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[English edition] اسم موقع بالعراق يبعد حوالي ستين ميلاً جنوب غرب بغداد. اشتهر بواقعة استشهاد الحسين بن علي حفيد الرسول فيه، حيث قُتل ودُفن جسده مقطوع الرأس هناك. (قبر الحسين). (للاطلاّع على كلّ هذه الأحداث، راجع مدخل الحسين بن علي). وحين أصبحت كربلاء مكانا للحجّ، صارت تُعرف بين الناس بمشهد الحسين. يُحتمل أنّ أصل اسم كربلاء من الأرامية كاربيلا (دانيال، 3: 21)، أومن السريانية، كربلّتو ويعنى «نوعًا من أنواع أغطية الرأس». (انظر: G. Jacob, Türkische Bibliothek, xi, 35, n. 2). لا ذكر لكربلاء في المرحلة السابقة للإسلام. أقام خالد بن الوليد مخيّما في كربلاء بعد فتحه الحيرة. (ياق…

, a town in ʿIrāḳ, near al-Kūfa. It is known mainly from the accounts of the battle of Ḳādisiyya [ q.v.]. From the statements collected by Yāḳūt regarding its position, it appears that two different places of this name had later to be distinguished, namely one near al-Kūfa on the road to Syria, which is several times mentioned in the time of the caliphs ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, and another, a watering station between al-Mug̲h̲īt̲h̲a and al-ʿAḳaba, 3 mīls from al-Ḥufayr, to the right of the road to Mecca. Several encounters took place there during the seco…

(a.), a word with the basic sense of “mountain”. It occurs ten times in the Ḳurʾān (II, 60/63, 87/93; IV, 153/154; XIX, 53/52, etc.), on two occasions (XXIII, 20; XCV, 2) expressly coupled with Sīnāʾ/ Sīnīn, specifically meaning Mount Sinai. Virtually all its occurences in the Ḳurʾān are connected with the wanderings of the Children of Israel in the Sinai Desert [see banū isrāʾīl ; sīnāʾ ; al-tīh ]. It was early recognised by the Arabic philologists as a loan word from Hebrew or Aramaic (cf. Hebr. ṣūr “rock” > “cliff”, Aram, ṭūrā “mountain”), more proximately, from Syriac (see A. Jeffery, The f…

(modern Tkish. Samandaǧ), nowadays an important town and headquarters of the sub-province ( ilçe ) of Samandaǧ. It is situated 26 km/16 miles south-west of Antakya (Anṭākiyā [ q.v.]), the capital of the Hatay province of Turkey, near to the Mediterranean Sea, 5 km/3 miles north of the Orontes River (Ar. al-ʿĀṣī [ q.v.]). In the mediaeval period, when al-Suwaydiyya is first mentioned, the name apparently refers to the port at the mouth of the river on the north bank, which the Crusaders knew as Soudin or Port Saint-Simeon, after St. Simeon Stylites …

or mas̲h̲had ʿalī , a town and place of pilgrimage in ʿIrāḳ 10 km 6 miles west of al-Kūfa. It lies on the edge of the desert on a flat barren eminence from which the name al-Nad̲j̲af has been transferred to it (A. Musil, The Middle Euphrates , 35), at an altitude of 37 m/120 feet in lat. 31° 59′ N. and long. 44° 20′ E. According to the usual tradition, the Imām al-Muʾminīn ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib [ q.v.] was buried near al-Kūfa, not far from the dam which protected the city from flooding by the Euphrates at the place where the ¶ town of al-Nad̲j̲af later arose (Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , iv, 760)…

, properly Faḥṣ al-Tīh, the name in mediaeval Islamic usage for the desert forming the frontier zone between Palestine and Egypt and spanning the Sinai Desert. The name itself is not found in the Ḳurʾān (which in sūra XXIII, 20, uses Sīnāʾ and in II, 60/63, 87/93, IV, 153/154, etc., Ṭūr, for the Sinai peninsula), but the verb from which it is presumably derived occurs as yatīhūn “they wander about in a confused, lost manner” (V, 29/25), said of the Children of Israel, condemned by God to wander distractedly through the Sinai Desert because of their refusal to Moses to enter the Holy Land. Hence th…

or al-ruhāʾ , the Arabic name of a city which was in early Islamic times in the province of Diyār Muḍar [ q.v.] but known in Western sources as edessa (Syriac Orhāy, Armenian Uṛhay). It is now in the province of Diyarbakir in the southeast of modern Turkey and is known as Urfa, a name for the city which is not clearly attested before the coming of the Turks to eastern Anatolia. 1. In pre-Islamic times. The city is probably an ancient one, though efforts to identify it with the Babylonian Erech/Uruk or with Ur of the Chaldees cannot be taken seriously. Its site, at the j…

