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al-K̲h̲uld

(273 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Ḳaṣr , the name of a palace of the early ʿAbbāsids in Bag̲h̲dād, so-called because of its being compared in splendour with the d̲j̲annat al-k̲h̲uld “garden of eternity”, i.e. Paradise. It was built by the founder of the new capital Bag̲h̲dād, al-Manṣūr [ q.v.], in 158/775 on the west bank of the Tigris outside the walled Round City, possibly on the site of a former Christian monastery (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 273; Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, ii, 382). It was strategically placed between the two great military areas of the Ḥarbiyya and al-Ruṣāfa on the eastern side [see al-ruṣāfa. 2.] and adjacent …

Gūmāl

(525 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, Gomal , a river of the Indus valley system and the North-West Frontier region of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. It rises in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān some 40 miles/62 km. east of the Āb-i Istāda lake. Flowing eastwards, it is joined from the south by the Kundar and Z̲h̲ōb rivers, and forms the southern boundary of the South Wazīristān tribal agency of the former North-West Frontier Province of British India (now Pakistan). Below the settlement of Murtaḍā, it leaves the mountains and enters the lower-lying lands of the Dēra Ismāʿīl Ḵh̲ān district [see dērad̲j̲āt ], …

K̲h̲ērla

(342 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a fortress of mediaeval India, lying to the south of Mālwa and east of K̲h̲āndes̲h̲ [ q.vv.], and in the extreme northern part of Berār [ q.v.], just to the south of the headwaters of the Tāptī River. It is in fact some 50 miles west of modern Deogaŕh; in British India it fell within the Central Provinces, now Madhya Pradesh. The foundation of the fortress is attributed to a Rād̲j̲put rād̲j̲ā , the last of whose line is said to have been killed by a commander of the Dihlī Sultans, perhaps in the time of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī; but the fortre…

Tukarōʾī

(102 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
or Mug̲h̲almārī , a place near Midnapūr in the southern part of West Bengal, the site of a battle in 982/1574 between Akbar’s finance minister and commander Rād̲j̲ā T́ōd́ar Mal [ q.v.] and the young ruler of Bengal, Dāwūd K̲h̲ān Kararānī [ q.v.], who had repudiated Mug̲h̲al suzerainty. Dāwūd K̲h̲ān was beaten by a ruse [see ḥarb. vi, at Vol. III, 202b] and forced to flee, allowing Akbar formally to annex Bihar, Bengal and Orissa. (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography See that to dāwūd k̲h̲ān kararānī, and also J.F. Richards, The Mughal empire (= The New Comb. hist, of India, I. 5), Cambridge 1993, 33.

Ilek-K̲h̲āns or Ḳarak̲h̲ānids

(4,341 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a Turkish dynasty which ruled in the lands of Central Asia straddling the T’ien-s̲h̲an Mountains, scil . in both Western Turkestan (Transoxania or Mā warāʾ al-Nahr) and in Eastern Turkestan (Kās̲h̲g̲h̲aria or Sin-kiang), from the 4th/10th to the early 7th/13th centuries. 1. Introductory. The name “Ilek-K̲h̲āns” or “Ilig-K̲h̲āns” stems from 19th century European numismatists. The element Ilek/Ilig (known in Hunnish, Magyar and Uyg̲h̲ur Turkish onomastic) is commonly found on the dynasty’s coins, but is by no means general. The complete phrase Ilek-K̲h̲ān/Ilig-K̲h̲ān

Malik-S̲h̲āh

(2,908 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of various Sald̲j̲ūḳ rulers. 1. Malik-S̲h̲āh I b. Alp Arslan , D̲j̲alāl al-Dawla Muʿizz al-Din Abu ’l-Fatḥ , Great ¶ Sald̲j̲uḳ sultan, born in 447/1055, reigned 465-85/1072-92. During his reign, the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ empire reached its zenith of territorial extent—from Syria in the west to K̲h̲urāsān in the east—and military might. Alp Arslan [ q.v.] had made Malik-S̲h̲āh his walī ’l-ʿahd or heir to the throne in 458/1066, when various governorships on the eastern fringes were at this same time distributed to several members o…

