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, a hydronym and toponym of Persia. 1. A river of the Elburz Mountains region of northwestern Persia. It runs from the south-east northwestwards from a source in the mountains west of Tehran and joins the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen [ q.v.] at Mand̲j̲īl, the combined waters then making up the Safīd Rūd [ q.v.], which flows into the Caspian Sea. The upper reaches of the S̲h̲āh Rūd are known as the S̲h̲āh Rūd-i Ṭālaḳān, to distinguish i…

, a small town or village of mediaeval Islamic Bād̲h̲g̲h̲īs [ q.v.], lying to the northeast of Harāt in modern Afg̲h̲ānistān, and described by the mediaeval geographers as being mountainous, possessing agricultural lands and having warlike inhabitants (Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 268-9; Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 441, tr. Wiet. 426; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , 104, 327; Yāḳūt, ii, 404; Barbier de Meynard, Dict . géogr ., hist . et litt. de la Perse , 197). Although within a Sunnī region, K̲h̲ud̲j̲istān itself was one of the last centre…

, Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. D̲j̲aʿfar b. Zakariyyāʾ , historian of the Sāmānid period. Presumably from Nars̲h̲ak̲h̲ in the vicinity of Buk̲h̲ārā (cf. al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, xiii, 77-8), nothing however is known of his life except that he composed in Arabic a history of Buk̲h̲ārā and presented it to the amir Nūḥ b. Naṣr in 332/943-4; this is the only book of his known. The history was translated into Persian by Abū Naṣr Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ḳubāwī (sc. from Ḳubā in Farg̲h̲ānā, cf. ibid., x, 322-3) in 522/1128 because, it is there said, people did not want to read the Arabic …

, also Mārsiwān , modern Turkish spelling Merzifon, a town of north-central Anatolia, lying in lat. 40°52′ and long. 35°35′E. and at an altitude of 750 m./2.464 ft. It is situated on the southern slopes of the Tavşan Daği, with a rich and fertile plain, the Sulu Ova, on its south, where fruit, vines, nuts, opium poppies, etc. are cultivated, and with the towns of Çorum [see čorum ] at 69 km./42 miles to the south-west and of Amasya [ q.v. ] at 49 km./30 miles to the south-east. The town most probably occupies the site of the ancient Phazemon (Φαζημών) in the district of Phazemonitis…

ḳanḳli̊ , the name of a Turkish people living in mediaeval times in the steppes of Turkestan and south-western Siberia. We do not find mention of the Ḳang̲h̲li̊ in the oldest Arab and Persian geographers and travellers of the 3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries, as we do of several other Turkish tribes. For Maḥmūd Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, ḳanklī was not an ethnic designation, but was, as a proper noun, “the name of a great man of the Ḳi̊pčaḳ”, and as a common noun, “a heavily-loaded cart” ( Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk , tr. Atalay, iii, 379). In some early Turkish sources on the l…

, the name of a city, district and division of the northern Pand̲j̲āb in Pākistān. The city lies in lat. 33° 40ʹ N. and long. 73° 08ʹ E. at an altitude of 530 m/1,750 feet. In British Indian times, it was one of the most important military stations of northern India, and is now the headquarters of the Pākistān Army, with extensive cantonments, as well as being an important commercial and industrial centre and the starting-point of the route into Kas̲h̲…

, usually written Tās̲h̲kend or Tas̲h̲kend in Arabic and Persian manuscripts, a large town in Central Asia, in the oasis of the Čirčik, watered by one of the right bank tributaries of the Si̊r Daryā [ q.v.] or Jaxartes now, since the break-up of the USSR, in the Uzbekistan Republic (lat. 41° 16’ N., long. 69° 13’ E.). 1. History till 1865. Nothing is known of the origin of the settlement on the Čirčik. According to the Greek and Roman sources, there were only nomads on the other side of the Jaxartes. In the earliest Chinese sources (from the 2nd century B.…

(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…

, Dandānaḳān , a small town in the sand desert between Marw and Sarak̲h̲s in mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān and 10 farsak̲h̲ s or 40 miles from the former city. The site of the settlement is now in the Turkmenistan SSR, see V.A. Zhukovsky, Razvalini̊ Starago Merva , St. Petersburg 1894, 38. The geographers of the 4th/10th century mention that it was well-fortified and was surrounded by a wall 500 paces in circumference, the baths and a ribāṭ or caravanserai lying outside this wall (Ibn Ḥawḳal2 , 436-7, 456, tr. Kramers-Wiet, 422, 440; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 105). Whe…

, perennially rebellious Mug̲h̲al prince and brother-in-law of the emperor Humāyūn [ q.v.]. On Humāyūn’s accession in 937/1530, he allied with Bahādur S̲h̲āh of Gud̲j̲arāt, provoking an invasion by Humayūn of Gud̲j̲arāt via Mālwā. Muḥammad Zamān was pardoned, but in 941/1534 rebelled again, this time in Bihār, but had to escape to Gud̲j̲arāt once more. This provoked a full-scale invasion and occupation of Gud̲j̲arāt by the Mug̲h̲al emperor (941-2/1535-6). Muḥammad Zamān escaped; he tried to claim the throne …

(a.), pl. ṣikāk , a technical term of early Islamic financial, commercial and legal usage, appearing in Persian, through a standard sound change, as čak , meaning “document, contract of sale, etc.”, which has been suggested—for want of any other etymology—as the origin of Eng. “cheque”, Fr. “chèque,” Ger. “Scheck,” see E. Littmann, Morgenländische Wörter im Deutschen , 2 Tübingen 1924. The term’s range of applications is wide, see Lane, Lexicon , 1709. In legal contexts, it has a similar meaning to sid̲j̲ill [see sid̲j̲ill. 1.], sc. a signed and sealed record of a judge’s decis…

