Usama ibn Munqidh
Usama ibn Munqidh (Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni) (Usamah ibn Munqidh) (Ousama ibn Munqidh) (July 4, 1095 – November 17, 1188). Arab knight, courtier and man of letters. Throughout his life, he was in constant relations with the Franks, sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly; quite a number of the Templars were among his friends. He spent nine years (1129-1138) in the army of ‘Imad al-Din Zangi I, and six years (1138-1144) at the court of the Burids in Damascus. Between 1144 and 1154 he was in Egypt, becoming involved in political intrigues during the last phase of Fatimid rule. On the way from Cairo to Damascus, he lost his entire library, which contained over 4,000 manuscripts. From 1154 to 1164 he undertook many campaigns against the Franks with Nur al-Din Mahmud Zangi. Another ten years (1164-1174) were spent in Hisn Kayfa, ruled by the Artuqid Qara Arslan of Diyarbakr (r.1144-1167). The fame of Saladin brought him for the third time to Damascus. His fame rests above all on his Memoirs, called Book of Instruction by Example, composed or dictated in 1183. It gives a vivid picture of his time.
Usāma ibn Munqidh was a medieval Muslim poet, author, soldier, and diplomat from the Banu Munqidh dynasty of Shaizar in northern Syria. His life coincided with the rise of several medieval Muslim dynasties, as well as the arrival of the First Crusade and the establishment of the crusader states.
He was the nephew of the emir of Shaizar and probably expected to rule Shaizar himself, but he was exiled in 1131 and spent the rest of his life serving other leaders. He was a courtier to the Burids, Zengids, and Ayyubids in Damascus, serving the famous Zengi, Nur ad-Din, and Saladin over a period of almost fifty years. He also served the Fatimid court in Cairo, as well as the Artuqids in Hisn Kayfa. He often meddled in the politics of the courts in which he served, and he was exiled from both Damascus and Cairo.
During and immediately after his life he was most famous as a poet and adib (a "man of letters"). He wrote many poetry anthologies, such as the Kitab al-'Asa ("Book of the Staff"), Lubab al-Adab ("Kernels of Refinement"), and al-Manazil wa'l-Diyar ("Dwellings and Abodes"), and collections of his own original poetry. For modern readers, however, he is most well-known for his Kitab al-I'tibar ("Book of Learning by Example" or "Book of Contemplation"), which contains lengthy descriptions of the crusaders, whom he visited on many occasions, and some of whom he considered friends, although he generally saw them as foreign barbarians.
Most of his family was killed in an earthquake at Shaizar in 1157. He died in Damascus in 1188, at the age of 93, a remarkably advanced age for the time.
Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni see Usama ibn Munqidh
Usamah ibn Munqidh see Usama ibn Munqidh
Ousama ibn Munqidh see Usama ibn Munqidh
Usama ibn Munqidh (Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni) (Usamah ibn Munqidh) (Ousama ibn Munqidh) (July 4, 1095 – November 17, 1188). Arab knight, courtier and man of letters. Throughout his life, he was in constant relations with the Franks, sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly; quite a number of the Templars were among his friends. He spent nine years (1129-1138) in the army of ‘Imad al-Din Zangi I, and six years (1138-1144) at the court of the Burids in Damascus. Between 1144 and 1154 he was in Egypt, becoming involved in political intrigues during the last phase of Fatimid rule. On the way from Cairo to Damascus, he lost his entire library, which contained over 4,000 manuscripts. From 1154 to 1164 he undertook many campaigns against the Franks with Nur al-Din Mahmud Zangi. Another ten years (1164-1174) were spent in Hisn Kayfa, ruled by the Artuqid Qara Arslan of Diyarbakr (r.1144-1167). The fame of Saladin brought him for the third time to Damascus. His fame rests above all on his Memoirs, called Book of Instruction by Example, composed or dictated in 1183. It gives a vivid picture of his time.
Usāma ibn Munqidh was a medieval Muslim poet, author, soldier, and diplomat from the Banu Munqidh dynasty of Shaizar in northern Syria. His life coincided with the rise of several medieval Muslim dynasties, as well as the arrival of the First Crusade and the establishment of the crusader states.
He was the nephew of the emir of Shaizar and probably expected to rule Shaizar himself, but he was exiled in 1131 and spent the rest of his life serving other leaders. He was a courtier to the Burids, Zengids, and Ayyubids in Damascus, serving the famous Zengi, Nur ad-Din, and Saladin over a period of almost fifty years. He also served the Fatimid court in Cairo, as well as the Artuqids in Hisn Kayfa. He often meddled in the politics of the courts in which he served, and he was exiled from both Damascus and Cairo.
