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(written Māridīn in Arabic, in Syriac Marde), a town in upper Mesopotamia (Diyār Rabīʿa). Position. In Upper Mesopotamia, the watershed between the Tigris and Euphrates is formed by the heights which culminate in Ḳarad̲j̲a-dag̲h̲, (5,000 feet) S.W. of Diyār-bakr. This basalt massif is continued eastwards in the direction of Ḏj̲azīrat Ibn ʿOmar by the limestone chain known in ancient times as Masius and later as Izala (’ΙζαλαΣ). The eastern part of this ridge forms the district of Ḏj̲abal-Ṭūr or Tūr ʿAbdīn [q.…

, pseudonym of the Persian poet Abu ’l-Ḥasan Raḥīm b. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ibrāhīm Ḳulī. He was born about 1196 (1782) in the village of Ḵh̲ūr in the oasis of Ḏj̲andaḳ or Biyābānak in the middle of the central desert of Persia. He began his life as a camel-herd but by the age of 7 his natural gifts had been noticed by the owner of the oasis, Ismāʿīl Ḵh̲ān ʿArab-i ʿĀmirī whose secretary ( muns̲h̲ī-bās̲h̲ī) he ultimately became. His first nom de plume was Mad̲j̲nūn. In 1216 (1802) Ismāʿīl Ḵh̲ān after a rising against the government had to flee to Ḵh̲urāsān, while Ḏj̲andaḳ was …

, an Iranian term applied to the country to the north-east of Iran. The form of the name is not earlier than the Middle Persian period. The suffix - ān is used to form both patronymics (Pāpakān) and the names of countries (Gēlān, Dailamān) (cf. Grundr. d. iran. Phil., I/ii., p. 176; Salemann, ibid., I/i., p. 280 expresses doubts as to whether - ān is from the genitive plural - ānām). Three questions are raised by the name Tūrān: 1. its origin, 2. its later acceptation, which identifies Tūrān with “the land of the Turks”, 3. its modern geographical, linguistic and political applications. The Tūra.…

(better T-čayi̊), a village in the district of Gärmärūd in the province of Ād̲h̲arbāid̲j̲ān. Türkmän-čai, “the river of the Turkomans”, is really the name of the stream on which the village stands; it comes down from the Čičäkli pass (between Türkmän-čai and Sarāb). It is one of the northern tributaries of the river of Miyāna (S̲h̲ähär-čayi̊) which flows into the Ḳi̊zi̊lüzän (cf. the article safīd-rūd). The village of Türkmän-čai marks a stage on the great Tabrīz-Zand̲j̲ān-Ḳazwīn-Tihrān-Ḵh̲urāsān road. The distances are Tabrīz-Türkmän-čai c. 60 miles; Türkmä…

, 1. capital of the Persian province of ʿIrāḳ (popularly: ʿArāḳ). The town was founded in 1808 by Yūsuf Ḵh̲ān Gurd̲j̲ī in the S. W. corner of the plain of Farāhān. The town is built very regularly in the shape of a rectangle; its walls (2,000 × 2,666 feet) are each protected by 12 or 18 towers. The inhabitants number 25,000 (Stahl). The province now bearing the name of ʿIrāḳ (ʿArāḳ) must not be confused with the extensive area to which the geographers of the Mongol period gave the name of ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī (cf. Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 185—186) which included Kirmāns̲h̲ā…

, “men of God”, a secret religion found especially in Western Persia. If one wished to choose a name for the sect, Ahl-i Ḥaḳḳ would seem to lack precision for it was in use, for example, among the Ḥurūfīs (cf. Huart, Textes persons relatifs à la secte des Ḥurūfī, in G.M.S., 1909, p. 40), and it resembles Ṣūfī terms like Ahl-i Ḥaḳīḳat (this is also used by the Ahl-i Ḥaḳḳ). In the narrow sense however, Ahl-i Ḥaḳḳ is the name actually given themselves by the followers of the religion described in the present article. The name ʿAlī-Ilāhī [q. v.] given them by…

