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b. Kočḳar , Turkish slave commander of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs and governor for them in Ḵh̲wārazm with the traditional title of Ḵh̲wārazm-S̲h̲ah [ q.v.] in 490/1097. He was the successor in this office of Anūs̲h̲tigin G̲h̲arčaʾī, the founder of the subsequent line of Ḵh̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs who made their province the centre of a great military empire in the period preceeding the Mongol invasions. According to Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, x, 181-2, Ekenči was one of Sultan Berk-Yaruḳ’s slaves (but according to Ḏj̲uwaynī, ii, 3, tr. Boyle, i, 278, one of Sand̲j̲ar’s slaves), and was appointed to Ḵh̲wārazm by Berk-…

, a local dynasty of mediaeval Central Asia which ruled in the upper Oxus principality of Čag̲h̲āniyān [ q.v.] in the 4th/10th and early 5th/11th centuries. At the time of the Arab invasions of the early 2nd/8th century, Čag̲h̲āniyān had been ruled by a dynasty of Čag̲h̲ān-K̲h̲udās. probably of Iranian stock like the princes of Soghdia and K̲h̲wārazm, who, pace other local rulers, seems to have co-operated with the incoming Arabs (see H.A.R. Gibb, The Arab conquests in Central Asia, London 1923, 9, 32). The eponymous ancestor Muḥtād̲j̲ may have been a descendant of these p…

, Persian governor in the Yemen towards the end of the Prophet Muḥammad’s lifetime. A Persian presence had been established in the Yemen ca. 570 A.D. when there had taken place a Yemenī national reaction under the Ḥimyarī prince Abū Murra Sayf b. D̲h̲ī Yazan [see sayf b. d̲h̲ī yazan ] against the Ethiopian-backed governor Masrūḳ b. Abraha. The Persian Emperor Ḵh̲usraw Anūs̲h̲irwān had sent troops to support Sayf b. D̲h̲ī Yazan, and eventually, a Persian garrison, with a military governor at its head, was set up in Ṣanʿāʾ. It was the progeny of …

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh, early Meccan convert to Islam, prominent Companion of the Prophet and leading commander in the Arab invasions of Syria, d. 18/639. Apparently of Kindī origin, he was known by his mother’s name Ḥasana, but his patrilineal nasab was ... b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Muṭāḥ b. ʿAmr. He is described as a ḥalīf or confederate [see ḥilf ] of the Meccan clan of Zuhra but as also being connected, through another marriage of his mother, with D̲j̲umaḥ. As an early convert, he took part in the second hid̲j̲ra or migration to Ethiopia (see Ibn Sa’d, iv/1, 94, vii, 118; Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, Usd al-g̲h̲āba …

, secretary in the service of the Ṣaffārids of Sīstān and one of the first known poets to write verse in New Persian according to the rules of Arabic quantitative metre, sc. ʿarūḍ [ q.v.]. The local history of Sīstān, the Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Sīstān , cites fragments from four poems, apparently ḳaṣīdas , by Muḥammad b. Waṣīf (see G. Lazard, Les premiers počtes persans ( IX e -X e sičcles ), Tehran-Paris 1342/1964, i, 18, 54-6, ii, 13-15). The first of these was composed, the anonymous historian states, around the time of Yaʿḳūb b. Layt̲h̲’s conquest …

, the name found in mediaeval times for a district of northern K̲h̲urāsān. It lay to the south of Kūčān/K̲h̲abūs̲h̲ān [ q.v.], straddling the hilly region of the modern Kūh-i S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān and the Kūh-i Binālūd, around the sources of the Kas̲h̲af-Rūd. It is not to be identified with the district of D̲j̲ād̲j̲arm [ q.v. in Suppl.] lying further to the west, as was done by Le Strange, The lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 392, an error perpetuated by B. Spooner in his Arghiyān . The area of Jājarm in western Khurāsān , in Iran , Jnal . of the British Institute of Persian Studies …

