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means etymologically “a patch of ground marked out from adjoining land by a difference in colour, etc.” or “a low-lying region with stagnant water” (see Lane, s.v.); the latter sense is obviously at the base of the plural Biḳāʿ [ q.v.] to designate the (originally) marshy valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges in Syria, and doubtless at that of the name al-Buḳayʿa for a settlement near the Lake of Ḥimṣ [ q.v.] (see Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems , 352). From these senses it acquires the broader one of “province, region, tract of la…

, Abū Kālīd̲j̲ār Marzubān, S̲h̲ams al-Milla (353-88/964-98), Buyid amir and eldest son of ʿAḍud al-Dawla [ q.v.]. On his father’s death in S̲h̲awwāl 372/March 983, Ṣamṣām al-Dawla succeeded to power as amīr al-umarāʾ , but his position was immediately disputed by another brother, S̲h̲araf al-Dawla S̲h̲īrzīl, who seized Fārs and Ḵh̲ūzistān. From his base in ʿIrāḳ, Ṣamṣām al-Dawla had also to combat the Kurdish chief Bād̲h̲, ancestor of the Marwānid dynasty [see marwānids ] of Diyār Bakr, who had seized various towns in al-Ḏj̲azīra and who even for a while held Mawṣil.…

, D̲j̲abal , a mountainous and, in early Islamic times, apparently wooded region of the Kirmān province in Iran, described by the mediaeval historians and geographers as the haunt of predatory peoples like the Kūficīs or Ḳufṣ and the Balūč [see balūcistān , kirmān and ḳufṣ ]. It is the steepsided granite chain running in a NW-SE direction from the mountain massif of central Kirmān (sc. the massif which culminates in such peaks as the Kūh-i Hazār and the Kūh-i Lālazār), to the south of the towns of Bam [ q.v.] and Fahrad̲j̲; the geographers count it as amongst the garmsīrāt or warm regions [see ḳi̊s…

, Ṣadr al-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Nāṣir b. ʿAlī , author of the late Sald̲j̲ūḳ period and early decades of the 7th/13th century, whose work is known to us through its incorporation within an anonymous history of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs and succeeding Atabegs of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, the Ak̲h̲bār al-Dawla al-sald̲j̲ūḳiyya (ed. Muhammad Iqbal, Lahore ¶ 1933; Tkish. tr. Necati Lugal, Ankara 1943; cf. Brockelmann, I2, 392, Suppl. I, 554-5). Al-Ḥusaynī apparently composed the Zubdat al-tawārīk̲h̲ , ak̲h̲bār al-umarāʾ wa ’l-mulūk al-sald̲j̲ūḳiyya , which forms the first…

, the Arabic name for the Jordan River, used also from early Islamic times onwards to designate the regions adjacent to the river’s course. 1. The river This appears in Arabic as the nahr al-Urdunn , in Old Testament and later Hebrew as ha-ϒardēn , and in the Septuagint and the classical geographers as ô ’Ιορδάνης. After the Crusading period, local Arabic usage often referred to it as al-S̲h̲arīʿa [ al-kabīra ] “the [Great] watering-place”. It was, and still is, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims, by Christians in particular on account of…

(a.), pl. ṣawāʾif (< ṣayf ‘‘summer”), summer raid or military expedition (see Lane, 1756; Dozy, Supplément, i, 857). 1. In the Arab-Byzantine warfare. The term is used by the early Islamic historians to denote the raids of the Arabs into Byzantine Anatolia. These were normally mounted annually, over a period of some two centuries, beginning during the governorship in Syria of Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān [ q.v.], i.e. from ca. 640 onwards. They tailed off in the 3rd/9th century as the ʿAbbāsid caliphate became racked by internal discord and as the Macedonian emperors i…

, Ruwāndiz , a town of Kurdish ʿIrāḳ, the chef-lieu of a ḳaḍāʾ in the liwāʾ of Irbil. In ca. 1940 it had a population of 7,000. It lies in lat. 36° 37ʹ N. and long. 44° 33ʹ E. at an altitude of ca. 914 m/3,000 feet on a route which connects Mawṣil and Irbil [ q.vv.] via the Garū S̲h̲inka pass (1,830 m/6,000 feet) with Mahābād/Sāwd̲j̲-Bulāḳ [ q.vv.]. The route was described in early Islamic times only by Yāḳūt, enumerating seven stages from Mawṣil to Sāwd̲j̲-Bulāḳ. History. It will be evident that Rawāndiz, situated at the intersection of the communications of…

