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, a town in ʿIrāḳ, near al-Kūfa. It is known mainly from the accounts of the battle of Ḳādisiyya [ q.v.]. From the statements collected by Yāḳūt regarding its position, it appears that two different places of this name had later to be distinguished, namely one near al-Kūfa on the road to Syria, which is several times mentioned in the time of the caliphs ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya, and another, a watering station between al-Mug̲h̲īt̲h̲a and al-ʿAḳaba, 3 mīls from al-Ḥufayr, to the right of the road to Mecca. Several encounters took place there during the seco…

(a.), a word with the basic sense of “mountain”. It occurs ten times in the Ḳurʾān (II, 60/63, 87/93; IV, 153/154; XIX, 53/52, etc.), on two occasions (XXIII, 20; XCV, 2) expressly coupled with Sīnāʾ/ Sīnīn, specifically meaning Mount Sinai. Virtually all its occurences in the Ḳurʾān are connected with the wanderings of the Children of Israel in the Sinai Desert [see banū isrāʾīl ; sīnāʾ ; al-tīh ]. It was early recognised by the Arabic philologists as a loan word from Hebrew or Aramaic (cf. Hebr. ṣūr “rock” > “cliff”, Aram, ṭūrā “mountain”), more proximately, from Syriac (see A. Jeffery, The f…

(modern Tkish. Samandaǧ), nowadays an important town and headquarters of the sub-province ( ilçe ) of Samandaǧ. It is situated 26 km/16 miles south-west of Antakya (Anṭākiyā [ q.v.]), the capital of the Hatay province of Turkey, near to the Mediterranean Sea, 5 km/3 miles north of the Orontes River (Ar. al-ʿĀṣī [ q.v.]). In the mediaeval period, when al-Suwaydiyya is first mentioned, the name apparently refers to the port at the mouth of the river on the north bank, which the Crusaders knew as Soudin or Port Saint-Simeon, after St. Simeon Stylites …

or mas̲h̲had ʿalī , a town and place of pilgrimage in ʿIrāḳ 10 km 6 miles west of al-Kūfa. It lies on the edge of the desert on a flat barren eminence from which the name al-Nad̲j̲af has been transferred to it (A. Musil, The Middle Euphrates , 35), at an altitude of 37 m/120 feet in lat. 31° 59′ N. and long. 44° 20′ E. According to the usual tradition, the Imām al-Muʾminīn ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib [ q.v.] was buried near al-Kūfa, not far from the dam which protected the city from flooding by the Euphrates at the place where the ¶ town of al-Nad̲j̲af later arose (Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , iv, 760)…

, properly Faḥṣ al-Tīh, the name in mediaeval Islamic usage for the desert forming the frontier zone between Palestine and Egypt and spanning the Sinai Desert. The name itself is not found in the Ḳurʾān (which in sūra XXIII, 20, uses Sīnāʾ and in II, 60/63, 87/93, IV, 153/154, etc., Ṭūr, for the Sinai peninsula), but the verb from which it is presumably derived occurs as yatīhūn “they wander about in a confused, lost manner” (V, 29/25), said of the Children of Israel, condemned by God to wander distractedly through the Sinai Desert because of their refusal to Moses to enter the Holy Land. Hence th…

or al-ruhāʾ , the Arabic name of a city which was in early Islamic times in the province of Diyār Muḍar [ q.v.] but known in Western sources as edessa (Syriac Orhāy, Armenian Uṛhay). It is now in the province of Diyarbakir in the southeast of modern Turkey and is known as Urfa, a name for the city which is not clearly attested before the coming of the Turks to eastern Anatolia. 1. In pre-Islamic times. The city is probably an ancient one, though efforts to identify it with the Babylonian Erech/Uruk or with Ur of the Chaldees cannot be taken seriously. Its site, at the j…

, a place in ʿIrāḳ some 60 miles SSW of Bag̲h̲dād celebrated by the fact that the Prophet’s grandson al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī was killed and his decapitated body buried there ( Ḳabr al-Ḥusayn ). For all these events, see al-ḥusayn b. ʿalī . When it became a place of pilgrimage, Karbalāʾ became known as Mas̲h̲had (al-) Ḥusayn. The name Karbalāʾ probably comes from the Aramaic Karbelā (Daniel, III, 21) and from the Assyrian ¶ Karballatu, a kind of headdress; see G. Jacob, Türkische Bibliothek , xi, 35, n. 2. It is not mentioned in the pre-Islamic period. K̲h̲ālid b…

