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bi ’llāh , Abu ’l-Ḳāsim ʿAbd Allāh , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 333-4/944-6, son of the caliph al-Muḳtafī [ q.v.] by a Greek slave concubine called G̲h̲uṣn. When the commander-in-chief of the Turkish soldiery in Bag̲h̲dād, Tūzūn, deposed and blinded al-Muttaḳī b. al-Muḳtadir [ q.v.], he raised to the throne one of the latter’s cousins as al-Mustakfī in Ṣafar 333/September-October 944, al-Mustakfī being then aged 41. The situation in ʿIrāḳ was unpropitious for the new ruler. The caliphs were puppets in the hands of the Turkish troops, whose…

, a town in northern Bihār State of the Indian Union (lat. 26° 7′ N.,85° 24″ E.), and also the name of a District of which it is the administrative centre; the District covers the ancient region of Tirhut between the Ganges and the southern border of Nepal. The region was attacked in the 8th/14th century by the Muslim rulers of Bengal; in the next century it passed to the S̲h̲arḳī rulers of D̲j̲awnpur [ q.v.], and then to Sikandar Lōdī of Dihlī. The town of Muẓaffarpur enshrines the name of its founder, the Emperor Akbar’s commander Muẓaffar Khān, dīwān or head of revenue and finance [see dīwān. v] a…

, the name of a mysterious potentate, said to be a Nestorian Christian and inimical to Islam, whom the Christians of medieval Europe placed beyond the Islamic lands in Inner or Far Asia. The name Presbyter Johannes first occurs in the chronicle, called Historia de duabus civitatibus, of the German prelate Otto, Bishop of Freising, in which he describes, on the authority of a meeting in 1145 with the Latin Bishop Hugh of D̲j̲abala (= ancient Byblos, in Lebanon), how Prester John was a monarch, of the lineage of the Magi of the Gospels, living in the Far East ( in extremo oriente) beyond Persia an…

, ʿAbd al-Bāḳī b. Abī Bakr Kurd, Indo-Muslim historian of the Mug̲h̲al period (978-after 1046/1570-after 1637). Of Kurdish origin from D̲j̲ūlak near Nihāwand [ q.v.], he served the Ṣafawids as a tax official and eventually became a wazīr in the administration. But then he fell from grace, and like many Persians of his age, decided to migrate to India, and entered the service of the K̲h̲ān-i K̲h̲ānān [ q.v.] Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, one of Akbar’s generals, subsequently holding official posts in the Deccan and Bihar. The K̲h̲ān-i K̲h̲ānān asked him to write a biography of himself, the Maʾāt̲h̲ir…

, a small town in the Persian province of Fārs (lat. 29° 16′ N., long 53° 13′ E., alt. ¶ 1,597 m/5,238 ft.), some 80 km/50 miles to the southeast of S̲h̲īrāz on the road to Nayrīz [ q.v.]. It seems to be identical with the K̲h̲awristān of the early Arab geographers, but first appears under the name Sarwistān (“place of cypresses”) in al-Muḳaddasī at the end of the 4th/10th century. It is notable for the tomb and shrine of a local saint, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Yūsuf Sarwistānī, dated by its inscription to 682/1283, and for a nearby mysterious building situated on the S̲h̲īrāz-F…

(“land of the unbelievers”), the name of a mountainous region of the Hindu Kush massif in north-eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān, until 1896 very isolated and politically independent, but since the Afg̲h̲ān conquest of that date and the introduction of Islam known as Nūristān (“land of light”). Some older European writers mentioned what might be termed a “greater Kāfiristān”, comprising such regions as Kāfiristān in the restricted sense (see below), Lag̲h̲mān, Čitral, Swāt, Bad̲j̲awr, Gilgit, etc. This cor…

, today the north-easternmost ustān or province of Persia, with its administrative capital at Mas̲h̲had [ q.v.]. But in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, the term “K̲h̲urāsān” frequently had a much wider denotation, covering also parts of what ¶ are now Soviet Central Asia and Afg̲h̲ānistān; early Islamic usage often regarded everywhere east of western Persia, sc. D̲j̲ibāl or what was subsequently termed ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī, as being included in a vast and ill-defined region of K̲h̲urāsān, which might even extend to the Indus Valley …

