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, a rural district ( rūstāḳ , nāḥiya ) of the mediaeval Islamic province of D̲j̲ibāl [ q.v.], sc. western Persia. The geographers describe it as a fertile plain below the Kūh-i Alwand, containing 93 villages and producing high-quality saffron which was exported through the nearby towns of Hamad̲h̲ān and Nihāwand. The chef-lieu of the district, in which was situated the d̲j̲āmiʿ and minbar , was known as Karad̲j̲-i Rūd̲h̲rāwar, characterised in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 132, § 31.8-9, as prosperous and the resort of merchants. The site of this seems…

, Abū Ḥarb, Umayyad commander and governor, the third of the many sons of Abū Sufyān’s bastard son Ziyād b. Abīhi [ q.v.], d. 73/692. The family of Ziyād already had a firm grip on the East in the later years of Muʿāwiya’s caliphate, and when Yazīd I came to the throne, he appointed Salm as governor of Ḵh̲urāsān (61/681), and the latter nominated another of his brothers, Yazid b. Ziyād, as his deputy in Sīstān. Salm proved himself a highly popular governor with the Arab troops in Ḵh̲urāsān. largely on account of his mil…

, an old Turkish word which came, in Islamic times, to mean “slave boy, male slave”, defined by Maḥmūd Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī, Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-Turk , ed. Kilisli Rifʿat Bilge, i, 282, tr. Atalay, i, 336-7, as ʿabd . However, the original meaning of ḳul in Orkhon Turkish was rather “servant, vassal, dependent” (the masculine counterpart of kün “female servant, etc.”, the two words being linked in the Kültegin inscription, text references in Talât Tekin, A grammar of Orkhon Turkish, Bloomington, Ind. 1968, 347), since slavery in the Islamic juridical sense did not exist among the ancient Turks. The…

, a small town in Central India, before Partition in the Native State of Dewās, now in the Shajapur District of the state of Madhya Pradesh in the Indian Union (lat. 23° 34′ N, long. 76° 24′ E). It is essentially a Muslim town, founded by the sultans of Mālwā [ q.v.], but on an ancient site. It was reputedly the location of a battle in 840/1437 when Maḥmūd K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī I of Mālwā was defeated by the forces of Mēwāŕ [ q.v.], and, of more certain historicity, it was captured in 932/1526 from Maḥmūd II of ¶ Mālwā by Rāṇā Sāṇgā [ q.v.] of Čitawr. Then in 968/1561 it was seized by Akbar from the local…

, Arabised as Zarand̲j̲, the main town of the early Islamic province of Sīstān. Its ruins lie a few miles north of what was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the administrative centre of Persian Sīstān, Nuṣratābād or Nāṣirābād, modern Zābul. Its remaining traces are visible within the vast ruined site known as Nād-i ʿAlī, to the east of the present course of the Hilmand river [ q.v.] before it peters out in the Hāmūn depression [see zirih ] just inside Afg̲h̲an Sīstān; the site has, however, been much depleted by periodic flooding and the re-us…

, a town of northern Persia (long. 53° 24′ E., lat. 35° 33′ N., alt. 1,138 m/3,734 ft.), in mediaeval Islamic times coming within the province of Ḳūmis [ q.v.] and lying on the great highway connecting Rayy with the administrative centre of Ḳūmis, sc. Dāmg̲h̲ān [ q.v.], and K̲h̲urāsān. To its north is situated the Elburz Mountain chain and to its south, the Great Desert. 1. History. Simnān comes within what was the heartland of the Parthians (whose capital almost certainly was at S̲h̲ahr-i Ḳūmis, southeast of Dāmg̲h̲ān on the Simnān road), but nothing is known o…

, the name of a family settled in K̲h̲urāsān, of Arab descent, which provided secretaries and viziers for the Sāmānids and early G̲h̲aznawids [ q.vv.] in the 4th/10th and early 5th/11th centuries (from which of the ʿUtbas of early Islamic times they were descended does not seem to be specified in the sources). 1. Abū d̲j̲aʿfar ( ism and nasab variously given), vizier under the Sāmānid amīr ʿAbd al-Malik I b. Nūḥ I, from 344/956 to 348/959 and again, in company with Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Balʿamī [ q.v.], under his successor Manṣūr I b. Nūḥ I, a few years later. His policy aimed at s…

