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Ḳi̊z

(562 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(t.), basically “girl, unmarried female”, but often used with the more restricted meanings of “daughter, slave girl, concubine”. It is already found in the Orkhon inscriptions in the phrase ḳi̊z og̲h̲li̊ “daughter”, as opposed to uri̊ og̲h̲li̊ “son”, ¶ and subsequently appears in most Turkish languages. Through Türkmen forms it passed into Iranian languages like Kurdish and Ossetian, and through Ottoman usage into Balkan languages like Serbian and Bulgarian, often via the Ottoman technical expression (for which see below) ḳi̊zlar ag̲h̲asi̊ (see Radloff, Versuch eines Wörterbuc…

Mayhana

(269 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Mīhana , a small town of mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān, now in the USSR, situated to the east of the Kūh-i Hazār Masd̲j̲id range and on the edge of the “Marw desert”, the later Ḳara Ḳum [ q.v.], 40 miles/62 km. to the east-north-east of Ḳalʿat-i Nādirī and 60 miles/93 km. south-east of Mas̲h̲had [ q.vv.]. In mediaeval times, it was the chief settlement of the district of K̲h̲āwarān or K̲h̲ābarān which lay between Abīward and Sarak̲h̲s [ q.vv.]; by Yāḳūt’s time, Mayhana itself had largely decayed, though Mustawfī describes K̲h̲āwarān as a whole as flourishing, with good crops and cereals and fruit ( Ḥudū…

ʿUmān

(1,739 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
iii. Social structure. ʿUmān is overwhelmingly an Arab, Muslim society, and tribal organisation remains an important element in national identity. The country’s rapid development since 1970 has introduced a measure of physical and social mobility, as well as creating an influx of emigrants. The migration of Arab tribes into ʿUmān predates Islam, with Kahtānī or South Arabian tribes moving ¶ along the southern Arabian Peninsula from Yemen into ʿUman around the 2nd century A.D. They were followed several centuries later by ʿAdnānī or North Arabian tribes …

Ḳunduz

(807 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of a river, a town and a modern province of Afg̲h̲ānistān. 1. The river is one of the two main left bank affluents in Afg̲h̲ānistan of the Oxus. It rises in the central region of the Hindū Kus̲h̲ [ q.v.], with Bāmiyān in its catchment area, and flows for some 300 miles/480 km. until it reaches the Oxus just below where it receives its right-bank affluent the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ River. The different stretches of the river have varying names; thus the middle course, within which are situated the towns of Bag̲h̲lān and Pul-i K̲h̲umrī, is called the Surk̲h̲āb or “Red River”. 2. The town is situated…

Yaylaḳ

(364 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(t., originally yaylag̲h̲ ), “summer quarters”, applied to the summer residences of the old Turkish ḳag̲h̲ans or the summer pastures of nomadic or transhumant tribes of Inner Asia, its antonym being ki̊s̲h̲laḳ [ q.v.] “winter quarters”. The origin of the word is from yay “summer” (but this originally meant “spring”, cf. Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk, Tkish. tr. Atalay, iii, 160-1, though already in the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions it means “summer”, and it comes to mean this in most Turkic languages, with yaylamaḳ “to spend the summer”, cf. Sir Gerard Clauson, An etymological dicti…

Sulṭānābād

(473 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of various places in Persia. 1. The best-known one is the town presentiy known in Persia as Arāk lying in long. 49° 41′ E. and lat. 34° 5′ N. at an altitude of 1,753 m/5,751 feet, 284 ¶ km/176 miles to the southwest of Tehran. It lies in the southwestern corner of the plain of Farahān, adjoining the Zagros massif. The popular (and now official) name Arāk must come ultimately from ʿIrāḳ, in the sense of ʿIrāḳ-i ʿAd̲j̲am or Persian ʿIrāḳ, the mediaeval D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.]. The modern region of Arāk lies within the bend of the Ḳara Ṣu. Its rural districts include that of Kazzā…

K̲h̲ārān

(440 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a former native state of western Balūčistān, now incorporated in Pakistan. Geographically, it comprises a wide basin, that of the Mas̲h̲kel river in the west and the Baddo in the east, between high ranges of mountains, the Raʾs Kūh rising to 9,900 feet; the valley terrain includes an extensive rīgistān or sand desert. The population is largely Balūč, with some Brahūīs in the eastern part. The early history of K̲h̲ārān is very obscure. Local tradition says that the Naws̲h̲īrwānī chiefs entered K̲h̲ārān in the 8th/14th century. Over the ensuing centuries, thes…

al-Samhūdī

(606 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Nūr al-Dīn abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿAfīf al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh, al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, noted Egyptian scholar in history, theology, law, tradition, etc. (844-91/1440-1506). He was born at Samhūd in Upper Egypt in Ṣafar 844/July 1440, the son of a ḳāḍī ; in his genealogy, he claimed to be a Ḥasanid sayyid . His biography is given in detail by al-Sak̲h̲āwī, resumed in Ibn al-ʿImād and other subsequent biographical sources. He studied in Cairo from 853/1449 onwards under its celebrated scholars, and also received the Ṣūfī k̲h̲irḳa or cloak. He made the Pilgrimage in 860/14…

Ḳubād̲h̲iyān

(460 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Ḳuwād̲h̲iyān , in mediaeval ¶ Islamic times a small province situated on the right bank of the upper Oxus, and also a town, the chief settlement of the province. The latter comprised essentially the basin of the Ḳubād̲h̲iyān (modern Kafirnihan) River, which ran down from the Buttamān Mountains and joined the Oxus at the fordingplace of Awwad̲j̲ or Awzad̲j̲ (modern Ayvad̲j̲); accordingly, it lay between the provinces of Čag̲h̲āniyān [ q.v.] on the west and Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ and K̲h̲uttal [ q.v.] on the east. Administratively, it was most often attached to K̲h̲uttal. It now falls …

Ḳarā Bāg̲h̲

(478 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(Turkish-Persian “black garden”, allegedly because of the fertility of its upland valleys, but this is probably a folk etymology), the recent name of the mountainous region lying to the north of the middle course of the Araxes River in Transcaucasia, corresponding to the southern part of the mediaeval Islamic Arrān [ q.v.]. The mountains of Ḳarābāg̲h̲ rise to over 12,000 feet, and the modern population (mostly Armenian, with some S̲h̲īʿī Azeri Turks) is concentrated in the deep valleys. The original Armenian princes of Artzak̲h̲ were dispossessed after the Sald̲j̲ūḳ drive…

Zuhayr b. Ḥarb

(114 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū K̲h̲ayt̲h̲ama al-S̲h̲aybānī al-Nasāʾī, traditionist of the early ʿAbbāsid period. He was born at Nasā in K̲h̲urāsān in 160/776-7 but lived mostly in Bag̲h̲dād, dying there in S̲h̲aʿbān 234/March 849. He was amongst the seven scholars forwarded by Isḥāḳ b. Ibrāhīm to the caliph al-Maʾmūn for questioning over the createdness or otherwise of the Ḳurʾān (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 1116; see also miḥna ). Regarded as a trustworthy, t̲h̲iḳa , narrator of traditions, he was the author of a Kitāb al-ʿIlm (publ. Damascus 1966). (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography al-K̲h̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī, viii, 482-…

Biʾr Maʿūna

(342 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a well on the Mecca-Medina road, between the terri tories of ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa and Sulaym, where a group of Muslims was killed in Ṣafar 4/625. The traditional account is that the chief of ʿĀmir, Abū Barāʾ (or Abū ’l-Barāʾ), invited Muḥammad to send a missionary group to his tribe, promising his personal protection for them. So a group of “Ḳurʾān-readers” ( ḳurrāʾ ) was sent from Medina. When they reached Biʾr Maʿūna, they were massacred by clans of Sulaym, led by ʿĀmir b. al-Ṭufayl, who had failed to induce his own tribe of ʿĀmir to vi…

