Search

Arslān Arghun b. Alp Arslān (d. 490/1097), a Saljūq prince and regional ruler in parts of Khurāsān (486–90/1093–7), makes his appearance in the sources only after the death, in 485/1092, of his brother, the Great Saljūq sultan Malikshāh b. Alp Arslān (r. 465–85/1073–92). He was one of several pretenders but had no real power base at first; he is mentioned as holder of an iqṭāʿ (administrative grant) worth a mere seven thousand dinars per year. He won regional support in Khurāsān, however, and was able to establish his rule in the northern part of the provinc…

Jalāl al-Dīn Mangburnī, the “last Khwārazmshāh,” ruled in parts of Iran and northwestern India from 617/1220 to 628/1231. He is best known as a heroic fighter against the Mongol invasion. He succeeded in restoring Khwārazmī rule in western Iran and Azerbaijan but was finally defeated by the Mongols in 628/1231. His name is read and explained in various ways. Earlier scholars had Mangubirti (or similar forms); the forms most frequently used now are Mangburnī (with a birthmark on the nose) (Mīnuvī) or Mingīrinī (valiant fighter worth one thousand men, equivalent of Persian hazārmard) (Ja…

Bādghīs (or Bādhgīs) is a mountainous region in eastern Khurāsān, north of Herat. It is also the name of an Afghan province, the administrative centre of which is Qalʿa-yi naw. In 2005 the province's population was approximately 420,000, consisting of a Tajik majority (more than 60 percent) with Pashtu, Uzbek, and Turkmen minorities. The province has a total area of 20,591 square kilometres. Bādghīs is marked by high mountains (reaching more than 5,000 metres in the east), but its landscape consists mostly of rolling hills separated by ravines. Precipitati…

Aḥmad b. Sahl b. Hāshim (d. 307/920) was a military leader in Khurāsān. He came from a dihqān (politically elite) family in the Merv oasis that claimed descent from the last Sāsānid, Yazdigird. Members of the family had served in high positions under the Ṭāhirids (third/ninth century). Aḥmad's career illustrates the role and fate of the dahāqīn under the Sāmānids (third–fourth/ninth–tenth centuries). He appears in the sources in connection with his seeking revenge for his brothers who had been killed in factional strife between Persians and Arabs in Merv. …

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn wa-l-Dawla Abū l-Muẓaffar Atsız b. Muḥammad b. Anūshtegin (b. c. 491/1098, d. 551/1156), Khwārazmshāh, ascended the throne in Khwārazm on the death of his father, Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad, in 521 or 522/1127–8. He participated in numerous campaigns of his overlord, the Saljūq sultan Sanjar b. Malikshāh (r. in Khurāsān 490–552/1097–1157 and as Saljūq overlord 511–52/1118–57)—against the Samarqandī Qarakhānid in 524/1130, the western Saljūq Masʿūd b. Muḥammad in 526/1132, and the Ghaznavid Bahrā…

Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Bukhārī (d. 802/1400), called ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn-i ʿAṭṭār, the first successor to Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 792/1389), eponymous founder of the now widespread Naqshbandī Ṣūfī order, came from Khwārazm, an oasis region south of the Aral Sea. While still a madrasa student, he attached himself to Bahāʾ al-Dīn and married one of his daughters; his son Ḥasan-i ʿAṭṭār (d. 1422), himself an important figure among the Khwājagān of Herat, was thus Bahāʾ al-Dīn’s grandson. After his master’s death, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn is said to have …

Khvāja Muḥammad Bābā Sammāsī (d. c.734–6/1334–6; 755/1354 is also given) was a Central Asian Ṣūfī of the Khvājagān tradition (the Ṭarīqa-yi Khvājagān, lit., way of masters, goes back to ʿAbd al-Khāliq Ghijduwānī, d. 575/1179, and was the precursor of the Naqshbandiyya the widespread Ṣūfī order, whose eponymous founder was Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, d. 791/1389). He was born in Sammāsī (other forms of the name are also cited), a village situated between Romitan and Varakhsha, on the western rim of the oasis of Bukhara (…

Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf al-Hamadānī (d. 535/1140) is best known as the spiritual teacher of ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Ghijduwānī (d. 574/1179, or possibly as late as 617/1220), a key figure of the Central Asian Khwājagān (“masters”), a chain of Central Asian Ṣūfī masters from the fourth/tenth to the tenth/sixteenth century. There are two distinct traditions about him. One is transmitted in the biographical dictionaries written in Arabic, beginning with that of Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī (502–62/1113–67), a scholar whose…

Khvāja Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Naqshband (718–91/1318–89) was one of the central figures of the Transoxanian Ṣūfī current called the Khvājagān (lit., masters), later growing into the Naqshbandiyya, named for Bahāʾ al-Dīn. The name “Naqshband” is explained in different ways; it appears originally to have denoted the profession which Bahāʾ al-Dīn’s father and later he himself practised: printing on cotton cloth with stamps. Later, the name was taken to mean “he who fixes in the heart the imprint of the divine name” (Algar, Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Naqšband). 1. Life Bahāʾ al-Dīn was bo…

Yaʿqūb b. ʿUthmān b. Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad Ghaznavī Charkhī (d. 838/1434–5 or 851/1447–8) was a shaykh of the Khvājagān-Naqshbandiyya brotherhood (the Khvājagān, lit., masters, were a network of Ṣūfīs in Central Asia often incorporated into later Naqshbandī hierarchies; the Naqshbandī Ṣūfī order, whose eponymous founder, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, d. 791/1389, is now widespread). Yaʿqūb was born in or near Charkh, a small town between Kabul and Ghazna, in present-day Logar province, Afghanistan. His teacher in the accepted silsilas (lit., chain, a Ṣūfī spiritual genealogy) was…

