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, a town on the Murg̲h̲āb river in mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān, five or six stages up river from the city of Marw al-S̲h̲āhid̲j̲ān [ q.v.], where the river leaves the mountainous region of G̲h̲arčistān [see g̲h̲ard̲j̲istān ] and enters the steppe lands of what is now the southern part of the Ḳara Ḳum [ q.v.]. The site seems to be marked by the ruins at the modern Afg̲h̲ān town of Bālā Murg̲h̲āb (inlat. 35° 35′ N. and long 63° 20′ E.) described by C. E. Yate in his Northern Afghanistan or letters from the Afghan Boundary Commission , Edinburgh and London 1888, 208; the modern…

, a place in the desert fringes of the early Islamic region of the Balḳāʾ [ q.v.], in what is now Jordan, some 22 km./14 miles southeast of ʿAmmān and 16 km./10 miles northeast of the Umayyad palace of Ms̲h̲attā or Mus̲h̲attā [ q.v.]. Visible there are the remains of an Umayyad settlement. These include traces of a palace, a tower which may have been part of a mosque, and signs of an extensive irrigation system in the form of sites of three dams nearby plus a fine stone-lined cistern, still much used by Bedouins of the Banū Ṣak̲h̲r for wa…

, a small town in northeastern Persia in the modern province of K̲h̲urāsān. It is on the Mas̲h̲had-Harāt highway, 150 km/96 miles from Mas̲h̲had and 75 km/48 miles from the Afg̲h̲ān frontier (lat. 35° 16′ N., long. 60° 36′ E.). The earlier Islamic name of Turbat-i D̲j̲ām was Būzad̲j̲ān or Pūčkān (both names in Mustawfī, Nuzha , 177, tr. 171, cf. also 143-4, tr. 151-2, where he calls it D̲j̲ām); it was here that the great mathematician Abu ’l-Wafāʾ al-Būzad̲j̲ānī (d. 368/998 [ q.v.]) was born. The geographers describe it being four stages from Nīs̲h̲āpūr, in a fertile agricultu…

, Mohammed Marmaduke William (1875-1936), English traveller, novelist, polemicist and educationist, who became a convert to Islam at a time when British converts to Islam were much rarer than later in the 20th century, and is now best remembered for his Ḳurʾān translation, The meaning of the Glorious Koran . Born in London, the son of an Anglican clergyman and with two step-sisters who were Anglican nuns, his boyhood and formative years were spent in rural Suffolk, from which he acquired a nostalgic view of a countryside way of life which was t…

, modern Vezirköprü, a small town of northern Anatolia, situated 35 km/21 miles north of Merzifon [see merzifūn ] and 18 km/12 miles south of the lowest stretch of the Kizil Irmak [see Ḳi̊zi̊l-i̊rmāḳ ] (lat. 41° 09’ N, long. 35° 27’ E). There was apparently a town there or nearby, in classical times, in what was then southern Pamphylia, and in Byzantine times, the town of Gedegara (in Kātib Čelebi’s Ḏj̲ihān-nümā , Kedeg̲h̲ara). In high Ottoman times, from the 10th/16th century onwards, it came within the sand̲j̲aḳ of Amasya in the eyālet of Sivas. Ewliyā Čelebi vi…

, a tide of rulers in Central Asia and what is now Afg̲h̲ānistān during the early Islamic period ¶ and, presumably, in pre-Islamic times also. The form s̲h̲ār must be an attempt to render in Arabic orthography the MP and NP form s̲h̲ēr/s̲h̲īr (< OP k̲h̲s̲h̲at̲h̲riya “ruler”, and not from s̲h̲ēr “lion”; see Marquart, Ērānšahr , 79). The title appears in early Islamic texts on the geography and history of the eastern Iranian fringes. Thus the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky 105, comm. 327-8, gives S̲h̲ār as the tide of the ruler of the district of G̲h̲arčistān in northern Afg̲h̲ānistān [see g̲h̲ard…