, the name of two places in eastern Persia, denoted in the early mediaeval Islamic sources by the dual form al-Ṭabasāni (e.g. in al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, ix, 45, and Yāḳūt, Buldān, ed. Beirut, iv, 20) and distinguished as Ṭabas al-Tamr “Ṭ. of the date-palms” and Ṭabas al-ʿUnnāb “Ṭ. of the jujube trees”, later Persian forms Ṭabas Gīlakī and Ṭabas Masīnān respectively. Ṭabas al-Tamr lay to the west of Ḳuhistān [ q.v.] in the central Great Desert at a junction of routes between the Das̲h̲t-i Lūt in the south and the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr in the north and west. Ṭab…

, a mediaeval town on the lower reaches of the Si̊r Daryā in Central Asia, towards its debouchure into the Aral Sea, in what is now the Kazakhstan SSR; its fame was such that the Aral Sea was often called “the Sea of D̲j̲and”. D̲j̲and is first mentioned by certain Muslim geographers of the mid-4th/10th century, in particular, by Ibn Ḥawḳal, and following him, by the anonymous author of the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (wrote 372/982). Ibn Ḥawḳal mentions three settlements on the lower Si̊r Daryā amongst the Og̲h̲uz Turks of that region: D̲j̲and; the “New Se…

b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib al-Hās̲h̲imī , Companion of the Prophet, son of the Prophet’s uncle and of Umm al-Faḍl Lubāba al-Hilāliyya, herself Muḥammad’s sister-in-law. Although the Sīra brings him into contact with Muḥammad by making him one of the inner circle of the Hās̲h̲imī family who washed the Prophet’s corpse and descended into his grave, and although his physical resemblance to the Prophet is also stressed, he was obviously a late convert to Islam, doubtless following his father al-ʿAbbās [ q.v.] in this after the conquest of Mecca. Nothing is heard of him during the reigns of t…

, Abu ’l-Faḍl al-Minḳarī al-Tamīmī, early S̲h̲īʿī historian (though probably not, as Sezgin rightly observes, the first one) and traditionist; his date of birth is uncertain, but he died in 212/827. He lived originally in Kūfa but later moved to Bag̲h̲dād; amongst those from whom he heard traditions was Sufyān al-T̲h̲awrī [ q.v.]. His own reputation as an ak̲h̲bāri and muḥaddit̲h̲ was, however, weak, and he was regarded by some Sunnī authors as a fervent ( g̲h̲ālī ) S̲h̲īʿī. He is best known for his Kitāb Waḳʿat Ṣiffīn (this has been reconstructed, from the p…

, the nisba of two scholars from the small town of Maybud [ q.v.] near Yazd in Persia and also of a vizier of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs. 1. ras̲h̲īd al-dīn abu ’l-faḍl aḥmad b. muḥammad , author of an extensive Ḳurʾān commentary in Persian, begun in 520/1126, the Kas̲h̲f al-asrār waʿuddat al-abrār , extant in several mss. Bibliography Storey, i, 1190-1 Storey-Bregel, i, 110-11 and on the nisba in general, al-Samʿānī, Ansāb, f. 547b. 2. mīr ḥusayn b. muʿīn al-dīn al-manṭiḳī , pupil of D̲j̲alāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī [ q.v.], ḳāḍī and philosopher, author of several works on…

, Ẓahīr al-Dīn , Persian author who wrote a valuable history of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs during the reign of the last Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ of Persia, Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l (III) b. Arslan [ q.v.]; he must have died ca. 580/1184-5. Nothing is known of his life except that Rāwandī [ q.v.] states ( Rāḥat al-ṣudūr , ed. M. Iqbál, 54) that he had been tutor to the previous sultans Masʿūd b. Muḥammad [ q.v.] and Arslan b. Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l (II). His Sald̲j̲ūḳ-nāma was long believed lost, but was known as the main source for Rāwandī’s information on the Sald̲j̲ūḳs up to the latter’s own time (see Rāḥat al-ṣudūr, Preface, pp. XXVI, XXI…

