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the nisba or gentilic of several Egyptian scholars of the Mamlūk and early Ottoman periods, the most important of whom are as follows: (1.) S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī (ʿAbd Allāh?) b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Fazārī al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, legal scholar and secretary in the Mamlūk chancery, and author of several books. The main sources for his life are the fairly brief mentions of him in biographical and historical sources of the late Mamlūk period by al-ʿAynī, al-Maḳrīzī, Ibn Tag̲h̲rībirdī, al-Sak̲h̲āwī and Ibn …

(a.) means basically "wood, piece of wood, plank, spar" (pls. aʿwād , ʿīdān ). I. In daily life 1. ʿŪd as perfume and incense and as a medicament In the Arabic materia medica it indicates the so-called "aloe wood". This designation, used in trade, is conventional but incorrect because aloe wood is called ṣabr [ q.v.]. ʿŪd has to do with certain kinds of resinous, dark-coloured woods with a high specific weight and a strong aromatic scent, which were used in medicine as perfume and incense ( ʿūd al-bak̲h̲ūr ) and were highly coveted because of their rarity and v…

b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams , ancestor of the Umayyads, the principal clan of the Ḳuraysh of Mecca. His genealogy (Umayya b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf b. Ḳuṣayy) and his descendants are given in Wüstenfeld, Geneal . Tabellen , U, V, and Ibn al-Kabbī, in Caskel-Strenziok, i, nos. 8 ff. Like all other eponyms of Arab tribes and clans, his actual existence and the details of his life have to be accepted with caution, but too great scepticism with regard to tradition would be as ill-advised as absolute faith in its statement…

(p.), the Peacock Throne, a name given to various highly-decorated and much bejewelled royal thrones in the eastern Islamic world, ¶ in particular, to that constructed for the Mug̲h̲al Emperor S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān (1037-68/1628-57 [ q.v.]). There are relevant accounts in the contemporary Indo-Muslim sources, e.g. in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Lāhawrī’s Bāds̲h̲āh-nāma and Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s ʿAmal-i Ṣāliḥ , and in the accounts of European travellers who claimed to have seen the throne, such as Tavernier, Bernier and Manucci. These last authorities, …

, siege. The following articles deal with siegecraft and siege warfare. On fortification see burd̲j̲ , ḥiṣn , ḳalʿa and sūr . i.— General Remarks Siege warfare was one of the essential forms of warfare when it was a matter of conquest, and not merely of plundering raids, in countries in which, from ancient times, most of the large towns had been protected by walls and where, during the Middle Ages, the open countryside was to an ever increasing extent held by fortresses [see ḥiṣn and ḳalʿa ]. Although the forces available were rarely sufficient to impose a co…

(a.), pi. subul , literally “way, road, path”, a word found frequently in the Ḳurʾān and in Islamic religious usage. 1. As a religious concept. Associated forms of the Arabic word are found in such Western Semitic languages as Hebrew and Aramaic, and also in Epigraphic South Arabian as s 1 bl (see Joan C. Biella, Dictionary of Old South Arabic , Sabaean dialect, Cambridge, Mass. 1982, 326). A. Jeffery, following F. Schwally, in ZDMG, liii (1899), 197, surmised that sabīl was a loanword in Ḳurʾānic usage, most likely taken from Syriac, where s̲h̲ebīlā has both the l…

(t., < ḳi̊s̲h̲ “winter”), winter quarters, originally applied to the winter quarters, often in warmer, low-lying areas, of pastoral nomads in Inner Asia, and thence to those in regions like Persia and Anatolia into which Türkmens and others from Central Asia infiltrated, bringing with them their nomadic ways of life; Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk , tr. Atalay, i, 464-5, defines ḳi̊s̲h̲laḳ as al-mus̲h̲attā . Its antonym is yaylaḳ “summer quarters” (< yay “spring”, later “summer”), denoting the upland pastures favou…