, early Arabic form K̲h̲arluk̲h̲, Persian K̲h̲alluk̲h̲ (whence frequent confusion in the sources with the K̲h̲alad̲j̲ [ q.v.], Chinese Ko-lo-lu (northwestern Middle Chinese *Kâr-lâ-luk), a Turkish tribal group in Central Asia. They were originally a small federation of three tribes (whence the name given to them in the Uyg̲h̲ur Shine-usu inscription ca. 760 of Uč Ḳarli̊ḳ; the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , 98, on the other hand, mentions seven tribes of the Ḳarluḳ), and comparatively unimportant. Their paramount chief never bore the title of k̲h̲ag̲h̲an or k̲h̲an , but i…

, Zarah , an inland lake in Sīstān [ q.v.], now straddling the borders of Persia and Afg̲h̲ānistān and the largest stretch of inland fresh water on the Iranian plateau. The name comes from Avestan zrayah-, O Pers. drayah- “sea, lake”. The lake played a role in ancient Iranian legend about a Saos̲h̲yant or Redeemer, a son of Zoroaster, who would arise ¶ from it; Islamised versions of such legends describe King Solomon as commanding his army of jinn to lower the surface of the lake so that the land masses thereby appearing could be used for agriculture (see Bosworth, The Saffarids of Sistan , 36). The…

, al-Ḳurḥ , a town and district of mediaeval Islamic times in the northern Ḥid̲j̲āz, mentioned in early Islamic sources as of prime importance, but not now known under this name. It seems very likely that the place had a role in the pre-Islamic history of the Wādī ’l-Ḳurā [ q.v.], where the settlement of later Ḳurḥ was situated, although the principal towns then were Dēdān (modern al-K̲h̲urayba) and al-Ḥid̲j̲r [ q.v.] or Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ (modern al-ʿUlā). According to Yāḳūt, Buldān , Beirut 1374-6/1955-7, iv, 320-1, and al-Samhūdī, Wafāʾ al-wafaʾ , ed. M. M. ʿAbd a…

, the s̲h̲uhra of Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Manṣūr Mubārak S̲h̲āh al-Ḳuras̲h̲ī , Persian author in India during the time of the last G̲h̲aznawids, the G̲h̲ūrids and the first Slave Kings of Dihlī (later 6th/12th century-early 7th/13th century). His birth date and place are both unknown, but he wa…

, Abū Manṣūr Būya b. Rukn al-Dawla Ḥasan , Būyid ruler in Iṣfahān, Rayy and most of D̲j̲ibāl 366-73/976-84. His father Rukn al-Dawla had before his death partitioned his lands between Muʾayyid al-Dawla (in Iṣfahān, Rayy and their dependencies) and another son Fak̲h̲r al-Dawla ʿAlī [ q.v.] (in Hamadān and Kurdish D̲j̲ibāl). In the event, Muʾayyid al-Dawla acknowledged the overlordship of their other brother, ʿAḍud al-Dawla [ q.v.] of Fārs, and with the latter’s support prev…

, a former city of Muslim Bengal during Mug̲h̲al times, now a small town 6 km/4 miles to the east of the ruinous Mug̲h̲al site, in the Santāl Parganas District of Bihar Province in the Indian ¶ Union (lat. 25° 3ʹ N, long. 87° 50′ E.). To its west run the basaltic Rād̲j̲mahāl Hills of central Bihār. Rād̲j̲mahāl city grew up in the strategically important gap between the Hills and the right bank of the Ganges, a corridor defended in Mug̲h̲al times by the fortress of Teliāgarhi. When the Rād̲j̲put governor of the Mug̲h̲als, Mān Singh [ q.v.], had in 1000/1592 conquered Orissa [see úrisā …

, Zikrīs , a Muslim sect of southern Balūčistān, especially strong amongst the Balūč of Makrān [ q.v.], but also with some representation amongst the Brahūīs of further north. The sect’s name derives from the fact that its adherents exalted the liturgical recitations of formulae including the name and titles of God, sc. d̲h̲ikr [ q.v.], above the formal Muslim worship, the ṣalāt or namāz . The D̲h̲ikrīs were believed by Hughes-Buller to stem from the North Indian heterodox movement of the Mahdawiyya, the followers of Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī of D̲j̲awnpūr (847-91…

