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, the name of a hilly tract and a fortress of mediaeval India and Indo-Muslim times. It lies in a fold of the Salt Range, to the north of the Jhelum river in northern Pand̲j̲āb, and the place is still marked by ruins of a fortress and a Hindu temple near the modern Čao Saydān S̲h̲āh (lat. 32° 43′ N., long. 73° 17′ E.), in the Jhelum District of the Pand̲j̲āb province of Pakistan. The place is mentioned in early mediaeval Indo-Muslim history. In 404-5/1013-14 Maḥmūd of G̲h̲azna [ q.v.] attacked the Hindūs̲h̲āhīs [ q.v.] of northwestern India and marched against the Rād̲j̲ā Triločanapāla’s…

1. A river of Afg̲h̲ānistān and the Northwest Frontier region of Pākistān, 700 km. long and rising near the Unai Pass in lat. 34° 21′ N. and long. 68° 20′ E. It receives the affluents of the Pand̲j̲hīr, Alingar, Kunar and Swat Rivers from the north, and the Lōgar from the south, and flows eastwards to the Indian plain, joining the Indus at Atak (Attack). The Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (end of 4th/10th century) calls it “the River of Lamg̲h̲ān”, and describes it as flowing from the mountains bordering on Lamg̲h̲ān and Dunpūr, passing by Nangrahār (sc. …

, a seaport at the eastern tip of the peninsula of that name at the eastern end of the Crimea [see ḳri̊m ] in the modern Crimean oblast of the Ukrainian SSR. The district was clearly a well-populated one in pre-historic, Cimmerian and Scythian times, since it contains a large number of kurgans or burial mounds, many of which have been excavated since the last century. In classical times, it was from the 6th century B.C. onwards the site of the flourishing Ionian Greek colony of Pantikapaion, later called Bosporos and the cap…

means etymologically “a patch of ground marked out from adjoining land by a difference in colour, etc.” or “a low-lying region with stagnant water” (see Lane, s.v.); the latter sense is obviously at the base of the plural Biḳāʿ [ q.v.] to designate the (originally) marshy valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges in Syria, and doubtless at that of the name al-Buḳayʿa for a settlement near the Lake of Ḥimṣ [ q.v.] (see Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems , 352). From these senses it acquires the broader one of “province, region, tract of la…

, Ottoman prince and eldest son of Bāyezīd I [ q.v.], ruler in Rumelia and a considerable part of northern and northwestern Anatolia in the confused years after Bāyezīd’s defeat and capture by Tīmūr at the Battle of Ankara in 804/1402, b. ?779/1377, d. 813/1411. He is heard of in 800/1398, when his father sent him against the Aḳ Ḳoyunlu Ḳara Yülük at Sivas, and he fought at Bāyezīd’s side, together with his brothers, at Ankara. He managed to escape to Europe with his retainers by being ferried across the Bosphorus by the Genoese. He had to…

, Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. Ḏj̲arīr b. Yazīd, polymath, whose expertises included tradition and law but who is most famous as the supreme universal historian and Ḳurʾān commentator of the first three or four centuries of Islam, born in the winter of 224-5/839 at Āmul, died at Bag̲h̲dād in 310/923. . 1. Life. It should be noted at the outset that al-Ṭabarī’s own works, in so far as they have been preserved for us, give little hard biographical data, though they often give us leads to his teachers and authorities and help in the evaluation of his per…

, a town of the Tarim basin, Eastern Turkestan, now coming within the Sinkiang/Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People’s republic of China and having in Chinese the (revived) name of So-chʾe/Shache (lat. 38° 27’ N., long. 77° 16’ E., altitude 1,190 m/3,900 feet). Yārkand lies on the river of the same name, which rises in the northern part of the Karakoram mountains near the imperfectly delineated border between Kas̲h̲mīr and China and then flows eastwards to join the Tarim river; with its perennial flow, it is the main source stream of …