, a place in ʿIrāḳ some 60 miles SSW of Bag̲h̲dād celebrated by the fact that the Prophet’s grandson al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī was killed and his decapitated body buried there ( Ḳabr al-Ḥusayn ). For all these events, see al-ḥusayn b. ʿalī . When it became a place of pilgrimage, Karbalāʾ became known as Mas̲h̲had (al-) Ḥusayn. The name Karbalāʾ probably comes from the Aramaic Karbelā (Daniel, III, 21) and from the Assyrian ¶ Karballatu, a kind of headdress; see G. Jacob, Türkische Bibliothek , xi, 35, n. 2. It is not mentioned in the pre-Islamic period. K̲h̲ālid b…

, a town in the Taurus Mountains region of southern Anatolia, falling within modern Turkey and now the chef-lieu, as Maraş, of the il (formerly vilayet ) of Maraş. It lies about 2,000 feet/610 m. above sea-level on the northern edge of the hollow (ʿAmḳ of Marʿas̲h̲; now Čaḳal Owa and south of it S̲h̲ēḳer Owa or Marʿas̲h̲ Owasi̊) which lies east of the D̲j̲ayḥān and is watered by its tributary, the Nahr Ḥūrīt̲h̲ (Aḳ-Ṣū). As a result of its situation at the intersection of the roads which run to Anṭākiya, to ʿAyn Zarba and al…

or ʿAyn Warda , Syriac Rēs̲h̲ ʿAynā, a town of classical and mediaeval Islamic times of al-D̲j̲azīra, deriving its name (“spring-head”) from the famed springs of the locality (see below). It is situated on the Greater K̲h̲ābūr [ q.v.] affluent of the Euphrates in lat. 36° 50′ N. and long. 40° 02′ E. It is now little more than a village straddling the modern border between Syria and Turkey, with the Syrian settlement still known as Raʾs al-ʿAyn and the Turkish one as Resülayn or Ceylânpinar. In classical times it was known as Resaina-Theodosiopolis, receiving from the Emperor Theo…

, a plain west of the D̲j̲abal Ḥawrān on the border of Trachonitis in Transjordan. The name al-Nuḳra (“the cavity”) is quite modern. It is applied to an area which includes the two districts of al-Bat̲h̲aniyya (with its chief town Ad̲h̲riʿāt) and Ḥawrān (west of the hills of the same name), i.e. the whole northern half of modern Jordan. In the wider sense, al-Nuḳra includes all the country from al-Lad̲j̲āʾ, D̲j̲aydūr and al-Balḳāʾ to the foot of the D̲j̲abal Ḥawrān, in the narrower sense on…

, Sebasṭiyya , the Arabic name of various towns in the Near East. 1. The ancient Samaria, which Herod had changed to Σεβαστή in honour of Augustus. The form Σεβάστεια—as in the case of other towns of this name—was presumably also used, as the Arabic name (which is sometimes also written Sabaṣṭiyya) suggests. By the end of the classical period, the town, overshadowed by the neighbouring Neapolis (Sichem; Arabic, Nābulus), had sunk to be a small town (πολίκνιον) and played only an unimportant part in the Arab period. It was conquered by ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ while Abū Bakr ¶ was still caliph; the inh…

, an old-established town of eastern Anatolia, not far from the upper Euphrates. It lies at the junction of important roads (in antiquity: the Persian royal road and the Euphrates route; in modern times Samsūn-Siwās-Malaṭya-Diyārbakr and Ḳayṣariyya-Albistān-Malaṭya-K̲h̲arpūt) in a plain (the fertility and richness of which in all kinds of vegetables and fruits was celebrated by the Arab geographers, as in modern times by von Moltke and others) at the northern foot of the Taurus, not very far sou…