, a city in southeastern Afg̲h̲ānistān (in modern times giving its name to a province) situated in latitude 31°27′ N. and longitude ¶ 65°43′ E. at an altitude of 3,460 ft. (1,000 m.), and lying between the Arg̲h̲andāb and S̲h̲orāb Rivers in the warmer, southern climatic zone ( garmsīr ) of Afg̲h̲ānistān. Hence snow rarely lies there for very long, and in modern times the city has been favoured as a winter residence for Kābulīs wishing to avoid the rigours of their winter (see J. Humlum et al., La géographie de l’Afghanistan , étude d’un pays aride , Copenhagen 1959, 14…

, abū s̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ muḥammad b. al-ḥusayn , zaḥīr al-dīn , vizier to the ʿAbbāsid caliphs and adīb (437-88/1045-95). He was actually born at Kangāwar [see kinkiwar ] in D̲j̲ibāl, but his father, a member of the official classes, stemmed from the nearby district of Rūd̲h̲rāwar [ q.v.]. Abū S̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ Muḥammad served al-Muḳtadī as vizier very briefly in 471/1078-8 after the dismissal of ʿAmīd al-Dawla Ibn D̲j̲ahīr [see d̲j̲ahīr , banū ] ¶ and then for a longer period, S̲h̲aʿbān 476 Ṣafar or Rabīʿ I 484/December 1083 to January 1084-April or May 1091, after the second …

(I) b. Naṣr b. Aḥmad , Sāmānid amīr of Transoxania and Khurāsān (331-43/943-54), given after his death the honorific of al-Amīr al-S̲h̲āhīd (“the Praiseworthy”). ¶ Continuing the anti-S̲h̲īʿī reaction which marked the end of the reign of Nūḥ’s father Naṣr [ q.v.], the early years of the new reign were dominated by the vizierate of the pious Sunnī faḳīh Abu i-Faḍl Muḥammad Sulamī, but very soon, ominous signs of decline began to appear in the state. There were revolts in the tributary kingdom of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.] and in K̲h̲urāsān under its governor Abū ʿAlī Čag̲h̲ānī, whom Nūḥ a…

, Arabic spellings K̲h̲.w.st or K̲h̲.wāst, the name of various places in Afg̲h̲anistān. The most likely etymology for the name is that given by G. Morgenstierne in his An etymological vocabulary of Pashto , Oslo 1928, 98: that it is an Iranised form * hwāstu , cf. Skr. suvāstu- “good site” (which became the place-name Swāt [ q.v.] in the North-West frontier region of Pakistan). The mediaeval Arabic and Persian geographers mention what appear to be two places of this name in northern Afg̲h̲anistān. Those of the 4th/10th century mention K̲h̲as̲h̲t as a town on …

al-Layt̲h̲ī al-Kinānī , the last ¶ governor of K̲h̲urāsān under the Umayyads, d. 131/748. Naṣr’s whole career seems to have been spent in K̲h̲urāsān and the East. In 86/705 he campaigned in the upper Oxus region under Ṣāliḥ, brother of the governor of K̲h̲urāsān Ḳutayba b. Muslim [ q.v.], and received a village there as reward. Then in 106/724 he was campaigning in Farg̲h̲āna under Muslim b. Saʿīd al-Kilābī, and served as governor of Balk̲h̲ for some years. Hence on the death of the governor of the East Asad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḳasrī [ q.v.], the caliph His̲h̲ām was advised to appoint as hi…

the title given to local Iranian rulers of Sog̲h̲dia and Farg̲h̲āna in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic period. Although Justi ( Iranisches Namenbuch , 14 ), Unvala ( The translation of an extract from Mafâtîh al-ʿUlûm of al-K̲h̲wârazmî , in J. of the . Cama Ins xi (1928), 18-19) and Spuler ( Iran , 30-1, 356) derive it from O. Pers. k̲h̲s̲h̲aeta- ‘shining, brilliant’, an etymology from O. Pers. k̲h̲s̲h̲āyat̲h̲iya- ‘king, ruler’ (M. Pers. and N. Pers. s̲h̲āh ) is more probable (Christensen, and Bosworth and Clauson, see below). This O. Pers. term k̲h̲s̲h̲āyat̲h̲iya- penetrated beyond T…