Thānā

(225 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town of western peninsular India, 21 km/15 miles from the Arabian Sea coast and 32 km/20 miles to the north-north-east of Bombay (lat. 90° 14′ N., long. 73° 02′ E.; see the map in gud̲j̲arāt , at Vol. II, 1126). Thānā was in pre-Muslim times the centre of a great Hindu kingdom, but was conquered in 718/1318 by the Sultan of Dihlī Mubārak S̲h̲āh K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī It soon afterwards became an outpost of the Bahmanid sultanate of the Deccan, but was at times disputed by the Sultans of Gud̲j̲arāt, who seized it, e.g. in 833/1430 (see hind, iv, at Vol. III, 418b). By 1529 it was tribute to the Por…

Ṣofta

(315 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(t., orthography ṣ.w.f.t.h ), a name given to students of the theological, legal and other sciences in the madrasa [ q.v.] system of Ottoman Turkey. A parallel form is sūk̲h̲te , in Persian literally “burnt, aflame (i.e. with the love of God or of learning)”, which seems to be the earlier form; the relationship between the two words, if any, is unclear (see S̲h̲. Sāmī, Ḳāmūs-i turkī , Istanbul 1318/1900-1, ii, 839 col. 3; Redhouse, Turkish and English dict., 1087, 1192). The term ṣofta was applied to students in the earlier stages of their education; when a student became qualified to act as a muʿ…

Zūn

(443 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Z̲h̲ūn , the name of a deity of the district of Zamīndāwar [ q.v.] in eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, whose shrine there figures in historical accounts of the Arabs’ and Ṣaffārids’ penetration of the region. In 33/654-5 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Samura, governor of Sīstān for ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿĀmir [ q.v.], raided into Zamīndāwar and attacked the “hill of Zūn” ( d̲j̲abal al-Zūn ), entered the shrine and partially despoiled the idol there, telling the local marzbān that his sole object was to demonstrate the idol’s impotence (al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 394). Over two centuries late…

Rustāḳ

(308 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Arabised form of M. Pers. rōstāg , meaning “rural district, countryside”, and given the broken pl. rasātīḳ . (1) In the mediaeval Islamic usage of the Arabic and Persian geographers and of the Arabic writers on finance and taxation, rustāḳ is used both as a specific administrative term and in a more general sense. Thus, reflecting the more exact usage, in Sāsānid and early Islamic ʿIrāḳ, each kūra [ q.v.] or province was divided into ṭassūd̲j̲ s or sub-provinces, and these last were in turn divided into rustāḳs, districts or cantons, centred on a madīna or town. According to Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, K.…

Terken K̲h̲ātūn

(448 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of the wives of various Turkish rulers of the eastern Islamic world in mediaeval (essentially pre-Mongol) times. In old Turkish, terken was a royal title, often but not invariably applied to females, and in these cases being roughly equivalent to “queen”. It may be a loan word in Turkish, being found, according to G. Doerfer, amongst the Kitan or Western Liao, the later Ḳara K̲h̲itay [ q.v.] of Central Asian Islamic history (see his Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen , Wiesbaden 1963-7, ii, 495-8 no. 889; Sir Gerard Clauson, An etymological dictionary of pre-…

Naṣr b. Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl

(439 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Sāmānid amīr of Transoxania and K̲h̲urāsān (301-31/914-43), given after his death the honorific of al-Amīr al-Saʿīd (“the Fortunate”). Naṣr was raised to the throne at the age of eight on the murder of his father by the Turkish g̲h̲ulāms of the army, with a regency of the vizier Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad D̲j̲ayhānī [see al-d̲j̲ayhānī in Suppl.]. The early years of his reign were seriously disturbed by rebellions at Samarḳand, at Nīs̲h̲āpūr and in Farg̲h̲āna by various discontented members of the Sāmānid family, and the amīrate was not at peac…

