Search

, the name of the administrative capital of the Southern Region (Ẓafār [ q.v.], Dhofar, also D̲j̲anūbiyya) of the Sultanate of Oman [see ʿumān ) and of the plain in which the town is situated. The town stands on the shore of the Indian Ocean and is 850 km/528 miles as the crow flies south-west of the capital of the Sultanate, Muscat [see masḳaṭ ] and about 120 km/75 miles from the present border with the Republic of Yemen. The town is the seat of the Minister of State and the Wālī of Dhofar. The town is a modern one which has developed from a small market town only in the post-1970 perio…

, a South Arabian dynasty of Fāṭimid allegiance (473-569/1080-1173), of Yām [ q.v.], centred on the southern port of Yemen [see al-yaman ], Aden [see ʿadan ]. When the Maʿnids (Banū Maʿn), the then rulers of Aden, suspended their tribute to their masters, the Ṣulayḥids [ q.v.] in 473/1080, al-Mukarram Aḥmad marched on Aden for the Ṣulayḥids, drove out the Maʿnids and installed as joint rulers al-ʿAbbās and al-Masʿūd, sons of one al-Mukarram b. al-D̲h̲iʾb, in return for their previous services to the Ṣulayḥid Fāṭimid cause. Al-ʿAbbās died in…

, the name of a town and area in ʿUmān [ q.v.] which finds no place in the classical Arabic geographies. The town is situated about 112 km/70 miles west, as the crow flies, of the chief town of the Sultanate, Muscat [see masḳaṭ ], on the northern side of the range of al-D̲j̲abal al-Ak̲h̲ḍar. The district, according to Lorimer ( Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf , Calcutta 1908, IIB, 1603-4), is the region of western Had̲j̲ar from al-Ḥazm with all the villages therein. The word itself is universally defined as Arabised Persian (see the previous article) meaning “village”, “market-to…

, banū , also and perhaps originally Riʾām, a tribal grouping in ʿUmān [ q.v.]. The tribe would appear to have originated in the coastal area of southern ʿUmān and in the 4th/10th century al-Hamdānī ( Ṣifa , 52) refers to them as a baṭn of al-Ḳamar, which Ibn Manẓūr’s LA (v, 115) states is a baṭn of Mahra b. Ḥaydān, not the main group of Mahra which remained in southern Arabia. Kaḥḥāla ( Muʿd̲j̲am , ii, 458), relying on the 5th/11th century geographer, al-Bakrī, says Banū Riyām themselves are a baṭn of Mahra b. Ḥaydān b. ʿAmr b. al-Ḥāf, that they live in the coastal area of southern ʿ…

b. ʿAlī , called ʿImād al-Dīn, a Ḥasanī s̲h̲arīf of Yemen. Belonging also to the Zaydī Ḥamzas, he is usually given the nisba al-Ḥamzī. He was a Ṣanʿānī, was born in 673/1274 and died in 714/1314. Idrīs had a strict Zaydī background and his early days were spent under the eye of his father, D̲j̲amāl al-Dīn ʿAlī, who played a prominent military part on the side of the Zaydīs in the Zaydī-Rasūlid struggles of the late 7th/13th century. By the time his father died in 699/1299, he had made his peace with the Rasūlids and Idrīs was left in charge of the Ḥamzī as̲h̲rāf in the Yemen…

, the first local dynasty to emerge in the Yemen in the Islamic period (232-387/ 847-997). The name is often erroneously vocalised “Yaʿfurids”, but the 4th/10th century Yemeni scholar al-Hamdānī, who was a contemporary of the Yuʿfirids, makes it clear that Yuʿfirids is the correct spelling ( al-Iklīl , Südarabisches Muštabih , ed. O. Löfgren, Uppsala etc. 1953, 36, and al-Iklīl, ii, ed. Löfgren, Uppsala 1965, 71). The family was of D̲h̲ū Ḥiwāl, a tribe from S̲h̲ibām-Kawkabān some 40 km/25 miles north-west of Ṣanʿāʾ [ q.v.]. The founder of the dynasty, Yuʿfir b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al…