, a dynasty of Atābegs [see atabak ] which flourished in eastern and ¶ southern Luristān between 550/1155 and 827/1423, the capital of which was Īd̲h̲ad̲j̲ [ q.v.] or Mālamīr. The eponymous founder of the dynasty, also known as Faḍlawī, was a Kurd chief of Syria named Faḍlūya. His descendants (the D̲j̲ihān-ārā mentions 9 predecessors of Abū Ṭāhir) migrated from Syria, and passing through Mayyafāriḳīn and Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān (where they made an alliance with the Amīra Dībād̲j̲ [?] of Gīlān), they arrived about 500/1006 in the plains north of Us̲h̲turān-Kūh (Luristān). Their (1) chief Abū…

, geographically speaking, the highlands of Gīlān [ q.v.]. In the south, the lowlands of Gīlān proper are bounded by the Alburz range; the latter forms here a crescent, the eastern horn of which comes close to the Caspian coast (between Lāhīd̲j̲ān and Čālūs). In the centre of the crescent there is a gap through which the Safīd-rūd, formed on the central Iranian plateau, breaks through ¶ towards the Caspian Sea. Before entering the gorge at Mand̲j̲īl the river, flowing here from west to east, receives a considerable tributary, the S̲h̲āh-rūd, which, rising in t…

, the old capital of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. Position. The town lies in lat. 37° 23′ N. and long 46° 15′ E. at a height of 5,500 feet above sea-level on the southern slope of Mount Sahand (11,800 feet high) which separates it from Tabrīz [ q.v.]. This explains the very considerable difference in climate ¶ between the two towns, which are only 50 miles apart as the crow flies (by the high road 80 miles). The climate of Marāg̲h̲a is mild and rather moist (H̲amd Allāh and Mecquenem, 1904). The plentiful water supply makes the vegetation rich. The fruit of …

, ancient Armenian capital, whose ruins lie on the right bank of the Arpa-Čay (called by the Armenians Ak̲h̲uryan) at about 20 miles from the point where that river joins the Araxes. A suggestion has been made that the town may owe its name to a temple of the Iranian goddess Anāhita (the Greek Anaďtis). The site was inhabited in the pre-Christian period, for pagan tombs have been found in the immediate vicinity of the town. As a fortress Ānī is mentioned as early as the 5th century A.D. Its foun…

, a town and district in southern Kurdistān, since the Ottoman reconquest of ʿIrāḳ from the Ṣafawids in the 11th/17th ¶ century under nominal Ottoman suzerainty, and since the aftermath of the First World War in the kingdom and then republic of ʿIrāḳ. The town lies in lat. 35° 32′ E. and long. 45° 27′ N. at an altitude of 838 m/2,750 feet, and is 90 km/54 miles east of Kirkūk [ q.v.], to which it is connected by road. The historical region of Sulaymāniyya lies between what is now the ʿIrāḳ-Persia frontier, the Diyāla [ q.v.] and its upper affluents the Tand̲j̲aru and Sīrwān, the region of …

, a town in the northeast of Diyār Bakr [ q.v.]. The other Islamic forms of the name are Māfārḳīn, Mafārḳīn, Fārḳīn (whence the name of origin al-Fāriḳī), etc. The town is called in Greek Martyropolis, in Syriac Mīpherḳēt, in Armenian Nphkert (later Muharkin, Muphargin). According to Yāḳūt, iv, 702, the old name of the town was Madūr-ṣālā (read ḳāla < * matur-khalakh in Armenian, "town of the martyrs"). On the identification of Tigranocerta with Mayyāfariḳīn, see below. 1. Topography and early history. Geography. The town lies to the south of the little r…

, literally, “land of the S̲h̲ūl” [see s̲h̲ūl. 1. above], a district, formerly a bulūk , in the southern Persian province of Fārs. Three epochs must be distinguished in the history of the district: one before the arrival of the S̲h̲ūl, the period of their rule (from the 7th/13th centuries), and the period of its occupation by the Mamassanī Lurs about the beginning of the 12th/18th century. During the Sāsānid period, the district was included in the kūra of S̲h̲āpūr-k̲h̲ūra. The founding of its capital Nawbandagan (Nawband̲j̲ān) is attributed to S̲h̲…

(Mūnd, Mund), the longest river in Far s ( Nuzhat al-ḳulūb 50 farsak̲h̲s E.C. Ross: over 300 miles in length). The name..As a rule in Persia, sections of a river are called after the districts through which they flow. Mānd is the name of the last stretch near its mouth. The name seems to appear for the first time in the Fārs-nāma (before 510/1116), but only in the composite Māndistān (cf. below). The old name of the river is usually transcribed in Arabic characters Sakkān (al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī. 120; Ibn Ḥawḳal, 191; al-Idrīsī, tr. Jaubert, i, 401), but the orthography varies: T̲h̲akān. Fārs-nāma, GMS…

(in Persian Lor with o short), an Iranian people living in the mountains in southwestern Persia. As in the case of the Kurds, the principal link among the four branches of the Lurs (Mamāsanī, Kūhgīlūʾī, Bak̲h̲tiyārī and Lurs proper) is that of language. The special character of the Lur dialects suggests that the country was Iranicised from Persia and not from Media. On the ancient peoples, who have disappeared, become Iranicised or absorbed in different parts of Luristān, see luristān . The name. Local tradition ( Taʾrīk̲h̲-i guzīda ) connects the name of the …

( 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 former k̲h̲ānate in the Persian province of Ad̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, and now the name of a town and of modern administrative units around it (see below). Mākū occupies the north-western extremity of Persia and forms a salient between Turkey (the old sand̲j̲aḳ of Bāyazīd, modern vilayet of Ağri) and Soviet Transcaucasia. In the west the frontier with Turkey follows the heights which continue the line of the Zagros in the direction of Ararat. The frontier then crosses a plain stretching to the south of this mountain (valle…