S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī

(314 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Persian historian and poet of the Tīmūrid period, born at Yazd, died in 858/1454. He was a favourite of the Tīmūrid ruler S̲h̲āh Ruk̲h̲ [ q.v.] and of his son Mīrzā Abu ’l-Fatḥ Ibrāhīm Sulṭān, governor of Fārs, and in 832/1429 became tutor to the captured young Čingizid Yūnus K̲h̲ān. to whom he dedicated many poems. He was then in the service of the Tīmūrid prince Mīrzā Sulṭān Muḥammad in ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī or western Persia, and narrowly escaped death when that prince rebelled in 850/1447. After S̲h̲āh Ruk̲h̲’s death he …

al-Wāt̲h̲iḳī

(243 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUt̲h̲mān, poet and political claimant of the second half of the 4th/10th and the first years of the 5th/11th centuries, who claimed descent from the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ [ q.v.]. His younger contemporary al-T̲h̲aʿālibi gives specimens of his verses plus biographical information ( Yatīma , ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, iv, 192-3). Al-Wāt̲h̲iḳī began his career in ʿIrāḳ and al-D̲j̲azīra as a court witness and preacher, but became involved in political intrigues. He fled eastwards to the Transoxanian lands of the Ḳarak̲h̲ānids [see ilek-k̲h̲āns …

D̲j̲irga

(567 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
(Pas̲h̲to; cf. H.G. Raverty, A dictionary of the Puk̲h̲to , Pus̲h̲to , or language of the Afg̲h̲āns , London 1867, 330b), an informal tribal assembly of the Pafhàns in what are now Afg̲h̲ānistān and Pakistan, with competence to intervene and to adjudicate in practically all aspects of private and public life among the Pat́hāns. In the course of his abortive mission to S̲h̲āh S̲h̲u-d̲j̲āʿ and the Durrānī court of Kabūl in 1809 [see Afg̲h̲ānistān . v. History (3) (A)], Mountstuart Elphinstone described the d̲j̲irga system as alive and vital, with assemblies…

Rūd̲h̲rāwar

(253 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a rural district ( rūstāḳ , nāḥiya ) of the mediaeval Islamic province of D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.], sc. western Persia. The geographers describe it as a fertile plain below the Kūh-i Alwand, containing 93 villages and producing high-quality saffron which was exported through the nearby towns of Hamad̲h̲ān and Nihāwand. The chef-lieu of the district, in which was situated the d̲j̲āmiʿ and minbar , was known as Karad̲j̲-i Rūd̲h̲rāwar, characterised in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 132, § 31.8-9, as prosperous and the resort of merchants. The site of this seems…

Salm b. Ziyād b. Abīhi

(448 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū Ḥarb, Umayyad commander and governor, the third of the many sons of Abū Sufyān’s bastard son Ziyād b. Abīhi [ q.v.], d. 73/692. The family of Ziyād already had a firm grip on the East in the later years of Muʿāwiya’s caliphate, and when Yazīd I came to the throne, he appointed Salm as governor of Ḵh̲urāsān (61/681), and the latter nominated another of his brothers, Yazid b. Ziyād, as his deputy in Sīstān. Salm proved himself a highly popular governor with the Arab troops in Ḵh̲urāsān. largely on account of his mil…

Ḳul

(277 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, an old Turkish word which came, in Islamic times, to mean “slave boy, male slave”, defined by Maḥmūd Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-Turk , ed. Kilisli Rifʿat Bilge, i, 282, tr. Atalay, i, 336-7, as ʿabd . However, the original meaning of ḳul in Orkhon Turkish was rather “servant, vassal, dependent” (the masculine counterpart of kün “female servant, etc.”, the two words being linked in the Kültegin inscription, text references in Talât Tekin, A grammar of Orkhon Turkish, Bloomington, Ind. 1968, 347), since slavery in the Islamic juridical sense did not exist among the ancient Turks. The…

K̲h̲wārazm

(5,698 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, in post-Mongol times increasingly known as K̲h̲īwa, the province lying along the lower course of the Amū Daryā [ q.v.] or Oxus, classical Chorasmia. In the early Islamic period, the southern boundary of K̲h̲wārazm was considered to be at Ṭāhiriyya, five days’ journey downstream from Āmul-i S̲h̲aṭṭ (modern Čārd̲j̲ūy), the crossing-place of the K̲h̲urāsān-Buk̲h̲ārā caravan route. Ṭāhiriyya lay just to the south of the gorge of the “lion’s mouth”, Dahān-i S̲h̲īr, where the river narrows at modern Düldül Atlag̲h̲ān near Pitnyak. H…

Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b. Malik-S̲h̲āh

(582 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Abū S̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dunyā ¶ wa ’l-Din, Sald̲j̲uḳ sultan in western Persia 548-55/1153-9. The death in 547/1152 of Sultan Masʿūd b. Muḥammad [ q.v.] without direct male heir instituted a period of confusion for the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultanate, in that there were left several Sald̲j̲ūḳ princes with claims to the throne, including Masʿūd’s brother Sulaymān-S̲h̲āh and the sons of his brothers Maḥmūd and Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l. All but Muḥammad, out of these contenders, were of mediocre abilities, and were largely dependent on the Turkish Atabegs and other amīrs , …

Safīd Rūd

(273 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.) “White River”, a river system of northwestern Persia draining the southeastern part of Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān and what was, in mediaeval Islamic times, the region of Daylam [ q.v.]. The geographers of the 4th/10th century already called it the Sabīd/Sapīd̲h̲ Rūd̲h̲, and Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī (8th/14th century) clearly applies it to the whole system. In more recent times, however, the name tends to be restricted to that part of the system after it has been formed from the confluence at Mard̲j̲il of its two great ¶ affluents, the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen [ q.v.] coming in from the left and the S̲h̲āh…

Ud̲j̲d̲j̲ayn

(310 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town of Central India in what was the mediaeval Islamic sultanate of Mālwā [ q.v.] and at times its capital. It is now a fair-sized town in the westernmost part of Madhya Pradesh State in the Indian Union (lat. 23° 11′ N., long. 75° 50′ E.). Renowned since Mauryan and Gupta times as a sacred site for Hindus, it also played a leading role in Indian astronomy, since the ancient Indians came to calculate longitudes from the meridian of Ud̲j̲d̲j̲ayn [see al-Ḳubba ]. Hence the town appears in Ptolemy’s Geography as Ozēnē, in the geographical section of Ibn Rusta’s encyclopaedia as ʾdh. y. n for Uzza…

Tūn

(316 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town of the mediaeval region of Ḳuhistān [ q.v.] in northeastern Persia. It lay some 80 km/50 miles west-north-west of the main town of the region, Ḳāʾin, and was often linked with it; Marco Polo speaks of Tunocain (Yule and Burnell, The Book of Ser Marco Polo , 2 London 1903, i, 83, 86), and Tūn wa Ḳāʾin still figures in the Bābur-nāma (tr. Beveridge, 296, 301). Tūn has no known pre-Islamic history, but was a flourishing town in the 4th/10th century, when the geographers describe it thus, mentioning especially its strong fortress. Nāṣir-i K̲h̲usraw was there…

D̲j̲ād̲j̲arm

(439 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C. E.
, a town in the western part of mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān in Persia, now a town and also a bak̲h̲s̲h̲ or sub-district in the s̲h̲ahrastān or district of Bud̲j̲nurd in the K̲h̲urāsān ustān . It lies at the western end of the elongated plain which stretches almost from Bisṭām in the west almost to Nīs̲h̲āpūr in the east, which is drained by the largely saline Kāl-i S̲h̲ūr stream, and which is now traversed by the Tehran-Nīs̲h̲āpūr-Mas̲h̲had railway. The mediaeval geographers, up to and including Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī (see Le Strange, The lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 392-3…

Özbeg b. Muḥammad Pahlawān

(431 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Muẓaffar al-Dīn (reigned 607-22/1210-25), the fifth and last Atabeg of the Ildegizid or Eldigüzid ¶ family [see ildeñizids ] who ruled in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān during the later Sald̲j̲ūḳ and K̲h̲wārazms̲h̲āhī periods. He married Malika K̲h̲ātūn, widow of the last Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l III (killed in 590/1194 [ q.v.]). During the early part of his career, he ruled in Hamad̲h̲ān as a subordinate of his brother Nuṣrat al-Dīn Abū Bakr, during the time when much of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī was falling into anarchy in the post-S…

