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1. A town in the Caspian coastal province of Gīlān [ q.v.] in north-western Persia, in long. 50° 0′ 20″ E. and lat. 37° 12′ 30″ N. It is situated on the plain to the east of the lower reaches of the Safīd-Rūd and to the north of the Dulfek mountain, and on the small river Čom-k̲h̲ala or Purdesar, but at some 14 miles/20 km. from the Caspian Sea shore. Lāhīd̲j̲ān does not seem to have been known as such to the earliest Arabic geographers, though legend was to attribute its foundation to Lāhīd̲j̲ b. Sām b. Nūḥ. It does, however, appear in the Persian Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (372/982) as L…

, the name of a group of nineteen islands in the Indian Ocean, to the south of the Bay of Bengal and lying between lats. 6°40′ and 9°20′ N.; the largest southernmost of them, Great Nicobar, is 190 km/120 miles to the northwest of the northern tip of Sumatra. Their area is 1,953 km2/627 sq. miles. The Arabic geographers place them at 15 days’ voyage from Sarandīb ( = Ceylon ) and 6 days’ voyage from Kalah [ q.v.] ( = probably in the Malacca peninsula or, less probably, at Kedah). The Nicobar Islands appear in Arabic travel and geographical literature as early as the Ak̲h̲bār al-Ṣīn wa ’l-Hind …

, a small town of the mediaeval central Deccan, now in the Bīd̲j̲apur District of the Karnataka State of the Indian Union (lat 16° 31’ N., long. 76° 20’ E.). It is famed as the assembly point and base camp for the combined forces of the South Indian sultanates (the ʿĀdil S̲h̲āhīs, Barīd S̲h̲āhīs, Ḳuṭb S̲h̲āhīs and Niẓām S̲h̲āhīs [ q.vv.]). These all marched southwards some 50 km/30 miles southwards to the Krishna river and the villages of Raks̲h̲asa and Tangadi, crossed the river and, at a point 20 km/12 miles south of the Krishna, after several skirmish…

, Syria, etymologically, “the left-hand region”, because in ancient Arab usage the speaker in western or central Arabia was considered to face the rising sun and to have Syria on his left and the Arabian peninsula, with Yaman (“the rig̲h̲thand region”), on his right (cf. al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ ., iii, 140-1 = § 992; al-Muḳaddasī, partial French tr. A. Miquel, La meilleure répartition pour la connaissance des provinces , Damascus 1963, 155-6, both with other, fanciful explanations). In early Islamic usage, the term bilād al-S̲h̲ām covered what in early 20th-…

, the Ottoman Turkish form for the name of the Italian city of Venice, in earlier Arabic usage, however, there appears Bunduḳiya and similar forms. 1. In earlier Islamic times. The city was known to early Arabic geographers, such as Ibn Rusta, Ibn Ḥawḳal, etc., and these geographers had a fair knowledge of the names of many of the Italian cities and towns of the Lombard and Carolingian periods; the knowledge of later writers like al-Idrīsī was a fortiori much profounder after some three centuries during which the Arabs had controlled Sicily [see siḳilliya ] and, at times, Calabria [see Ḳillawr…

bi ’llāh , Abū D̲j̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. D̲j̲aʿfar , ʿAbbasid caliph, reigned 247-8/861-2, and son of the preceeding caliph al-Mutawakkil by a Greek slave concubine Ḥubs̲h̲iyya. Towards the end of al-Mutawakkil’s reign, it had been the aim of his vizier ʿUbayd Allāh b. Yaḥyā b. K̲h̲āḳān to get the succession changed from the caliph’s original choice as walī al-ʿahd to another son al-Muʿtazz. Al-Muntaṣir was involved in the conspiracy of the Turkish soldiery which led to the caliph’s death [see al-mutawakkil ], and himself received the bayʿa [ q.v.] at the palace of al-D̲j̲aʿfariyya on …

(a.), lit. “hirer”, a dealer in riding beasts and beasts of burden (see WbKAS , Letter K, s.v., 164-5), usage being extended from the person buying and selling and hiring to the muleteer or other person accompanying a loaded beast. Terminology in this overlaps here with other, more specific terms like ḥammār , donkey driver and dealer, and bag̲h̲g̲h̲āl , mule driver and dealer, whilst in 19th century Damascus, rakkāb was also used for the hirer of donkeys and the man accompanying them on trading journeys. In pre-modern times, the mukārūn/mukāriya and their assoc…