During and immediately after his life he was most famous as a poet and adib (a "man of letters"). He wrote many poetry anthologies, such as the Kitab al-'Asa ("Book of the Staff"), Lubab al-Adab ("Kernels of Refinement"), and al-Manazil wa'l-Diyar ("Dwellings and Abodes"), and collections of his own original poetry. For modern readers, however, he is most well-known for his Kitab al-I'tibar ("Book of Learning by Example" or "Book of Contemplation"), which contains lengthy descriptions of the crusaders, whom he visited on many occasions, and some of whom he considered friends, although he generally saw them as foreign barbarians.
Most of his family was killed in an earthquake at Shaizar in 1157. He died in Damascus in 1188, at the age of 93, a remarkably advanced age for the time.
Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni see Usama ibn Munqidh
Usamah ibn Munqidh see Usama ibn Munqidh
Ousama ibn Munqidh see Usama ibn Munqidh
Usama ibn Zayd ibn Haritha al-Kalbi
Usama ibn Zayd ibn Haritha al-Kalbi (d. c. 673). Son of the Abyssinian freedwoman Baraka Umm Ayman. He is reckoned among the Prophet’s freedmen. Hadith records many instances of the Prophet’s fondness for him as a child. He was among those who prepared the Prophet’s body for burial. The election of ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan to the caliphate in 644 took place in the house of his wife Fatima bint Qays al-Fihriya, and after the murder of ‘Uthman in 656, Usama refused homage to ‘Ali.
Usama ibn Zayd ibn Haritha al-Kalbi (d. c. 673). Son of the Abyssinian freedwoman Baraka Umm Ayman. He is reckoned among the Prophet’s freedmen. Hadith records many instances of the Prophet’s fondness for him as a child. He was among those who prepared the Prophet’s body for burial. The election of ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan to the caliphate in 644 took place in the house of his wife Fatima bint Qays al-Fihriya, and after the murder of ‘Uthman in 656, Usama refused homage to ‘Ali.
Ustad Muhammad Akbari
Ustad Muhammad Akbari. Head of the Shi‘a Hizb-i Wahdat’s (the Unity Party’s) political committee who lost in a power struggle with Abdul Ali Mazari and joined Rabbani’s Jam’iat-i Islami. Sayyid Husain Alimi Balkhi, a member of his party, was appointed in July 1996, minister of commerce in Prime Minister Hekmatyar’s government until they were evicted from Kabul and Bamian by the Taliban.
Ustad Muhammad Akbari. Head of the Shi‘a Hizb-i Wahdat’s (the Unity Party’s) political committee who lost in a power struggle with Abdul Ali Mazari and joined Rabbani’s Jam’iat-i Islami. Sayyid Husain Alimi Balkhi, a member of his party, was appointed in July 1996, minister of commerce in Prime Minister Hekmatyar’s government until they were evicted from Kabul and Bamian by the Taliban.
Ustadsis
Ustadsis. Leader of a religious movement in Khurasan, directed against the ‘Abbasids. The rising began in 767 and spread rapidly. Ustadis represented himself as a prophet and exhorted the people to unbelief (in Arabic, kufr). The movement was suppressed by Khazim ibn Khuzayma.
Ustadsis. Leader of a religious movement in Khurasan, directed against the ‘Abbasids. The rising began in 767 and spread rapidly. Ustadis represented himself as a prophet and exhorted the people to unbelief (in Arabic, kufr). The movement was suppressed by Khazim ibn Khuzayma.
Usuli
Usuli. School of Shi‘ite jurisprudence that asserts the permissibility of recourse to rational methods (usul) and exertion (ijtihad) in order to deduce legal ordinances (ahkam) from the scriptural sources of the law -- the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet and the twelve imams. The school is said to have originated with Abu Ja‘far al-Tusi (d. 1067), who was the first Shi‘ite scholar to expound the permissibility of qiyas (analogical reasoning). Usulism, however, was in its origin less an organized school than a current of jurisprudential thought that generally enjoyed majority support, with the exception of a period of Akhbari supremacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Usuli positions were systematized by Agha Muhammad Baqir Bihbahani and definitively elaborated by Shaikh Murtaza Ansari (d. 1864) and Akhund Khurasani (d. 1911). The Usulis hold that the Shi‘ite community (in the continuing absence of the twelfth imam) consists of mujtahids -- those technically qualified to practice ijtihad -- and muqallids -- those who, unable to do so, are obliged to follow the rulingsof the former. This analysis has bestowed on the Shi‘ite religous scholars a claim to loyalty and obedience that has been decisive for the history of Iran.