G̲h̲azna

(2,024 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān situated 90 miles/145 km. south-west of Kābul in lat. 68° 18′ E. and long. 33° 44′ N. and lying at an altitude of 7,280 feet/2,220 m. The original form of the name must have been * Ganzak < gand̲j̲a “treasury”, with a later metathesis in eastern Iranian of -nz-/-nd̲j̲- to -zn-, and this etymology indicates that G̲h̲azna was already in pre-Islamic times the metropolis of the surrounding region of Zābulistān. The parallel forms G̲h̲aznī (in present-day use) and G̲h̲aznīn must go back to forms like G̲h̲aznīk and G̲h̲aznēn the geograph…

Sayyid

(902 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Sāʾid (a., pls. asyād , sāda , sādāt , abstract nouns siyāda , suʾdad , etc.), originally, chief, e.g. of an Arabian tribe, and then, in Islamic times, a title of honour for descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad, being in this respect in many ways coterminous with the term s̲h̲arīf . Sayyid was used in ancient South Arabian, where it appears as s 1 wd “chieftain” (A.F.L. Beeston, etc., ¶ Sabaic dictionary, Louvain-Beirut 1982, 129), but the root seems to be largely absent from North-Western Semitic, being only dubiously attested in Elephantine Aramaic (J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling, Dictionar…

Ḳisma

(502 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), Ḳismet (t.), a term used for “fate, destiny”. In Arabic, ḳisma means literally “sharing out, distribution, allotment”, and one of its usages is as the arithmetical term for “division of a number”. It later came to mean “portion, lot”, and was then particularised to denote “the portion of fate, good or bad, specifically allotted to and destined for each man”. It is in this final sense, and especially via Turkish, that ḳismet has become familiar in the West as a term for the fatalism popularly attributed to the oriental (the first attestati…

Śrīrangapat́t́anam

(200 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Europeanised form Seringapatam , a town of South India (lat. 12° 25′ N., long. 76° 42′ E.). In British India, it came within the princely state of Mysore [see mahisur , maysūr ], and is now in the Mysore District, the southernmost one of the Karnataka State of the Indian Union. It is situated on an island in the Cauvery River to the north-north-east of Mysore city. Named after its shrine to the Hindu god Śri Raṅga (Viṣṇu), it became in the 17th century the capital of the Hindu Rād̲j̲ās of Mysore and then, after 1761, of the Muslim sultans Ḥaydar ʿAlī and Tīpū Sulṭān [ q.vv.]. The latter’s oppositio…

Küčük ʿAlī Og̲h̲ullari̊

(479 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a line of Turkmen derebey s [ q.v.] or local lords who controlled the region round Payās [ q.v.], which was strategically situated near the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta (and now in the modern Turkish il or province of Hatay), and, for a while, Adana in Cilicia [ q.vv.] for almost a century. The founder, K̲h̲alīl Bey Küčük ʿAlī Og̲h̲lu, appears ca. 1770 as a bandit chief based on Payās, preying on shipping (including the ships of European powers) in the Gulf and on the land traffic which had to pass through the narrow gap between the Gâvur Daği mountain…

Nāʾīn

(285 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Nāyin , a small town (lat. 53° 05’ E., long. 32° 52’ N., altitude 1,408 m/4.620 feet) on the southwestern edge of the Great Desert of central Persia and on the road connecting Yazd with Iṣfahān and Ḳum. The town seems to have a pre-Islamic history, but nothing is known of this. The mediaeval Islamic geographers place it in the sardsīr or cooler upland regions and describe it as administratively within Fārs (al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī) but as dependent on either Yazd or Iṣfahān. According to Mustawfī, Nuzha , 69, tr. 77, its citadel (whose ruins are still visible) had w…

Sūrs

(381 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
or Sūrī dynasty, a line of Dihlī Sultans (947-62/1540-55) founded by the Afg̲h̲ān commander S̲h̲īr S̲h̲āh Sūr b. Miyān Ḥasan [ q.v.], who had been in the service of the preceeding Lōdī sultans [ q.v.]. This brief Indian dynasty’s period of rule spanned the interval between the first reign of the Mug̲h̲al Humāyūn [ q.v.] (937-47/1530-40) and his second reign and the final consolidation of Mug̲h̲al rule (962/1555). From a base in Bihār, S̲h̲īr S̲h̲āh in the 1530s made himself master of northern India, including Bengal, and twice repelled invasions from Agra by Hum…

al-Ḳās̲h̲ānī

(311 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, al-ḳās̲h̲ī , Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, called Ibn Bāba or Bābā, Persian author of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ: period, and boon-companion or nadīm by profession. He apparently flourished in the second half of the 5th/11th century and early years of the next one; Bagdatli Ismail Paşa, Īḍāḥ al-maknūn , ¶ i, 546, says that he died in 510/1116-7, and this is approximately confirmed by Yāḳūt, who says that he died at Marw. Only Samʿānī, Ansāb , ff. 80a, 437b, and Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, i, 412, iv, 296-7, have any significant information on him. It seems that he w…

S̲h̲ūl

(372 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
1. The name of a land and a city in China mentioned in the mediaeval Arabic geographer Ḳudāma b. D̲j̲aʿfar [ q.v.], 264, here borrowing material from the lost part of his predecessor Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih [ q.v.]. According to Ḳudāma, Alexander the Great, in company with the Emperor of China, went northwards from China and conquered the land of S̲h̲ūl, founding there two cities, K̲h̲.mdān and S̲h̲ūl and ordering the Chinese ruler to place a garrison ( rābita ) of his troops in the latter place. K̲h̲umdān is well-attested in other Islamic sources (e.g. Gardīzī; Marwazī, tr. Minors…

Ispahbad̲h̲

(1,377 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Persian, “army chief”, the Islamic form of a military title used in the pre-Islamic Persian empires and surviving in the Caspian provinces of Persia down to the Mongol invasions. In Achaemenid times the spād̲h̲apati was the commander-in-chief of the army. In the Arsacid period, the office of spāhpat was apparently hereditary in one of the great Parthian families; the Armenian geographer Moses of Choren (8th century A. D.) says that when Kos̲h̲m or Koms̲h̲, daughter of King Ars̲h̲avir (se. Phraates IV) married the comma…

Rāfiʿ al-Darad̲j̲āt

(148 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Rāfiʿ al-S̲h̲aʾn b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam I, S̲h̲ams al-Dīn, great-grandson of the great Mug̲h̲al emperor Awrangzīb [ q.v.] and one of the ephemeral emperors in the last decades of independent Mug̲h̲al rule, reigning for some four months in the spring of 1131/1719. After Awrangzīb’s death in 1118/1707, the main power in the empire was that of the Bārha Sayyids [ q.v. in Suppl.], who in 1124/1712 raised to the throne Farruk̲h̲-siyar b. ʿAẓīm al-S̲h̲aʾn Muḥammad ʿAẓīm [ q.v.] but deposed him in Rabīʿ II 1131/February 1719 and substituted for him Rāfi ʿ al-Darad̲j̲āt; but in June…

Sand̲j̲a

(181 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of a small, right-bank affluent (Grk. Singas, Modern Tkish. Keysun Çayı, a tributary of the Gök Su) of the upper Euphrates and of a small town on it, both coming in mediaeval Islamic times within the northern part of Diyār Muḍar [ q.v.]. The Sand̲j̲a river runs into the Euphrates between Sumaysāṭ and Ḳalʿat al-Rūm [ q.vv.]. It was famed for its bridge, said by the Arabic geographers to have been composed of a single arch of 200 paces’ length constructed from dressed stone, and to have been one of the wonders of the world (cf. Yāḳūt, Buldān , iii, 264-5). It was …

