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, an Iranian people, now reduced to between 4,000 and 5,000 houses, inhabiting an area north of the main road from Kirmāns̲h̲āh to the Persian frontier near Ḳaṣr-i S̲h̲īrīn and comprising the slopes of the Kūh-i S̲h̲āhān—Dālāhū mountain. The Gūrān ‘capital’ is Gahwāra, lying 60 km. due west of Kirmāns̲h̲āh in the valley of the Zimkān, a southern tributary of the Sīrwān. An isolated community occupies the village of Kandūla, 40 km. north-east of Kirmāns̲h̲āh, near the site of Dīnawar. Other, more numerous branches are formed by the Bād̲j̲alān and the tribes of the Hawrāmān [ qq.v.]. An older…

, also ḥamawand (generally Arabicized as Aḥmadwand, though Ḥama is the normal hypocoristic form of Muḥammad), a small Kurdish tribe of obscure origins, numbering about 10,000 souls, now settled mainly in the Čamčamāl and Bāzyān districts west of Sulaymāniya, in ʿIrāḳ. The chief family is divided into the four branches Ramawand, Ṣafarwand, Ras̲h̲awand and Bagzāda. Ag̲h̲as of this family were until recently established in some fifty villages of the area, having both tribal followers and client villagers in their service. With the exception of one offshoot, which went to S̲h̲ī…

, D̲j̲abal al-Ḳabḳ (the most common rendering), al-Ḳabk̲h̲ ( e.g., Masʿūdī) or al-Ḳabd̲j̲ ( e.g. Ṭabarī, Yāḳūt), Turkish Kavkaz, the name given by the Muslims to the Caucasus Mountains. The form ḳabḳ may derive from Middle Persian kāfkōh “the mountain of Kāf”, Armenian kapkoh ; in Firdawsī we find the Caucasus called kūh-i ḳāf (Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik , i, 45, cf. Marquart, Ērānšahr , 94). A village called Ḳabḳ is also mentioned by Ibn Rusta, 173, tr. Wiet, 201, as being the first stage on the road from Harāt to Isfizār and Sīstān. 1. Topography and ethnology. The Caucasus became k…

is the language of the Burūs̲h̲o, who form the majority of the population of the isolated principalities of Hunza and Nagir [ q.v.] in the western Karakoram. It is probably used by about 20,000 persons. A closely related dialect, called Werčikwār, is spoken in the Yāsin valley further west towards Čitrāl. The language was no doubt formerly current over a larger territory than at present. Al-though it shares much vocabulary with the Dardic languages S̲h̲iṇa of Gilgit and Khowār of Čitrāl [see dardic and kāfir languages ], Burus̲h̲aski has no known genetic rel…

Both surviving branches of this formerly larger tribe are now settled in ʿIrāḳ. The main branch occupies the area of Bin Ḳudra and Ḳuratū, north of Ḵh̲ānaḳīn. An offshoot, known variously as Bad̲j̲lān, Bād̲j̲wān or Bēd̲j̲wān, is to be found in the S̲h̲abak [ q.v.] area on the left bank of the river Tigris opposite Mawṣil. Although the tribehas always been known as a Kurdish one this is only so in the wide sense that all nomads of the Zagros area, including the Gūrān [ q.v.] and the Lurs, are considered by their neighbours to be Kurds. In fact, all Bād̲j̲alānīs appear to speak a …

¶ 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. …

, infinitive of the verb aḍāfa ( ilā ) “to unite (with)”, has became a term in Arabic grammar. In the Kitāb of Sībawayhi it has at first a very wide meaning: it is inserted into the theory of the d̲j̲arr (genitive) [the Kūfans say k̲h̲afḍ ] set out in Chapter 100. There we find: “al-D̲j̲arr is found only in nouns that are muḍāf ilayhi” , that is: “that have received an adjunction”, the muḍāf being that which is “added”. It is the iḍāfa , the fact of having united one term with another, that requires the d̲j̲arr ( Mufaṣṣal , § 110), but the “operator” of this putting into the d̲j̲arr, the ʿāmil , is the ḥarf al…

, Avroman , a mountainous region of the southern Zagros lying west of Sanandad̲j̲ (Senna) on the western border of Īrān. It extends for approximately 50 km. south-east from a point 46° 0′ E., 35° 30′ N., to the river Sīrwān. The Hawrāmān mountain (Avroman Dagh, 2626 m.) forms a northern extension of the S̲h̲āhō range, from which it is separated by the Sīrwān. Parallel to both ranges, east of the river, is the Kō (or Kūh-i) Sālān (2597 m.). The chief products of the area are various orchard fruits, walnuts, gall-apples and mastic. The population is a branch of the Gūrān [ q.v.] and numbers perhaps…

