Search

, a small Syrian town, 195 m. above sea-level, on the right bank of the Euphrates. A suspension bridge 450 m. long, completed in 1931, crosses the river a short distance down-stream from the town. In 1867 it became the chief town of a sand̲j̲aḳ and later of a muḥāfaẓa , and today it has a modern aspect about it. The majority of its 22,000 inhabitants are Sunnī Muslims, and the small Christian minority comprises mainly Armenian refugees from former Turkish possessions. There are three mosques and several Orthodox and Roman …

, a small port in Lebanon situated between Bayrūt and Tripoli on the site of the ancient Byblos (or Gebal in the Old Testament), formerly a centre at once maritime, commercial and religious, closely connected with Egypt since the 4th millennium B.C., and as celebrated for the worship of Adonis, of a syncretistic nature, as for its specialization in woodwork and products from the forests on the mountains nearby. If Byblos remained truly prosperous in the Roman period and later became the seat of a bishopric, it appears to have greatly ¶ declined by the time when it was conquered by the…

, Abū ʿAbd allāh Ṃuhammad b. ʿAbdūs , a scholar born in al-Kūfa, who played a political rôle at the beginning of the 4th/10th century on account of his relations with the viziers of the time. He succeeded his father in the office of ḥād̲j̲ib to the vizier ʿAlī b. ʿIsā, of whose personal guard he was in command in 306/912. Later, he is found among the supporters of Ibn Muḳla whom he helped to be proclaimed vizier and whom he concealed after his fall; several times he was imprisoned and fined, either by the viziers or by the amīrs Ibn Rāʾiḳ and Bad̲j̲kam. He died in 331/942. Al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī is princi…

, name of several secretaries and viziers of the ʿAbbāsid period. (1) Yaḥyā b. K̲h̲āḳān , secretary of K̲h̲urāsānī origin, was in the service of al-Ḥasan b. Sahl [ q.v.] under the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn and became, under al-Mutawakkil, secretary to the office for land-taxes, and then director of the maẓālim -court, when his son ʿUbayd Allāh became vizier. (2) ʿUbayd Allāh b. Yaḥyā was the first member of the family to become a vizier. Patronized by the caliph al-Mutawakkil, who had appointed him as his private secretary, he succeeded i…

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Dāwūd b. al-D̲j̲arrāḥ . secretary of state of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs and uncle of the famous vizier ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā [ q.v.]. He belonged to a family of Iranian origin which had formerly been converted to Christianity and then embraced Islam. His father Dāwūd had been secretary under al-Mutawakkil and he himself began his career in government service during the caliphate of al-Muʿtaḍid and the vizierate of ʿUbayd Allāh b. Sulaymān, whose son-in-law he became. He was director of taxes for the eastern …

, the ancient Gerasa, a place in Transjordan situated south-east of the Ḏj̲abal ʿAd̲j̲lūn, in a well-wooded hilly district, standing on the bank of a small tributary of the Wādi ’l-Zarḳāʾ, the Wādi ’l-Dayr or Chrysoroas of the Greeks. Founded in the Hellenistic era at a centre of natural communications, later to be followed by Roman roads, it was captured by the Jewish leader Alexander Jannaeus in about 80 B.C., but freed by Pompey; it then belonged to the towns of the Decapolis, being incorpora…

(Ar.), a word with a number of varied meanings due to its dual etymology, Latin or Greek as the case may be. Deriving from palatium it means “palace” (Masʿūdī, al-Tanbīh , 167; Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Zubda , ed. Dahan, i, 142 and 145; Muḳaddasī, 147, and Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 195, mentioning the Dār al-Balāṭ at Constantinople; cf. M. Canard, Extraits des sources arabes , ap. A. A. Vasiliev, Byzance et les Arabes , ii/2, Brussels 1950, 412, 423 and n. 2). Deriving from πλατεῖα (through the intermediary of Aramaic), it has two principal meanings corresponding to…

, name of several secretaries or viziers of the ʿAbbāsid period, who did not however all belong to the same family. al-Ḥasan b. Mak̲h̲lad b. al-D̲j̲arrāḥ was a secretary of Christian origin and recently converted to Islam, who served the caliph al-Mutawakkil and became vizier under al-Muʿtamid, for the first time in 263/877, then in 264-5/878-9, and was dismissed from the government on the insistence of the regent al-Muwaffaḳ. He seems to have been exiled to Egypt, where he was at first welcomed by…

, secretary to al-Maʾmūn, was of Syrian origin and the son of a secretary of Abū ʿUbayd Allāh. He took advantage of his former connections with the Barmakids to enter the service of al-Faḍl b. Sahl. Indeed the Barmakids were already under an obligation to his father, and he himself had managed to be of service to the disgraced Yaḥyā. Apparently even before the capture of Bag̲h̲dād he went to Ḵh̲urāsān and, as the result of a letter of recommendation which Yaḥyā had given to him before his death, he was placed in charge of several dīwāns at Marw. After the return of th…

, the name borne by several physicians of a celebrated Christian family originally established at D̲j̲undaysābūr. It was from there that Ḏj̲urd̲j̲īs b. D̲j̲ibrīl b. Buk̲h̲tīs̲h̲ūʿ, who was director of the hospital of this town and well known for his scientific writings, was called to Bag̲h̲dād in 148/765 to attend the caliph al-Manṣūr, ill with a stomach complaint. By successful treatment he won the confidence of the sovereign, who asked him to remain in the capital, but he wished to revisit his native land in 152/769. Buk̲h̲tīs̲h̲ūʿ b. Ḏj̲urd̲j̲īs. to whom …