(a.), the verbal noun of the form III verb nād̲j̲ā “to whisper to, talk confidentially with someone”, which is used in Ḳurʾān, LVIII, 13, in this sense, and in the reciprocal form VI in LVIII, 9, 10, of the murmurs of discontent amongst the Prophet’s followers, probably after the Uḥud reverse (see Nöldeke-Schwally, G des Q, i, 212-13). Munād̲j̲āt becomes, however, a technical term of Muslim piety and mystical experience in the sense of “extempore prayer”, as opposed to the corporate addressing of the deity in the ṣalāt (see Hughes, A dictionary of Islam, 420), and of the Ṣūfīs’ communio…

, Iličpur , modern Ačalpur , a town of the mediaeval Islamic province of Berār [ q.v.] in southern Central India, lying near the headwaters of the Purnā constituent of the Tāptī River in lat. 21° 16ʹ N. and long. 77° 33ʹ E. Up to 1853, Eličpur was generally regarded as the capital of Berār, after when Amraotī became the administrative centre. The pre-Islamic history of Eličpur is semi-legendary, its foundation being attributed to a Jain Rād̲j̲ā called Il in the 10th century. By Baranī’s time (later 7th/13th century), it could be described as one of the fam…

, “The limits of the world”, the title of a concise but very important anonymous Persian geography of the world, Islamic and non-Islamic, composed towards the end of the 4th/10th century in Gūzgān [ q.v.] in what is now northem Afghānistān. The work exists in a unique manuscript of the 7th/13th century (the “Toumansky manuscript”) which came to light in Buk̲h̲ārā in 1892. The Persian text was first edited and published by W. Barthold at Leningrad in 1930 as Ḥudūd al-ʿālem , rukopisi̊ Tumanskago , with an important preface (this last reprinted in his Sočineny̲a̲ , vii…

, a soldier of fortune who disputed control of K̲h̲urāsān with other adventurers and with the Ṣaffārid Amīr ʿAmr b. al-Layt̲h̲ [ q.v.] in the later 3rd/9th century, d. 283/896. Rāfiʿ had been in the service of the Ṭāhirids [ q.v.], and after the death in 268/882 at Nīs̲h̲āpūr of the previous contender for power in K̲h̲urāsān, Aḥmad al-K̲h̲ud̲j̲istānī, he set himself up as de facto ruler of K̲h̲urāsān, subsequently securing legitimisation from the ʿAbbāsid caliphs when al-Muwaffaḳ [ q.v.] broke with the Ṣaffārids. By 283/896, however, ʿAmr managed to defeat Rāfiʿ and to dri…

, Banū , the blanket designation in mediaeval Islamic literature for the practitioners of begging, swindling, confidence tricks, the displaying of disfiguring diseases, mutilated limbs, etc., so that sāsānī has often become a general term in both Arabic and Persian for “beggar, trickster”. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa uses sāsānī in the sense of “pertaining to magic or slight-of-hand”, with the ʿilm al-ḥiyal al-sāsāniyya denoting “the science of artifices and trickery”. In his treatise warning the general public against trickery in all forms, al-Muk̲h̲tār min kas̲h̲f al-asrār …

, called Nad̲j̲m-i T̲h̲ānī (d. 1047/1637), official in the service of the Mug̲h̲als of India and the author of a Persian Mirror for Princes, the Mawʿiẓa-yi D̲j̲ahāngīrī . Of émigré Persian origin, Muḥammad Bāḳir served as a military commander and then as a provincial governor for the Emperors D̲j̲ahāngīr and S̲h̲āhd̲j̲ahān, but was clearly a highly cultivated adīb also, the patron of poets, himself a poet and master of the ins̲h̲āʾ style and author of a work of S̲h̲īʿī kalām , still in manuscript. His chief claim to fame is as the author of one of the …

