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(a.), literally, an iron ploughshare, and an iron stamp or die used for stamping coins ¶ (see Lane, Lexicon , 1937). From the latter meaning, it came to denote the result of the stamping, i.e. the legends on the coins, and then, the whole operation of minting coins. 1. Legal and constitutional aspects. As in the Byzantine and Sāsānid empires to which the Arab caliphate was heir, the right of issuing gold and silver coinage was a royal prerogative. Hence in the caliphate, the operation of sikka , the right of the ruler to place his name on the coinage, eventua…

, Is̲h̲tīk̲h̲an , a town and district of mediaeval Islamic Transoxania. It lay seven farsak̲h̲ s north of Samarḳand and was administratively separate from it. There were many arable fields, irrigated by a canal taken off the Zarafs̲h̲an river [ q.v.]. In the 4th/10th century, the town had a citadel, a s̲h̲ahristān and a rabaḍ or suburb; a village of the same name exists on the site today. When the Arabs took over Samarḳand in the second quarter of the 8th century A.D., the Ik̲h̲s̲h̲īds of Sogdia transferred their capital to Is̲h̲tīk̲h̲an. In the 3rd/9th century …

(a.). 1. In Islamic law, this means the rescission of a sale or transaction (synonym, mutāraka ); see for lexical aspects of the term, LA 1, x, 282; TA 1, v, 535; Freytag, Lexicon , iv, 476. 2. In mediaeval Eastern Islamic administrative usage, it denotes the contract of service of officials, in accordance with the term’s further meaning of “the laying down of conditions for an agreement with some one”. We possess the texts of two muwāḍaʿa s made by early Ghaznavid viziers with their sovereign: one made by Aḥmad b. Ḥasan al-Maymandī [ q.v.] with Sultan Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd [ q.v.] on his appointment…

, a town of mediaeval Persia, in what later became known as Luristān [ q.v.], and the chef-lieu of the district of Mihrad̲j̲ānkad̲h̲aḳ. A tributary of the Kark̲h̲ā, which flows into the Kārūn river [ q.v.], is still today known as the Saymareh. The district passed peacefully into the hands of Abū Mūsā al-As̲h̲ʿarī’s Arab troops (al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 307), and in mediaeval times prospered as a meetingplace of Arab, Persian and Lur ethnic elements, apart from the devastations of a severe earthquake in 258/872 (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 187…

, a town and an extensive district of mediaeval Islamic Central Asia, identifiable with the later Islamic town of Sayram. Popular etymologising saw in the name the Persian component sipīd , ispīd “white”. It lay on the Aris river, a right-bank affluent of the Si̊r Daryā [ q.v.], 14 km/8 miles to the east of the later town of Chimkent (lat. 42° 16′ N., long. 69° 05′ E.); Chimkent itself, now in the southernmost part of the Kazakhstan Republic, is mentioned in the historical sources from Tīmūrid times onwards, e.g. in S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī. Isfīd̲j̲āb apparently had a pre-Islamic histo…

, modern Tkish. Yeşil Irmak (“the Green River”), a river of northern Anatolia, the classical Iris in the province of Pontus (see PW, ix/2, col. 2045). The upper course of the river, called the Tozanli Su, rises in the Köse Dağ to the northeast of Sivas and flows westwards by Tokat [ q.v.] and Turhal. Here there is a fertile plain, the Kazova or “Goose Plain”, which is now irrigated by waters from the Almus dam on the river’s course above it, completed in 1966, and a canal running off and parallel to the river, enabling cereals, sugar-beet and vin…

, a small town of western Persia (lat. 33° 29’ N., long. 51° 57’ E., altitude 1,372 m/4,500 feet) on the lower, southeastern slopes of the Kūh-i Kargas mountains and just off the modern Tehran—Ḳum— Kās̲h̲ān—Yazd road. The early Islamic geographers do not mention it, but Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , v, 292, describes it as a small town, administratively dependent on Iṣfahān and in the province of D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.], and situated 20 farsak̲h̲s to the north of Iṣfahān; and Mustawfī (8th/14th century) describes it as protected by the nearby fortress of Was̲h̲ā…