, T́hāneswar (meaning “place of the god”), a town of northern India, especially notable in accounts of the raids of the G̲h̲aznawids and G̲h̲ūrids [ q.vv.]. It is situated in the eastern Pand̲j̲āb on the banks of the Saraswati River, some 32 km/20 miles north of Karnāl, in the direction of Ambāla (lat. 29° 59′ N., long. 76° 50′ E.). In the mediaeval Islamic sources (e.g. al-ʿUtbī, Gardīzī), the name usually appears as Tānīsar or Tānīs̲h̲ar. Mentioned by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen-Tsang, it was famed for its Hindu shrine, with a bronze idol Čakraswāmi “lord of th…

, a line of Atabegs which ruled in Fārs during the second half of the 6th/12th century and for much of the 7th/13th one (543-681/1148-1282). They were of Türkmen origin, and Maḥmūd Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī considered them as a clan of the Og̲h̲uz tribe [see g̲h̲uzz ], giving their particular tamg̲h̲a ( Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-Turk , Tkish. tr. Atalay, i, 56, iii, 141, 414); later sources such as Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn, Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī’s Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Guzīda and Abu ’l-G̲h̲āzī’s S̲h̲ad̲j̲ara-yi Tarākima were uncertain whether Salg̲h̲ur was a clan or the name of an eponymo…

(a. “counsellor of the state”), a title bestowed on six separate men of affairs in Ḳād̲j̲ār Persia during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the last of these being Mus̲h̲īr al-Dawla Ḥasan Pirniyā (d. 1935), prime minister in 1920 towards the end of Ḳād̲j̲ār rule. All six of them served as diplomatic envoys or ambassadors, and all except the first one became minister for foreign affairs in Tehran. It is the first Mus̲h̲īr al-Dawla, Mīrzā Sayyid D̲j̲aʿfar K̲h̲ān Tabrīzī, Muhandis Bas̲h̲ī ( ca. 1790-1862), who will concern us here. He had been one of the group of five Persians …

(p.), literally “wind-catcher”, the term used in Persia for the towers containing ventilation shafts and projecting high above the roofs of domestic houses. They are also erected over water-storage cisterns and over the mouths of mineshafts in order to create ventilation through the tunnels below. In domestic houses, cooler air is forced down either to rooms at ground level or to cellars (the zīr-i zamīn ), and it provides an early form of air conditioning. The towers are usually substantial, square-sectioned structures with rows of aper…

b. Ziyār b. Wardāns̲h̲āh , Abu ’l-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ , founder of the Ziyārid dynasty [ q.v.] in the Caspian regions of Persia. Mardāwid̲j̲’s rise as a soldier of fortune in northern Persia is bound up with the decline of direct caliphal control there, seen already in the independent role of the Sād̲j̲id governors [ q.v.] in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān towards the end of the 3rd/9th century and in the general upsurge of hitherto submerged indigenous Iranian elements, Daylamī, D̲j̲īlī and Kurdish, forming what has been called the “Daylamī interlude” of Persian history [see ḍaylam , and also buwayhids , k…

, in Arabic orthography Yag̲h̲mā, a Turkish tribe of Central Asia mentioned in accounts of the early Turks and their component tribal groups. P. Pelliot thought that the Chinese ϒang-mo presupposed a nasalised form * ϒangma ( Notes sur le “Turkestan” de M.W . Barthold, in T’oung-Pao , xxvii [1930], 17). There are sections on the Yag̲h̲ma in Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 95-6 § 13, cf. comm. 277-81, and Gardīzi, Zayn al-ak̲h̲bār , ed. Ḥabībī, Tehran 1347/1968, 260. Abū Dulaf does not mention them by name in his First Risāla , but Marquart thought that his Bug̲h̲rād̲j̲ tri…