, a town in the Taurus Mountains region of southern Anatolia, falling within modern Turkey and now the chef-lieu, as Maraş, of the il (formerly vilayet ) of Maraş. It lies about 2,000 feet/610 m. above sea-level on the northern edge of the hollow (ʿAmḳ of Marʿas̲h̲; now Čaḳal Owa and south of it S̲h̲ēḳer Owa or Marʿas̲h̲ Owasi̊) which lies east of the D̲j̲ayḥān and is watered by its tributary, the Nahr Ḥūrīt̲h̲ (Aḳ-Ṣū). As a result of its situation at the intersection of the roads which run to Anṭākiya, to ʿAyn Zarba and al…

or ʿAyn Warda , Syriac Rēs̲h̲ ʿAynā, a town of classical and mediaeval Islamic times of al-D̲j̲azīra, deriving its name (“spring-head”) from the famed springs of the locality (see below). It is situated on the Greater K̲h̲ābūr [ q.v.] affluent of the Euphrates in lat. 36° 50′ N. and long. 40° 02′ E. It is now little more than a village straddling the modern border between Syria and Turkey, with the Syrian settlement still known as Raʾs al-ʿAyn and the Turkish one as Resülayn or Ceylânpinar. In classical times it was known as Resaina-Theodosiopolis, receiving from the Emperor Theo…

, a plain west of the D̲j̲abal Ḥawrān on the border of Trachonitis in Transjordan. The name al-Nuḳra (“the cavity”) is quite modern. It is applied to an area which includes the two districts of al-Bat̲h̲aniyya (with its chief town Ad̲h̲riʿāt) and Ḥawrān (west of the hills of the same name), i.e. the whole northern half of modern Jordan. In the wider sense, al-Nuḳra includes all the country from al-Lad̲j̲āʾ, D̲j̲aydūr and al-Balḳāʾ to the foot of the D̲j̲abal Ḥawrān, in the narrower sense on…

, Sebasṭiyya , the Arabic name of various towns in the Near East. 1. The ancient Samaria, which Herod had changed to Σεβαστή in honour of Augustus. The form Σεβάστεια—as in the case of other towns of this name—was presumably also used, as the Arabic name (which is sometimes also written Sabaṣṭiyya) suggests. By the end of the classical period, the town, overshadowed by the neighbouring Neapolis (Sichem; Arabic, Nābulus), had sunk to be a small town (πολίκνιον) and played only an unimportant part in the Arab period. It was conquered by ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ while Abū Bakr ¶ was still caliph; the inh…

, an old-established town of eastern Anatolia, not far from the upper Euphrates. It lies at the junction of important roads (in antiquity: the Persian royal road and the Euphrates route; in modern times Samsūn-Siwās-Malaṭya-Diyārbakr and Ḳayṣariyya-Albistān-Malaṭya-K̲h̲arpūt) in a plain (the fertility and richness of which in all kinds of vegetables and fruits was celebrated by the Arab geographers, as in modern times by von Moltke and others) at the northern foot of the Taurus, not very far sou…

, a plain west of the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥawrān on the border of Trachonitis in Transjordan. The name al-Nuḳra (“the cavity”) is quite modern. It is applied to an area, which includes the two districts of al-Bat̲h̲anīya (with its chief town Ad̲h̲riʿāt) and Ḥawrān (west of the hills of the same name), i. e. the whole northern half of Transjordan. In the wider sense al-Nuḳra includes all the country from al-Led̲j̲āʾ, Ḏj̲aidūr and al-Balḳāʾ to the foot of the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥawrān, in the narrower sense only the southern part of thi…

, the name of two left bank tributaries (al-Zawābī) of the Tigris. 1. The Upper or Great Zāb ( Zāb al-aʿlā or al-akbar) was known already to the Assyrians as Zabu ēlū, the “Upper Zāb”. The Greeks called it Lykos (Weissbach, s. v., N°. 12 in Pauly-Wissowa, R.E., vol. xiii., col. 2391 sq.; on the name see J. Markwart, Südarmenien, Vienna 1930, p. 429 sq.), the Byzantines however have again ό μέγαΣ ΖάβαΣ (Theophan., Chron., ed. de Boor, p. 318, 320). In Syriac it was called Zābhā, in Armenian Zaw (Thomas Arcruni, ed. Patkanean, 111/iv., p. 143; transl. Brosset, in Collection d’hist. Arméniens, i. 1…

