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Uzun Ḥasan

(4,960 words)

Author(s): Minorsky, V. | Bosworth, C.E.
b. ʿAlī b. Ḳara yoluk ʿUt̲h̲mān , Abū Naṣr, born in 828/1425, died in 882/1478, and together with his grandfather, one of the most celebrated rulers of the line of Aḳ Ḳoyunlu Turkmens [ q.v.] and a statesman and military commander of genius. Expanding from his family’s base in Diyār Bakr [ q.v.], Uzun (“the Tall”) overcame his Ḳara Ḳoyunlu [ q.v] Turkmen rivals, and in the east defeated his rivals for control of Persia, the Tīmūrids [ q.v.], reigning 861-82/1457-78 over a powerful and extensive state which comprised western Persia and Kirmān as far as the borders of K̲h̲u…

Rād̲j̲asthān

(3,557 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E. | Shackle, C. | Siddiqui, Iqtidar H.
, a historic region of the western part of the Indian subcontinent, and now the name of a province in the Indian Union. It is bounded by the Pakistan provinces of Sind and Pand̲j̲āb on the west and northwest, and by the Indian states of Pand̲j̲āb, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh on the northeast, Madhya Pradesh on the east, southeast and south, and Gud̲j̲arāt on the south. With an area of 342,267 km2/132,149 sq. miles, it is the second largest state in the Indian Union (after Madhya Pradesh), but because of its climate and habitat, has a less dense population than any ot…

Silāḥ

(12,583 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E. | Nicolle, D.
(a.), masc. and fern, noun according to the lexicographers, standard pl. asliḥa , with suluḥ , sulḥān and silāḥāt also found in the lexica, the general term in Arabic for both offensive weapons and protective armour and equipment. This collective sense of the word is also often included in the general term ʿudda , literally “equipment, gear, tackle”. The sense of “weapon” has clearly no connection with that of the common Arabic verb salaḥa “to defecate”. Attestations of any parallel form of silāḥ are weak in Old South Arabian. One can only cite Biblical Hebrew šelaḥ ,…

Sanad

(145 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), pl. asnād , lit. “support, stay, rest”, but in Islamic administrative usage coming to mean an administrative, financial or legal document on which reliance can formally be placed ( masnūd ), hence an authenticated document. From the same root s-n-d is derived the technical term of Islamic tradition, isnād [ q.v. and ḥadīt̲h̲ ], literally “the act of making something rest upon something else”. The Turkish form of sanad , i.e. sened , was used in Ottoman practice for a document with e.g. a seal attached, thereby authenticating it and support…

Maymana

(637 words)

Author(s): | Bosworth, C.E.
, a town of northwestern Afg̲h̲ānistān (lat. 35° 55′ N., long. 64° 67′ E.), lying at an altitude of 2,854 feet/870 m. on the upper reaches of the Āb-i Maymana, one of the constituent streams of the Āb-i Ḳayṣar which peters out in the desert beyond Andk̲h̲ūy [ q.v.] and the sands of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Ḳum [ q.v.]. The site of the settlement seems to be ancient. The Vendidad speaks of Nisāya, and the ?8th century Armenian geography of Iran records Nsai-mianak = MP * Nisāk-i Miyānak “the Middle Nisā”, possibly identical with Ptolemy’s Νισαία in Margiana (Marquart, Ērānšahr , 78-9)…

Mihmān

(371 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), literally “guest”, the equivalent of Ar. ḍayf [ q.v. for this sense]. The Persian word occurs in various compounds, such as mihmāndār and mihmān-k̲h̲āna . In Ṣafawid Persia, the mihmāndārs were officials appointed to receive and to provide hospitality for guests, including foreign ambassadors and envoys, with a court head official, the mihmāndār-bāshī , superintending these lesser persons. In Ḳād̲j̲ār times, the mihmāndārs seem to have been appointed ad hoc. See the references to the accounts of European travellers in Ṣafawid Persia (Chardin, Kaempfer, Sanso…

Maʾmūn b. Muḥammad

(185 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abu ’l-ʿAbbās , founder of the short-lived line of Maʾmūnid K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs in K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.]. Maʾmūn was governor, probably as a nominal vassal of the Sāmānids [ q.v.], in the town of Gurgand̲j̲ [ q.v.], which during the 4th/10th century had been prospering commercially at the expense of the ancient capital Kat̲h̲ [ q.v.], seat of the old-established line of Afrīg̲h̲id K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs [see k̲h̲wārazm-s̲h̲āhs ]. In 385/995 the Afrīg̲h̲ids were overthrown and their dynasty extinguished, so that Maʾmūn became ruler of a unified K̲h̲wārazm. Very soon he was drawn into t…

Tadmur

(1,105 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Tadmor , the ancient name, and that of modern Arabic usage, for the city of Palmyra. It lies in the Syrian Desert some 145 km/90 miles east of Ḥimṣ and 240 km/150 miles west of the middle Euphrates (lat. 34° 36′ N., long. 38° 15′ E., altitude 407 m/1,336 feet). From early times, Tadmur must have been a station on the caravan route connecting Mesopotamia with Syria, since the road on which it lay could pass through a gap in the southwest to northeastwards-running chain of hills: to the southwest of Tadmur, the Ḏj̲abal al-Ḵh̲anāzir, and to the n…

ʿUbayd Allāh b. Abī Bakra

(323 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Ḥātim, Arab commander of the Umayyads and governor in Sīstān, d. 79/698. The Abū Bakra family were of mawlā origin, Abū Bakra’s father being apparently an Abyssinian slave. Although he married a free Arab wife from the Banū ʿId̲j̲l, ʿUbayd Allāh himself retained a dark and swarthy complexion, being described as adg̲h̲am ; an attempted filiation of the family to al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Kalada [ q.v. in Suppl.], the so-called "Physician of the Arabs", was later disallowed by the caliph al-Mahdī. The family prospered in Basra as partisans of the Umayyads and through…

Zuhra

(222 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a clan of Ḳurays̲h̲ [ q.v.] in Mecca, with the genealogy Zuhra b. Kilāb b. Murra b. Kaʿb b. Luʾayy b. G̲h̲ālib b. Fihr. In pre-Islamic Mecca, the clan seems to have been prosperous, and members of it had trading connections with ʿAbd S̲h̲ams. In the factional disputes within Mecca, Zuhra were in the group led by ʿAbd Manāf, the Muṭayyabūn or “Perfumed Ones” [see laʿaḳat al-dam ] and then in the Ḥilf al-Fuḍūl [ q.v.] along with Hās̲h̲im and al-Muṭṭalib. The clan acquired Islamic kudos from the fact that the Prophet’s mother Āmina bt. Wahb [ q.v.] was from Zuhra. Early converts from the clan…