Zawāra

(268 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a small town in Persia lying some 15 km/9 miles to the northeast of Ardistān, on the southwestern edge of the central desert of the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr (long. 52° 25’ E., lat. 33° 30’ N.). It falls administratively within the ustān or province of Iṣfahān and is the chef-lieu of a canton or dihistān . In ca. 1951 it had a population of 5,400; and according to the census of 1375/1996-7, one at that time of 7,710, representing 1,911 households. This small and isolated place has played no role in wider Persian history, but is of significance for its ¶ surviving architecture. It clearly enjoyed prosp…

al-Malik al-Raḥīm

(352 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Naṣr Ḵh̲usraw-Fīrūz , Būyid amīr , d. 450/1058. When Abū Kālīd̲j̲ār, ruler in K̲h̲ūzistān. Fārs, Kirmān, ʿUmān and Baṣra in parallel with his uncle D̲j̲alāl al-Dawla [ q.v.] of Bag̲h̲dād, died in 440/1048, the eldest of his ten or so sons, K̲h̲usraw-Fīrūz. succeeded as amīr with the title, unwillingly extracted from the caliph, of al-Malik al-Raḥīm. However, his succession was challenged by various of his brothers, and especially by Fūlād-Sutūn, and during his seven years’ reign, K̲h̲usraw-Fīrūz reigned undisputedly only in ʿIrāḳ, wit…

Hazārad̲j̲āt

(131 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, a region of central Afg̲h̲ānistān spanning the modem (post-1964 reorganisation) provinces of Bāmiyān, Wardak, G̲h̲aznī, G̲h̲ōr and Uruzgān. The region is almost wholly mountainous, its northem backbone being formed by the Kūh-i Bābā range [ q.v.] and its outliers. There are consequently very few towns and these tend to lie in the river valleys, e.g. Dawlatyār on the upper Herī Rūd and Pand̲j̲āb or Pand̲j̲āō on the Pand̲j̲āb tributary of the upper Helmand. The sedentary agriculturist Hazāras [ q.v. below] are the main Ethnic element of the region, but there are also Pas̲h…

Rukn al-Dīn Bārbak S̲h̲āh

(177 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd S̲h̲āh, Bengal Sultan of the restored Ilyās S̲h̲āhī line, r. 864-79/1460-74. Bārbak was one of the most powerful of the medieval rulers of Bengal, achieving a great reputation from his warfare against the Hindu rulers of Orissa and northern and eastern Bengal, regaining Silhet [ q.v.] (Sylhet) and also Chittagong [ q.v.] from the Arakanese. He recruited for his armies Ḥabas̲h̲ī military slaves and Arab mercenaries, and popular hagiographical tradition attributed many of Bārbak’s conquest to one of this latter group, the warrio…

ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-ʿAbbās

(272 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib , Abū Muḥammad, Companion and paternal cousin of the Prophet Muḥammad and younger brother of the famed scholar and reciter of traditions ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAbbās [ q.v.], born in the year of the Hid̲j̲ra , died in the reign of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya or in 85/704 or in 87/706. He was further related to the Prophet in that his mother Umm al-Faḍl bt. al-Ḥārit̲h̲ al-Hilāliyya was the sister of Muḥammad’s wife Maymūna [ q.v.] (Ibn Ḳutayba, Maʿārif , ed. ʿUkās̲h̲a, 121, 367; al-Balād̲h̲urī, Ansāb al-as̲h̲rāf , iii, ed. al-Dūrī, 447). Unlike his brother,…

Ḳun

(684 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Arabic orthography Ḳūn, a Turkish tribe of Inner Asia known in the pre-Mongol period, but only in a shadowy fashion. The earliest mention of the Ḳun is in Bīrūnī’s K. al-Tafhīm (420/1029), ed. R. R. Wright, London 1934, 145, and he places them in the Sixth Clime, in the territory of the eastern Turks between the Ḳāy and the K̲h̲irkīz [see ḳāyi̊ and ḳi̊rgi̊z ]. The tribe is not, however, mentioned in Bīrūnī’s al-Ḳānūn al-Masʿūdī ( pace Pelliot, À propos des Comans , in JA, Ser. 11, Vol. xv [1920], 134-5). Nor are the Ḳun given in Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī (who does however deal with the ot…

Sarkār

(452 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), lit. “head [of] affairs”, a term used in Mug̲h̲al Indian administration and also in the succeeding British Indian domination of the subcontinent. 1. In the structure of Mug̲h̲al provincial government, as elaborated under the Emperor Akbar [ q.v.] in 989/1580, there was a hierarchy of the ṣūba [ q.v.] or province, under the ṣūbadār [ q.v.] (also called sipāhsālār , nāẓim and ṣāḥib-i ṣūba ); the sarkār , or district, under the fawd̲j̲dar [ q.v.], who combined both administrative and military functions, corresponding to the two separate officials of British India, t…

S̲h̲āpūr

(504 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), the NP form of MP S̲h̲āhpūr “king’s ¶ son”, usually Arabised as S̲h̲ābūr, Sābūr, Syriac S̲h̲ābhōr, Greek Σαπώρης or Σαβουρ (see Justi, Iranisches Mamenbuch , 284 ff.), the name of various monarchs of the Sāsānid dynasty in pre-Islamic Persia. For the detailed history of their reigns, see sāsānids . Here, only such aspects as impinged on the Arabs will be noted. S̲h̲āpūr I, son of Ardas̲h̲īr Pāpakān (r. 239 or 241 to 270 or 273) is known in Arabic sources as S̲h̲āpūr al-D̲j̲unūd “S̲h̲. of the armies” (e.g. in al-Ṭabarī, i, 824, tr. Nöldeke, Gesch . der Perser und Amber

Ẓahīr al-Dīn Marʿas̲h̲ī

(282 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Nāṣir al-Dīn, Sayyid, Persian commander, diplomat and historian of the Caspian region, b. ca . 815/1412, d. after 894/1489. He was a scion of the important family of Marʿas̲h̲ī Sayyids who dominated Māzandarān from the later 8th/14th century until the province’s incorporation into the Ṣafawid empire by S̲h̲āh ʿAbbās I in 1005/1596 [see marʿas̲h̲īs ]. ¶ Ẓahīr al-Dīn stemmed from the main branch of the Marʿas̲h̲īs, that of Kamāl al-Dīn b. Ḳiwām al-Dīn (d. 801/1379). He owned estates at Bāzargāh in Gīlān, and was employed by Sult…

al-Zāb

(827 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of two left-bank tributaries of the Tigris [see did̲j̲la ] in northern ʿIrāḳ, both of them rising in the Zagros mountain chain in Kurdistān. 1. The Great or Upper Zāb ( al-Zāb al-akbar or al-aʿlā ) was already known to the Assyrians, as Zabu ēlū “the upper Zāb”, and appears in classical Greek as Λύκος (cf. PW, xiii, cols. 2391-2), Byzantine Greek as ὁ μέγας Ζάβας, in Syriac as Zāb̲ā and in later Armenian as Zav . In Kurdish it is known today as the Zēʾ-i Bādinān and in Turkish as Zap J. Markwart discussed possible etymologies and suggested a link with older Aramaic dēb̲ā

ʿUkbarā

(497 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town of mediaeval ʿIrāḳ, lying, in the time of the classical Arabic geographers (3rd-4th/9th-10th centuries) on the left, i.e. eastern, bank of the Tigris, ten farsak̲h̲ s to the north of Bag̲h̲dād, roughly halfway between the capital and Sāmarrāʾ. As Yāḳūt noted ( Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 142), the name is orginally Aramaic ( sūriyānī ), sc. ʿOkbarā, and the history of the place can be traced back at least to early Sāsānid times. In the reign of the emperor S̲h̲āpūr I (mid-3rd century A.D.), Roman captives were settled there,…