, sc. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm, a mawlā of T̲h̲aḳīf, rebel against ʿAbbāsid rule in eastern K̲h̲urāsān during the caliphate of al-Mahdī, d. 160/777 or shortly afterwards. Yūsuf’s rising was only one of a series of revolts by both Arabs and local Iranians in Transoxania and eastern Khurāsān during the early ʿAbbāsid period. Whilst the sources impute certain religious motives to Yūsuf, including use of the traditional slogan summoning to al-amr bi ’l-maʿrūf wa ’l-nahy ʿan al-munkar , it seems that the revolt was basically political and directed against the a…

, a term often used in the sources for Sald̲j̲ūḳ history to designate the partisans and protégés of the great vizier Niẓām al-Mulk [ q.v.], after his death attached to and operating with the sons and descendants of Niẓām al-Mulk. The influence of these partisans was especially notable in the years just after Sultan Malik S̲h̲āh’s death in 485/1092, when they actively promoted the cause of and secured the sultanate for Berk-yaruḳ b. Malik S̲h̲āh [ q.v.] against his infant half-brother Maḥmūd, the candidate of Mālik S̲h̲āh’s widow Terken K̲h̲ātūn and her ally the vizier T…

, Abū Ṭālib Rustam b. Fak̲h̲r al-Dawla ʿAlī , Kahf al-Umma , ruler of the northern Būyid amīrate of Ray and Ḏj̲ibāl (387-420/997-1029). When Fak̲h̲r al-Dawla [ q.v.] died in S̲h̲aʿbān 387/August-September 997, his young son Rustam succeeded him at the age of eight (thus according to the anonymous Mud̲j̲mal al-tawārīk̲h̲ wa ’l-ḳiṣaṣ , ed. Bahār, Tehran 1318/1939, 396, giving Rustam’s birth-date as Rabīʿ II 379/July-August 989, and Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, ed. Beirut, ix, 69, but according to al-Rūd̲h̲rāwarī, in Eclipse of the ʿAbbasid caliphate, iii, 297, and Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, ix, 132, at…

, Tawwaz , a town in the western part of the mediaeval province of Fārs in Persia. It lay on or near the S̲h̲āpūr river midway between Kāzarūn [ q.v.] and the Gulf coastland, but the place fell into ruin by later mediaeval times and its site is no longer known for sure. For further details on the town, see s̲h̲āpūr , river, to whose Bibl. should be added Sir Arnold Wilson, The Persian Gulf , London 1926, 74-5; J. Markwart-G. Messina, A catalogue of the provincial capitals of Ērānsahr , Rome 1931, 94-5; Barthold, An historical geography of Iran , Princeton 1984, 163. (C.E. Bosworth)

, Indo-Muslim historian and stylist whose exact dates of both birth and death are unknown but who flourished in the 11th/17th century under the Mug̲h̲al emperors S̲h̲āh Ḏj̲ahān and Awrangzīb [ q.vv.]. He may have been the younger brother of the historian and littérateur ʿInāyat Allāh Kańbō (d. 1082/1671 [ q.v.]), if Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s reference to this last person, his master and patron, as birādar-i kalān “elder brother” is to be taken literally. Virtually nothing is known of his life, but he was ¶ a government official in Lahore, where his tomb still exists and where in 1079/1…

, cannanore, a port on the Malabar coast of southwestern peninsular India in lat. 11° 521 N. and long. 75° 221 E. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa sailed down this coast in 743/1342, and though he does not mention Kannanūr by name, ¶ it seems that his mention of the powerful ruler of D̲j̲urfattan, whose ships traded with the Persian Gulf, ʿUmān and South Arabia, refers to the local ruler there ( Riḥla , iv, 82-3). Aḥmad b. Mād̲j̲id (wrote ca. 895/1489-90) certainly speaks specifically of the “Bay of Kannanūr” in his account of the Malabar coastline (G. R. Tibbett, Arab navigation in the Indian Ocean before the …

