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, term which may be translated approximately as chamberlain, used in Muslim countries for the person responsible for guarding the door of access to the ruler, so that only approved visitors may approach him. The term quickly becam…

, Abū Isḥāḳ Muḥammad b. Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 218-27/833-42, son of the caliph Hārūn by a slave concubine Mārida. During the reign of his brother and predecessor al-Maʾmūn [ q.v.], al-Muʿtaṣim achieved a reputation as a skilful commander in Anatolia and as governor in Egypt. When al-Maʾmūn died in the Byzantine marches in Rad̲j̲ab 218/August 833, al-Muʿtaṣim was recognised as caliph despite support within the army for his nephew al-ʿAbbās b. al-Maʾmūn (who was, in fact, later to conspire against al-Muʿta…

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a settlement of early and mediaeval Islamic times in the Ču [ q.v.] valley of the Semirečye in Turkestan, during the Soviet period forming the city of Frunze (lat. 42° 54′ N., long. 74° 36′ E.). The region of Pis̲h̲pek and nearby Toḳmaḳ is known to have been in mediaeval Islamic times a centre of Nestorian Christianity, and inscribed grave stones, the oldest of which date back to the time of the Ḳara ¶ K̲h̲iṭay [ q.v.] (6th/12th century), have been found there (see W. Barthold, Zur Geschichte des Christentums in Mittel-Asien bis zur mongolische Eroberung , Tübingen and Leipzig 1901, 1-2, 37-8 et …

, the name of a Rād̲j̲pūt tribe of Lower Sind in mediaeval Islamic times. Their origins are shrouded in mystery, but they are first mentioned in Muslim historians’ account of Maḥmūd of G̲h̲azna’s return from his attack on Somnāth in 416/1026 [see sūmanāt ]. For the next three centuries, they were the leading power in Lower Sind, but in the 8th/14th century their domination was challenged by the rival tribe of the Sammās [ q.v.]. Despite attempts by the Tug̲h̲luḳid Sul…

, apparently the grandson of the last Umayyad governor of K̲h̲urāsān Naṣr b. Sayyār [ q.v.] and rebel against the ʿAbbāsid caliphate in the opening years of the 9th century A.D. In 190/806 Rāfiʿ led a rising in Samarḳand which turned into a general rebellion throughout Transoxania against the harsh rule and financial exploitation of the caliphal governor of K̲h̲urāsān. ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā b. Māhān [see ibn māhān ]. As well as receiving support from the local Iranian population, Rāfiʿ secured h…

, a Balūč tribe of modern Pakistan, living partly in the Indus valley plains of the Dēra G̲h̲āzī Ḵh̲ān District of the Pand̲j̲āb [see dērad̲j̲āt ], and partly in the Mārī and Drāgal hills of the Sulaymān Mountains range and the upland plateaux of S̲h̲am and Paylāwag̲h, extending as far west as the modern Loralai District of northeastern Balūčistān. ¶ The tribe is of mixed origin, some sections being Dōdāīs of mingled Balūč-Sindh Rād̲j̲pūt extraction, whilst others are pure-blooded Balūč of the Rind and Lās̲h̲ārī groups; the chief’s family belongs to one of the Dōdāī sections. In the early …

(a. “place of securing, tying up, i.e. anchorage), a port of the South Arabian coast in Ẓufār [ q.v.] (Dhofar), lying in 17°00′N. and 54°41′E., some 40 miles/70 km east of the modern town of Salāla [ q.v.] in the Sultanate of Oman. Yāḳūṭ, ¶ B…

, S̲h̲ūs̲h̲tar , Arabie form Tustar , a town of southwestern Persia in the mediaeval Islamic province of Ahwāz [ q.v.] and the modern one ( ustān ) of K̲h̲ūzistān (lat. 32° 03’ N., long. 48° 51’ E.). It stands on a cliff to the west of which runs the river Kārūn [ q.v.], the middle course of which begins a few miles north of the town. This position gives the town considerable commercial and strategic importance and has made possible the construction of various waterworks for which the town has long been famous. The main features of these construct…

