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, a plain west of the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥawrān on the border of Trachonitis in Transjordan. The name al-Nuḳra (“the cavity”) is quite modern. It is applied to an area, which includes the two districts of al-Bat̲h̲anīya (with its chief town Ad̲h̲riʿāt) and Ḥawrān (west of the hills of the same name), i. e. the whole northern half of Transjordan. In the wider sense al-Nuḳra includes all the country from al-Led̲j̲āʾ, Ḏj̲aidūr and al-Balḳāʾ to the foot of the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥawrān, in the narrower sense only the southern part of thi…

, the name of two left bank tributaries (al-Zawābī) of the Tigris. 1. The Upper or Great Zāb ( Zāb al-aʿlā or al-akbar) was known already to the Assyrians as Zabu ēlū, the “Upper Zāb”. The Greeks called it Lykos (Weissbach, s. v., N°. 12 in Pauly-Wissowa, R.E., vol. xiii., col. 2391 sq.; on the name see J. Markwart, Südarmenien, Vienna 1930, p. 429 sq.), the Byzantines however have again ό μέγαΣ ΖάβαΣ (Theophan., Chron., ed. de Boor, p. 318, 320). In Syriac it was called Zābhā, in Armenian Zaw (Thomas Arcruni, ed. Patkanean, 111/iv., p. 143; transl. Brosset, in Collection d’hist. Arméniens, i. 1…

, a town in North Syria at the point where the Nahr Ḳuwaiḳ enters the swampy lake of il-Maṭk̲h̲. In ancient times it was called ΧαλκίΣ, Chalcis ad Belum and lay ἐν μεθορίοιΣ ’Αράβων (Diodorus, Bibl., xxxiii. 4a); perhaps it is to it that the note in Stephen of Byzantium refers, according to which a town named Chalkis was founded by the Arab ΜονικόΣ. In the late classical period a part of the Syro-Arabian limes was called τὸ λίμιτον ΧαλκίδοΣ (Malalas, p. 296, 5). In this region the Arabs very early immigrated into Byzantine territory; at al-Ḥiyār (the later Ḥiyār bani ’l-Ḳaʿḳāʿ) in the district …

, a town in the southeast of Asia Minor. It is the chief town in a ḳazā of the wilāyet (formerly sand̲j̲aḳ) of Marʿas̲h̲ and is (or was before the recent persecutions) inhabited for the most part by Armenians, who call it Zet̲h̲un or Ulnia, usually however simply Keg̲h̲ (“village”). The name Ulni (Ulnia) is also used for the whole of the mountainous country on the Ḏj̲aiḥān between Ḳaratūt̲h̲ (S. W. of Albistān) and Bertis. Whether Ulnia was originally the name of Zaitūn or Furnus to the S. W. of…

, arab. al-Maṣṣīṣa, a town in Cilicia on the Ḏj̲aiḥān. In antiquity it was called Μόψου ἑστία a name, which (like that of Μόψου κρήνη in the Cilician passes) is derived from the cult of the legendary seer Mopsos (cf. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altert., I/ii.2, § 483). In ancient times, the town was chiefly famous for its bishop Theodoras (d. 428), the teacher of Nestorius and friend of the suffragan bishop and inventor of the Armenian alphabet, ¶ Mas̲h̲tʿocʿ (Peeters, Revue des Etudes Armén., ix., Paris 1929, p. 210; on him cf. e.g. al-Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, ed. de Goeje, p. 152; Mich. Syr., transl. Cha…

, a fortress in Northern Syria. According to Arnold Nöldeke’s description, it is situated “on a steeply sloping tongue of rock, lying along the right bank of the Euphrates, which bars the direct road to the Euphrates from the west for its tributary the Merziman as it breaks through the edge of the plateau, so that it is forced to make a curve northwards around this tongue. The connection between this tongue of rock, some 1,300 feet long and about half as broad, and the plateau which rises above …

(Lādīḳ, Greek Λαοδίκεια), the name of several towns in Asia Minor. 1. The ancient Λαοδίκεια κατακεκαυμένη ( Lādīḳ Sūk̲h̲ta). It probably derived this name from the smelting furnaces which it had around it as the centre of the quicksilver mining area. It was in Ḳaramān north of Ḳūniya on the great military road which ran through Asia Minor. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa already knows it by its modern name of Yorgān Lādīḳ or Lād̲h̲iḳīya in Ḳaramān. Bibliography Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa, Ḏj̲ihān-Numā, p. 611 sqq. Ibn Bībī, ed. Houtsma in Recueil de textes relat. à. L’hist. des Siljoucides, iii. 23, 25 …

