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Liṣṣ

(1,854 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(A., also laṣş , luṣṣ , pl. luṣūṣ , with maṣdar s luṣūṣiyya , talaṣṣuṣ (see LA 1, viii, 355-6, and Lane, s.v.), one of the two main words in Arabic for thief robber (the other being sāriḳ ); in Persian we have duzd “thief”, duzdī “theft”, and in old Turkish og̲h̲ri̊ , Ottoman k̲h̲ayrsi̊z , modern hırsız . Arabic liṣṣ and the unassimilated variants li/a/uṣt must have appeared in the language during the Byzantine period, presumably via Syriac leṣtā , whilst there exists the form listīs , closer to the Greek original λῃστής in Mishnaic Hebrew and Palestine Jewish Aramaic (see S. Krauss, Griechische u…

Ustāndār

(188 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), literally “the holder of an ustān [ q.v.] or province”, an administrative term originally found in Sāsānid Persia for the governor of a province or for the official in charge of state domains (see Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber , 448). When the Arabs conquered ʿIrāḳ, the old Sāsānid state lands were taken over as ṣawāfī al-ustān and administered by ustāndārs for the caliph ʿUmar (see M.J. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest , Princeton 1984, 68-9 and index s.v. ustāndār). The title probably continued to be used meanwhile by local potentates in the un-Islami…

Yada Tas̲h̲

(1,032 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(t.), lit. rain stone, in Arabic texts appearing as ḥad̲j̲ar al-maṭar , this being a magical stone by means of which rain, snow, fog, etc., could be conjured up by its holder(s). In particular, knowledge and use of such stones has been widespread until very recent times in Inner Asia. Belief in the existence of stones and other means of controlling the weather has been widespread throughout both the Old and New Worlds (see Sir J.G. Frazer, The golden bough, a study in magic and religion, abridged ed., London 1922, 75-8). Belief in a stone seems to have been general amongst the e…

K̲h̲ud̲j̲and(a)

(1,227 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town and district in Central Asia, now the town and oblast of Leninabad in the Tadzhik SSR, the town lying in 40° 17′ lat. N. and 69° 37′ long. E. The mediaeval town was strung out along the left bank of the middle Si̊r Daryā at the southernmost bend of its course and at the entrance to the Farg̲h̲āna valley. It lay in the ill-defined borderlands between the Transoxanian districts of Īlāḳ [ q.v. in Suppl.] and Us̲h̲rūsana [ q.v.], and was generally reckoned as being connected administratively with one or other of these two in the early middle ages. Its destinies were, ho…

al-Nūs̲h̲arī

(139 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
or al-Naws̲h̲ari , Abū Mūsā ʿĪsā b. Muḥammad, general (said to be Turkish, but perhaps an Iranian from K̲h̲urāsān, since al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, xiii, 201-2, derives the nisba al-Nūs̲h̲ārī ( sic) from Nūs̲h̲ār, a village in the district of Balk̲h̲) from the guard of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs at Sāmarrā and governor of Damascus on various occasions during the caliphates of al-Muntaṣir, al-Mustaʿīn and al-Muʿtazz [ q.vv.] from 247/861 onwards. At the accession of al-Muʿtazz in 252/866, he expanded southwards into Palestine, displacing the Arab governor of Ramla [ q.v.], ʿĪsā b. …

Ṭalḥat al-Ṭalaḥāt

(287 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
“Ṭalḥa of the Ṭalḥas”, the name by which the early Islamic Arab commander Abū Muḥammad Ṭalḥa b. ʿAbd Allāh b. K̲h̲alaf al-K̲h̲uzāʿī was known. Ibn K̲h̲allikān, ed. ʿAbbās, iii, 88, tr. de Slane, ii, 53, explains that he got this cognomen because his mother’s name was Ṭalḥa bt. Abī Ṭalḥa. On his mother’s side he was connected with Ḳurays̲h̲ (Caskel-Strenziok, Ğamharat an-nasab , ii, 555). He appears in Umayyad history as governor of Sīstān around the end of the caliphate of Yazīd I, being appointed by the governor of K̲h̲urāsān Salm b. Ziyād [ q.v.] just after an Arab raid into eastern Af…

