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or Ruḍwān b. Tutus̲h̲ b. Alp Arslan, Fak̲h̲r al-Mulk (d. 507/1113), Sald̲j̲ūḳ prince in Aleppo after the death of his father Tutus̲h̲ [ q.v.] in Ṣafar 488/February 1095. After assuming power in Aleppo, Riḍwān and his stepfather, the Atabeg D̲j̲anāḥ al-Dawla Ḥusayn, aimed at taking over Tutus̲h̲’s former capital Damascus and thus at controlling the whole of Syria and Palestine not still in Fāṭimid hands. However, Riḍwān’s brother Duḳāḳ and his Atabeg Ṭug̲h̲tigin held on to Damascus, and after Riḍwān broke with D̲j̲anāḥ al-D…

b. al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. D̲j̲ābir, Abū ʿUbayd Allāh or Abū G̲h̲azwān al-Māzinī, from the Māzin tribe of Ḳays ʿAylān and a ḥalīf or confederate of the Meccan clans of Nawfal or ʿAbd S̲h̲ams, early convert to Islam and one of the oldest Companions of the Prophet. He was called “the seventh of the Seven”, i.e. of those adopting the new faith. He took part in the two hid̲j̲ras to Ethiopia, the battle of Badr and many of the raids of Muḥammad. During ʿUmar’s caliphate, he was sent from Medina to lead raids into Lower ʿIrāḳ, capturing al-Ubulla [ q.v.], killing the marzbān of Dast May…

, a dynasty of mediaeval eastern Persia which ruled 247-393/861-1003 in the province of Sid̲j̲istān or Sīstān [ q.v.], the region which now straddles the border between Iran and Afg̲h̲ānistān. The dynasty derived its name from the profession ¶ of coppersmith ( ṣaffār , rūygar ) of Yaʿḳūb b. al-Layt̲h̲. founder of the dynasty. Sīstān, on the far eastern periphery of the caliphal lands, had begun to slip away from direct ʿAbbāsid rule at the end of the 8th century, when K̲h̲urāsān and Sīstān were caught up in the great K̲h̲ārid̲j̲ite rebellion, led by Ḥamza b. Ād̲h̲arak (d. 213/828 [ q.v.]), whi…

, the name of two small islands (the Greater and the Lesser Ṭunbs) in the Persian Gulf situated to the west of the Straits of Hurmuz (lat. 26° 15′ N., long. 55° 17′ E.), whose modest history has been linked in recent times with that of the island of Abū Mūsā to their southwest (lat. 25° 52′ N., long. 55° 00′ E.). All three islands have been the subject of disputes between the ruling power in Persia to the north and the s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ s of the Arab shores of the Gulf, those now forming the United Arab Emirates [see al-imārāt al-ʿarabiyya al-muttaḥida, in Suppl.]. The Ṭunbs are mentioned by the Portugue…

, the more recent name for the town of eastern Persia known in mediaeval Islamic times as Isfīd̲h̲, Sipih, Safīd̲j̲ (written in al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī and Ibn Ḥawḳal as Sanīd̲j̲, for *Sabīd̲j̲/Safīd̲j̲). It lay on what was the highway from Kirmān to Sīstān [ q.vv.], and some of the classical Islamic geographers attributed it administratively to Sīstān and others to Kirmān, reflecting its position on the frontier between these two provinces. Muḳaddasī and others describe it as a flourishing and populous town with its water from ḳanāt s, the only town in the Great Des…

, minister in Central Asia and China of the Mongol K̲h̲āns in the 13th century A.D. Barthold surmised ( Turkestan3 , 396 n. 3) that Maḥmūd Yalawač was identical with Maḥmūd the K̲h̲wārazmian mentioned by Nasawī as one of the leaders of Čingiz’s embassy of 1218 to the K̲h̲wārazm-S̲h̲āh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīh Muḥammad [see k̲h̲wārazm-s̲h̲āhs ]. It is true that the Secret history of the Mongols (tr. E. Haenisch, Die Geheime Geschichte der Mongolen2 , Leipzig 1948, 132) refers to Maḥmūd Yalawač and his son Masʿūd Beg [ q.v.] as K̲h̲wārazmians (Ḳurums̲h̲i) and that yalawač / yalawar …