, an ethnie and, until recently, a linguistic group originally concentrated in westcentral Afg̲h̲ānistān, in the modern province of G̲h̲ōrāt, and carrying on there a semi-pastoral and semi-agricultural way of life; now however groups of them have become dispersed throughout northern and central Afg̲h̲ānistān. They number at most 10,000 souls. For other communities in Afg̲h̲ānistān of mixed Turkish-Mongol origin, see …

, the spelling in the Indo-Muslim sources for the ancient Indian town of Somnāth , properly Somanātha “lord of soma” (the hallucinogenic drink of the early Indo-Iranians), referring to Siva (S̲h̲iva), and, by extension, “lord of the moon”. It is now an ancient ruined town on the southwestern coast of the Kāt́hīāwāŕ peninsula of western India, in what was the older Indo-Muslim sultanate of Gud̲j̲arāt [ q.v.]. Recent excavations have revealed settlement there dating back to 1500 B.C., and Somnāth plays a part ¶ in the story of the death of Kṛ…

, an Arab tribe which in Umayyad times claimed descent from Kahlān b. Sabaʾ of Yemen and relationship with Lak̲h̲m and ʿĀmila; this certainly corresponded with the prevailing political alliances. However, the North Arab tribes claimed that D̲j̲ud̲h̲ām, Ḳuḍāʿa and Lak̲h̲m were originally of Nizār but had later assumed Yemenī descent. D̲j̲ud̲h̲ām were among the nomads who had settle…

, a river of Inner Asia, and like many rivers in that region, one without outlet to the sea or to any more extensive river system. It rises in the Kūh-i Ḥiṣār mountains in north-central Afg̲h̲ānistān, flows westwards and receives tributaries from the Band-i Turkistān and Paropamisus mountains in north-western Afg̲h̲ānistān. Some 250 miles from its source, it reaches the town of Bālā-Murg̲h̲āb in the modern Bādg̲h̲īs province of Afg̲h̲ānistan, and then enters the Turkmen SSR and flows for another 250 miles northwards towards the Ḳara Ḳum desert [ q.v.] to New Marw (Russ. Mary), and t…

, Muṭṭawwiʿa (a.), lit. “those who perform supererogatory deeds of piety, those over and above the duties laid upon them by the S̲h̲arīʿa ” echoing the use of the verb taṭawwaʿa in Ḳurʾān, II, 153/158, 180/184, IX, 80/79, the term used in military contexts for volunteer fighters. Al-Samʿānī defines them ( Ansāb , ed. Haydarābād, xii, 317) as “a group who devote themselves to g̲h̲azw and d̲j̲ihād , station themselves in ribāṭs along the frontiers ( t̲h̲ug̲h̲ūr) and who go beyond the call of duty ¶ ( taṭawwaʿū ) in g̲h̲azw and undertake this last in the lands of unbelief when it is not incumbent upon them nor is an obvious institution in their land”. As well as …

b. Ḥarb b. Umayya, Arab commander of the conquests period, son of the Meccan leader Abū Sufyān [ q.v.] by his wife Zaynab bt. Nawfal and half-brother of the subsequent caliph Muʿāwiya I [ q.v.], d. 18/639 without progeny (Ibn Ḳutayba, Maʿārif ed. ʿUkās̲h̲a, 344-5). With his father and brother, he became a Muslim at the conquest of Mecca in 8/630, took part in the ensuing battle of Ḥunayn [ q.v.] and was one of “those whose hearts are won over”, receiving from the Prophet a gift of 100 camels and 40 ounces of silver (Ibn Saʿd, ii/1, 110, vii/2, 127; al-Wāḳidī, iii, 944-5; and see al-muʾallafa ḳulūbuh…

, the “Privy Chamber” of the Ottoman palace organisation and the most important of the four departments comprising the Enderūn or Inside Service (the others being, in decreasing order of importance, the Treasury or K̲h̲azīne [ q.v.] the Privy Larder or Kilār-i̊ K̲h̲āṣṣ and the Great and Little Chambers or Büyük ve Küčük Odalar . The K̲h̲āṣṣ Oda as we know it was created by Meḥemmed the Conqueror, who in his Ḳānūn-nāme mentions by title its four chief officers and its staff of 32 pages or …