, a city in the delta region of the Amū Daryā [ q.v.] or Oxus river of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.]which was for some four centuries, from Mongol times onwards, the capital of the province.…

(t.), a word common to all Turkic languages (cf. W. Radloff, Versuch eines Wörterbuches der Türk-Dialecte , St. Petersburg 1888-1911, i/2, cols. 1015-16), found as early as Ork̲h̲on Turkic and meaning “offspring, child”, with a strong implication of “male child”, as opposed to …

, Ṭārom , the name of two places in Persia. 1. The best-known is the mediaeval Islamic district of that name lying along the middle course of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen or Safīd Rūd river [ q.vv.] in the ancient region of Daylam [ q.v.] in northwestern Persia. Adjoining it on the east was the district of K̲h̲alk̲h̲āl [ q.v.]. There are, at the present time, two small towns or villages bearing the name Ṭārum, one of them on the right bank of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen between Wanisarā and Kallad̲j̲. According to Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī ( Nizhat al-ḳulūb , 65, 217-18, tr. 69-70, 209-10), the district of “the two Ṭārums” ( Ṭārumayn ) was divided into an upper and a lower Ṭārum, with chief towns at Ḳalʿa-yi Tād̲j̲ and S̲h̲amīrān respectively; the population at that time (8th/14th century) were S̲h̲āfiʿī Sunnīs. Ṭārum lay off the main communication routes, and the limited amount of traffic between Ardabīl and Zand̲j̲ān had to cross the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen either at the only bridge or, more direcdy, by means of inflated rafts ( keleks [ q.v.]). Though the district was very mountainous, Mustaw…

, ʿAyn Ubāg̲h̲ , the name of a spring or watercourse on the eastern, sc. ʿIrāḳī, fringes of the Syrian Desert which was the scene of a pre-Islamic yawm or battle of the Arabs. The confused Arabic sources take this as being the battle of A. D. 554 in which the Lak̲h̲mid al-Mund̲h̲ir III b. al-Nuʿmān II was killed fighting the G̲h̲assānid al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Ḏj̲abala [ q.v.], in fact, the yawm al-Ḥalīma (see e.g. al-Bakrī, Muʿd̲j̲am mā ’staʿd̲j̲ama , i, 95; Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 175. Cf. A. P. Caussin de Perceval, …

, a district, and in earlier Islamic times a town, in northwestern Ḵh̲urāsān. It lies on the northern edge of the long plain which extends from Bisṭām and S̲h̲āhrūd in the west almost to Nīs̲h̲āpūr in the east and whose central section is drained by the Kāl-i S̲h̲ūr river before it turns southwards into the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr. In mediaeval Islamic times, the route from Nīs̲h̲āpūr to Gurgān ran across this plain, and the geographers place Isfarāyīn at roughly the midpoint, five stages from Nīs̲h̲āpūr and five from Gurgān. Though allegedly founded by Isfandiyār, little is known of Isfar…

, a settlement and port on the eastern coast of Arabia in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, situated in the region of Had̲j̲ar or Baḥrayn; its exact location is however unknown and would appear to be only discoverable by future archaeological investigations. Varying traditions attribute the foundation of al-Mus̲h̲aḳḳar to one of the kings of Kinda [ q.v.], Mūsā b. al-Ḥārit̲h̲, or to a commander of the Sāsānid heavy cavalry ( asāwira ; see on these, C.E. Bosworth, EIr art. Asāwera ) B.s.k.b. Māhbūd̲h̲ in the time of the Kisrās (al-Ṭabarī, i, 985-6, tr. Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Ara…