(in Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 16, Ṭabarstarān), a district of the eastern Caucasus, essentially the basin of the Rūbās river which runs into the Caspian Sea just south of Darband [see derbend ], the early Islamic Bāb al-Abwāb [ q.v.]. It now comes within the southernmost part of Dāg̲h̲istān (see map in ḳabḳ , at IV, 344). Its population comprises Caucasian mountaineers plus a considerable admixture of Iranian speakers of Tātī dialect [see tāt ]. At the time of the Umayyad prince Marwān b. Muḥammad’s raids through the Caucasus, there was a Ṭabarsarān S̲h̲āh (known a…

, a district of eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, ¶ thus designated in the Islamic sources of the later mediaeval period, deriving its name from its urban centre Lamg̲h̲ān (later form, Lag̲h̲mān). It comprises the fertile plain of the middle course of the Kābul River, much of it lying to the north and east of Kābul city [ q.v.] itself. It is bounded on the north by the mountains of Kāfiristān [ q.v.], modern Nūristān, and includes the lower reaches of the Alingār and Alis̲h̲ang Rivers; on the south and east, it adjoins, and was sometimes considered (e.g. by Bābur) to includ…

(a.), literally, “something made obscure, hidden”. 1. In the sense of word puzzle, riddle [see lug̲h̲z ]. 2. In the sense of secret writing, code. Codes were regularly used in classical Antiquity. Thus the skytalē of the Spartans, mentioned by Plutarch, in which a message was written on a parchment or leather ribbon which was wrapped round a tapered wooden baton for purposes of writing and then could only be read by a recipient possessing a baton of the same shape and size, is an early example of a typical …

(p.), literally “cool water”, often found in the Arabised form sirdāb , an underground chamber used for keeping cool during the extreme heat of e.g. the ʿIrāḳī or Persian summers. Such building constructions are an ancient feature of Middle Eastern life, being found amongst the Egyptians of Pharaonic times and in Babylonia. Examples of them have been found in the remains of the early ʿAbbāsid palace at al-Uk̲h̲ayḍir [ q.v.] and at al-Muʿtaṣim’s palace, the D̲j̲awsaḳ al-K̲h̲āḳānī, at Sāmarrā. At Bag̲h̲dād until recent times, traditional-type houses had a semi-base…

, a line of military commanders who governed the northwestern provinces of the caliphate (Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. Arrān and Armenia) in the later 3rd/9th and early 4th/10th centuries on behalf of the ʿAbbāsids. The Sād̲j̲ids were just some of several commanders, originally from the Iranian East and Central Asia, who came westwards to serve in the early ʿAbbāsid armies. The family seems to have originated in Us̲h̲rūsana [ q.v.] on the middle Syr Darya in Transoxania, the region where the Afs̲h̲īns [ q.v.] were hereditary princes until at least the end of the 3rd/9th century, and w…

, a small town of Persian Kurdistan, now the chef-lieu of a s̲h̲ahrastān or county in the province of Kurdistān (lat. 36° 14′ N., long. 46° 15′ E.). It lies on the western side of the upper D̲j̲ag̲h̲atū Čay valley some 77 km/50 miles to the southeast of Mahābād [ q.v.] and on the road southwards to Sanandad̲j̲ and Kirmāns̲h̲āh [ q.vv.]. The Kurdish population are from the Mukrī tribe, S̲h̲āfiʿī Sunnīs and with the Naḳs̲h̲bandī Ṣūfī order influential amongst them. In the early 20th century, the local k̲h̲ān was a relative of the wālī s of Ardalān and Sanandad̲j̲. In ca. 1950 Saḳḳiz town had a po…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. D̲j̲aʿfar , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 252-5/866-9, and son of the earlier caliph al-Mutawakkil [ q.v.] by his favourite slave concubine Ḳabīḥa. The reign of al-Muʿtazz’s predecessor, his cousin al-Mustaʿīn [ q.v.], ended in strife and violence stirred up by the Turkish guards in Sāmarrā. Al-Mustaʿīn was forced to abdicate at Bag̲h̲dād, and on 4 Muḥarram 252/25 January 866, al-Muʿtazz, having been brought out of jail, was hailed as caliph. The first part of the succession arrangements envisaged towards t…

