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is the name by which the national hero of Albania is generally known in Europe. It is based on an Italianised or Latinised form of the name Iskandar Beg, which was given him in his youth when he was serving at the Ottoman court; the name contains an allusion to that of Alexander the Great. His real name was George Kastriota, of the family of the Kastriotas of Serbian origin, who had once ruled Epirus and Southern Albania. Born about 1404, he and his three elder brothers were given as hostages to Sulṭān Murād II, so that he was brought up in the Muslim religion as ič og̲h̲lan. His ability won him the …

, twentieth Ottoman Sulṭān, reigned from 1687 to 1691. He was born in 1052 (1642) (on 15th Muḥarram = April 15, according to von Hammer, G. O. R., the Sid̲j̲ill-i ʿOt̲h̲mānī gives the 25th Ṣafar = May 25), and was the son of Sulṭān Ibrāhīm; from the accession of his brother Muḥammad IV he lived the life of a prisoner in the palace with his brother Aḥmad. On the deposition of Muḥammad IV, the result of the defeat of the Turkish army at Mohács, Sulaimān was placed on the throne on Nov. 8, 1637, mainly through the efforts of the ḳāʾim-maḳām Köprülü Muṣṭafā Pas̲h̲a. In the precarious position of t…

, Siʿird or Saïrd, a little town in the frontier region between Armenia and Turkish Kurdistān, situated in a valley formed by the Bohtān Ṣu and the river of Bidlis about 30 miles S.W. of Bidlis and about 18 north of the Tigris. The little river Kezer runs near Seʿerd; but it is the Bohtān Ṣu which is sometimes called Seʿerd Ṣu (Söʿörd Su in von Moltke). litis name is also found in al-Masʿūdī, the earliest Arab geographer to mention Seʿerd; he calls the Bohtān Ṣu ¶ (ed. Paris 1840, i. 227); likewise al-Idrīsī (transl. Jaubert, ii. 172). The orthography varies much: (al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, Ibn al-At̲h̲īr…

I. Historical and Ethnographical Survey. (J. H. Kramers) II. Language and Dialects. (H. W. Bailey) III. Modern Persian Literature. (E. Berthels) I. Historical and Ethnographical Survey. Name. The name Persia is of Western origin and probably only in the Middle Ages began to be used for the countries occupying the Iranian plateau (in Plautus Persia is found once instead of Persis). It is derived from the Greek-Roman appellation “Persae” for the Achæmenids, an appellation that goes back to the name of the region of Persis …

is one of the honorific titles which first appear in the second half of the fourth century a. h. While other honorific titles compounded with Islām (like ʿIzz-, Ḏj̲alāl-, Saif al-Islām) were borne by persons exercising secular power (notably the viziers of the Fāṭimids, cf. van Berchem, Z. D. P. V., xvi., p. 101), the title of S̲h̲aik̲h̲ al-Islām has always been reserved for ʿulamāʾ and mystics, like other titles of honour whose first part is S̲h̲aik̲h̲ (e. g. S̲h̲aik̲h̲ al-Dīn; the surname of S̲h̲aik̲h̲ al-Fatyā is given by Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn to the jurist Asad b. al-Furāt; cf. Muḳaddima, transl.…

, Ḥakīm Mad̲j̲d al-Dīn Abū Isḥāḳ (or Abu ’l-Ḥasan) Kisāʾī, a Persian poet of the second half of the fourth century a. h. belonging to the first period of Persian poetry. He was ¶ born in Merw on Wednesday 26th S̲h̲awwāl 341 (March 16, 953) and according to most authorities died in 392 (1002); one source however (Wāliḥ, quoted by Ethé), says that he reached a very advanced age. A few of his poems have been preserved in the different tad̲h̲kīra: they have been published by Ethé ( Die Lieder des Kisâʾî, S.-B. Bayr. Ak., 1874, p. 133—149). These poems illustrate the whole repertory of Persia…