Saʿīd Pas̲h̲a

(790 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Muḥammad , youngest son of Muḥammad ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.] and hereditary viceroy of Egypt, theoretically under Ottoman suzerainty, 1854-63. He was styled Pas̲h̲a, but was already known in informal and unofficial usage as Khedive before this latter title was formally adopted after his death [see k̲h̲idīw ]. Born in 1822, his father had had a high opinion of his capabilities and had sent him at the age of only nineteen to Istanbul for negotiations over the tribute payable by Egypt to the Porte. Saʿīd’s uncle and predecessor in the governorship of Egypt, ʿAbbās Ḥilmī I b. Aḥmad Ṭūsūn [ q.v.], had…

S̲h̲āh Malik

(277 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Alī Yabg̲h̲u , the Og̲h̲uz Turkish [see g̲h̲uzz ] ruler in the town of D̲j̲and [ q.v. in Suppl.] on the lower Syr Darya in Transoxania during the second quarter of the 11th century A.D. S̲h̲āh Malik, who is given by Ibn Funduḳ the kunya of Abu ’l-Fawāris and the laḳab s of Ḥusām al-Dawla and Niẓām al-Milla, was the son and successor of the Og̲h̲uz Yabg̲h̲u, head of a section of that Turkish tribe in rivalry with that one led by the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family of chiefs [see sald̲j̲ūḳids. ii]. It was this hostility that made S̲h̲āh Malik ally with the G̲h̲aznawid Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd [ q.v.] against his kinsmen t…

Kānpur

(542 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, cawnpore, a city situated on the banks of the Ganges river in Uttar Pradesh province in the Indian Republic at lat. 26° 281 N. and long. 80° 201 E., and also the name of an administrative district of that province. Until the later 18th century, Kānpur was little more than a village known as Kanbaiyāpur or Kanhpur, and since it was situated on the western frontiers of Awadh or Oudh [ q.v.], the district of Kānpur was disputed in the middle decades of the 18th century by the Nawwābs of Awadh, the Mug̲h̲al emperors in Dihlī and the expanding power of the Marāthās. Af…

Muʿāwiya II

(1,050 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya I, last caliph of the Sufyānid line of the Umayyads, reigned briefly in 64/683-4. When Yazīd I b. Muʿāwiya [ q.v.] died at Ḥuwwārīn in the Syrian Desert in Rabīʿ I 64/November 683, he left behind Three young sons by free mothers; Muʿāwiya and his brother K̲h̲ālid b. Yazīd [ q.v.] cannot have been much more than 20 years old, Muʿāwiya’s age being given by the sources variously at between 17 and 23. Most of the surviving Sufyānids were in fact young and inexperienced, with their leadership qualities unproven. Yazīd had had the bayʿa [ q.v.] made to Muʿāwiya before his death…

al-Marwazī

(169 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, S̲h̲araf al-Zamān Ṭāhir , presumably a native of Marw [see marw al-s̲h̲āhid̲j̲ān ] or a descendant of such a native, physician and writer on geography, anthropology and the natural sciences, died after 514/1120. He acted as physician to the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Malik-S̲h̲āh [ q.v.] and possibly to his successors down to the time of Sand̲j̲ar [ q.v.]; little else is known of his life. His main fame comes from his book the Ṭabāʾiʿ al-ḥayawān , which is essentially zoological in subject, but also with valuable sections on human geography, i.e. the vari…

D̲j̲aʿda (ʿĀmir)

(506 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a South Arabian tribe. In early Islamic times D̲j̲aʿda had lands in the southernmost part of the Yemen highlands, the Sarw Ḥimyar, between the present-day towns of al-Ḍāliʿ and Ḳaʿṭaba in the north and the Wādī Abyan in the south. The road from Aden to Ṣanʿāʾ passed through the territory, and their neighbours were the Banū Mad̲h̲ḥid̲j̲ and Banū Yāfiʿ. These South Arabian D̲j̲aʿda are described by Hamdānī as a clan of ʿAyn al-Kabr, and are to be distinguished from the North Arabian tribe of D̲j…

al-ʿUlā

(420 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town of the Ḥid̲j̲āz in north-western Arabia, lying in what was the early Islamic Wādī ’l-Ḳurā, at the southeastern end of the Ḥarrat al-ʿUwayriḍ and below a hill called Umm Nāṣir (lat. 26° 38ʹ N., long. 37° 57ʹ E., altitude 674 m/2,210 feet). The area is extremely rich archaeologically, and clearly flourished in pre-Islamic times as a major centre along the caravan route southwards from Syria, with ancient Dedan at the base of the Ḏj̲abal al-Ḵh̲urayba, to the south of what was al-Ḥid̲j̲r [ q.v.] and is now Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ some 18 km/12 miles north of al-ʿUlā. The mediaeval Isl…

S̲h̲ug̲h̲nān

(886 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, S̲h̲ig̲h̲nān , a district on the upper Oxus, there known as the Pand̲j̲ River, extending over both banks from where the river leaves the district of Wak̲h̲ān [ q.v.] and turns directly northwards before flowing westwards again. The left bank part of S̲h̲ug̲h̲nān now falls within the Afg̲h̲ān province of Badak̲h̲s̲h̲ān [ q.v.] and the right bank one within the Pamir region of the former USSR, a division likewise reflected in the districts of G̲h̲ārān immediately to the north of S̲h̲ug̲h̲nān and Raws̲h̲ān to its south. The whole district is extrem…

Sābūr b. Ardas̲h̲īr

(345 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
Abū Naṣr Bahāʾ al-Dīn (330-416/942-1025), official and vizier of the Buy ids in Fārs. Beginning his career in high office as deputy to S̲h̲araf al-Dawla’s vizier Abū Manṣūr b. Ṣāliḥān, he subsequently became briefly vizier himself for the first time in 380/990 and for S̲h̲araf al-Dawla’s successor in S̲h̲īrāz. Bahāʾ al-Dawla [ q.v. in Suppl.]. He was vizier again in S̲h̲īrāz in Ḏj̲umādā I 386/May-June 996, this time for over three years, and in 390/1000 in Baghdād as deputy there for the vizier Abū ʿAlī al-Muwaffaḳ. Sābūr, although a native of S̲…

Maʿrūf Balk̲h̲ī

(139 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Ḥasan, early poet in New Persian, of whom almost nothing is known but who must have flourished in the middle decades of the 4th/10th century, since odd verses of his survive that were allegedly dedicated to the Sāmānid Amir ʿAbd al-Malik (I) b. Nūḥ (I) (343-50/954-61), and he may have been at the court of the Ṣaffārid ruler of Sīstān, Ḵh̲alaf b. Aḥmad (352-93/963-1003). Fragments amounting to some 45 verses, mainly love poetry and satires, have been collected by G. Lazard, Les premiers poètes persans ( IX e-Xe siècles ), Tehran-Paris 1964…

Nandana

(354 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of a hilly tract and a fortress of mediaeval India and Indo-Muslim times. It lies in a fold of the Salt Range, to the north of the Jhelum river in northern Pand̲j̲āb, and the place is still marked by ruins of a fortress and a Hindu temple near the modern Čao Saydān S̲h̲āh (lat. 32° 43′ N., long. 73° 17′ E.), in the Jhelum District of the Pand̲j̲āb province of Pakistan. The place is mentioned in early mediaeval Indo-Muslim history. In 404-5/1013-14 Maḥmūd of G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] attacked the Hindūs̲h̲āhīs [ q.v.] of northwestern India and marched against the Rād̲j̲ā Triločanapāla’s…

