Abū l-Ḥusayn Bajkam (d. 329/941) was a military commander of Turkish origin who served as the amīr al-umarāʾ of Baghdad from 326–329/938–941. He began his military career in the service of the Daylamī soldier Mākān b. Kākī (d. 329/940–1) in Ṭabaristān and Gīlān. He switched loyalties to the Daylamī Mardāwīj b. Ziyār (d. 323/935), who had defeated Mākān in 320/932–3 and taken control of much of Jibāl province. Bajkam was involved in the murder of Mardāwīj in 323/934–5, which had been caused by the resentment felt by the Turkish ghulāms (slave soldiers) over their mistreatment at the …

Harthama b. Aʿyan (d. 200–1/816–7) was an important political and military figure who assisted in the enthronement of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Rashīd and al-Maʾmūn. His background is murky. He was from Khurāsān but belonged to the Banū Ḍabba (a famous tribe originally centred in al-Yamāma, in the central Arabian Peninsula), so his family were probably immigrants from the west. To complicate matters, he is described as mawlā amīr al-muʾminīn, an ambiguous term indicating some form of client/patron relationship to the ruling family. One explanation for this is that…

ʿAbdallāh b. Ṭāhir (c. 182–230/798–845) was a son of the ʿAbbāsid general Ṭāhir Dhū l-Yamīnayn, governor of Khurāsān and the eastern lands of the caliphate for the seventeen years 213–30/828–45, the most illustrious of the Ṭāhirid line of governors there, and the outstanding patron of Arabic culture and literature of his time in the Iranian lands. The Ṭāhirid family were originally of Iranian mawlā stock and had risen in the service of the first ʿAbbāsid caliphs. ʿAbdallāh early distinguished himself at the side of his father in military campaigns during th…

Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan b. Bahrām al-Jannābī (d. 300/913) founded the Ismāʿīlī Qarmaṭian communities on the Persian Gulf. He was of Persian origin, from the port of Jannāba (present-day Ganāva), on the Iranian coast. In the sawād (rural district) of Kufa, he married into a family that had been converted to the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa (mission), which was then headed by Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ and his brother-in-law Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdān (murdered 286/899). Abū Saʿīd was eventually won over to the daʿwa. Becoming a dāʿī (missionary) himself, he was initially active in his home region—Jannāba, Sīnīz, …

ʿAmr b. al-Layth (d. 289/902) was the second Ṣaffārid amīr (r. Shawwāl 265/June 879 to 8 Jumādā I, 289/20 April 902). ʿAmr was reported by the sources to be of modest origins, working either as someone who hired out mules or as a stonemason. He fought alongside his brothers Yaʿqūb, ʿAlī, and Ṭāhir as an ʿayyār (typically young irregular fighter) in Sijistān as early as 239/854. During Yaʿqūb's reign, ʿAmr and ʿAlī held various subordinate administrative and military positions, but there seems to have been no formally designated heir. Both ʿAmr and ʿ…

Abū Ṭāhir Sulaymān b. Abī Saʿīd al-Jannābī (d. 332/944) was the son and successor of Abū Saʿīd al-Jannābī, the founder of the Qarmaṭian community in al-Baḥrayn. Born in Ramaḍān 294/June–July 906, he was still a minor when his father was murdered in 300/913, and, with his five brothers, he remained under the tutelage of his uncle, the dāʿī (missionary) al-Ḥasan b. Sanbar. When he reached his majority, in Ramaḍān 310/December 922–January 923, he took over the leadership and soon terrorised the population of southern Iraq. Every year from 310 to 314/923 …

Abraha was a Christian king of South Arabia in the middle of the sixth century C.E. According to Muslim sources, he attacked Mecca with the “People of the Elephant” in about 570 C.E. The name “Abraha” is said in Muslim sources to be of Abyssinian origin, meaning “bright face” ( wajh abyaḍ; see Ibn Hishām, al-Tījān, 136; Ibn Saʿīd, 1:119). Islamic reports often add to Abraha's name the nickname al-Ashram (“Split-Nose”). The tip of his nose is said to have been cut off during a duel with his rival, Aryāṭ, in Yemen (see below). According to another explanation (Ibn Manẓūr, s.v. sh-r-m), a stone st…