K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs

(3,303 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the ancient title of the rulers of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.], used regularly in the early Islamic period (cf. Ṭabarī, ii, 1238, events of 93/712) until the Mongol invasions, and sporadically thereafter; hence as with the designations Afs̲h̲īn and Ik̲h̲s̲h̲īd [ q.vv.], this is an example of the survival of what was probably an ancient Central Asian Iranian title well into Islamic times. The K̲h̲wārazmian scholar Bīrūnī gives the names and genealogical sequence of the first line of K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs, the house of Afrīg̲h̲, which began, so he says, in 305 A.D. and continued unti…

Kōŕā or Kōŕā Ḏj̲ahānābād

(297 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, an ancient town of northern India in the K̲h̲ad̲j̲uhā taḥṣīl of Fatḥpūr District in the former British United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh. It lies in lat. 26° 7′ N. and long. 80° 22′ E. on the Rind River some 12 miles/20 km. from the Ḏj̲amnā (Jumna) River between Kānpūr (Cawnpore) and Fatḥpūr. In early times it was apparently held by the Rād̲j̲put line of the Rād̲j̲ās of Argal, and the fortress there may have been their ancestral centre. Under the Mug̲h̲als, Kōŕā (sometimes spelt in Marāt́hi and Persian sources as Kurrah, and to be distinguished from Kārā Manīkpūr, an adjacent but separate sar…

al-Sallāmī

(277 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Bayhaḳī, historian of the Sāmānid period, who flourished in the middle decades of the 4th/10th century but whose exact dates of birth and death are unknown. According to the local historian of Bayhaḳ, Ibn Funduḳ [see al-bayhaḳī , ẓahīr al-dīn ... b. funduḳ ], he was a pupil of the rather shadowy nadīm and adīb Ibrahīm b. Muḥammad al-Bayhaḳī [ q.v.], author of the K. al-Maḥāsin wa ’l-masāwī , and according to al-T̲h̲aʿālibī, he was in the service of the Muḥtād̲j̲id amīr s of Čag̲h̲āniyān [see muḥtād̲j̲ids ], Abū Bakr Muḥammad and Abū…

Muḥammad S̲h̲āh

(620 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Ḏj̲ahān-S̲h̲āh b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam i , Nāṣir al-Dīn (1131-61/1719-48), surnamed Raws̲h̲an Ak̲h̲tar, “Brillant Star”, the last of the Mug̲h̲al emperors in Dihlī to enjoy real power. His father had been one of three brothers who perished in disputing the crown with their eldest brother D̲j̲ahān-dār S̲h̲āh b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam Bahādur. Muḥammad S̲h̲āh was born on 24 Rabīʿ I 1114/7 August 1702, and hailed as emperor by the two Sayyid brothers, Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh and Sayyid Ḥusayn, after the two brief reigns of Muḥammad S̲h̲āh’s cousin…

Ḳāʾin

(939 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, conventionally Qayen, etc., a town of eastern Persia (lat. 33° 43′ N., long. 59° 06′ E.), now in the administrative province of K̲h̲urāsān but in mediaeval Islamic times falling within the region known as Ḳūhistān [ q.v.]. It lies on the road connecting the urban centres of northern K̲h̲urāsān (Mas̲h̲had, Turbat-i Ḥaydariyya, etc.) with Bird̲j̲and, Persian Sīstān and Zāhidān. Ḳāʾin must be an ancient town, but virtually nothing is known of it before the descriptions of the 4th/10th century geographers. The 8th century Armenian geo…

Nūḥ

(368 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(II) b. Manṣūr b. Nūḥ , Sāmānid amīr initially in Transoxania and K̲h̲urāsān. latterly in the first province only (366-87/977-97), given after his death the honorific al-Amīr al-Raḍī (“the Wellpleasing”). The last of his line to enjoy a reign of any significant length, Nūḥ succeeded his father Manṣūr (I) [ q.v.] at the age of 13, real power being in the hands of his mother and the vizier Abu ’l-Ḥusayn ʿUtbī, the last vizier to the Sāmānids worthy of the title. However, authority in the state fell more and more into the hands of the great milita…