, the name given in Islamic geographical and travel literature to Khmer or Cambodia. The geography and political organisation of South-East Asia early became of interest to Islamic scholars because of trade links with Further India and China, and information was brought back by, inter alios, Arab and Persian merchants and navigators. Some of this information relates to the Khmer kingdom on the lower Mekong River, an outpost of Indian cultural and religious life, which lasted from the beginning of the 9th century to the middle of the 13th century (see R. Grousset, Histoire de l’Extrème-O…

, the coastal region of the western Deccan or Peninsular India lying roughly between Thālnēr and Bombay in the north and Goa in the south, i.e. between latitudes 19° 30′ and 15° 30′ N., and extending for some 560 km/350 miles. It has been known under this name in both mediaeval Islamic and modern times. Within British India, it was formerly in the Bombay Presidency, later Province, and is now in Maharashtra State of the Indian Union. It comprises a highly-forested, low-lying plain between the Arabian Sea and the inland mountain barrier of the Western Ghats. In medieval Islamic times, the T…

, Abū S̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ al-Dunyā wa ’l-Dīn, with the Turkish name Tapar “he who obtains, finds” (see P. Pelliot, Notes sur l’histoire de la Horde d’Or, Paris 1950, 182-3), Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan in ʿIrāḳ and western Persia 498-511/1105-18. Born in S̲h̲aʿbān 474/January 1082, he was a half-brother of Malik-S̲h̲āh’s eldest son Berk-Yaruḳ [ q.v.] and a full brother of Sand̲j̲ar [ q.v.]. When Berk-Yaruḳ succeeded his father in 485/1092, he had to leave Muḥammad in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān and Arrān, where Muḥammad enjoyed the support of Sand̲j̲ar and of the for…

the usual name in Muslim sources of the 6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries of the Kitai people, mentioned in Chinese sources from the 4th century A.D. onwards as living on the northern fringes of the Chinese empire; during the course of the 6th/12th century a group of them migrated into the Islamic lands of Central Asia and established a domination there which endured for some eighty years. In the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions of Outer Mongolia, the royal annals of the T’u-chüeh or Turks (ca. 732 A.D.), the Kitai are mentioned as enemies of the Turks and as living to the…

, Dhū ’l-Ṣawārī , G̲h̲azwat al-Ṣawārī , “the Battle of the Masts”, the names given in the Arabic sources to a naval battle between the Arabs and Byzantines in the latter part of ʿut̲h̲mān’s caliphate. The locale of the engagement is not wholly certain, but was probably off the coast of Lycia in southern Anatolia near the place Phoenix (modern Turkish Finike, chef-lieu of the kaza of that name in the vilayet of Antalya). As governor of Syria, Muʿāwiya [ q.v.] seems to have inaugurated a policy of building up Arab naval power in order to counter Byzantine control of the Easte…

, an Arab dynasty of northern ʿIrāḳ and al-Ḏj̲azīra which flourished from ca. 380/990 to 564/1169. The family stemmed from the North Arab tribe of ʿUḳayl [ q.v.]. In the 4th/10th century, the ‘Uḳayl in Syria and northern ʿIrāḳ were dependents of the Ḥamdānids [ q.v.] of Mawṣil and Aleppo. When the last Ḥamdānids of Mawṣil, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn and Abū Ṭāhir Ibrāhim, were threatened by the Kurdish chief Bād̲h̲, founder of the Marwānid line [see marwānids ] in Diyār Bakr, they appealed for help to the ʿUḳaylid chief Abu ’l-Ḏh̲awwād Muḥammad b. al-Musayyab. But after def…