, an Iranian family of K̲h̲urāsān prominent in the cultural and social worlds there and also active as local administrators and town officials under the Sāmānids and early G̲h̲aznawids [ q.vv.]. They were apparently of Sog̲h̲dian origin, and amongst their pre-Islamic forebears is mentioned the Prince of Pand̲j̲kent S̲h̲īr Dīvāstič, killed at Mount Mug̲h̲ by the Arabs in 104/722-3 [see mā warāʾ al-nahr. 2. History]; al-Samʿānī traces the family back to the Sāsānids Yazdagird II and Bahrām Gūr ( K. al-Ansāb , facs. edn., fols. 548b-549b). It must neverthe…

, Arabised form of Persian Kūfičīs, a people inhabiting south eastern Persia, more exactly the Kirmān-western Balūčistān region, in early mediaeval Islamic times. The name, literally “mountain dwellers”, probably stems ultimately from O. Pers. ākaufačiya — (< O. Pers. kaufa- “mountain”), the name of a people in the Daiva inscription of Xerxes, who are mentioned together with the mačiya “men of Maka” (= Makrān, the coastal region of Balūčistān?), via N. Pers. kūfid̲j̲ / kūfič (cf. R. G. Kent, Old Persian grammar, texts , lexicon 2, New Haven 1953, 151, 165). In early Islamic sour…

, a line of Atabegs or Turkish slave commanders who governed most of northwestern Persia, including Arrān, most of Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān, and D̲j̲ibāl, during the second half of the 6th/12th century and ¶ the early decades of the 7th/13th. Down to the death in battle in 590/1194 of Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l b. Arslan, last of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs of Iraq and Persia, the Ildeñizids ruled as theoretical subordinates of the Sultans, acknowledging this dependence on their coins almost down to the end of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. Thereafter, they were in effec…

, the name of a district, and of its mediaeval urban centre, in the western part of the Persian province of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. The district comprises ¶ a fertile plain near the northwestern corner of Lake Urmiya, bounded on the west by the Harāwīl mountain range with the pass of Ḵh̲ānasūr (2,408 m/7,900 feet) leading into Turkey, and on the south by the Kūh-i Awg̲h̲ān. The modern town of Salmās, S̲h̲ābūr or Dīlmān(lat. 38° 13′ N., long. 44° 50′ E.), lies 48 km/30 miles to the south-south-west of Ḵh̲ōy [see khoi ] on the Zala Čay river. The region of Salmās has be…

, a town in eastern Transcaucasia on the left bank of the middle course of the Araxes or Aras River, lying in lat. 38°54′ N. and long. 46° 01′ E. and at an altitude of 948 m/2,930 ft. The Turco-Persian name “army town” implies a probable foundation during the period of the Mongol ¶ invasions or of the ensuing Il-K̲h̲ānids, especially as the latter made Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān the centre of their power. Certainly, Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī (mid-8th/14th century) describes it as a provincial town, one of the five making up the tūmān of Nak̲h̲čiwān [ q.v.], watered by a stream coming down from Mount Ḳub…

, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Isḥāḳ al-Ṭūsī , the celebrated minister of the Sald̲j̲ūḳid sultans Alp Arslān [ q.v.] and Maliks̲h̲āh [ q.v.]. According to most authorities, he was born on Friday 21 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḳaʿda 408/10 April 1018, though the 6th/12th century Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Bayhaḳ of Ibn Funduḳ al-Bayhaḳī [ q.v.], which alone supplies us with detailed information about his family, places his birth in 410/1019-20. His birth-place was Rādkān, a village in the neighbourhood of Ṭūs, of which his father was revenue agent on behalf of the G̲h̲aznawīd gov…