Usuli is a school of law relying on a series of rational processes, the Usuliyah has been almost universally accepted by Shi‘a Muslims for the past two centuries. Its designation “Usuliyah,” derived from the expression usul al-fiqh (“principles of jurisprudence”), is not encountered before the mid-twelfth century, but there can be little doubt that the application of rational methods to the deduction of the specific ordinances of the law from its sources was known already during the lifetime of the imams. Clearly rationalist in tendency was Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 1022), who rejected with great polemical vigor the view of his traditionist opponents (the forerunners of the Akhbariyah) that traditions narrated by only one line of transmission were acceptable sources of law. His positions were developed, with some modification, by Shaykh al-Ta’ifah al-Tusi (d. 1067), Muhaqqiq al-Hilli (d. 1277), and ‘Allamah al-Hilli (d. 1326). The last took the crucial step of recognizing the principle of ijtihad (disciplined reasoning based on the shari‘a) that was to become central to the Usuliyah. He is therefore sometimes regarded as the first Usuli sensu stricto. This gradual clarification of the bases of rationalist jurisprudence in Shiism owed much to earlier developments in Sunni law, something that did not go unnoticed by the Akhbari adversaries of the Usuli doctrine.
When the Safavids set about propagating Shiism in Iran, creating for the first time the conditions for the application of Shi‘a law in a major Islamic society, representatives of the Usuli position -- such as ‘Ali al-Karaki (d. 1534) and Muhaqqiq Ardabili (d. 1585) -- were initially in the ascendant. In the mid-seventeenth century, however, there was a late blossoming of the Akhbari school under the auspices of Mullah Muhammad Amin Akhbari (d. 1624). It succeeded in gaining the loyalty of many of the major intellectual figures of the day and came to enjoy nearly complete control of the ‘atabat in Iraq by the mid-eighteenth century. The supremacy of the Usuliyah was definitively re-established toward the end of the century by Aqa Muhammad Baqir Bihbahani (d. 1791) by means of both vigorous public debate in the madrasahs of Karbala and the composition of treatises on usul al-fiqh. His numerous associates and students consolidated this triumph in both Iraq and Iran, and the Usuli positions were from that time virtually co-terminous with Shi‘a law as such.
Bihbahani not only reasserted the legitimate or even obligatory nature of ijtihad but also made it incumbent on all who had not attained the qualifications for ijtihad to follow, in matters of religious law, those who had. This process is known as taqlid (“imitation”), and the scholar practicing ijtihad who is selected for imitation is called the marja’ al-taqlid (“source of imitation”). The structuring of the Shi‘a community that this implied, with obedience to a practitioner of ijtihad made a matter of religious duty, greatly elevated the status of the religious jurists and had a profound impact on Iranian history and society. It paved the way for the political activism of the Shi‘a ‘ulama’ throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and may even be regarded as an ancestor of the Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979.
The principles of the Usuli school were further refined by Shaykh Murtada Ansari (d. 1864), who had stress on the necessity of choosing as marja’ al-taqlid the most learned jurist available, and by Akhund Muhammad Kazim Khurasani (d. 1911). The doctrine of wilayat al-faqih (“the vice-regency of the jurist”), according to which a jurist may claim full governmental powers, may be regarded as a radical but nonetheless logical working out of the implications of Usuli doctrine. In elaborating it, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1989) was able to cite indications scattered in the works of earlier Usuli scholars.
Usulis are the majority Twelver Shi'a Muslim group. They differ from their now much smaller rival Akhbari group in favoring the use of ijtihad, i.e. reasoning in the creation of new rules of fiqh; in assessing hadith to exclude traditions they believe unreliable; and in considering it obligatory to obey a mujtahid when seeking to determine Islamically correct behavior.
After the crushing of the Akhbaris in the late 18th century, the Usuli became the dominant school of Twelver Shi'a and formed an overwhelming majority within the Twelver Shia denomination.
The Usuli believe that the Hadith collections contained traditions of very varying degrees of reliability, and that critical analysis was necessary to assess their authority. In contrast, the Akhbari believe that the sole sources of law are the Qur'an and the Hadith, in particular the Four Books accepted by the Shia. Everything in these sources is in principle reliable, and outside them there was no authority competent to enact or deduce further legal rules.
In addition to assessing the reliability of the Hadith, Usuli believe the task of the legal scholar is to establish intellectual principles of general application (Usul al-fiqh), from which particular rules may be derived by way of deduction: accordingly, legal scholarship has the tools in principle for resolving any situation, whether or not it is specifically addressed in the Qur'an or Hadith.