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Muʿizzī , Turkish slave commander of the

or Ḵh̲yber Pass , one of the principal passes (together with the Kurram, Tochi, Gomal and Bolan Passes) through the mountain barrier separating the Indus valley plains from Afg̲h̲ānistān. The pass runs northwestwards for ca. 33 miles/50 km. from the Shadi Bagiar opening 3 miles/5 km. beyond Fort Jamrud, itself 7 miles/12 km. from Peshawar, to the barren plain of Loi Dakka, which then stretches to the Kabul River banks. The highest point of the pass is at Landi Kotal (3,518 ft/1,280 m.), an important market centre for the region,…

, Abū Ibrāhīm al-Muntaṣir , the last of the Sāmānids of Transoxania and Ḵh̲urāsān. When in 389/999 the Ḳarak̲h̲ānid Ilig Ḵh̲ān Naṣr occupied the Sāmānid capital Buk̲h̲ārā. Ismāʿīl and other members of the family were carried off to Uzkend. He contrived, however, to escape to Ḵh̲wārazm, an…

, the mustering, passing in review and inspection of troops, the official charged with his duty being known as the ʿāriḍ , pl. ʿurrāḍ . The institution of the ʿarḍ was from the start closely bound up with the Dīwān al-Ḏj̲ays̲h̲ or that departaient of the bureaucracy concerned with military affairs, and these duties of recruitment, mustering and inspection comprised one of the dīwān ’ s main spheres of activity, the other sphere being that concerned with pensions and salaries [see dīwān and d̲j̲ays̲h̲ ]. The Ṣāḥib Dīwān al-Ḏj̲ays̲h̲ of the early ʿAbbāsid Caliphate or ʿĀriḍ al-Ḏj̲ays̲h̲ …

, called Nad̲j̲m-i T̲h̲ānī (d. 1047/1637), official in the service of the Mug̲h̲als of India and the author of a Persian Mirror for Princes, the Mawʿiẓa-yi D̲j̲ahāngīrī . Of émigré Persian origin, Muḥammad Bāḳir ser…

, the name given in Islamic geographical and travel literature to Khmer or Cambodia. The geography and political organisation of South-East Asia early became of interest to Islamic scholars because of trade links with Further India and China, and information was brought back by, inter alios, Arab and Persian merchants and navigators. Some of this information relates to the Khmer kingdom on the lower Mekong River, an outpost of Indian cultural and religious life, which lasted from the beginning of the 9th century to the middle of the 13th century (see R. Grousset, Histoire de l’Extrème-O…

, Siʿirt , Isʿird , the orthography in medieval Arabic texts for a town of southeastern Anatolia, 150 km/95 miles to the east of modern Diyarbakir and 65 km/44 miles to the south-west of Lake Van (lat. 37° 56′ N., long. 41° 56′ E.). It lies on the Bohtan tributary of the upper Tigris in the foothills of the eastern end of the Taurus Mts. It is the modern ¶ Turkish town of Siirt, now the chef-lieu of an il or province of the same name. 1. History. (a) The pre-Ottoman period. Siʿird is mentioned very little in early Islamic sources; the absence of fortifications apparently made it of…

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, Abū S̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dunyā wa ’l-Dīn, with the Turkish name Tapar “he who obtains, finds” (see P. Pelliot, Notes sur l’histoire de la Horde d’Or, Paris 1950, 182-3), Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan in ʿIrāḳ and western Persia 498-511/1105-18. Born in S̲h̲aʿbān 474/January 1082, he was a half-brother of Malik-S̲h̲āh’s eldest son Berk-Yaruḳ [ q.v.] and a full brother of Sand̲j̲ar [ q.v.]. When Berk-Yaruḳ succeeded his father in 485/1092, he had to leave Muḥammad in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and Arrān, where Muḥammad enjoyed the support of Sand̲j̲ar and of the for…

