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, 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…

, 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…

, 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…

, 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 …

, 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…

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…

, 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 …