(a.), usual pl. k̲h̲uzzān (the pl. k̲h̲azana is found in the Ḳurʾān in XXXIX, 71, 73, etc. for the angels who guard Paradise and Hell), literally, “he who keeps safe, stores something away”, a term of mediaeval Islamic administration for certain members of the financial departments (on which see bayt al-māl and, for Ottoman times, also k̲h̲azīne ) and also of the chancery. It was used in ʿAbbāsid times, for there was prominent in the early 4th/10th century Muʾnis al-K̲h̲āzin (so-called in the sources to distinguish him from the commander of the guard Muʾnis al-Muẓaffar [ q.v.], an associat…

(a.), literally “the wearers, or bearers, of black”, the name given to the partisans of the ʿAbbāsids at the time of the daʿwas of Abū Muslim al-K̲h̲urāsānī and Abū Salama al-K̲h̲allāl [ q.vv.], apparently from the black banners which these rebels against the Umayyads bore, so that they are described in some sources as the aṣḥāb al-rāyāt al-sawdāʾ . The origins of this use of black are obscure and have been much discussed. In the first place, the use of black may have been simply a mark of rebellion, for the anti-Umayyad rebel in K̲h̲urāsān and Transoxania, al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Surayd̲j̲ [ q.v.], act…

(t.), amongst the early Turks an emblem of royal authority, a standard or a drum (the former being used as a battle-flag and a rallying-point on the battle-field), known from the time of the Türges̲h̲ or Western Turks in Transoxania (see below) and of the Uyg̲h̲urs. 1. In older Turkish usage. The traditional old Turkish standard was a horse’s tail or a bunch of horse hair on a pole, or, in the regions of Inner Asia adjacent to Tibet, the tail of a yak ( ḳuṭās ). A great ruler would be described as having nine tug̲h̲s , the maximum ( toḳuz tug̲h̲lug̲h̲ k̲h̲an ). Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt…

, Turd̲j̲umān (a.), pls. tarād̲j̲im , tarād̲j̲ima , appearing in Ottoman Turkish as Terd̲j̲üman , interpreter. The word is of Aramaic origin, and is familiar in the form Targum for the Aramaic translations or paraphrases or interpretations of the Hebrew Old Testament which came into use when the use of Hebrew as a living, spoken language amongst ordinary people declined. The Arabic term, and the verb tard̲j̲ama “to translate”, was certainly in familiar usage by ʿAbbāsid times. 1. In the Arab lands in mediaeval times. We know of interpreters in the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, some of who…

, the name given in mediaeval Arabic geographical and travel literature to the port of Quilon at the southern extremity of the Malabar coast of southwestern peninsular South India, in ancient and modern Kerala (lat. 8° 53′ N. and long. 76°36′ E.). Quilon early became a centre of the St. Thomas Christians of South India, and is mentioned in a letter of the Nestorian Patriarch Īs̲h̲ūʿyāb of Adiabene (d. 660) to Simon, Metropolitan of Fārs, under the name of Colon and as lacking at that time a settled ministry (Assemanus, Bibliotheca orientalis, iii/2, Rome 1728, 437). The first mention …

, the name of a District and of ¶ its administrative centre, in the western Deccan of India. In British Indian times, these fell within the Bombay Presidency; within the Indian Union, they are now on the southeastern fringe of Mahāras̲h̲tra State. The town (lat. 17° 43′, long. 75° 56′ E.) was an early centre of the Marāt́hās [ q.v.]. In 718/1318 it came finally under the control of the Dihlī Sultans, being governed from Deogīrī or Dawlatābād [ q.v.], then under the Bahmanīs, then oscillating between the ʿĀdil S̲h̲āhīs of Bīd̲j̲āpur and the Niẓām S̲h̲āhīs of Ahmadnagar befo…

, Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad b. Mīkāʾīl (b. towards the end of the 10th century A.D., d. 455/1063), leading figure of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family and, with his brother Čag̲h̲ri̊ Beg Dāwūd [ q.v.], founder of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ Sultanate in Persia and ʿIraḳ. Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l and Čag̲h̲ri̊ must have been born when the Og̲h̲uz tribe [see g̲h̲uzz ] was still in the Central Asian steppes to the north of K̲h̲wārazm and Transoxania, and after their father’s death were apparently brought up in the D̲j̲and [ q.v. in Suppl.] region by their grandfather Sald̲j̲ūḳ b. Duḳāḳ, eponymous founder of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ…