(more frequently S. Sohāḳ, S. Sohāk), an important personage in the beliefs of the Ahl-i Ḥaḳḳ sect (popularly known as ʿAlī llāhī; q. v.). The first manifestations of God (Ḵh̲āwandigār, ʿAlī, Bābā Ḵh̲os̲h̲īn) correspond to the stages of s̲h̲arīʿa, ṭarīḳa and maʿrifa, but it is the fourth avatar — Sulṭān Sohāk — which marks the highest degree of gnosis, the ḥaḳīḳa [q. v.]. Everything goes to show that Sulṭān Isḥāḳ was a historical personage. The Ahl-i Ḥaḳḳ put him in the xivth century. He js said to have been a son of a certain S̲h̲aik̲h̲ ʿĪsā and Ḵh̲ātūn Dāyira (Dayarāḳ), da…

b. bazzāz (Tūklī [?] b. Ismāʿīl), a darwīs̲h̲, author of the Ṣifwat al-Ṣafā, which is a biography of the grand S̲h̲aik̲h̲ Ṣafī al-Dīn of Ardabīl (650—735= 1252—1334), ancestor of the Ṣafawid dynasty. The book was written in 750 (1350) under the direction of S̲h̲aik̲h̲ Ṣadr al-Dīn, son of Ṣafī al-Dīn, whom Tawakkul quotes as an authority. Later under S̲h̲āh Ṭahmāsp I the text of the work was revised by a certain Abu ’l-Fatḥ Ḥusainī. The Persian text was published in Calcutta in 1329 (1911). The Ṣifwat al-Ṣafā is a work of considerable length, about 216,000 words. It is purely hagi…

(Send̲j̲ābī), a Kurd tribe in the Persian province of Kirmāns̲h̲āh. In summer the Sind̲j̲ābī pitch their tents in the plain of Māhīdas̲h̲t and in the district of Ḏj̲wānrū; in winter they move to the lands south of the Alwand (in Kurdish: Halawān from the older Ḥulwān, cf. sarpul), a left bank tributary of the Diyāla which it joins near Ḵh̲āniḳīn. Here the ¶ pasturages of the Sind̲j̲ābī stretch from Sarpul to the mountains of Ag̲h̲-dāg̲h̲, Bāg̲h̲če and Ḳaṭār (south of Ḵh̲āniḳīn) and in the south stretch as far as Ḳala-naft. The delimitation of the Turco-Per…

, a Mongol Ḵh̲ān, whose dynasty ruled in Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ān for a century before 808 (1405). The Name. The Ḵh̲ān’s name may be read Tug̲h̲a or Tog̲h̲a. The Ẓafar-nāma transcribes it Ṭg̲h̲y (Tug̲h̲ai?); on a coin published by Fraehn it is spelled Tog̲h̲an (in Mongol character; cf. Howorth, op. cit., iii. 718). Family. Tug̲h̲a Tīmūr b. Suri (Surikuri?) b. Bābā Bahādur was a descendant in the sixth generation from a brother of Čingiz-Ḵh̲ān (Ḏj̲uči-Ḳasar, S̲h̲ad̲j̲arat, p. 315, misunderstood by Miles). In 705 (1305) Bābā Bahādur arrived in Ḵh̲orāsān with his tuman (10,000 families) and entered…

, or properly Maʿalt̲h̲āyā, the Arabic name of two villages in the ḳaḍā of Duhūk in the old wilāyet of Mawṣil. They are about 40 miles N. N. W. of Mawṣil at the point where the river of Duhūk (left bank tributary of the Tigris) enters the plain, whence the Aramaic name Maʿallt̲h̲ā > Malt̲h̲ai, “entrance”. The pass of Maʿalt̲h̲āyā giving access to the country to the south of Lake Van must have played an important part in ancient times. Its importance is indicated by the famous bas-reliefs carved on the rock half an hour’s walk to the south of Maʿalt̲h…

( Kangarids or Sallārids ), a dynasty of Daylamī origin which came from Ṭārum [ q.v.] and reigned in the 4th-5th/10th-11th centuries of the Hid̲j̲ra in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, Arrān and Armenia. Its coming to power was one of the manifestations of the great movement of Iranian liberation which formed a kind of interlude between the end of Arab domination and the first Turkish invasions. While in K̲h̲urāsān and Transoxania this movement culminated in the rule of the Sāmānids [ q.v.], in western Persia and Mesopotamia its standard-bearers were the Daylamīs and to a smaller extent…