Kābul

(2,050 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
1. A river of Afg̲h̲ānistān and the Northwest Frontier region of Pākistān, 700 km. long and rising near the Unai Pass in lat. 34° 21′ N. and long. 68° 20′ E. It receives the affluents of the Pand̲j̲hīr, Alingar, Kunar and Swat Rivers from the north, and the Lōgar from the south, and flows eastwards to the Indian plain, joining the Indus at Atak (Attack). The Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (end of 4th/10th century) calls it “the River of Lamg̲h̲ān”, and describes it as flowing from the mountains bordering on Lamg̲h̲ān and Dunpūr, passing by Nangrahār (sc. …

Kerč

(870 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a seaport at the eastern tip of the peninsula of that name at the eastern end of the Crimea [see ḳri̊m ] in the modern Crimean oblast of the Ukrainian SSR. The district was clearly a well-populated one in pre-historic, Cimmerian and Scythian times, since it contains a large number of kurgans or burial mounds, many of which have been excavated since the last century. In classical times, it was from the 6th century B.C. onwards the site of the flourishing Ionian Greek colony of Pantikapaion, later called Bosporos and the cap…

Buḳʿa

(654 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
means etymologically “a patch of ground marked out from adjoining land by a difference in colour, etc.” or “a low-lying region with stagnant water” (see Lane, s.v.); the latter sense is obviously at the base of the plural Biḳāʿ [ q.v.] to designate the (originally) marshy valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges in Syria, and doubtless at that of the name al-Buḳayʿa for a settlement near the Lake of Ḥimṣ [ q.v.] (see Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems , 352). From these senses it acquires the broader one of “province, region, tract of la…

Ṣamṣām al-Dawla

(529 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Kālīd̲j̲ār Marzubān, S̲h̲ams al-Milla (353-88/964-98), Buyid amir and eldest son of ʿAḍud al-Dawla [ q.v.]. On his father’s death in S̲h̲awwāl 372/March 983, Ṣamṣām al-Dawla succeeded to power as amīr al-umarāʾ , but his position was immediately disputed by another brother, S̲h̲araf al-Dawla S̲h̲īrzīl, who seized Fārs and Ḵh̲ūzistān. From his base in ʿIrāḳ, Ṣamṣām al-Dawla had also to combat the Kurdish chief Bād̲h̲, ancestor of the Marwānid dynasty [see marwānids ] of Diyār Bakr, who had seized various towns in al-Ḏj̲azīra and who even for a while held Mawṣil.…

Bāriz

(437 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, D̲j̲abal , a mountainous and, in early Islamic times, apparently wooded region of the Kirmān province in Iran, described by the mediaeval historians and geographers as the haunt of predatory peoples like the Kūficīs or Ḳufṣ and the Balūč [see balūcistān , kirmān and ḳufṣ ]. It is the steepsided granite chain running in a NW-SE direction from the mountain massif of central Kirmān (sc. the massif which culminates in such peaks as the Kūh-i Hazār and the Kūh-i Lālazār), to the south of the towns of Bam [ q.v.] and Fahrad̲j̲; the geographers count it as amongst the garmsīrāt or warm regions [see ḳi̊s…

al-Ḥusaynī

(370 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, Ṣadr al-Dīn Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Nāṣir b. ʿAlī , author of the late Sald̲j̲ūḳ period and early decades of the 7th/13th century, whose work is known to us through its incorporation within an anonymous history of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs and succeeding Atabegs of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, the Ak̲h̲bār al-Dawla al-sald̲j̲ūḳiyya (ed. Muhammad Iqbal, Lahore ¶ 1933; Tkish. tr. Necati Lugal, Ankara 1943; cf. Brockelmann, I2, 392, Suppl. I, 554-5). Al-Ḥusaynī apparently composed the Zubdat al-tawārīk̲h̲ , ak̲h̲bār al-umarāʾ wa ’l-mulūk al-sald̲j̲ūḳiyya , which forms the first…

Ṭabarsarān

(188 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(in Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 16, Ṭabarstarān), a district of the eastern Caucasus, essentially the basin of the Rūbās river which runs into the Caspian Sea just south of Darband [see derbend ], the early Islamic Bāb al-Abwāb [ q.v.]. It now comes within the southernmost part of Dāg̲h̲istān (see map in ḳabḳ , at IV, 344). Its population comprises Caucasian mountaineers plus a considerable admixture of Iranian speakers of Tātī dialect [see tāt ]. At the time of the Umayyad prince Marwān b. Muḥammad’s raids through the Caucasus, there was a Ṭabarsarān S̲h̲āh (known a…

Lamg̲h̲ānāt

(778 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a district of eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, ¶ thus designated in the Islamic sources of the later mediaeval period, deriving its name from its urban centre Lamg̲h̲ān (later form, Lag̲h̲mān). It comprises the fertile plain of the middle course of the Kābul River, much of it lying to the north and east of Kābul city [ q.v.] itself. It is bounded on the north by the mountains of Kāfiristān [ q.v.], modern Nūristān, and includes the lower reaches of the Alingār and Alis̲h̲ang Rivers; on the south and east, it adjoins, and was sometimes considered (e.g. by Bābur) to includ…

Muʿammā

(756 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), literally, “something made obscure, hidden”. 1. In the sense of word puzzle, riddle [see lug̲h̲z ]. 2. In the sense of secret writing, code. Codes were regularly used in classical Antiquity. Thus the skytalē of the Spartans, mentioned by Plutarch, in which a message was written on a parchment or leather ribbon which was wrapped round a tapered wooden baton for purposes of writing and then could only be read by a recipient possessing a baton of the same shape and size, is an early example of a typical …

Sardāb

(486 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), literally “cool water”, often found in the Arabised form sirdāb , an underground chamber used for keeping cool during the extreme heat of e.g. the ʿIrāḳī or Persian summers. Such building constructions are an ancient feature of Middle Eastern life, being found amongst the Egyptians of Pharaonic times and in Babylonia. Examples of them have been found in the remains of the early ʿAbbāsid palace at al-Uk̲h̲ayḍir [ q.v.] and at al-Muʿtaṣim’s palace, the D̲j̲awsaḳ al-K̲h̲āḳānī, at Sāmarrā. At Bag̲h̲dād until recent times, traditional-type houses had a semi-base…

Sād̲j̲ids

(1,278 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a line of military commanders who governed the northwestern provinces of the caliphate (Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. Arrān and Armenia) in the later 3rd/9th and early 4th/10th centuries on behalf of the ʿAbbāsids. The Sād̲j̲ids were just some of several commanders, originally from the Iranian East and Central Asia, who came westwards to serve in the early ʿAbbāsid armies. The family seems to have originated in Us̲h̲rūsana [ q.v.] on the middle Syr Darya in Transoxania, the region where the Afs̲h̲īns [ q.v.] were hereditary princes until at least the end of the 3rd/9th century, and w…

Saḳḳiz

(159 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a small town of Persian Kurdistan, now the chef-lieu of a s̲h̲ahrastān or county in the province of Kurdistān (lat. 36° 14′ N., long. 46° 15′ E.). It lies on the western side of the upper D̲j̲ag̲h̲atū Čay valley some 77 km/50 miles to the southeast of Mahābād [ q.v.] and on the road southwards to Sanandad̲j̲ and Kirmāns̲h̲āh [ q.vv.]. The Kurdish population are from the Mukrī tribe, S̲h̲āfiʿī Sunnīs and with the Naḳs̲h̲bandī Ṣūfī order influential amongst them. In the early 20th century, the local k̲h̲ān was a relative of the wālī s of Ardalān and Sanandad̲j̲. In ca. 1950 Saḳḳiz town had a po…

al-Muʿtazz Bi ’llāh

(688 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. D̲j̲aʿfar , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 252-5/866-9, and son of the earlier caliph al-Mutawakkil [ q.v.] by his favourite slave concubine Ḳabīḥa. The reign of al-Muʿtazz’s predecessor, his cousin al-Mustaʿīn [ q.v.], ended in strife and violence stirred up by the Turkish guards in Sāmarrā. Al-Mustaʿīn was forced to abdicate at Bag̲h̲dād, and on 4 Muḥarram 252/25 January 866, al-Muʿtazz, having been brought out of jail, was hailed as caliph. The first part of the succession arrangements envisaged towards t…

al-Bad̲h̲d̲h̲

(277 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, a district and fortress of northern Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, famous as being the headquarters of the Ḵh̲urramī rebel Bābak [ q.v.] in the first decades of the 3rd/9th century. The exact site is uncertain, but it must have lain in the modern Ḳarad̲j̲a-Dag̲h̲, older Maymad, the ancient Armenian region of Pʿaytakaran, to the north of Ahar and south of the Araxes River, near Mount Has̲h̲tād-Sar, at some spot between the modern districts of Hārand, Kalaybar and Garmādūz (V. Minorsky, Studies in Caucasian history, London 1953, 116 and Addenda et corrigenda slip). Bābak’s fortress there…