, a town in North Syria at the point where the Nahr Ḳuwaiḳ enters the swampy lake of il-Maṭk̲h̲. In ancient times it was called ΧαλκίΣ, Chalcis ad Belum and lay ἐν μεθορίοιΣ ’Αράβων (Diodorus, Bibl., xxxiii. 4a); perhaps it is to it that the note in Stephen of Byzantium refers, according to which a town named Chalkis was founded by the Arab ΜονικόΣ. In the late classical period a part of the Syro-Arabian limes was called τὸ λίμιτον ΧαλκίδοΣ (Malalas, p. 296, 5). In this region the Arabs very early immigrated into Byzantine territory; at al-Ḥiyār (the later Ḥiyār bani ’l-Ḳaʿḳāʿ) in the district …

, a town in the southeast of Asia Minor. It is the chief town in a ḳazā of the wilāyet (formerly sand̲j̲aḳ) of Marʿas̲h̲ and is (or was before the recent persecutions) inhabited for the most part by Armenians, who call it Zet̲h̲un or Ulnia, usually however simply Keg̲h̲ (“village”). The name Ulni (Ulnia) is also used for the whole of the mountainous country on the Ḏj̲aiḥān between Ḳaratūt̲h̲ (S. W. of Albistān) and Bertis. Whether Ulnia was originally the name of Zaitūn or Furnus to the S. W. of…

, arab. al-Maṣṣīṣa, a town in Cilicia on the Ḏj̲aiḥān. In antiquity it was called Μόψου ἑστία a name, which (like that of Μόψου κρήνη in the Cilician passes) is derived from the cult of the legendary seer Mopsos (cf. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altert., I/ii.2, § 483). In ancient times, the town was chiefly famous for its bishop Theodoras (d. 428), the teacher of Nestorius and friend of the suffragan bishop and inventor of the Armenian alphabet, ¶ Mas̲h̲tʿocʿ (Peeters, Revue des Etudes Armén., ix., Paris 1929, p. 210; on him cf. e.g. al-Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, ed. de Goeje, p. 152; Mich. Syr., transl. Cha…

, a fortress in Northern Syria. According to Arnold Nöldeke’s description, it is situated “on a steeply sloping tongue of rock, lying along the right bank of the Euphrates, which bars the direct road to the Euphrates from the west for its tributary the Merziman as it breaks through the edge of the plateau, so that it is forced to make a curve northwards around this tongue. The connection between this tongue of rock, some 1,300 feet long and about half as broad, and the plateau which rises above …

(Lādīḳ, Greek Λαοδίκεια), the name of several towns in Asia Minor. 1. The ancient Λαοδίκεια κατακεκαυμένη ( Lādīḳ Sūk̲h̲ta). It probably derived this name from the smelting furnaces which it had around it as the centre of the quicksilver mining area. It was in Ḳaramān north of Ḳūniya on the great military road which ran through Asia Minor. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa already knows it by its modern name of Yorgān Lādīḳ or Lād̲h̲iḳīya in Ḳaramān. Bibliography Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa, Ḏj̲ihān-Numā, p. 611 sqq. Ibn Bībī, ed. Houtsma in Recueil de textes relat. à. L’hist. des Siljoucides, iii. 23, 25 …

, a town in Northern Syria on the eastern side of the Ḏj̲abal al-Nuṣairīye. The pronunciation and orthography of the name varies between the forms Maṣyād, Maṣyāf (in official documents and on the inscriptions mentioned below of the years 646 and 870 a. h.), Maṣyāt and Maṣyāt̲h̲. (on the interchange of f and t̲h̲ see Rescher, Z.D.M.G., lxxiv. 465; Praetorius, Z. D. M. G., Ixxv. 292; Dussaud, Topographie hist. de la Syrie, p. 143, note 4; 209; 395, note 3). The variants Maṣyāb (Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am, ed. Wüstenfeld, iv. 556), Maṣyāh (Ḵh̲alīl al-Ẓāhirī, Zubda, ed. Ravaisse, p. 49) and Maṣyāṭ (al-Nāb…