(Persian orthography, k.w.twāl ), commander of a fortress, town, etc. The word is used throughout mediaeval times in the Iranian, Central Asian and Muslim Indian worlds, and has spread westwards into the regions of ʿIrāḳ and the Persian Gulf, where we find it, for instance, as a component of place names like Kūt al-ʿAmāra [ q.v.], and given an Arabic-pattern diminutive form in al-Kuwayt [ q.v.]. Although the word appears from the Mongol period onwards in Turkish, including Čag̲h̲atay, in such versions as ketaul , kütäül , etc., so that many native authoritie…

, Turkish adherent of the Ṣūfī order of the K̲h̲alwatiyya [ q.v.] and poet in both Persian and Turkish. He was born at an unspecified date at Güzel Ḥiṣār in Aydi̊n, western Anatolia, being connected maternally with the ruling family of the Aydi̊n Og̲h̲ullari̊ [see aydi̊nog̲h̲lu ] and died at Tabrìz in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān in 892/1487. Dede ʿUmar was the k̲h̲alīfa of Sayyid Yaḥyā S̲h̲īrwānī, the pīr-i t̲h̲ānī or second founder of the Ḵh̲alwatī order, and as head of the Rūs̲h̲anī branch of the order engaged in missionary work in northern Ād̲h̲a…

, the name of three dynasties of mediaeval Islam. 1. A line of governors for the ʿAbbāsid caliphs in K̲h̲urāsān and the holders of high offices in ʿIrāḳ, who flourished in the 3rd/9th century (205-78/821-91). The founder of the line was the Persian commander, of mawlā origin, Ṭāhir (I) b. al-Ḥusayn D̲h̲u ’l-Yamīnayn [ q.v.], who became governor of K̲h̲urāsān in 205/821 but who died almost immediately afterwards, after showing signs of asserting his independence of Bag̲h̲dād. Nevertheless, the caliph—possibly being unable to find anyone else with th…

, Isbayta , the Arabic name for a settlement in the Negev [see al-nakb ] region of southern Palestine, which had the Nabataean name, rendered in Greek sources as Sobata (whence the Arabic one), Hebrew Shivta. Its ruins lie 43 km/27 miles to the southwest of Beersheba at an altitude of some 350 m/1,150 feet. First described by E.H. Palmer in 1870, it has been extensively excavated since the 1930s. The town flourished in Late Nabataean, Late Roman and Byzantine times as an unwalled, essentially agricultural centre, it being away fro…

(p.), literally “record of the day”, hence acquiring meanings like “almanac, calendar, daily journal” etc. 1. As a mediaeval Islamic administrative term. In the ʿAbbāsid caliphate’s financial departments, the rūznāmad̲j̲ was the day-book ( kitāb al-yawm) in which all the financial transactions of the day—incoming taxation receipts, items of expenditure— were recorded before being transferred to the awārad̲j̲ , the register showing the balance of taxation in hand. The form rūznāmad̲j̲ points to an origin of this practice in Sāsānid administration. Later, in Fāṭimid…

or simply Ṭarābulus, with the local variants of Itrābulus, Iṭrābulus al-G̲h̲arb and Ṭrablus, the name for the city of Tripoli, of Africa or of Barbary, in Libya, a designation which is also extended to Tripolitania, a region of North Africa bordering the Mediterranean which, with Cyrenaica and the Fezzan, constitutes the State of Libya [see lībiyā ; barḳa ; fazzān ]. 1. General. The name derives from an Arabisation of the Greek term Tripolis which dates back to ancient times. The qualificative al-G̲h̲arb (= “of the West”) was added after the Tur…

or G̲h̲uld̲j̲a , modern Hi or I-ning, a town in the fertile and mineral-rich upper valley of the Ili river [ q.v.] in Central Asia. For the mediaeval history of the district in which modern Ḳuld̲j̲a lay, see almali̊g̲h̲ . The town of Ḳuld̲j̲a (“Old Ḳuld̲j̲a”) was probably a new foundation in 1762 by the Chinese after their victory over the Kalmucks [see kalmuk ] in 1759, and they named it Ning-yüan-chen. Two years later the town of Hoi-yuan-chen was founded as the headquarters of the Chinese governor-general ( dsandsün ) of Chinese Turkestan; this was known as “…

