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b. Riʾāb al-Asadiyya, one of the Prophet’s wives, whom he married after her divorce from Muḥammad’s freedman and adopted son Zayd b. Ḥārit̲h̲a [ q.v.]. Zaynab’s mother was a maternal aunt of the Prophet, Umayma bt. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and her father, from the tribe of Asad, a client of the clan of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams. One of the first emigrants to Medina, she was a virgin (according to some traditions, a widow) when Muḥammad gave her in marriage to Zayd. In the year 4/626 Muḥammad saw Zaynab alone in her house, was taken with he…

( nisba Bahrānī), a tribe of the Ḳuḍāʿa group, sometimes reckoned a part of Ḏj̲ud̲h̲ām, which emigrated northwards to the Euphrates and then to the plain of Ḥimṣ. Like their Euphrates neighbours Tag̲h̲lib and Tanūk̲h̲, they became Christian, but were converted after Tag̲h̲lib, probably about 580. A deputation came to Muḥammad at Medina in 9/630 and became Muslims; but the tribe as a whole remained hostile and attached to Byzantium. In 8/629 Bahrāʾ had b…

, a town of the northeastern Deccan of India (lat. 18° 00’ N., long. 79° 35’ E.), important in mediaeval times as the centre of a Hindu princedom in the region of Telingāṇa [ q.v.]. It blocked the way to Muslim expansion from the central Deccan to the Bay of Bengal, hence was frequently involved in warfare during the 8th-9th/14th-15th centuries with the Dihlī Sultanate [ q.v.] and then the local northern Deccani sultanate of the Bahmanids [ q.v.]. Warangal lies on the eastern edge of the Deccan plateau some 130 km/70 miles to the southwest of the Godivari river. In mediaev…

, also Erič , Erač , on modern maps Erachh, a small town of north-central India, situated on the south bank of the Betwā river, 65 km/40 miles northeast of Jhansi and 100 km/62 miles southeast of Gwalior (lat. 25° 47′ N., long. 79° 9′ E.). It is now in the Jhansi District in the extreme southwest of Uttar Pradesh Province of the Indian Union. Although now within a region largely Hindu, the area round Irič is rich in Indo-Muslim remains and monuments. It was in Muslim hands by 709/1309, when the Ḵh̲ald̲j̲ī commander Malik Kāfūr [ q.v.] stayed at Irič, then renamed Sulṭānpūr, en route southwa…

(p.), New (Year’s) Day. 1. In the Islamic heartlands. The word is frequently represented in Arabic works in the form Nayrūz , which appears in Arabic literature as early as the verse of al-Ak̲h̲ṭal [ q.v.] (see al-D̲j̲awālīḳī, Muʿarrab , ed. A.M. S̲h̲ākir, Tehran 1966; al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿs̲h̲ā , ii, 408). It was the first day of the Persian solar year and is not represented in the Muslim lunar year (al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , iii, 416-17 = §§ 1301-2). In Achaemenid times, the official year began with Nawrūz, when the sun entered the Zodiac…

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…

, 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…

(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 ,…

(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…

, 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)…

(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…

, 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…

, 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…

, 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…

, 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…

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…

, 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…

, 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…

(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…

, 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-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)…

, 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 …

“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…

, 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…

, 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…

(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…

, 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 …

(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…

, 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…

, 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…

, 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…

, 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…

, 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…

(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…

, 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 …

(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…

(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…

, 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…

(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 …

, 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…

, 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…

, 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 …

, 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 …

(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…

(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…

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 …

, 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…

, 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 …

, 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…

, 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…