(a., the noun of instrument from wat̲h̲iḳa “to trust, have confidence in”, or wat̲h̲uḳa “to be firm”, in usage the equivalent of the maṣdar mīmī or noun of place and time mawt̲h̲ik ), covenant, agreement, used 25 times in the Ḳurʾān and often linked with its synonym ʿahd [ q.v.]. In a few places, it refers to political compacts (IV, 92/90, 94/92, VIII, 73/72, and cf. the use of ʿāhada in VIII, 58/56), and once to the compact between husband and wife (IV, 25/21), but the majority of usages relate to compacts between God and various members of…

, the leader of a revolt in the Buk̲h̲ārā oasis, one with popular religious and social overtones, against Mongol domination (636/ 1238-9). Maḥmūd was a sieve-maker from the village of Ṭārāb or Tārāb, four farsak̲h̲s from the city of Buk̲h̲ārā on the K̲h̲urāsān road (see al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, ix, 5; Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 4; Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion 3 , 114 n. 9, 117, 132), who led a movement against the financial oppression of the Mongol basḳaḳs or tax-collectors and also, it appears, against local landowners a…

, Ottoman prince and eldest son of Bāyezīd I [ q.v.], ruler in Rumelia and a considerable part of northern and northwestern Anatolia in the confused years after Bāyezīd’s defeat and capture by Tīmūr at the Battle of Ankara in 804/1402, b. ?779/1377, d. 813/1411. He is heard of in 800/1398, when his father sent him against the Aḳ Ḳoyunlu Ḳara Yülük at Sivas, and he fought at Bāyezīd’s side, together with his brothers, at Ankara. He managed to escape to Europe with his retainers by being ferried across the Bosphorus by the Genoese. He had to…

, Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. Ḏj̲arīr b. Yazīd, polymath, whose expertises included tradition and law but who is most famous as the supreme universal historian and Ḳurʾān commentator of the first three or four centuries of Islam, born in the winter of 224-5/839 at Āmul, died at Bag̲h̲dād in 310/923. . 1. Life. It should be noted at the outset that al-Ṭabarī’s own works, in so far as they have been preserved for us, give little hard biographical data, though they often give us leads to his teachers and authorities and help in the evaluation of his per…

, a town of the Tarim basin, Eastern Turkestan, now coming within the Sinkiang/Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People’s republic of China and having in Chinese the (revived) name of So-chʾe/Shache (lat. 38° 27’ N., long. 77° 16’ E., altitude 1,190 m/3,900 feet). Yārkand lies on the river of the same name, which rises in the northern part of the Karakoram mountains near the imperfectly delineated border between Kas̲h̲mīr and China and then flows eastwards to join the Tarim river; with its perennial flow, it is the main source stream of …

, Arab traveller in Central Asia in early ʿAbbāsid times and the only Muslim one who has left us a record of his visit to the capital of the Uyg̲h̲ur Turks (pre-840) on the Ork̲h̲on river [ q.v.] in Mongolia, most probably Ḳarabalg̲h̲asun, the Khara Balghasun of the modern Mongolian Republic. It may be assumed that Tamīm was an Arab, possibly one of those settled within K̲h̲urāsān, and his nisba implies that he had been a fighter for the faith against pagans. He certainly seems to have been a great traveller in the steppes, since he says that he also visited the Turkish Kimäk [ q.v.] and their king…

, ʿAbbāsid army commander who served al-Maʾmūn and al-Muʿtaṣim in the first half of the 3rd/9th century, d. 223/838. Nothing is recorded of his antecedents, but he seems to have been of Ḵh̲urāsānian or Transoxanian Arab stock; at the height of his career, he had a grant of the revenues of the market at Is̲h̲tīk̲h̲ān [ q.v. in Suppl.] near Samarḳand (Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, i, 196). He was originally a partisan of the rebel in Transoxania Rāfiʿ b. al-Layt̲h̲ [ q.v.], during the latter part of Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd’s reign, but went over to the caliphal side in 192/807-8 (al-Ṭa…