, a component group of the Meccan clan of Umayya or ʿAbd S̲h̲ams, the term being a plural of the founder’s name, a son of Umayya b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf b. Ḳuṣayy called al-ʿĪṣ or Abu ’l-ʿĪṣ or al-ʿĀṣ(ī) or Abu ’l-ʿĀṣ(ī) or ʿUwayṣ, these being given in the genealogical works as separate individuals, but doubtless in fact one person (on the two orthographies al-ʿĀṣ and al-ʿĀṣī, the former explicable as an apocopated Ḥid̲j̲āzī form, see K. Vollers, Volksprache und Schriftsprache im alten Arabien , Strassburg 1906, 139-40). The group formed a branch of th…

(a.), literally, “someone who makes a thing legal, legaliser, legitimator”, the figure who, in classical Islamic law acts as something like a dummy or a “man of straw”, in order to authenticate or make permissible some legal process otherwise of doubtful legality or in fact prohibited. It thus forms part of the mechanisms and procedures subsumed under ḥiyal , legal devices, often ¶ used for evading the spirit of the law whilst technically satisfying its letter [see ḥīla ]. Thus the muḥallil is found in gambling, racing for stakes, e.g. with horses or pi…

, Dunganistan , a name coined by Western scholars and travellers (W. Heissig, Ella Maillart) for an ephemeral régime, hardly to be called a state, in the southern part of Chinese Turkestan or Sinkiang [ q.v.] 1934-7. The name stems from the Dungan or Tungan [see tungans ] troops, Hui, i.e. ethnic Chinese, Muslims who formed the military backing of Ma Hu-shan, styled “Commander-in-Chief of the 36th Division of the Kuomintang” and brother-in-law of Ma Chung-ying [ q.v.], best-known of the five Muslim Chinese warlords who controlled much of northwestern China in the later d…

, a town of the northwestern Deccan or South India, situated on the middle course of the Tāptī River in lat. 21° 15′ N., long. 74° 58′ E. (see the map in gud̲j̲arāt , at Vol. II, 1126). Its fame in mediaeval Indo-Muslim history arises from its being the first capital of the Fārūḳī rulers [see fārūḳids ] of K̲h̲āndēs̲h̲ [ q.v.] before they later moved to Burhānpūr [ q.v.]. It had been a centre of Hindu power in western India when Malik Rād̲j̲ā Aḥmad chose it towards the end of the 8th/14th century. It was captured in 914/1509 by the Gud̲j̲arāt Sultan Maḥmūd Begaŕhā [ q.v.], who installed his own cand…

, a town of mediaeval Transoxania, in the region of Soghdia, and lying on a canal which led southwards from the Nahr Ṣug̲h̲d and on the Samarḳand-Karmīniyya-Buk̲h̲ārā road. The site is marked by the ruins of Ḳalʿa-yi Dabūs near the modern village of Ziyaudin (=Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn), according to Barthold, Turkestan3 , 97. It lay in a prosperous and well-watered area, say the mediaeval geographers, and Muḳaddasī, 324, cf. R.B. Serjeant, Islamic textiles, material for a history up to the Mongol conquest, Beirut 101, mentions in particular the brocade cloth known as Wad̲h̲ārī produced there. Dabūsi…

(a.), literally, “the Rightly-Guided Caliphs”, the four heads of the nascent Islamic community who succeeded each other in the thirty years or so after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad in Rabīʿ I 11/June 632. The qualifying term in the phrase has often been rendered as “Orthodox” (an anachronism, since there was no generally accepted corpus of Islamic belief and practice at this early time from which deviation could occur) or “Patriarchal”, reflecting a view of this period as a heroic age for Islam. The four caliphs in question comprised: All four were from the Prophet’s own Meccan …

, a town and district of South India, now in the Gulbargā division of the Indian Union state of Karnataka, before 1947 in the Ḥaydarābād princely state of British India (lat. 16° 15′ N., long. 77° 20′ E.). An ancient Hindu town formerly part of the kingdom of Warangal, it passed to the K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī Sultans of Dihlī in the 8th/14th century, then to the Bahmanīs and, after Awrangzīb’s Deccan conquests, to the Mug̲h̲als. Rāyčūr has interesting Islamic monuments. The Bahmanī Ek mīnār kī masd̲j̲id has its minaret in the corner of the courtyard [see manāra. 2. In India]. The fortifications and gat…