Abū l-Sarāyā al-Sarī b. Manṣūr al-Shaybānī (d. 200/815) fought as part of Harthama b. Aʿyan’s (d. 200/816) army for al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33) against al-Amīn (r. 193–8/809–13) in the civil war (195–8/811–3). At the end of the war Abū l-Sarāyā, now unemployed, embarked upon a career of highway robbery as the leader of a small gang. In Jumādā II 199/January 815 he crossed paths with the ʿAlid Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm, commonly known as Ibn Ṭabāṭabā. Together in Kufa they revolted and, echoing the origin…

ʿAmr b. Luḥayy, also known as Abū Khuzāʿa, is the legendary pre-Islamic figure said to have introduced idolatry into Arabia. He was the ancestor of the tribe of Khuzāʿa, who lived in the vicinity of Mecca. The clans of Kuzāʿa that are considered his direct descendants are Kaʿb, Mulayḥ, ʿAwf, ʿAdiyy, and Saʿd. There are contradictory traditions concerning ʿAmr b. Luḥayy’s genealogical descent. On the one hand he is provided with a northern genealogy, Luḥayy being said to have been the son of Qamaʿa of the Muḍar. Qamaʿa’s mother was Khindif of the Q…

Saʿīd b. al-Baṭrīq (or al-Biṭrīq, although al-Baṭrīq meaning patrician seems more likely, 263–328/877–940), also known as Eutychius of Alexandria, was the Melkite patriarch of Alexandria and author of the historiographical treatise Kitāb naẓm al-jawhar, “The string of pearls,” also known as Kitāb al-taʾrīkh al-majmūʿ ʿalā l-taḥqīq wa-l-taṣdīq, “The book of history, compiled through investigation and verification,” or by its eleventh/seventeenth-century Latin title, the Annales. A native of al-Fusṭāt, Ibn al-Baṭrīq was appointed in 321/933 or 325/935 as patr…

Al-ʿAbbās b. al-Maʾmūn (d. 223/838) was the son of the caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33) and his concubine, Sundus. It is unclear whether he was ever formally designated heir apparent, but he was positioned to make a claim on the throne when his father died in 218/833. He first appears in al-Ṭabarī, who reports al-Maʾmūn’s reaction to the news of the death of the caliph al-Amīn (r. 193–8/809–13) (3:1065). In 213/828 al-Maʾmūn made al-ʿAbbās governor of the provinces adjoining the Byzantine Empi…

K̲h̲ambāyat (Cambay, Kanbāya, Kinbāya, and Kambhāt), lies at the head of the Gulf of K̲h̲ambāyat, in northwestern Gujarat, about fifty-two miles south of the city of Ahmedabad. It was a leading port in the Indian Ocean trading network from the late fourth/tenth century to the end of the tenth/sixteenth. When the Arab historian and traveller al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/946) visited K̲h̲ambāyat in about 300–1/913–4, he found it a flourishing town, located in a bay with deeper water than the Nile and the Eu…

Kanʿān is the name usually given by post-Qurʾānic Islamic traditions and literature to the son of Noah who was left behind and drowned in the Flood. The name is attested in early Qurʾānic commentaries (cf. Muqātil, 2:283–4), although a few sources maintain that his name was actually Yām. The Qurʾān does not name such a son but alludes to him in a few verses: “And Noah called to his son, who was standing apart, ‘Embark with us, my son, and be thou not with the unbelievers!’ He said, ‘I will take …

Amīn al-Dīn Abū l-Qāsim Ḥājjī Bula (or Ḥājj Bula) (d. 720/1320) was a religious writer and an influential Ṣūfī shaykh of Tabriz in the second half of the seventh/thirteenth and early eighth/fourteenth centuries, and probably the master of Maḥmūd Shabistarī (d. c.740/1340), the author of the famous Persian poem entitled Gulshan-i rāz (“The garden of mystery”). Ḥājj/Ḥājjī Bula was probably the nickname of Ḥājj/Ḥājjī Abū l-Qāsim (Ṣādiqī, 279). He is said to have been initiated into the Ṣūfī path by Shaykh Zāhid-i Gīlānī (613–700/1216–1301) in Gīlān…