, the name of a very old Persian fire-temple, a place or district to the south-east of Lake Urmiya in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, said to be the native place of Zoroaster. According to A.V.W. Jackson, the name is said to be derived from the Avestan name of Lake Urmiya, Čaēčasta; according to Yāḳūt, it is an Arabic corruption of …

the usual name in Muslim sources of the 6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries of the Kitai people, mentioned in Chinese sources from the 4th century A.D. onwards as living on the northern fringes of the Chinese empire; during the course of the 6th/12th century a group of them migrated into the Islamic lands of Central Asia and established a domination there which endured for some eighty years. In the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions of Outer Mongolia, the royal annals of the T’u-chüeh or Turks (ca. 732 A.D.), the Kitai are mentioned as enemies of the Turks and as living to the…

, Dhū ’l-Ṣawārī , G̲h̲azwat al-Ṣawārī , “the Battle of the Masts”, the names given in the Arabic sources to a naval battle between the Arabs and Byzantines in the latter part of ʿut̲h̲mān’…

(a.), an official in mediaeval Islamic administration who was in charge of official accounts and thus acted as an accountant-general. The title first becomes generally used in the successor-states to the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. Under the G̲h̲aznavids, the mustawfī al-mamālik was responsible to the vizier, and kept accounts of income and expenditure in the dīwān-i wazīr (M. Nāzim, The life and times of Sulṭān Maḥmūd of Ghazna , Cambridge 1931, 132). Under the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs, e.g., in the time of Niẓām al-Mulk [ q.v.], the mustawfī was second in importance only to the vizier himsel…

, 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…

, an Arab dynasty of northern ʿIrāḳ and al-Ḏj̲azīra which flourished from ca. 380/990 to 564/1169. The family stemmed from the North Arab tribe of ʿUḳayl [ q.v.]. In the 4th/10th century, the ‘Uḳayl in Syria and northern ʿIrāḳ were dependents of the Ḥamdānids [ q.v.] of Mawṣil and Aleppo. When the last Ḥamdānids of Mawṣil, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn and Abū Ṭāhir Ibrāhim, were threatened by the Kurdish chief Bād̲h̲, founder of the Marwānid line [see marwānids ] in Diyār Bakr, they appealed for help to the ʿUḳaylid chief Abu ’l-Ḏh̲awwād Muḥammad b. al-Musayyab. But after defeating Bād̲h̲ and acquiring the towns of Ḏj̲azīrat Ibn ʿUmar, Niṣībīn and Balad, Abu ’l-Ḏh̲awwād was able to set aside the Ḥamdānids and take possession of Mawṣil for himself ca. 380/990, nominally as a vassal of the Būyid Amīr Bahāʾ al-Dawla [ q.v. in Suppl.]. After Abu ’l-Ḏh̲awwād’s death in 386/996, there were struggles for power amongst his sons until his ¶ nephew Muʿtamid al-Dawla Ḳirwās̲h̲ b. al-Muḳallad b. al-Musayyab emerged as victor and bega…

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(a.), literally, “someone who makes a thing legal, legaliser, legitimator”, the figure who, in classical Islamic law acts as something like a dummy or a “man of straw”, in order to authenticate or make permissible some legal process otherwise of doubtful legality or in fact prohibited. It thus forms part of the mechanisms and procedures subsumed under ḥiyal , legal devices, often ¶ used for evading the spirit of the law whilst technically satisfying its letter [see ḥīla ]. Thus the muḥallil is found in gambling, racing for stakes, e.g. with horses or pi…

, Yāfa , conventionally Jaffa, older Joppa, a port on the Palestinian seaboard, in pre-modern times the port of entry for Jerusalem, since 1950 part of the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo in the State of Israel (lat. 32° 05′ N., long. 34° 46′ E.). Situated on a 30 m/100 feet-high promontory on the otherwise straight coastline of central Palestine, Jaffa is a very ancient town. Thutmosis III’s forces seized the Canaanite town of ϒ-pw in the 15th century B.C. and it became a provincial capital during the Egyptian New Kingdom; since the 1950s, archaeological excavations have revealed the monumental gateway of the Egyptian citadel. It passed to the Philistines, and appears in Phoenician texts as ϒ.p.y. Jaffa was the port of entry for the timber floated down from Tyre by king Aḥiram for Solomon to use for the Temple in Jerusalem (II Chron. ii. 16). The Apostle Peter stayed at Jaffa in the house of Simon the Tanner (Acts ix. 42), but in Roman times its value as a port declined in favour of Caesarea. In ¶ …

