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(also spelt Sīwī in mediaeval Islamic sources, e.g. the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam ) a town and district of northeastern Balūčistān, lying on the plain below the entrance to the Bolān Pass and the route to Quetta [see kwat́t́a ], which is some 140 km/88 miles beyond Sībī town. The town is situated in lat. 29° 31′ N. and long. 67° 54′ E. Because of its strategic position between the mouths of the Bolān and Harnaī Passes, and on the way down to the Indus valley, it has always played a part in history. In early Islamic times, Sībī was one of the towns of the district of Bālis(h) or Wālis̲h̲ān, althou…

, son of Kāmd̲j̲ār, a Persian general of K̲h̲usraw Anūs̲h̲arwān (A.D. 531-79 [see kisrā ]). The name would apparently stem from MP vēhrēz “having a good abundance”, see Nöldeke, Gesch . der Perser und Araber , 223 n. 2, and Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 340, but was in origin a title, since the Byzantine historian Procopius names the commander of the Sāsānid emperor Kawād’s expedition into Georgia and Lazica (early 5th century) as having the title Ouarizēs (< * wahriz ); see daylam, at Vol. II, 190a. In response to an appeal ca. 570, via the Lak̲h̲mids [ q.v.], from Sayf b. D̲h̲ī Yazan, the …

, a small town of northern Persia (lat. 35° 19’ N., long. 51° 40’ E.) lying in the fertile Warāmīn plain, which benefits from a good water supply from the D̲j̲ād̲j̲a Rūd and has been much frequented by Turkmen nomads up to modern times. 1. History. The mediaeval Islamic geographers place it at two stages from al-Rayy (al-Muḳaddasī, 401) or at 30 mīl s from it (Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, v, 370). Already in Būyid times it was a flourishing little town with a bazaar, but it developed especially after the Mongols sacked al-Rayy in 617/1220 an…

(a.), the active participle of the verb istak̲h̲rad̲j̲a in the sense of “to extract”, used in the mediaeval Islamic terminology for the person responsible for collecting money, such as that of the ṣadaḳa or poor-tax (al-Ṭabarī, i, 2746) or of the k̲h̲arād̲j̲ or land-tax; thus in ʿAbbāsid times he was an offical of the Dīwan al-K̲h̲arād̲j̲ charged with the latter task ( ibid., hi, 1856, year 257/871, caliphate of al-Muʿtamid). In Muslim Spain, it seems to have been the original of the Latin term exceptor , the official who collected on behalf of the Muslim s…

, Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Mīrzā Ḥasan , Persian scholar of the 19th century and author of a historicalgeographical work on his native province of Fārs, the Fārsnāma-yi Nāṣirī (the latter part of the book’s title being a reference to the Ḳād̲j̲ār sultan Nāṣir al-Dīn S̲h̲āh, in whose reign Ḥasan Fasāʾī wrote). He was born, according to the autobiography inserted into his book, in 1237/1821-2 in the small town of Fasā [ q.v.] in Fārs, of a family which had been prominent in the intellectual and religious life of S̲h̲īrāz for at least four centuries; various members of it had be…

, the name in Arabic geographical writing for the Araxes River (Perso-Turkish form Aras, Armenian Eraskʿ, Georgian Rak̲h̲s̲h̲ī, modern Aras). It rises in what is now eastern Turkey near Erzurum and flows generally in an eastwards direction for 1,072 km/670 miles into the Caspian Sea. Its middle reaches, from a point near Mount Ararat, today form the boundary between the former Azerbaijan SSR and Persia, with the lower stretch receiving the Kur River and flowing through the Mūḳān [ q.v.] steppes and what is now wholly Azerbaijani territory. The early Arabic name al-Rass led the Musl…

, the Ottoman Turkish form of modern Turkish Payas, a small town at the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta 18 km/12 miles north of Iskandarūn [ q.v.] (lat. 36° 46′ N., long. 36° 10′ E.). Lying as it ¶ does in the very narrow coastal corridor between the sea and the Amanus Mts. or D̲j̲abal al-Lukkām [ q.v.], the modern Turkish Gavur Dağlari, Payās has always been a strategically important point on the route from Cilicia to Antioch; the name itself goes back to that of the classical Greek town of Baiae (see PW, ii/2, col. 2775 (Ruge)). In the early Islamic period, Payās was on the road connecting…