, Arab traveller in Central Asia in early ʿAbbāsid times and the only Muslim one who has left us a record of his visit to the capital of the Uyg̲h̲ur Turks (pre-840) on the Ork̲h̲on river [ q.v.] in Mongolia, most probably Ḳarabalg̲h̲asun, the Khara Balghasun of the modern Mongolian Republic. It may be assumed that Tamīm was an Arab, possibly one of those settled within K̲h̲urāsān, and his nisba implies that he had been a fighter for the faith against pagans. He certainly seems to have been a great traveller in the steppes, since he says that he also visited the Turkish Kimäk [ q.v.] and their king…

, ʿAbbāsid army commander who served al-Maʾmūn and al-Muʿtaṣim in the first half of the 3rd/9th century, d. 223/838. Nothing is recorded of his antecedents, but he seems to have been of Ḵh̲urāsānian or Transoxanian Arab stock; at the height of his career, he had a grant of the revenues of the market at Is̲h̲tīk̲h̲ān [ q.v. in Suppl.] near Samarḳand (Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, i, 196). He was originally a partisan of the rebel in Transoxania Rāfiʿ b. al-Layt̲h̲ [ q.v.], during the latter part of Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd’s reign, but went over to the caliphal side in 192/807-8 (al-Ṭa…

, a settlement in the Semirečye region of Central Asia [see yeti su ] mentioned in the history of the Early Turks and their connections with the adjacent Islamic lands. It apparently lay slightly to the north of the Ču river valley, hence just north of the modern Kirghizia-Kazakstan border. Minorsky suggested that the name means “canal ( āb ) on the Ču”. At the time of the Arab incursions into Central Asia, the chief ordu or encampment of the Türgesh ruler Su-lu was located at Sūyāb; it was sacked by the incoming Chinese army in 748, and then in 766 the site was occupied by the Ḳarluḳ [ q.v.] when they…

, Nūbandad̲j̲ān (also Nūband̲j̲ān, according to Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , ed. Beirut, v, 307), a town of the province of Fārs in mediaeval Islamic Persia. It lay in the district of S̲h̲ābūr K̲h̲urra roughly midway between Iṣṭak̲h̲r and Arrad̲j̲ān [ q.vv.] on the road linking S̲h̲īrāz with K̲h̲ūzistān. The geographers describe the town as populous and ¶ flourishing, with fine markets and a good running water supply. It flourished under the Būyids, was destroyed by the S̲h̲abānkāra Kurds of Abū Saʿd in the 5th/11th century, but was rebuilt by the Sald̲j̲ūḳ M…

, the name for two towns of the eastern Iranian world. 1. Sabzawār in western Ḵh̲urāsān was, together with Ḵh̲usrūd̲j̲ird, one of the two townships making up the administrative district of Bayhaḳ [ q.v.], the name by which the whole district was generally known in mediaeval Islamic times. It lay in the cultivable zone on the northern rim of the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr or Great Desert. Sabzawār itself is described in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 102, §23.2, as a small town and as the chef-lieu ( ḳaṣaba ) of a district; the Arabic geographers merely mention it as a stage along the roads of Ḵh̲urāsān and as a rūstāḳ…

, Kis̲h̲s̲h̲ , the later S̲h̲ahr-i Sabz , a town of mediaeval Transoxania, now in the Uzbekistan SSR and known simply as S̲h̲ahr, but in early times in the region of Soghdia (Ar. Ṣug̲h̲d [ q.v.]). It lay on the upper reaches of the landlocked K̲h̲as̲h̲ka Daryā in an area where several streams came down from the Sayām and Buttamān Mountains to the east, forming a highly fertile valley, intersected with irrigation canals. The town lay on the Samaḳand-Tirmid̲h̲ high road, two days’ journey from Samarḳand; after passing through Kis̲h…

(t.), a designation in Old Turkish for a bird of prey, described by Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī ¶ as larger than a ṣonḳur , a possibility is the Crested Goshawk, Astur trivirgatus . It was certainly used for hunting purposes [see for this, bayzara ]. Its chief importance, however, in early Turkish history and culture, from Uyg̲h̲ur times onwards, was as a frequent personal name. In Islamic times, its most notable holder was Ṭog̲h̲ri̊l Beg [ q.v.], co-founder with his brothers Čag̲h̲ri̊ Beg [ q.v.] and Big̲h̲u (whose names are also those of avian raptors) of the fortunes of the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳs [ q.…

al-Saffār (“the coppersmith”), Abū Yūsuf, adventurer in Sīstān and founder of the dynasty there of Ṣaffārids [ q.v.], functioned as amīr in Sīstān from 247/861 and then as ruler of an extensive military empire in the eastern Islamic lands until his death in 265/879, in practice independent of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs. The origins of Yaʿḳūb’s family in Sīstān were clearly humble, despite attempts of later historians to elevate his father al-Layt̲h̲ to the status of head of the guild of coppersmiths in the province. He was one of four brothers who were members of local bands of ʿayyārs [ q.v.], in …