Saʿīd b. al-ʿĀṣ

(596 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Umayya, a member of the Aʿyāṣ [ q.v. in Suppl.] component group of the Umayyad clan in Mecca and, later, governor of Kufa and Medina, died in 59/678-9, according to the majority of authorities. His father had fallen, a pagan, fighting the Muslims at the battle of Badr [ q.v.] on 2/624 when Saʿīd, his only son, can only have been an infant. He nevertheless speedily achieved great prestige in Islam not only as the leader of an aristocratic family group but also for his liberality, eloquence and learning. He ¶ was in especially high favour with ʿUt̲h̲mān, and was appointed by that cal…

Karrāmiyya

(2,685 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a sect which flourished in the central and eastern parts of the Islamic worlds, and especially in the Iranian regions, from the 3rd/9th century until the Mongol invasions. (1). Origins. The founder, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Karrām (thus vocalized by Samʿānī, who says that his father was a vine-tender, karrām , but there is some support for the readings Karām or Kirām), is known from biographies, in e.g. Samʿānī, Ansāb , fols. 476b-477a; D̲h̲ahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl , Cairo 1325/1907, iii, 127; idem, Taʾrīk̲h̲ al-Islām , sub anno 255/869 (abridged version in Leiden Ms. 1721, fols…

al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ Bi ’llāh

(1,091 words)

Author(s): Zetterstéen, K.V. | Bosworth, C.E. | van Donzel, E.
, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar Hārūn b. al-Muʿtaṣim , ʿAbbāsid caliph. He was given the name Hārūn after his grandfather Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd; his mother was a Greek slave called Ḳarāṭīs. On the day that his father al-Muʿtaṣim bi ’llāh [ q.v.] died (18 Rabīʿ I 227/5 January 842), al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ was proclaimed his successor. Before al-Muʿtaṣim’s death, an alleged descendant of the Umayyads, named Abū Ḥarb, usually called al-Mubarḳaʿ [ q.v.] “the veiled one” from the veil that he always wore, had provoked a dangerous rising in Palestine, and Rad̲j̲āʾ b. Ayyūb al-Ḥiḍārī, whom al-Muʿta…

Ṭīn

(313 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), mud, clay. 1. In the Ḳurʾān, it is said that God created man from base clay (contrasted with the superior fire from which Iblīs [ q.v.] boasts he has been made), and ṭīn is the most commonly used word here for “clay” (together with e.g. turāb , ḥamāʾ ) See e.g. sūra VI, 2, VII, 11/12, XVII, 63/61’, XXIII, 12, XXXII, 6/7). Ṭīn is further used as the substance from which Jesus ¶ will create a live bird (III, 43/49, V, 110). On the general topic of creation from these materials, see k̲h̲alḳ , at IV, 981b, and further, ṭīna . 2. As the potter’s material. See for this, k̲h̲azaf . O…

Zamm

(268 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town on the left bank of the Oxus river [see āmū daryā ] in mediaeval Islamic Central Asia. It lay some 190 km/120 miles upstream from Āmul-i S̲h̲aṭṭ [see āmul. 2.] in the direction of Tirmid̲h̲ [ q.v.], hence this Āmul was sometimes called “the Āmul of Zamm”, from Zamm’s being the next crossing-place along the river (see e.g. al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 410). Zamm was significant as a crossing-place connecting K̲h̲urāsān with Mā warāʾ al-nahr [ q.vv.]. It figures in historical accounts of the early Arab invasions of Transoxania as an entry-point for armies aiming at Payk…

al-G̲h̲iṭrīf b. ʿAṭāʾ

(733 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
al-Ḏj̲uras̲h̲ī , ʿAbbāsid governor. He was the brother of the famous Ḵh̲ayzurān [ q.v.], the Yemeni girl of slave origin who married the caliph al-Mahdī and was mother of the two successive caliphs al-Hādī and al-Ras̲h̲īd. Al-G̲h̲iṭrīf is also given the nisba of “al-Kindi” in the biography of him by Gardīzī (probably stemming from al-Sallāmī’s lost Taʾrīk̲h̲ Wulāt Ḵh̲urāsān ) and by al-Samʿānī, and may accordingly have been a mawlā of the great South Arabian tribe of Kinda [ q.v.] ( Zayn al-ak̲h̲bār , ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy Ḥabībī, Tehran 1347/1968, 96, 129-30)…

Las Bēla

(1,167 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a former native state of the British Indian empire. It lies in the south-east of Balūčistān, along the coast to the west of Karachi, between lats. 24° 54′ and 26° 39′ N. and longs, 64° 7′ and 67° 29′ E. It is bounded on the west by Makrān [ q.v.] (of which western Las Bēla forms indeed a part), on the north by the Jhalāwān district of the former Kalāt native state [see kilāt ] and on the east by the former province of Sind; its area, both as a former native state and as a modern District of Pakistan (see below) is 6,441 sq. miles. 1. Geography. The central part of the state is a flat, arid plain ( las

Mog̲h̲olistān

(459 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
“the land of the Mongols”, the name used from the time of the Mongols (13th century) onwards to designate the steppe, plateau and mountain region of Inner Asia lying to the north of Transoxania or Mā warāʾ al-nahr [ q.v.] and the Syr Darya, hence including inter alia the region of Semirečiye, Turkish Yeti-su “the land of seven rivers”, which comprised the basins of the Ili and Ču rivers [ q.vv.]; this part of Mog̲h̲olistān corresponds in large measure with the modern Kazakh SSR. But the region also extended eastwards across the Tien Shan and Ala Tau ranges into th…

Ṭarāz

(1,015 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the Arabic name for Talas , a river of Central Asia and a town of pre-Islamic and early Islamic times on its bank. The exact site is unknown, but was probably near the later Awliyā ¶ Atā/Aulie Ata, modern Dzhambul. This last is now just within the Kazakhstan Republic, but the old name Talas has been revived for a modern settlement some distance to the east, on the left bank of the Talas River and just within Kirghizia. The original Talas certainly lay in the river valley, between two mountain ranges which run westwards and end in the Aḳ Ḳum desert. The valley carried an important trade route e…

S̲h̲ahrazūr

(1,652 words)

Author(s): Minorsky, V. | Bosworth, C.E.
, S̲h̲ahrizūr (in S̲h̲araf K̲h̲ān Bidlīsī’s S̲h̲araf-nāma , S̲h̲ahra-zūl), a district in western Kurdistān lying to the west of the Awrāmān mountain chain, essentially a fertile plain some 58 × 40 km/36 × 25 miles in area, watered by the tributaries of the Tānd̲j̲arō river, which flows into the Sīrwān and eventually to the Diyālā and Tigris. In the wide sense, S̲h̲ahrazūr denoted in Ottoman times the eyālet or province of Kirkūk, a source of considerable confusion in geographical terminology. The district is closely associated with the Ahl-i Ḥaḳḳ [ q.v.], and the initiates of the sec…

