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the ancient capital of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.], situated on the east bank of the main channel of the Amū Daryā or Oxus a short distance from modern K̲h̲īwa. According to Yāḳūt, Buldān , iv, 222, Kāt̲h̲ meant in K̲h̲wārazmian a wall or rampart within the steppe, even if it enclosed no buildings, but there is nothing in what we know of K̲h̲wārazmian to confirm this; it is conceivable that there is some connection with Sogdian kat̲h̲ , kant̲h̲ , “town”, though this is wholly conjectural. The site of Kāt̲h̲ was affected by changes in the channels of the river, and was accordingly moved at various times. Litt…

, Quetta , a town and district of northern Balūčistān, now in Pakistan. In both the former British India and now in Pakistan, Quetta and Pīs̲h̲īn, some 20 miles to its north, have formed an administrative district. The region is geologically complex and is very mountainous, with peaks rising up to nearly 12,000 feet/3,850 metres, and it is centred upon the basin of the Pīs̲h̲īn-Lora river and its tributaries. The climate is temperate, with cold winters. Crops—wheat being the chief rabīʿ or spring crop and sorghum the chief k̲h̲arīf or autumn one—can only be gr…

(a.), used in a personal sense, with an extended ¶ meaning from Arabic “breast” > “foremost, leading part of a thing”, denotes an eminent or superior person or primus inter pares, whence its use for a chief, president or minister; cf. the Ottoman Turkish Grand Vizier’s title ṣadr-i aʿẓam [ q.v.]. The title was especially used in the Persian world for a high religious dignitary whose function ( ṣadārat , ṣidārat ) was concerned essentially with the administration of religious affairs. In the first mentions of the title and in the structural evo…

b. Abi ’l-ʿAṣ , Abu ’l-Ḳāsim and then Abū ʿAbd al-Malik, first caliph of the Marwānid branch of the Umayyad dynasty [ q.v.], reigned for several months in 64-5/684-5. Marwān, born of al-Ḥakam’s wife Āmina bt. ʿAlḳama al-Kināniyya, stemmed from the same branch of the Umayyad clan of Ḳurays̲h̲, se. Abu ’l-ʿĀṣ, as the Rightly-guided caliph ʿUt̲h̲mān, and was in fact ʿUt̲h̲mān’s cousin. The sources generally place his birth in A.H. 2 or 4 ( ca. 623-6), but it may well have occurred before the Hid̲j̲ra in any case, he must have known the Prophet and was accounte…

, Naṣībīn , classical Nasibis, modern Turkish form Nusaybin, a town in upper Mesopotamia, now in modern Turkey. It is situated on the modern Görgarbonizra Çayi, the classical Mygdonios river, the early Arabic Hirmās, Syriac Nehar Māsā or Mās̲h̲ī, in the plain to the south of the mountain region of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn [ q.v.], and today faces the Syrian town of al-Ḳāmis̲h̲lī. Naṣībīn is an ancient town, its name being probably Semitic. In classical sources we find the form Νάσιβις and on coins ΝΕΣΙΒΙ. In Armenian, it is usually Mcbin, Nsepi or Nsepin. The countrysid…

, one of many Arabic words used to express the concept of “gift”, and the preferred legal term for it, see following article. The giving of gifts, that is, the voluntary transfer of property, serves material and psychological purposes. In the pre-history of man, it probably antedates the contractual payment for goods and services. In Islam, it has retained its inherited functions as an important component of the social fabric and has exercised a considerable influence on political life. Literature (in the narrow sense…

, Abū Manṣūr , Daylamī soldier of fortune who played an important part in the tortuous politics and military operations in northern Persia, involving local Daylamī chiefs, the ʿAlids of Ṭabaristān and the Sāmānids, during the first half of the 4th/10th century. The house of Kākī were local rulers of As̲h̲kawar in Rānikūh, the eastern part of Gīlān in the Caspian coastlands. Mākān rose to prominence in Ṭabaristān in the service of the ʿAlid princes there, and as the ʿAlids themselves dissolved into internecine rivalries, he became the co…