, the name found in pre-modern usage for a region of what is now eastern Afgh̲ānistān, also appearing in mediaeval Arabic usage as its Arabic equivalent Bilād al-Dāwar. The region straddled the courses of the upper Helmand river and the Arg̲h̲andāb to the north of their confluence at Bust, hence it was bounded on the north by Zābulistān and al-Ruk̲h̲k̲h̲ad̲j̲ [ q.vv.] on the south and southeast, but the boundaries of all these regions were indeterminate, and Zamīndāwar, in particular, seems often to have been confused in the sources with that of Zābulistān. The early Arabic geographers …

, scene of a battle in eastern Syria in 73/692-3 between the Arab tribes of Sulaym and Tag̲h̲lib. Ḵh̲ālid b. al-Walīd campaigned here in 12/633 (Ṭabarī, i, 2068, 2072-3). Yāḳūt describes it as a range of hills stretching from ʿUrḍ near Palmyra to the Euphrates, corresponding to the modern D̲j̲ebel el-Bis̲h̲rī. The battle is also sometimes called after al-Raḥūb, a local water-course. The “Day of al-Bis̲h̲r” was the climax of several clashes between the two tribes. This strife lay to some extent outside the Ḳays-Kalb tribal feud of the period; both tribes we…

, the name generally given by the classical Islamic geographers to the Indus river (Skr. Sindhu, Σίνθος, “Ινδς, Lat. Sindus, Indus), but Nahr al-Sind, Sind-Rūdh, Nahr Multān, etc. were also used by them. There was, in fact, considerable confusion over the precise nomenclature of the Indus and its constituents, with, in particular, uncertainty over what was to be regarded as the main river channel. Thus al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, followed by Ibn Ḥawḳal, records the Nahr Multān or Mihrān as rising in the mountains of Central Asia. They compa…

(a., pl. mak̲h̲ālīf ), a term of mediaeval Islamic administrative geography used particularly in Yemen. The sources usually state that it is the equivalent of Arabic kūra [ q.v.] “administrative province” (Nas̲h̲wān al-Ḥimyarī, Die auf Südarabien bezüglichen Angaben im Šams al-ʿulūm , Leiden-London 1916, 34) or Persian rustāḳ [ q.v.] “rural area” (al-K̲h̲alīl b. Aḥmad, cited by Yāḳūt, Buldān , Beirut 1374-6/1955-7, i, 37, tr. Wadie Jwaideh, The introductory chapters of Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-buldān , Leiden 1959, 56-7), with a fanciful explanation tha…

, Arab commander in the service of Abū Muslim at the time of the ʿAbbāsid Revolt (d. 135/752-3). He was one of the naḳībs [ q.v.] chosen by Abū Muslim from the leaders of the Arabs in K̲h̲urāsān in 1340/747-8. With the triumph of the ʿAbbāsid cause, Abū Muslim appointed Ziyād governor of Buk̲h̲ārā and Sogdia, where he suppressed a rebellion of the discontented Arab garrison in Buk̲h̲ārā led by S̲h̲arīk (or S̲h̲urayk) b. S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Mahrī (133/750-1). Shortly afterwards he commanded the Arab expedition sent into the la…

Ḵh̲ārs̲h̲ād̲h̲ b. ʿAḍud al-Dawla Fanā-Ḵh̲usraw , Būyid supreme amīr , who ruled in ʿIrāḳ and then in southern Persia also from 379/989 to 403/1012) after 381/992 with the further honorific, granted by the caliph al-Ḳādir, of G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Umma, and towards the end of his life, those of Ḳiwām al-Dawla and Ṣafī Amīr al-Muʾminīn). He was the third son, after Ṣamṣām al-Dawla Marzubān and S̲h̲araf al-Dawla S̲h̲īrzīl, of the great amīr ʿAḍud al-Dawla [ q.v.], who had built up the Būyid confederation into the mightiest empire of its time in the Islamic east. On ʿAḍud al-Dawla’s death in S̲h̲…