, the name given to a complex of military encampments, settlements and royal palaces in southern Afg̲h̲ānistān which apparently flourished in the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries. The site (lat. 31° 28′ N. and long 64° 20′ E.) is an extensive one, stretching along the left bank of the Helmand River [see hilmand ] near its confluence with the Arg̲h̲andāb with the mediaeval Islamic town of Bust [ q.v.], modern ruins of Ḳalʿa-yi Bist, at its southern end, and the modern, new town (named after the mediaeval complex of buildings) of Las̲h̲kar-gāh at its northern one.…

, a mythical dynasty of ancient Persia, given a considerable role in the national historical tradition of Persia. This tradition was essentially put together in the k̲h̲ w adāy-nāmags of late Sāsānid times and, like most of our information on Sāsānid history, has to be reconstructed from post-Sāsanid, ¶ mainly early Islamic sources. Hence we find information on the Pīs̲h̲dādids in such sources as al-Ṭabarī, al-Masʿūdī, Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī and al-T̲h̲aʿālibī. Ḥamza, ed. Beirut n.d. [ ca. 1961], 13, 16-17, makes the Fīs̲h̲dādiyya the first ṭabaḳa of the kings …

, a small province of mediaeval Islamic Persia, lying to the south of the Alburz chain watershd and extending into the northern fringes of the Das̲h̲t-i Kavīr. Its western boundaries lay almost in the eastern rural districts of Ray, whilst on the east it marched with K̲h̲urāsān, with which it was indeed at times linked. It was bisected by the great Ray-K̲h̲urāsān highway, along which ¶ were situated the chief towns of Ḳūmis, from west to east K̲h̲uwār or K̲h̲awār (classical Χοαρηνή, modern Aradūn), Simnān [ q.v.]. Dāmg̲h̲ān [ q.v.], and Bisṭām [ q.v.], whilst at its south-eastern extrem…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad , official and vizier of the Būyids in the second half of the 4th/10th century and patron of scholars, d. 374/984-5. Virtually nothing is known of his origins, but he served the great amīr ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā-Ḵh̲usraw [ q.v.] as one of his two inspectors of the army ( ʿāriḍ al-d̲j̲ays̲h̲ ) in Bag̲h̲dād, the ʿāriḍ responsible for the Turkish, Arab and Kurdish troops. Then when ʿAḍud al-Dawla died in 372/983 and his son Ṣamṣām al-Dawla Marzubān assumed power in Bag̲h̲dād as supreme amīr, he nominated Ibn Saʿdān as his vizier. He occupied this post fo…

1. Town in the Persian province of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. Position. The town lies about 40 miles north of Tabrīz, halfway between it and the Araxes or Aras in lat. 38° 25′ 30″ N. and 45° 46″ E. at an altitude of ca. 4,400 feet/1,360m. (it is 42 miles from Marand to D̲j̲ulfā). The road from Tabrīz to K̲h̲oy also branches off at Marand. A shorter road from Tabrīz to K̲h̲oy follows the north bank of Lake Urmiya and crosses the Mis̲h̲owdag̲h̲ range by the pass between Tasūd̲j̲ [ q.v.] and Ḍiyā al-Dīn. Marand, which is surrounded by many gardens, occupies the eastern corner of a rather beau…

, the region of Transoxania lying within the great northwards bend of the middle reaches of the Jaxartes river and to the south of the rightbank affluent the Āhangarān (Russian form, Angren) river. It thus lay between the provinces of S̲h̲ās̲h̲ [see tas̲h̲kent ] on the northwest and Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.] on the east. The Arabic and Persian geographers of the 3rd-5th/9th-11th centuries describe it as a flourishing province, with its mountains producing silver and salt. They give the names of many towns there, the chief one being Tūnkat̲h̲, whose ru…

, Abū Saʿīd Tād̲j̲ al-Dawla (458-88/1066-95), Sald̲j̲ūḳ ruler in Syria 471-88/1078-95. The name, < Tkish. tut-, “he who grasps, seizes”, was already familiar as a personal name to Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, tr. Atalay, i, 367. During his brother Malik S̲h̲āh’s [ q.v.] lifetime, the youthful Tutus̲h̲ was given Syria in 471/1078 or 472/1079 as his appanage. The Turkmen commander Atsi̊z b. Uvak [ q.v.], who had overrun southern Syria and Palestine and had seized Jerusalem from the Fāṭimids, had been swept out of these temporary conquests by the returning armies of al-Mu…