, “land of the Lurs”, a region in the south-west of Persia. In the Mongol period the terms “Great Lur” and “Little Lur” roughly covered all the lands inhabited by Lur tribes. Since the Ṣafawid period, the lands of the Great Lur have been distinguished by the names of Kūh-Gīlū and Bak̲h̲tiyārī. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Mamāsanī confederation occupied the old S̲h̲ūlistān [ q.v.] and thus created a third Lur territory between Kūh-Gīlū and S̲h̲īrāz. It is however only since the 16th century that Lur-i Kūčik [ q.v.] has been known as Luristān (for greater precision it was …

, a mystic and poet who wrote in a Persian dialect. According to Riḍā Ḳulī Ḵh̲ān (19th century), who does not give his source, Bābā-Ṭāhir lived in the period of Daylamī rule and died in 401/1010. Among his quatrains there is an enigmatical one: “I am that sea ( baḥr ) which entered into a vase; that point which entered into the letter. In each alf (“thousand”, i.e. of years?) arises an alif-ḳadd (a man upright in stature like the letter alif ). I am the alif-ḳadd who has corne in this alf” . Mahdī Ḵh̲ān in the JASB has given an extremely curious interpretation of this quatrain: the letters alf-ḳd …

1. For all practical purposes the term Abk̲h̲āz or Afk̲h̲āz , in early Muslim sources covers Georgia and Georgians (properly Ḏj̲urzān , q.v.). The reason (cf. below under 2.) is that a dynasty issued from Abk̲h̲āzia ruled in Georgia at the time of the early ʿAbbāsids. A distinction between the Abk̲h̲ăzian dynasty and the Georgian rulers on the upper Kur is made by al-Masʿūdī, ii, 65, 74. The people properly called Abk̲h̲āz is possibly referred to only in the tradition represented by Ibn Rusta, 139: , read * Awg̲h̲az , see Marquart, Streifzüge , 164-76, and Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam …

or ḵh̲ilāṭ , town and fortress at the N.W. corner of Lake Wān. (i) In Armenian the town is called Ḵh̲latʿ, the name being possibly connected with the ancient inhabitants of the country, the Urartian Ḵh̲alds. It lies half-way between Sipan Dag̲h̲ and Nimrūd Dag̲h̲ on the route taken by invasions from Mesopotamia into eastern Armenia. Al-Balād̲h̲urī, 200, reckons it to Armenia III, which in the Arab view included Ḳālīḳalā (Erzerum), Ard̲j̲īs̲h̲ and Baḥunays (i.e. either Apahunikʿ, where Manāzgird lies, or Bznunikʿ, the district of Ak̲h̲lāṭ). Under ʿUmar, ʿIyāḍ b. G̲h̲anm made a tre…

¶ i.—General Introduction The Kurds, an Iranian people of the Near East, live at the junction of more or less laicised Turkey, S̲h̲īʿi Iran, Arab and Sunnī ʿIrāḳ and North Syria, and Soviet Transcaucasia. The economic and strategic importance of this land, Kurdistān, is undeniable. Since the end of the First World War, the Kurdish people, like all the rest of their neighbours, have undergone considerable transformations as much in the political order as in the economic, social and cultural domain. …

, Ṭārom , the name of two places in Persia. 1. The best-known is the mediaeval Islamic district of that name lying along the middle course of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen or Safīd Rūd river [ q.vv.] in the ancient region of Daylam [ q.v.] in northwestern Persia. Adjoining it on the east was the district of K̲h̲alk̲h̲āl [ q.v.]. There are, at the present time, two small towns or villages bearing the name Ṭārum, one of them on the right bank of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen between Wanisarā and Kallad̲j̲. According to Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī ( Nizhat al-ḳulūb , 65, 217-18, tr. 69-70, 209-10), the district of “the two Ṭārums” ( Ṭāruma…

, Gurd̲j̲ , Gurd̲j̲istān , the names in Islamic sources for the province of Georgia in western Caucasia. Georgia comprises four distinct regions: Mingrelia and Imereti in the north-west; Samtask̲h̲e in the south-west (adjoining the Black Sea coastal region of Lazistān [see laz ], inhabited by a people closely related to the Georgians); Kartli in the north, with the capital Tiflis [ q.v.], Georgian Tbilisi; and Kak̲h̲eti in the east. Topographically, much of Georgia comprises mountains, hills and plateaux, with lowland only on the Black Sea coastal plain an…

, a district in K̲h̲urāsān, original Persian form Tōs (also thus in the later 8th century Armenian geography, see Markwart-Messina, A catalogue of the provincial capitals of Ērānshahr , Rome 1931, 11, 47), which played a notable part in the medieval Islamic period of Persia’s Islamic history. ¶ 1. History. In early Islamic times, Ṭūs was the name of a district containing several towns. The town of Nawḳān flourished down to the end of the 3rd/9th century. The form Nawḳān < Nōḳan is confirmed by the present name of the Mas̲h̲had quarter Nawg̲h̲ān (where the diphthong aw corresponds to the old wāw…

, the ancient Rag̲h̲ā, a city in the old Persian region of Media, during Islamic times in the province of D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.]. Its ruins may be seen about 5 miles south-southeast of Tehran [ q.v.] to the south of a spur projecting from Elburz into the plain. The village and sanctuary of S̲h̲āh ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm lie immediately south of the ruins. The geographical importance of the town lies in the fact that it was situated in the fertile zone which lies between the mountains and the desert, by which from time immemorial communication ha…