, a technical term of fiscal practice in the hydraulic civilisation of early Islamic ʿIrāḳ, doubtless going back to earlier periods there. It is defined by al-K̲h̲wārazmī in his Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm , 70, as “a chain or cable which is fastened right across a river and which prevents boats from getting past”, and more specifically by Ibn Rusta, 185, tr. Wiet, 213, as a barrier across the Tigris at Ḥawānīt near Dayr al-ʿĀḳūl [ q.v.] consisting of a cable stretched ¶ between two ships at each side of the river, preventing ships passing by night (and thus evading the tolls levied b…

, rūdbār , meaning literally in Persian, a district along a river or a district intersected by rivers, and a frequent toponym in Islamic Persia. Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iii, 770-8, and al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābad, vi, 187-90, list Rūd̲h̲bārs at Iṣfahān, Ṭūs, Balk̲h̲, Marw, Hamad̲h̲ān and Bag̲h̲dād, and in the provinces of S̲h̲āsh and Daylam. As homes or places of origin of noted scholars, the most significant of these were the Rūd̲h̲bār by the gate of Ṭābarān, one of the two townships making up Ṭūs [ q.v.]; the one near Bag̲h̲dād; and the one near Hamad̲h̲ān. In the historical geog…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad, littérateur of the Fāṭimid period, and librarian and boon-companion to the caliph al-ʿAzīz (365-86/975-96 [ q.v.]), died at Fusṭāṭ in 388/988 or possibly in the succeeding decade. Ibn K̲h̲allikān explains the unusual cognomen S̲h̲ābus̲h̲tī as being a name of Daylamī origin, and not a nisba ; an origin in s̲h̲āh pus̲h̲tī “he who guards the king’s back” has been somewhat fancifully suggested. Al-S̲h̲ābus̲h̲ī’s works included a K. al-Yusr baʿd al-ʿusr , a Marātib al-fuḳahāʾ , a K. al-Tawḳīf wa ’l-tak̲h̲wīf , a K. al-Zuhd wa ’l-mawāʿiẓ …

, a river of the northern part of what is now the Mongolian People’s Republic; it joins the Selenga to flow northwards eventually into Lake Baikal. ¶ For Turcologists, the banks of this river are of supreme importance as the locus for the Old Turkish inscriptions, carved in the middle decades of the 8th century in a so-called “runic” script, in fact derived ultimately from the Aramaic one [see turks. Languages]. These inscriptions are the royal annals of the Köktürk empire, centred on this region till its fall in 744 and supersession by a Uyg̲h̲ur [ q.v.] grouping based on Ḳara Balg̲h̲asun…

, 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 was a descendant, so he says, on his father’s side from the caliph Abū Bakr and on his mother’s from the Turkish amīr Bilgetigin, the immediate predecessor in G̲h̲azna of Sebüktigin and father-in-law of Maḥmūd of G̲h̲azna; he may …

, 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 prevented Fak̲h̲r al-Dawla from assuming control in the greater part of his allotted territori…

, 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 hazāras in Suppl. Unlike the S̲h̲īʿī Hazāras, the Mog̲h̲ols are Sunnī. The origins of these Mog̲h̲ols probably lie in the appearance in Afg̲h̲ānistān o…

, 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 Kṛṣna (Kris̲h̲na) in the Mahābhārata …

, 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 settled in pre-Islamic times on the borders of Byzantine Syria and Palestine; they held places like Madyan, ʿAmmān, Maʿān a…

, 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 u…

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 Ič Og̲h̲lam [ q.v.], who became known as the K̲h̲āṣṣ Oda g̲h̲ilmāni̊ or K̲h̲āṣṣ Odali̊lar …

, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Bayhaḳī, historian of the Sāmānid period, who flourished in the middle decades of the 4th/10th century but whose exact dates of birth and death are unknown. According to the local historian of Bayhaḳ, Ibn Funduḳ [see al-bayhaḳī , ẓahīr al-dīn ... b. funduḳ ], he was a pupil of the rather shadowy nadīm and adīb Ibrahīm b. Muḥammad al-Bayhaḳī [ q.v.], author of the K. al-Maḥāsin wa ’l-masāwī , and according to al-T̲h̲aʿālibī, he was in the service of the Muḥtād̲j̲id amīr s of Čag̲h̲āniyān [see muḥtād̲j̲ids ], Abū Bakr Muḥammad and Abū…

b. Ḏj̲ahān-S̲h̲āh b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam i , Nāṣir al-Dīn (1131-61/1719-48), surnamed Raws̲h̲an Ak̲h̲tar, “Brillant Star”, the last of the Mug̲h̲al emperors in Dihlī to enjoy real power. His father had been one of three brothers who perished in disputing the crown with their eldest brother D̲j̲ahān-dār S̲h̲āh b. S̲h̲āh ʿĀlam Bahādur. Muḥammad S̲h̲āh was born on 24 Rabīʿ I 1114/7 August 1702, and hailed as emperor by the two Sayyid brothers, Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh and Sayyid Ḥusayn, after the two brief reigns of Muḥammad S̲h̲āh’s cousin…

, conventionally Qayen, etc., a town of eastern Persia (lat. 33° 43′ N., long. 59° 06′ E.), now in the administrative province of K̲h̲urāsān but in mediaeval Islamic times falling within the region known as Ḳūhistān [ q.v.]. It lies on the road connecting the urban centres of northern K̲h̲urāsān (Mas̲h̲had, Turbat-i Ḥaydariyya, etc.) with Bird̲j̲and, Persian Sīstān and Zāhidān. Ḳāʾin must be an ancient town, but virtually nothing is known of it before the descriptions of the 4th/10th century geographers. The 8th century Armenian geo…

(II) b. Manṣūr b. Nūḥ , Sāmānid amīr initially in Transoxania and K̲h̲urāsān. latterly in the first province only (366-87/977-97), given after his death the honorific al-Amīr al-Raḍī (“the Wellpleasing”). The last of his line to enjoy a reign of any significant length, Nūḥ succeeded his father Manṣūr (I) [ q.v.] at the age of 13, real power being in the hands of his mother and the vizier Abu ’l-Ḥusayn ʿUtbī, the last vizier to the Sāmānids worthy of the title. However, authority in the state fell more and more into the hands of the great milita…

, Maham , a town in the district and ¶ taḥṣīl of Rohtak in India, on the road connecting Dihlī and Hānsī, situated in lat. 28° 58′ N. and long. 76° 18′ E.; it was formerly in the Pand̲j̲āb, but since 1947 has fallen within the Indian Union (Hariana State). It was probably founded by Rād̲j̲pūt princes, but was allegedly destroyed at the end of the 12th century by Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad G̲h̲ūrī [see g̲h̲ūrids ]. The D̲j̲āmiʿ Masd̲j̲id has an inscription from the reign of Humāyūn, recording its construction by Bēgam Sulṭān in 1531, and another from A…

(a.), said to be an Arabised form of Pers. čawgān “polo stick” [see čawgān ]. The intrusive l makes this difficult, but D.N. MacKenzie, A concise dictionary of Pahlavi , London 1971, 22, has * caw ( l) agān (“of doubtful transcription”). At all events, the curve of a polo stick makes it a suitable figurative expression, either as a simile [see tas̲h̲bīh ] or as a metaphor [see istiʿāra ], in classical Arabic, Persian and Turkish literatures, for the curving eyebrows and locks or tresses of hair of a beautiful girl; see Annemarie Schimmel, The two-colored brocade. The imagery of Persian poetry, C…

, later form Marg̲h̲elān , a town of Farg̲h̲āna [ q.v.] in Central Asia, situated to the south of the Ṣi̊r Daryā [ q.v.] or Jaxartes, on a small river now called the Margelan Say. ¶ It was a place of modest importance in the first Islamic centuries as one of the main towns, with inter alia Andid̲j̲ān [ q.v.], of the district of Farg̲h̲āna known as Lower Nasyā; according to al-Mukaddasī, 272 (see also Le Strange, Lands , 479; Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 513-14, tr. 491; al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , facs. ed. f. 522a), it had a Friday mosque and markets. Coins were first minted there …

