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, Sandābūr , a port on the western coast of peninsular India. Al-Idrīsī describes it as a trading town on a large estuary with an anchor-: age. It has been tentatively identified with either Sidd̲h̲āpūr/S̲h̲iddāpūr or the modern S̲h̲adās̲h̲ivagad, some 80 km/50 miles south of Goa, hence in what is now the union territory of Goa, Daman and Diu in the Indian Union. (Ed.) Bibliography S. Maqbul Ahmad, India and the neighbouring territories in the Kitāb Nuzḥat al-Mus̲h̲tāq ... of al-S̲h̲arīf al-Idrīsī, Leiden 1960, 58, 62, 102, 159.

, īliyyā (1889-1957), poet and journalist of Lebanese origin, who spent his childhood in the village of al-Muḥaydit̲h̲a near Bikfayā, his birthplace, but left his native land at the age of 11 to help his maternal uncle with his business in Alexandria. During his stay of some dozen years in Egypt, he was able to find time to acquire an advanced literary education, to learn a lot of classical and modern poetry and to frequent the circles of intellectuals who were in varying degrees engaged in political activities which roused the authorities’ suspicions. Like so many of his compatriots, he began early to write poetry, which gave him an initial fame, and he was even able in 1911 to publish at Alexandria a first collection called …

(t.) “son of a slave”, in Ottoman usage, more specifically the son of a Janissary, admitted to the pay-roll of the corps; for further information see yeñi čeri . In the period of Turkish domination in Algeria and Tunisia, the word ḳulug̲h̲lī/kulug̲h̲lī and, with dissimilation, ḳurug̲h̲lī/kurug̲h̲lī (pl. ḳulug̲h̲lān/kulug̲h̲lān , ḳurug̲h̲lān/kurug̲h̲lān/krag̲h̲el ; French koulougli and variants) denoted those elements of the population resulting from marriages of Turks with local women. They were fairly numerous at Tunis, Alg…

, from Persian dīdebān , a term applied at different times to certain categories of sentinels, watchmen, inspectors, etc. It already appears as the name of a profession in the Rasāʾil Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafā (8th risāla of 1st series, ed. Cairo, i, 210; cf. IC, 1943, 147), together with the Nātūr . In classical Ottoman usage the term, pronounced Dīdebān , was applied to the Customs-house guards, whose chief was the Dīdebān bas̲h̲i̊ . It was also given to the watchmen on the fire-towers in Istanbul, as well as to naval and military look-outs. (Ed.) Bibliography …

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, a plain in eastern Anatolia through which the Murad Su, sc. the more southerly of the two upper arms of the Euphrates, flows in one part of its course between Malazgird and Muş, hence now in the modern Turkish il or province of Muş; see further, al-furāt . (Ed.)

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is one of the Turkish forms of the name Muḥammad which, having been borne by the Prophet of Islam, is by far the commonest used name in the Islamic world. …

, “the rearwards region”, conventionally Dhahirah, the name given to the interior, landwards part of ʿUmān, that lying behind the D̲j̲abal Ak̲h̲ḍar range and merging into the desert fringes of the Empty Quarter [see al-rubʿ al-k̲h̲ālī ]. The term al-Ẓāhira contrasts with that of al-Bāṭina, the coastlands of ʿUmān. The religious and political history of this “inner ʿUmān”, and its social and cultural development, with local Ibāḍī elements mingled with Sunnīs, have frequently diverged from that of the Sultanate…

(a.; noun of unity, ḥaysa ), an Arab dish made from dates (of the variety called barnī ) crushed and then kneaded with some preserved butter; to this is added skimmed, dried and crumbly camels’ milk cheese, or some flour, or even some crumbled bread. The invention of this mixture of ingredients is attributed traditionnally (see al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Buk̲h̲alaʾ , ed. Ḥād̲j̲irī, 211; tr. in Arabica , ii/3 [1955], 336) to a prominent member of Mak̲h̲zūm called Suwayd al-Haramī (Ibn al-Kalbī-Caskel, D̲j̲amhara , Tab. 22), who is also said to have been the first to s…