Mahīm

(206 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Maham , a town in the district and ¶ taḥṣīl of Rohtak in India, on the road connecting Dihlī and Hānsī, situated in lat. 28° 58′ N. and long. 76° 18′ E.; it was formerly in the Pand̲j̲āb, but since 1947 has fallen within the Indian Union (Hariana State). It was probably founded by Rād̲j̲pūt princes, but was allegedly destroyed at the end of the 12th century by Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad G̲h̲ūrī [see g̲h̲ūrids ]. The D̲j̲āmiʿ Masd̲j̲id has an inscription from the reign of Humāyūn, recording its construction by Bēgam Sulṭān in 1531, and another from A…

Ṣawlad̲j̲ān

(113 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), said to be an Arabised form of Pers. čawgān “polo stick” [see čawgān ]. The intrusive l makes this difficult, but D.N. MacKenzie, A concise dictionary of Pahlavi , London 1971, 22, has * caw ( l) agān (“of doubtful transcription”). At all events, the curve of a polo stick makes it a suitable figurative expression, either as a simile [see tas̲h̲bīh ] or as a metaphor [see istiʿāra ], in classical Arabic, Persian and Turkish literatures, for the curving eyebrows and locks or tresses of hair of a beautiful girl; see Annemarie Schimmel, The two-colored brocade. The imagery of Persian poetry, C…

Marg̲h̲īnān

(574 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, later form Marg̲h̲elān , a town of Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.] in Central Asia, situated to the south of the Ṣi̊r Daryā [ q.v.] or Jaxartes, on a small river now called the Margelan Say. ¶ It was a place of modest importance in the first Islamic centuries as one of the main towns, with inter alia Andid̲j̲ān [ q.v.], of the district of Farg̲h̲āna known as Lower Nasyā; according to al-Mukaddasī, 272 (see also Le Strange, Lands , 479; Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 513-14, tr. 491; al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , facs. ed. f. 522a), it had a Friday mosque and markets. Coins were first minted there …

al-Mūriyānī

(317 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Ayyūb Sulaymān b. Mak̲h̲lad (the nisba stemming from Mūriyān in Ahwāz, see Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Beirut, v, 221), secretary of the second ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr [ q.v.]. Various stories are given in the sources about how he came to enjoy al-Manṣūr’s confidence: that in the time of the last Umayyad caliph Marwān b. Muḥammad he had saved the ʿAbbāsid Abū D̲j̲aʿfar from a flogging for embezzling state funds (al-Yaʿḳūbī, al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī): that he was a freed slave of al-Saffah’s, taken into his successor’s service (…

Narmās̲h̲īr

(222 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Narmāsīr , a town and a district of eastern Kirmān [ q.v.] in mediaeval Islamic Persia, lying to the south-east of Bam [ q.v.], adjacent to the southern end of the Das̲h̲t-i Lūṭ and on the road connecting Kirmān with Sīstān. The classical Islamic geographers list the district as one of the five kūras of Kirmān and describe the town as prosperous and populous, the resort of merchants who travelled from K̲h̲urāsān to ʿUmān and an emporium for Indian goods. It had a protective wall with four gates, a citadel and a congregationa…

Maybud

(120 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a small town in the s̲h̲ahrastān of Ardakān [ q.v.] in the modern Persian ustān or province of Yazd, situated 32 miles/48 km. to the northwest of Yazd. The mediaeval geographers (e.g. Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 263, 287, tr. Kramers and Wiet, 260, 281; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 29, § 29.45; Le Strange, Lands , 285) describe it as being on the Iṣfahān-Yazd road, 10 farsak̲h̲s from Yazd. Lying as it does on the southern fringe of the Great Desert, its irrigation comes from ḳanāts [ q.v.] (see Lambton, Landlord and peasant in Persia 1, 219). Its population in ca. 1950 was 3,798. (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography I…