(Ar.; from Persian pīl ), elephant. The word appears in the title and first verse of Sūra CV, which alludes to the expedition of Abraha [ q.v.], but the Arabs were barely acquainted with this animal which is a native of India and Africa; consequently when, towards the end of the 2nd/beginning of the 8th century, a troop of elephants arrived in Baṣra, it was a matter of curiosity for the population (see al-Nawawī, Tahd̲h̲īb , 738). The subject had already come up in the Kalīla wa-Dimna (trans. A. Miquel, Paris 1957, 53), but the first Arab author truly to con…

, Dunganistan , a name coined by Western scholars and travellers (W. Heissig, Ella Maillart) for an ephemeral régime, hardly to be called a state, in the southern part of Chinese Turkestan or Sinkiang [ q.v.] 1934-7. The name stems from the Dungan or Tungan [see tungans ] troops, Hui, i.e. ethnic Chinese, Muslims who formed the militar…

(a.), pl. waẓāʾif , literally “task, charge, impose obligation” (see Dozy, Supplément, ii, 820-1). 1. As an administrative term. In the early Islamic period, the form II verb waẓẓafa and the noun waẓīfa are used as administrative-fiscal terms with the sense of imposing a financial burden ¶ or tax, e.g. of paying the k̲h̲arād̲j̲ , ʿus̲h̲r or d̲j̲izya [ q.vv.], cf. al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 73, 193 (the waẓāʾif of the provinces of al-Urdunn, Filasṭīn, Dimas̲h̲ḳ, Ḥimṣ, etc.) and other references given in the Glossarium , 108. But as well as this loose sense, waẓīfa had a more specific one, as set forth by al-K̲h̲wārazmī. Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm , 62, cf. 59, that of an extra, fixed payment, made by the ʿāmil or tax collector, on top of the land-tax collected; Løkkegaard compared it to the Hellenistic-Roman annona and the ekstraordinaria of the Egyptian papyri ( Islamic taxation in the classic period, Copenhagen 1950, 126-8; C.E. Bosworth, …

(Ṭahmāsb), the name of two S̲h̲āhs of the Ṣafawid dynasty [ q.v.] in Persia. 1. Ṭahmāsp I, Abu ’l-Fatḥ, eldest son of S̲h̲āh Ismāʿīl [see ismāʿīl i ], born at S̲h̲āhābād in the district of Iṣfahān on Wednesday, 26 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 919/22 February 1514 (Ḥasan-i Rūmlū, Aḥsan al-tawārīk̲h̲ (ed. C.N. Seddon, Baroda 1931, 142), died Monday, 15 Ṣafar 984/14 May 1576 ( Aḥsan al-tawārīk̲h̲, 464), second ruler of the Ṣafawid dynasty [see …

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, a town of mediaeval Transoxania, in the region of …

(a.), literally, “the Rightly-Guided Caliphs”, the four heads of the nascent Islamic community who succeeded each other in the thirty years or so after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad in Rabīʿ I 11/June 632. The qualifying term in the phrase has often been rendered as “Orthodox” (an anachronism, since there was no generally accepted corpus of Islamic belief and practice at this early time from which deviation could occur) or “Patriarchal”, reflecting a view of this period as a heroic age for Islam. The four caliphs in question comprised: All four were from the Prophet’s own Meccan …

, a town and district of South India, now in the Gulbargā division of the Indian Union state of Karnataka, before 1947 in the Ḥaydarābād princely state of British India (lat. 16° 15′ N., long. 77° 20′ E.). An ancient Hindu town formerly part of the kingdom of Warangal, it passed to the K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī Sultans of Dihlī in the 8th/14th century, then to the Bahmanīs and, after Awrangzīb’s Deccan conquests, to the Mug̲h̲als. Rāyčūr has interesting Islamic monuments. The Bahmanī Ek mīnār kī masd̲j̲id has its minaret in the corner of the courtyard [see manāra. 2. In India]. The fortifications and gateway were built by Ibrāhīm I ʿĀdil S̲h̲āh in the mid-10th/16th century, and the D̲j̲āmiʿ masd̲j̲id …