(a.), a noun of place from the verb d̲j̲alasa “to sit down” and, by extension, “to sit”, ¶ “to hold a session”; starting from the original meaning of “a place where one sits down, where one stays”, thence “a seat” (J. Sadan, Le mobilier au Proche-Orient médiéval , Leiden 1976, index), the semantic field of mad̲j̲lis is of very wide extent (see the dictionaries of Lane, Dozy, Blachère, etc.). Among the principal derivative meanings are “a meeting place”, “meeting, assembly” (cf. Ḳurʾān, LXVIII, 12/11), “a reception hall (of a ca…

Muslims in the modern Mongolian People’s Republic. The sole Muslim communities of the Republic live today within the Turkish-speaking Kazakh [see ḳazaḳ ] (Mo. Hasag ) and Choton (Mo. Hoton ) groups. According to the 1960 census, 36,700 Kazakhs lived in the westernmost aimak or administrative division of the Republic, that is in existence since 1940 as the Bayan Ölgiy aimak; the aimak is also called Hasag aimak, “that of the Kazakhs”. These Kazakhs of Mongolia are linguistically, culturally and historically closely linked with the Kazakhs of the Kazakh SSR or th…

, Abu ’l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān , S̲h̲āfīʿī faḳīh and specialist in the Ḳurʾānic readings, born at Malaṭya [ q.v.] and died at ʿAsḳalān in 377/987, whence the nisba of al-ʿAsḳalānī which he also bears. He was the author of a ḳaṣī…

or Bagimzā, in the time of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, was a village north-east of Bag̲h̲dād, some 8 miles from Baʿḳūbā, where the caliph al-Muḳtafī bi-Amr Allāh put to flight the troops of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ Sulṭān Muḥammad II under Alp Ḳus̲h̲ Kūn-i Ḵh̲ar in 549/1154. …

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, Yūsuf b. Sulaymān b. Marwān al-Anṣārī, Abū ʿUmar, b. 367/978, d. at Murcia 448/1056, grammarian of Muslim Spain. Best known as such, he is equally credited with competence in fiḳh , poetry, metrics and genealogies. It appears that he played a certain role in the reconciliation of the various grammatical schools in al-Andalus. A Radd ʿalā ’l-Ḳabrī and a Radd ʿalā Abī Muḥammad al-Aṣīlī are attributed to him, but do not seem to have survived. (Ed.) Bibliography Ibn Bas̲h̲kuwāl, Ṣila, Cairo 1374/1955, ii, 640 no. 1499 Kaḥḥāla, Muʾallifīn, Damascus 1376-80/1957-61, xiii, 303.

(a.), lit. “something circular”, a term used in the central and western parts of the Arab world in the later Middle Ages to denote a large tent of rulers and great men, used especially when the army was on the march. K̲h̲alīl al-Ẓāhirī ( Zubdat kas̲h̲f al-mamālik , ed. R. Ravaisse, Paris 1894, 136-7, tr. Venture de Paradis, Beirut 1950, 228) states that when the Mamlūk sultan sent out a powerful military expedition, the order of the commander’s tents, when encamped, is that the highest-ranking officer’s tent ( waṭāḳ ) is set up at the end of the formation, with the sultan’s mudawwara …

(a.), court. The subject-matter of this article is the administration of justice, and the organisation of its administration, in the Muslim countries, the office of the judge being dealt with in the art. ḳāḍī…

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, country of the d̲j̲inns , beyond the sands of Yabrīn, into which no human ventures, and also a fabulous kind of camels, which are the issue of a cross between ordinary camels and d̲j̲inn stallions or descended from the camels of the Wabār [ q.v.], whose country they alone occupy. At times the males leave these desert wastes to attack herds and mate with female domestic camels; it is thus, it is thought, that famous species such as the mahriyya [see ibil ] or the ʿasd̲j̲ādiyya are born. …