, a plain west of the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥawrān on the border of Trachonitis in Transjordan. The name al-Nuḳra (“the cavity”) is quite modern. It is applied to an area, which includes the two districts of al-Bat̲h̲anīya (with its chief town Ad̲h̲riʿāt) and Ḥawrān (west of the hills of the same name), i. e. the whole northern half of Transjordan. In the wider sense al-Nuḳra includes all the country from al-Led̲j̲āʾ, Ḏj̲aidūr and al-Balḳāʾ to the foot of the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥawrān, in the narrower sense only the southern part of thi…

, the name of two left bank tributaries (al-Zawābī) of the Tigris. 1. The Upper or Great Zāb ( Zāb al-aʿlā or al-akbar) was known already to the Assyrians as Zabu ēlū, the “Upper Zāb”. The Greeks called it Lykos (Weissbach, s. v., N°. 12 in Pauly-Wissowa, R.E., vol. xiii., col. 2391 sq.; on the name see J. Markwart, Südarmenien, Vienna 1930, p. 429 sq.), the Byzantines however have again ό μέγαΣ ΖάβαΣ (Theophan., Chron., ed. de Boor, p. 318, 320). In Syriac it was called Zābhā, in Armenian Zaw (Thomas Arcruni, ed. Patkanean, 111/iv., p. 143; transl. Brosset, in Collection d’hist. Arméniens, i. 1…

, a town in North Syria at the point where the Nahr Ḳuwaiḳ enters the swampy lake of il-Maṭk̲h̲. In ancient times it was called ΧαλκίΣ, Chalcis ad Belum and lay ἐν μεθορίοιΣ ’Αράβων (Diodorus, Bibl., xxxiii. 4a); perhaps it is to it that the note in Stephen of Byzantium refers, according to which a town named Chalkis was founded by the Arab ΜονικόΣ. In the late classical period a part of the Syro-Arabian limes was called τὸ λίμιτον ΧαλκίδοΣ (Malalas, p. 296, 5). In this region the Arabs very early immigrated into Byzantine territory; at al-Ḥiyār (the later Ḥiyār bani ’l-Ḳaʿḳāʿ) in the district …

, a town in the southeast of Asia Minor. It is the chief town in a ḳazā of the wilāyet (formerly sand̲j̲aḳ) of Marʿas̲h̲ and is (or was before the recent persecutions) inhabited for the most part by Armenians, who call it Zet̲h̲un or Ulnia, usually however simply Keg̲h̲ (“village”). The name Ulni (Ulnia) is also used for the whole of the mountainous country on the Ḏj̲aiḥān between Ḳaratūt̲h̲ (S. W. of Albistān) and Bertis. Whether Ulnia was originally the name of Zaitūn or Furnus to the S. W. of…

, arab. al-Maṣṣīṣa, a town in Cilicia on the Ḏj̲aiḥān. In antiquity it was called Μόψου ἑστία a name, which (like that of Μόψου κρήνη in the Cilician passes) is derived from the cult of the legendary seer Mopsos (cf. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altert., I/ii.2, § 483). In ancient times, the town was chiefly famous for its bishop Theodoras (d. 428), the teacher of Nestorius and friend of the suffragan bishop and inventor of the Armenian alphabet, ¶ Mas̲h̲tʿocʿ (Peeters, Revue des Etudes Armén., ix., Paris 1929, p. 210; on him cf. e.g. al-Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, ed. de Goeje, p. 152; Mich. Syr., transl. Cha…

, a fortress in Northern Syria. According to Arnold Nöldeke’s description, it is situated “on a steeply sloping tongue of rock, lying along the right bank of the Euphrates, which bars the direct road to the Euphrates from the west for its tributary the Merziman as it breaks through the edge of the plateau, so that it is forced to make a curve northwards around this tongue. The connection between this tongue of rock, some 1,300 feet long and about half as broad, and the plateau which rises above …

(Lādīḳ, Greek Λαοδίκεια), the name of several towns in Asia Minor. 1. The ancient Λαοδίκεια κατακεκαυμένη ( Lādīḳ Sūk̲h̲ta). It probably derived this name from the smelting furnaces which it had around it as the centre of the quicksilver mining area. It was in Ḳaramān north of Ḳūniya on the great military road which ran through Asia Minor. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa already knows it by its modern name of Yorgān Lādīḳ or Lād̲h̲iḳīya in Ḳaramān. Bibliography Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa, Ḏj̲ihān-Numā, p. 611 sqq. Ibn Bībī, ed. Houtsma in Recueil de textes relat. à. L’hist. des Siljoucides, iii. 23, 25 …