Sikka

(10,717 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E. | Darley-Doran, R.E. | Freeman-Greenville, G.S.P.
(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…

Is̲h̲tīk̲h̲ān

(244 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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 …

Muwāḍaʿa

(227 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(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…

Ṣaymara

(152 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Isfīdjāb

(896 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Yes̲h̲il I̊rmak

(297 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Naṭanz

(326 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Terek

(393 words)

Author(s): Barthold, W. | Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Zaḳḳūm

(175 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(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…

al-Warkāʾ

(224 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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

Raʾīs

(2,026 words)

Author(s): Havemann, A. | Bosworth, C.E. | Soucek, S.
(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…

Marāfiḳ

(311 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(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…

Ob

(862 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Yog̲h̲urt

(292 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(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 …

Wak̲h̲ān

(1,205 words)

Author(s): Minorsky, V. | Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

al-Muṭīʿ Li ’llāh

(505 words)

Author(s): Zetterstéen, K.V. | Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Sardhanā

(234 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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 …

Nak̲h̲čiwān

(1,076 words)

Author(s): Minorsky, V. | Bosworth, C.E.
, 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 …

Munādī

(424 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(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…

Rizḳ

(1,228 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E. | McAuliffe, Jane D.
(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…

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥassān

(529 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
b. t̲h̲ābit al-anṣārī , poet of Medina and Damascus in the early Islamic period and son of the more famous eulogist of the Prophet, Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit [ q.v.]. He seems to have been born in ca. 6/627-8 or 7/628, and apart from visits to the Umayyad capital, to have spent most of his life in Medina. He died there, according to Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Tahd̲h̲īb , vi, 162-3, in ca. 104/722-3 at the age of 98 lunar years, long-lived like his father. ¶ His father had latterly become a strong advocate of vengeance for ʿUt̲h̲mān and a supporter of Muʿāwiya’s cause, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān likewise …

Sandābil

(339 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town said to be the capital of the king of China in the account of the Arab traveller and littérateur Abū Dulaf Misʿar b. Muhalhil [ q.v.] purporting to describe his participation in an embassy of the Chinese king Ḳālīn b. al-S̲h̲ak̲h̲īr returning from the court of the Samānid amīr Naṣr b. Aḥmad (301-31/914-43 [ q.v.]) at Buk̲h̲ārā. Abū Dulaf describes it as an immense city, one day’s journey across, with walls 90 cubits high and an idol temple bigger than the sacred mosque at Jerusalem ( First Risāla , Fr. tr. G. Ferrand, in Relations de voyages ... relatifs à l’Extrême Orient du VIII e au XVIII e s…

Kumīd̲j̲īs

(235 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a people mentioned in the Arabic and Persian historical and geographical sources of the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries as dwelling in the Buttaman Mts. at the heads of the valleys running southwards through K̲h̲uttal and Čag̲h̲āniyān down to the course of the upper Oxus. The Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (372/982) describes them as professional brigands and as linked with a smaller group, the Kand̲j̲īna Turks. In fact, these two peoples must be remnants of some earlier waves of invaders from Inner Asia, left behind in the Pamir region, probably of the Hephthalites [see hayāṭila …

Nawwāb

(271 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Nawāb , a title used in Muslim India. The form must be a hypercorrection from A. nuwwāb , pl. of nāʾib [ q.v.], used, as often in Persian usage (cf. arbāb “master”, ʿamala “workman”, and see D.C. Phillott, Higher Persian grammar, Calcutta 1919, 65) as a singular. The title was originally granted by the Mug̲h̲al emperors to denote a viceroy or governor of a province, and was certainly current by the 18th century, often in combination with another title, e.g. the Nawāb-Wazīr of Oudh (Awadh), the Nawāb-Nāẓim of Bengal. A nawāb might be subordi…

Nābulus

(1,272 words)

Author(s): Buhl, F. | Bosworth, C.E.
, a town in central Palestine, the name of which is derived from that of Flavia Neapolis built in honour of Vespasian. Its Old Testament predecessor was Shechem, which however lay more to the east on the site of the present village of Balāṭa (the name is explained by S. Klein, in ZDPV, xxxv, 38-9; cf. R. Hartmann, in ibid., xxxiii, 175-6, as “platanus”, from the evidence of the pilgrim of Bordeaux and the Midras̲h̲ Gen. rb ., c. 81, § 3). According to Eusebius, the place where the old town stood was pointed out in a suburb of Neapolis. The correctne…

al-Ruk̲h̲k̲h̲ad̲j̲

(602 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(in Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 111, 121, Ruk̲h̲ud̲h̲; in al-Muḳaddasī, 50, 297, Ruk̲h̲ūd, perhaps to be read as Ruk̲h̲wad̲h̲), the name given in early Islamic times to the region of southeastern Afghanistan around the later city of Ḳandahār [ q.v.] and occupying the lower basin of the ¶ Arg̲h̲andāb river (see D. Balland, EIr art. Arḡandāb ). The Islamic name preserves that of the classical Arachosia, through which Alexander the Great passed on his Indian expedition in 330 B.C. (see PW, ii/1, cols. 367-8 (W. Tomaschek)), which is itself a hellenisation of Old Pers. Harak̲…

Yeti Su

(1,813 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, in mediaeval Turkish “[the land of] the seven rivers”, rendered in recent times by Russian scholars as Semirečʾe, a region of Central Asia. It comprised essentially the lands north of Transoxania [see mā warāʾ al-nahr ] which stretched from the basin of the I̊ssi̊k-Kol [ q.v.] lake northwards to Lake Balk̲h̲as̲h̲ [ q.v.], and it derived its name from the numerous rivers draining it, such as the Ču [ q.v.], which peters out in the desert to the northeast of the middle Si̊r Daryā [ q.v.], and several rivers flowing into Lake Balk̲h̲as̲h̲ such as the Ili [ q.v.], which rises in Dzungaria and f…

Maḥmūd B. Muḥammad B. Malik-S̲h̲āh

(1,176 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Mug̲h̲īt̲h̲ al-Dunyā wa ’l-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḳāsim , Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ Sultan in western Persia and ʿIrāḳ 511-25/1118-31. The weakening of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ central power in the west, begun after Malik-S̲h̲āh’s death in the ¶ period of the disputed succession between Berk-yaruḳ and Muḥammad [ q.vv.], but arrested somewhat once Muḥammad had established his undisputed authority, proceeded apace during Maḥmūd’s fourteen-year reign. This arose in part from the latter’s initial youthfulness (he came to the throne, at the age of 13 and as the eldest …

Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn

(209 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the regnal name of the Kas̲h̲mīr Sultan S̲h̲āhī K̲h̲ān b. Iskandar, greatest of the line of S̲h̲āh Mīr Swātī, hence called Bud S̲h̲āh “Great King”, r. 823-75/1420-70. It was his merit to put an end to the persecutions of his father Sikandar But-S̲h̲ikan [ q.v.], who had forcibly converted Hindus and destroyed their temples. Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn now in effect abolished the d̲j̲izya , allowed the rebuilding of temples, etc. The realm was secured by strong military policies, and internal prosperity secured by such measures as the digging of …

Kay Kāʾūs b. Iskandar

(727 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, prince of the Ziyārid dynasty in Persia and author of a well-known “Mirror for Princes” in Persian, the Ḳābūsnāma . ʿUnṣur al-Maʿālī Kay Kāʾūs was the penultimate ruler of the line of Ziyārids [ q.v.] who ruled in the Caspian provinces of Ṭabaristān or Māzandarān and Gurgān in the 4th/10th and 5th/11th centuries. His main claim to fame lies in the Ḳābūs-nāma , written in 475/1082-3, when the author was 63 years old, for his favourite son and intended successor, Gīlān-S̲h̲āh. The little that we know of his life must be gleaned from historical sources like Ibn Isfandiyār’s Tāʾrīk̲h̲-i Ṭabaris…

Tīmūrtās̲h̲ Og̲h̲ullari̊

(1,202 words)

Author(s): Babinger, F. | Bosworth, C.E.
, a family which flourished in the service of the early Ottoman sultans in the 8th/14th and early 9th/15th centuries, the most celebrated of its members being the general and wezīr Tīmūrtās̲h̲ b. Ḳara ʿAlī Beg, d. 806/1404. In the early Ottoman historical sources, it is called the Āl-i Tīmūrtās̲h̲. Ḳarā ʿAlī Beg’s father Ayḳut Alp (d. 725/1325) had been in the service of the somewhat shadowy founding figures of the Ottoman dynasty, Ertog̲h̲rul and ʿOt̲h̲mān I [ q.v.]. In the first year of Ork̲h̲an’s reign (726/1326), Ḳarā ʿAlī Beg took the fortress of Hereke on the Gulf o…

K̲h̲oḳand

(2,795 words)

Author(s): Barthold, W. | Bosworth, C.E.
, Arabic orthography, K̲h̲wāḳand, later written K̲h̲uḳand (which is given a popular etymology, k̲h̲ūḳ + kand = town of the boar), a town in Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.], where see also for the other spellings and the foundation of an independent Özbeg kingdom with K̲h̲oḳand as capital in the 12th/18th century. The accession of the first ruler of this Miñ dynasty, S̲h̲āhruk̲h̲, was followed by the building of a citadel; another citadel later called Eski Urda was built by his son, ʿAbd al-Karīm (d. 1746). ʿAbd al-Karīm and his nephe…

Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr

(8,348 words)

Author(s): Barthold, W. | Bosworth, C.E.
(a.) “the land which lies beyond the river”, i.e. beyond the Oxus or Āmū-Daryā [ q.v.], the classical Transoxiana or Transoxania, so-called by the conquering Arabs of the 1st/7th century and after in contrast to Mā dūn al-Nahr, the lands of K̲h̲urāsān [ q.v.] this side of the Oxus, although the term K̲h̲urāsān was not infrequently used vaguely to designate all the eastern Islamic lands beyond western Persia. 1. The name The frontiers of Ma warāʾ al-nahr on the north and east were where the power of Islam ceased and depended on political conditions; cf. the statemen…

Yabg̲h̲u

(525 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(t.) (perhaps also Yavg̲h̲u, the Old Turkish so-called “runic” alphabet not differentiating b and v), an ancient Turkish title, found in the Ork̲h̲on [ q.v.] inscriptions to denote an office or rank in the administrative hierarchy below the Kag̲h̲an. The latter normally conferred it on his close relatives, with the duty of administering part of his dominions. It was thus analogous to the title S̲h̲ad̲h̲, whom the Yabg̲h̲u preceded in the early Türk empire [see turks. I. History. 1. The pre-Islamic period]. It seems to have lost some importance after this time (8th century), …

Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad

(582 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Ibrāhīm , called al-Amīr al-Māḍī or al-Amīr al-ʿĀdil, the first member of the Sāmānid family effectively to rule all Transoxania and Farg̲h̲āna as an independent sovereign. Born in 234/849, he spent 20 years as governor of. Buk̲h̲ārā on behalf of his brother Naṣr, who himself resided at Samarḳand (260/874-279/892). The unsettled conditions in Ḵh̲urāsān during the years between the fall of the Ṭāhirids and the final establishment there of ʿAmr b. al-Layt̲h̲ [ q.v.] were reflected in Transoxania also. Ismāʿīl had in Buk̲h̲ārā to fight off an invading army from Ḵh̲wārazm under one Ḥ…

Kāt̲h̲

(850 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
the ancient capital of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.], situated on the east bank of the main channel of the Amū Daryā or Oxus a short distance from modern K̲h̲īwa. According to Yāḳūt, Buldān , iv, 222, Kāt̲h̲ meant in K̲h̲wārazmian a wall or rampart within the steppe, even if it enclosed no buildings, but there is nothing in what we know of K̲h̲wārazmian to confirm this; it is conceivable that there is some connection with Sogdian kat̲h̲ , kant̲h̲ , “town”, though this is wholly conjectural. The site of Kāt̲h̲ was affected by changes in the channels of the river, and was accordingly moved at various times. Litt…

Kwat́́t́́a

(1,582 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Quetta , a town and district of northern Balūčistān, now in Pakistan. In both the former British India and now in Pakistan, Quetta and Pīs̲h̲īn, some 20 miles to its north, have formed an administrative district. The region is geologically com…

Marwān I b. al-Ḥākam

(1,763 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Abi ’l-ʿAṣ…

Naṣībīn

(1,737 words)

Author(s): Honigmann, E. | Bosworth, C.E.
, Naṣībīn , classical Nasibis, modern Turkish form Nusaybin, a town in upper Mesopotamia, now in modern Turkey. It is situated on the modern Görgarbonizra Çayi, the classical Mygdonios river, the early Arabic Hirmās, Syriac Nehar Māsā or Mās̲h̲ī, in the plain to the south of the mountain region of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn [

Hiba

(8,430 words)