Abu ’l-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Masʿūd b. Mawdūd b. Zangī , called al-Malik al-ʿĀdil, sixth ruler in Mawṣil of the Zangid line of Atabegs, reigned 589-607/1193-1211. On the death of his father ʿIzz al-Dīn Masʿūd [ q.v.], Nūr al-Dīn succeeded him, but for many years was under the tutelage of the commander of the citadel of Mawṣil, the eunuch Mud̲j̲āhid al-Dīn Ḳaymaz al-Zaynī, till the latter’s death in 595/1198-9. Nūr al-Dīn’s early external policy aimed at securing control of Niṣibīn [ q.v.] from his kinsman, the Zangī lord of Sind̲j̲ār ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī and the latter’s son Ḳuṭb al-D…

, a district of Central Asia and the name of a river there. The Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ Āb is a right-bank tributary of the Oxus, flowing down from the Alai range of mountains to the south of Farg̲h̲āna. Geiger and Markwart thought that the Greek name ¶ “Οξος came from Wak̲h̲s̲h̲, the tributary thus giving its name to the great river (see Markwart, Wehrot und Arang , 3 ff., 89; Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol invasion, 65; and āmū daryā ). In early mediaeval times, the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ district must have had a population which included remnants of the Hepht̲h̲alites, such as the Kumīd̲j̲īs [ q.v.] and also T…

, the form usually found in Persian sources, early Arabic form Sid̲j̲istān, a region of eastern Persia lying to the south of K̲h̲urāsān and to the north of Balūčistān, now administratively divided between Persia and Afghanistan. In early Arabic historical and literary texts one finds as nisba s both Sid̲j̲istānī and Sid̲j̲zī, in Persian, Sīstānī. 1. Etymology. The early Arabic form reflects the origin of the region’s name in MP Sakastān “land of the Sakas”, the Indo-European Scythian people who had dominated what is now Afg̲h̲ānistān and northwestern …

(in the texts usually Kīmāk, often wrongly vocalised Kaymāk), an early Turkish people living in western Siberia on the lower course of the Irtis̲h̲ River and on its tributaries the Is̲h̲im and Tobol, possibly as far north as the confluence of the Irtis̲h̲ and Ob and as far west as the Ural Mts. ; they are mentioned in Islamic sources from the 3rd/9th century onwards. The most detailed accounts of the Kimäk and their territories are in the anonymous Ḥudud al-ʿālam (begun 372/982-3), tr. Minorsky, 99-100, 304-10, and in Gardīzī’s Zayn al-ak̲h̲bār , ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy …

, Otrār , a town of mediaeval Islamic Central Asia notorious for its role in the irruption of the Mongols into the Islamic world. It lay on the right bank of the Sir Daryā or Jaxartes just to the south of the confluence with it of the Aris river. It is not found in geographical texts till the early 7th/13th ¶ century and Yāḳūt’s Buldān , ed. Beirut, i, 218, who has Uṭrār or Utrār. It may possibly be mentioned in al-Ṭabarī, iii, 815-16, year 195/810-11, but the reading here is doubtful, see M. Fishbein (tr.), The History of -Ṭabarī , XXXI. The war between brothers, Albany 1992, 71-2 and n. 292. In the hist…

(t.), a Turkish name found e.g. among the early Sald̲j̲ūḳs, usually written P.y.g̲h̲ū or B.y.g̲h̲ū . In many sources on the early history of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs these orthographies seem to reflect the old Turkish title Yabg̲h̲u , which goes back at least to the time of the Ork̲h̲on inscriptions (see C.E. Bosworth and Sir Gerard Clauson, in JRAS [1965], 9-10), and it was the Yabg̲h̲u of the western, Og̲h̲uz Turks whom the eponymous ancestor of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs, Duḳāḳ Temir-Yali̊g̲h̲ “Iron-bow” served (see Cl. Cahen, in Oriens , ii [1949], 42; Bosworth, The Ghaznavids , their empire in Afghanistan a…