, a town in Northern Syria on the eastern side of the Ḏj̲abal al-Nuṣairīye. The pronunciation and orthography of the name varies between the forms Maṣyād, Maṣyāf (in official documents and on the inscriptions mentioned below of the years 646 and 870 a. h.), Maṣyāt and Maṣyāt̲h̲. (on the interchange of f and t̲h̲ see Rescher, Z.D.M.G., lxxiv. 465; Praetorius, Z. D. M. G., Ixxv. 292; Dussaud, Topographie hist. de la Syrie, p. 143, note 4; 209; 395, note 3). The variants Maṣyāb (Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am, ed. Wüstenfeld, iv. 556), Maṣyāh (Ḵh̲alīl al-Ẓāhirī, Zubda, ed. Ravaisse, p. 49) and Maṣyāṭ (al-Nāb…

, a fortress of the Crusaders east of the Araba in the mountains of al-S̲h̲arā. It was built in 509 (1115) by Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 18 days in Syria Sobal and was called Mens Regalis (Montréal, also le Crac de Montréal to distinguish it from Crac des Moabites, i. e. Kerak [q. v.] and Crac des Chevaliers, i. e. Ḥiṣn al-Akrād [q. v.]) by the Franks. The site of the fortress was, as William of Tyre (xi. 26; Migne, Patrol. Lat., cci., col. 514 sqq.) points out, very suitable for the building of an impregnable fortress. It is therefore not improbable that, as Yāḳūṭ (iii. 332) indi…

(Palestine). Under Turkish rule and British mandate. By the victory of Selīm I at Dābiḳ on the 25th Rad̲j̲ab 922 (Aug. 24, 1516) Palestine passed into the hands of the Ottoman Turks for 400 years. During this period of cultural and economic decline there were formed a number of small temporary independent Druse states like that of Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn (1595—1634), of Ẓāhir al-ʿAmr (about 1750), of Aḥmad al-Ḏj̲ezzār (Ḏj̲ezzār Pas̲h̲a) and his successors who usually ruled in ʿAkkā and held a considerable part of Galilee…

, properly Faḥṣ al-Tīh, is the name of the desert forming the frontier between Syria and Egypt in the interior of the Sinai Peninsula. The Arab geographers also call it the “Desert of the Banī Isrāʾīl”. As early as the Tabula Peutingeriana we find the legend: Desertum ubi quadraginta annis errauerunt filii Israel ducente Moyse and on the map of Mādabā: ἔρημοΣ [ὅπου] τοὺΣ ’ΙσραηλίταΣ ἔσωσ [εν] ὁ χαλκοῦΣ ὄΦιΣ and ἔρημοΣ Σὶν ὅπου κατεπέμΦθη τὸ μάννα καὶ ἡ ὀρτυγομήτρα. In the desert there was a fortress of the same name (De Guignes, Perle des Merveilles, N. E., ii. 31); there is a Wādi ’l-Tīh i…

, the Arabic name for the Mediterranean. It took its name from al-Rūm (Bilād al-Rūm), the Roman, i. e. Byzantine, Empire. Other names were also used, such as Baḥr al-Mag̲h̲rib [q. v.]. The name Adria, which originally meant only the Adriatic Sea, became applied in later antiquity to an area which gradually expanded eastwards. For example Jordanes speaks of Rodus totius Atriae insularum metropolis and the Tabula Peutingeriana makes the Adriaticum Pelagus extend to Crete (Partsch, Pauly-Wissowa’s Realenzykl., i., col. 418; A. Ronconi, Per l’onomastica antica dei mari, in Studi italian…

, 1. Ḏj̲abal al-Tūr, more rarely Ṭūr Sīnāʾ, Mount Sinai. The Arab geographers (Abu ’l-Fidāʾ, ed. Reinaud, p. 69; al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, transl. Wüstenfeld, in Abh. G. W. Gött., xxv. 100; Maḳrīzī, Gesch. d. Kopten, transl. Wüstenfeld, op. cit., iii. 113; Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am, ed. Wüstenfeld, iii. 557) explain the name as of Hebrew origin; it occurs once in the Ḳurʾān as Ṭūr Sīnīn (xcv. 2, emended in Ibn al-Faḳīh, B. G. A., v. 104 to Ṭūr Sīnā). The mountain which lay not far from the Red Sea ( Baḥr al-Ḳulzum) was climbed from al-Amn (Elim?), where the children of Israel once encamped. In the…

, a battlefield near Dābiḳ [q.v.] on the Nahr al-Ḳuwaiḳ in northern Syria. On the history of the town of Dābiḳ, which was known to the Assyrians as Dabigu (Sachau, Z. A., xii. 47) and is called Δάβεκον by Theophanes ( Chron., ed. de Boor, p. 431, 451 sq.) cf. above vol. i., dābik. For convenience in his campaigns against the Byzantines, Sulaimān b. ʿAbd al-Malik moved the headquarters of the Syrian troops from Ḏj̲ābiya to Dābiḳ (Lammens, supra i., d̲j̲ābiya). In 717 with an army under ʿUbaida he set out from Mard̲j̲ Dābiḳ for Asia Minor and on his return died there in Ṣafar…