Wus̲h̲mgīr b. Ziyār

(379 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Ẓahīr al-Dawla , the second ruler of the Daylamī dynasty of the Ziyārids [ q.v.] of northern Persia, r. 323-56/935-67. Wus̲h̲mgīr is said to have meant “quail-catcher”, according to al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , ix, 30 = § 3603, cf. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 359. Wus̲h̲mgīr was the lieutenant of his brother Mardāwīd̲j̲ [ q.v.], and after his death was hailed at Rayy as his successor by the Daylaml troops. Until ca. 328/940 he held on to his brother’s conquests in northern Persia, but thereafter was drawn into warfare, in alliance with another Daylamī soldier of fortune, Mākān b. Kākī [ q.v.], w…

Nīzak, Ṭark̲h̲ān

(362 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, ruler of the northern branch of the Hephtalite confederation which had in pre-Islamic times ruled both north and south of the Hindu Kush, from what is now Soviet Central Asia to northern India, that people known to the Arab historians as Hayṭal (<* Habṭal), pl. Hayāṭila [ q.v.] (see on them, R. Ghirshman, Les Chionites-Hephtalites , Cairo 1958, 69 ff.). It is unclear whether the Ṭarkhān element of his name is in fact a personal name or the well-known Central Asian title (on which see Bosworth and Sir Gerard Clauson, in JRAS [1965], 11-12). The power of the northern Hephthalites, whose d…

K̲h̲ayrpūr

(807 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
1. A former native state of the province of Sind in British India, now in Pakistan, lying to the east of the lower-middle Indus River between lat. 27°46′ and 26°10′ N. and between long. 68°20′ and 70°14′ E., and with an area of 6,018 sq. miles; it is also the name of a town, formerly the capital of the state, lying some 25 miles south-west of Sukkur and Rohri. The southeastern part of what was K̲h̲ayrpūr state is largely desert, but the alluvial plains in the north and west, adjacent to the Indus, are fertile and are irrigated by canals from the Indus valley, so …

Ilyāsids

(468 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a minor dynasty which ruled in Kirmān in south-eastern Persia during the middle decades of the 4th/10th century. Their establishment there marks the final severance of Kirmān from direct Caliphal control, which had been restored earlier in the century after the collapse of the Ṣaffārid empire. The founder, Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad b. Ilyās, was a commander in the Sāmānid army and of Soghdian origin. He was involved in the revolt against the Sāmānid Amīr Naṣr b. Aḥmad of his brothers in 317/929, and when the rebellion collapsed in 320/932, he with…

Sīrāf

(701 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a port of the Persian Gulf which flourished in the early Islamic centuries as one of the main commercial centres of the Gulf, rivalling Baṣra. It lay on the coast of Fārs, near the modern village of Ṭāhirī, some 200 km/125 miles to the southeast ¶ of Bushire (Bū S̲h̲ahr [ q.v.]), in the garmsīr or hot region of the sīf or coasdand. Excavations carried out at the site of Sīrāf 1966-73 by a team sponsored by the British Institute of Persian Studies have shown that there was a Sāsānid port there, probably serving the inland centre of Ardas̲h̲īr K̲h̲urra, the latter Islamic Gūr or D̲j̲ūr [see fīrūzābād …

al-K̲h̲azrad̲j̲ī

(464 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Muwaffaḳ al-Dīn Abū ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-K̲h̲azrad̲j̲ī al-Zabīdī , called Ibn Wahhās , South Arabian historian who wrote under the Turkish Rasūlid dynasty [ q.v.] in the Yaman, d. late 812/early 1410 aged over 70. The biographical dictionaries give virtually nothing on his life, except that Sak̲h̲āwī states that he met him in Zabīd and that his ancestor Ibn Wahhās had been praised for his learning by the commentator Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī. According to Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa, K̲h̲azrad̲j̲ī wrote three histories of the Yaman, impe…

Muḥammad Ḥākim Mīrzā

(232 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Mug̲h̲al prince and half-brother of the emperor Akbar [ q.v.], b. 960/1553, d. 993/1585. In 973/1566 he was governor of Kābul and eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān for Akbar, but when temporarily forced out of his capital by the Tīmūrids of Badak̲h̲ s̲h̲ān, he retreated towards India, where a group of dissident Özbeg nobles proclaimed him emperor at Ḏj̲awpūr and incited him to invade India. He beseiged Lahore with his forces, but had to retreat to Kābul. For over a decade, he posed a threat on Akbar’s northwestern front…