, a town in western Anatolia, classical Opsicum. It lies on the margin of a fertile plain, a few miles south of the upper course of the Gediz river and to the north of the main Manisa-Uşak road, in lat. 38°33′ north and long. 28°40′ east and at an altitude of 2,140 feet/652 m. it is in a volcanic area (classical Katakekaumene or Combusta), with the extinct volcano Karadevlit north-east of the town; hence many of the houses are built from dark basalt. There are numerous marble remains from classical times, but the citadel, apparently late mediaeval, is ruinous. Ḳūla came …

, a district in K̲h̲urāsān, original Persian form Tōs (also thus in the later 8th century Armenian geography, see Markwart-Messina, A catalogue of the provincial capitals of Ērānshahr , Rome 1931, 11, 47), which played a notable part in the medieval Islamic period of Persia’s Islamic history. ¶ 1. History. In early Islamic times, Ṭūs was the name of a district containing several towns. The town of Nawḳān flourished down to the end of the 3rd/9th century. The form Nawḳān < Nōḳan is confirmed by the present name of the Mas̲h̲had quarter Nawg̲h̲ān (where the diphthong aw corresponds to the old wāw…

b. Riʾāb al-Asadiyya, one of the Prophet’s wives, whom he married after her divorce from Muḥammad’s freedman and adopted son Zayd b. Ḥārit̲h̲a [ q.v.]. Zaynab’s mother was a maternal aunt of the Prophet, Umayma bt. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and her father, from the tribe of Asad, a client of the clan of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams. One of the first emigrants to Medina, she was a virgin (according to some traditions, a widow) when Muḥammad gave her in marriage to Zayd. In the year 4/626 Muḥammad saw Zaynab alone in her house, was taken with he…

( nisba Bahrānī), a tribe of the Ḳuḍāʿa group, sometimes reckoned a part of Ḏj̲ud̲h̲ām, which emigrated northwards to the Euphrates and then to the plain of Ḥimṣ. Like their Euphrates neighbours Tag̲h̲lib and Tanūk̲h̲, they became Christian, but were converted after Tag̲h̲lib, probably about 580. A deputation came to Muḥammad at Medina in 9/630 and became Muslims; but the tribe as a whole remained hostile and attached to Byzantium. In 8/629 Bahrāʾ had b…

, a town of the northeastern Deccan of India (lat. 18° 00’ N., long. 79° 35’ E.), important in mediaeval times as the centre of a Hindu princedom in the region of Telingāṇa [ q.v.]. It blocked the way to Muslim expansion from the central Deccan to the Bay of Bengal, hence was frequently involved in warfare during the 8th-9th/14th-15th centuries with the Dihlī Sultanate [ q.v.] and then the local northern Deccani sultanate of the Bahmanids [ q.v.]. Warangal lies on the eastern edge of the Deccan plateau some 130 km/70 miles to the southwest of the Godivari river. In mediaev…

, also Erič , Erač , on modern maps Erachh, a small town of north-central India, situated on the south bank of the Betwā river, 65 km/40 miles northeast of Jhansi and 100 km/62 miles southeast of Gwalior (lat. 25° 47′ N., long. 79° 9′ E.). It is now in the Jhansi District in the extreme southwest of Uttar Pradesh Province of the Indian Union. Although now within a region largely Hindu, the area round Irič is rich in Indo-Muslim remains and monuments. It was in Muslim hands by 709/1309, when the Ḵh̲ald̲j̲ī commander Malik Kāfūr [ q.v.] stayed at Irič, then renamed Sulṭānpūr, en route southwa…

(p.), New (Year’s) Day. 1. In the Islamic heartlands. The word is frequently represented in Arabic works in the form Nayrūz , which appears in Arabic literature as early as the verse of al-Ak̲h̲ṭal [ q.v.] (see al-D̲j̲awālīḳī, Muʿarrab , ed. A.M. S̲h̲ākir, Tehran 1966; al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿs̲h̲ā , ii, 408). It was the first day of the Persian solar year and is not represented in the Muslim lunar year (al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , iii, 416-17 = §§ 1301-2). In Achaemenid times, the official year began with Nawrūz, when the sun entered the Zodiac…