, a fortress of the Crusaders east of the Araba in the mountains of al-S̲h̲arā. It was built in 509 (1115) by Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 18 days in Syria Sobal and was called Mens Regalis (Montréal, also le Crac de Montréal to distinguish it from Crac des Moabites, i. e. Kerak [q. v.] and Crac des Chevaliers, i. e. Ḥiṣn al-Akrād [q. v.]) by the Franks. The site of the fortress was, as William of Tyre (xi. 26; Migne, Patrol. Lat., cci., col. 514 sqq.) points out, very suitable for the building of an impregnable fortress. It is therefore not improbable that, as Yāḳūṭ (iii. 332) indi…

, a town of central Syria on the eastern side of the D̲j̲abal al-Nuṣayriyya situated at 33 miles/54 km to the east of Bāniyās [ q.v.] and 28 miles/45 km to the east of Ḥamāt [ q.v.], in long. 36° 35’ E. and lat. 35° N., in the massif of the D̲j̲abal Anṣāriyya at the foot of the eastern slopes of the D̲j̲abal Baḥrāʾ, at an altitude of 1,591 ft./485 m. and to the west of the great trench of the fault of the G̲h̲āb [ q.v.]. The pronunciation and orthography of the name varies between the forms Maṣyād , Maṣyāf (in official documents and on the inscriptions mentioned below of the years 646 and 870 A.H.), Maṣyāt and M…

, Naṣībīn , classical Nasibis, modern Turkish form Nusaybin, a town in upper Mesopotamia, now in modern Turkey. It is situated on the modern Görgarbonizra Çayi, the classical Mygdonios river, the early Arabic Hirmās, Syriac Nehar Māsā or Mās̲h̲ī, in the plain to the south of the mountain region of Ṭūr ʿAbdīn [ q.v.], and today faces the Syrian town of al-Ḳāmis̲h̲lī. Naṣībīn is an ancient town, its name being probably Semitic. In classical sources we find the form Νάσιβις and on coins ΝΕΣΙΒΙ. In Armenian, it is usually Mcbin, Nsepi or Nsepin. The countrysid…

, a plain near Dābiḳ [ q.v.] on the Nahr al-Ḳuwayḳ in northern Syria. The town of Dābiḳ, was known to the Assyrians as Dabigu (Sachau, ZA, xii, 47) and is called Δάβεκον by Theophanes ( Chron ., ed. de Boor, 143, 451 ff.). For convenience in his campaigns against the Byzantines, Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik moved the headquarters of the Syrian troops from D̲j̲ābiya [ q.v.] to Dābiḳ. In 717 with an army under ʿUbayda he set out from Mard̲j̲ Dābiḳ for Asia Minor and on his return died there in Ṣafar 99/September-October 717 (al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , v, 397 = §2151; Chronica minora, ed. Guidi, in GSCO, Scr . Sy…

(Palestine). Under Turkish rule and British mandate. By the victory of Selīm I at Dābiḳ on the 25th Rad̲j̲ab 922 (Aug. 24, 1516) Palestine passed into the hands of the Ottoman Turks for 400 years. During this period of cultural and economic decline there were formed a number of small temporary independent Druse states like that of Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn (1595—1634), of Ẓāhir al-ʿAmr (about 1750), of Aḥmad al-Ḏj̲ezzār (Ḏj̲ezzār Pas̲h̲a) and his successors who usually ruled in ʿAkkā and held a considerable part of Galilee…

, properly Faḥṣ al-Tīh, is the name of the desert forming the frontier between Syria and Egypt in the interior of the Sinai Peninsula. The Arab geographers also call it the “Desert of the Banī Isrāʾīl”. As early as the Tabula Peutingeriana we find the legend: Desertum ubi quadraginta annis errauerunt filii Israel ducente Moyse and on the map of Mādabā: ἔρημοΣ [ὅπου] τοὺΣ ’ΙσραηλίταΣ ἔσωσ [εν] ὁ χαλκοῦΣ ὄΦιΣ and ἔρημοΣ Σὶν ὅπου κατεπέμΦθη τὸ μάννα καὶ ἡ ὀρτυγομήτρα. In the desert there was a fortress of the same name (De Guignes, Perle des Merveilles, N. E., ii. 31); there is a Wādi ’l-Tīh i…