, a port on the Red Sea coast of the Tihāma or lowland of the southern Ḥid̲j̲āz, situated in lat. 19°9′ N. and long. 41°04′ E. and at the mouth of the Wādī Ḳanawnā. It lies 210 miles south of D̲j̲idda or D̲j̲udda [ q.v.] and 45 miles north of Ḥaly. The town is in the form of a large rectangle enclosed by a wall, strengthened at several points by towers and pierced by three gates. Practically the only stone buildings are at the harbour, where is the bazaar with its one-storied warehouses in an irregular line, and the chief mosque and smaller mosq…

(t.), basically “girl, unmarried female”, but often used with the more restricted meanings of “daughter, slave girl, concubine”. It is already found in the Orkhon inscriptions in the phrase ḳi̊z og̲h̲li̊ “daughter”, as opposed to uri̊ og̲h̲li̊ “son”, ¶ and subsequently appears in most Turkish languages. Through Türkmen forms it passed into Iranian languages like Kurdish and Ossetian, and through Ottoman usage into Balkan languages like Serbian and Bulgarian, often via the Ottoman technical expression (for which see below) ḳi̊zlar ag̲h̲asi̊ (see Radloff, Versuch eines Wörterbuc…

, Mīhana , a small town of mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān, now in the USSR, situated to the east of the Kūh-i Hazār Masd̲j̲id range and on the edge of the “Marw desert”, the later Ḳara Ḳum [ q.v.], 40 miles/62 km. to the east-north-east of Ḳalʿat-i Nādirī and 60 miles/93 km. south-east of Mas̲h̲had [ q.vv.]. In mediaeval times, it was the chief settlement of the district of K̲h̲āwarān or K̲h̲ābarān which lay between Abīward and Sarak̲h̲s [ q.vv.]; by Yāḳūt’s time, Mayhana itself had largely decayed, though Mustawfī describes K̲h̲āwarān as a whole as flourishing, with good crops and cereals and fruit ( Ḥudū…

iii. Social structure. ʿUmān is overwhelmingly an Arab, Muslim society, and tribal organisation remains an important element in national identity. The country’s rapid development since 1970 has introduced a measure of physical and social mobility, as well as creating an influx of emigrants. The migration of Arab tribes into ʿUmān predates Islam, with Kahtānī or South Arabian tribes moving ¶ along the southern Arabian Peninsula from Yemen into ʿUman around the 2nd century A.D. They were followed several centuries later by ʿAdnānī or North Arabian tribes …

, the name of a river, a town and a modern province of Afg̲h̲ānistān. 1. The river is one of the two main left bank affluents in Afg̲h̲ānistan of the Oxus. It rises in the central region of the Hindū Kus̲h̲ [ q.v.], with Bāmiyān in its catchment area, and flows for some 300 miles/480 km. until it reaches the Oxus just below where it receives its right-bank affluent the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ River. The different stretches of the river have varying names; thus the middle course, within which are situated the towns of Bag̲h̲lān and Pul-i K̲h̲umrī, is called the Surk̲h̲āb or “Red River”. 2. The town is situated…

(t., originally yaylag̲h̲ ), “summer quarters”, applied to the summer residences of the old Turkish ḳag̲h̲ans or the summer pastures of nomadic or transhumant tribes of Inner Asia, its antonym being ki̊s̲h̲laḳ [ q.v.] “winter quarters”. The origin of the word is from yay “summer” (but this originally meant “spring”, cf. Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk, Tkish. tr. Atalay, iii, 160-1, though already in the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions it means “summer”, and it comes to mean this in most Turkic languages, with yaylamaḳ “to spend the summer”, cf. Sir Gerard Clauson, An etymological dicti…

, conventional rendering Sialkot, a town in the Pand̲j̲āb situated in 32° 30′ N. and 74° 32′ E., the foundation of which is attributed by legend to Rād̲j̲ā Sālā, the uncle of the Pāṇḍavas, and its restoration to Rād̲j̲ā Sālivāhan, in the time of Vikramāditya. Sālivahān had two sons, Pūran, killed by the instrumentality of a wicked step-mother, and thrown into a well, still the resort of pilgrims, near the town, and Rasālu, the mythical hero of Pand̲j̲ā…

, the name of various places in Persia. 1. The best-known one is the town presentiy known in Persia as Arāk lying in long. 49° 41′ E. and lat. 34° 5′ N. at an altitude of 1,753 m/5,751 feet, 284 ¶ km/176 miles to the southwest of Tehran. It lies in the southwestern corner of the plain of Farahān, adjoining the Zagros massif. The popular (and now official) name Arāk must come ultimately from ʿIrāḳ, in the sense of ʿIrāḳ-i ʿAd̲j̲am or Persian ʿIrāḳ, the mediaeval D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.]. The modern region of Arāk lies within the bend of the Ḳara Ṣu. Its rural districts include that of Kazzā…

, a former native state of western Balūčistān, now incorporated in Pakistan. Geographically, it comprises a wide basin, that of the Mas̲h̲kel river in the west and the Baddo in the east, between high ranges of mountains, the Raʾs Kūh rising to 9,900 feet; the valley terrain includes an extensive rīgistān or sand desert. The population is largely Balūč, with some Brahūīs in the eastern part. The early history of K̲h̲ārān is very obscure. Local tradition says that the Naws̲h̲īrwānī chiefs entered K̲h̲ārān in the 8th/14th century. Over the ensuing centuries, thes…