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(Ar. pl. umanā ), "trustworthy, in whom one can place one’s trust", whence al-Amīn, with the article, as an epithet of Muḥammad in his youth. As a noun, it means "he to whom something is entrusted, overseer, administrator": e.g. Amīn al-Waḥy , "he who is entrusted with the revelation", i.e. the angel Gabriel. The word also frequently occurs in titles, e.g. Amīn al-Dawla (e.g. Ibn al-Tilmīd̲h̲ others), Amīn al-Dīn (e.g. Yāḳūt), Amīn al-Mulk, Amīn al-Salṭana. In addition to these general and undefined uses of the word amīn , there are other more technical uses,…

, D̲j̲ird̲j̲is , (602-72/1205-73) Arabic-speaking Coptic historian whose History , covering the period from the creation of the world to the year 658/1260, was one of the very first mediaeval oriental chronicles to become known in Europe and consequently played a significant role in the early researches of modern Islamic scholars. The encyclopaedists, who since the 18th century have provided a biography of al-Makīn which is still reproduced by Brockelmann (I, 348) and Graf ( GCAL, i, 348), have omitted to indicate their sources; all that is known is that the history of…

Name of the dynasty founded by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn b. Ayyūb, which, at the end of the 6th/12th century and in the first half of the 7th/13th century, ruled Egypt, Muslim Syria-Palestine, the major part of Upper Mesopotamia, and the Yemen. The eponym of the family, Ayyūb b. S̲h̲ād̲h̲ī b. Marwān, born in the village of Ad̲j̲danaḳān near Dvin (Dabīl) in Armenia, belonged to the Rawwādī clan of the Kurdish tribe of the Had̲h̲bānī, and, at the beginning of the 6th/12th century, had been in the service of the S̲h̲addādid dynasty, likewise Kurdish,…

, name of three Sald̲j̲ūḳid sultans of Rūm. Kayḳubād i , ʿalāʾ al-dīn was the most distinguished of the Sald̲j̲ūḳid sultans of Rūm, to whom many later sovereigns would connect themselves. Removed from power by his brother and predecessor Kaykāʾūs I [ q.v.], he succeeded him in 618/1220. His foreign policy made his dynasty one of the most powerful of his time. In the south he expanded his power, from the very beginning of his reign, over a great part of the Cilician Taurus, where he settled Turkmens. He enlarged his maritime frontiers, i…

(Arabic and Turkish orthography, Ḳūniya), known in antiquity as Iconium, an important town lying on the edge of the Anatolian plateau, on a diagonal line connecting the Dardanelles with the Taurus passes leading into Syria. 1. History. Konya was, during the centuries of Arab invasion, a Byzantine military base which the attackers seem for this reason to have more or less deliberately avoided and circumvented, in preference either for Tarsus [see ṭarsūs ] to the south or especially for Cappadocia by the northern routes; this would seem to explai…

, prince, son; heir apparet (344/955) and successor (356/967) of Muʾizz al-Dawla in ʿIrāḳ, with the laḳab of ʿIzz al-Dawla. He appears to have had little talent for government, which, unlike his father, he entrusted to wazīrs (chosen without any great discernment) so as to be free to amuse himself, though he still impeded the conduct of affaire by his impetuous verbal or active intervention. At the beginning of his reign he continued his father’s policy of hostility to the Ḥamdānid Abū Tag̲h̲lib of Mawṣil and to the autonomous chieftain ¶ of the Baṭīḥa, ʿImrān b. S̲h̲āhīn. Furthermor…

, nūr al-dawla balak b. bahrām b. artuḳ , one of the first Artuḳids, known chiefly as a tough warrior. He appears in history in 489/1096 as commander of Sarud̲j̲ on the Middle Euphrates. This locality being taken from him by the Crusaders in the following year, and his uncle Ilg̲h̲āzī having been appointed governor of ʿIrāḳ by Sulṭān Muḥammad, he accompanied him, and is found in the following years struggling vainly for the little towns of ʿĀna and Ḥadīt̲h̲a, against Arabs, or prot…

, Claudias, a locality of ancient origin (the Claudiopolis of Pliny? cf. Pauly-Wissowa, s.v.), the exact site of which has not been determined but which almost certainly commanded the entrance to the Euphrates gorges below Malaṭya/Melitene, between the eastern Taurus and the K̲h̲anzit [ q.v.]. One of the fortified places on the frontier that were captured and re-captured by the Arabs and the Byzantines, it was restored by al-Mansūr, but again fell into Byzantine hands, together with the province of Melitene, in the middle of the 4th/10th …

ʿaḍud al-dawla abū s̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ muḥammad b. dāʾūd čag̲h̲ribeg , celebrated Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan, the second of the dynasty (455/1063-465/1073). Born probably in 421/1030, at an early age he led the armies of his father Čag̲h̲ribeg with great success, especially against the G̲h̲aznawids, and in 450/1058 he saved his uncle, the sultan Ṭug̲h̲rilbeg, from the revolt of Ibrāhīm Inal in Persia. Two or three years later he succeeded Čag̲h̲ribeg, who had been ill for a long time, and at the end…

, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām b. al-Ḥasan . . . al-Ḳaysarānī al-Miṣrī (525-617/1130-1220), high-ranking official of the later Fāṭimids, wrote in the reign of Salāḥ al-Dīn a “History of the two dynasties”, Nuzhat al-muḳlatayn fī ak̲h̲bār al-dawlatayn , an important work now unfortunately lost, to which the great compilers of the Mamlūk period, Ibn al-Furāt, al-Maḳrīzī, al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, Ibn Tag̲h̲rībirdī, and even before them Ibn K̲h̲aldūn, owe the most important part of their knowledge of the history of the later Fāṭimids and of the general institutions of the régime. (Cl. Cahen) Bibl…

