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, the name found in early Islamic times for a region of what is now eastern Afg̲h̲anistān, roughly covering the modern Afg̲h̲ān provinces of G̲h̲aznī and Zābul. The early geographers describe what was a remote region on the far eastern frontiers of the Dār al-Islām in understandably vague terms as an extensive province with G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] as its centre. It thus emerges that it lay between Kābul and the Kābul river valley on the north and the territories around the confluence of the Helmand river and Arg̲h̲andāb known as Zamīndāwar and al-Ruk̲h̲k̲h̲ad̲j̲ [ q.vv.], but the boundaries her…

the nisba or gentilic of several Egyptian scholars of the Mamlūk and early Ottoman periods, the most important of whom are as follows: (1.) S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī (ʿAbd Allāh?) b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Fazārī al-S̲h̲āfiʿī, legal scholar and secretary in the Mamlūk chancery, and author of several books. The main sources for his life are the fairly brief mentions of him in biographical and historical sources of the late Mamlūk period by al-ʿAynī, al-Maḳrīzī, Ibn Tag̲h̲rībirdī, al-Sak̲h̲āwī and Ibn …

(p.), the Peacock Throne, a name given to various highly-decorated and much bejewelled royal thrones in the eastern Islamic world, ¶ in particular, to that constructed for the Mug̲h̲al Emperor S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān (1037-68/1628-57 [ q.v.]). There are relevant accounts in the contemporary Indo-Muslim sources, e.g. in ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Lāhawrī’s Bāds̲h̲āh-nāma and Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s ʿAmal-i Ṣāliḥ , and in the accounts of European travellers who claimed to have seen the throne, such as Tavernier, Bernier and Manucci. These last authorities, …

(t., < ḳi̊s̲h̲ “winter”), winter quarters, originally applied to the winter quarters, often in warmer, low-lying areas, of pastoral nomads in Inner Asia, and thence to those in regions like Persia and Anatolia into which Türkmens and others from Central Asia infiltrated, bringing with them their nomadic ways of life; Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-turk , tr. Atalay, i, 464-5, defines ḳi̊s̲h̲laḳ as al-mus̲h̲attā . Its antonym is yaylaḳ “summer quarters” (< yay “spring”, later “summer”), denoting the upland pastures favou…

, an Iranian family of K̲h̲urāsān prominent in the cultural and social worlds there and also active as local administrators and town officials under the Sāmānids and early G̲h̲aznawids [ q.vv.]. They were apparently of Sog̲h̲dian origin, and amongst their pre-Islamic forebears is mentioned the Prince of Pand̲j̲kent S̲h̲īr Dīvāstič, killed at Mount Mug̲h̲ by the Arabs in 104/722-3 [see mā warāʾ al-nahr. 2. History]; al-Samʿānī traces the family back to the Sāsānids Yazdagird II and Bahrām Gūr ( K. al-Ansāb , facs. edn., fols. 548b-549b). It must neverthe…

, Arabised form of Persian Kūfičīs, a people inhabiting south eastern Persia, more exactly the Kirmān-western Balūčistān region, in early mediaeval Islamic times. The name, literally “mountain dwellers”, probably stems ultimately from O. Pers. ākaufačiya — (< O. Pers. kaufa- “mountain”), the name of a people in the Daiva inscription of Xerxes, who are mentioned together with the mačiya “men of Maka” (= Makrān, the coastal region of Balūčistān?), via N. Pers. kūfid̲j̲ / kūfič (cf. R. G. Kent, Old Persian grammar, texts , lexicon 2, New Haven 1953, 151, 165). In early Islamic sour…

, a line of Atabegs or Turkish slave commanders who governed most of northwestern Persia, including Arrān, most of Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān, and D̲j̲ibāl, during the second half of the 6th/12th century and ¶ the early decades of the 7th/13th. Down to the death in battle in 590/1194 of Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l b. Arslan, last of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs of Iraq and Persia, the Ildeñizids ruled as theoretical subordinates of the Sultans, acknowledging this dependence on their coins almost down to the end of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs. Thereafter, they were in effec…