, the name of a Persian province and of its present capital. The name of the town was derived later from that of the province. The usual pronunciation is Kirmān, although, according to the tradition of Arab scholarship (Yāḳūt, iv. 263) the form Karman is more correct; the name, in any case, goes back to the form Carmania, which is found in Strabo (xv. 2, 14), and which in its turn is said to be derived from the name of an ancient capital, Carmana (Ptolemy, Geography, vi. 8; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6, 48). According to Marquart ¶ ( Ērānšahr, p. 30) the name Carmania replaced that of Yūti…

, the twenty-second Ottoman sulṭān, was a son of Muḥammad IV. Born in 1664, he succeeded to his uncle Aḥmad II on February 6, 1695, at a time when the empire was at war with Austria, Poland, Russia und Venice. The new sulṭān in a remarkable k̲h̲aṭṭ-i s̲h̲erīf proclaimed a Holy War and carried out, against the decision of the Dīwān, his desire to take part in the campaign against Austria. Before his departure a mutiny of the Janissaries had cost the grand vizier Defterdār ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a his life (April 24, 1693) and the campaign was led by the new grand viz…

, S̲h̲ams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr al-Bannāʾ al-S̲h̲aʾmī al-Muḳaddasī al-maʿrūf bi ’l-Bas̲h̲s̲h̲ārī as he is called on the first page of the Berlin manuscript (Cat. Ahlwardt, N°. 6034), is the author of the most original and at the same time one of the most valuable geographical treatises in Arabic literature. The name-form al-Muḳaddasī, denoting his origin from Jerusalem, goes back to Sprenger, who brought the Berlin manuscript from India and made this author first known in Europe (A. Sprenger, Die Post-und Reiserouten des Orients, Leipzig 1864, p. xviii.…

, thirteenth ruler of the Ottoman Empire, was born on May 16,1567, the son of Murād III and the Venetian lady Baffa, and reigned from January 27, 1593 until his death, December 22, 1603. He was the last sulṭān who, as crown prince, had resided as governor in Mag̲h̲nisa. During his short reign he does not seem to have exercised any great influence on the policy of the Empire, being mostly under the influence of his mother who, as wālide sulṭān, intervened in affairs of state through her protégés within and without the palace. Much against her will but on the insistence of a …

, the name of a sand̲j̲aḳ in the old territorial division of the Ottoman empire. This sand̲j̲aḳ covered the north-west part of Bithynia, including the whole of the shore of the Gulf of Nicomedia. In the north it was bounded by the Black Sea, in the east by the Bosphorus and the Gulf of Nicomedia, in the south by the sand̲j̲aḳ of Brusa and in the east by that of Boli; on this side the Saḳaria forms the natural boundary but in the administrative division the eastern bank of this river was included in the sand̲j̲aḳ. The name Ḳod̲j̲a Hi is connected with Aḳče Ḳod̲j̲a, the famous g̲h̲āzī and companion-in-…

, the part of the range of hills west of the Nile, which lies immediately to the east of Cairo and from which the mountains take a north-easterly direction, bordering the Nile delta to the south-east. It reaches a height of about 600 feet and consists, as does the greater part of the north African mountains, of limestome (cf. Description de l’Egypte, Etat moderne, Paris 1822, ii/ii. 751). The name Muḳaṭṭam (the Tād̲j̲ al-ʿArūs records also the popular form al-Muḳaṭṭab) does not go back to a pre-Muḥammadan nomenclature, nor is it considered, in spite of its correct Ar…

, a town lying in a plain among the mountain ranges that border the Iranian plateau on the south-west, now the capital of a Persian province between Kurdistān on the north and Luristān on the south. The geographical position of the town is approximately 34° 20′ North Lat. and 47° East Long.; the plain is traversed by the Ḳara Ṣu which runs to the north-east of the town in a south-easterly direction, joining the river Gāmāsiyāb (formerly the Gāwmāsā Rūd) farther south; the latter is a tributary of the Kerk̲h̲a [q.v.] and the most important water-course of the province. It was probably in this …

