, a small and ancient town situated on the north-eastern bank of Lake Van, which in the Middle Ages was still called the Lake of Ard̲j̲īs̲h̲. Its existence seems to be vouched for since the Urartaean period, and more expressly by the Graeco-Roman geographers. It was occupied for a time by the Arabs during the time of ʿUt̲h̲mān, but remained an integral part of the Armenian principalities up to the 8th century A.D.; from 772 onwards, it was incorporated into the Ḳaysite emirate of Ak̲h̲lāṭ [ q.v.]. In the 10th century A.D., it belonged to the Marwānids, but about 1025 it was taken…

( Banu ), one of the families of government contractors characteristic of their period who almost completely monopolized the caliph’s vizierate during the protectorate of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳids, and deriving their particular importance from that fact. The founder of the political fortunes of the dynasty, Fak̲h̲r al-Dawla Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. D̲j̲ahīr, born in al-Mawṣil in 398/1007-8 of a family of rich merchants, entered the service of the S̲h̲īʿī ʿUḳaylid princes of that town; then, after one of them, Ḳirwās̲h̲, fell …

, (not urṭukids ), a Turkish dynasty which reigned over the, whole or part of Diyār Bakr, either independently or under Mongol protectorate, from the end of the 5th/11th to the beginning of the 9th/15th century. Artuḳ, son of Ekseb, belonged to the Turkoman tribe Döger [ q.v.]. In 1073 he was in Asia Minor, operating for and against the Byzantine Emperor ¶ ¶ Michael VII, but he later appears principally as an officer in the service of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ Maliks̲h̲āh. In 1077 he brought the Carmathians of Baḥrayn under the rule of Maliks̲h̲āh; in 1079 Maliks̲…

, properly “abode of (the tribe of) Bakr”, the designation of the northern province of the D̲j̲azīra. It covers the region on the left and right banks of the Tigris from its source to the region where it changes from its west-east course to flow in a south-easterly direction. It is, therefore, the upper basin of the Tigris, from the region of Siʿirt and Tell Fāfān to that of Arḳanīn to the north-west of Āmid and Ḥiṣn al-Ḥamma (Čermük) to the west of Āmid. Yāḳūt points out that Diyār Bakr does not extend beyond the plain. Diyār Bakr is so called because it became, during the 1st/7th century…