, the name of a district, and of its mediaeval urban centre, in the western part of the Persian province of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān. The district comprises ¶ a fertile plain near the northwestern corner of Lake Urmiya, bounded on the west by the Harāwīl mountain range with the pass of Ḵh̲ānasūr (2,408 m/7,900 feet) leading into Turkey, and on the south by the Kūh-i Awg̲h̲ān. The modern town of Salmās, S̲h̲ābūr or Dīlmān(lat. 38° 13′ N., long. 44° 50′ E.), lies 48 km/30 miles to the south-south-west of Ḵh̲ōy [see khoi ] on the Zala Čay river. The region of Salmās has be…

, a town in eastern Transcaucasia on the left bank of the middle course of the Araxes or Aras River, lying in lat. 38°54′ N. and long. 46° 01′ E. and at an altitude of 948 m/2,930 ft. The Turco-Persian name “army town” implies a probable foundation during the period of the Mongol ¶ invasions or of the ensuing Il-K̲h̲ānids, especially as the latter made Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān the centre of their power. Certainly, Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī (mid-8th/14th century) describes it as a provincial town, one of the five making up the tūmān of Nak̲h̲čiwān [ q.v.], watered by a stream coming down from Mount Ḳub…

, a town in western Anatolia, classical Opsicum. It lies on the margin of a fertile plain, a few miles south of the upper course of the Gediz river and to the north of the main Manisa-Uşak road, in lat. 38°33′ north and long. 28°40′ east and at an altitude of 2,140 feet/652 m. it is in a volcanic area (classical Katakekaumene or Combusta), with the extinct volcano Karadevlit north-east of the town; hence many of the houses are built from dark basalt. There are numerous marble remains from classical times, but the citadel, apparently late mediaeval, is ruinous. Ḳūla came …

b. Riʾāb al-Asadiyya, one of the Prophet’s wives, whom he married after her divorce from Muḥammad’s freedman and adopted son Zayd b. Ḥārit̲h̲a [ q.v.]. Zaynab’s mother was a maternal aunt of the Prophet, Umayma bt. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and her father, from the tribe of Asad, a client of the clan of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams. One of the first emigrants to Medina, she was a virgin (according to some traditions, a widow) when Muḥammad gave her in marriage to Zayd. In the year 4/626 Muḥammad saw Zaynab alone in her house, was taken with he…

( nisba Bahrānī), a tribe of the Ḳuḍāʿa group, sometimes reckoned a part of Ḏj̲ud̲h̲ām, which emigrated northwards to the Euphrates and then to the plain of Ḥimṣ. Like their Euphrates neighbours Tag̲h̲lib and Tanūk̲h̲, they became Christian, but were converted after Tag̲h̲lib, probably about 580. A deputation came to Muḥammad at Medina in 9/630 and became Muslims; but the tribe as a whole remained hostile and attached to Byzantium. In 8/629 Bahrāʾ had b…

, a town of the northeastern Deccan of India (lat. 18° 00’ N., long. 79° 35’ E.), important in mediaeval times as the centre of a Hindu princedom in the region of Telingāṇa [ q.v.]. It blocked the way to Muslim expansion from the central Deccan to the Bay of Bengal, hence was frequently involved in warfare during the 8th-9th/14th-15th centuries with the Dihlī Sultanate [ q.v.] and then the local northern Deccani sultanate of the Bahmanids [ q.v.]. Warangal lies on the eastern edge of the Deccan plateau some 130 km/70 miles to the southwest of the Godivari river. In mediaev…

, also Erič , Erač , on modern maps Erachh, a small town of north-central India, situated on the south bank of the Betwā river, 65 km/40 miles northeast of Jhansi and 100 km/62 miles southeast of Gwalior (lat. 25° 47′ N., long. 79° 9′ E.). It is now in the Jhansi District in the extreme southwest of Uttar Pradesh Province of the Indian Union. Although now within a region largely Hindu, the area round Irič is rich in Indo-Muslim remains and monuments. It was in Muslim hands by 709/1309, when the Ḵh̲ald̲j̲ī commander Malik Kāfūr [ q.v.] stayed at Irič, then renamed Sulṭānpūr, en route southwa…