, a town in the mediaeval Islamic province of northern D̲j̲ibāl some 50 km/32 miles to the southeast of Zand̲j̲ān [ q.v.] (lat. 36° 24′ N., long. 48° 50′ E.). 1. History. Sulṭāniyya was founded towards the end of the 7th/13th century by the Mongol Il K̲h̲ānids and served for a while in the following century as their capital. The older Persian name of the surrounding district was apparently S̲h̲āhrūyāz or S̲h̲ārūyāz/S̲h̲arūbāz (which was to be the site, adjacent to Sulṭāniyya, of the tomb which the Il K̲h̲ānid Abū Saʿīd [ q.v.] built for himself, according to Ḥāfiẓ-i Abrū). It was orig…

, a mountain massif of the central Sahara, forming part of the elevated land running from the Adrar of the Ifog̲h̲as [see adrar ] in northeastern Mali to the Nuba mountains of Sudan. It lies roughly between lats. 23° and 19° 30′ N. and longs. 16° and 19° 30′ E., being about 480 km/300 miles long and up to 350 km/200 miles wide, and includes the highest peak of the Sahara, the volcanic summit Emi Koussi (3,415 m/11,200 feet). Three great, deeply-cut dry wadis indicate, as elsewhere in the Sahara, a formerly…

, a town in the northwestern part of the former Ḥaydarābād state, now in Maharashtra state of the Indian Union, and situated in lat. 20° 1′ N. ¶ and long. 75° 12′ E; it is also known as Rauza (sc. Rawḍa). It is 14 miles from Awrangābād and 8 from Dawlatābād [ q.vv.], and a particularly holy spot for Deccani Muslims, since it contains the tombs of several Muslim saints and great men, including the Niẓām-S̲h̲āhī minister Malik ʿAnbar [ q.v.]; Niẓām al-Mulk Āṣaf D̲j̲āh, founder of Ḥaydarābād state [ q.v.]; and above all, of the Mug̲h̲al Emperor Awrangzīb [ q.v.], who died at Aḥmadnagar in D̲h̲u ’…

, the name of a region and a town of northwestern India, now in the Hariyana State of the Indian Union. The region is not mentioned in the earliest Indo-Muslim sources, but from the Sultanate period onwards, its history was often linked with that of nearby Dihlī, to its southeast. In the 18th century, it was fought over by commanders of the moribund Mug̲h̲als and the militant Sikhs [ q.v.]; for its history in general, see hariyānā . In early British Indian times, till 1832, it was administered by a Political Agent under the Resident in Dihlī. During…

, a town of northern India situated 75 miles south-east of Dihlī and coming within the United Provinces in British India, now Uttar Pradesh in the Indian Union. The more modern town of ʿAlīgaŕh [ q.v.] has expanded out of a suburb of Koyl. In 590/1194 the commander of the G̲h̲ūrids, Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Aybak [ q.v.], captured Koyl on a raid from Dihlī, and henceforth there were usually Muslim governors over local Rād̲j̲put rulers, such as Kučuk ʿAlī under Bābur (932/1526) ( Bābur-ndma , tr. Beveridge, 176). Ibn Baṭṭūṭa visited Koyl on his way southwards from Dihl…

, sing. Ṣaḳlabī, Ṣiḳlabī, the designation in mediaeval Islamic sources for the Slavs and other fair-haired, ruddy-complexioned peoples of Northern Europe (see A.Z. Velidi Togan, Die Schwerter der Germanen , 19-38). 1. The Ṣaḳāliba of Northern and Eastern Europe. The actual name was a borrowing from Middle Greek Σλάβος, “Slav.” this, in turn, is to be connected with the self-designation of the Slavs, Slověne (cf. the Rus’ usage Slověne, Slovyane , Sloven’ski̊y yazi̊k “Slavs”, “Slavic nation” in the Povest’ vremyanni̊k̲h̲ let , in PSRL, i, 5-6, 28, Mod. Russ. Slavyane , Ukr. Slov’yani̊ …

1. A town in the Caspian coastal province of Gīlān [ q.v.] in north-western Persia, in long. 50° 0′ 20″ E. and lat. 37° 12′ 30″ N. It is situated on the plain to the east of the lower reaches of the Safīd-Rūd and to the north of the Dulfek mountain, and on the small river Čom-k̲h̲ala or Purdesar, but at some 14 miles/20 km. from the Caspian Sea shore. Lāhīd̲j̲ān does not seem to have been known as such to the earliest Arabic geographers, though legend was to attribute its foundation to Lāhīd̲j̲ b. Sām b. Nūḥ. It does, however, appear in the Persian Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (372/982) as L…