Muḥammad Bak̲h̲tiyār K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī

(338 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Ik̲h̲tiyār al-Dīn , Afg̲h̲ān adventurer and commander active in the Muslim conquest of northern India under the generals of the G̲h̲ūrids [ q.v.] and the one who first established Muslim power in Bengal. Having failed to find preferment in G̲h̲azna with Sultan Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām [ q.v.] of G̲h̲ūr and then in Dihlī, allegedly on account of his unprepossessing appearance, Muḥammad Bak̲h̲tiyār began as a local g̲h̲āzī leader in the districts of Badāʾūn and Awadh [ q.vv.] until he was able, under the aegis of Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Aybak [ q.v.] of Dihlī, to make important conquests in Bihār ca. …

Muns̲h̲ī

(142 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), correctly muns̲h̲iʾ , a secretary, an exponent of the high-flown epistolary style general in mediaeval Islamic chanceries from the 2nd/8th century onwards and known as ins̲h̲āʾ [ q.v.]. In the Persian and Indo-Muslim worlds, the term muns̲h̲ī was used for secretaries in the ruler’s chancery, e.g. among the Ṣafawids, for the whom the State Scribe, the muns̲h̲ī al-mamalīk , was a very important official who apparendy shared responsibility for the S̲h̲āh’s correspondence with the wāḳiʿa-nuwīs or Recorder (see Tad̲h̲kirat al-mulūk , tr. Minorsky, Lond…

Vid̲j̲ayanagara

(1,218 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of a mediaeval Hindu power which covered large parts of the Deccan from the mid-14th century to the later 17th century and which is relevant to this Encyclopaedia because of the incessant warfare between its Rād̲j̲ās (some sixty of whom, from various, distinct lineages, issued royal inscriptions claiming sovereignty over India south of the Krishna river) and the Muslim sultanates of the Deccan. It appears in Indo-Muslim sources as Bid̲j̲anagar. The name Vid̲j̲ayanagara, meaning “City of victory”, was that of the state’s original capital on the upper Tungab…

Makrān

(1,400 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the coastal region of southern Balūčistān, extending roughly from the Somniani Bay in the East to the eastern fringes of the region of Bas̲h̲kardia [see bas̲h̲kard in Suppl.] in the west. The modern political boundary between Pakistan and Iran thus bisects the mediaeval Makrān. The east-to-west running Siyāhān range of mountains, just to the north of the Mas̲h̲kēl and Rak̲h̲s̲h̲ān valleys, may be regarded as Makrān’s northern boundary. In British Indian times, this range formed the boundary between the southwestern part of the Kalāt native state [see kilāt ] and the K̲h̲ārān one [ q.v.]…

Simaw

(383 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, modern Turkish Simav , a town of northwestern Anatolia, lying on the river of the same name and just to the south-east of the Simav Gölü, 90 km/58 miles as the crow flies to the southwest of Kütahya [ q.v.] and on the road connecting Balıkesir with Usak (lat. 39° 05′ N., long. 28° 59′ E., altitude 823 m/2,700 feet). In later Ottoman times, it was the chef-lieu of a ḳaḍāʾ of the same name, and is now the centre of the ilçe or district of Simav in the il or province of Kütahya. One should not confuse it, as did Babinger in his EI 1 art., with Simāwnā in eastern Thrace, the birthplace of the early Ot…

Musāwāt

(498 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.) “equality”, the maṣdar of form III of the verb sawiya “to be equal to, be worth”, with the same sense as form I; in modern times, it has been ¶ used for the political concept of human equality (Ottoman Turkish müsāwāt , modern Turkish mūsavat , Persian musāwāt , barābārī ). The root is found frequently in the Ḳurʾān, though only once in form III (XVIII, 95/96), in the sense “to make level, even up”. In the literary and cultural controversies of the ʿAbbāsid period, those of the S̲h̲uʿūbiyya [ q.v.], the non-Arabs seeking social equality with the ruling class of Arabs were sometimes known as the a…

K̲h̲alk̲h̲āl

(516 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, in mediaeval times a district and town, now a district only, of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān in northwestern Persia. It lies to the south of Ardabīl, and is bounded on the east by that part of the Elburz chain which separates Gīlān and Tālis̲h̲ in the Caspian coastlands from the upland interior of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, the mountains here rising to over 10,000 feet. Much of the district is drained by the left-bank tributaries of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Uzun affluent of the Safīd-Rūd. In mediaeval times it adjoined on the east the district of Ṭārom and was part of the general region called Daylam [ qq.v.]. The actual name…