Ḳurra b. S̲h̲arīk

(1,250 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Mart̲h̲ad b. Ḥāzim al-ʿAbsī al-G̲h̲aṭafānī . governor of Egypt 90-6/709-14 for the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik. Ḳurra came from the group of North Arab tribes which had settled extensively in northern Syria and the D̲j̲azīra and which were in the forefront of the warfare along the Taurus Mountains with Byzantium. He himself came from the region of Ḳinnasrīn [ q.v.] to the south of Aleppo, and was thus a member of the experienced and capable cadre of Syrian Arabs whom the Umayyads liked to appoint to high civil and military office; the fact …

S̲h̲ūmān

(214 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a district of the upper Oxus region mentioned at the time of the Arab invasions. It lay near the head waters of the Kāfirnihān and Surkhān rivers, hence in the upper mountainous parts of Čag̲h̲āniyān and K̲h̲uttalān [ q.vv.]. In Chinese sources such as Hiuen-Tsang, it appears as Su-man. In al-Ṭabarī, ii, 1179, 1181, where the conquests of the governor Kutayba b. Muslim [ q.v.] in upper K̲h̲urāsān during 86/705 are being described, S̲h̲ūmān is linked with Ak̲h̲arūn or K̲h̲arūn as being under a local prince, whose name seems to be the Iranian one *Gus̲h̲tāspā…

Zarafs̲h̲ān

(364 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, conventionally Zerafshan , a landlocked river of Central Asia, now coming within Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In early Islamic times, it was known as “the river of Sogdia”, Nahr Ṣug̲h̲d [see ṣug̲h̲d ] or “the river of Buk̲h̲ārā” (see al-Yaʿḳūbī, Buldān , 293-4, tr. Wiet, 1 lull; al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 319-21; Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, ii, 495-7, tr. Kramers and Wiet, ii, 475-7; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 55, 73, comm. 198, 211). It flowed westwards from sources in what the geographers called the Buttamān mountains, in fact, between what are…

Biyār, al-Biyār

(551 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
(a. “wells, springs”), modern Biyārd̲j̲umand, a small town on the northern edges of the Great Desert, the Das̲h̲t-i Kavīr, of Persia. The mediaeval geographers describe it as being three days’ journey from Bisṭām and 25 farsak̲h̲s from Dāmg̲h̲ān, and as falling administratively within the province of Ḳūmis [ q.v.], although in Sāmānid times (4th/10th century) it seems to have been attached to Nīs̲h̲āpūr in Ḵh̲urāsān. It was the terminus of an only-moderately frequented route across the northeastern corner of the desert to Turs̲h̲īz in Ḳūhistān. We have in Muḳaddasī, 356-7, 372, …

Lanbasar

(396 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(thus in Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn and Mustawfī), popular pronunciation with assimilation Lam(m)asar < Lambasar, the name of one of the Ismāʿīlī ¶ fortresses in northwestern Iran taken over from a local chief by Ḥasan-i Sabbāḥ’s lieutenant and eventual successor Kiyā Buzurg-Ummīd, according to D̲j̲uwaynī in 495/1102 [see alamūt , ismāʿīliyya ]. Its still-extensive ruins lie on a site sloping at 30°, whose surface resembles in shape a truncated cone and which measures some 1,500 ft./480 m. by 600 ft/190 m., with easily defensible slopes, in the Rūdbār di…

Swāt

(704 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a region of the North-West Frontier region of what is now Pākistān, lying roughly between lats. 34° 30′ and 35° 50′ N. and long. 72° and 73° E. It is bounded on the north-west by Čitrāl, on the west by Dīr, on the east by Bunēr and Hazāra and on the south by Mardān. It comprises essentially the basin of the Swāt River, from its headwaters down to the Malakand Pass, after which it runs into the Kabul River below Pes̲h̲awar and near Naws̲h̲ēra. The nor…

Tad̲j̲mīr

(178 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), the verbal noun of form II of d̲j̲-m-r meaning basically “to come together”. In early Islamic military and administrative ¶ usage, d̲j̲ammara had the meaning of “to keep the troops quartered on distant frontiers, far away from their families” (see LʿA 1, v, 217). The caliph ʿUmar is said to have disapproved of this, as leading to discontent and rebelliousness amongst the Arab warriors. But once the initial phase of the Arab conquests was over, the muḳātila found themselves fighting in distant, climatically and topographically difficult environ…

Ibn Farīg̲h̲ūn

(358 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, S̲h̲aʿyā (?), author in the 4th/10th century of a concise Arabic encyclopaedia of the sciences the D̲j̲awāmiʿ al-ʿulūm “Connections of the sciences”. The author wrote in the upper Oxus lands, and dedicated his work to the Muḥtād̲j̲id amīr of Čag̲h̲āniyān [ q.v.], Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Muẓaffar (d. 344/955). Minorsky surmised from his name (if this has been interpreted correctly) that he was a scion of the Farīg̲h̲ūnids [ q.v.] in northern Afg̲h̲ānistān, rulers of the district of Gūzgān [ q.v.] as tributaries of the Sāmānids, and latterly, of the G̲h̲aznawids; a co…

Masʿūd b. Muḥammad b. Malik-s̲h̲ah

(767 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abu ’l-Fatḥ G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dunyā wa ’l-Din , Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan in ʿIrāḳ and western Persia 529-47/1134-52. Like the other sons of Muḥammad b. Malik-S̲h̲ah [ q.v.], Masʿūd was entrusted as a child to the tutelage of Turkish Atabegs [see atabak ], latterly with Ay-Aba D̲j̲uyūs̲h̲ Beg acting thus, and given the appanage of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and al-D̲j̲azīra: at D̲j̲uyūs̲h̲ Beg’s prompting, Masʿūd unsuccessfully rebelled in 514/1120 at the age of 12 against his elder brother Sultan Maḥmūd b. Malik-S̲h̲āh [ q.v.], but was pardoned. When Maḥmūd died in 525/1131, a period of confusio…

Tungans

(491 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Dungans , in Chinese, T’ung-kan, the Turkic name given to those Hui (i.e. ethnically Chinese Muslims) settled within Chinese Turkestan or Sinkiang [ q.v.], especially in the northern Sinkiang regions of Dzungaria and Kumul, but numerous also in the northwestern provinces of China proper such as Kansu [ q.v.] (Gansu), Ninghsia [ q.v.], Shensi [ q.v.] (Shaanxi) and Tsinghai. The Tungans in Sinkiang were estimated at 92,000 in the mid-1940s, and played a considerable political and military role there during the Chinese Republican or Kuomintang period (191…

