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, Turd̲j̲umān (a.), pls. tarād̲j̲im , tarād̲j̲ima , appearing in Ottoman Turkish as Terd̲j̲üman , interpreter. The word is of Aramaic origin, and is familiar in the form Targum for the Aramaic translations or paraphrases or interpretations of the Hebrew Old Testament which came into use when the use of Hebrew as a living, spoken language amongst ordinary people declined. The Arabic term, and the verb tard̲j̲ama “to translate”, was certainly in familiar usage by ʿAbbāsid times. 1. In the Arab lands in mediaeval times. We know of interpreters in the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, some of who…

, the name given in mediaeval Arabic geographical and travel literature to the port of Quilon at the southern extremity of the Malabar coast of southwestern peninsular South India, in ancient and modern Kerala (lat. 8° 53′ N. and long. 76°36′ E.). Quilon early became a centre of the St. Thomas Christians of South India, and is mentioned in a letter of the Nestorian Patriarch Īs̲h̲ūʿyāb of Adiabene (d. 660) to Simon, Metropolitan of Fārs, under the name of Colon and as lacking at that time a settled ministry (Assemanus, Bibliotheca orientalis, iii/2, Rome 1728, 437). The first mention …

, the name of a District and of ¶ its administrative centre, in the western Deccan of India. In British Indian times, these fell within the Bombay Presidency; within the Indian Union, they are now on the southeastern fringe of Mahāras̲h̲tra State. The town (lat. 17° 43′, long. 75° 56′ E.) was an early centre of the Marāt́hās [ q.v.]. In 718/1318 it came finally under the control of the Dihlī Sultans, being governed from Deogīrī or Dawlatābād [ q.v.], then under the Bahmanīs, then oscillating between the ʿĀdil S̲h̲āhīs of Bīd̲j̲āpur and the Niẓām S̲h̲āhīs of Ahmadnagar befo…

, Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad b. Mīkāʾīl (b. towards the end of the 10th century A.D., d. 455/1063), leading figure of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family and, with his brother Čag̲h̲ri̊ Beg Dāwūd [ q.v.], founder of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ Sultanate in Persia and ʿIraḳ. Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l and Čag̲h̲ri̊ must have been born when the Og̲h̲uz tribe [see g̲h̲uzz ] was still in the Central Asian steppes to the north of K̲h̲wārazm and Transoxania, and after their father’s death were apparently brought up in the D̲j̲and [ q.v. in Suppl.] region by their grandfather Sald̲j̲ūḳ b. Duḳāḳ, eponymous founder of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ…

or Tortosa , earlier Anṭarṭūs, frequently Anṭarsūs (by analogy with Ṭarsūs), a town on the Syrian coast, the ancient Antarados opposite the island of Arados (Ar. D̲j̲azīrat Arwād, also written Arwād̲h̲; now Ruwād; concerning the Arab conquest of the island, see L.I. Conrad, The conquest of Arwād : a source-critical study in the historiography of the early medieval Near East , in Averil Cameron and Conrad (eds.), The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East . I. Problems in the literary source material, Princeton 1992, 317-401). Under the Roman empire, Antarados was called Const…

, Ṭālḳān , the name of three places in the Iranian lands. The biographical and geographical dictionaries mention only two of these specifically (thus al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, ix, 8-13; Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 6-8: both distinguish just a Ṭālaḳān of Marw al-Rūd̲h̲ and a Ṭālaḳān of Ḳazwīn). These are nos. 1 and 2 below. There was, however, a further Ṭālaḳān in the Ṭuk̲h̲āristān-Badak̲h̲s̲h̲ān region; this is no. 3 below. 1. A town of mediaeval Gūzgān or D̲j̲ūzd̲j̲ān [ q.v.], in what is now northern Afg̲h̲ānistān but adjacent to the frontier with the Turkmenis…

