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, once one of the most important cities of the ʿIrāḳ in the centre of which it stood. The city was a creation of al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ b. Yūsuf [q. v.]. As to the date of its foundation, the statements of the Arab writers vary between 83 (702) to 84 (703). Yāḳūt is probably right in saying that the building of it occupied the years 83—86 (702—705). Al-Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ was certainly living in his new city by the year 84. On the date of its foundation cf. Streck, op. cit. (see Bibl.), p. 324—325; Périer, op. cit., p. 208; Masʿūdī, B. G. A., viii. 360. On the immediate reasons which led to the building…

(al-Mas̲h̲had), capital of the Persian province of Ḵh̲urāsān (q. v., ii., p. 966), the greatest place of pilgrimage for the S̲h̲īʿīs in Persia. It lies 3,000 feet above sea level in 59° 35′ E. Long. (Greenw.) and 16° 17′ N. Lat. in the valley from 10 to 25 miles broad of the Kes̲h̲ef-Rūd, which runs from N. W. to S. E. This river, also called Āb-i Mes̲h̲hed (the “river of Mes̲h̲hed”), rises about 12 miles N.W. of the ruins of Ṭus [q. v.] in the little lake of Čes̲h̲me-i Gīlās (cf. Fraser, op. cit., p. 350; Khanikoff, op. cit., p. no; Yate, op. cit., p. 315) and joins the Herī (Harī)-Rūd (q. v., a…

, or Abād̲h̲ah, a town in Persia situated on the road from Iṣṭak̲h̲r to Iṣpahān. Mention of it is found in oriental writings of the Middle Ages; see G. le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (Cambridge, 1905) pp. 282, 284, 297. At the present time it contains about 5000 inhabitants; comp. Reclus, Nouv. géogr. univ., ix. 270. Celebrated for the Persian wood carvings produced there; see Brugsch, Reise der Kgl. Preuss. Gesandtsch. nach Persien (Leipsic, 1862—1863), ii. 126, 222. — Arab geographers mention another Persian town of the same name situated in the distr…

(Būs̲h̲ehr) the chief seaport of Persia, in the province of Fārs, Long. 50° 51’ E, (Greenw.) and Lat. 29° N, The town is built on the north end of a narrow island (the Mesambria and ΧερόνησοΣ of the ancients) lying north and south, which is connected with the mainland by a tongue of swampy land which is regularly covered by the tides (it is called Mäs̲h̲īläl, cf. Stolze-Andreas, op. cit., p. 46). On the south end of this island or rather peninsula are the ruins of Rīs̲h̲ehr. The neighbourhood of Būs̲h̲īr is a cheerless desert only relieved by a few palm-trees; hi…

town in al-Ḏj̲ibāl, 7 farsak̲h̲s or 54 kms. southwest of Hamad̲h̲ān. on the western slope of the Alwand Kūh at the entrance to a fruitful well-tilled plain (5659 ft. high). As a permanent caravan-station on the famous, ancient highway Hamad̲h̲ān (Ekbatana)-Bag̲h̲dād (or Babylon), it is a settlement reaching back into antiquity, and (according to Tomaschek) is probably the ’Αδραπάνα of Isidor of Charax and the Beltra of the Tabula Peutingeriana (cf. Weissbach, in Pauly-Wissowa’s iii, 264). In the Arab Middle ages, and even into the Mongol per…

, the name of a town in ʿIrāḳ. When al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ [ q.v.], the governor of ʿIrāḳ appointed by the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik had put down the rebellion there, he began in 83-6/702-5 to build a new town which was called Wasiṭ (“centre”) because it was midway between the two older Arab capitals of this province, al-Kūfa in the north and al-Baṣra in the south. For the site of the town he chose the vicinity of Kaskar, on the Tigris, which had played a not unimportant part in the Sāsānian period. The new Muslim …

, a town in ʿIrāḳ (Babylonia) and, in the mediaeval division of this province, the capital of a district ( ṭassūd̲j̲ ) of the S̲h̲ād̲h̲-Ḳubād̲h̲ circle to the east of the Tigris, was a station on the important K̲h̲urāsān road, the main route between Babylonia and Īrān, and was at about an equal distance (7 parasangs = 28 miles) from Dastad̲j̲ird [ q.v.] in the south-west and from K̲h̲āniḳīn in the northeast. It was watered by a canal from the Diyālā (called Nahr D̲j̲alūlāʾ), which rejoined the main stream a little further down near Bād̲j̲isrā [ q.v.]. Near this town, which seems from the s…