Tonk

(167 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a former Native State of British India, when three of its component districts fell within Rād̲j̲pūtānā and three in Central India, with its centre in the town of the same name (lat. 26° 10’ N., long 75° 50’ E.). The former Tonk State is now a District of Rād̲j̲āst̲h̲ān in the Indian Union. Tonk was founded by Amīr K̲h̲ān (d. 1834 [ q.v.]), a Pathan from Bunēr who rose, first in the service of the Rohillas [ q.v.] and then in the army of D̲j̲aswant Singh Holkar (1798). He submitted to the British in 1817. During the Sepoy Mutiny, his son Wazīr Muḥammad K̲h̲ān remained lo…

Ḳarā-Köl

(428 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(Turkish “black lake”), ḳarakul , the name of various lakes in Central Asia and of a modern town in the Uzbek SSR. The best-known lake is that lying at the western extremity of the Zarafs̲h̲ān River in Sog̲h̲dia (modern Uzbekistan), midway between Buk̲h̲ārā and Čārd̲j̲ūy (mediaeval Āmul-i S̲h̲aṭṭ, see āmul . 2). The basin in which it lay was known as the Sāmd̲j̲an basin, see Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 315, and Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, 485, tr. Kramers and Wiet, 466. In Nars̲h̲ak̲h̲ī’s Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Buk̲h̲ārā , ed. Schefer, 17, tr. Frye, 19, the lake is given both the Tur…

G̲h̲ūrids

(4,439 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of an eastern Iranian dynasty which flourished as an independent power in the 6th/12th century and the early years of the 7th/13th century and which was based on the region of G̲h̲ūr [ q.v.] in what is now central Afg̲h̲ānistān with its capital at Fīrūzkūh [ q.v.]. 1. Origins and early history. The family name of the G̲h̲ūrid Sultans was S̲h̲anasb/S̲h̲ansab (< MP Gus̲h̲nasp; cf. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 282, and Marquart, Das Reich Zābul , in Festschrift E. Sachau , 289, n. 3), and in the time of their florescence, attempts were made to at…

al-Mustakfī

(489 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
bi ’llāh , Abu ’l-Ḳāsim ʿAbd Allāh , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 333-4/944-6, son of the caliph al-Muḳtafī [ q.v.] by a Greek slave concubine called G̲h̲uṣn. When the commander-in-chief of the Turkish soldiery in Bag̲h̲dād, Tūzūn, deposed and blinded al-Muttaḳī b. al-Muḳtadir [ q.v.], he raised to the throne one of the latter’s cousins as al-Mustakfī in Ṣafar 333/September-October 944, al-Mustakfī being then aged 41. The situation in ʿIrāḳ was unpropitious for the new ruler. The caliphs were puppets in the hands of the Turkish troops, whose…

Muẓaffarpur

(223 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town in northern Bihār State of the Indian Union (lat. 26° 7′ N.,85° 24″ E.), and also the name of a District of which it is the administrative centre; the District covers the ancient region of Tirhut between the Ganges and the southern border of Nepal. The region was attacked in the 8th/14th century by the Muslim rulers of Bengal; in the next century it passed to the S̲h̲arḳī rulers of D̲j̲awnpur [ q.v.], and then to Sikandar Lōdī of Dihlī. The town of Muẓaffarpur enshrines the name of its founder, the Emperor Akbar’s commander Muẓaffar Khān, dīwān or head of revenue and finance [see dīwān. v] a…

Prester John

(478 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of a mysterious potentate, said to be a Nestorian Christian and inimical to Islam, whom the Christians of medieval Europe placed beyond the Islamic lands in Inner or Far Asia. The name Presbyter Johannes first occurs in the chronicle, called Historia de duabus civitatibus, of the German prelate Otto, Bishop of Freising, in which he describes, on the authority of a meeting in 1145 with the Latin Bishop Hugh of D̲j̲abala (= ancient Byblos, in Lebanon), how Prester John was a monarch, of the lineage of the Magi of the Gospels, living in the Far East ( in extremo oriente) beyond Persia an…

