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, Muʾayyid al-Dīn Abū Ismāʿīl al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Muns̲h̲iʾ al-Iṣbahānī, secretary, Arabic poet and alchemist. He was born in 453/1061 at Iṣfahān, and his poems give ample testimony of his lasting attachment to his native town. He entered the service of Sald̲j̲ūḳs at the time of Malik S̲h̲āh and went on to become chief secretary under that ruler’s son, Muḥammad I, with the tides muns̲h̲iʾ , mutawallī dīwān al-ṭug̲h̲rāʾ and ṣāḥib dīwān al-ins̲h̲āʾ ; in short, he was the second most senior official (after the wazīr ) in the civil administration of the Sald̲j̲…

, a Turkish dynasty of mediaeval Islam which, at the peak of its power during the 5th-6th/11th-12th centuries, ruled over, either directly or through vassal princes, a wide area of Western Asia from Transoxania, Farg̲h̲āna, the Semirečye and K̲h̲wārazm in the east to Anatolia, Syria and the Ḥid̲j̲āz in the west. From the core of what became the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ empire, subordinate lines of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family maintained themselves in regions like Kirmān (till towards the end of the 6th/12th century), Syria (till the opening years of…

“king of kings”, two royal titles in Persian. They can be traced back to the Achaemenid kings of ancient Persia, who, from Darius I (521-486 B.C.) onwards, refer to themselves in their inscriptions both as xšāyaθiya “king” (from the root xšay- “to rule”, cognate to Sanskrit kṣáyati “possess” and Greek κτάομαι “acquire”) and as xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām “king of kings”. Even earlier the title “king of kings” had been used by the rulers of Assyria and of Urartu (in the Caucasus) and it is not unlikely that the Persians adopted it from the latter (see O.G. von Wesendonk, The title “King of Kings” , in O…

, the 12th and 13th letters of the Arabic alphabet. Both letters have the same form ( rasm ), which derives from that of the Aramaic letter s̲h̲īn , and are distinguished only by diacritics, s̲h̲īn having three dots above, while sīn is in principle unpointed ( muhmal ), though in carefully written man…

(or perhaps better, S̲h̲uhayd) b. al-Ḥusayn al-Balk̲h̲ī al-Warrāḳ al-Mutakallim, Abu ’l-Ḥasan, a philosopher and a poet in Persian and Arabic, died (according to Yāḳūt, followed by al-Ṣafadī) in 315/927. …

(p.) “province”, “provincial capital”, “[large] town”. The word continues Middle Persian s̲h̲ahrestān , which has the same meanings, though it is certainly possible that it goes back even further to an unattested Old Persian * xšaça-stāna- . In any case, it is derived from s̲h̲ahr [ q.v.]—or its ancestor—and -stāna “place” (in compounds); a s̲h̲ahristān is thus literally a “place of kingship”, i.e. the seat of the local representative of royal power (the provincial capital) and then also the region over which that representati…

, the 28th letter of the Arabic alphabet, with the numerical value 10. It stands for the semivowel y and for the long vowel ī , which the grammarians analyse as short i ( kasra ) plus yāʾ . For the shortening of final -ī before hamzat al-waṣl , see wāw . ϒāʾ …

(better Sōzanī), Muḥammad b. ʿAlī (or Masʿūd?) al-Samarḳandī, Persian satirical poet of the 6th/12th century. A native of Nasaf (Nak̲h̲s̲h̲ab), he eulogised several of the Ḳarak̲h̲ānid rulers of Samarḳand, from Arslān S̲h̲āh Muḥammad II (495- ca. 523/1102- ca. 1129) up to Ḳi̊li̊č Ṭamg̲h̲āč K̲h̲ān Masʿūd II ( ca. 556-74/ ca. 1161-78), but also several of the Burhānid ṣadr s of Buk̲h̲ārā [see ṣadr . 1], the Sald̲j̲ūḳid Sand̲j̲ar [ q.v.] and others. Dawlats̲h̲āh, who appears to have seen Sūzanī’s grave in Samarḳand, says that he died in 569/1173-4, and adds that before his death…

(a.), or, with the usual weakening of final hamza , Ṣābī , plural Ṣābiʾūn , Ṣābiʾa , Ṣāba , in English “Sabian” (preferably not “Sabaean”, which renders Sabaʾ [ q.v.]), a name applied in Arabic to at least three entirely different religious communities: (1) the Ṣābiʾūn…

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a Persian poet of the first half of the 6th/12th century. His dīwān , which has been published twice (ed. ʿAlī Ḳawīm, Tehran 1331 S̲h̲ ./1952-3, and ed. M.ʿA. Nāṣiḥ, Tehran 1343 S̲h̲./1964), consists almost entirely of panegyrics praising the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Sand̲j̲ar (511-52/1118-57), the Ḵh̲wārazms̲h̲āh Atsi̊z (521-68/1127-72) and various persons at their respective courts, in particular Sand̲j̲ar’s raʾīs-i Ḵh̲urāsān , Mad̲j̲d al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Musawī, the poet’s principal patron. The rivalry between his two royal masters was the cause of his undoing. Ḏj̲uwaynī says that Ṣābir, whom Sand̲j̲ar had sent to Ḵh̲wārazm with a…

