( Banū Umayya ), the dynasty of caliphs which, from its centre in Syria, ruled the whole of the Arab Islamic territories from 41/661 to 132/750. All of the caliphs during this period are descendants of Umayya b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams [ q.v.], a preIslamic notable of the tribe of Ḳurays̲h̲ of Mecca, but they represent two distinct lines within the clan of Umayya: the first three caliphs, descended from Abū Sufyān b. Ḥarb [ q.v.]., are referred to as Sufyānids; the remaining eleven, descendants of Marwān b. al-Ḥakam b. Abi ’l-ʿĀṣ [ q.v.], as Marwānids. For convenience, a list of the Umayyad calip…

, Maʿadd, fourth and last caliph of the Fāṭimid dynasty of Ifrīḳiya. He acceded to the throne of his ancestors at an early age on 29 S̲h̲awwāl 341/19 March 953; having been born on 11 Ramaḍān 319/26 September 931, he had barely come of age. According to his biographer, the famous ḳāḍī al-Nuʿmān [ q.v.], the designation of the young Maʿadd to the imāmate does not seem to have ¶ been surrounded by the traditional secrecy of the period of satr [ q.v.], his father al-Manṣūr bi ’llāh [ q.v.] having for long hesitated as to the choice of his successor from among his five sons. It was only…

, (not urṭukids ), a Turkish dynasty which reigned over the, whole or part of Diyār Bakr, either independently or under Mongol protectorate, from the end of the 5th/11th to the beginning of the 9th/15th century. Artuḳ, son of Ekseb, belonged to the Turkoman tribe Döger [ q.v.]. In 1073 he was in Asia Minor, operating for and against the Byzantine Emperor ¶ ¶ Michael VII, but he later appears principally as an officer in the service of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ Maliks̲h̲āh. In 1077 he brought the Carmathians of Baḥrayn under the rule of Maliks̲h̲āh; in 1079 Maliks̲…

, Banū , an Arab tribal term. The Arab genealogical works record the name Murra in the genealogies of many tribes, but apparently the name does not always denote functioning tribal groups. In the Ḳurays̲h̲, e.g., Murra is merely a link in the genealogical chain, and not the name of a clan (see Ibn Ḥazm, D̲j̲amharat ansāb al-ʿArab , Cairo 1962, 14 ff.). It is also difficult to determine whether a given (ancient) Murra was a tribe, a clan or a lineage. As effective tribal groups may be considered the following (among others): (1) th…

—The aim of the present article is to clarify general ideas, and to show what system underlies the expression of grammatical number, as regards the Arabic plural and collective. The Arabic language distinguishes. between: 1) the singular, 2) dual, 3) plural, 4) collective. Arab grammarians have paid close attention to the first three: 1) the singular: al-wāḥid ; mufrad is applied to the “simple” noun (as opposed to murakkab , applied to the “compound” noun) by the Muf . § 4; but it has also been used for “singular”, likewise fard [ q.v.].—2) the dual: al-mut̲h̲annā , …

, geographically speaking, the highlands of Gīlān [ q.v.]. In the south, the lowlands of Gīlān proper are bounded by the Alburz range; the latter forms here a crescent, the eastern horn of which comes close to the Caspian coast (between Lāhīd̲j̲ān and Čālūs). In the centre of the crescent there is a gap through which the Safīd-rūd, formed on the central Iranian plateau, breaks through ¶ towards the Caspian Sea. Before entering the gorge at Mand̲j̲īl the river, flowing here from west to east, receives a considerable tributary, the S̲h̲āh-rūd, which, rising in t…

, Banū , a clan of Ḳurays̲h̲ [ q.v.] which achieved a prominent position in pre-Islamic Mecca. Although in the course of the 7th century A.D. the clans of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams and Hās̲h̲im [ q.v.] went on to achieve greater prominence, a role of some importance was played in early Islamic history by Mak̲h̲zūmīs. They were for the most part descendants of al-Mug̲h̲īra b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar b. Mak̲h̲zūm, in whom the bayt of Mak̲h̲zūm reposed (al-Muṣʿab al-Zubayrī, Nasab Ḳurays̲h̲ , ed. Lévi-Provençal, 300; al-Balād̲h̲urī, Ansāb al-as̲h̲rāf , Süleymaniye ms. ii, 523; Ibn Haẓm, D̲j̲amhara …

