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, town in south-west Turkey (Pisidia), situated at an altitude of 1025 m., in a fertile plain between Burdur and Egridir, the Apollonia-Sozopolis of antiquity. The modern name preserves that of the Byzantine fortress Saporda (not Baris Pisidiae, see E. Honigmann in Byzantion , xiv (1939), 655); in Muslim sources of the 7th-8th/13th-14th centuries it appears as Sabarta. After its capture by the Sald̲j̲ūḳs in 600-1/1203-4 it belonged to the Western frontier-province of their dominions. With the break-up of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ empire, the Ḥamīdog̲h̲ullari̊ [ q.v.], whose base was Egridir…

(a.), the name of apoem written in rhyming couplets. 1. In Arabic literature, see muzdawid̲j̲ . 2. In Persian. According to the prosodist S̲h̲ams-i-Ḳays (7th/13th ¶ century), the name refers to “a poem based on independent, internally rhyming lines ( abyāt-i mustaḳill-i muṣarraʿ ). The Persians call it mat̲h̲nawī because each line requires two rhyming letters— This kind ( nawʿ ) is used in extensive narratives and long stories which cannot easily be treated of in poems with one specific rhyming letter” ( al-Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Tehran 1338/1959, 418f.). The fir…

( Ičel ), mountainous province in southern Turkey, situated on the western spurs of the Taurus on the Mediterranean opposite Cyprus. The chief town is today the port of Mersin; its administrative districts are Mersin, Anamur, Gülnar, Mut, Silifke and Tarsus. The province is bounded in the north by the province of Konya, in the north-east by that of Niǧde, in the east by Adana and in the west by Antalya. The main river is the Göksu [ q.v.] (Kalykadnos/Saleph), which rises in the Bolkar Daǧı and flows below Silifke into the Mediterranean. In antiquity the borders of “Stony Cilicia” (as th…

, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Maḥmūd b. ʿOt̲h̲mān b. ʿAlī al-naḳḳās̲h̲ b. Ilyās , a celebrated Ottoman Ṣūfī writer and poet of the first half of the 10th/16th century. He was born in 877/1472-3 at Bursa, where he spent all his life. His grandfather, Naḳḳās̲h̲ ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a, teacher of Fawrī [ q.v.] and one of the great painter-carvers ( naḳḳās̲h̲ ) of his time, had in his youth been taken by Tīmūr to Samarḳand, where he perfected his art; after his return, he contributed masterly decorations to the Yes̲h̲il D̲j̲āmiʿ and the Yes̲h̲il Türbe in Bursa. As the son of ʿOt̲h̲mān Čelebi, the defterdār …

or mart̲h̲āt (A., pl. marāt̲h̲ī ) “elegy”, a poem composed in Arabic (or in an Islamic language following the Arabic tradition) to lament the passing of a beloved person and to celebrate his ¶ merits; rit̲h̲āʾ , from the same root, denotes both lamentation and the corresponding literary genre. 1. In Arabic literature. The origin of the mart̲h̲iya may be found in the rhymed and rhythmic laments going with the ritual movements performed as a ritual around the funeral cortège by female relatives of the deceased, before this role bec…

(a.), pl. ḳiṣaṣ , the term which, after a long evolution, is now generally employed in Arabic for the novel, whilst its diminutive uḳṣūṣa , pl. aḳāṣīṣ , has sometimes been adopted, notably by Maḥmūd Taymūr [ q.v.] as the equivalent of “novella, short story”, before being ineptly replaced by a calque from the English “short story”, ḳiṣṣa ḳaṣīra . The sections of the following article are largely devoted to these literary genres as they are cultivated in the various Islamic literatures, even if the word ḳiṣṣa is not itself used by them. Although some Berber tongues use the Arabic term ( Iḳiṣṣt …

, “the Madman of Laylā”, or Mad̲j̲nūn Banī ʿĀmir, the name given to the hero of a romantic love story, the original form of which could date back as far as the second half of the 1st/7th Century. 1. In Arabic literature This imaginary character (acknowledged as such even by some Arab critics; see Ag̲h̲ānī , ed. Beirut, ii, 6, 11) has been furnished by the ruwāt with an ism and with a complete genealogy; Ḳays b. al-Mulawwaḥ b. Muzāḥim b. Ḳays b. ʿUdas b. Rabīʿa b. D̲j̲aʿda b. Kaʿb b. Rābīʿa b. ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa, but according to the evidence, …

, Saʿd al-Dīn b. Ḥasan D̲j̲ān b. Ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad Iṣfāhānī (1536-99), a famous Ottoman s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ül-Islām, statesman, and historian. Life. He was born in 943/1536-7 in Istanbul, and died there on 12 Rabīʿ I 1008/2 October 1599. His grandfather, one of the notables who had joined Sultan Selīm I after the battle of Čāldirān, had served Selīm I as ḥāfiẓ , and his father Ḥasan D̲j̲ān had been an intimate courtier to the same sultan. Saʿd al-Dīn studied under prominent scholars, entered the ʿulamāʾ career and became assistant ( mülāzim ) to the muftī Ebu ’l-Suʿūd [see Abu ’l-Suʿūd …