, the Arabic name for the Mediterranean. It took its name from al-Rūm (Bilād al-Rūm), the Roman, i. e. Byzantine, Empire. Other names were also used, such as Baḥr al-Mag̲h̲rib [q. v.]. The name Adria, which originally meant only the Adriatic Sea, became applied in later antiquity to an area which gradually expanded eastwards. For example Jordanes speaks of Rodus totius Atriae insularum metropolis and the Tabula Peutingeriana makes the Adriaticum Pelagus extend to Crete (Partsch, Pauly-Wissowa’s Realenzykl., i., col. 418; A. Ronconi, Per l’onomastica antica dei mari, in Studi italian…

, 1. Ḏj̲abal al-Tūr, more rarely Ṭūr Sīnāʾ, Mount Sinai. The Arab geographers (Abu ’l-Fidāʾ, ed. Reinaud, p. 69; al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, transl. Wüstenfeld, in Abh. G. W. Gött., xxv. 100; Maḳrīzī, Gesch. d. Kopten, transl. Wüstenfeld, op. cit., iii. 113; Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am, ed. Wüstenfeld, iii. 557) explain the name as of Hebrew origin; it occurs once in the Ḳurʾān as Ṭūr Sīnīn (xcv. 2, emended in Ibn al-Faḳīh, B. G. A., v. 104 to Ṭūr Sīnā). The mountain which lay not far from the Red Sea ( Baḥr al-Ḳulzum) was climbed from al-Amn (Elim?), where the children of Israel once encamped. In the…

, a battlefield near Dābiḳ [q.v.] on the Nahr al-Ḳuwaiḳ in northern Syria. On the history of the town of Dābiḳ, which was known to the Assyrians as Dabigu (Sachau, Z. A., xii. 47) and is called Δάβεκον by Theophanes ( Chron., ed. de Boor, p. 431, 451 sq.) cf. above vol. i., dābik. For convenience in his campaigns against the Byzantines, Sulaimān b. ʿAbd al-Malik moved the headquarters of the Syrian troops from Ḏj̲ābiya to Dābiḳ (Lammens, supra i., d̲j̲ābiya). In 717 with an army under ʿUbaida he set out from Mard̲j̲ Dābiḳ for Asia Minor and on his return died there in Ṣafar…

, the name of two towns. 1. The Arabs called the Jericho ofthe Bible Rīḥā or Arīḥā (Clermont-Ganneau, in J.A., 1877, i. 498). The town, which was 12 mīl E. of Jerusalem, was reckoned sometimes to the Ḏj̲und of Filasṭīn (Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am, iii. 913, e.g.) and sometimes to the district of al-Balḳāʾ (Yaʿḳūbī, in B. G. A., vii. 113); sometimes however it was called the capital of the province of Jordan (al-Urdunn) or of G̲h̲awr, the broad low lying valley of the Jordan (Nahr al-Urdunn) from which it was 10 mīl distant (Yāḳūt, i. 227). As a result of its warm moist climate and the rich irr…

, capital of Filasṭīn, 25 miles E. N. E. of Jerusalem. The Umaiyad caliphs liked to choose little country towns, usually places in Palestine, to live in rather than Damascus. Muʿāwiya and after him Marwān and others frequently resided in al-Ṣinnabra on the south bank of the Lake of al-Ṭabarīya, Yazīd I in Hawwārīn, Ad̲h̲riʿāt, ʿAbd al-Malik in al-Ḏj̲ābiya, Walīd in Usais (now Tell Sais S. E. of Damascus) and al-Ḳaryatain and his ¶ sons in al-Ḳaṣtal, Yazīd II also in al-Muwaḳḳar near Fudain or in Bait Raʾs (Lammens, La Bâdia et la Ḥîra sous les Omaiyades, in M.F.O.B., iv., 1910, p. 91—112; A.…

(Urtuḳids), a Turkmen dynasty, branches of which ruled in Mārdīn, Ḥiṣn Kaifā and Ḵh̲artabirt. When the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sulṭān of Damascus, Tutus̲h̲, conquered Jerusalem in 479 he appointed as governor of the town his officer Urtuḳ b. Aksab, who had already served under Maliks̲h̲āh and had taken part in the siege of Āmid in 477. He was succeeded in 484 (1091) by his sons Sukmān and and Īlg̲h̲āzī. After the Holy City had been taken for the Fāṭimids in S̲h̲aʿbān 489 (1096) by al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Ḏj̲amālī, Sukmān went to al-Ruhā and ¶ Īlg̲h̲āzī to his lands in the ʿIrāḳ. In 495 (1101) Sulṭān Mu…

