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Ḏj̲emʿiyyet-i ʿIlmiyye-i ʿOt̲h̲māniyye

(372 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
the Ottoman Scientific Society, was founded in Istanbul in 1861 by Munīf Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.]. Modelled on the Royal Society of England, and perhaps inspired by the reopening of the Institut d’Egypte [ q.v.] in Alexandria in 1859, it consisted of a group of Turkish officials, dignitaries and scholars, some of them educated in Europe. It was the third such learned society to appear in 19th century Turkey, having been preceded by the End̲j̲umen-i Dānis̲h̲ in 1851 (see and̲j̲uman ), and by the ‘learned society of Bes̲h̲iktas̲h̲’ in the time of Maḥmūd II (see D̲j̲ewdet, Taʾrīk̲h̲ 2

Tunali̊ Ḥilmī

(226 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Turkish writer and politician. Born in Eskid̲j̲uma in 1863, he became involved in illegal political activities while still a medical student. After serving a brief term of imprisonment, he fled to Europe in 1895, and joined the Young Turk group in Geneva, where in 1896 he founded, with others, the Ottoman Revolutionary Party ( ʿOt̲h̲mānli̊ Ik̲h̲tilāl Fi̊rḳasi̊ ); he was particularly effective as a writer and propagandist with a simple and direct popular appeal. In 1900, together with ʿAbd Allāh D̲j̲ewdet and Isḥāḳ Sükūtī [ qq.v.], he made his peace with the Sultan and was appoi…

Daftardār

(728 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, in Turkish defterdār , keeper of the daftar [ q.v.], an Ottoman term for the chief finance officer, corresponding to the Mustawfī [ q.v.] in the eastern Islamic world. According to Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī ( Ṣubḥ , iii, 485, 494, 525, 526), the title Ṣāḥib al-Daftar already existed in the Fāṭimid administration, for the official in charge of the Daftar al-Mad̲j̲lis , that is, of accounts and audits. The title Daftark̲h̲ w ānDaftar -reader—appears in the time of Saladin (B. Lewis, Three Biographies from Kamāl ad-Dīn , in Fuad Köprülü Armağanı , Istanbul 1953, 343), and r…

Duyūn-i ʿUmūmiyye

(706 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, the Ottoman public debt, more particularly the debt administration set up in 1881. The Ottoman government had made its first attempts to raise money by internal loans in ¶ the late 18th and early 19th centuries (see ashām and ḳāʾime ). The needs and opportunities of the Crimean War brought a new type of loan, floated on the money markets of Europe. The first such foreign loan was raised in London in 1854, the second in the following year. They were for £ 3,000,000 at 6% and £ 5,000,000 at 4% respectively. Betwee…

ʿAlids

(1,706 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, descendants of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, who had eighteen sons (according to most works on ʿAlid genealogy, but fourteen according to another version given by al-Ṭabarī and eleven according to al-Masʿūdī), and seventeen daughters. His sons were as follows: By Fāṭima; al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn, and al-Muḥsin (or Muḥassin). The third does not appear in all sources. By Ḵh̲awla; Muḥammad, known as Ibn al-Ḥanafiyya. By Umm al-Banīn; ʿAbbās the elder, ʿAbd Allāh, ʿUt̲h̲mān the elder, Ḏj̲aʿfar the elder. By al-Ṣaḥbāʾ, called Umm Ḥabīb; ʿUmar. By Laylā bint Masʿūd; Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, ʿUbayd Allāh. B…

Bazīg̲h̲ b. Mūsā

(189 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, called al-ḥāʾik , S̲h̲īʿite heretic. A disciple of Abu ’l-Ḵh̲aṭṭāb [ q.v.], he was, like his master, denounced by the Imām Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Ṣādiḳ as a heretic and was even, according to Nawbak̲h̲tī, disowned by Abu ’l-Ḵh̲aṭṭāb himself. Kas̲h̲s̲h̲ī reports a tradition that when Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Ṣādiḳ was told that Bazīg̲h̲ had been killed, he expressed satisfaction. This would place Bazīg̲h̲’s death before that of D̲j̲aʿfar in 148/765. Like many of the early extremist S̲h̲īʿites, Bazīg̲h̲ was an artisan—a weaver of …