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Ṣafī ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn al-Wāʿiẓ al-Kāshifī (867–c. 939/1463–c. 1532) was a Naqshbandī scholar best remembered for his Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt (“Tricklings from the fountain of life”). Born in Sabzawār, a town in Western Khurasan, he came to Herat, where his father, the famous scholar, author, and preacher Ḥusayn al-Wāʿiẓ al-Kāshifī (d. 910/1504–5) had been appointed to the position of preacher in the Friday mosque of that city. The family was close to Herati intellectual circles and to the great poet and…

The Karakhanids (Qarakhānids) ruled in Central Asia from Bukhara to the Tarim Basin from the late fourth/tenth to the early seventh/thirteenth centuries. They were the first dynasty of steppe origin to rule a part of the Islamic world, establishing the first Turkic steppe polity in the Muslim world. Persian and Arabic sources refer to the dynasty using terms such as “Āl-i Afrāsiyāb” or “al-Khāqāniyya.” Nevertheless, the term “Karakhanid” as an identifier for the dynasty does have some justification. The term “qara khān” is used as a title on Karakhanid coins and Maḥmūd al-Kā…

Dihqān (pl. dahāqīn) was the term for a member of a class of lesser nobles in Sāsānid and early Muslim Iran, for local lords in Iran and Transoxiana, and for a peasant in modern Persian, Tajik, and the Central Asian Turkic languages. The stratum of lesser local lords appears to have been growing from the sixth century C.E. in the Sāsānid empire. At the time of the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iraq and Iran, they held hereditary responsibility for the management of local affairs in the countryside, working for a subdistrict (rustāq, nāḥiya). Their military role is less well attested, and th…

Balkh (36°45′ N, 66°54′ E, elevation 365 metres) was the major urban centre between the Amu Darya (Amu River) and the Hindu Kush from antiquity until the mid-nineteenth century. It is situated on the alluvial fan of the Balkhāb (Balkh River) and within the irrigation system called the Eighteen Canals (Persian, Hījdah Nahr), which, despite its name, has not always had eighteen branches. In addition to this agricultural basis, it owed its importance to its situation on major trade routes. In parti…

ʿAbd al-Khāliq b. ʿAbd al-Jamīl al-Ghijduwānī was a central seventh/thirteenth-century figure of the early Central Asian mystics called Khwājagān (lit. “venerable masters,” later to become the Naqshbandiyya); he came from Ghijduwān (as it is called today), on the northern fringes of the Bukharan oasis. Older sources have other variants of his name, including Ghujduwānī and Ghujdawānī. Khwājagānī narratives have the family coming from Malatya, in southeastern Anatolia, and claim for the family a promi…

[English Version] I. Vorislamisch 1. Unter T. versteht man diejenigen Ethnien, die durch ihre Zugehörigkeit zur türkischen Sprachfamilie miteinander verbunden sind. Diese Familie gehört zum agglutinierenden Sprachtyp (d.h. alle morphologischen Elemente werden dem nur selten veränderten Wortstamm angefügt) und ist u.a. gekennzeichnet durch das Merkmal der Vokalharmonie (d.h. innerhalb eines Wortes kommen in der Regel nur die Vokale einer von zwei Vokalklassen vor). Zu den T., die sprachlich insg. we…

[German Version] I. Pre-Islamic Period 1. Turkic peoples are those ethnic groups that are affiliated with each other through the fact that their native tongue belongs to the Turkic family of languages. This ¶ family belongs to the agglutinative category of languages (meaning that all morphological elements are affixed to the seldom modified root word) and is characterized, among other things, by a linguistic feature that is known as “vowel harmony” (meaning that only the vowels of one or two vowel classes usually appear within a…

i. Achaemenid Period. ii. Sasanian Period. iii. Islamic Period. iv. Safavid and Qajar Periods. v. Pahlavi Period. vi. Islamic Republic. A version of this article is available in printVolume IX, Fascicle 6, pp. 639-654 FISCAL SYSTEM in Persia.FISCAL SYSTEM i. ACHAEMENIDThere probably was no clear distinction between state and royal incomes in the Achaemenid empire. All state receipts were considered royal property, as was the income from the king’s estates (Dandamayev and Lukonin, p. 208).Taxes constituted the most substantial source of government income. Beginning fro…

ancient city and province in northwestern Afghanistan. OVERVIEW of the entry: i. Geography. ii. History, Pre-Islamic Period. iii. History, Medieval Period. iv. Topography and urbanism. v. Local histories. vi. The Herat question. vii. The Herat frontier, 19th and 20th centuries.A version of this article is available in printVolume XII, Fascicle 2, 3, pp. 203-226 HERAT, ancient city and province in northwestern Afghanistan.HERAT i. GEOGRAPHYThe province of Herat constitutes roughly the northern one-third of the western lowlands of Afghanistan, bordering on Pe…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies In comparative religious studies, veneration of saints generally refers to the posthumous cultic veneration of a holy person more or less identifiable as a historical individual; it is centered at the place that preserves the saint’s mortal remains, thought to have miraculous powers. Occasionally veneration of living individuals is subsumed under the same category, but this extension results in a dubious diminution of terminological precision, since to this day no one …