, S̲h̲arwān S̲h̲āh , the title in mediaeval Islamic times of the rulers of S̲h̲īrwān [ q.v.] in eastern Transcaucasia. The title very probably dates back to pre-Islamic times. Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih, 17-18, mentions the S̲h̲īrwān S̲h̲āh as one of the local rulers who received his title from the Sāsānid emperor Ardas̲h̲īr. Al-Balād̲h̲urī mentions the S̲h̲īrwān S̲h̲āh, together with an adjacent potentate, the Layzān S̲h̲āh, as amongst those encountered by the first Arab raiders into the region; he further records that…

Abu ’l-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Masʿūd b. Mawdūd b. Zangī , called al-Malik al-ʿĀdil, sixth ruler in Mawṣil of the Zangid line of Atabegs, reigned 589-607/1193-1211. On the death of his father ʿIzz al-Dīn Masʿūd [ q.v.], Nūr al-Dīn succeeded him, but for many years was under the tutelage of the commander of the citadel of Mawṣil, the eunuch Mud̲j̲āhid al-Dīn Ḳaymaz al-Zaynī, till the latter…

, Muḥammad Saʿīd , prominent minister and military commander in 11th/17th century Muslim India, first in the service of the Ḳuṭb-S̲h̲āhī ruler of Golkond́ā ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad [see ḳuṭb-s̲h̲āhis ] and then in that of the Mug̲h̲als S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān and Awrangzīb [ q.vv.], died in 1073/1663. Stemming originally from Persia, he was at the outset a diamond merchant and accumulated a vast private fortune in the Carnatic, the region around Madras, from these dealings and from Hindu temple treasures, having his own private army of 5,000 cavalryme…

, a district of Central Asia and the name of a river there. The Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ Āb is a right-bank tributary of the Oxus, flowing down from the Alai range of mountains to the south of Farg̲h̲āna. Geiger and Markwart thought that the Greek name ¶ “Οξος came from Wak̲h̲s̲h̲, the tributary thus giving its name to the great river (see Markwart, Wehrot und Arang , 3 ff., 89; Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion, 65; and āmū daryā ). In early mediaeval times, the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ district must have had a population which included remnants of the Hepht̲h̲alites, such as the Kumīd̲j̲īs [ q.v.] and also T…

, the form usually found in Persian sources, early Arabic form Sid̲j̲istān, a region of eastern Persia lying to the south of K̲h̲urāsān and to the north of Balūčistān, now administratively divided between Persia and Afghanistan. In early Arabic historical and literary texts one finds as …

(in the texts usually Kīmāk, often wrongly vocalised Kaymāk), an early Turkish people living in western Siberia on the lower course of the Irtis̲h̲ River and on its tributaries the Is̲h̲im and Tobol, possibly as far north as the confluence of the Irtis̲h̲ and Ob and as far west as the Ural Mts. ; they are mentioned in Islamic sources from the 3rd/9th century onwards. The most detailed accounts of the Kimäk and their territories are in the anonymous Ḥudud al-ʿālam (begun 372/982-3), tr. Minorsky, 99-100, 304-10, and in Gardīzī’s Zayn al-ak̲h̲bār , ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy …

, Otrār , a town of mediaeval Islamic Central Asia notorious for its role in the irruption of the Mongols into the Islamic world. It lay on the right bank of the Sir Daryā or Jaxartes just to the south of the confluence with it of the Aris river. It is not found in geographical texts till the early 7th/13th ¶ century and Yāḳūt’s Buldān , ed. Beirut, i, 218, who has Uṭrār or Utrār. It may po…