, a district and fortress of northern Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, famous as being the headquarters of the Ḵh̲urramī rebel Bābak [ q.v.] in the first decades of the 3rd/9th century. The exact site is uncertain, but it must have lain in the modern Ḳarad̲j̲a-Dag̲h̲, older Maymad, the ancient Armenian region of Pʿaytakaran, to the north of Ahar and south of the Araxes River, near Mount Has̲h̲tād-Sar, at some spot between the modern districts of Hārand, Kalaybar and Garmādūz (V. Minorsky, Studies in Caucasian history, London 1953, 116 and Addenda et corrigenda slip). Bābak’s fortress there…

b. Mart̲h̲ad b. Ḥāzim al-ʿAbsī al-G̲h̲aṭafānī . governor of Egypt 90-6/709-14 for the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik. Ḳurra came from the group of North Arab tribes which had settled extensively in northern Syria and the D̲j̲azīra and which were in the forefront of the warfare along the Taurus Mountains with Byzantium. He himself came from the region of Ḳinnasrīn [ q.v.] to the south of Aleppo, and was thus a member of the experienced and capable cadre of Syrian Arabs whom the Umayyads liked to appoint to high civil and military office; the fact …

, a district of the upper Oxus region mentioned at the time of the Arab invasions. It lay near the head waters of the Kāfirnihān and Surkhān rivers, hence in the upper mountainous parts of Čag̲h̲āniyān and K̲h̲uttalān [ q.vv.]. In Chinese sources such as Hiuen-Tsang, it appears as Su-man. In al-Ṭabarī, ii, 1179, 1181, where the conquests of the governor Kutayba b. Muslim [ q.v.] in upper K̲h̲urāsān during 86/705 are being described, S̲h̲ūmān is linked with Ak̲h̲arūn or K̲h̲arūn as being under a local prince, whose name seems to be the Iranian one *Gus̲h̲tāspā…

, conventionally Zerafshan , a landlocked river of Central Asia, now coming within Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In early Islamic times, it was known as “the river of Sogdia”, Nahr Ṣug̲h̲d [see ṣug̲h̲d ] or “the river of Buk̲h̲ārā” (see al-Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān , 293-4, tr. Wiet, 1 lull; al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 319-21; Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, ii, 495-7, tr. Kramers and Wiet, ii, 475-7; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 55, 73, comm. 198, 211). It flowed westwards from sources in what the geographers called the Buttamān mountains, in fact, between what are…

(a. “wells, springs”), modern Biyārd̲j̲umand, a small town on the northern edges of the Great Desert, the Das̲h̲t-i Kavīr, of Persia. The mediaeval geographers describe it as being three days’ journey from Bisṭām and 25 farsak̲h̲s from Dāmg̲h̲ān, and as falling administratively within the province of Ḳūmis [ q.v.], although in Sāmānid times (4th/10th century) it seems to have been attached to Nīs̲h̲āpūr in Ḵh̲urāsān. It was the terminus of an only-moderately frequented route across the northeastern corner of the desert to Turs̲h̲īz in Ḳūhistān. We have in Muḳaddasī, 356-7, 372, …

(thus in Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn and Mustawfī), popular pronunciation with assimilation Lam(m)asar < Lambasar, the name of one of the Ismāʿīlī ¶ fortresses in northwestern Iran taken over from a local chief by Ḥasan-i Sabbāḥ’s lieutenant and eventual successor Kiyā Buzurg-Ummīd, according to D̲j̲uwaynī in 495/1102 [see alamūt , ismāʿīliyya ]. Its still-extensive ruins lie on a site sloping at 30°, whose surface resembles in shape a truncated cone and which measures some 1,500 ft./480 m. by 600 ft/190 m., with easily defensible slopes, in the Rūdbār di…