, a district in al-Ḏj̲ibāl (Media) south of Mount Alwand, halfway between Hamad̲h̲ān and Nihāwand. According to Ibn al-Faḳīh, it was a valley in the district of Nihāwand, which was three farsak̲h̲s in length and formed one of the most pleasing spots in the Sāsānian empire with its 93 villages all linked up one another by an uninterrupted stretch of orchards and perennial streams. The principal product was a world renowned saffron which was exported through Nihāwand and also through Hamad̲h̲ān. T…

, the most important of the four great cities of Ḵh̲urāsān (Nīs̲h̲āpūr, Marw, Herāt and Balk̲h̲), one of the great towns of Īrān in the middle ages. The name goes back to the Persian Nēw-S̲h̲āhpuhr (“Fair S̲h̲āpūr”); in Armenian it is called Niu-S̲h̲apuh, Arab. Naisābūr or Nīsābūr, new Pers. Nēs̲h̲āpūr, pronounced in the time of Yāḳūt: Nīs̲h̲āwūr, now Nīs̲h̲āpūr (Nöldeke, Ṭabarī, p. 59, note 3; G. Hoffmann, Auszüge . . ., p. 61, note 530). The town occasionally bore the official title of honour, Īrāns̲h̲ahr. Nīs̲h̲āpūr was founded by S̲h̲āhpuhr I, son of Ardas̲h̲īr I (Ḥamza al-I…

, Raḥbat Mālik b. Ṭawḳ or Raḥbat al-S̲h̲aʾm, a town on the right bank of the Euphrates, the modern al-Miyādīn. Hardly anything definite is known about the history of the town before the Muslim era. In the middle ages it was usually identified as the Reḥōbōt han-Nāhār of the Bible (Gen. xxxvi. 37) i.e. Reḥōbōt on the river (Euphrates) especially in the Talmud and by the Syriac authors (e. g. Mich. Syr., cf. index, p. 63*; Barhebraeus, Chron. syr., ed. Bedjan, p. 273 and passim), who usually call it Reḥabōt, Raḥabat (M. Hartmann, in Z.D.P.V., xxiii., p. 42, note 1). A. Musil ( The Middle Euphrates, N…

, a river in Syria, now called S̲h̲arīʿat al-Manāḍira (from the Beduin tribe ʿArab al-Manāḍira). It rises in the Ḥawrān, flows west through a deeply cut valley of erosion, the Wādī al-Ramād, which describes a flat curve open to the south, to the G̲h̲awr, where it flows into the Nahr al-Urdunn (the Jordan) below Lake Gennesareth at Ḏj̲isr al-Mud̲j̲āmiʿ. Pliny calls it ( Hist. Nat., v. 74) Hieromix or Hieromices ( Gadara Hieromice praefluente, var. Hieromiace; the now so popular form “ Hieromax” is not recorded). On the 12th Rad̲j̲ab 15 (Aug. 20, 636 a. d.) in the celebrated battle on the Y…

, 1. a place in Syria. It is situated in the ḥarra of al-Ṣafāʾ on an eminence in the Wādi ’l-S̲h̲ām, which runs from the Ḏj̲ebel al-Drūz (Ḏj̲ebel al-Ḥawrān) to the plain of Ruḥba, at the spot where it joins the Wādi ’l-Saʾūṭ. It ¶ corresponds to the Roman military post of Namara (Waddington, Inscriptions, N°. 2270). Less than a mile S. E. of al-Namāra, Dussaud found the Nabataean-Arab tomb inscription of the “King of all the Arabs”, Maiu ’l-Ḳais bar ʿAmru, i. e. the Lak̲h̲mid Imru ’l-Ḳais b. ʿAmru, of the 7th Keslūl 223 of the era of Boṣrāʾ = Dec. 7,. 328 a. d. (cf. vol. i., p. 382a). Bibliography R. Duss…