, a settlement in the Semirečye region of Central Asia [see yeti su ] mentioned in the history of the Early Turks and their connections with the adjacent Islamic lands. It apparently lay slightly to the north of the Ču river valley, hence just north of the modern Kirghizia-Kazakstan border. Minorsky suggested that the name means “canal ( āb ) on the Ču”. At the time of the Arab incursions into Central Asia, the chief ordu or encampment of the Türgesh ruler Su-lu was located at Sūyāb; it was sacked by the incoming Chinese army in 748, and then in 766 the site was occupied by the Ḳarluḳ [ q.v.] when they…

, Nūbandad̲j̲ān (also Nūband̲j̲ān, according to Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Beirut, v, 307), a town of the province of Fārs in mediaeval Islamic Persia. It lay in the district of S̲h̲ābūr K̲h̲urra roughly midway between Iṣṭak̲h̲r and Arrad̲j̲ān [ q.vv.] on the road linking S̲h̲īrāz with K̲h̲ūzistān. The geographers describe the town as populous and ¶ flourishing, with fine markets and a good running water supply. It flourished under the Būyids, was destroyed by the S̲h̲abānkāra Kurds of Abū Saʿd in the 5th/11th century, but was rebuilt by the Sald̲j̲ūḳ M…

, the name for two towns of the eastern Iranian world. 1. Sabzawār in western Ḵh̲urāsān was, together with Ḵh̲usrūd̲j̲ird, one of the two townships making up the administrative district of Bayhaḳ [ q.v.], the name by which the whole district was generally known in mediaeval Islamic times. It lay in the cultivable zone on the northern rim of the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr or Great Desert. Sabzawār itself is described in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 102, §23.2, as a small town and as the chef-lieu ( ḳaṣaba ) of a district; the Arabic geographers merely mention it as a stage along the roads of Ḵh̲urāsān and as a rūstāḳ…

, Kis̲h̲s̲h̲ , the later S̲h̲ahr-i Sabz , a town of mediaeval Transoxania, now in the Uzbekistan SSR and known simply as S̲h̲ahr, but in early times in the region of Soghdia (Ar. Ṣug̲h̲d [ q.v.]). It lay on the upper reaches of the landlocked K̲h̲as̲h̲ka Daryā in an area where several streams came down from the Sayām and Buttamān Mountains to the east, forming a highly fertile valley, intersected with irrigation canals. The town lay on the Samaḳand-Tirmid̲h̲ high road, two days’ journey from Samarḳand; after passing through Kis̲h…

(t.), a designation in Old Turkish for a bird of prey, described by Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī ¶ as larger than a ṣonḳur , a possibility is the Crested Goshawk, Astur trivirgatus . It was certainly used for hunting purposes [see for this, bayzara ]. Its chief importance, however, in early Turkish history and culture, from Uyg̲h̲ur times onwards, was as a frequent personal name. In Islamic times, its most notable holder was Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l Beg [ q.v.], co-founder with his brothers Čag̲h̲ri̊ Beg [ q.v.] and Big̲h̲u (whose names are also those of avian raptors) of the fortunes of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs [ q.…

al-Saffār (“the coppersmith”), Abū Yūsuf, adventurer in Sīstān and founder of the dynasty there of Ṣaffārids [ q.v.], functioned as amīr in Sīstān from 247/861 and then as ruler of an extensive military empire in the eastern Islamic lands until his death in 265/879, in practice independent of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs. The origins of Yaʿḳūb’s family in Sīstān were clearly humble, despite attempts of later historians to elevate his father al-Layt̲h̲ to the status of head of the guild of coppersmiths in the province. He was one of four brothers who were members of local bands of ʿayyārs [ q.v.], in …