Author(s): Rosenthal, F. | Bosworth, C.E. | Wansbrough, J. | Colin, G.S. | Busse, H. | Et al.
, one of many Arabic words used to express the concept of “gift”, and the preferred legal term for it, see following article. The giving of gifts, that is, the voluntary transfer of property, serves material and psychological purposes. In the pre-history of man, it probably antedates the contractual payment for goods and services. In Islam, it has retained its inherited functions as an important component of the social fabric and has exercised a considerable influence on political life. Literature (in the narrow sense…

Maḳān b. Kākī

(597 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Manṣūr , Daylamī soldier of fortune who played an important part in the tortuous politics and military operations in northern Persia, involving local Daylamī chiefs, the ʿAlids of Ṭabaristān and the Sāmānids, during the first half of the 4th/10th century. The house of Kākī were local rulers of As̲h̲kawar in Rānikūh, the eastern part of Gīlān in the Caspian coastlands. Mākān rose to prominence in Ṭabaristān in the service of the ʿAlid princes there, and as the ʿAlids themselves dissolved into internecine rivalries, he became the co…

Maʿalt̲h̲āyā

(972 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Maʿalt̲h̲ā (Syriac “gate, entrance”, Payne Smith, Thesaurus syriacus , col. 2881), modern Malthai, the name given to two villages in the former ḳaḍāʾ of Dehōk (Duhūk) in the wilāyet of Mawṣil in Ottoman times, now in the Autonomous Region of Dehōk in Republican ʿIrāḳ. The second of these two villages was formerly distinguished as Maʿalt̲h̲ā al-Naṣārā “M. of the Christians”, but has recently become largely Kurdish and Muslim, like its fellow-village. Maʿalt̲h̲āyā lies on a small affluent of the Tigri…

Māhūr

(398 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E. | Burton-Page, J.
, a small town of mediaeval India in the extreme north of the former Hyderabad State of British India. It is situated in lat. 19° 49′ N. and long. 77° 58′ E. just to the south of the Pengangā river, a left-bank affluent of the Godavari, where it forms the boundary between the former regions of northern Hyderabad [see ḥaydarābād ] and Berār [ q.v.] in Central India. In pre-Muslim times, Māhūr had the shrine of Śrī-Dattātreya. In the middle years of the 8th/14th century, the territory up to Māhūr was conquered by the Deccani power of the Bahmanīs [ q.v.]. In 857/1453 Maḥmūd I K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī [ q. v. ] of Mā…

Pāʾ

(335 words)

Author(s): Levy, R. | Bosworth, C.E.
or bāʾ-i fārsī or bāʾ-i ʿad̲j̲amī , i.e. the bāʾ with three points subscript, invented for Persian as supplement to the Arabic bāʾ and to represent the unvoiced, as opposed to the voiced, bilabial plosive (for the voiced b, see bāʾ). It is sometimes interchangeable with bāʾ (e.g. asp and asb , dabīr and dapīr ) and, more frequently, with fāʾ (e.g. sapīd and safīd , Pārs and Fārs ). The regular use of the letter in manuscripts is comparatively modern, but it is found in good ones of the 7th/13th century while at the same time it is often omitted in manuscripts of much later date ( GIPh

Udgīr

(167 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a small town in South India (lat. 18° 26′ N., long. 77° 11′ E.), in British Indian times the chef-lieu of a taluk in the Bīdar District of Ḥaydarābād State [ q.v.], now coming within the Maharashtra State of the Indian Union. It has a fort dating back to the end of the 9th/15th century. It was part of the lands of the Barīd S̲h̲āhs of Bīdar [ q.vv.], and then of their successors the ʿĀdil S̲h̲āhs of Bīd̲j̲apur [ q.vv.] until it was besieged by S̲h̲āh Ḏj̲ahān’s army in 1044/1635 and then incorporated into the Mug̲h̲al empire. Its chief fame stems from the fiercely-fought ba…

K̲h̲wāf

(804 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, older orthography (e.g. in Ibn Rusta, 171) K̲h̲wāb, a rustāḳ or rural district of Ḳūhistān in eastern Persia, lying between the district of Bāk̲h̲arz [ q.v.] to the north and that of Ḳāʾin to the southwest, and adjacent to the modern Iran-Afg̲h̲ānistān border. The geographers of the 4th/10th century mention the towns there of Salūmak ( Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 103, Salūmīd̲h̲), Fard̲j̲ird and Kusūy(a), the latter being especially populous. Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut 1374-6/1955-7, ii, 399, describes the district as having 200 villages and three si…

Ṭuk̲h̲āristān

(1,725 words)

Author(s): Barthold, W. | Bosworth, C.E.
, the name found in earlier mediaeval Islamic sources for the region along the southern banks of the middle and upper Oxus river, in the wider sense of the term (see below), with the ancient of the Balk̲h̲ as the centre of its western part and such towns as Ṭālaḳān, Andarāb and Walwālīd̲j̲ [ q.vv.] as its centres in the narrower acceptation of the term, sc. the eastern part. It comprised in its wider sense the modern Afg̲h̲an provinces of Fāryāb, D̲j̲ūzd̲j̲ān, Balk̲h̲, Sanangān, Ḳunduz, Tak̲h̲ār and Badak̲h̲s̲h̲ān. The name of the region obviously preserves a memory of the people k…

Ṭarābulus (or Aṭrābulus) al-S̲h̲ām

(2,111 words)

Author(s): Buhl, F. | Bosworth, C.E. | Lavergne, M.
, the Greek Tripolis, called “of Syria” in the Arabic sources to distinguish it from Ṭarābulus al-G̲h̲arb [ q.v.] “of the West”, Tripoli in Libya, an historic town of the Mediterranean coast of the Levant, to the north of D̲j̲ubayl and Batrūn [ q.vv.]. It lies partly on and partly beside a hill at the exit of a deep ravine through which flows a river, the Nahr Ḳadīs̲h̲a (Arabic, Abū ʿAlī). West of it stretches a very fertile plain covered with woods, which terminate in a peninsula on which lies the port of al-Mīnā. The harbour is protect…

Yaḥyā b. Akt̲h̲am

(231 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Muḥammad al-Marwazi al-Tamīmī, faḳīh who had been a pupil of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī. judge and counsellor of ʿAbbāsid caliphs, d. 242/857. A native of Marw, he became Grand Judge ( ḳāḍī ’l-ḳuḍāt ) of Bag̲h̲dād after having been being appointed judge in Baṣra by al-Ḥasan b. Sahl [ q.v.] in 202/817-18. He soon became a member of al-Maʾmūn’s court circle as an adviser and boon-companion, thus exemplifying a trend under this caliph to take legal scholars rather than administrators as political counsellors. He accompanied al-Maʾmūn to Syria and Egypt …