, the pen-name of several Persian…

, the 27th letter of the Arabic alphabet (or the 26th, if hāʾ is placed after wāw ), with the numerical value 6. It has two principal functions in Arabic orthography, standing either for the semivowel w or for the long vowel ū . Traditional Arabic grammar reduces these two functions to one by analysing ū as short …

(properly Rōd̲h̲akī, arabicised as al-Rūd̲h̲akī) the leading Persian poet during the first half of the 4th/10th century and author of the earliest substantial surviving fragments of Persian verse. Al-Samʿānī gives his name as Abū ʿAbd Allāh D̲j̲aʿfar b. Muḥammad b. Ḥakīm b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ādam al-Rūd̲h̲akī al-S̲h̲āʿir al-Samarḳandī, says that he was born in Rōd̲h̲ak, a suburb of Samarḳand, and that he also died there in 329/940-1; there are, however, reasons to think that this date might be a…

, in Islamic science an astronomical handbook with tables, after the models of the Sāsānid Persian Zīk -i S̲h̲ahriyār , the Indian Sindhind [ q.v.], and Ptolemy’s Almagest and Handy Tables [see baṭlamiyūs ]. A typical zīd̲j̲ might contain a hundred folios of text and tables…

, the third and sixteenth letters of the Arabic alphabet, with the numerical values in the abd̲j̲ad system of 400 and 9 respectively. In the modern standard pronunciation, the former represents a voiceless, slightly aspirated, dental (or dento-alveolar) stop; the latter a voiceless, unaspirated, dental (dento-alveolar) stop with simultaneous velarisation, i.e. with the back of the tongue lifted towards the soft palate. Sībawayh and his successors classify ṭāʾ as mad̲j̲hūr , which most modern scholars have understood to mean "voiced" [see ḥurūf al-hid̲j̲āʾ and the references c…

, secretary and prolific author in Arabic and Persian. A reputed descendant of the caliph ʿUmar, he was born either in Balk̲h̲ or Buk̲h̲ārā, but spent most of his life in Gurgānd̲j̲, the capital of K̲h̲ w ārazm. He died, according to Dawlats̲h̲āh, in 578/1182-3, in his 97th year, which would put his birth in 481/1088-9; Yāḳūt (at least in the published text) has him die 5 years earlier. Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn was chief secretary ( ṣāḥib dīwān al-ins̲h̲āʾ ) under the K̲h̲wārazms̲h̲āh Atsi̊z (521-51/1127-56) and his successor Īl-Arslān (d. 568/1172). His loyalty to Atsi̊z earned him…

or S̲h̲awarwa , banū , conventional readings for the name of a family of Ḥanafī clerics and men of letters in Iṣfahān during the 6th/12th century. The name has not been explained and should perhaps be read rather as (Persian) S̲h̲aβ-rō “black-face”. Although several members of the family are listed in biographical works, the only one about whom we have precise knowledge is S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Hibat Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Hibat Allāh b. Ḥamza al-maʿrūf bi -S̲h̲awarwa. a religious scholar who spent time in Damascus and Cairo (where he met Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn) before returning, in 570/1175, to his native Iṣfahān. Al-Ṣafadī quotes a few of his Arabic verses. His name appears as that of the author in at least some of the manuscripts of Aṭbāḳ al-d̲h̲ahab , a little moralising tract in Arabic, a poor imitation of al-Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī’s Aṭwāḳ al-d̲h̲ahab (printed Būlāḳ 1864 and often; tr. O. Rescher, in his Beiträge zur Maqâmen-Litteratur , vii, 1914). …

1. The word. Zindīḳ , pl. zanādiḳa , abstract/collective noun zandaḳa , is an Arabic word borrowed (at least in the first instance) from Persian, and used in the narrow and precise meaning “Manichaean” (synonym: Mānawī , or the quasi-Aramaic Manānī ), but also loosely for “heretic, renegade, unbeliever”, in effect as a synonym for …

(a., pl. tarād̲j̲im ), verbal noun of the verb tard̲j̲ama “to interpret, translate, write the biography of someone ( lahu )”. For the function of interpreter, see tard̲j̲umān . ¶ 1. In literature. Here, it may form part of the title of a biography, or, especially in contemporary North Africa, the biography (or autobiography) itself. Hence ʿilm al-tarād̲j̲im is a branch of historical research, sometimes equated by the Twelver S̲h̲īʿa with ʿilm al-rid̲j̲āl [ q.v.]. The term dates to at least the early 5th/11th century, where it appears in the titles of three works by al-T̲h̲aʿālibī (350-429/961-1038 [ …