, a region in the heart of Inner Asia, to the south of the Pamir [ q.v.] range, essentially a long and narrow valley running east-west and watered by the upper Oxus or Pand̲j̲a and the Wak̲h̲ān Daryā, its southernmost source. The length of Wak̲h̲ān along the Oxus is 67 miles and of the Wak̲h̲ān Daryā (from Langar-kis̲h̲ to the Wak̲h̲d̲j̲īr pass) 113 miles. Afg̲h̲an sources put the distance from Is̲h̲kās̲h̲im to Sarḥadd at 66 kurōh (=22 farsak̲h̲s ). ¶ To the south of Wak̲h̲ān rises the wall of the Hindū Kus̲h̲, through which several passes lead to the lands of the upper In…

, Nak̲h̲čuwān , the name of a town in Transcaucasia which is also the chief town of a region of the same name, until the early 19th century a largely independent khanate and in former Soviet Russian administrative geography part of the Azerbaijan SSR but an enclave within the Armenian Republic. Both town and region lie to the northwest of the great southern bend of the Araxes river, since 1834 here the frontier between Persia and Russian territory. The town of Nak̲h̲čiwān is …

, a former fortress on the Black Sea, situated on the Bugur river 40 km. S. W. of the Kuban estuary. Built by French engineers for Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd I in 1781, it was unsuccessfully attacked by the Russians in 1787 and 1790, but stormed by Gen. Gudovich in 1791. Returned to Turkey by the treaty of Yassy (1791), it was in 1808 taken by the Russians but returned to Turkey in 1812. In 1828 it was blockaded by Admiral Greig and Prince Menshikov and ceded to Russia by the treaty of Adrianople of 1…

1. The most southern group of Kurd tribes in Persia. According to Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, their name (Läk, often Läkk) is explained by the Persian word läk (100,000), which is said to have been the original number of families of Lak. The group is of importance in that the Zand dynasty arose from it. The Lak now living in northern Luristān [ q.v.] are sometimes confused with the Lur (Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn), whom they resemble from the somatic and ethnic point of view. The facts of history, however, show that the Lak have immigrated to their present settlements from lan…

(or Ṭuwārān?), the mediaeval Islamic name for the district around Ḳuṣdār [ q.v.] or Ḳuzdār in the east-central part of what is now Balūčistān, the territory in British Indian times of the Ḵh̲ānate of Kalāt [see kilat ]. According to al-Ṭabarī, i, 820, the kings of Ṭūrān and of Makurān (Makrān) submitted to the Sāsānid Ardas̲h̲īr (224-41). The Paikuli inscription only mentions the Makurān-S̲h̲āh. Herzfeld, Paikuli, 38, thought that these princes at first owned the suzerainty of the Sakas, and their submission to Ardas̲h̲īr was the result of the conquest of Sak…

, a small town belonging to Yazd and lying on the road from S̲h̲īrāz to Yazd (at 39 farsak̲h̲s from the former and at 28 fars. from the latter) and also connected by a road with Ābādah [ q.v.]. It lies in a plain, and according to Mustawfī, Nuzha , 121, its name ("on a mountain") refers to its earlier site. In 443/1051 Ṭug̲h̲ri̊lbeg gave Yazd and Abarḳūh to the Kākūyid Farāmarz (Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, ix, 384) as a compensation for the loss of Iṣfahān. His successors continued to rule these towns as atābeks . In the 8th/14th century Abarḳūh is frequently mentioned in the …

, “those of the White Sheep”, rederation of Turkmen tribes, which rose in the region of Diyār Bakr in post-Mongol times (in the 14th century) and lasted till c. 908/1502. The name (cf. Chalcocondyles, ch. ix: Λευκοὶ ᾿Ασπρο<προ>βατάντες) is unknown in earlier times. There is some uncertainty about the origin of the name, whether it refers to the breed of sheep, or to some kind of totem; the tumular stones of the Turkmens have often the form of rams, but such a symbol is absent in Uzun Ḥasan’s ban…

(?), a people whom the Arabs found in Sind. Only the outline of the name is certain = *myd (Mīd, Maid), *mnd (Mand, Mund). In the reign of Muʿāwiya (41-60), Ras̲h̲īd b. ʿAmr lost his life on an expedition against the Mand (Balād̲h̲urī, p. 433). During the governorship of al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲, some Mand from Daibul [q. v.] seized on the high seas the Muslim women who were being repatriated by the king of the Rubis islands (Ḏj̲azīrat al-Yāḳūt); this act of piracy served the Arabs as a pretext to send an expedition against Daibul ( ibid., p. 435). After 95 (714) Muḥammad b. Ḳāsim concluded a …