(a.), pl. asnād , lit. “support, stay, rest”, but in Islamic administrative usage coming to mean an administrative, financial or legal document on which reliance can formally be placed ( masnūd ), hence an authenticated document. From the same root s-n-d is derived the technical term of Islamic tradition, isnād [ q.v. and ḥadīt̲h̲ ], literally “the act of making something rest upon something else”. The Turkish form of sanad , i.e. sened , was used in Ottoman practice for a document with e.g. a seal attached, thereby authenticating it and support…

, a town of northwestern Afg̲h̲ānistān (lat. 35° 55′ N., long. 64° 67′ E.), lying at an altitude of 2,854 feet/870 m. on the upper reaches of the Āb-i Maymana, one of the constituent streams of the Āb-i Ḳayṣar which peters out in the desert beyond Andk̲h̲ūy [ q.v.] and the sands of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Ḳum [ q.v.]. The site of the settlement seems to be ancient. The Vendidad speaks of Nisāya, and the ?8th century Armenian geography of Iran records Nsai-mianak = MP * Nisāk-i Miyānak “the Middle Nisā”, possibly identical with Ptolemy’s Νισαία in Margiana (Marquart, Ērānšahr , 78-9)…

(p.), literally “guest”, the equivalent of Ar. ḍayf [ q.v. for this sense]. The Persian word occurs in various compounds, such as mihmāndār and mihmān-k̲h̲āna . In Ṣafawid Persia, the mihmāndārs were officials appointed to receive and to provide hospitality for guests, including foreign ambassadors and envoys, with a court head official, the mihmāndār-bāshī , superintending these lesser persons. In Ḳād̲j̲ār times, the mihmāndārs seem to have been appointed ad hoc. See the references to the accounts of European travellers in Ṣafawid Persia (Chardin, Kaempfer, Sanso…

, Abu ’l-ʿAbbās , founder of the short-lived line of Maʾmūnid K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs in K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.]. Maʾmūn was governor, probably as a nominal vassal of the Sāmānids [ q.v.], in the town of Gurgand̲j̲ [ q.v.], which during the 4th/10th century had been prospering commercially at the expense of the ancient capital Kat̲h̲ [ q.v.], seat of the old-established line of Afrīg̲h̲id K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āhs [see k̲h̲wārazm-s̲h̲āhs ]. In 385/995 the Afrīg̲h̲ids were overthrown and their dynasty extinguished, so that Maʾmūn became ruler of a unified K̲h̲wārazm. Very soon he was drawn into t…

, Tadmor , the ancient name, and that of modern Arabic usage, for the city of Palmyra. It lies in the Syrian Desert some 145 km/90 miles east of Ḥimṣ and 240 km/150 miles west of the middle Euphrates (lat. 34° 36′ N., long. 38° 15′ E., altitude 407 m/1,336 feet). From early times, Tadmur must have been a station on the caravan route connecting Mesopotamia with Syria, since the road on which it lay could pass through a gap in the southwest to northeastwards-running chain of hills: to the southwest of Tadmur, the Ḏj̲abal al-Ḵh̲anāzir, and to the n…

, Abū Ḥātim, Arab commander of the Umayyads and governor in Sīstān, d. 79/698. The Abū Bakra family were of mawlā origin, Abū Bakra’s father being apparently an Abyssinian slave. Although he married a free Arab wife from the Banū ʿId̲j̲l, ʿUbayd Allāh himself retained a dark and swarthy complexion, being described as adg̲h̲am ; an attempted filiation of the family to al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Kalada [ q.v. in Suppl.], the so-called "Physician of the Arabs", was later disallowed by the caliph al-Mahdī. The family prospered in Basra as partisans of the Umayyads and through…