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(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 military backing of Ma Hu-shan, styled “Commander-in-Chief of the 36th Division of the Kuomintang” and brother-in-law of Ma Chung-ying [ q.v.], best-known of the five Muslim Chinese warlords who controlled much of northwestern China in the later d…

(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, a…

(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 ṣafawids. i ]. Following the early Ṣafawid practice of appointing princes of the blood royal to be nominal governors of provinces, in the care of a Ḳi̊zi̊lbās̲h̲…

, a town of the northwestern Deccan or South India, situated on the middle course of the Tāptī River in lat. 21° 15′ N., long. 74° 58′ E. (see the map in gud̲j̲arāt , at Vol. II, 1126). Its fame in mediaeval Indo-Muslim history arises from its being the first capital of the Fārūḳī rulers [see fārūḳids ] of K̲h̲āndēs̲h̲ [ q.v.] before they later moved to Burhānpūr [ q.v.]. It had been a centre of Hindu power in western India when Malik Rād̲j̲ā Aḥmad chose it towards the end of the 8th/14th century. It was captured in 914/1509 by the Gud̲j̲arāt Sultan Maḥmūd Begaŕhā [ q.v.], who installed his own cand…

, a town of mediaeval Transoxania, in the region of Soghdia, and lying on a canal which led southwards from the Nahr Ṣug̲h̲d and on the Samarḳand-Karmīniyya-Buk̲h̲ārā road. The site is marked by the ruins of Ḳalʿa-yi Dabūs near the modern village of Ziyaudin (=Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn), according to Barthold, Turkestan3 , 97. It lay in a prosperous and well-watered area, say the mediaeval geographers, and Muḳaddasī, 324, cf. R.B. Serjeant, Islamic textiles, material for a history up to the Mongol conquest, Beirut 101, mentions in particular the brocade cloth known as Wad̲h̲ārī produced there. Dabūsi…

(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 gat…

, 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’s death in 595/1198-9. Nūr al-Dīn’s early external policy aimed at securing control of Niṣibīn [ q.v.] from his kinsman, the Zangī lord of Sind̲j̲ār ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī and the latter’s son Ḳuṭb al-D…

, 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 nisba s both Sid̲j̲istānī and Sid̲j̲zī, in Persian, Sīstānī. 1. Etymology. The early Arabic form reflects the origin of the region’s name in MP Sakastān “land of the Sakas”, the Indo-European Scythian people who had dominated what is now Afg̲h̲ānistān and northwestern …

(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 possibly be mentioned in al-Ṭabarī, iii, 815-16, year 195/810-11, but the reading here is doubtful, see M. Fishbein (tr.), The History of -Ṭabarī , XXXI. The war between brothers, Albany 1992, 71-2 and n. 292. In the hist…

(t.), a Turkish name found e.g. among the early Sald̲j̲ūḳs, usually written P.y.g̲h̲ū or B.y.g̲h̲ū . In many sources on the early history of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs these orthographies seem to reflect the old Turkish title Yabg̲h̲u , which goes back at least to the time of the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions (see C.E. Bosworth and Sir Gerard Clauson, in JRAS [1965], 9-10), and it was the Yabg̲h̲u of the western, Og̲h̲uz Turks whom the eponymous ancestor of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs, Duḳāḳ Temir-Yali̊g̲h̲ “Iron-bow” served (see Cl. Cahen, in Oriens , ii [1949], 42; Bosworth, The Ghaznavids , their empire in Afghanistan a…

, modern Turkish Yenişehir, a town of northwestern Anatolia, in what was the classical Bithynia. It lies in lat. 40° 17’ N. and long. 29° 38’ E. at an altitude of 245 m/800 feet in a long depression running from Inegöl in a northeasterly direction, where this narrows; this plain is drained by the Gök Su, whose waters are used here for irrigation purposes and which flows past Yeñi S̲h̲ehir into the Sakarya river [ q.v.]. Yeñi S̲h̲ehir played an important role in early Ottoman history. It was the first town of significance to be taken at some point in the early 8th/14th century by ʿOt̲h̲mān I [ q.v.], w…

, minister in Central Asia of the Mongol K̲h̲āns in the 13th century A.D. Soon after 1238, in the reign of the Great K̲h̲ān Ögedey (1227-41), parts of Transoxania and Mog̲h̲olistān [ q.v.] (the region of the steppes to the north of Transoxania) were ceded to Čag̲h̲atay as an ind̲j̲ü or appanage [see čag̲h̲atay k̲h̲ān and mā warāʾ al-nahr. 2. History]. Masʿūd Beg’s father Maḥmūd Yalawač [ q.v.] was transferred from his governorship of the sedentary population of Transoxania and Mog̲h̲olistān to China, and the son then appointed to succeed him there. Indeed, acco…

(p.), in Pas̲h̲to Spīn G̲h̲ar (“The White Mountain”), the name of a mountain range falling mainly in eastern Afghānistān. According to Bābur, it derives its name from its perpetual covering of snow; from its northern slopes, nine rivers run down to the Kābul River ( Bābur-nāma , tr. Beveridge, 209, cf. Appx. E, pp. xvii-xxiii). The Safīd Kūh, with its outliers, runs from a point to the east of G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] in a northeasterly and then easterly direction almost to Attock [see atak ] on the Indus (approx. between longs. 68° 40′ E. an…

, Abū Ḥafṣ Ḳutayba b. Abī Ṣāliḥ Muslim b. ʿAmr al-Bāhilī , Arab commander under the Umayyad caliphs. He was born in 49/669 into a family influential at the court and with extensive possessions in Baṣra. His father Muslim was the boon-companion of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, and during the revolt of al-Muk̲h̲tār [ q.v.], he was in charge of the prison at Baṣra; but he later sided with Muṣʿab b. al-Zubayr and was killed in 72/691-2 when Muṣʿab’s dominion in ʿIrāḳ was ended, after having failed to secure a pardon from ʿAbd al-Malik. The family nevertheless co…