(a., the noun of instrument from wat̲h̲iḳa “to trust, have confidence in”, or wat̲h̲uḳa “to be firm”, in usage the equivalent of the maṣdar mīmī or noun of place and time mawt̲h̲ik ), covenant, agreement, used 25 times in the Ḳurʾān and often linked with its synonym ʿahd [ q.v.]. In a few places, it refers to political compacts (IV, 92/90, 94/92, VIII, 73/72, and cf. the use of ʿāhada in VIII, 58/56), and once to the compact between husband and wife (IV, 25/21), but the majority of usages relate to compacts between God and various members of…

(the contracted form Rāmiz , Rāmuz is found as early as the 4th/10th century), a town and district in K̲h̲ūzistān [ q.v.] in southwestern Persia. Rām-Hurmuz lies about 55 miles southeast of Ahwāz, 65 miles south-south-east of S̲h̲ūs̲h̲tar, and 60 miles north-east of Bihbihān. Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih, 43, reckons it 17 farsak̲h̲ s from Ahwāz to Rām-Hurmuz and 22 farsak̲h̲s from Rām-Hurmuz to Arrad̲j̲ān. Ḳudāma, 194, who gives a more detailed list of stages, counts it 50 farsak̲h̲s from Wāsiṭ to Baṣra, thence 35 farsak̲h̲s to Ahwāz, thence 20 farsak̲h̲s to Rām-Hurmuz, and then 24 farsak̲h̲s …

, the leader of a revolt in the Buk̲h̲ārā oasis, one with popular religious and social overtones, against Mongol domination (636/ 1238-9). Maḥmūd was a sieve-maker from the village of Ṭārāb or Tārāb, four farsak̲h̲s from the city of Buk̲h̲ārā on the K̲h̲urāsān road (see al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, ix, 5; Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 4; Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion 3 , 114 n. 9, 117, 132), who led a movement against the financial oppression of the Mongol basḳaḳs or tax-collectors and also, it appears, against local landowners a…

, the early Islamic form for the ancient site of Susa in the south-west Persian province of K̲h̲ūzistān, modern Persian S̲h̲ūs̲h̲. It lies on the plain between the two main rivers of K̲h̲ūzistān, the Kārūn and the Kerk̲h̲ā [ q.vv.], which were once connected by canals, and the S̲h̲āwūr river runs along the western side of the site. From at least the second millennium B.C., it was the capital of the Elamite kingdom, destroyed by the Assyrian Ashurbanipal in the 7th century B.C., but rebuilt by the Achaemenids and a flourishing town under the Sāsānids; S…

(a. pls. sufun , safāʾin , safīn ), a word used in Arabic from pre-Islamic times onwards for ship. Seamanship and navigation are in general dealt with in milāḥa , and the present article, after dealing with the question of knowledge of the sea and ships in Arabia at the time of the birth of Islam, not covered in milāḥa, will be confined to a consideration of sea and river craft. 1. In the pre-modern period. (a) Pre-Islamic and early Islamic aspects. The most general word for “ship” in early Arabic usage was markab “conveyance”, used, however, …

, the name of a mediaeval Hindu power which covered large parts of the Deccan from the mid-14th century to the later 17th century and which is relevant to this Encyclopaedia because of the incessant warfare between its Rād̲j̲ās (some sixty of whom, from various, distinct lineages, issued royal inscriptions claiming sovereignty over India south of the Krishna river) and the Muslim sultanates of the Deccan. It appears in Indo-Muslim sources as Bid̲j̲anagar. The name Vid̲j̲ayanagara, meaning “City of victory”, was that of the state’s original capital on the upper Tungab…

, the coastal region of southern Balūčistān, extending roughly from the Somniani Bay in the East to the eastern fringes of the region of Bas̲h̲kardia [see bas̲h̲kard in Suppl.] in the west. The modern political boundary between Pakistan and Iran thus bisects the mediaeval Makrān. The east-to-west running Siyāhān range of mountains, just to the north of the Mas̲h̲kēl and Rak̲h̲s̲h̲ān valleys, may be regarded as Makrān’s northern boundary. In British Indian times, this range formed the boundary between the southwestern part of the Kalāt native state [see kilāt ] and the K̲h̲ārān one [ q.v.]…