Kalikat

(935 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, locally Kōĺikōd́u (interpreted in Malayalam as “cock fortress”, see Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson , a glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and phrases, 2London 1903, 148), conventionally Calicut and, in modern Indian parlance, Kozhikode , a town of the Western Deccan or Peninsular Indian coastland (lat. 11° 15′ N., long. 75° 45′ E.) in what was known in pre-modern times, and is still known, as the Malabar coast [see maʿbar ]. In British Indian times it was the centre of a sub-district ( tālūk ) of the same name in the Malabar District of the Madra…

Is̲h̲kās̲h̲im

(383 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a small settlement in the modern Afg̲h̲ān province, and the mediaeval Islamic region, of Badak̲h̲s̲h̲ān [ q.v.]. It lies in lat. 36° 43′ N., long. 71° 34′ E., and should not be confused with Is̲h̲kāmis̲h̲, further westwards in the Ḳunduz or Ḳaṭag̲h̲ān district of Badak̲h̲s̲h̲ān. The historic Is̲h̲kās̲h̲im is on the left or southern bank of the Pand̲j̲ or upper Oxus river (only in Soviet times did a smaller settlement on the other side of the river become the chef-lieu of the so-called Is̲h̲kās̲h̲im tuman or district of the Gorno-Badak̲h̲ s̲h̲ān Autonomous…

Hindū-S̲h̲āhīs

(318 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a native dynasty of northern India who were the first great opponents of G̲h̲aznawid and Islamic expansion into the Pand̲j̲āb. Bīrūnī in his Taḥḳīḳ mā li ’l-Hind describes them as originally Turks from Tibet who ruled in the Kābul river valley; it is possible that these “Turks” were Hinduized epigoni of the Kushans and Kidarites pushed eastwards by the Hephthalites [see hayāṭila ]. During the 4th/10th century these first Hindū-S̲h̲āhīs were replaced by a Brāhmanic line. In the time of the first G̲h̲aznawids Sebüktigīn and Maḥmūd [ qq.v.], the Hindū-S̲h̲āhīs constituted a powerful…

Riḍwān

(643 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
or Ruḍwān b. Tutus̲h̲ b. Alp Arslan, Fak̲h̲r al-Mulk (d. 507/1113), Sald̲j̲ūḳ prince in Aleppo after the death of his father Tutus̲h̲ [ q.v.] in Ṣafar 488/February 1095. After assuming power in Aleppo, Riḍwān and his stepfather, the Atabeg D̲j̲anāḥ al-Dawla Ḥusayn, aimed at taking over Tutus̲h̲’s former capital Damascus and thus at controlling the whole of Syria and Palestine not still in Fāṭimid hands. However, Riḍwān’s brother Duḳāḳ and his Atabeg Ṭug̲h̲tigin held on to Damascus, and after Riḍwān broke with D̲j̲anāḥ al-D…

ʿUtba b. G̲h̲azwān

(316 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
b. al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. D̲j̲ābir, Abū ʿUbayd Allāh or Abū G̲h̲azwān al-Māzinī, from the Māzin tribe of Ḳays ʿAylān and a ḥalīf or confederate of the Meccan clans of Nawfal or ʿAbd S̲h̲ams, early convert to Islam and one of the oldest Companions of the Prophet. He was called “the seventh of the Seven”, i.e. of those adopting the new faith. He took part in the two hid̲j̲ras to Ethiopia, the battle of Badr and many of the raids of Muḥammad. During ʿUmar’s caliphate, he was sent from Medina to lead raids into Lower ʿIrāḳ, capturing al-Ubulla [ q.v.], killing the marzbān of Dast May…

Ṣaffārids

(2,702 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a dynasty of mediaeval eastern Persia which ruled 247-393/861-1003 in the province of Sid̲j̲istān or Sīstān [ q.v.], the region which now straddles the border between Iran and Afg̲h̲ānistān. The dynasty derived its name from the profession ¶ of coppersmith ( ṣaffār , rūygar ) of Yaʿḳūb b. al-Layt̲h̲. founder of the dynasty. Sīstān, on the far eastern periphery of the caliphal lands, had begun to slip away from direct ʿAbbāsid rule at the end of the 8th century, when K̲h̲urāsān and Sīstān were caught up in the great K̲h̲ārid̲j̲ite rebellion, led by Ḥamza b. Ād̲h̲arak (d. 213/828 [ q.v.]), whi…