, a mediaeval Islamic town in eastern Anatolia/western Armenia. It lay, at a site whose definite location is unknown, on the left bank of the southern headwater of the upper Euphrates, the classical Arsanias, modern Murad Su. Its location was, according to Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 362-3, between Bālūya (modern Palu) and Hiṣn Ziyād or K̲h̲artpirt [ q.v.] (modern Harput), and it is not to be confused with Sumaysāṭ [ q.v.] on the Euphrates further south. It was in the borderland between the Arabs and the Greeks, and possession of it must have oscillated between…

, the Uyg̲h̲ur Turkish leader of a Muslim rebellion at Ḳomul [ q.v. in Suppl.] in Eastern Turkistan or Sinkiang [ q.v.] during the 1930s, b. 1888, d. ? in the mid-1970s. In 1928 the second Republican Chinese governor of Sinkiang, Chin Shu-jen, overthrew the last autonomous k̲h̲ānate of Central Asia, that of Ḳomul in the extreme eastern end of the province, adjacent to the frontiers ¶ with Mongolia and Kansu. His anti-Muslim policies provoked a rebellion there in April 1931 of the Uyg̲h̲urs, and possibly some of the Tungans [ q.v.], under the joint leadership of Yulbārs K̲h̲ān, who had…

b. Umayya b. Ḥārit̲h̲a al-Sulamiyya, an early supporter of Muḥammad’s cause at Mecca and an associate of his. She was the daughter of a man of Sulaym [ q.v.] who had come to Mecca and had become a confederate there of ʿAbd Manāf, and of a woman of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf; hence K̲h̲awla was related maternally to the Prophet himself. She was an early convert to the new teaching, in company with her husband, the ascetic ʿUt̲h̲mān b. Maẓʿūn [ q.v.]. When he died in 3/624-5, K̲h̲awla is said to have “offered herself” ( wahabatnafsahā ) to Muḥammad, but the latter “put her off” ( ard̲j̲aʾahā …

, Kuram , the name of a river which flows down from the western end of the Safīd Kūh or Spīn G̲h̲ar range of the Hindū Kus̲h̲-Koh-i Bābā massif of eastern Afg̲h̲ānistān and which joins the Indus River in modern Pakistan just below ʿĪsā K̲h̲ēl. The lower course of the river flows through Bannū [ q.v.], and the middle reaches through the northernmost part of Wazīristān [ q.v.]. The upper valley, beyond the railhead of Thāl, forms what in British India and now in Pakistan is the administrative region of the Kurram Agency, a thin wedge of territory some 70 miles lo…

, Sultan of the G̲h̲aznawid dynasty [ q.v.], reigned 388-421/998-1030 in the eastern Islamic lands. Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Maḥmūd was the eldest son of the Turkish commander Sebüktigin, who had risen from being one of the slave personal guards of the Ḥād̲j̲ib-i buzurg or commander-in-chief Alptigin [see alp takīn ] under the Sāmānids to becoming the virtually independent amīr of a principality centred on G̲h̲azna [ q.v.], at that time on the far eastern fringe of the Sāmānid empire. Maḥmūd was born in 361/971, his mother being from the local Iranian (?) gentry stock of Zābulistān [ q.v.], the distri…

, an important settlement in Nad̲j̲d during mediaeval times, now a village, situated in lat. 27° 8’ N. and long 42° 28’ E. It lies on a plain in the borderlands between the two regions of the D̲j̲abal S̲h̲ammar to the north-west and al-Ḳaṣīm [ q.v.] to the south-east, some 80 miles/130 km. south-east of Ḥāʾil [ q.v.]. The early Islamic geographers locate it in the territory where the pasture grounds of the B. Ṭayyiʾ and the B. Asad marched together, near to the frequently-mentioned “two mountains of Ṭayyiʾ”, sc. Salmā and Ad̲j̲āʾ. Bakrī, followed by Samhūdī, describes it as a famous ḥimā [ q.v.] o…

, Nirāḳ , a small town of Persia (lat. 34° 00′ N., long. 50° 49′ E.), in the modern province of Ḳum, 60 km/38 miles to the west of Kās̲h̲ān and at the northwestern end of the Kūh-i Kargas. It is not mentioned in the classical Islamic geographers, but has some fame as the origin of the scholar Muḥammad Mahdī b. Abī D̲h̲arr Nirāḳī (d. ?1209/1794-5), author of Persian and Arabic works on rhetoric, the S̲h̲īʿī martyrs, mathematics, etc. (Storey, i, 219-20, iii, 213; Brockelmann, S II, 824) and of his son Mullā Aḥmad Nirāḳī (d. 1244/1828-9), theologian and poet with the tak̲h̲alluṣ of Ṣafāʾī (Browne, LHP…