, modern Turkish Yenişehir, a town of northwestern Anatolia, in what was the classical Bithynia. It lies in lat. 40° 17’ N. and long. 29° 38’ E. at an altitude of 245 m/800 feet in a long depression running from Inegöl in a northeasterly direction, where this narrows; this plain is drained by the Gök Su, whose waters are used here for irrigation purposes and which flows past Yeñi S̲h̲ehir into the Sakarya river [ q.v.]. Yeñi S̲h̲ehir played an important role in early Ottoman history. It was the first town of significance to be taken at some point in the early 8th/14th century by ʿOt̲h̲mān I [ q.v.], w…

, minister in Central Asia of the Mongol K̲h̲āns in the 13th century A.D. Soon after 1238, in the reign of the Great K̲h̲ān Ögedey (1227-41), parts of Transoxania and Mog̲h̲olistān [ q.v.] (the region of the steppes to the north of Transoxania) were ceded to Čag̲h̲atay as an ind̲j̲ü or appanage [see čag̲h̲atay k̲h̲ān and mā warāʾ al-nahr. 2. History]. Masʿūd Beg’s father Maḥmūd Yalawač [ q.v.] was transferred from his governorship of the sedentary population of Transoxania and Mog̲h̲olistān to China, and the son then appointed to succeed him there. Indeed, acco…

(p.), in Pas̲h̲to Spīn G̲h̲ar (“The White Mountain”), the name of a mountain range falling mainly in eastern Afghānistān. According to Bābur, it derives its name from its perpetual covering of snow; from its northern slopes, nine rivers run down to the Kābul River ( Bābur-nāma , tr. Beveridge, 209, cf. Appx. E, pp. xvii-xxiii). The Safīd Kūh, with its outliers, runs from a point to the east of G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] in a northeasterly and then easterly direction almost to Attock [see atak ] on the Indus (approx. between longs. 68° 40′ E. an…

, Abū Ḥafṣ Ḳutayba b. Abī Ṣāliḥ Muslim b. ʿAmr al-Bāhilī , Arab commander under the Umayyad caliphs. He was born in 49/669 into a family influential at the court and with extensive possessions in Baṣra. His father Muslim was the boon-companion of Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, and during the revolt of al-Muk̲h̲tār [ q.v.], he was in charge of the prison at Baṣra; but he later sided with Muṣʿab b. al-Zubayr and was killed in 72/691-2 when Muṣʿab’s dominion in ʿIrāḳ was ended, after having failed to secure a pardon from ʿAbd al-Malik. The family nevertheless co…

, a hydronym and toponym of Persia. 1. A river of the Elburz Mountains region of northwestern Persia. It runs from the south-east northwestwards from a source in the mountains west of Tehran and joins the Ḳi̊zi̊l Üzen [ q.v.] at Mand̲j̲īl, the combined waters then making up the Safīd Rūd [ q.v.], which flows into the Caspian Sea. The upper reaches of the S̲h̲āh Rūd are known as the S̲h̲āh Rūd-i Ṭālaḳān, to distinguish it from its right-bank affluent the S̲h̲āh Rūd-i Alamūt. This last rises near the Tak̲h̲t-i Sulaymān peak and is hemmed in by high…

, a small town or village of mediaeval Islamic Bād̲h̲g̲h̲īs [ q.v.], lying to the northeast of Harāt in modern Afg̲h̲ānistān, and described by the mediaeval geographers as being mountainous, possessing agricultural lands and having warlike inhabitants (Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 268-9; Ibn Ḥawḳal 2, 441, tr. Wiet. 426; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , 104, 327; Yāḳūt, ii, 404; Barbier de Meynard, Dict . géogr ., hist . et litt. de la Perse , 197). Although within a Sunnī region, K̲h̲ud̲j̲istān itself was one of the last centres for the K̲h̲awārid̲j̲ in eastern Iran, and …