, a town and one of the most celebrated S̲h̲īʿī places of pilgrimage in ʿIrāk. It is a little over one km. from the right bank of the Tigris, which here describes a loop, being separated from the river by a series of gardens. Kāẓimayn itself is prettily situated among palmgroves. It is connected with the west side of Bag̲h̲dād, about three miles away, by regular bus and taxi services, replacing the horse-tramway laid down by the governor Midḥat Pās̲h̲ā (1869-72), who did a great deal for Bag̲h̲d…

, in ʿAbbāsid times one of the sequence of small towns on the main route between Niṣībīn and Mawṣil, in the Ḏj̲azīra province, the others being Ad̲h̲rama to the west, and Bāʾaynāthā and Balad (where the Mawṣil-Sind̲j̲ar road bifurcated south-westward) to the east. Barḳaʿīd, of which the modern Tall Rumaylān, north of the railway Une (and near to Tall Kochek station thereon) may possibly mark the site, was probably just inside the Bec de Canard (eastward extremity of the modern Syrian province of…

, the highest point in the mountains on the borders of Northern Persia (cf. Alburz ), somewhat below 36° N. Lat. and about 50 miles north-east of Tehran. According to de Morgan it rises out of the plateau of Rēhne to a height of 13,000 feet above it. The various estimates of its height differ: Thomson estimates it at 21,000 feet (certainly too high), de Morgan at 20,260 feet, Houtum Schindler at 19,646, Sven Hedin at 18,187, and in the last edition of Stieler’s Handatlas (1910) it is given as 18,830 feet. Its summit, perpetually snow-clad and almost always…

, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn , Tunisian scholar ( fl. in the first half of the 19th century) who travelled in the Sūdān and wrote on Dār Fūr and Wadāī [ q.vv.]. He was an Azharī by training who in 1818 or 1819 set out for the Sūdān and spent some ten years there. From Sennar [see sinnār ] and Kordofān [ q.v.] he went to Dār Fūr and Wadāī, returning eventually via Fezzān to Tūnis. He recorded his experiences and observations there in an Arabic work of modest length which was translated into Turkish and thence into German by G. Rosen as Dos Buck des Sudan oder Reisen des Scheich Zain el-Âbidîn in Nigritien …

, Arabicised form of antiocheia, town in northern Syria, situated on the Orontes (ʿĀṣī) river, 14 m. from the Mediterranean coast. Founded about 300 B.C. by Seleucus I, and occupied by Pompey in 64 B.C., it became the largest and most important Roman city in Asia and capital of the Asian provinces of the Roman empire. Its gradual decay dates from the foundation of the Sāsānid empire, which diminished its political and economic influence in the Tigris-Euphrates basin and made it the object of repeate…

(sometimes also eghri̊ dag̲h̲ ), mountain (extinct volcano) with a double peak on the eastern frontier of the Turkish Republic, 39° 45 N 44° 20 E, the highest point in the plateau of the region of the Aras (Araxes) and Wan (high plateau of Ararat), in Armenian Masis or Masik, in Persian Kūh-i Nūḥ; by Europeans it is called Ararat, as it was identified with the mountain of this name (Hebrew Arārāṭ, originally the name of the country of Urarṭu, later understood as the name of a mountain), on which Noah’s ark is said to have alighted. (Originally Ararat was identified with Ḏj̲abal Ḏj̲ūdī [ q.v.] near …

a town in Central Babylonia, on the east bank of the Tigris, a few hours’ journey above Kūt al-ʿAmāra, and five parasangs (about twenty miles) south-east of Nuʿmāniya (the modern Tell Naʿmān). It is described as a flourishing place by the older Arab geographers; but, by Yāḳūt’s time (beginning of the 7th/13th century) it had considerably declined. In course of time—we have no details of its decay—it fell utterly into ruins. This town must date from a very remote period; for the name of the Gambū…