, modern Turkish Simav , a town of northwestern Anatolia, lying on the river of the same name and just to the south-east of the Simav Gölü, 90 km/58 miles as the crow flies to the southwest of Kütahya [ q.v.] and on the road connecting Balıkesir with Usak (lat. 39° 05′ N., long. 28° 59′ E., altitude 823 m/2,700 feet). In later Ottoman times, it was the chef-lieu of a ḳaḍāʾ of the same name, and is now the centre of the ilçe or district of Simav in the il or province of Kütahya. One should not confuse it, as did Babinger in his EI 1 art., with Simāwnā in eastern Thrace, the birthplace of the early Ot…

(a.) “equality”, the maṣdar of form III of the verb sawiya “to be equal to, be worth”, with the same sense as form I; in modern times, it has been ¶ used for the political concept of human equality (Ottoman Turkish müsāwāt , modern Turkish mūsavat , Persian musāwāt , barābārī ). The root is found frequently in the Ḳurʾān, though only once in form III (XVIII, 95/96), in the sense “to make level, even up”. In the literary and cultural controversies of the ʿAbbāsid period, those of the S̲h̲uʿūbiyya [ q.v.], the non-Arabs seeking social equality with the ruling class of Arabs were sometimes known as the a…

, in mediaeval times a district and town, now a district only, of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān in northwestern Persia. It lies to the south of Ardabīl, and is bounded on the east by that part of the Elburz chain which separates Gīlān and Tālis̲h̲ in the Caspian coastlands from the upland interior of Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, the mountains here rising to over 10,000 feet. Much of the district is drained by the left-bank tributaries of the Ḳi̊zi̊l Uzun affluent of the Safīd-Rūd. In mediaeval times it adjoined on the east the district of Ṭārom and was part of the general region called Daylam [ …

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(Turkish “black lake”), ḳarakul , the name of various lakes in Central Asia and of a modern town in the Uzbek SSR. The best-known lake is that lying at the western extremity of the Zarafs̲h̲ān River in Sog̲h̲dia (modern Uzbekistan), midway between Buk̲h̲ārā and Čārd̲j̲ūy (mediaeval Āmul-i S̲h̲aṭṭ, see āmul . 2). The basin in which it lay was known as the Sāmd̲j̲an basin, see Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 315, and Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, 485, tr. Kramers and Wiet, 466. In Nars̲h̲ak̲h̲ī’s Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Buk̲h̲ārā , ed. Schefer, 17, tr. Frye, 19, the lake is given both the Tur…

(I) bi ’llāh , Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Muḥammad , ʿAbbāsid caliph, reigned 248-52/862-6, grandson of the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim [ q.v.] and the son of a slave concubine of Ṣaḳlabī origin named Muk̲h̲āriḳ. When his cousin al-Muntaṣir [ q.v.] died, the Turkish commanders in Sāmarrā plucked al-Mustaʿīn from a life of obscurity (he is said to have made a living as a copyist of manuscripts) to become caliph (6 Rabīʿ II 248/9 June 862). The choice aroused discon…

, the name of an eastern Iranian dynasty which flourished as an independent power in the 6th/12th century and the early years of the 7th/13th century and which was based on the region of G̲h̲ūr [ q.v.] in what is now central Afg̲h̲ānistān with its capital at Fīrūzkūh [ q.v.]. 1. Origins and early history. The family name of the G̲h̲ūrid Sultans was S̲h̲anasb/S̲h̲ansab (< MP Gus̲h̲nasp; cf. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 282, and Marquart, Das Reich Zābul , in Festschrift E. Sachau , 289, n. 3), and in the time of their florescence, attempts were made to attach their genealogy to the ancient Iranian epic past. The 7th/13th century historian of the G̲h̲ūrids, Ḏj̲ūzd̲j̲ānī, quotes a metrical version of the genealogy of the family composed by Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn Mubāraks̲h̲āh Marwarrūd̲h̲ī and completed in the reign of Sultan G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dīn Muḥammad ( …