Ötüken

(525 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a forested, mountain area of Inner Asia which had a special religious and moral significance for the early Turkish peoples. It seems to have been located in the eastern part of the Khangai Mts. around the headwaters of the Orkhon and Tamir rivers (the latter river corresponding, according to R. Giraud, L’Empire des Turcs célestes . Les règnes d’Elterich , Qapghan et Bilga ( 680-734), Paris 1960, 207, to the i̊duḳ yer sub “sacred places and watercourses” of the old Turkish inscriptions), generally along the co-ordinates of…

S̲h̲ims̲h̲āṭ

(200 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a mediaeval Islamic town in eastern Anatolia/western Armenia. It lay, at a site whose definite location is unknown, on the left bank of the southern headwater of the upper Euphrates, the classical Arsanias, modern Murad Su. Its location was, according to Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 362-3, between Bālūya (modern Palu) and Hiṣn Ziyād or K̲h̲artpirt [ q.v.] (modern Harput), and it is not to be confused with Sumaysāṭ [ q.v.] on the Euphrates further south. It was in the borderland between the Arabs and the Greeks, and possession of it must have oscillated between…

Yulbārs K̲h̲ān

(357 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the Uyg̲h̲ur Turkish leader of a Muslim rebellion at Ḳomul [ q.v. in Suppl.] in Eastern Turkistan or Sinkiang [ q.v.] during the 1930s, b. 1888, d. ? in the mid-1970s. In 1928 the second Republican Chinese governor of Sinkiang, Chin Shu-jen, overthrew the last autonomous k̲h̲ānate of Central Asia, that of Ḳomul in the extreme eastern end of the province, adjacent to the frontiers ¶ with Mongolia and Kansu. His anti-Muslim policies provoked a rebellion there in April 1931 of the Uyg̲h̲urs, and possibly some of the Tungans [ q.v.], under the joint leadership of Yulbārs K̲h̲ān, who had…

K̲h̲awla bt. Ḥakīm

(189 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Umayya b. Ḥārit̲h̲a al-Sulamiyya, an early supporter of Muḥammad’s cause at Mecca and an associate of his. She was the daughter of a man of Sulaym [ q.v.] who had come to Mecca and had become a confederate there of ʿAbd Manāf, and of a woman of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf; hence K̲h̲awla was related maternally to the Prophet himself. She was an early convert to the new teaching, in company with her husband, the ascetic ʿUt̲h̲mān b. Maẓʿūn [ q.v.]. When he died in 3/624-5, K̲h̲awla is said to have “offered herself” ( wahabatnafsahā ) to Muḥammad, but the latter “put her off” ( ard̲j̲aʾahā

Kurram

(928 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Kuram , the name of a river which flows down from the western end of the Safīd Kūh or Spīn G̲h̲ar range of the Hindū Kus̲h̲-Koh-i Bābā massif of eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān and which joins the Indus River in modern Pakistan just below ʿĪsā K̲h̲ēl. The lower course of the river flows through Bannū [ q.v.], and the middle reaches through the northernmost part of Wazīristān [ q.v.]. The upper valley, beyond the railhead of Thāl, forms what in British India and now in Pakistan is the administrative region of the Kurram Agency, a thin wedge of territory some 70 miles lo…

Maḥmūd b. Sebüktigin

(1,966 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Sultan of the G̲h̲aznawid dynasty [ q.v.], reigned 388-421/998-1030 in the eastern Islamic lands. Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Maḥmūd was the eldest son of the Turkish commander Sebüktigin, who had risen from being one of the slave personal guards of the Ḥād̲j̲ib-i buzurg or commander-in-chief Alptigin [see alp takīn ] under the Sāmānids to becoming the virtually independent amīr of a principality centred on G̲h̲azna [ q.v.], at that time on the far eastern fringe of the Sāmānid empire. Maḥmūd was born in 361/971, his mother being from the local Iranian (?) gentry stock of Zābulistān [ q.v.], the distri…

Fayd

(934 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, an important settlement in Nad̲j̲d during mediaeval times, now a village, situated in lat. 27° 8’ N. and long 42° 28’ E. It lies on a plain in the borderlands between the two regions of the D̲j̲abal S̲h̲ammar to the north-west and al-Ḳaṣīm [ q.v.] to the south-east, some 80 miles/130 km. south-east of Ḥāʾil [ q.v.]. The early Islamic geographers locate it in the territory where the pasture grounds of the B. Ṭayyiʾ and the B. Asad marched together, near to the frequently-mentioned “two mountains of Ṭayyiʾ”, sc. Salmā and Ad̲j̲āʾ. Bakrī, followed by Samhūdī, describes it as a famous ḥimā [ q.v.] o…

Narāḳ

(169 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Nirāḳ , a small town of Persia (lat. 34° 00′ N., long. 50° 49′ E.), in the modern province of Ḳum, 60 km/38 miles to the west of Kās̲h̲ān and at the northwestern end of the Kūh-i Kargas. It is not mentioned in the classical Islamic geographers, but has some fame as the origin of the scholar Muḥammad Mahdī b. Abī D̲h̲arr Nirāḳī (d. ?1209/1794-5), author of Persian and Arabic works on rhetoric, the S̲h̲īʿī martyrs, mathematics, etc. (Storey, i, 219-20, iii, 213; Brockelmann, S II, 824) and of his son Mullā Aḥmad Nirāḳī (d. 1244/1828-9), theologian and poet with the tak̲h̲alluṣ of Ṣafāʾī (Browne, LHP…

al-Ziyādī

(220 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Ḥassān al-Ḥasan b. ‘Ut̲h̲mān al-S̲h̲īrāzī (this nisba from some apparent connection with the Persian city; see Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 381), judge, traditionist and historian of the early ʿAbbāsid period, b. 156/773 in Bag̲h̲dād and died there Rad̲j̲ab 242/Nov.-Dec. 856 (al-Ṭabarī, iii, ¶ 1434, and al-K̲h̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī) or the following year. A traditionalist in his views and associate of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, he was questioned under the Miḥna [ q.v.] at the end of al-Maʾmūn’s reign (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 1121-5, 1128, 1132). But he came into his own under th…

Dabīr

(325 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
(p.) “scribe, secretary”, the term generally used in the Persian cultural world, including the Indo-Muslim one (although in the later centuries it tended to be supplanted by the term munshī , so that Yule-Burnell, Hobson-Jobson , a glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and phrases, London 1886, 328, record “dubeer” as being in their time “quite obsolete in Indian usage”), as the equivalent of Arabic kātib and Turkish yazi̊d̲j̲i̊ ,. The word appears as dipīr / dibīr (Pahlavi orthography dpy ( w) r, see D.N. MacKenzie, A concise Pahlavi dictionary, London 1971, 26) in Sāsānid Per…

Ḳābūs b. Wus̲h̲magīr b. Ziyār

(901 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, S̲h̲ams al-Maʿālī Abu’l-Ḥasan (reigned 366-71/977-81 and ¶ 388-403/998 to 1012-13), fourth ruler of the Ziyārid dynasty which had been founded by Mardāwīd̲j̲ b. Ziyār [ q.v.] and which ruled in Ṭabaristān and Gurgān (Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ān). Like other families rising to prominence in the “Daylamī interlude” of Persian history, the Ziyārids endeavoured to attach themselves to the pre-Islamic Iranian past, and Ḳābūs’s grandson Kay Kāʾūs makes Ḳābūs’s ancestors rulers of Gīlān in the time of Kay K̲h̲usraw ( Ḳābūs-nāma , Preface). As under his predecessors, suze…

Rad̲j̲aʾ b. Ḥaywa

(940 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Ḵh̲anzal al-Kindī, Abu ’l-Miḳdām or Abū Naṣr (full nasab in Gottschalk, 331, from Ibn ʿAsākir), a rather mysterious mawlā or client who seems to have been influential as a religious and political adviser at the courts of the early Marwānid caliphs, from ʿAbd al-Malik to ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. His birth date is unknown, but he died in 112/730, probably around the age of seventy. According to one account, Rad̲j̲ahʾ’s family stemmed from Maysān in Lower ʿIrāḳ, hence from the local Nabaṭ or Aramaeans, where the bond of walā with the Arab tribe of Kinda [ q.v.] must have been made, the Kinda…