Madura, Madurāʾī

(299 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, in mediaeval Islamic times a town, now the city of Madurai, in South India. It lies on the Vaidai river in lat. 9° 55’ N., long. 78° 07’ E. in the region known to the mediaeval Muslims as Maʿbar and to later European traders as Coromandel. For the historical geography and Islamic history of this coastal province, roughly extending from Cape Comorin northwards to Madras, see maʿbar . In 734/1334 S̲h̲arīf Ḏj̲alāl al-Dīn Aḥsan [ q.v.], governor for the Dihlī Sultan Muḥammad b. Tug̲h̲luḳ [ q.v.], renounced his allegiance, and he and some seven of his successors ruled over a short-l…

Kākūyids

(2,266 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, or Kākwayhids , a dynasty of Daylamī origin which ruled over part of D̲j̲ibāl or west-central Persia during the first half of the 5th/11th century as virtually independent sovereigns, and thereafter for more than a century as local lords of Yazd, tributary to the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. The rise of the Kākūyids is one aspect of the “Daylamī interlude” of Iranian history, during which hitherto submerged Daylamī and Kurdish elements rose to prominence. Under the dynamic leadership of the …

Mazyad

(1,639 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Banū , or Mazyadids , an Arab dynasty of central ʿIrāḳ, which stemmed originally from the clan of Nās̲h̲ira of the Banū Asad [ q. v. ] established in the area between al-Kūfa and Hīt, and which flourished in the 4th-6th/10th-12th centuries. ¶ The origins of the Mazyadids, as established by G. Makdisi (see Bibl .) pace the older view (expressed e.g. in EI 1 mazyadīds ) that the family did not appear in history till the early years of the 5th/11th century, go back to the period soon after the establishment of Būyid domination in ʿIrāḳ. Ibn al-Ḏj̲āwzī relates that the Būyid amīr Muʿizz al-Dawla’s v…

Ḳuṣdār

(595 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Ḳuzdār , the name of a town in mediaeval Islamic Balūčistān [ q.v.], modern town and district of Ḵh̲uzdār in the former Kalāt state [see kilāt ] in Pakistan. It lies in lat. 27° 48′ N. and long 66° 37′ E. at an altitude of 4,050 feet, some 85 miles south of Kalāt; the long, narrow valley of the Kolachi River in which it is situated is strategically important as a nodal point of communications, from Karāčī and Las Bēla [ q.vv.] in the south, from Kaččhī in the east, from Kalāt in the north, and from Makrān and K̲h̲ārān [ q.vv.] in the west. Ḳuṣdār was first raided by the Arabs…

Ḳāwūs

(570 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Banū , an Iranian dynasty which reigned in the districts of Rūyān and Rustamdār, the coastal plain and the mountainous interior respectively, of the western parts of the Caspian province of Māzandarān [ q.v.] in the second half of the 9th/15th century and in the 10th/16th century. The dynasty was in fact one of the two branches into which the ancient line of the Bādūspānids [ q.v.], whose genealogy went back to Sāsānid times, split in the middle years of the 9th/15th century. The Bādūspānids had been confined to the fortress of Nūr by the Caspian campaigns of Tīmūr in 794/139…

Sūrat

(796 words)

Author(s): Haig, T.W. | Bosworth, C.E.
, a city and port of western India, on the south bank of the Tāptī and some 16 km/10 miles upstream from where the river debouches into the Gulf of Cambay (lat. 21° 10´ N., long 72° 54´ E.). The geographer Ptolemy (A.D. 150), speaks of the trade of Pulipula, perhaps Phulpāda, the sacred part of Sūrat city. Early references to Sūrat by Muslim historians must be scrutinised, owing to the confusion of the name with Sorath (Saurās̲h̲tra), but in 774/1373 F…

Liṣṣ

(1,854 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(A., also laṣş , luṣṣ , pl. luṣūṣ , with maṣdar s luṣūṣiyya , talaṣṣuṣ (see LA 1, viii, 355-6, and Lane, s.v.), one of the two main words in Arabic for thief robber (the other being sāriḳ ); in Persian we have duzd “thief”, duzdī “theft”, and in old Turkish og̲h̲ri̊ , Ottoman k̲h̲ayrsi̊z , modern hırsız . Arabic liṣṣ and the unassimilated variants li/a/uṣt must have appeared in the language during the Byzantine period, presumably via Syriac leṣtā , whilst there exists the form listīs , closer to the Greek original λῃστής in Mishnaic Hebrew and Palestine Jewish Aramaic (see S. Krauss, Griechische u…

Ustāndār

(188 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), literally “the holder of an ustān [ q.v.] or province”, an administrative term originally found in Sāsānid Persia for the governor of a province or for the official in charge of state domains (see Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber , 448). When the Arabs conquered ʿIrāḳ, the old Sāsānid state lands were taken over as ṣawāfī al-ustān and administered by ustāndārs for the caliph ʿUmar (see M.J. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest , Princeton 1984, 68-9 and index s.v. ustāndār). The title probably continued to be used meanwhile by local potentates in the un-Islami…

Yada Tas̲h̲

(1,032 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(t.), lit. rain stone, in Arabic texts appearing as ḥad̲j̲ar al-maṭar , this being a magical stone by means of which rain, snow, fog, etc., could be conjured up by its holder(s). In particular, knowledge and use of such stones has been widespread until very recent times in Inner Asia. Belief in the existence of stones and other means of controlling the weather has been widespread throughout both the Old and New Worlds (see Sir J.G. Frazer, The golden bough, a study in magic and religion, abridged ed., London 1922, 75-8). Belief in a stone seems to have been general amongst the e…

K̲h̲ud̲j̲and(a)

(1,227 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town and district in Central Asia, now the town and oblast of Leninabad in the Tadzhik SSR, the town lying in 40° 17′ lat. N. and 69° 37′ long. E. The mediaeval town was strung out along the left bank of the middle Si̊r Daryā at the southernmost bend of its course and at the entrance to the Farg̲h̲āna valley. It lay in the ill-defined borderlands between the Transoxanian districts of Īlāḳ [ q.v. in Suppl.] and Us̲h̲rūsana [ q.v.], and was generally reckoned as being connected administratively with one or other of these two in the early middle ages. Its destinies were, ho…

al-Nūs̲h̲arī

(139 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
or al-Naws̲h̲ari , Abū Mūsā ʿĪsā b. Muḥammad, general (said to be Turkish, but perhaps an Iranian from K̲h̲urāsān, since al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, xiii, 201-2, derives the nisba al-Nūs̲h̲ārī ( sic) from Nūs̲h̲ār, a village in the district of Balk̲h̲) from the guard of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs at Sāmarrā and governor of Damascus on various occasions during the caliphates of al-Muntaṣir, al-Mustaʿīn and al-Muʿtazz [ q.vv.] from 247/861 onwards. At the accession of al-Muʿtazz in 252/866, he expanded southwards into Palestine, displacing the Arab governor of Ramla [ q.v.], ʿĪsā b. …