(Greek Edessa, Syr. Orhāi, Armen. Urhay, Ar. al-Ruhāʾ), an important town in Diyār Muḍar, the ancient Osrhoëne. The origin of the town, which must have existed before the Macedonian conquest, is lost in obscurity. Repeated attempts to prove the existence of the name in Assyrian times (E. Honigmann, Urfa keilinschriftlich nachweisbar?, in Z. A., N. F., v. 1930, p. 301 sq.) have so far failed. The original name was probably ’Ορρόη which has survived in that of the spring Καλλιῤῥόη, which lay below the walls of the town, and in that of the district of Osrho…

, capital of Diyār Muḍar in al-Ḏj̲azīra on the left bank of the Euphrates, shortly before it is joined by the Nahr Balīk̲h̲ (ΒασίλειοΣ, Βίληχα, ΒάλισσоΣ). The town was in antiquity called Kallinikos. Nikephorion is to be located in the same region (Strabo, xvi. 747; Isidores of Charax, in Geogr. Graeci Min., ed. Müller, p. 247; Dio Cass., xl. 13; Pliny, Nat. Hist., v. 86; vi. 119; Ptolemy, Geogr., v. 17; Stephen Byz.); but its usual identification with Kallinikos is certainly wrong and it may be a case of two adjoining towns as with the “black” and “white al-Raḳ…

(ʿAin Warda), a town in al-Ḏj̲azīra on the Ḵh̲ābūr. In ancient times it was already known as Resain-Theodosiopolis ( Notitia dignitatum, or. xxxvi. 20) or ‘Ρέσινα (Steph. Byz.), Syriac Rēs̲h̲ ʿAinā. On account of its position at the sources of the Ḵh̲ābūr it has been identified with the road-station Fons Scabora of the Tabula Peutingeriana (fons Chabura in Pliny, Nat. hist., xxxi. 37; xxxii. 16) (E. Herzfeld, Reise im Euphrat u. ¶ Tigris-Gebiet, i. 191; A. Poidebard, La Trace de Rome dans le désert de Syrie, p. 151 sq.). According to Ioannes Malalas (Bonn, p. 345 sq.) in whom the form ‘Ρoφ…

, an Ortokid. He was the son and successor of Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn Ḳarā-Arslān, lord of Ḥiṣn Kaifā and of a considerable part of Diyār Bakr (Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, Kāmil, ed. Tornberg, xi. 217) who, according to Ibn al-At̲h̲īr (xi. 207), died in 562 (1166—1167) but according to the numismatic evidence may have lived till 570 or 571 (van Berchem, Abh. Ges. Wiss. Gött., N. F., vol. IX/iii., 1907, p. 143, note 3). Nūr al-Dīn married the daughter of Sulṭān Ḳi̊li̊d̲j̲ Arslān but when he treated her disgracefully, his father-in-law was very angry and threatened him with war…

, a town in northern Syria, often called simply al-Maʿarra. It is celebrated as the birthplace of the poet Abu ’l-ʿAlāʾ Aḥmad al-Maʿarrī [q. v.]. According to al-Samʿānī ( Kitāb al-Ansāb, reproduced by D. S. Margoliouth, G.M.S., xx., 1912, fol. 536v, l. ¶ 4) the nisba from the place-name was Maʿarnamī to distinguish it from that of Maʿarrat Naṣrīn, Maʿarnasī. The town probably lay on the site of the ancient Arra which is called Κώμη ῎Αῤῥων οἰνοφοροΣ in an inscription. Yaʿḳūbī says that Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān is an old town in ruins. Nāṣir-i Ḵh̲usraw in 438 …

, an old city, not far from the upper Euphrates. It lies at the junction of important roads (in antiquity: the Persian royal road and the Euphrates route; in modern times Samsūn-Sīwās-Malaṭya-Diyārbakr and Ḳaisarīya-Albistān-Malaṭya-Ḵh̲arpūt) in a plain, the fertility and richness of which in all kinds of vegetables and fruits was celebrated by the Arab geographers, as in modern times by von Moltke and others, at the northern foot of the Taurus not very far south of Tok̲h̲ma-ṣū (Arab. Naḥr al-Ḳu…

