̲ahristān is thus literally a “place of kingship”, i.e. the seat of the local representative of royal power (the provincial capital) and then also the region over which that representati…

, the 28th letter of the Arabic alphabet, with the numerical value 10. It stands for the semivowel y and for the long vowel ī , which the grammarians analyse as short i ( kasra ) plus yāʾ . For the shortening of final -ī before hamzat al-waṣl , see wāw . ϒāʾ is also used, like alif and wāw, as a “support” for medial or final hamza [ q.v.], reflecting presumably the ancient Ḥid̲j̲āzī dialect loss of hamza in certain positions with concomitant glides. In word-final position, alif maḳṣūra (that is to say: long ā not followed by hamza) is written sometimes with alif and sometimes with yāʾ. In the latter c…

(better Sōzanī), Muḥammad b. ʿAlī (or Masʿūd?) al-Samarḳandī, Persian satirical poet of the 6th/12th century. A native of Nasaf (Nak̲h̲s̲h̲ab), he eulogised several of the Ḳarak̲h̲ānid rulers of Samarḳand, from Arslān S̲h̲āh Muḥammad II (495- ca. 523/1102- ca. 1129) up to Ḳi̊li̊č Ṭamg̲h̲āč K̲h̲ān Masʿūd II ( ca. 556-74/ ca. 1161-78), but also several of the Burhānid ṣadr s of Buk̲h̲ārā [see ṣadr . 1], the Sald̲j̲ūḳid Sand̲j̲ar [ q.v.] and others. Dawlats̲h̲āh, who appears to have seen Sūzanī’s grave in Samarḳand, says that he died in 569/1173-4, and adds that bef…

(a.), or, with the usual weakening of final hamza , Ṣābī , plural Ṣābiʾūn , Ṣābiʾa , Ṣāba , in English “Sabian” (preferably not “Sabaean”, which renders Sabaʾ [ q.v.]), a name applied in Arabic to at least three entirely different religious communities: (1) the Ṣābiʾūn who are mentioned three times in the Ḳurʾān (II 62, V 69, XXII 17) together with the Christians and Jews. Their identity, which has been much debated both by the Muslim commentators and by modern orientalists, was evidently uncertain already shortly after the time of Muḥamma…

, Muʾayyid al-Dīn Abū Ismāʿīl al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Muns̲h̲iʾ al-Iṣbahānī, secretary, Arabic poet and alchemist. He was born in 453/1061 at Iṣfahān, and his poems give ample testimony of his lasting attachment to his native town. He entered the service of Sald̲j̲ūḳs at the time of Malik S̲h̲āh and went on to become chief secretary under that ruler’s son, Muḥammad I, with the tides muns̲h̲iʾ , mutawallī dīwān al-ṭug̲h̲rāʾ and ṣāḥib dīwān al-ins̲h̲āʾ ; in short, he was the second most senior official (after the wazīr ) in the civil administration of the Sald̲j̲…

, a Turkish dynasty of mediaeval Islam which, at the peak of its power during the 5th-6th/11th-12th centuries, ruled over, either directly or through vassal princes, a wide area of Western Asia from Transoxania, Farg̲h̲āna, the Semirečye and K̲h̲wārazm in the east to Anatolia, Syria and the Ḥid̲j̲āz in the west. From the core of what became the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ empire, subordinate lines of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family maintained themselves in regions like Kirmān (till towards the end of the 6th/12th century), Syria (till the opening years of…

(p.), the name of a mythical bird. There are two passages in the Avesta referring to the “bird Saēna-” ( mərə γ ō saēnō ; Yašt 14: 41) or the “tree of Saēna-” ( vanam yam saēnahe ; Yašt 12: 17); the latter specifies that this tree stands in the middle of Lake Vourukaša, that its name is “all-remedies” and that it bears the seeds of all plants. The word saēna is etymologically identical with Sanskrit śyēná- , “eagle, falcon”, but it is not clear from the two Avestan passages whether it designates a species of bird (though the fact that Saēna- is used…

, a long narrative poem in Persian by Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn Asʿad Gurgānī [ q.v.], written not long after 441/1050 and dedicated to Abū Naṣr b. Manṣūr, the governor of Iṣfahān on behalf of the Sald̲j̲ūḳids. The story, which is set in the distant and unspecified past, deals with the love affair between Wīs, the wife of King Mōbad of Marw, and Rāmīn, her husband’s younger brother. It tells of how the two lovers meet, how they are eventually discovered, and how Rāmīn rises in rebellion against his brother, in the end …

Muḥammad b. S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Ḥusaynī al-Kās̲h̲ānī, commonly called Taḳī Kās̲h̲ī , Persian scholar of the 10th-11th/16th-17th centuries. He was a pupil of the poet Muḥtas̲h̲am Kās̲h̲ī, whose dīwān he edited. His fame rests on his monumental compendium of Persian poetry K̲h̲ulāṣat al-as̲h̲ʿār wa-zubdat al-afkār , of which the first version was completed in 993/1585 and the enlarged second version in 1016/1607-8. It contains notices of well over 600 poets from the 5th/11th century up to the author’s own contempora…

(a.). 1. Ḳurʾānic and early Arabic usage. Sid̲j̲ill is an Arabic word for various types of documents, especially of an official or juridical nature. It has long been recognised (first, it seems, by Fraenkel) that it goes back ultimately to Latin sigillum , which in the classical language means “seal” (i.e. both “sealmatrix” and “seal-impression”), but which in Mediaeval Latin is used also for the document to which a seal has been affixed; it was borrowed into Byzantine Greek as σιγίλλ(ι)ον, “seal, treaty, imperial edict”, and then, via Aramaic (e.g. Syriac sygylywn …