II. In the Arab Lands 2. In Syria. A survey of the history of endowments in Syria, in the geographical sense of Bilād al-S̲h̲ām [see al-s̲h̲am ], has to take into account a broad range of changing and often localised rules and practices. This article will focus primarily on Syria’s main urban centres, Damascus [see dimas̲h̲ḳ ], Jerusalem [see al-ḳuds ] and Aleppo [see ḥalab ], and occasionally refer to smaller cities. In general, endowments in Syria have not solicited as much scholarly attention as those in Egypt, particularly before the Ottoman period. To a certain…

, a city in central ʿIrāḳ during the mediaeval period, the existence of which is attested from the later years of the 1st century/closing years of the 7th century or opening years of the 8th century, until the beginning of the 12th century/turn of the 17th-18th centuries (according to M. D̲j̲awād, K̲h̲arāb Wāṣit , in Lug̲h̲at al-ʿArab , x (1931), 617 until ca. 1107/1695-6). From its foundation by the Umayyad governor of ʿIrāḳ, al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ad̲j̲ (75-95/694-713 [ q.v.]), the city was the administrative and political capital of that province under the first Marwānids (65-…

¶ i.—General Introduction The Kurds, an Iranian people of the Near East, live at the junction of more or less laicised Turkey, S̲h̲īʿi Iran, Arab and Sunnī ʿIrāḳ and North Syria, and Soviet Transcaucasia. The economic and strategic importance of this land, Kurdistān, is undeniable. Since the end of the First World War, the Kurdish people, like all the rest of their neighbours, have undergone considerable transformations as much in the political order as in the economic, social and cultural domain. …

(a.), vizier or chief minister. I. In the Arab World 1. The ʿAbbāsids. Etymology The term wazīr occurs in the Ḳurʾān (XXV, 35: “We gave Moses the book and made his brother Aaron a wazīr with him”), where it has the sense of “helper”, a meaning well attested in early Islamic poetry (for examples, see Goitein, The origin of the vizierate, 170-1). Though several scholars have proposed Persian origins for the term and for the institution, there is no compelling reason to doubt the Arabic provenance of the term or an Arab-Islamic origin and evolution of the institution of the wazīr (cf. Goitein, op. ci…

, Syria, etymologically, “the left-hand region”, because in ancient Arab usage the speaker in western or central Arabia was considered to face the rising sun and to have Syria on his left and the Arabian peninsula, with Yaman (“the rig̲h̲thand region”), on his right (cf. al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ ., iii, 140-1 = § 992; al-Muḳaddasī, partial French tr. A. Miquel, La meilleure répartition pour la connaissance des provinces , Damascus 1963, 155-6, both with other, fanciful explanations). In early Islamic usage, the term bilād al-S̲h̲ām covered what in early 20th-…

(a.), poet. ¶ 1. In the Arab world. A. Pre-Islamic and Umayyad periods. Among those endowed with knowledge and with power in ancient Arabia stands the figure of the s̲h̲āʿir , whose role is often confused with that of the ʿarrāf ( s̲h̲aʿara and ʿarafa having the same semantic value: cf. I. Goldziher, Abhandlungen , i, 3 ff.) and of the kāhin [ q.v.]. They were credited with the same source of inspiration, the d̲j̲inns (Goldziher, Die Ǧinnen der Dichter , in ZDMG, xlv [1891], 685 ff.). However, the s̲h̲āʿir was, originally, the repository of magical rather than divinatory knowledge; …

i.—Geography The geological background: The alignments of Iran’s principal topographie features, represented by the Kūhhā-yi Alburz and the Zagros Chain, are west to east and north-west to south-east, respectively. In broad context, the Alburz is a continuation of the European Alpine structures, while the Zagros chain has been linked through Cyprus with the Dinaric Alps (Fisher, 1956). The structure of the mountain rim of the country has been influenced strongly by tectonic movements which have n…

, a Turkish dynasty of mediaeval Islam which, at the peak of its power during the 5th-6th/11th-12th centuries, ruled over, either directly or through vassal princes, a wide area of Western Asia from Transoxania, Farg̲h̲āna, the Semirečye and K̲h̲wārazm in the east to Anatolia, Syria and the Ḥid̲j̲āz in the west. From the core of what became the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ empire, subordinate lines of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family maintained themselves in regions like Kirmān (till towards the end of the 6th/12th century), Syria (till the opening years of…