Ṭunb

(438 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of two small islands (the Greater and the Lesser Ṭunbs) in the Persian Gulf situated to the west of the Straits of Hurmuz (lat. 26° 15′ N., long. 55° 17′ E.), whose modest history has been linked in recent times with that of the island of Abū Mūsā to their southwest (lat. 25° 52′ N., long. 55° 00′ E.). All three islands have been the subject of disputes between the ruling power in Persia to the north and the s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ s of the Arab shores of the Gulf, those now forming the United Arab Emirates [see al-imārāt al-ʿarabiyya al-muttaḥida, in Suppl.]. The Ṭunbs are mentioned by the Portugue…

Nuṣratābād

(266 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the more recent name for the town of eastern Persia known in mediaeval Islamic times as Isfīd̲h̲, Sipih, Safīd̲j̲ (written in al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī and Ibn Ḥawḳal as Sanīd̲j̲, for *Sabīd̲j̲/Safīd̲j̲). It lay on what was the highway from Kirmān to Sīstān [ q.vv.], and some of the classical Islamic geographers attributed it administratively to Sīstān and others to Kirmān, reflecting its position on the frontier between these two provinces. Muḳaddasī and others describe it as a flourishing and populous town with its water from ḳanāt s, the only town in the Great Des…

Maḥmūd Yalawač

(422 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, minister in Central Asia and China of the Mongol K̲h̲āns in the 13th century A.D. Barthold surmised ( Turkestan3 , 396 n. 3) that Maḥmūd Yalawač was identical with Maḥmūd the K̲h̲wārazmian mentioned by Nasawī as one of the leaders of Čingiz’s embassy of 1218 to the K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīh Muḥammad [see k̲h̲wārazm-s̲h̲āhs ]. It is true that the Secret history of the Mongols (tr. E. Haenisch, Die Geheime Geschichte der Mongolen2 , Leipzig 1948, 132) refers to Maḥmūd Yalawač and his son Masʿūd Beg [ q.v.] as K̲h̲wārazmians (Ḳurums̲h̲i) and that yalawač / yalawar

Kötwāl

(1,220 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(Persian orthography, k.w.twāl ), commander of a fortress, town, etc. The word is used throughout mediaeval times in the Iranian, Central Asian and Muslim Indian worlds, and has spread westwards into the regions of ʿIrāḳ and the Persian Gulf, where we find it, for instance, as a component of place names like Kūt al-ʿAmāra [ q.v.], and given an Arabic-pattern diminutive form in al-Kuwayt [ q.v.]. Although the word appears from the Mongol period onwards in Turkish, including Čag̲h̲atay, in such versions as ketaul , kütäül , etc., so that many native authoritie…

Rūs̲h̲anī, Dede ʿUmar

(272 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Turkish adherent of the Ṣūfī order of the K̲h̲alwatiyya [ q.v.] and poet in both Persian and Turkish. He was born at an unspecified date at Güzel Ḥiṣār in Aydi̊n, western Anatolia, being connected maternally with the ruling family of the Aydi̊n Og̲h̲ullari̊ [see aydi̊nog̲h̲lu ] and died at Tabrìz in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān in 892/1487. Dede ʿUmar was the k̲h̲alīfa of Sayyid Yaḥyā S̲h̲īrwānī, the pīr-i t̲h̲ānī or second founder of the Ḵh̲alwatī order, and as head of the Rūs̲h̲anī branch of the order engaged in missionary work in northern Ād̲h̲a…

Subayta

(201 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, Isbayta , the Arabic name for a settlement in the Negev [see al-nakb ] region of southern Palestine, which had the Nabataean name, rendered in Greek sources as Sobata (whence the Arabic one), Hebrew Shivta. Its ruins lie 43 km/27 miles to the southwest of Beersheba at an altitude of some 350 m/1,150 feet. First described by E.H. Palmer in 1870, it has been extensively excavated since the 1930s. The town flourished in Late Nabataean, Late Roman and Byzantine times as an unwalled, essentially agricultural centre, it being away fro…