, Abū Saʿīd , S̲h̲ihāb al-Dawla , D̲j̲amāl al-Milla , etc., sultan of the G̲h̲aznawid [ q.v.] dynasty, reigned 421-32/1030-40. The eldest son of the great Maḥmūd b. Sebüktigin [ q.v.], he was born in 388/998. In 406/1015-16, as walī ʿahd or heir apparent, he was made governor of Harāt and in 411/1020 led an expedition into the still-pagan enclave of G̲h̲ūr [ q.v.] in central Afg̲h̲ānistān. When in 420/1029 Maḥmūd annexed the northern Būyid amirate of Ray and D̲j̲ibāl and attacked the Kākūyids [ q.v.] of Iṣfahān and Hamad̲h̲ān. Masʿūd was placed in charge of these operations in western Persia. S…

, the name of a town and of an extensive region, formerly a K̲h̲anate, of Balūčistān, now a District of Pakistan. (1) The town (often called Kalāt-i Balūč to distinguish it from the Afg̲h̲ān Kalāt-i G̲h̲ilzay) lies in lat. 28° 53′ N. and long. 66° 28′ E. at an altitude of 6,800 feet, and has in recent centuries been the centre of the K̲h̲ānate of Kalāt; until the rise of Quetta as a military base of British India [see kwat́t́a ] it was the most important town of Balūčistān. The name Kalāt or Kilāt represents Arabic ḳalʿa and Persian ḳala / ḳalāt , often pronounced kilā / kilāt i…

, a castle of the Ismāʿīlīs [see ismāʿīliyya ] in the Alburz Mountains in northwestern Iran, the mediaeval region of Daylam [ q.v.]. ¶ Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn states that it was built in 490/1097 by the Grand Master of the Assassins Ḥasan-i Sabbāḥ or by his successor Kiyā Buzurg-Ummīd in the early 6th/12th century. Ḏj̲uwaynī, tr. Boyle, II, 621-36, cf. M. G. S. Hodgson, The order of the Assassins , The Hague 1955, 265 ff., has a detailed account of the fortress’s reduction by the Il-Ḵh̲ān Hülegü in S̲h̲awwāl 654/November 1256. The Mongols besieged …

, Arabic form Sāriya, a town of the Caspian region of Persia, in mediaeval Islamic times within the province of Ṭabaristān, now in the modern province of Māzandarān [ q.v.] (lat. 36° 33′ N., long. 53° 06′ E.). It lies some 32 km/20 miles from the Caspian Sea on the Tīd̲j̲in river ( Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 77: Tīžin-Rūd̲h̲) and in the hot and humid coastal plain; the surrounding region has always been famous for its silk production and its fruits. Whether Sārī had any pre-Islamic history is unclear, though Islamic lore assigned its foundation to the legendary Pīs̲h̲dādid [ q.v.] figure, Ṭahmūrat̲h…

, Marḍī (or Murḍā) b. ʿAlī b. Marḍī, enigmatic writer in Arabic on military topics. His dates are unknown, but he flourished in the later 6th/12th century and seems to have lived in Alexandria. He composed for the Ayyūbid sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn [ q.v.] a treatise, Tabṣirat arbāb al-albāb fī kayfiyyat al-nad̲j̲āt fi ’l-ḥurūb min al-aswāʾ wa-nas̲h̲r aʿlām al-iʿlām fi ’l-ʿudad , extant in the Bodleian unicum Hunt 264 ¶ (extracts ed. and tr. Cl. Cahen, Un traité d’armurerie composé pour Saladin , in BEO, xii [1947-8], 1-47, 150-63). It deals with weapons such as the sword, bow, lance,…

, a town of India in the easternmost part of the Pand̲j̲āb, situated in lat. 30° 39′ N. and long. 76° 28′ E. and lying some 36 km/24 miles north of Patiāla city. In the mediaeval Islamic Persian chronicles, the name is usually spelt S.h.r.n.d , and the popular derivation from sar-Hind “the head of India”, from its strategic position, is obviously fanciful. The town must have had a pre-Islamic, Hindu past, but became important from G̲h̲ūrid times onwards and was developed by the Tug̲h̲luḳid sultan Fīrūz S̲h̲āh (III) at the b…