Hazāras

(1,175 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, the name of a group of peoples inhabiting the central mountains of Afghānistān; they form one of the principal population elements of the country, amounting perhaps to 900,000. The Hazāras are almost certainly an Ethnically mixed group, whose components may or may not be related to each other. In appearance, Hazāras are predominantly brachycephalous, with Mongoloid facial features, though this is by no means universal. There is therefore much in favour of Schurmann’s hypothesis that the Hazāras of the core region, the Hazārad̲j̲āt [ q.v. above], at least, are a mixed populatio…

Sarhang

(127 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), a term denoting a rank of officer or commander in mediaeval Persian armies and paramilitary groups (cf. Vuller, Lexicon persicolatinum, ii, 261-2, 293; dux exercitus, praefectus ). Thus the sarhangs were leaders of bands of ʿayyārs [ q.v.] or Sunnī orthodox vigilantes combatting the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲īs in 3rd/9th century Sīstān, and Yaʿḳūb b. al-Layt̲h̲, founder of the Ṣaffārid dynasty [ q.v.], embarked on his rise to power by becoming a sarhang in the ʿayyār forces of a local leader in Bust, Ṣāliḥ b. al-Naḍr al-Kinānī ( Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Sīstān , ed. Bahār, passim; Gardīzī, Zayn al-ak̲h̲bār

Zābul, Zābulistān

(534 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name found in early Islamic times for a region of what is now eastern Afg̲h̲anistān, roughly covering the modern Afg̲h̲ān provinces of G̲h̲aznī and Zābul. The early geographers describe what was a remote region on the far eastern frontiers of the Dār al-Islām in understandably vague terms as an extensive province with G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] as its centre. It thus emerges that it lay between Kābul and the Kābul river valley on the north and the territories around the confluence of the Helmand river and Arg̲h̲andāb known as Zamīndāwar and al-Ruk̲h̲k̲h̲ad̲j̲ [ q.vv.], but the boundaries her…

al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī

(2,416 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
the nisba or gentilic of several Egyptian scholars of the Mamlūk and early Ottoman periods, the most important of whom are as follows: (1.) S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī (ʿAbd Allāh?) b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Fazārī al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, legal scholar and secretary in the Mamlūk chancery, and author of several books. The main sources for his life are the fairly brief mentions of him in biographical and historical sources of the late Mamlūk period by al-ʿAynī, al-Maḳrīzī, Ibn Tag̲h̲rībirdī, al-Sak̲h̲āwī and Ibn …

Tak̲h̲t-i Ṭawūs

(548 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), the Peacock Throne, a name given to various highly-decorated and much bejewelled royal thrones in the eastern Islamic world, ¶ in particular, to that constructed for the Mug̲h̲al Emperor S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān (1037-68/1628-57 [ q.v.]). There are relevant accounts in the contemporary Indo-Muslim sources, e.g. in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Lāhawrī’s Bāds̲h̲āh-nāma and Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s ʿAmal-i Ṣāliḥ , and in the accounts of European travellers who claimed to have seen the throne, such as Tavernier, Bernier and Manucci. These last authorities, …

Ḳi̊s̲h̲laḳ

(549 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(t., < ḳi̊s̲h̲ “winter”), winter quarters, originally applied to the winter quarters, often in warmer, low-lying areas, of pastoral nomads in Inner Asia, and thence to those in regions like Persia and Anatolia into which Türkmens and others from Central Asia infiltrated, bringing with them their nomadic ways of life; Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk , tr. Atalay, i, 464-5, defines ḳi̊s̲h̲laḳ as al-mus̲h̲attā . Its antonym is yaylaḳ “summer quarters” (< yay “spring”, later “summer”), denoting the upland pastures favou…

Mīkālīs

(1,102 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, an Iranian family of K̲h̲urāsān prominent in the cultural and social worlds there and also active as local administrators and town officials under the Sāmānids and early G̲h̲aznawids [ q.vv.]. They were apparently of Sog̲h̲dian origin, and amongst their pre-Islamic forebears is mentioned the Prince of Pand̲j̲kent S̲h̲īr Dīvāstič, killed at Mount Mug̲h̲ by the Arabs in 104/722-3 [see mā warāʾ al-nahr. 2. History]; al-Samʿānī traces the family back to the Sāsānids Yazdagird II and Bahrām Gūr ( K. al-Ansāb , facs. edn., fols. 548b-549b). It must neverthe…

Ḳufṣ

(723 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Arabised form of Persian Kūfičīs, a people inhabiting south eastern Persia, more exactly the Kirmān-western Balūčistān region, in early mediaeval Islamic times. The name, literally “mountain dwellers”, probably stems ultimately from O. Pers. ākaufačiya — (< O. Pers. kaufa- “mountain”), the name of a people in the Daiva inscription of Xerxes, who are mentioned together with the mačiya “men of Maka” (= Makrān, the coastal region of Balūčistān?), via N. Pers. kūfid̲j̲ / kūfič (cf. R. G. Kent, Old Persian grammar, texts , lexicon 2, New Haven 1953, 151, 165). In early Islamic sour…

Ildeñizids or Eldigüzids

(1,977 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a line of Atabegs or Turkish slave commanders who governed most of northwestern Persia, including Arrān, most of Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān, and D̲j̲ibāl, during the second half of the 6th/12th century and ¶ the early decades of the 7th/13th. Down to the death in battle in 590/1194 of Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l b. Arslan, last of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs of Iraq and Persia, the Ildeñizids ruled as theoretical subordinates of the Sultans, acknowledging this dependence on their coins almost down to the end of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. Thereafter, they were in effec…

Salmās

(913 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of a district, and of its mediaeval urban centre, in the western part of the Persian province of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. The district comprises ¶ a fertile plain near the northwestern corner of Lake Urmiya, bounded on the west by the Harāwīl mountain range with the pass of Ḵh̲ānasūr (2,408 m/7,900 feet) leading into Turkey, and on the south by the Kūh-i Awg̲h̲ān. The modern town of Salmās, S̲h̲ābūr or Dīlmān(lat. 38° 13′ N., long. 44° 50′ E.), lies 48 km/30 miles to the south-south-west of Ḵh̲ōy [see khoi ] on the Zala Čay river. The region of Salmās has be…

Ordūbād

(245 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town in eastern Transcaucasia on the left bank of the middle course of the Araxes or Aras River, lying in lat. 38°54′ N. and long. 46° 01′ E. and at an altitude of 948 m/2,930 ft. The Turco-Persian name “army town” implies a probable foundation during the period of the Mongol ¶ invasions or of the ensuing Il-K̲h̲ānids, especially as the latter made Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān the centre of their power. Certainly, Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī (mid-8th/14th century) describes it as a provincial town, one of the five making up the tūmān of Nak̲h̲čiwān [ q.v.], watered by a stream coming down from Mount Ḳub…

Ḳūla

(342 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town in western Anatolia, classical Opsicum. It lies on the margin of a fertile plain, a few miles south of the upper course of the Gediz river and to the north of the main Manisa-Uşak road, in lat. 38°33′ north and long. 28°40′ east and at an altitude of 2,140 feet/652 m. it is in a volcanic area (classical Katakekaumene or Combusta), with the extinct volcano Karadevlit north-east of the town; hence many of the houses are built from dark basalt. There are numerous marble remains from classical times, but the citadel, apparently late mediaeval, is ruinous. Ḳūla came …

Zaynab bt. D̲j̲aḥs̲h̲

(467 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
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…

Bahrāʾ

(168 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
( 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…

Warangal

(656 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

Irič

(242 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, 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…

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)…
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