Ṭalḥat al-Ṭalaḥāt

(287 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
“Ṭalḥa of the Ṭalḥas”, the name by which the early Islamic Arab commander Abū Muḥammad Ṭalḥa b. ʿAbd Allāh b. K̲h̲alaf al-K̲h̲uzāʿī was known. Ibn K̲h̲allikān, ed. ʿAbbās, iii, 88, tr. de Slane, ii, 53, explains that he got this cognomen because his mother’s name was Ṭalḥa bt. Abī Ṭalḥa. On his mother’s side he was connected with Ḳurays̲h̲ (Caskel-Strenziok, Ğamharat an-nasab , ii, 555). He appears in Umayyad history as governor of Sīstān around the end of the caliphate of Yazīd I, being appointed by the governor of K̲h̲urāsān Salm b. Ziyād [ q.v.] just after an Arab raid into eastern Af…

Mazār-i S̲h̲arīf

(626 words)

Author(s): Barthold, W. | Bosworth, C.E.
, a town in northern Afg̲h̲ānistān, situated in lat. 36° 42′ N. and long. 67° 06′ E., at an altitude of 1,235 feet/380 m. in the foothills of the northern outliers of the Hindū-Kus̲h̲ [ q.v.]. The great classical and mediaeval Islamic town of Balk̲h̲ [ q.v.], modern Wazīrābād, lay some 14 miles/20 km. to the west of Mazār-i S̲h̲arīf, and until the Tīmūrid period was the most important urban centre of the region. Previously to that time, the later Mazār-i S̲h̲arīf was marked by the village of Ḵh̲ayr, later called Ḵh̲ōd̲j̲a Ḵh̲ayrān. On two d…

K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs

(3,303 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the ancient title of the rulers of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.], used regularly in the early Islamic period (cf. Ṭabarī, ii, 1238, events of 93/712) until the Mongol invasions, and sporadically thereafter; hence as with the designations Afs̲h̲īn and Ik̲h̲s̲h̲īd [ q.vv.], this is an example of the survival of what was probably an ancient Central Asian Iranian title well into Islamic times. The K̲h̲wārazmian scholar Bīrūnī gives the names and genealogical sequence of the first line of K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs, the house of Afrīg̲h̲, which began, so he says, in 305 A.D. and continued unti…

Kōŕā or Kōŕā Ḏj̲ahānābād

(297 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, an ancient town of northern India in the K̲h̲ad̲j̲uhā taḥṣīl of Fatḥpūr District in the former British United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh. It lies in lat. 26° 7′ N. and long. 80° 22′ E. on the Rind River some 12 miles/20 km. from the Ḏj̲amnā (Jumna) River between Kānpūr (Cawnpore) and Fatḥpūr. In early times it was apparently held by the Rād̲j̲put line of the Rād̲j̲ās of Argal, and the fortress there may have been their ancestral centre. Under the Mug̲h̲als, Kōŕā (sometimes spelt in Marāt́hi and Persian sources as Kurrah, and to be distinguished from Kārā Manīkpūr, an adjacent but separate sar…

Ras̲h̲t

(874 words)

Author(s): Nikitine, B. | Bosworth, C.E.
Res̲h̲t , a town of the Persian province of Gīlān [ q.v.], in the Caspian Sea lowlands and lying on a branch of the Safīd Rūd [ q.v.] in lat. 37° 18ʹ N. and 49° 38ʹ E. It has long been the commercial centre of Gīlān, with its fortunes fluctuating with the state of sericulture and silk manufacture. However, the town is not mentioned by the early Arabic geographers, who localise the silk industry in ¶ the province of Ṭabaristān to the east [see māzan darān ], and it is the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam which first gives the name, but as a district, not a town (tr. Minorsky, 137, §…

al-Sallāmī

(277 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Bayhaḳī, historian of the Sāmānid period, who flourished in the middle decades of the 4th/10th century but whose exact dates of birth and death are unknown. According to the local historian of Bayhaḳ, Ibn Funduḳ [see al-bayhaḳī , ẓahīr al-dīn ... b. funduḳ ], he was a pupil of the rather shadowy nadīm and adīb Ibrahīm b. Muḥammad al-Bayhaḳī [ q.v.], author of the K. al-Maḥāsin wa ’l-masāwī , and according to al-T̲h̲aʿālibī, he was in the service of the Muḥtād̲j̲id amīr s of Čag̲h̲āniyān [see muḥtād̲j̲ids ], Abū Bakr Muḥammad and Abū…

Sud̲j̲ān Rāy Bhandārī

(429 words)

Author(s): Shafi, Mohammed | Bosworth, C.E.
, or Sud̲j̲ān Singh D̲h̲īr, Muns̲h̲ī ( flor . in the second half of the 11th/17th century and the early part of the 12th/18th century ¶ under the Mug̲h̲al emperor Awrangzīb [ q.v.]), Hindu chronicler of Muslim India and compiler of collections of ins̲h̲āʾ [ q.v.] literature. The name Sud̲j̲ān (probably not to be taken as Sand̲j̲ān, as in the EI 1 article) comes from a Hindi word meaning “well informed, wise, intelligent”, according to Storey. Very little is known of his life and career, apart from what he tells us in his books or what has been added to the manuscripts o…

Yas̲h̲m

(2,104 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E. | Sheila S. Blair and J.M. Bloom
(p.), the Persian term for the mineral generally termed jade. This is made up of one or the other hard, fine-grained translucent stones jadeite or nephrite, the first a silicate of sodium and aluminum and the second a silicate of calcium and magnesium. Both may be white or colourless, but are often found in a variety of other colours, such as green, brown, yellow, etc., because of the presence of traces of other elements such as iron, chromium and manganese. 1. In Islamic history. Nephrite was known to Eastern Turkic peoples as ¶ kas̲h̲ (see Clauson, An etymological dictionary of pre-thirt…

Muḥammad S̲h̲āh

(620 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Ḏj̲ahān-S̲h̲āh b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam i , Nāṣir al-Dīn (1131-61/1719-48), surnamed Raws̲h̲an Ak̲h̲tar, “Brillant Star”, the last of the Mug̲h̲al emperors in Dihlī to enjoy real power. His father had been one of three brothers who perished in disputing the crown with their eldest brother D̲j̲ahān-dār S̲h̲āh b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam Bahādur. Muḥammad S̲h̲āh was born on 24 Rabīʿ I 1114/7 August 1702, and hailed as emperor by the two Sayyid brothers, Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh and Sayyid Ḥusayn, after the two brief reigns of Muḥammad S̲h̲āh’s cousin…

