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ʿALĪ-REŻĀ ABBĀSĪ TABRĪZĪ, 10th-11th/16th-17th century calligrapher born and trained in Tabrīz but active principally in Qazvīn and Isfahan. His birth date is unknown but Qāżī Aḥmad, writing in 1005/1596, speaks of him as still young; his documented professional activity stretches from 993/1585 to 1025/1617, though he is said to have…

ʿALIDS OF ṬABARESTĀN, DAYLAMĀN, AND GĪLĀN. From its beginnings in 250/864 until the early Safavid age, ʿAlid rule in the coastal regions south of the Caspian Sea was based chiefly on Zaydī Shiʿite support. There is no evidence that the brief stay of the Hasanid rebel Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh with…

ʿALĪKOŠ, an archeological site dating to the 8th millennium B.C. in southwestern Iran, near the modern town of Deh Lorān, about 80 km west of Dezfūl in Ḵūzestān (for the name see F. Hole and K. V. Flannery, “Excavations at Ali Kosh, Iran, 1961,” Iranica Antiqua 2/2, 1962, p. 100,…

ʿALĪŠĀH B. MOḤAMMAD B. AL-QĀSEM AL-ḴᵛĀRAZMĪ AL-BOḴĀRĪ, known also as ʿALĀʾ or ʿALĀʾ-AL-DĪN AL-MONAJJEM, 7th/13th century astronomer. From autobiographical references it is known that ʿAlīšāh journeyed to Samarqand with his father, a merchant, and returned to Bokhara at the age of thirty-six in 659/1260-61; after the sack of Bokhara by…

ʿALĪŠĀH, TĀJ-AL-DĪN, vizier of the two Il-khans Ölǰeytü (r. 703-17/1304-16) and Abū Saʿīd (r. 717-36/1317-35). In his youth as a textile merchant and jeweler he played an important part in the development of the new capital Solṭānīya. In 710/1311, he was made vizier along with Ḵᵛāǰa Rašīd-al-dīn and Saʿd-al-dīn Sāvaǰī;…

ʿALĪTIGIN, the usual name in the sources for ʿALĪ B. ḤASAN or HĀRŪN BOḠRA KHAN, member of the Hasanid or eastern branch of the Qarakhanid family, ruler in Transoxania during the early 5th/11th century (d. 425/1034). We known about ʿAlītigin almost wholly through his hostile relations with the Ghaznavid sultans…

ʿALĪʾ-AL-DĪN ATSÏZ B. ʿALĀʾ-AL-DĪN ḤOSAYN, a late and short-reigned sultan of the Ghurid dynasty in Afghanistan (607-11/1210-14). He was still a child when his father, the great ʿAlāʾ-al-dīn Ḥosayn Jahānsūz died in 556/1161, and the succession in the Ghurid capital Fīrūzkūh went to his cousins, Šams-al-dīn (later Ḡīāṯ-al-dīn) Moḥammad and…

ʿAMALA (literally: workers, retainers), the retinue of a tribal chief, and the name of a number of tribes. The clan of a tribal chief or the tribe of the chief of a tribal confederacy often bears the name ʿAmala, since it is made up of individuals who serve the chief…

ʿAMĀMA (or ʿAMMĀMA, Arabic ʿEMĀMA), the turban. Imbued with symbolic significance, the turban was once the almost universal headgear of adult male Muslims. Although of pre-Islamic origin and widely disseminated in the ancient Near East, it came in Islamic times to distinguish first the Arab from the non-Arab and then…

ʿAMĀRA B. MOḤAMMAD (or AḤMAD or MAḤMŪD) MARVAZĪ, ABŪ MANṢŪR, Persian poet of the late Samanid/early Ghaznavid periods. Most scholars have read his name as ʿAmmāra, but ʿAwfī (Lobāb, p. 262) clearly read it with a single mīm. We possess no information concerning ʿAmāra’s life; that he lived until at…

ʿĀMEL, the holder of an administrative office in the pre-modern Islamic world. In earliest Islam, the Arabic term ʿāmel was one which denoted, at its most general, a provincial governor; hence it was correlative with such designations as amīr and walī. The basic sense of “agent, person involved in some…