, the name of several places in Asia Minor. The meaning — if it is not ¶ simply a corruption of Ḳod̲j̲a Ḥiṣār — is “castle of the ram” and it may be compared with proper names like Ḳoyun Ḥiṣār, Toḳlu Ḥiṣār, Keči Ḥiṣār. 1. Ḳoč Ḥiṣār in the sand̲j̲aḳ of Kang̲h̲ri is a little town on the Dewrek Cai, twenty-five miles north of the town of Kang̲h̲ri. It is on the high road from Constantinople to Boli, Amasia and Erzerūm, between Ḳarad̲j̲a Wīrān and Ṭosia. According to Ewliyā Čelebi, this Ḳoč Ḥiṣār was captured by ʿOt̲h̲mān in 708 (1308) and comp…

, a famous military commander in the Ottoman history of the xvith century. The date of his birth is not given. He was a native of Ṣoḳol, the ¶ same Bosnian locality from which came the grand vizier Ṣoḳolli [q. v.], and began his service in the imperial serāy. He rose in rank under the grand vizier Aḥmad (1553—1555), but was not in favour with the letter’s successor Rustam Pas̲h̲a, who made him in 1556 lālā to prince Selīm with the object of ruining him. The outcome of this nomination was the contrary of what was expected; Muṣṭafā became the chief originator of the intr…

, is the Italian form of the name of the Greek town Naupactos which the Turks call Ine Bak̲h̲ti̊. This is how the Turkish form is transcribed, e. g. by Leunclavius ( Annales Turcici, p. 35) while von Hammer ( G. O. R., iii. 318) transcribes it as Aina Bak̲h̲ti̊, which he translates ¶ “Spiegelglück”; in view of the Greek form however it is very probable that the Turks originally pronounced it Ine Bak̲h̲ti̊. The town is situated in the ancient Locris, north of the strait which leads from the Ionian Sea towards the Gulf of Corinth, known since the middle ages as the Gulf of Lepanto. After forming from t…

, the tenth and the greatest of the Ottoman Sulṭāns, reigned from 1520 to 1566. The Turks call him Ḳānūnī Sulṭān Sulaimān and western authors Soliman the Magnificent. Some Western historians like Leunclavius and, more recently, Jorga call him Sulaimān II, the first Sulaimān having been, according to them, the son of Bāyazīd I who lived at Adrianople. In Turkey however the opinion that Sulaimān the Legislator is the first of the name has prevailed; he is always called Sulaimān Ḵh̲ān Awwal and the ten s̲h̲erfe of the four minarets of the Sulaimānīya mosque signify, according to the Ḥadīḳat al-…

, Viceroy (Ḵh̲edive) of Egypt from 1854 to 1863. Muḥammad Saʿīd, youngest son of Muḥammad ʿAlī Pās̲h̲ā, was born in 1822. His father had a very high opinion of this, his fourth, son whom he sent when only 19 to Constantinople to conduct negotiations regarding the tribute to be paid by Egypt. Saʿīd, who was francophil, was not on good terms with his nephew and predecessor, ʿAbbās I [q.v.]. The latter had done everything possible to induce the Porte to alter the law of succession formulated by the Sulṭān’s firmān in favour of Muḥammad ʿAlī and to s…

, turkicised form of the Arabic tard̲j̲amān (cf. Muḥammad Ḥafīd, al-G̲h̲alaṭāt al-mas̲h̲hūra, p. 110) meaning an interpreter. The word is of Aramaic origin and early entered the Arabic language. Interpreters must have always played an important part in the commercial and diplomatical relations of Islāmic states with foreign peoples, but their activity begins to enter into clearer historical light only in the vith (xiith) century; from that time date the earliest known treaties between Christian towns or states and Muslim rulers of the countries around the M…

, the town of Salonika in Macedonia, situated at the foot of the Gulf of Salonika, to the east of the mouth of the Wardar and at the foot of a hill which commands it on the north-east. It is the ancient Greek town of Θεσσαλονίκη, founded on the site of Therma by Cassander, who gave the new city the name of his wife, the sister of Alexander the Great (Strabo, VII, vii. 4). Towards the eleventh century, the popular form Σαλονίκιον appears ( Chronicle of the Morea) on which is based the form Ṣalūnīḳ or Ṣalūnīḳ in al-Idrīsī, the Bulgarian form Solun, the western form Salonika and fina…