, Maʿalt̲h̲ā (Syriac “gate, entrance”, Payne Smith, Thesaurus syriacus , col. 2881), modern Malthai, the name given to two villages in the former ḳaḍāʾ of Dehōk (Duhūk) in the wilāyet of Mawṣil in Ottoman times, now in the Autonomous Region of Dehōk in Republican ʿIrāḳ. The second of these two villages was formerly distinguished as Maʿalt̲h̲ā al-Naṣārā “M. of the Christians”, but has recently become largely Kurdish and Muslim, like its fellow-village. Maʿalt̲h̲āyā lies on a small affluent of the Tigri…

, a small town of mediaeval India in the extreme north of the former Hyderabad State of British India. It is situated in lat. 19° 49′ N. and long. 77° 58′ E. just to the south of the Pengangā river, a left-bank affluent of the Godavari, where it forms the boundary between the former regions of northern Hyderabad [see ḥaydarābād ] and Berār [ q.v.] in Central India. In pre-Muslim times, Māhūr had the shrine of Śrī-Dattātreya. In the middle years of the 8th/14th century, the territory up to Māhūr was conquered by the Deccani power of the Bahmanīs [ q.v.]. In 857/1453 Maḥmūd I K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī [ q. v. ] of Mā…

or bāʾ-i fārsī or bāʾ-i ʿad̲j̲amī , i.e. the bāʾ with three points subscript, invented for Persian as supplement to the Arabic bāʾ and to represent the unvoiced, as opposed to the voiced, bilabial plosive (for the voiced b, see bāʾ). It is sometimes interchangeable with bāʾ (e.g. asp and asb , dabīr and dapīr ) and, more frequently, with fāʾ (e.g. sapīd and safīd , Pārs and Fārs ). The regular use of the letter in manuscripts is comparatively modern, but it is found in good ones of the 7th/13th century while at the same time it is often omitted in manuscripts of much later date ( GIPh …

, a small town in South India (lat. 18° 26′ N., long. 77° 11′ E.), in British Indian times the chef-lieu of a taluk in the Bīdar District of Ḥaydarābād State [ q.v.], now coming within the Maharashtra State of the Indian Union. It has a fort dating back to the end of the 9th/15th century. It was part of the lands of the Barīd S̲h̲āhs of Bīdar [ q.vv.], and then of their successors the ʿĀdil S̲h̲āhs of Bīd̲j̲apur [ q.vv.] until it was besieged by S̲h̲āh Ḏj̲ahān’s army in 1044/1635 and then incorporated into the Mug̲h̲al empire. Its chief fame stems from the fiercely-fought ba…

, older orthography (e.g. in Ibn Rusta, 171) K̲h̲wāb, a rustāḳ or rural district of Ḳūhistān in eastern Persia, lying between the district of Bāk̲h̲arz [ q.v.] to the north and that of Ḳāʾin to the southwest, and adjacent to the modern Iran-Afg̲h̲ānistān border. The geographers of the 4th/10th century mention the towns there of Salūmak ( Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 103, Salūmīd̲h̲), Fard̲j̲ird and Kusūy(a), the latter being especially populous. Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut 1374-6/1955-7, ii, 399, describes the district as having 200 villages and three si…

, the name found in earlier mediaeval Islamic sources for the region along the southern banks of the middle and upper Oxus river, in the wider sense of the term (see below), with the ancient of the Balk̲h̲ as the centre of its western part and such towns as Ṭālaḳān, Andarāb and Walwālīd̲j̲ [ q.vv.] as its centres in the narrower acceptation of the term, sc. the eastern part. It comprised in its wider sense the modern Afg̲h̲an provinces of Fāryāb, D̲j̲ūzd̲j̲ān, Balk̲h̲, Sanangān, Ḳunduz, Tak̲h̲ār and Badak̲h̲s̲h̲ān. The name of the region obviously preserves a memory of the people k…