, a large river of the northeastern Caucasus region (length 600 km/373 miles, with a breadth in some places of up to 547 m/1,500 feet). It rises from the glaciers of Mount Kazbek in the central Caucasus, and cuts its way through spectacular gorges, eventually into the Noghay steppe to a complex delta on the western shore of the Caspian Sed. Even the lower course through the plains is too swift for navigation to be possible on it, but much water is now drawn off for irrigation purposes. During the golden period of Arabic geographical knowledge (4th/10th century), the land of Terek m…

(a.), a tree that figures in Islamic eschatology as growing in Hell, with bitter fruit which the damned are condemned to eat. It is mentioned in the Ḳurʾān three times (XXXVII, 60/62; XLIV, 43; LVI, 52). The lexicographers explain it as an evil-smelling tree that grows in the Tihāma, but also as a medically beneficial one that grows in the Jordan valley around Jericho; and as a foodstuff of the Arabs, composed of fresh butter with dates (see Lane, 1239a-b). Richard Bell, The Qurʾān translated, ii, 556 n. 1, cited as a parallel the same word in Syriac meaning “the hogbean”; Bell…

, Tall , the Arabic name for what is now an archaeological site in the Nāṣiriyya liwāʾ or governorate of ʿIrāḳ (lat. 31° 18’ N., long. 45° 40’ E.). It is the Sumerian and Babylonian Uruk, Biblical Erech (Gen. x. 10), one of the leading cities and religious centres of ancient Babylonia, first surveyed by W. K. Loftus in the 1850s. In early Islamic times it seems to have been a minor place in the district of Kaskar, with a reputation in Islamic tradition as being the birthplace of the Patriarch Ibrāhīm or Abraham (although many other places were mentioned for this) (Yāḳūt, Buldān …

(a.), pl. ruʾasāʾ , from raʾs , “head”, denotes the “chief, leader” of a recognisable group (political, religious, juridical, tribal, or other). The term goes back to pre-Islamic times and was used in various senses at different periods of Islamic history, either to circumscribe specific functions of the holder of the office of “leadership” ( riʾāsa ) or as a honorific title ( laḳab [ q.v.]). 1. In the sense of “mayor” in the central Arab lands. Here, the raʾīs most commonly referred to was the head of a village, a city or a city-region. He emerged as…

(a.), sing, marfiḳ , “bribes, douceurs”, literally, “benefits, favours”. In mediaeval Islamic society, various terms in addition to this are found, such as ras̲h̲wa / ris̲h̲wa , manāla , d̲j̲aʿāla , hadiyya , etc., with varying degrees of euphemism, for the inducements given either directly to a potential bestower of benefits or as an inducement for a person’s intercession or mediation ( s̲h̲afāʿa , wasāṭa ). In the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, this form of bribery became institutionalised in the caliphate of al-Muḳtadir (295-320/908-32 [ q.v.]), when the vizier Ibn al-Furāt [ q.v.] institute…

, one of the major rivers of Siberia, which flows from sources in the Altai Mountains to the Gulf of Ob and the Kara Sea of the Arctic Ocean. Its course is 3,680 km/2,287 miles long and 5,410 km/3,362 miles long if its main left-bank affluent, the Irtysh [see irtis̲h̲ in Suppl.] is included. Its whole basin covers a huge area of western Siberia. In early historic times, the lands along the lower and middle Ob were thinly peopled with such groups as the Samoyeds and the Ugrian Voguls and Ostiaks (in fact, the indigenous population of these regions today, only…

(t.), from older Turkish yug̲h̲ur -, Ottoman yog̲h̲urmaḳ / yoǧurmak “to knead [dough, etc.], yoghourt, a preparation of soured milk made in the pastoralist, more temperate northern tier of the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans, appearing as yog̲h̲urt / yog̲h̲rut in Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī ( Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk , tr. Atalay, i, 182, ii, 189, iii, 164, 190; Brockelmann, Mitteltürkischer Wortschatz , 92. Cf. also Radloff, Ver such eines Worterbuch der Türk-Dialecte , iii/1, 412-13; Doerfer, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersichen , iv, 173-5 no. 1866; Clauson, An …