, the name of two towns. 1. The Arabs called the Jericho ofthe Bible Rīḥā or Arīḥā (Clermont-Ganneau, in J.A., 1877, i. 498). The town, which was 12 mīl E. of Jerusalem, was reckoned sometimes to the Ḏj̲und of Filasṭīn (Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am, iii. 913, e.g.) and sometimes to the district of al-Balḳāʾ (Yaʿḳūbī, in B. G. A., vii. 113); sometimes however it was called the capital of the province of Jordan (al-Urdunn) or of G̲h̲awr, the broad low lying valley of the Jordan (Nahr al-Urdunn) from which it was 10 mīl distant (Yāḳūt, i. 227). As a result of its warm moist climate and the rich irr…

, capital of Filasṭīn, 25 miles E. N. E. of Jerusalem. The Umaiyad caliphs liked to choose little country towns, usually places in Palestine, to live in rather than Damascus. Muʿāwiya and after him Marwān and others frequently resided in al-Ṣinnabra on the south bank of the Lake of al-Ṭabarīya, Yazīd I in Hawwārīn, Ad̲h̲riʿāt, ʿAbd al-Malik in al-Ḏj̲ābiya, Walīd in Usais (now Tell Sais S. E. of Damascus) and al-Ḳaryatain and his ¶ sons in al-Ḳaṣtal, Yazīd II also in al-Muwaḳḳar near Fudain or in Bait Raʾs (Lammens, La Bâdia et la Ḥîra sous les Omaiyades, in M.F.O.B., iv., 1910, p. 91—112; A.…

(Urtuḳids), a Turkmen dynasty, branches of which ruled in Mārdīn, Ḥiṣn Kaifā and Ḵh̲artabirt. When the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sulṭān of Damascus, Tutus̲h̲, conquered Jerusalem in 479 he appointed as governor of the town his officer Urtuḳ b. Aksab, who had already served under Maliks̲h̲āh and had taken part in the siege of Āmid in 477. He was succeeded in 484 (1091) by his sons Sukmān and and Īlg̲h̲āzī. After the Holy City had been taken for the Fāṭimids in S̲h̲aʿbān 489 (1096) by al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Ḏj̲amālī, Sukmān went to al-Ruhā and ¶ Īlg̲h̲āzī to his lands in the ʿIrāḳ. In 495 (1101) Sulṭān Mu…

, a district in al-Ḏj̲ibāl (Media) south of Mount Alwand, halfway between Hamad̲h̲ān and Nihāwand. According to Ibn al-Faḳīh, it was a valley in the district of Nihāwand, which was three farsak̲h̲s in length and formed one of the most pleasing spots in the Sāsānian empire with its 93 villages all linked up one another by an uninterrupted stretch of orchards and perennial streams. The principal product was a world renowned saffron which was exported through Nihāwand and also through Hamad̲h̲ān. T…

, the most important of the four great cities of Ḵh̲urāsān (Nīs̲h̲āpūr, Marw, Herāt and Balk̲h̲), one of the great towns of Īrān in the middle ages. The name goes back to the Persian Nēw-S̲h̲āhpuhr (“Fair S̲h̲āpūr”); in Armenian it is called Niu-S̲h̲apuh, Arab. Naisābūr or Nīsābūr, new Pers. Nēs̲h̲āpūr, pronounced in the time of Yāḳūt: Nīs̲h̲āwūr, now Nīs̲h̲āpūr (Nöldeke, Ṭabarī, p. 59, note 3; G. Hoffmann, Auszüge . . ., p. 61, note 530). The town occasionally bore the official title of honour, Īrāns̲h̲ahr. Nīs̲h̲āpūr was founded by S̲h̲āhpuhr I, son of Ardas̲h̲īr I (Ḥamza al-I…

, Raḥbat Mālik b. Ṭawḳ or Raḥbat al-S̲h̲aʾm, a town on the right bank of the Euphrates, the modern al-Miyādīn. Hardly anything definite is known about the history of the town before the Muslim era. In the middle ages it was usually identified as the Reḥōbōt han-Nāhār of the Bible (Gen. xxxvi. 37) i.e. Reḥōbōt on the river (Euphrates) especially in the Talmud and by the Syriac authors (e. g. Mich. Syr., cf. index, p. 63*; Barhebraeus, Chron. syr., ed. Bedjan, p. 273 and passim), who usually call it Reḥabōt, Raḥabat (M. Hartmann, in Z.D.P.V., xxiii., p. 42, note 1). A. Musil ( The Middle Euphrates, N…