Nihāwandī

(144 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, ʿAbd al-Bāḳī b. Abī Bakr Kurd, Indo-Muslim historian of the Mug̲h̲al period (978-after 1046/1570-after 1637). Of Kurdish origin from D̲j̲ūlak near Nihāwand [ q.v.], he served the Ṣafawids as a tax official and eventually became a wazīr in the administration. But then he fell from grace, and like many Persians of his age, decided to migrate to India, and entered the service of the K̲h̲ān-i K̲h̲ānān [ q.v.] Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, one of Akbar’s generals, subsequently holding official posts in the Deccan and Bihar. The K̲h̲ān-i K̲h̲ānān asked him to write a biography of himself, the Maʾāt̲h̲ir…

Sarwistān

(334 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a small town in the Persian province of Fārs (lat. 29° 16′ N., long 53° 13′ E., alt. ¶ 1,597 m/5,238 ft.), some 80 km/50 miles to the southeast of S̲h̲īrāz on the road to Nayrīz [ q.v.]. It seems to be identical with the K̲h̲awristān of the early Arab geographers, but first appears under the name Sarwistān (“place of cypresses”) in al-Muḳaddasī at the end of the 4th/10th century. It is notable for the tomb and shrine of a local saint, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Yūsuf Sarwistānī, dated by its inscription to 682/1283, and for a nearby mysterious building situated on the S̲h̲īrāz-F…

Kāfiristān

(2,408 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(“land of the unbelievers”), the name of a mountainous region of the Hindu Kush massif in north-eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, until 1896 very isolated and politically independent, but since the Afg̲h̲ān conquest of that date and the introduction of Islam known as Nūristān (“land of light”). Some older European writers mentioned what might be termed a “greater Kāfiristān”, comprising such regions as Kāfiristān in the restricted sense (see below), Lag̲h̲mān, Čitral, Swāt, Bad̲j̲awr, Gilgit, etc. This cor…

K̲h̲urāsān

(4,360 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, today the north-easternmost ustān or province of Persia, with its administrative capital at Mas̲h̲had [ q.v.]. But in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, the term “K̲h̲urāsān” frequently had a much wider denotation, covering also parts of what ¶ are now Soviet Central Asia and Afg̲h̲ānistān; early Islamic usage often regarded everywhere east of western Persia, sc. D̲j̲ibāl or what was subsequently termed ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī, as being included in a vast and ill-defined region of K̲h̲urāsān, which might even extend to the Indus Valley …

Sulaymān b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh

(251 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, early ʿAbbāsid prince and uncle of the first ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Saffāḥ and al-Manṣūr [ q.vv.], d. at Baṣra in D̲j̲umādā II 142/October 759 aged 59 (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 141). He was appointed governor of Baṣra, including also eastern Arabia and western Persia, by al-Saffāḥ in 133/750-1 ( ibid., iii, 73), and remained in this important power base until forced out of the governorship in 139/756. As one of the ʿumūma or paternal uncles, whose position vis-à-vis their nephews the caliphs was ambiguous, Sulaymān sheltered for many years the failed rebel ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī [ q.v.], until ʿAbd All…

Nayrīz

(379 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Nīrīz , the name of a mediaeval Islamic region and of a town of Fārs in southern Persia. The Nayrīz plain is essentially a landlocked region in the southern Zagros mountains, drained by the Kūr and Pulwār rivers which rise in the Zagros and flow southeastwards into the shallow lake known in mediaeval Islamic times as the Lake of Nayrīz and in more recent ones as Lake Bak̲h̲tigān [ q.v., and also E. Ehlers, art. Bak̲tagān Lake , in EIr ]; although the lake itself is salt, the plain forms an agriculturally prosperous region, and in ancient times was the…

Muḥammad Farīd Bey

(479 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. Aḥmad Farīd Pas̲h̲a (1284-1338/1867-1919), Egyptian nationalist politician, active in the first two decades of the 20th century. Of aristocratic Turkish birth, he had a career as a lawyer in the Ahliyya courts and then as a supporter of Muṣṭafā Kāmil Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.], leader of the nationalist opposition to the British protectorate over Egypt and founder in 1907 of the Nationalist Party ( al-Ḥizb al-Waṭanī ) [see ḥizb. i. In the Arab lands]. When Muṣṭafā Kāmil died at the beginning of 1908, Muḥammad Farīd succeeded him as leader of the party, but being by temperame…