, a region in the heart of Inner Asia, to the south of the Pamir [ q.v.] range, essentially a long and narrow valley running east-west and watered by the upper Oxus or Pand̲j̲a and the Wak̲h̲ān Daryā, its southernmost source. The length of Wak̲h̲ān along the Oxus is 67 miles and of the Wak̲h̲ān Daryā (from Langar-kis̲h̲ to the Wak̲h̲d̲j̲īr pass) 113 miles. Afg̲h̲an sources put the distance from Is̲h̲kās̲h̲im to Sarḥadd at 66 kurōh (=22 farsak̲h̲s ). ¶ To the south of Wak̲h̲ān rises the wall of the Hindū Kus̲h̲, through which several passes lead to the lands of the upper In…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim al-Faḍl , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 334-63/946-74, son of al-Muḳtadir [ q.v.] by a Ṣaḳlabī slave concubine called Mas̲h̲ʿala, brother of al-Rāḍī and of al-Muttaḳī [ q.vv.]. Al-Muṭīʿ was a bitter enemy of al-Mustakfī [ q.v.] and therefore went into hiding on the latter’s accession, and after Muʿizz al-Dawla [ q.v.] had become the real ruler, al-Muṭīʿ is said to have taken refuge with him and incited him against al-Mustakfī. After the deposition of the latter in D̲j̲umādā II or S̲h̲aʿbān 334/January or March 946) al-Muṭīʿ was recognis…

, a town, also the centre of a taḥṣīl , in the Meerut [see mīrat́h ] District of northwestern India, now in the Uttar Pradesh State of the Indian Union. The town is situated in lat. 29° 09′ N., long. 77° 36′ E. and lies some 19 km/12 miles to the northwest of Meerut town. ¶ It achieved fame in the later 18th century, when Walter Reinhardt, called Sombre or Samrū, of Luxemburg origin, after having been a mercenary in both French and British service, received from Mīrzā Nad̲j̲af K̲h̲ān, general of the Mug̲h̲al Emperor S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam II [ q.v.], the pargana [ q.v.] of Sardhanā [ q.v.]. This became, after …

, Nak̲h̲čuwān , the name of a town in Transcaucasia which is also the chief town of a region of the same name, until the early 19th century a largely independent khanate and in former Soviet Russian administrative geography part of the Azerbaijan SSR but an enclave within the Armenian Republic. Both town and region lie to the northwest of the great southern bend of the Araxes river, since 1834 here the frontier between Persia and Russian territory. The town of Nak̲h̲čiwān is …

(a.), active participle of the form III verb nādā “to call”, hence crier, herald. In the Ḳurʾān, munādī is used (L, 40/41) for the one who will proclaim the Last Day and give the summons to Judgement, in popular Islam usually identified with the angel Isrāfīl [ q.v]; in another context where one might expect it, the story of Joseph, we find instead muʾad̲h̲d̲h̲in used for Joseph’s herald (XII, 70). In the towns of the pre-modern Islamic world, the munādī or town crier performed a vital function of communication in an age when there were no newspapers or, when these did ten…

(a.), pl. arzāḳ , literally, “anything granted by someone to someone else as a benefit”, hence “bounty, sustenance, nourishment”. 1. As a theological concept. Rizḳ , and the nominal and verbal forms derived from it, are very frequent in the Ḳurʾān, especially in reference to the rizḳ Allāh , God’s provision and sustenance for mankind from the fruits of the earth and the animals upon it (e.g. II, 20/22, 23/25, 57/60, etc.) (see further, section 2. below). Hence one of God’s most beautiful names [see al-asmāʾ al-ḥusnā ] is al-Razzāḳ , the All-Provider. The ultimat…