Ḥātim b. Hart̲h̲ama

(381 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, the son of Hart̲h̲ama b. Aʿyan [ q.v.], held a number of appointments in the service of the Caliphs. In a letter from al-Amīn to Ṣāliḥ, dated S̲h̲awwāl 192/July-August 808, i.e., nearly a year before the death of Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd, the heir apparent advises his brother to confirm Ḥātim b. Hart̲h̲ama, like his father a man of proved loyalty, in his post, and to entrust him with the guarding of the Caliphal palaces (Ṭabarī, iii, 769; cf. Gabrieli, Documenti relativi al califfato di al-Amīn in aṭ-Ṭabarī , in Rend. Lin ., Ser. vi, vol. iii (1927), 203). Later, al-A…

Biñbas̲h̲i̊

(326 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, ‘head of a thousand’, a Turkish military rank. The word appears at an early date among the Western Turks, and is already used in connexion with the military reorganisation said to have been made by Ork̲h̲ān in 729/1328-9 ( e.g., Saʿd al-Dīn, Tād̲j̲ al-Tawārīk̲h̲ , i, 40— ‘onbas̲h̲i̊s , yüzbas̲h̲i̊s , and biñbas̲h̲i̊s were appointed to them ...’). In the form miñbas̲h̲i̊ the term also occurs among the Eastern Turks, and is used, for example, of a rank in the Ṣafawid forces in Persia (V. Minorsky, Tad̲h̲kirat al-Mulūk , London 1943, 36, 74, 155). The title miñ-begi , wi…

al-ʿAyyās̲h̲ī

(192 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, abu ’l-naṣr muḥammad b. masʿūd b. muḥammad b. ʿayyās̲h̲ , a S̲h̲īʿite writer of the 3rd/9th century. He was a native of Samarḳand, and was said to have been descended from the tribe of Tamīm. Originally a Sunnī, he was converted while still young to S̲h̲īʿism, and studied under the disciples of ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan b. Faḍḍāl (d. 224/839-al-Ṭūsī 93) and of ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Ḵh̲ālid al-Ṭayālisī (al-Astarābādī, 211). He spent his patrimony of over 300,000 dīnārs on scholarship and…

ʿAyn Ḏj̲ālūt

(947 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, spring of Goliath, mentioned by the mediaeval geographers as a village between Baysān and Nābulus, in the Ḏj̲und of Filasṭīn. It stood at the head of the Wādī Ḏj̲ālūt, and is said to have owed its name to a tradition that by it David slew Goliath (cf. A. S. Marmardji, Textes géographiques arabes sur la Palestine , Paris 1951, 152; G. Le Strange, Palestine, 384, 461). In the chronicles of the Crusaders the neighbourhood is called Tubania or Tubanie. It first achieves mention in ḎJ̲um. II 578/Sept. 1183, when the armies of Saladin and of the Franks camped th…

al-Ḥaramayn

(811 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, the two holy places, usually referring to Mecca and Medina, occasionally, in both Mamlūk and Ottoman usage, to Jerusalem and Hebron [see al-ḥaram al-s̲h̲arīf , al-k̲h̲alīl , al-ḳuds , al-madīna , makka . On the title Servant (or Protector) of the two holy places see k̲h̲ādim al-Ḥaramayn ]. The following article deals with the administration of Ottoman waḳfs in favour of the Holy Places. Such waḳfs were established, from early times by the Ottoman Sultans and by members of their household and court, and in the 9th/15th century were already administered by spe…

ʿArūs Resmi

(383 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, also resm-i ʿarūs, resm-i ʿarūsāne, ʿādet-i ʿarūsī, etc., in earlier times gerdek deg̲h̲eri and gerdek resmi; an Ottoman tax on brides. The standard rates were sixty aspers on girls and forty or thirty on widows and divorcees. There are sometimes lower rates for persons of medium and small means. In some areas the tax is assessed in kind. Non-Muslims are usually registered as paying half-rates, but occasionally double rates. On timar lands the tax was normally payable to the timar-holder, thou…

Tafarnud̲j̲

(497 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
(a.), from Ifrand̲j̲ [ q.v.], lit. “adopting, imitating or aping the manners and customs of the Franks, i.e. the Europeans”. The term was used by the pioneer journalist Ḵh̲alīl al-Ḵh̲ūrī in his satirical novella Way id̲h̲an lastu bi-Ifrand̲j̲ī (“Alas then, I am not a European”), published in the magazine Ḥadīḳat al-Ak̲h̲bār in 1860, and may be older. The Turkish alafranga [ lik ], from Italian alla franca, and the Persian g̲h̲arbzada [ ], literally “West-struck[ness]”, convey the same meaning. The latter term has been variously rendered as “Westosis” and “Westoxication”. During the…