Bilqīs, the Queen of Sheba in Arabic literature, is one of the most famous examples of the treatment of women wavering between demonisation and iconisation. The biblical story of her visit to King Solomon (1 Kings 10:1–10; 2 Chronicles 9:1–12) underwent many elaborations in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions, particularly in Ethiopia, where the queen is said to have founded the imperial dynasty (as recounted in the Ge’ez-language court chronicle Kebra nagast (“Glory of the kings”) and in popular legends). Bilqīs later became the ideal of black liberation move…

Al-Khayzurān bt. ʿAtāʾ al-Jurashiyya (d. 173/789) was a slave woman of Yemeni origin who rose to power as the wife of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mahdī (r. 158–68/775–85) and the mother of the two caliphs al-Hādī and al-Rashīd. Her ascent began in Mecca when she was offered to the caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 136–58/754–75), who was there on pilgrimage. He was particularly wary of associating with slaves who had family ties, but al-Khayzurān went before him well prepared; she claimed, duplicitously, that she had no relatives: “[M]y mother begat…

ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya (d. probably 131/748–9) was an ʿAlid rebel who advocated for the Hāshimite rights (i.e., the rights of the members of the ʿAbbāsid house and/or of their followers) to the caliphate, calling people to support al-riḍā min āl Muḥammad (an ambiguous “slogan” that can be paraphrased as: a call for the choice of a leader from the family of the Prophet with whom the Muslims would find satisfaction” Agha, xv). Ibn Muʿāwiya attracted many followers, including members of the ʿAbbāsid family (such as the future first two ʿA…

The Oghuz tribal union derived from groups within the Türk Qaghanate; they were led by a Yabghu and inhabited the Syr Darya–Aral Sea region. The Eastern Old Turkic (EOT) ethnonym Oghuz initially denoted a kinship grouping (cf. Chin. 九 姓 Jiu Xing “Nine Surnames/clans” translated into Chinese as Toquz Oghuz [“The Nine Oghuz”]). Its earliest attestation may be Hujie 呼揭 (Old Chin. hâ/hâh gat, Early Middle Chin. xɔ gɨat) or Wujie 烏揭 (Old Chin. ʔâ gat/kat, Early Middle Chin. ʔɔ gɨat), which may transcribe *Hagaŕ (Oghur? the Western Old Turkic [WOT] variant of Oghuz), a people con…

The Caucasus range, which constitutes a natural barrier between Europe and Asia, was called in pre-900/ 1500 Muslim sources al-Qabq (Ibn Ḥawqal, 306, 319; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam, 67, 145, 201; al-Kabkh (al-Masʿūdī, 399). Pre-Islamic Persian sources referred to it as Kaf Kof, a Middle Persian name that appears in Sāsānid-era inscriptions (MacKenzie, 535) and resurfaces in variant form in the Islamic-era Persian tradition, when Firdawsī (c. 328–410/940–1020) refers, in his Shāh-nāma (“Book of kings”), to the Caucasus mountains as the Kōh-i Kāf. The earliest etymon of the n…

Ḥanẓala b. Ṣafwān is a pre-Islamic Arabian prophet about whom little is known, although he is said to have flourished “after the prophet Sulaymān” or “between Jesus and Muḥammad.” There is no consensus regarding his prophethood, and many lists of pre-Islamic prophets omit mention of him (Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya fī l-taʾrīkh, Beirut 1993, 2:269, 13:101). According to a Yemeni tradition, Muḥammad recognised the site of the Sanaa mosque as the prayer site of the prophet Ḥanẓala, where he is also buried (al-Rāzī al-Ṣanʿānī, Taʾrīkh madīnat Ṣanʿāʾ, ed. Ḥusayn b. ʿAbdallāh al…