, earlier Anṭarṭūs, frequently Anṭarsūs (by analogy with Ṭarsūs), a town on the Syrian coast; the ancient Antarados opposite the island of Arados (Arabic Ḏj̲azīrat Arwād, also written Arwād̲h̲; now Ruwād). Under the Roman empire, Antarados was called Constantia but the old name remained alongside of this and in the end drove the latter out again. The Muslims took the fortress of Ṭarṭūs under ¶ ʿUbāda b. al-Ṣāmit in 17 (638). The town was destroyed and remained for a lung time uninhabited. Muʿāwiya rebuilt it, fortified it and settled there and in Maraḳīya an…

(a., plur. of t̲h̲ag̲h̲r, “cleft, opening”), the zone of the fortresses built against the Byzantines in the Syrian and Mesopotamián marches (hence also T̲h̲ug̲h̲ūr al-Rūmīya). In Constantinos Porphyrogennetos they are called τὰ Στόμια ( De Cerimon., ed. Bonn, i. 657; cf. Reiske’s note, ii., p. 777 = Migne, Patrol. Graec., cxii., col. 1220, note 38), by the Syrians “the land of Tagrā” (Michael Syrus, ed. Chabot, iii. 20 sq., 467; Barhebraeus, Chron. Eccles., ed. Abbeloos-Lamy, i. 339 sq.). This frontier zone ran from Ṭarsūs [q. v.] in Cilicia along the Taurus on to Malaṭya…

, a town in the ʿIrāḳ, near al-Kūfa. It is known mainly from the accounts of the battle of Ḳādisīya. From the statements collected by Yāḳūt regarding its position it appears that two different places of this name had later to be distinguished, namely one near Kūfa on the road to Syria, which is several times mentioned in the time of the Caliphs ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya and another, a watering station between al-Mug̲h̲īt̲h̲a and al-ʿAḳaba, 3 mīl from al-Ḥufair, to the right of the road to Mecca. Several encounters took place there during the second battle of Ḳādisīya. According…

, in French usually Lattaquié or Lattakié, became the capital of the autonomous “gouvernement de Lattaquié (État des Alaouites)”, created on Aug. 31, 1920 by the French mandatory administration; its constitution was promulgated on May 14, 1930 by the Haut-Commissaire. Since that date the town, which under Turkish rule before the World War looked ruined and filthy, has developed into a clean and flourishing town. It has about 25,000 inhabitants including about 18,000 Sunnī Muslims, 400 Orthodox G…

the Arabic name of Beers̲h̲ebaʿ in Southern Palestine. At this place, south of ʿAsḳalān, were the springs which Abraham was said to have dug with his own hands; many legends were current about them. The place has been uninhabited since the xivth century. Numerous Greek inscriptions have been found at the modern Bīr es-Sebaʿ. (E. Honigmann) Bibliography Lord Lindsay’s codex of the Marāṣid in Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am, ed. Wüstenfeld, v. 14, 1. 5 ʿAlī al-Harawī, Oxford MS., fol. 46 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, ed. Defrémery and Sanguinetti i. 126 Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, London 1890, p. 402 sq. Robins…

the ancient Hebron, so called after the “friend of God” (θεοΦιλήΣ), Abraham (see the art. ibrāhīm), a town in South Palestine (also called Ḥabrūn, Ḥabrā or Masd̲j̲id Ibrāhīm). It lay in an exceedingly fertile valley between the heights of the Ḏj̲abal Naṣra (? reading uncertain) noted especially for its richness in fruits. According to a widely disseminated legend, Muḥammad is said to have granted the four districts Ḥabrūn, al-Marṭūm (so Yāḳūt, ii. 194; in Nāṣir-i Ḵh̲usraw, Safar-nama, ed. Kawiani 1923, p. 46, 14: Maṭlūn, varr. Marṭlūn, Marṭūn; in al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, Ṣubḥ al-Aʿs̲h̲ā, ed…

, the harbour of Anṭākiya, which lay 12 mīl from the Mediterranean. The town owed its rise owing to the gradual silting up of the harbour of Seleucia Pieria which lay a little farther north. Even in the time of Vespasian an attempt had been made, by making a great tunnel through the rock (which still exists and is called al-Gārīs, i. e. the Pers. Čehrīz or Kārīz) to avert the danger of setting up its port from the great trading centre but without permanent success. In the early Muslim period Salūḳīya is still occasionally mentioned (al-Balād̲h̲urī, ed de Goeje, p. 148, 12: Ḥiṣn Salūḳīya; al-Masʿūd…