, Kitāb , “the Letter of Tansar”, a political treatise from Sāsānid Persia, known in the Islamic world through an Arabic translation, probably by Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ [ q.v.], from a lost original in Pahlavi. It was ostensibly written by “Tansar” (a misreading, in Pahlavi script, for Tusar, perhaps an abbreviation of * Tus-artēs̲h̲tār , Avestan Tusa-raθaēštar- “T. the warrior”), the chief priest of the first Sāsānid king, Ardas̲h̲īr I ( ca. 224-40), to Gus̲h̲tāsp, the king of Ṭabaristān, encouraging him to submit to Ardas̲h̲īr and, more generally, justifying the Sāsāni…

a Persian poet of the first half of the 6th/12th century. His dīwān , which has been published twice (ed. ʿAlī Ḳawīm, Tehran 1331 S̲h̲ ./1952-3, and ed. M.ʿA. Nāṣiḥ, Tehran 1343 S̲h̲./1964), consists almost entirely of panegyrics praising the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Sand̲j̲ar (511-52/1118-57), the Ḵh̲wārazms̲h̲āh Atsi̊z (521-68/1127-72) and various persons at their respective courts, in particular Sand̲j̲ar’s raʾīs-i Ḵh̲urāsān , Mad̲j̲d al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Musawī, the poet’s principal patron. The rivalry between his two royal master…

, the pen-name of several Persian poets of various periods, among them the author of the Saʿādat-nāma , a collection of moral precepts in some 300 verses, wrongly ascribed, in mss. and in the printed editions, to the famous 5th/11th-century Ismāʿīlī poet Nāṣir-i K̲h̲usraw [ q.v.]. This poem was first published by E. Fagnan, together with a (rather inadequate) French translation, from a Paris manuscript in ZDMG, xxxiv (1880), 643-74, reprinted (from Fagnan, with some emendations) in the appendix to the edition of Nāṣir’s Safar-nāma published in Berlin, Kavi…

(or perhaps better, S̲h̲uhayd) b. al-Ḥusayn al-Balk̲h̲ī al-Warrāḳ al-Mutakallim, Abu ’l-Ḥasan, a philosopher and a poet in Persian and Arabic, died (according to Yāḳūt, followed by al-Ṣafadī) in 315/927. He was a contemporary and close friend of the polymath Abū Zayd al-Balk̲h̲ī and of the Muʿtazilī theologian Abu ’l-Ḳāsim al-Balk̲h̲ī (see al-balk̲h̲ī ; the three Balk̲h̲īs were the subject of a joint biography, used by Yāḳūt) and a bitter rival of the famous philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī [ q.v.]; the latter wrote a polemic against S̲h̲ahīd on the subject of pleasure ( al-lad̲h̲d̲h̲a …

, in Islamic science an astronomical handbook with tables, after the models of the Sāsānid Persian Zīk -i S̲h̲ahriyār , the Indian Sindhind [ q.v.], and Ptolemy’s Almagest and Handy Tables [see baṭlamiyūs ]. A typical zīd̲j̲ might contain a hundred folios of text and tables, though some are substantially larger than this. Most of the relevant astronomical and astrological concepts are clearly explained in the Tafhīm of al-Bīrūnī [ q.v.]. The history of Islamic zīd̲j̲s constitutes a major part of the history of Islamic astronomy [see ʿilm al-hayʾa ]. i. Etymology Arabic zīd̲j̲ (pl. zīd̲j̲ā…

“king of kings”, two royal titles in Persian. They can be traced back to the Achaemenid kings of ancient Persia, who, from Darius I (521-486 B.C.) onwards, refer to themselves in their inscriptions both as xšāyaθiya “king” (from the root xšay- “to rule”, cognate to Sanskrit kṣáyati “possess” and Greek κτάομαι “acquire”) and as xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām “king of kings”. Even earlier the title “king of kings” had been used by the rulers of Assyria and of Urartu (in the Caucasus) and it is not unlikely that the Persians adopted it from the latter (see O.G. von Wesendonk, The title “King of Kings” , in O…

, the 12th and 13th letters of the Arabic alphabet. Both letters have the same form ( rasm ), which derives from that of the Aramaic letter s̲h̲īn , and are distinguished only by diacritics, s̲h̲īn having three dots above, while sīn is in principle unpointed ( muhmal ), though in carefully written manuscripts it can be distinguished by a V-shaped sign above the letter, or else by three dots below. In the Eastern form of the abd̲j̲ad [ q.v.], sīn occupies the position of Aramaic semkat̲h̲ and, like this, has the numerical value 60, while s̲h̲īn has the position of Aramaic s̲h̲īn ( = 300), but in th…

, the 27th letter of the Arabic alphabet (or the 26th, if hāʾ is placed after wāw ), with the numerical value 6. It has two principal functions in Arabic orthography, standing either for the semivowel w or for the long vowel ū . Traditional Arabic grammar reduces these two functions to one by analysing ū as short u ( ḍamma ) plus wāw. Wāw also serves (like alif and yāʾ ) as a “support” for medial or final hamza [ q.v.], reflecting, according to the most commonly held view, the situation in the ancient dialect of Mecca, where ʾ appears to have shifted to w in certain positions. In the words ulāʾika and ulū , w…