Ḳāʾin

(939 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, conventionally Qayen, etc., a town of eastern Persia (lat. 33° 43′ N., long. 59° 06′ E.), now in the administrative province of K̲h̲urāsān but in mediaeval Islamic times falling within the region known as Ḳūhistān [ q.v.]. It lies on the road connecting the urban centres of northern K̲h̲urāsān (Mas̲h̲had, Turbat-i Ḥaydariyya, etc.) with Bird̲j̲and, Persian Sīstān and Zāhidān. Ḳāʾin must be an ancient town, but virtually nothing is known of it before the descriptions of the 4th/10th century geographers. The 8th century Armenian geo…

Nūḥ

(368 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(II) b. Manṣūr b. Nūḥ , Sāmānid amīr initially in Transoxania and K̲h̲urāsān. latterly in the first province only (366-87/977-97), given after his death the honorific al-Amīr al-Raḍī (“the Wellpleasing”). The last of his line to enjoy a reign of any significant length, Nūḥ succeeded his father Manṣūr (I) [ q.v.] at the age of 13, real power being in the hands of his mother and the vizier Abu ’l-Ḥusayn ʿUtbī, the last vizier to the Sāmānids worthy of the title. However, authority in the state fell more and more into the hands of the great milita…

Mahīm

(206 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Maham , a town in the district and ¶ taḥṣīl of Rohtak in India, on the road connecting Dihlī and Hānsī, situated in lat. 28° 58′ N. and long. 76° 18′ E.; it was formerly in the Pand̲j̲āb, but since 1947 has fallen within the Indian Union (Hariana State). It was probably founded by Rād̲j̲pūt princes, but was allegedly destroyed at the end of the 12th century by Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad G̲h̲ūrī [see g̲h̲ūrids ]. The D̲j̲āmiʿ Masd̲j̲id has an inscription from the reign of Humāyūn, recording its construction by Bēgam Sulṭān in 1531, and another from A…

Ṣawlad̲j̲ān

(113 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), said to be an Arabised form of Pers. čawgān “polo stick” [see čawgān ]. The intrusive l makes this difficult, but D.N. MacKenzie, A concise dictionary of Pahlavi , London 1971, 22, has * caw ( l) agān (“of doubtful transcription”). At all events, the curve of a polo stick makes it a suitable figurative expression, either as a simile [see tas̲h̲bīh ] or as a metaphor [see istiʿāra ], in classical Arabic, Persian and Turkish literatures, for the curving eyebrows and locks or tresses of hair of a beautiful girl; see Annemarie Schimmel, The two-colored brocade. The imagery of Persian poetry, C…

Miskīn

(737 words)

Author(s): Buhl, F. | Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), pl. masākīn , miskīnūn , “poor, destitute”. The word is an ancient Semitic one. In Akkadian, muškēnu/maškēnu apparently in the first place designated a social class between the full citizens and the slaves, and thence acquired the sense of “poor, destitute” (see E.A. Speiser, The muškēnum , in Orientalia , N.S. xxvii [1958], 19-28; Chicago Akkadian dictionary, Letter M , Part ii, 272-6; Von Soden, Akkadisches Wörterbuch , ii, 8641; idem, Muškenum und die Mawālī des frühen Islam , in ZA, N.F. xxii [1964], 133-41). In the latter sense, it appears in Aramaic as meskīnā and in OT Hebrew as mi…

Zawd̲j̲

(935 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E. | J. Lentin
(a., pl. azwād̲j̲ ), basically “two draught animals yoked together”, from which, in both literary and dialectal Arabic usage, a number of senses have developed, including “piece of land which a yoked pair of beasts can plough in a determined time”, “two things”, “pair, couple”, from which verbal forms have also developed. At the side of “one part of a pair”, “half of a couple” (especially “spouse”, and often with the fern, ending -at “wife”), the signification “couple, pair”, though rejected by the purists, is attested from mediaeval Islamic tim…

Miṣr

(46,751 words)

Author(s): Wensinck, A.J. | Bosworth, C.E. | Becker, C.H. | Christides, V. | Kennedy, H. | Et al.
, Egypt A. The eponym of Egypt B. The early Islamic settlements developing out of the armed camps and the metropolises of the conquered provinces C. The land of Egypt: the name in early Islamic times 1. Miṣr as the capital of Egypt: the name in early Islamic times 2. The historical development of the capital of Egypt i. The first three centuries, [see al-fusṭāṭ ] ii. The Nile banks, the island of Rawḍa and the adjacent settlement of D̲j̲īza (Gīza) iii. The Fāṭimid city, Miṣr al-Ḳāhira, and the development of Cairo till the end of the 18t…

Marg̲h̲īnān

(574 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, later form Marg̲h̲elān , a town of Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.] in Central Asia, situated to the south of the Ṣi̊r Daryā [ q.v.] or Jaxartes, on a small river now called the Margelan Say. ¶ It was a place of modest importance in the first Islamic centuries as one of the main towns, with inter alia Andid̲j̲ān [ q.v.], of the district of Farg̲h̲āna known as Lower Nasyā; according to al-Mukaddasī, 272 (see also Le Strange, Lands , 479; Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 513-14, tr. 491; al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , facs. ed. f. 522a), it had a Friday mosque and markets. Coins were first minted there …

al-Mūriyānī

(317 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Ayyūb Sulaymān b. Mak̲h̲lad (the nisba stemming from Mūriyān in Ahwāz, see Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Beirut, v, 221), secretary of the second ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr [ q.v.]. Various stories are given in the sources about how he came to enjoy al-Manṣūr’s confidence: that in the time of the last Umayyad caliph Marwān b. Muḥammad he had saved the ʿAbbāsid Abū D̲j̲aʿfar from a flogging for embezzling state funds (al-Yaʿḳūbī, al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī): that he was a freed slave of al-Saffah’s, taken into his successor’s service (…

Mug̲h̲als

(37,500 words)

Author(s): Burton-Page, J. | Islam, Riazul | Athar Ali, M. | Moosvi, Shireen | Moreland, W.H. | Et al.
an Indo-Muslim dynasty which ruled, latterly with decreasing effectiveness, 932-1274/1526-1858. 1. History. This article, like the section on History in hind, iv, above, aims at being no more than a guide to the numerous articles on the history of the Mug̲h̲al dynasty in India to be found elsewhere in the Encyclopaedia , and to relate these to a chronological framework. The Mug̲h̲als were given their first foothold in Indian territory in 800/1398 when Pīr Muḥammad, governor of Kābul and a grandson of Tīmūr, attacked Uččh and Multān, and established a gov…
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