, (taken to mean ʿArabgīr, i.e. «conquest of the Arabs"), in modern Turkish orthography Arapkir, in Armenian Arabkēr, in the Byzantine sources Arabrakes, a town in eastern Anatolia, 19° 3′ north, 38° 30′ east, about 70 km. north of Malaṭya, situated on the Arapkir Su, a tributary of the Karasu, which later becomes the northern Euphrates, 1,200 m. above sea-level. Capital of a ḳaḍā in the wilāyet of Malaṭya, with 6,684 inhabitants (1945); the ḳaḍā itself has 23,612 inhabitants. The town is situated on a hill in a lowland which is surrounded by steeply rising walls of basalt…

, a place in medieval ʿIrāḳ, the exact situation of which cannot now be fixed. According to al-Masʿūdī it belonged to the Ṭaff [ q.v.], the frontier district between Babylonia and Arabia, and was 16 parasangs (about 60 miles) from Kūfa. Yāḳūt says it was nearer to Kūfa than to Wāṣiṭ. Bāk̲h̲amrā is famous in the history of the ʿAbbāsids for the decisive battle which took place there in 145/762 (while the Caliph was designing the new city of Bag̲h̲dād) between the army of al-Manṣūr, commanded by ʿĪsā b. Mūsā, and the tro…

, the largest river in southern Persia. It rises in the north-eastern part of the district of ʿArabistān (earlier called K̲h̲ūzistān), a little above Lat. 32º N. on the Zarda-Kūh, which belongs to the Bak̲h̲tiyārī mountain system or, to be more accurate, on one of the ranges named Kūh-i Rang, one of the highest mountains in south-western ¶ Persia (estimated at 13,000 feet). The actual source of the river, according to Sawyer ( Bibl ., op. cit., 486, with a picture), is about 10 miles above the place called Ser-i Čes̲h̲me-i Kurang “main source of the Kurang (Kuran)”. The…

a loan word from Aramaic karka meaning “fortified City”, “city (Fraenkel, ¶ Fremdwörter , xx; Pauly-Wissowa, iv, 2122, 2124; Supplement, i, 275, 283). In Islamic times, the word is associated with various towns. Found in areas of Aramaic culture before the Islamic conquest, such towns are distinguished from one another by adding the name of their geographic location, e.g., Kark̲h̲ Bag̲h̲dād, Kark̲h̲ Sāmarrā (cf. Yāḳūt, Mus̲h̲tarik , 368-70; Muʿd̲j̲am , iv, 252-7). In Bag̲h̲dād, al-Kark̲h̲ refers to a specific area (Bāb al-Kark̲h̲) and more generally to the whole of …

, under the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate a district south-west of Bag̲h̲dād, the land south of the Nahî Ṣarāt, a branch of the Euphrates canal Nahr ʿĪsā [ q.v.]. The Ṣarāt separates it from the Ḳaṭrabbul district; the southern part of the western half of Bag̲h̲dād (the so-called town of al-Manṣūr) as well as the suburb of Kark̲h̲ were situated within the bounds of the district of Bādūrayā; the latter formed, like the district of Ḳaṭrabbul, a subdivision of the circle of Astān al-ʿĀlī. (M. Streck*) Bibliography Muḳaddasī, iii, 119, 120 Ibn Ḵh̲urradād̲h̲bih, 7, 9, 235, 237 Balād̲h̲urī, Futuḥ, 250, 254…

(also Ḳarḳīsiya ), a town in al-D̲j̲azīra on the left bank of the Euphrates, close to the confluence of the K̲h̲ābūr, a little above 35° N. Lat. Ḳarḳīsiyā is simply an Arabic reproduction of the Graeco-Roman name (τό) Κιρκήσιον, (τό) Κιρτήσιον κάστρον or Κιρκίσιον (Κιρκισία in the Notit. episcop ., ed. Parthey, 87), Circesium, Syriac Kerkusion, Latin = castrum Circense, “the castle with the circus”; cf. Nöldeke, op. cit. (see Bibl .), p. 3. Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī in Yāḳūt, iv, 65, 11. 21 ff., still knew the etymology of the place-name (Ḳarḳīsiyā, arabicised from Kirkīsiyā, from kirkīs = Ar. ḥalba…