Rūznāma

(148 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
(p.), literally “record of the day”, hence acquiring meanings like “almanac, calendar, daily journal” etc. 1. As a mediaeval Islamic administrative term. In the ʿAbbāsid caliphate’s financial departments, the rūznāmad̲j̲ was the day-book ( kitāb al-yawm) in which all the financial transactions of the day—incoming taxation receipts, items of expenditure— were recorded before being transferred to the awārad̲j̲ , the register showing the balance of taxation in hand. The form rūznāmad̲j̲ points to an origin of this practice in Sāsānid administration. Later, in Fāṭimid…

Ḳuld̲j̲a

(1,365 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
or G̲h̲uld̲j̲a , modern Hi or I-ning, a town in the fertile and mineral-rich upper valley of the Ili river [ q.v.] in Central Asia. For the mediaeval history of the district in which modern Ḳuld̲j̲a lay, see almali̊g̲h̲ . The town of Ḳuld̲j̲a (“Old Ḳuld̲j̲a”) was probably a new foundation in 1762 by the Chinese after their victory over the Kalmucks [see kalmuk ] in 1759, and they named it Ning-yüan-chen. Two years later the town of Hoi-yuan-chen was founded as the headquarters of the Chinese governor-general ( dsandsün ) of Chinese Turkestan; this was known as “…

Tibesti

(336 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a mountain massif of the central Sahara, forming part of the elevated land running from the Adrar of the Ifog̲h̲as [see adrar ] in northeastern Mali to the Nuba mountains of Sudan. It lies roughly between lats. 23° and 19° 30′ N. and longs. 16° and 19° 30′ E., being about 480 km/300 miles long and up to 350 km/200 miles wide, and includes the highest peak of the Sahara, the volcanic summit Emi Koussi (3,415 m/11,200 feet). Three great, deeply-cut dry wadis indicate, as elsewhere in the Sahara, a formerly…

K̲h̲uldābād

(178 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town in the northwestern part of the former Ḥaydarābād state, now in Maharashtra state of the Indian Union, and situated in lat. 20° 1′ N. ¶ and long. 75° 12′ E; it is also known as Rauza (sc. Rawḍa). It is 14 miles from Awrangābād and 8 from Dawlatābād [ q.vv.], and a particularly holy spot for Deccani Muslims, since it contains the tombs of several Muslim saints and great men, including the Niẓām-S̲h̲āhī minister Malik ʿAnbar [ q.v.]; Niẓām al-Mulk Āṣaf D̲j̲āh, founder of Ḥaydarābād state [ q.v.]; and above all, of the Mug̲h̲al Emperor Awrangzīb [ q.v.], who died at Aḥmadnagar in D̲h̲u ’…

Rohtak

(189 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, the name of a region and a town of northwestern India, now in the Hariyana State of the Indian Union. The region is not mentioned in the earliest Indo-Muslim sources, but from the Sultanate period onwards, its history was often linked with that of nearby Dihlī, to its southeast. In the 18th century, it was fought over by commanders of the moribund Mug̲h̲als and the militant Sikhs [ q.v.]; for its history in general, see hariyānā . In early British Indian times, till 1832, it was administered by a Political Agent under the Resident in Dihlī. During…

Koyl, Koil

(337 words)

Author(s): Bosworth, C.E.
, a town of northern India situated 75 miles south-east of Dihlī and coming within the United Provinces in British India, now Uttar Pradesh in the Indian Union. The more modern town of ʿAlīgaŕh [ q.v.] has expanded out of a suburb of Koyl. In 590/1194 the commander of the G̲h̲ūrids, Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Aybak [ q.v.], captured Koyl on a raid from Dihlī, and henceforth there were usually Muslim governors over local Rād̲j̲put rulers, such as Kučuk ʿAlī under Bābur (932/1526) ( Bābur-ndma , tr. Beveridge, 176). Ibn Baṭṭūṭa visited Koyl on his way southwards from Dihl…
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