(p., “mountains”), a directly-administered District of what was the North West Frontier Province of British India and of Pakistan till 1955, covering some 2,694 sq. miles and with its administrative centre at the town of Kōhāt. The District is bounded by the Khyber Agency [see k̲h̲aybar Pass] on the north, by the Kurram and North Wāziristān Agencies in the west, by the Bannū District [ q.v.] on the south, and by the Indus River and the ʿĪsā K̲h̲ēl taḥṣīl of the Pand̲j̲āb on the east. The terrain of the District is that of a rugged tableland lying at an average of 2,000 ft., with…

, the name of several places in the Islamic world, from Cordova in the west to Nīs̲h̲āpūr in the east (see Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 46-50). Amongst the Ruṣāfa settlements of ʿIrāḳ were: 1. Ruṣāfat Abi ’l-ʿAbbās (ʿAbd Allāh al-Saffāḥ), begun by the first ʿAbbāsid caliph in lower ʿIrāḳ on the banks of the Euphrates, near al-Anbār [ q.v.], and probably identical with that town called al-Hās̲h̲imiyya. Bibliography Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān, 237, tr. Wiet, 9 Yāḳūt, Buldān, iii, 46. 2. al-Ruṣāfa, the name of a quarter of the city of Bag̲h̲dād [ q.v.] founded soon after the caliph al-Manṣūr [ q.v.] buil…

, the name (of unknown etymology) of a mountain massif of Inner Asia. Its core is in the modern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous oblast of the former USSR, but it spills over into Kirghizia and Tadjikistan to the north and west, and into the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China to the east, and Afg̲h̲ānistān (including the Wak̲h̲ān corridor) and Pākistānī Kas̲h̲mir (Āzād Kas̲h̲mīr) to the south. Comprised mainly of east-west-running ranges, its many river valleys being right-bank affluents of t…

, an ancient oasis settlement of northwestern Arabia, now in Saudi Arabia (lat. 27° 37’ N., long. 38° 30’ E.). According to the mediaeval Islamic geographers, it lay in the region called al-Maḥad̲j̲d̲j̲āt, and was four days’ journey south of Dūmat al-D̲j̲andal [ q.v.]; al-Muḳaddasī, 107, 250, 252, localises it at three stages from al-Ḥid̲j̲r [ q.v.] (in fact, Taymāʾ is some 110 km/70 miles from al-Ḥid̲j̲r/ Madā’in Ṣāliḥ), four stages from Tabūk [ q.v.] and four from the Wādī ’l-Ḳurā [ q.v.]. It lies in a depression, the length of which J.A. Jaussen and R. Sauvignac put at 3.2…

, Muʿīn al-Dīn Muḥammad Zamčī, epistolary stylist and historian in Tīmūrid Ḵh̲urāsān whose birth and death dates are unknown but who flourished in the second half of the 8th/14th century. From what he says in his own works, he arrived in Harāt, probably from Isfizār in what is now western Afg̲h̲ānistān, in 873/1468-9, and was employed as a muns̲h̲ī at the court of Sultan Ḥusayn Bayḳara [see Ḥusayn at Vol. III, 603a] under the patronage of the vizier Ḳiwām al-Dīn Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 903/1497-8). Isfizārī is most famous as the author of a history and compendium of …

, the form in early Arabic usage for the name of a northwestern Indian people, the Jhāt́s [see d̲j̲āt́ ], members of whom were brought into the Persian Gulf region in the first Islamic centuries and possibly earlier. According to al-Balād̲h̲urī, the Sāsānid emperor Bahrām V Gūr ( r. 420-38) transported Zuṭṭ from India to K̲h̲ūzistān and the Persian Gulf shores; these subsequently became Muslim and were settled by Abū Mūsa al-As̲h̲ʿarī [ q.v.] at Baṣra, being attached to the tribe of Ḥanẓala of Tamīm. At least some of them were caught up in the rebellion of Ibn al-As̲h̲ʿat̲h̲ [ q.v.], and after…