, Abū Saʿīd , S̲h̲ihāb al-Dawla , D̲j̲amāl al-Milla , etc., sultan of the G̲h̲aznawid [ q.v.] dynasty, reigned 421-32/1030-40. The eldest son of the great Maḥmūd b. Sebüktigin [ q.v.], he was born in 388/998. In 406/1015-16, as walī ʿahd or heir apparent, he was made governor of Harāt and in 411/1020 led an expedition into the still-pagan enclave of G̲h̲ūr [ q.v.] in central Afg̲h̲ānistān. When in 420/1029 Maḥmūd annexed the northern Būyid amirate of Ray and D̲j̲ibāl and attacked the Kākūyids [ q.v.] of Iṣfahān and Hamad̲h̲ān. Masʿūd was placed in charge of these operations in western Persia. S…

, the name of a town and of an extensive region, formerly a K̲h̲anate, of Balūčistān, now a District of Pakistan. (1) The town (often called Kalāt-i Balūč to distinguish it from the Afg̲h̲ān Kalāt-i G̲h̲ilzay) lies in lat. 28° 53′ N. and long. 66° 28′ E. at an altitude of 6,800 feet, and has in recent centuries been the centre of the K̲h̲ānate of Kalāt; until the rise of Quetta as a military base of British India [see kwat́t́a ] it was the most important town of Balūčistān. The name Kalāt or Kilāt represents Arabic ḳalʿa and Persian ḳala / ḳalāt , often pronounced kilā / kilāt i…

, a castle of the Ismāʿīlīs [see ismāʿīliyya ] in the Alburz Mountains in northwestern Iran, the mediaeval region of Daylam [ q.v.]. ¶ Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn states that it was built in 490/1097 by the Grand Master of the Assassins Ḥasan-i Sabbāḥ or by his successor Kiyā Buzurg-Ummīd in the early 6th/12th century. Ḏj̲uwaynī, tr. Boyle, II, 621-36, cf. M. G. S. Hodgson, The order of the Assassins , The Hague 1955, 265 ff., has a detailed account of the fortress’s reduction by the Il-Ḵh̲ān Hülegü in S̲h̲awwāl 654/November 1256. The Mongols besieged …

, Arabic form Sāriya, a town of the Caspian region of Persia, in mediaeval Islamic times within the province of Ṭabaristān, now in the modern province of Māzandarān [ q.v.] (lat. 36° 33′ N., long. 53° 06′ E.). It lies some 32 km/20 miles from the Caspian Sea on the Tīd̲j̲in river ( Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 77: Tīžin-Rūd̲h̲) and in the hot and humid coastal plain; the surrounding region has always been famous for its silk production and its fruits. Whether Sārī had any pre-Islamic history is unclear, though Islamic lore assigned its foundation to the legendary Pīs̲h̲dādid [ q.v.] figure, Ṭahmūrat̲h…

, Marḍī (or Murḍā) b. ʿAlī b. Marḍī, enigmatic writer in Arabic on military topics. His dates are unknown, but he flourished in the later 6th/12th century and seems to have lived in Alexandria. He composed for the Ayyūbid sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn [ q.v.] a treatise, Tabṣirat arbāb al-albāb fī kayfiyyat al-nad̲j̲āt fi ’l-ḥurūb min al-aswāʾ wa-nas̲h̲r aʿlām al-iʿlām fi ’l-ʿudad , extant in the Bodleian unicum Hunt 264 ¶ (extracts ed. and tr. Cl. Cahen, Un traité d’armurerie composé pour Saladin , in BEO, xii [1947-8], 1-47, 150-63). It deals with weapons such as the sword, bow, lance,…