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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…

, conventional form Syr Darya, a river of Central Asia and the largest in that region. The Turkish element in the name, si̊r , is not actually found before the 10th/16th century; in the following century, the K̲h̲īwan ruler and historian Abu ’l-G̲h̲āzī Bahādur K̲h̲ān [ q.v.] calls the Aral Sea “the Sea of Sir” (Si̊r Teñizi). 1. In the early and mediaeval periods. The Si̊r Daryā flows through the present republics of Kirgizia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan down from the northwestern slopes of the Tien Shan Mountains to the Aral Sea [ q.v.]. It is formed by the confluence in the e…

, the form found in Islamic sources for the capital of Georgia, Tiflis or modern Tbilisi. The city is situated on hilly ground in the Kura river valley [see kur ] (lat. 41° 43′ N., long. 44° 49′ E.), and has a strategic position controlling the routes between eastern and western Transcaucasia which has ensured it a lively history. The city is an ancient one, being founded in A.D. 455 or 458 when the capital of Georgia was transferred thither from nearby Mtsk̲h̲eta. For the subsequent history of the city, from Byzantine and Sāsānid times through the long…

, 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…

, the name of three Ottoman princes. The name would appear to originate in the Old Turkish (especially, Eastern Turkish) word saw “word, piece of discourse, utterance”, found as early as the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions, then in the Turfan Uyg̲h̲ur texts, in the late 5th/11th century Ḳutadg̲h̲u bilig [ q.v.] and up to the 8th/14th century, after which it is not attested as a separate word (Clauson, An etymological diet, of pre-thirteenth century Turkish, 782-3). Cf. also the name of the slave commander of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Alp Arslan, Sāwtigin. Sawd̲j̲i̊ would according…

, 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 city of northern India in the uppermost part of the Ganges-D̲j̲amnā Doʾāb (lat. 29° 57′ N., long. 77° 33′ E.), now in the extreme northwestern tip of the Uttar Pradesh State of the Indian Union. It was founded in ca. 740/1340, in the reign of Muḥammad b. Tug̲h̲luḳ [ q.v.] and was named after a local Muslim saint, S̲h̲āh Haran Čis̲h̲tī. The city and district suffered severely during the invasion of Tīmūr; in 932/1526 Bābur traversed them on his way to Pānīpat, and some local Mug̲h̲al colonies trace their origin to his followers. Muslim influe…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Aḥmad b. Ḥasan , called S̲h̲ams al-Kufāt "sun of the capable ones", vizier of sultans Maḥmūd and Masʿūd of G̲h̲azna [ q.vv.]. He was a foster-brother of Maḥmūd, and had been brought up and educated with him. His father had been ʿāmil of Bust under Sebüktigin, and apparently stemmed from Maymand in Zābulistān; but on a charge of misappropriation of the revenue, he was put to death. In 384/994, when the Amīr Nūḥ b. Manṣūr the Sāmānid conferred on Maḥmūd the command of the troops of Ḵh̲urāsān, Maḥmūd put …

, early ʿAbbāsid prince and uncle of the first ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Saffāḥ and al-Manṣūr [ q.vv.], d. at Baṣra in D̲j̲umādā II 142/October 759 aged 59 (al-Ṭabarī, iii, 141). He was appointed governor of Baṣra, including also eastern Arabia and western Persia, by al-Saffāḥ in 133/750-1 ( ibid., iii, 73), and remained in this important power base until forced out of the governorship in 139/756. As one of the ʿumūma or paternal uncles, whose position vis-à-vis their nephews the caliphs was ambiguous, Sulaymān sheltered for many years the failed rebel ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAlī [ q.v.], until ʿAbd All…

, Nīrīz , the name of a mediaeval Islamic region and of a town of Fārs in southern Persia. The Nayrīz plain is essentially a landlocked region in the southern Zagros mountains, drained by the Kūr and Pulwār rivers which rise in the Zagros and flow southeastwards into the shallow lake known in mediaeval Islamic times as the Lake of Nayrīz and in more recent ones as Lake Bak̲h̲tigān [ q.v., and also E. Ehlers, art. Bak̲tagān Lake , in EIr ]; although the lake itself is salt, the plain forms an agriculturally prosperous region, and in ancient times was the…

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b. Aḥmad Farīd Pas̲h̲a (1284-1338/1867-1919), Egyptian nationalist politician, active in the first two decades of the 20th century. Of aristocratic Turkish birth, he had a career as a lawyer in the Ahliyya courts and then as a supporter of Muṣṭafā Kāmil Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.], leader of the nationalist opposition to the British protectorate over Egypt and founder in 1907 of the Nationalist Party ( al-Ḥizb al-Waṭanī ) [see ḥizb. i. In the Arab lands]. When Muṣṭafā Kāmil died at the beginning of 1908, Muḥammad Farīd succeeded him as leader of the party, but being by temperame…

(popular pronunciation Tikrīt , cf. Yāḳūt), a town of ʿIrāḳ on the right bank of the Tigris to the north of Sāmarrāʾ 100 miles from Bag̲h̲dād divertly, and 143 by river, and at the foot of the range of the D̲j̲abal Ḥamrīn (lat. 34° 36′ N., long. 43° 41′ E., altitude 110 m/375 feet). Geographically, this is the northern frontier district of ʿIrāḳ. The land is still somewhat undulating; the old town was built on a group of hills, on on…

, Turkestan , a Persian term meaning “land of the Turks”. 1. As a designation for the Central Asian lands to the north of modern Persia and Afg̲h̲ānistān. This roughly corresponded to the older Transoxania or Mā warāʾ al-nahr [ q.v.] and the steppe lands to its north, although these last were from Mongol times onwards (sc. the 13th century) often distinguished as Mog̲h̲olistān [ q.v.]. To the Persians, of course, only the southern frontier of the land of the Turks, the frontier against Īrān, was of importance and this frontier naturally depended on political conditions. On ¶ their very firs…

, the Arabic form of the name of the city of Tarsus in Cilicia, situated on the classical River Cydnus, the Nahr Baradān of early Islamic times and the contemporary Turkish Tarsus Çay, in the rich agricultural plain of the modern Çukurova. The ancient city appears first firmly in history under the Assyrian kings, then as being in the Persians’ sphere of influence, then as disputed by the Seleucids and Ptolemies, being for a while styled Antioch-onthe-Cydnus in honour of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (1…

Meḥmed Ṣāḥib Efendi (1085-1162/1674-1749), Ottoman S̲h̲eyk̲h̲ al-Islām [ q.v.] in Istanbul and the pioneer translator into Turkish of Ibn K̲h̲aldūn. Ibn K̲h̲aldūn’s Muḳaddima was quite early known in Ottoman Turkey, being cited by e.g. Maḥmūd b. Aḥmed Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn (d. 937/1550) and by Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa in his Kas̲h̲f al-ẓunūn . But during the years 1138-43/1725-30 Pīrī-zāde translated the Muḳaddima from the beginning to the end of the fifth chapter, i.e. about two-thirds of the whole, and this was lithographed at Cairo in 1275/1859, with Aḥmed D̲j̲ewdet Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.] shortly …