Ṭarsūs

(1,483 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the Arabic form of the name of the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, situated on the classical River Cydnus, the Nahr Baradān of early Islamic times and the contemporary Turkish Tarsus Çay, in the rich agricultural plain of the modern Çukurova. The ancient city appears first firmly in history under the Assyrian kings, then as being in the Persians’ sphere of influence, then as disputed by the Seleucids and Ptolemies, being for a while styled Antioch-onthe-Cydnus in honour of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1…

Pīrī-Zāde

(164 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
Meḥmed Ṣāḥib Efendi (1085-1162/1674-1749), Ottoman S̲h̲eyk̲h̲ al-Islām [ q.v.] in Istanbul and the pioneer translator into Turkish of Ibn K̲h̲aldūn. Ibn K̲h̲aldūn’s Muḳaddima was quite early known in Ottoman Turkey, being cited by e.g. Maḥmūd b. Aḥmed Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn (d. 937/1550) and by Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa in his Kas̲h̲f al-ẓunūn . But during the years 1138-43/1725-30 Pīrī-zāde translated the Muḳaddima from the beginning to the end of the fifth chapter, i.e. about two-thirds of the whole, and this was lithographed at Cairo in 1275/1859, with Aḥmed D̲j̲ewdet Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.] shortly …

Linga

(584 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a minor seaport, modern Bandar-i Linga, on the northern shore of the Persian or Arab Gulf, in lat. 26° 34′ N. and long. 54° 53′ E., to the south of Lāristān [see lār , lāristān ] and facing the islands of Ḳis̲h̲m [ q.v.] and the Ṭūnbs. Linga has a harbour of some depth, allowing traffic by dhows and coastal craft; behind the town lies a salt marsh, and then the Band-i Linga mountains, which rise to 3,900 ft./1,190 m. The population, formerly largely Arab, is now predominantly Persian, but with strong admixtures of Arabs, Baluchis, India…

Mawdūd b. Masʿūd

(448 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abu ’l-Fatḥ , s̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn wa ’l-Dawla , Ḳuṭb al-Millā , sultan of the G̲h̲aznawid [ q.v.] dynasty, reigned 432-40/1041-winter of 1048-9. ¶ He was probably born in 401/1010-11 or 402/1011-12 as the eldest son of Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd [ q.v.], and during his father’s reign was closely associated with the sultan on various military expeditions. When Masʿūd was deposed and then killed in D̲j̲umādā I 432/January 1041, Mawdūd made himself the avenger against the rebellious commanders and their puppet, his uncle Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd. He marche…

Laḳab

(14,791 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.) nickname, and at a later date under Islam and with a more specific use, honorific title (pl. alḳāb ). For suggestions about its etymology, see L. Caetani and G. Gabrieli, Onomasticon arabicum . i. Fonte-introduzione , Rome 1915, 144-5; and for its place in the general schema of the composition of Islamic names, see ism. The laḳab seems in origin to have been a nickname or sobriquet of any tone, one which could express admiration, be purely descriptive and neutral in tenor or be insulting and derogatory. In the latter case, it was often termed nabaz , pl. anbāz , by-form labaz

S̲h̲addādids

(1,405 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
or Banū S̲h̲addād , a minor dynasty of Arrān and eastern Armenia which flourished from the 4th/10th to the 6th/12th century ( ca. 340-570/ ca. 951-1174), with a main line in Gand̲j̲a and Dwīn [ q.vv.] and a junior, subsequent one in Ānī [ q.v.] which persisted long after the end of the main branch under Sald̲j̲ūḳ and latterly Ildeñizid suzerainty. There seems no reason to doubt the information in the history of the later Ottoman historian Müned̲j̲d̲j̲im Bas̲h̲i̊ that the S̲h̲addādids were in origin Kurdish. Their ethnicity was complicated by the fact that…

