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, 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,…

, a town of India in the easternmost part of the Pand̲j̲āb, situated in lat. 30° 39′ N. and long. 76° 28′ E. and lying some 36 km/24 miles north of Patiāla city. In the mediaeval Islamic Persian chronicles, the name is usually spelt S.h.r.n.d , and the popular derivation from sar-Hind “the head of India”, from its strategic position, is obviously fanciful. The town must have had a pre-Islamic, Hindu past, but became important from G̲h̲ūrid times onwards and was developed by the Tug̲h̲luḳid sultan Fīrūz S̲h̲āh (III) at the b…

, Abū Isḥāḳ Ibrāhīm [ b. Yahyā ?] b. ʿUt̲h̲mān b. ʿAbbās al-Kalbī al-As̲h̲habī (441-524/1049-1129), Arabic poet of the Sald̲j̲ūk period. He was born in G̲h̲azza [ q.v.] at a time when that town was still under Fāṭimid rule, but as a S̲h̲āfiʿī Sunnī and as a person especially proud of emanating from the Imām al-S̲h̲āfiʿī’s own birthplace, his life was to be orientated towards the East, where the establishment of the Sald̲j̲ūḳs favoured a resurgence of Sunnī orthodoxy. He was studying in Damascus in 481/1088 as a pupil of t…

, the upper basin of the Kābul River (see preceding article), vaguely defined in early Islamic times as the region between Bāmiyān in the west and Lamg̲h̲ān in the east. The geographer Muḳaddāsī (c. 375/985) includes within it all the country north of G̲h̲azna and Zābulistān, i.e., the Lōgar valley, cf. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 349; and it is only about this time that the term “Kābul” becomes specialised for the name of the town rather than being applied to the whole region of Kābulistān. In contemporary Afg̲h̲…

, the name of a range of mountains running roughly south-north and to the west of the Indus river in modern Pākistān. The Sulaymān rise from the low tract of the Dērad̲j̲āt [ q.v.] which lie along the right bank of the Indus and run, in a series of long, sharp-backed ridges and jagged peaks, from the Bugt́ī and Marī districts of north-east Balūčistān in the south to the Gomal Pass [see gūmāl in Suppl.] and river in the north, thereafter continuing as the Wazīristān hills (i.e. they lie between latitudes 28° 50′ and 32° 20′ N.). It is at the northern end that the hig…

, K̲h̲uttal , a region on the right bank of the upper Oxus river, in what is now Soviet Central Asia, lying between the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ river and the Pand̲j̲ river (sc. the head waters of the Oxus), called the Wak̲h̲s̲h̲āb and D̲j̲aryāb in mediaeval times. It was bounded on the west by the topographically similar regions of Čag̲h̲āniyan and Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ [ qq.v.], and was often administratively linked with Wak̲h̲s̲h̲ (Yāḳūt, Buldān , ii, 402). K̲h̲uttal was a land of rich pastures in both the river valleys and on the upper slopes of the hills, where t…

, a town and an extensive district of mediaeval Islamic Central Asia, identifiable with the later Islamic town of Sayram. Popular etymologising saw in the name the Persian component sipīd , ispīd “white”. It lay on the Aris river, a right-bank affluent of the Si̊r Daryā [ q.v.], 14 km/8 miles to the east of the later town of Chimkent (lat. 42° 16′ N., long. 69° 05′ E.); Chimkent itself, now in the southernmost part of the Kazakhstan Republic, is mentioned in the historical sources from Tīmūrid times onwards, e.g. in S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī. Isfīd̲j̲āb apparently had a pre-Islamic histo…

, modern Tkish. Yeşil Irmak (“the Green River”), a river of northern Anatolia, the classical Iris in the province of Pontus (see PW, ix/2, col. 2045). The upper course of the river, called the Tozanli Su, rises in the Köse Dağ to the northeast of Sivas and flows westwards by Tokat [ q.v.] and Turhal. Here there is a fertile plain, the Kazova or “Goose Plain”, which is now irrigated by waters from the Almus dam on the river’s course above it, completed in 1966, and a canal running off and parallel to the river, enabling cereals, sugar-beet and vin…