, name given to Aḥmad b. ʿUbayd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. al-K̲h̲aṣīb . vizier of al-Mukṭadir and al-Ḳāhir, who was probably the grandson of al-Muntaṣīr’s vizier Aḥmad b. al-K̲h̲aṣīb [see al-d̲j̲ard̲j̲arāʾi ]. He was originally secretary to the caliph’s mother, and then suddenly was made vizier after the fall of al-K̲h̲āḳānī, but only filled this office for a few months (Ramaḍān 313-D̲h̲u ’l-Ḳaʿda 314/Nov. 925-Jan. 927). Faced with the hostility of the military leaders, and treating adminis…

, abū hās̲h̲im , propagandist of the ʿAbbāsids at the end of the Umayyad caliphate, was a native of Sid̲j̲istān and had at first been secretary of the governor of Sind’ al-Ḏj̲unayd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. In 102/720-1 he was converted to the anti-Umayyad cause by Maysara ¶ al-ʿAbdī and Muḥammad b. Ḵh̲unays, and he put at the disposition of their party the fortune which he had amassed in business in Sind. After the death of Maysara he was entrusted with the direction of the movement in 105/723-4 and he was unusually active i…

, town in central Syria, 54 km. north of Ḥimṣ and 152 km. south of Ḥalab on the road which connects these two towns, and built on both banks of the Nahr al-ʿĀṣī [ q.v.] or Orontes, which at this point winds a great deal. The steppe plateau which surrounds the town is in part made into ploughed land (cereals), Mediterranean-type orchards and market gardens, thanks to the hydraulic installations which bring water from the river to its fertile soil. The town of Ḥamāt goes back to early antiquity: it was occupied by the Hittites, who left inscriptions there, then, in about the …

, the name given by the Arab authors to a locality situated, on the borders of Anatolia and Syria, in the upper valley of the Nahr Karzīn, at the foot of the Anti-Taurus (Kurd Dag̲h̲), north-west of ʿAynṭāb. It was the ancient Doliche, famous for the cult of a Semitic divinity who in the Graeco-Roman period received the name of Zeus Dolichenos. Being at the intersection of the routes from Germanicia, Nicopolis and Zeugma, it had been conquered by ʿIyāḍ b. G̲h̲ānim and became one of the fortresse…

, name of two former Christian monasteries in Syria. The name is of obscure origin; the Arab etymology dayr al-murrān , “ashtree convent”, is suspect, and Syriac does not offer a satisfactory explanation. The better known of the two monasteries was near Damascus, though its exact location cannot be determined. It was on the lower slopes of the D̲j̲abal Ḳaysūn, overlooking the orchards of the G̲h̲ūta, near the gateway of Bàb al-Farādīs and a pass ( ʿaḳaba ) where we may see in all probability the Baradā [ q.v.] gorge. It was a large monastery, embellished with mosaics in the Umayyad…

, secretary and writer of the Buwayhid period, belonging to a family of Sabean scholars and secretaries which had come from its native Ḥarrān to settle in Bag̲h̲dād and which included among its members the historian T̲h̲ābit b. Sinān. Hilāl’s grandfather, Abu Isḥāḳ Ibrāhīm [see al-ṣābiʾ ], was director of the Chancery at Bag̲h̲dād and it was in his service that Hilāl (b. at Bag̲h̲dād in 359/969) began his ¶ career in the time of the amīr Ṣamṣām al-Dawla ( K. al-Wuzarāʾ , 151). Little is known however of the details of his career, except that he became in…

, patronymic deriving from the locality of D̲j̲ard̲j̲arāyā in ʿIrāḳ (on the Tigris, south of Bag̲h̲dād), borne by several viziers of the ʿAbbāsid and Fāṭimid caliphs. 1.—Muḥammad b. al-Faḍl, former secretary of al-Faḍl b. Marwān [ q.v.], was vizier to al-Mutawakkil at the beginning of the reign, after Ibn al-Zayyāt’s disgrace, but was soon discarded by reason of his negligence. Recalled to the vizierate by al-Mustaʿīn in S̲h̲aʿbān 249/September-October 863, he died soon afterwards in the year 250/864-5, aged about eighty (see Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī , iv, 4, ed. Dedering, no. 1878). 2.—Aḥmad …

, vizier to the ʿAbbāsid al-Muʿtaṣim, and an ʿIrāḳi of Christian origin. He began his career modestly as a retainer of Hart̲h̲ama, the commander of Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd’s guard. Later, as a result of his particular talents, he became a secretary in the Land Tax office under the same caliph and subsequently he retired to ʿIrāḳ to the estates he had acquired during the civil war. It was there, in the region of al-Baradān, that he had an opportunity, during the reign of al-Maʾmūn, to gain the attentio…

, ʿalī b. abī ʿalī b. muḥ. al-tag̲h̲labī sayf al-dīn ), Arab theologian, born at Āmid in 551/1156-7; at first a Ḥanbalite, he later, at Bag̲h̲dād, entered the ranks of the S̲h̲āfiʿites; he embarked on a study of philosophy which he continued in Syria, became a teacher at the madrasa of al-Ḳarāfa al-Ṣughrā adjoining the mausoleum of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī in Cairo, and in 592/1195-6 became professor at the Ḏj̲āmiʿ al-Ẓāfirī. His intellectual powers and his knowledge of the "rational sciences" ( ʿaḳliyya ) gave him a brilliant reputation, but caused him to be accus…

, a village in the Biḳāʿ of Lebanon, situated at the foot of Mount Lebanon not far from Zahlé on the road to Baʿlabakk. Authors of the Ayyūbid period call it al-Karak, but then in the Mamlūk period it was called Karak Nūḥ. It was actually considered as the locality of the prophet Nūḥ’s tomb, which is still shown and which was apparently already mentioned in the 4th/10th century by the geographer al-Muḳaddasī. The structure which is considered to contain the stone cenotaph of Nūḥ and which is unu…