, Armenia, a country of Hither Asia. I. Geographical Outline. Armenia is the central and most elevated part of Hither Asia. Encompassed between two mountain chains, the Pontic chain to the north and the chain of the Taurus to the south, it lies between Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates, Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and the region south-west of the Caspian (on a level with the confluence of the Kurr [Kura] and the Araxes) to the east, the Pontic regions to the north-west, the Caucasus (from which the line of the…

, locusts. The word is a collective noun, the nom. unit, being d̲j̲arāda , which is applied to the male and the female alike. No cognate synonym seems to exist in the other Semitic languages. For the different stages of the locust’s development the Arabic language possesses special names (such as sirwa , dabā , g̲h̲awghāʾ , k̲h̲ayfān , etc.) which, however, are variously defined by different authorities. Being found in abundance in the homeland of the Arabs, locusts were often mentioned and described in ancient Arabic poetry and proverbs. In the Ḳurʾān they figu…

(a.) “water”. The present article covers the religio-magical and the Islamic legal aspects of water, together with irrigation techniques, as follows: 1. Hydromancy A a vehicle for the sacred, water has been employed for various techniques of divination, and in particular, for potamonancy (sc. divination by means of the colour of the waters of a river and their ebbing and flowing; cf. FY. Cumont, Études syriennes , Paris 1917, 250 ff., notably on the purification power of the Euphrates, consulted for divinatory reasons); for pegomancy (sc…

, a name formed in the same way as Diyār Bakr [ q.v.], is the province of the Ḏj̲azīra whose territory is watered by the Euphrates and its tributary the Balīk̲h̲ as well as by the lower reaches of the K̲h̲ābūr. It extends on both banks of the Euphrates from Sumaysāṭ (Samosata) in the north to ʿAnā (ʿĀnāt) in the south. The principal town of the Diyār Muḍar was al-Raḳḳa on the left bank of the Euphrates; other major towns were Ḥarrān on the Balīk̲h̲, Edessa (al-Ruhā, Urfa), capital of Osrhoene, and Sarūd̲j̲ …

, by-name first given to Aḥmad b. ʿUmar (d. 415/1024), of the family of the Āl al-Raḳil, and name by which his descendants were known until the 6th/12th century. The most important member of the family was his grandson, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, known also by the honorific title of raʾīs al-ruʾasāʾ , vizier to the caliphate from 437 to 450/1045-58, concerning whom there have arisen a number of important questions which have not yet been satisfactorily answered. The conquest of Bag̲h̲dād by the Būyids in 334/945 had led …

, governor of Fārs under the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. Būz-Abeh was one of the amīr s of Mengubars, the governor of Fārs, for whom he administered the province of Ḵh̲ūzistān. He was also in the army of his superior when the latter, accompanied by other amīrs, moved against the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Masʿūd and was made prisoner at the battle of Kurs̲h̲anba (other sources call the scene of the encounter Pand̲j̲ Angus̲h̲t), later being put to death, in 532/1137-38. Since, after their victory, the sultan’s troops began to plunder the enemy camp, Būz-Abeh attacked and dispersed them. Several prominent amīrs of th…

, the most important of the dynasties which, first in the Iranian plateau then in ʿIrāḳ, side by side with the Sāmānids of Ḵh̲urāsān and of Māwarāʾ al-Nahr, marked the “Iranian intermezzo” (Minorsky) between the Arab domination of early Islam and the Turkish conquest of the 5th/11th century. Its name derives from Buwayh or Būyeh, the father of three brothers who founded it, ʿAlī, al-Ḥasan, and the youngest, Aḥmad. Condottieri of humble birth, they belonged to the population of the Daylamites [ q.v.] who, newly won over to (S̲h̲iʿī) Islam, were at that time enlisting in large …

, Abū Yaʿlā Ḥamza b. Asad ... al-Tamīmī ( ca. 465-555/1073-1160), a member of an important family of Damascus, who for a time was raʾīs of that town, and above all was its historian for the period extending from the middle of the 4th/10th century to 555/1160. The History of Ibn al-Ḳalānisī, known simply by the title D̲h̲ayl tāʾrīk̲h̲ Dimas̲h̲ḳ , consists of two parts, the limits being somewhat imprecise. The first part, the opening pages of which are lost, and which goes down approximately to the time of the author’s youth, is based…

, better known by his laḳab of Rukn al-Dīn, one of the sons and successors of K̲h̲usraw II (1246). It was at the beginning of the period of the Mongol protectorate that, the three sons of the late sovereign all being minors, the senior amirs, in order to safeguard the unity of the state, sought to install, under their own executive power, a sultanate shared jointly between the three young princes; Ḳi̊li̊d̲j̲ Arslan was sent on a mission to the Mongol chief Batu to persuade him to accept this solution. This very mission alone established a…

, the term used to designate the sort of indefinitely renewed contract through which the Muslim community accords hospitality and protection to members of other revealed religions, on condition of their acknowledging the domination of Islam. The beneficiaries of the d̲h̲imma are called d̲h̲immīs , and are collectively referred to as ahl al-d̲h̲imma or simply d̲h̲imma. An account of the doctrinal position of Islam vis-à-vis the religions in question, and of the polemics between the two sides, is given in the article ahl al-kitāb ; for a detailed account of …