, bādīnān , the Kurdish territory to the north and north-east of the Mawṣil plain. From the latter years of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, circa 600/1200, until the middle of the 13th/19th century the area was a principality ruled from ʿAmādiya ([ q.v.], Kurdish Āmēdī ). It included ʿAḳra (Kurd. Ākrē ), S̲h̲ūs̲h̲, and the Zēbārī lands on the Great Zāb river to the east and Dahūk, and occasionally Zāk̲h̲ū, to the west. The principalities of Bōhtān and Ḥakārī bounded it in the north, and that of Sōrān in the south. The eponymous Bahāʾ al-Dīn family came originally from S̲h̲ams al-Dīnān (Kurd. S̲h̲amdīnā…

, two principalities in the extreme west of the Karakoram range of mountains, lie between Gilgit in the south, Ishkomān in the west, Afg̲h̲ān Wāk̲h̲ān in the north, and Chinese Turkistān in the north and east, i.e., approximately between 74° 10′ and 75° 20′ E. and 36° 10′ and 37° N. The whole area is extremely rugged and mountainous and for the most part uninhabitable. Permanent settlements exist only in the river valleys where terracing and irrigation of the mountainsides is possible, p…

iii. Languages (a) Pas̲h̲to [see afg̲h̲ān . (ii). The Pas̲h̲to language] (b) Kurdish [see kurds , kurdistān . v. Language] (c) Zaza [ q.v.] (d) Ḵh̲wārazmian (e) Sogdian and Bactrian in the early Islamic period (f) New Persian (g) New Persian written in Hebrew characters [see judaeo-persian . ii. Language] (d) Ḵh̲wārazmian. Ḵh̲warazmian, last attested late in the 8th/14th century (before yielding to Turkish), belonged to the Eastern branch of the Iranian language family, being most closely related to Sogdian, its southeastern neighbour. Pre-Islami…

(a.), dictionary. 1. Arabic Lexicography The word ḳāmūs/ḳawmas , from the Greek Ωχεανός appeared in Arabic, at the latest at the time of the Prophet, with the meaning of “the bottom, the very deepest part of the sea”. Nevertheless, following Ptolemy, the Arab geographers borrowed the Greek word again, in the form Uḳiyānūs , and applied it to “the mass of water surrounding the earth”, more particularly the Atlantic Ocean, which was called Uḳiyānūs al-muḥīṭ , then more simply al-Ḳāmūs al-muḥīṭ . As this latter term was employed in a metaphorical sense by al-Fīrūzābādī [ q.v.] as the title o…

, a sovereign State, of the Muslim religion, for the most part Arabic-speaking, situated at the eastern end of the Fertile Crescent. i.—Geography The structure of ʿIrāḳ paradoxically derives its originality from the fact that it forms part of a large geographical block of territory. From the Arabo-Syrian desert tableland which it faces along its south-western flank, it takes its general aspect and its climate. All along its frontiers on the North-East, on the other hand, it shares the orientation and ¶ relief of the folded mountain-chains of western Asia, which give it its t…

region on the lower reaches of the Oxus (Amu Darya) in western Central Asia.A version of this article is available in printVolume V, Fascicle 5, pp. 511-520 CHORASMIA (Gk. Chorasmiē < OPers. (H)uwārazmiš, Av. Xᵛāirizəm, later Ḵᵛārazm [Khwārazm], generally derived from * hwāra-zam/zmī-, either “nourishing land” [Burnouf, p. cviii; Sachau, p. 473; Geiger, p. 29;  Pauly-Wissowa III/2, cols. 2406-8] or “lowland” [Lerch, p. 447; Veselovskiĭ, p. v; Kiepert, no. 60; MacKenzie,  Camb. Hist. Iran III/2, p. 1244; Bogolyubov, p. 370, has suggested “land with good cattle enclo…

A version of this article is available in printVolume VIII, Fascicle 4, 5, pp. 439-452i. Persian elements in EnglishWords from all stages of Persian and from many fields have found their way into English, but almost always through the medium of one or more other languages. The earliest were literary words, quoted from Old Persian by classical Greek and Latin authors, which were then carried down to later European languages. The best known is probably Gk. parádeisos < OPers. * paridaiza-, (from which came NPers. pālīz “a kitchen garden”), used by Xenophon for an “enclosed park” o…

[English edition] العراق دولة ذات سيادة، دينها الإسلام. يتكلّم أغلب سكّانها العربيّة، وتقع في أقصى الشّرق من الهلال الخصيب. 1. الجغرافيا من المفارقة أن يستمدّ العراق تميّزه في تركيبته الجغرافيّة من كونه يشكّل جزءًا من كتلة جغرافيّة واسعة. فهو يستمدّ، من ناحية أولى، خصائصه الجغرافيّة العامّة ومناخه من هضبة بادية الشّام (الصّحراء العربيّة السّوريّة) التي يقع على طول سفحها الجنوبيّ الغربيّ، ومن جهة أخرى يشترك في الاتّجاه والتّضاريس مع سلاسل الجبال المنفرجة في آسيا الغربية التي تتقاسم، على طول تخومها الشّماليّة الشّرقيّ…