, the Greek Tripolis, called “of Syria” in the Arabic sources to distinguish it from Ṭarābulus al-G̲h̲arb [ q.v.] “of the West”, Tripoli in Libya, an historic town of the Mediterranean coast of the Levant, to the north of D̲j̲ubayl and Batrūn [ q.vv.]. It lies partly on and partly beside a hill at the exit of a deep ravine through which flows a river, the Nahr Ḳadīs̲h̲a (Arabic, Abū ʿAlī). West of it stretches a very fertile plain covered with woods, which terminate in a peninsula on which lies the port of al-Mīnā. The harbour is protect…

, Abū Muḥammad al-Marwazi al-Tamīmī, faḳīh who had been a pupil of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī. judge and counsellor of ʿAbbāsid caliphs, d. 242/857. A native of Marw, he became Grand Judge ( ḳāḍī ’l-ḳuḍāt ) of Bag̲h̲dād after having been being appointed judge in Baṣra by al-Ḥasan b. Sahl [ q.v.] in 202/817-18. He soon became a member of al-Maʾmūn’s court circle as an adviser and boon-companion, thus exemplifying a trend under this caliph to take legal scholars rather than administrators as political counsellors. He accompanied al-Maʾmūn to Syria and Egypt …

, in mediaeval Islamic times a town, now the city of Madurai, in South India. It lies on the Vaidai river in lat. 9° 55’ N., long. 78° 07’ E. in the region known to the mediaeval Muslims as Maʿbar and to later European traders as Coromandel. For the historical geography and Islamic history of this coastal province, roughly extending from Cape Comorin northwards to Madras, see maʿbar . In 734/1334 S̲h̲arīf Ḏj̲alāl al-Dīn Aḥsan [ q.v.], governor for the Dihlī Sultan Muḥammad b. Tug̲h̲luḳ [ q.v.], renounced his allegiance, and he and some seven of his successors ruled over a short-l…

, or Kākwayhids , a dynasty of Daylamī origin which ruled over part of D̲j̲ibāl or west-central Persia during the first half of the 5th/11th century as virtually independent sovereigns, and thereafter for more than a century as local lords of Yazd, tributary to the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. The rise of the Kākūyids is one aspect of the “Daylamī interlude” of Iranian history, during which hitherto submerged Daylamī and Kurdish elements rose to prominence. Under the dynamic leadership of the …

, Banū , or Mazyadids , an Arab dynasty of central ʿIrāḳ, which stemmed originally from the clan of Nās̲h̲ira of the Banū Asad [ q. v. ] established in the area between al-Kūfa and Hīt, and which flourished in the 4th-6th/10th-12th centuries. ¶ The origins of the Mazyadids, as established by G. Makdisi (see Bibl .) pace the older view (expressed e.g. in EI 1 mazyadīds ) that the family did not appear in history till the early years of the 5th/11th century, go back to the period soon after the establishment of Būyid domination in ʿIrāḳ. Ibn al-Ḏj̲āwzī relates that the Būyid amīr Muʿizz al-Dawla’s v…

, Ḳuzdār , the name of a town in mediaeval Islamic Balūčistān [ q.v.], modern town and district of Ḵh̲uzdār in the former Kalāt state [see kilāt ] in Pakistan. It lies in lat. 27° 48′ N. and long 66° 37′ E. at an altitude of 4,050 feet, some 85 miles south of Kalāt; the long, narrow valley of the Kolachi River in which it is situated is strategically important as a nodal point of communications, from Karāčī and Las Bēla [ q.vv.] in the south, from Kaččhī in the east, from Kalāt in the north, and from Makrān and K̲h̲ārān [ q.vv.] in the west. Ḳuṣdār was first raided by the Arabs…

, Banū , an Iranian dynasty which reigned in the districts of Rūyān and Rustamdār, the coastal plain and the mountainous interior respectively, of the western parts of the Caspian province of Māzandarān [ q.v.] in the second half of the 9th/15th century and in the 10th/16th century. The dynasty was in fact one of the two branches into which the ancient line of the Bādūspānids [ q.v.], whose genealogy went back to Sāsānid times, split in the middle years of the 9th/15th century. The Bādūspānids had been confined to the fortress of Nūr by the Caspian campaigns of Tīmūr in 794/139…