, Abū Isḥāḳ Ibrāhīm [ b. Yahyā ?] b. ʿUt̲h̲mān b. ʿAbbās al-Kalbī al-As̲h̲habī (441-524/1049-1129), Arabic poet of the Sald̲j̲ūk period. He was born in G̲h̲azza [ q.v.] at a time when that town was still under Fāṭimid rule, but as a S̲h̲āfiʿī Sunnī and as a person especially proud of emanating from the Imām al-S̲h̲āfiʿī’s own birthplace, his life was to be orientated towards the East, where the establishment of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs favoured a resurgence of Sunnī orthodoxy. He was studying in Damascus in 481/1088 as a pupil of t…

, the upper basin of the Kābul River (see preceding article), vaguely defined in early Islamic times as the region between Bāmiyān in the west and Lamg̲h̲ān in the east. The geographer Muḳaddāsī (c. 375/985) includes within it all the country north of G̲h̲azna and Zābulistān, i.e., the Lōgar valley, cf. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 349; and it is only about this time that the term “Kābul” becomes specialised for the name of the town rather than being applied to the whole region of Kābulistān. In contemporary Afg̲h̲…

, the name of a range of mountains running roughly south-north and to the west of the Indus river in modern Pākistān. The Sulaymān rise from the low tract of the Dērad̲j̲āt [ q.v.] which lie along the right bank of the Indus and run, in a series of long, sharp-backed ridges and jagged peaks, from the Bugt́ī and Marī districts of north-east Balūčistān in the south to the Gomal Pass [see gūmāl in Suppl.] and river in the north, thereafter continuing as the Wazīristān hills (i.e. they lie between latitudes 28° 50′ and 32° 20′ N.). It is at the northern end that the hig…

, K̲h̲uttal , a region on the right bank of the upper Oxus river, in what is now Soviet Central Asia, lying between the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ river and the Pand̲j̲ river (sc. the head waters of the Oxus), called the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲āb and D̲j̲aryāb in mediaeval times. It was bounded on the west by the topographically similar regions of Čag̲h̲āniyan and Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ [ qq.v.], and was often administratively linked with Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ (Yāḳūt, Buldān , ii, 402). K̲h̲uttal was a land of rich pastures in both the river valleys and on the upper slopes of the hills, where t…

b. Abī Muʿayṭ , Companion of the Prophet and member of the Abū ʿAmr family of the Umayyad clan in Mecca, d. 61/680. His father ʿUḳba fell at Badr opposing Muḥammad, but al-Walīd became a Muslim at the conquest of Mecca in 8/630. He acted as collector of the ṣadaḳa [ q.v.] from the Banū Muṣṭaliḳ under the Prophet and that from the Christian Banū Tag̲h̲lib [ q.v.] in al-D̲j̲azīra under ʿUmar. Through his mother, he was a half-brother of the ʿUt̲h̲mān b. ʿAffān, and when the latter became caliph he appointed al-Walīd governor of Kūfa after Saʿd b. Abī Waḳḳāṣ (29/6…

b. Muʿattib al-T̲h̲aḳafī , Abū Yaʿfur, a leader of the Aḥlāf group in al-Ṭāʾif [ q.v.] at the time of the rise of Islam and considered technically as a Companion of the Prophet, d. 9/630. He was descended through his mother from ʿAbd S̲h̲ams of Ḳurays̲h̲ and married a daughter, Āmina or Maymūna, of the Meccan head of resistance against Muḥammad, Abū Sufyān [ q.v.]. ʿUrwa took part in the negotiations between the Prophet and the Meccans for the truce of al-Ḥudaybiya [ q.v.] in 6/628 as an ally of Ḳurays̲h̲. When the men of al-Ṭāʾif, from both the component groups of the Aḥlāf a…