Sīmd̲j̲ūrids

(183 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a line of Turkish commanders and governors, originally of slave origin, for the Sāmānids in 4th/10th-century K̲h̲urāsān. The founder, Abū ʿImrān Sīmd̲j̲ūr, was the amīr Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad’s [ q.v.] ceremonial ink-stand bearer ( dawātī ). He became Sāmānid governor of Sīstān [ q.v.] in 300-1/913-14 when the local dynasty of the Ṣaffārids [ q.v.] were temporarily driven out. Thereafter, the family was prominent as governors of K̲h̲urāsān for the amīrs , involved in warfare with the Sāmānids’ rivals in northern Persia such as the Būyids, and they …

Ṭulaḳāʾ

(275 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(a.), the pl. of ṭalīḳ , which means “a person loosed, set free, e.g. from imprisonment or slavery” (Lane, 1874). The plural becomes a technical term in earliest Islam for denoting the Meccans of Ḳurays̲h̲ who, at the time when Muḥammad entered Mecca in triumph (Ramaḍān 8/January 630), were theoretically the Prophet’s lawful booty but whom he in fact released (al-Ṭabarī, i, 1642-3: ḳāla ’d̲h̲habū fa-antum al-ṭulaḳāʾ . Gf. Glossarium , p. CCCXLII, and Mad̲j̲d al-Dīn Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, Nihāya , ed. al-Zāwī and al-Ṭannāḥī, Cairo 1383/1963, iii, 136). It was subsequently used opprobriousl…

Ṣaband̲j̲a

(455 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, modern Turkish Sapanca, a town in northwestern Anatolia, in the classical Bithynia, situated on the southeastern bank of the freshwater lake of the same name and to the west of the Sakarya river (lat. 40° 41′ N., long. 30° 15′ E.). Almost nothing is known of its pre-Islamic history, although there are Byzantine remains; the name may be a popular transformation of Sophon. According to Ewliyā Čelebi, the town was founded by a certain Ṣaband̲j̲ī Ḳod̲j̲a, but this last must be merely an eponymous hero. It seems to appear in history only i…

al-Zaynabī

(405 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, ʿAlī b. Ṭirād (or Ṭarrād ) b. Muḥammad, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim S̲h̲araf al-Dīn, vizier to the two ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Mustars̲h̲id and al-Muḳtafī [ q.vv.] in the first half of the 6th/12th century, b. 462/1069-70, d. 538/1144. The nisba refers to descent from Zaynab bt. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAbbās, and this ʿAbbāsid descent doubtless helped al-Zaynabī’s father Ṭirād or Ṭarrād, called D̲h̲u ’l-S̲h̲arafayn, to secure in 453/1061 the office of naḳīb [see naḳīb al-as̲h̲rāf ] of the Hās̲h̲imī s̲h̲arīf s and also to pursue a career in diplomacy on beha…

al-Nuwayrī

(203 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Muḥammad b. al-Ḳāsim al-Iskandarānī, local historian of his home Alexandria, who lived in the 8th/14th century but whose precise dates are unknown. Between 767/1365-6 and 775/1373-4 he wrote a three-volume history of the city, the K. al-Ilmām fīmā d̲j̲arat bihi ’l-aḥkām al-maḳḍiyya fī wāḳiʿat al-Iskandariyya purporting to describe the calamity of Muḥarram 767/October 1365 when the Frankish Crusaders, led by Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, descended on Alexandria, occupied it for a week and sacked it (see S. Runciman, A history of the Crusades , London …

Ibn Nāẓir al-D̲j̲ays̲h̲

(229 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, Taḳī ’l-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān , ḳāḍī , official and author of the Mamlūk period in Egypt. His precise dates are unknown, but he was apparently the son of another ḳāḍī who had been controller of the army in the time of Sultan al-Nāṣir Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḳalāwūn, and he himself served in the Dīwān al-Ins̲h̲āʾ under such rulers as al-Manṣūr Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Muḥammad (762-4/1361-3) and his successor al-As̲h̲raf Nāṣir al-Dīn S̲h̲aʿbān (764-78/1363-76). His correspondence was apparently collected into a mad̲j̲mūʿ , for al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī [ q.v.] quotes four letters from it, to external …
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