, Abū Ḥassān al-Ḥasan b. ‘Ut̲h̲mān al-S̲h̲īrāzī (this nisba from some apparent connection with the Persian city; see Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 381), judge, traditionist and historian of the early ʿAbbāsid period, b. 156/773 in Bag̲h̲dād and died there Rad̲j̲ab 242/Nov.-Dec. 856 (al-Ṭabarī, iii, ¶ 1434, and al-K̲h̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī) or the following year. A traditionalist in his views and associate of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, he was questioned under the Miḥna [ q.v.] at the end of al-Maʾmūn’s reign (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 1121-5, 1128, 1132). But he came into his own under th…

(p.) “scribe, secretary”, the term generally used in the Persian cultural world, including the Indo-Muslim one (although in the later centuries it tended to be supplanted by the term munshī , so that Yule-Burnell, Hobson-Jobson , a glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and phrases, London 1886, 328, record “dubeer” as being in their time “quite obsolete in Indian usage”), as the equivalent of Arabic kātib and Turkish yazi̊d̲j̲i̊ ,. The word appears as dipīr / dibīr (Pahlavi orthography dpy ( w) r, see D.N. MacKenzie, A concise Pahlavi dictionary, London 1971, 26) in Sāsānid Per…

, S̲h̲ams al-Maʿālī Abu’l-Ḥasan (reigned 366-71/977-81 and ¶ 388-403/998 to 1012-13), fourth ruler of the Ziyārid dynasty which had been founded by Mardāwīd̲j̲ b. Ziyār [ q.v.] and which ruled in Ṭabaristān and Gurgān (Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ān). Like other families rising to prominence in the “Daylamī interlude” of Persian history, the Ziyārids endeavoured to attach themselves to the pre-Islamic Iranian past, and Ḳābūs’s grandson Kay Kāʾūs makes Ḳābūs’s ancestors rulers of Gīlān in the time of Kay K̲h̲usraw ( Ḳābūs-nāma , Preface). As under his predecessors, suze…

b. Ḵh̲anzal al-Kindī, Abu ’l-Miḳdām or Abū Naṣr (full nasab in Gottschalk, 331, from Ibn ʿAsākir), a rather mysterious mawlā or client who seems to have been influential as a religious and political adviser at the courts of the early Marwānid caliphs, from ʿAbd al-Malik to ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. His birth date is unknown, but he died in 112/730, probably around the age of seventy. According to one account, Rad̲j̲ahʾ’s family stemmed from Maysān in Lower ʿIrāḳ, hence from the local Nabaṭ or Aramaeans, where the bond of walā with the Arab tribe of Kinda [ q.v.] must have been made, the Kinda…

, the name of a group of peoples inhabiting the central mountains of Afghānistān; they form one of the principal population elements of the country, amounting perhaps to 900,000. The Hazāras are almost certainly an Ethnically mixed group, whose components may or may not be related to each other. In appearance, Hazāras are predominantly brachycephalous, with Mongoloid facial features, though this is by no means universal. There is therefore much in favour of Schurmann’s hypothesis that the Hazāras of the core region, the Hazārad̲j̲āt [ q.v. above], at least, are a mixed populatio…

(p.), a term denoting a rank of officer or commander in mediaeval Persian armies and paramilitary groups (cf. Vuller, Lexicon persicolatinum, ii, 261-2, 293; dux exercitus, praefectus ). Thus the sarhangs were leaders of bands of ʿayyārs [ q.v.] or Sunnī orthodox vigilantes combatting the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲īs in 3rd/9th century Sīstān, and Yaʿḳūb b. al-Layt̲h̲, founder of the Ṣaffārid dynasty [ q.v.], embarked on his rise to power by becoming a sarhang in the ʿayyār forces of a local leader in Bust, Ṣāliḥ b. al-Naḍr al-Kinānī ( Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Sīstān , ed. Bahār, passim; Gardīzī, Zayn al-ak̲h̲bār …