Ḏj̲umhūriyya

(1,646 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, in Turkish d̲j̲ūmhūriyyet , republic, also republicanism, a term coined in Turkey in the late 18th century from the Arabic d̲j̲umhūr , meaning the crowd, mass, or generality of the people, and first used in connexion with the first French Republic. In classical Arabic, as for example in Arabic versions and discussions of Greek political writings, the usual equivalent of the Greek πολιτεία or Latin res publica, i.e., polity or commonweal, was madīna ; thus, the ‘democratic polity’ of Plato’s classification is called, by Fārābī and others, madīna d̲j̲amāʿiyya (Fārābī, Arāʾ ahl al-madī…

Di̇lsi̇z

(371 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, in Turkish tongueless, the name given to the deaf mutes employed in the inside service ¶ ( enderūn ) of the Ottoman palace, and for a while also at the Sublime Porte. They were also called by the Persian term bīzabārī , with the same meaning. They were established in the palace from the time of Meḥemmed II to the end of the Sultanate. Information about their numbers varies. According to ʿAṭāʾ, three to five of them were attached to each chamber ( Kog̲h̲us̲h̲ ); Rycaut speaks of ‘about forty’. A document of the time of Muṣṭafā II (d. 1115/1703), cited by U…

ʿĀs̲h̲iḳ

(282 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, an Arabic word meaning lover, frequently in the mystical sense. Among the Anatolian and Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ānī Turks, from the late 9th/15th or 10th/16th century, it is used of a class of wandering poet-minstrels, who sang and recited at public gatherings. Their repertoire included religious and erotic songs, elegies and heroic narratives. At first they followed the syllabic prosody of the popular poets, but later were subjected to Persian influence, both directly and through the Persian-influenced…

Daftar

(4,995 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, a stitched or bound booklet, or register, more especially an account or letter-book used in administrative offices. The word derives ultimately from the Greek διφθέρα “hide”, and hence prepared hide for writing. It was already used in ancient Greek in the sense of parchment or, more generally, writing materials. In the 5th century B.C. Herodotus (v, 58) remarks that the lonians, like certain Barbarians of his own day, had formerly written on skins, and still applied the term diphthera to papyrus rolls; in the 4th Ctesias ( in Diodorus Siculus ii, 32; cf. A. Christensen, Heltedigtning og …

Čes̲h̲mīzāde

(199 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Muṣṭafā Ras̲h̲īd , Ottoman historian and poet, one of a family of ʿulamāʾ founded by the Ḳāḍīʿasker of Rumelia, Čes̲h̲mī Meḥmed Efendi (d. 1044/1634) A grandson of the S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Islām Meḥmed Ṣāliḥ Efendi, and the son of a ḳāḍī in the Ḥid̲j̲āz, he entered the ʿIlmiyye profession, and held various legal and teaching posts. After the resignation of the Imperial historiographer Meḥmed Ḥākim Efendi [ q.v.], he was appointed to this office, which he held for a year and a half. He then returned to his teaching career, which culminated in his appointment as müderris at…

Elči

(636 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, a Turkish word meaning envoy, from el or il, country, people, or state, with the occupational suffix či (= d̲j̲i ). In some eastern Turkish texts the word appears to denote the ruler of a land or people; its normal meaning, however, since early times, has been that of envoy or messenger, usually in a diplomatic, sometimes, in mystical literature, in a figurative religious sense. In Ottoman Turkish it became the normal word for an ambassador, together with the more formal Arabic term sefīr . From an early date the Ottoman sultans exchanged occasional diplo…

al-ʿAskarī

(607 words)

Author(s): Lewis, B.
, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAli b. Muḥammad. the tenth Imām of the Twelver S̲h̲īʿa. He is commonly known as al-Naḳī and al-Hādī. He was the son of the ninth Imām Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Riḍā [ q.v.], and was born in Medīna. Most S̲h̲īʿite authorities give the date of his birth as Rad̲j̲ab 214/Sept. 829, though others say that he was born in Ḏh̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 212 or 213/Feb.-March 828 or 829. His mother, according to some sources, was Umm al-Faḍl, the daughter of al-Maʾmūn; according to others she was a Mag̲h̲ribī Umm Walad called Sumāna or Sūsan. The latter story seems more l…
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