, Abū Ayyūb Sulaymān b. Mak̲h̲lad (the nisba stemming from Mūriyān in Ahwāz, see Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Beirut, v, 221), secretary of the second ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr [ q.v.]. Various stories are given in the sources about how he came to enjoy al-Manṣūr’s confidence: that in the time of the last Umayyad caliph Marwān b. Muḥammad he had saved the ʿAbbāsid Abū D̲j̲aʿfar from a flogging for embezzling state funds (al-Yaʿḳūbī, al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī): that he was a freed slave of al-Saffah’s, taken into his successor’s service (…

, Narmāsīr , a town and a district of eastern Kirmān [ q.v.] in mediaeval Islamic Persia, lying to the south-east of Bam [ q.v.], adjacent to the southern end of the Das̲h̲t-i Lūṭ and on the road connecting Kirmān with Sīstān. The classical Islamic geographers list the district as one of the five kūras of Kirmān and describe the town as prosperous and populous, the resort of merchants who travelled from K̲h̲urāsān to ʿUmān and an emporium for Indian goods. It had a protective wall with four gates, a citadel and a congregationa…

, a small town in the s̲h̲ahrastān of Ardakān [ q.v.] in the modern Persian ustān or province of Yazd, situated 32 miles/48 km. to the northwest of Yazd. The mediaeval geographers (e.g. Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 263, 287, tr. Kramers and Wiet, 260, 281; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 29, § 29.45; Le Strange, Lands , 285) describe it as being on the Iṣfahān-Yazd road, 10 farsak̲h̲s from Yazd. Lying as it does on the southern fringe of the Great Desert, its irrigation comes from ḳanāts [ q.v.] (see Lambton, Landlord and peasant in Persia 1, 219). Its population in ca. 1950 was 3,798. (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography I…

, Ik̲h̲tiyār al-Dīn , Afg̲h̲ān adventurer and commander active in the Muslim conquest of northern India under the generals of the G̲h̲ūrids [ q.v.] and the one who first established Muslim power in Bengal. Having failed to find preferment in G̲h̲azna with Sultan Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām [ q.v.] of G̲h̲ūr and then in Dihlī, allegedly on account of his unprepossessing appearance, Muḥammad Bak̲h̲tiyār began as a local g̲h̲āzī leader in the districts of Badāʾūn and Awadh [ q.vv.] until he was able, under the aegis of Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Aybak [ q.v.] of Dihlī, to make important conquests in Bihār ca. …

(a.), correctly muns̲h̲iʾ , a secretary, an exponent of the high-flown epistolary style general in mediaeval Islamic chanceries from the 2nd/8th century onwards and known as ins̲h̲āʾ [ q.v.]. In the Persian and Indo-Muslim worlds, the term muns̲h̲ī was used for secretaries in the ruler’s chancery, e.g. among the Ṣafawids, for the whom the State Scribe, the muns̲h̲ī al-mamalīk , was a very important official who apparendy shared responsibility for the S̲h̲āh’s correspondence with the wāḳiʿa-nuwīs or Recorder (see Tad̲h̲kirat al-mulūk , tr. Minorsky, Lond…

(a.). 1. In Islamic law, this means the rescission of a sale or transaction (synonym, mutāraka ); see for lexical aspects of the term, LA 1, x, 282; TA 1, v, 535; Freytag, Lexicon , iv, 476. 2. In mediaeval Eastern Islamic administrative usage, it denotes the contract of service of officials, in accordance with the term’s further meaning of “the laying down of conditions for an agreement with some one”. We possess the texts of two muwāḍaʿa s made by early Ghaznavid viziers with their sovereign: one made by Aḥmad b. Ḥasan al-Maymandī [ q.v.] with Sultan Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd [ q.v.] on his appointment…