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ESFARĀYEN, ESFARĀʾĪN (Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, tr. Minorsky, pp. 64, 102, has “*Siparāyin” [Sabarāyen], possibly influenced by a popular etymology given, e.g. by Yāqūt, Boldān (Beirut), I, p. 177 “shield bearers”), a district, and in pre-modern Islamic times, a town, of northwestern Khorasan. It lay on the northern edge of the long…

ESFEZĀRĪ, MOʿĪN-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD ZAMČĪ (or Zamačī) Heravī (ca. 850-915/1446-1510; for his nesba see Storey-Bregel, p. 1045), calligrapher specializing in the taʿlīq script (see CALLIGRAPHY), minor poet (pen name Nāmī), and master of the epistolary art (see CORRESPONDENCE), who flourished in Herat during the reign of the Timurid Solṭān-Ḥosayn Bāyqarā. He…

ESḤĀQ b. ṬOLAYQ (or Ṭalīq), the secretary responsible for translating the financial dīvāns of Khorasan into Arabic in 124/741-42. Next to nothing is known about him. He was a man (mawlā?) of the Banū Nahšal, a sub-tribe of the Banū Tamīm in Khorasan. Although the change of the land records…

ESḤĀQ AḤMAR NAḴAʿI (d. 286/899), full name: Esḥāq b. Moḥammad b. Abān Abu Yaʿqub al-Naḵaʿi al-Aḥmar al-Baṣri, a prominent Shiʿi extremist active in Iraq, founder of the Esḥāqiya ḡolāt sect, and the alleged author of a number of texts. Three of the works attributed to him (see below) are partially preserved in…

ESḤĀQ KHAN QARĀʾĪ TORBATĪ (ca. 1156-1231/1743-1816), one of the wealthiest and most powerful chieftains in Khorasan during the reigns of Āḡā Moḥammad Khan and Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah Qājār. The son of a shepherd, he initially served under Najafqolī Khan Tātār, the chief of the Qarā Tātār tribe. He eventually succeeded the…

ESḤĀQ MAWṢELĪ, ABŪ MOḤAMMAD, prominent musician at the ʿAbbasid court in Baghdad (b. 150/767-68; d. 235/850) and the successor of his equally famous father Ebrāhīm Mawṣelī (d. 188/803-4, q.v.) as leader of the conservative school of musicians of the time. He was born in 150/767-68 in Ray, where his father,…

ESḤĀQ TORK, propagandist sent by Abū Moslem Ḵorāsānī (q.v.), governor of Khorasan and leading figure in the ʿAbbasid revolution, to the Turkish people of Transoxania. He had Zoroastrian or Ḵorramdīnī inclinations (see BĀBAK ḴORRAMĪ) and, after the caliph al-Manṣūr had Abū Moslem murdered in 137/755, preached that Abū Moslem had…

ESḤĀQZĪ (sometimes shortened as Sāqzī, Sākzī, or even Sāgzī; sg. Esḥāqzay), an important Pashtun tribe of Afghanistan, member of the Panjpāy section of the Dorrānī confederation. It was the Afghan tribe with the largest pastoralist nomadic component in 1357 Š./1978: 10,600 families, i.e., nearly 60,000 persons or 7.5 percent of…

EŠĪK-ĀQĀSĪ-BĀŠĪ (or Īšīk-āqāsī-bāšī), the title of two officials in the Safavid central administration, namely ešīk-āqāsī-bāšī-e dīvān, and ešīk-āqāsī-bāšī-e ḥaram. The jurisdiction of the latter, as his title implies, lay only within the harem, and he was of less importance than the former and subordinate to him. Their respective annual salaries…

ESKĀFI, ABŪ ḤANĪFA, Persian poet, mentioned among the court poets of Ḡazna (Čahār maqāla, ed. Qazvīnī, text, p. 44). Contemporary information about his life is provided by Bayhaqī (q.v.), who met him for the first time in 451/1059 when the latter was still a young man. Abū Ḥanīfa, to whom…

ESKĀFĪ, ABŪ JAʿFAR MOḤAMMAD b. ʿAbd-Allāh, Muʿtazilite theologian of the 9th century (d. 240/854). His family originated from Samarkand, but had moved to Eskāf Banī Jonayd in Iraq (between Baghdad and Wāseṭ), hence his nesba. He was born into a milieu of poor craftsmen, and it was apparently only thanks…