The dominance of the Usuli over the Akhbari came in last half of the 18th century when Muhammad Baqir Behbahani led Usulis to challenge Akhbari dominance and completely routed the Akhbaris at Karbala and Najaf, to the point that only a handful of Shi'i ulama have remained Akhbari to the present day.
An important tenet of Usuli doctrine is Taqlid or "imitation", i.e. the acceptance of a religious ruling in matters of worship and personal affairs from someone regarded as a higher religious authority (e.g. an 'ālim) without necessarily asking for the technical proof. These higher religious authorities can be known as a "source of imitation" (Arabic, marja taqlid; Persian, marja) or less exaltedly as an "imitated one" (Arabic, muqallad). However, the muqallad's verdicts are not to be taken as the only source of religious information and the muqallad can be always corrected by other muqalladeen (the plural of muqallad) which come after him. Obeying a deceased taqlid is forbidden in Usuli.
Taqlid has been introduced by scholars who felt that Quranic verses and traditions were not enough and that ulama were needed not only to interpret the Quran and Sunna but to make new rulings to respond to new challenges and push the boundaries of Shia law in new directions. Critics also say a major motive behind introducing this was to collect Islamic taxes.
Usuli. School of Shi‘ite jurisprudence that asserts the permissibility of recourse to rational methods (usul) and exertion (ijtihad) in order to deduce legal ordinances (ahkam) from the scriptural sources of the law -- the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet and the twelve imams. The school is said to have originated with Abu Ja‘far al-Tusi (d. 1067), who was the first Shi‘ite scholar to expound the permissibility of qiyas (analogical reasoning). Usulism, however, was in its origin less an organized school than a current of jurisprudential thought that generally enjoyed majority support, with the exception of a period of Akhbari supremacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Usuli positions were systematized by Agha Muhammad Baqir Bihbahani and definitively elaborated by Shaikh Murtaza Ansari (d. 1864) and Akhund Khurasani (d. 1911). The Usulis hold that the Shi‘ite community (in the continuing absence of the twelfth imam) consists of mujtahids -- those technically qualified to practice ijtihad -- and muqallids -- those who, unable to do so, are obliged to follow the rulingsof the former. This analysis has bestowed on the Shi‘ite religous scholars a claim to loyalty and obedience that has been decisive for the history of Iran.
Usuli is a school of law relying on a series of rational processes, the Usuliyah has been almost universally accepted by Shi‘a Muslims for the past two centuries. Its designation “Usuliyah,” derived from the expression usul al-fiqh (“principles of jurisprudence”), is not encountered before the mid-twelfth century, but there can be little doubt that the application of rational methods to the deduction of the specific ordinances of the law from its sources was known already during the lifetime of the imams. Clearly rationalist in tendency was Shaykh al-Mufid (d. 1022), who rejected with great polemical vigor the view of his traditionist opponents (the forerunners of the Akhbariyah) that traditions narrated by only one line of transmission were acceptable sources of law. His positions were developed, with some modification, by Shaykh al-Ta’ifah al-Tusi (d. 1067), Muhaqqiq al-Hilli (d. 1277), and ‘Allamah al-Hilli (d. 1326). The last took the crucial step of recognizing the principle of ijtihad (disciplined reasoning based on the shari‘a) that was to become central to the Usuliyah. He is therefore sometimes regarded as the first Usuli sensu stricto. This gradual clarification of the bases of rationalist jurisprudence in Shiism owed much to earlier developments in Sunni law, something that did not go unnoticed by the Akhbari adversaries of the Usuli doctrine.
When the Safavids set about propagating Shiism in Iran, creating for the first time the conditions for the application of Shi‘a law in a major Islamic society, representatives of the Usuli position -- such as ‘Ali al-Karaki (d. 1534) and Muhaqqiq Ardabili (d. 1585) -- were initially in the ascendant. In the mid-seventeenth century, however, there was a late blossoming of the Akhbari school under the auspices of Mullah Muhammad Amin Akhbari (d. 1624). It succeeded in gaining the loyalty of many of the major intellectual figures of the day and came to enjoy nearly complete control of the ‘atabat in Iraq by the mid-eighteenth century. The supremacy of the Usuliyah was definitively re-established toward the end of the century by Aqa Muhammad Baqir Bihbahani (d. 1791) by means of both vigorous public debate in the madrasahs of Karbala and the composition of treatises on usul al-fiqh. His numerous associates and students consolidated this triumph in both Iraq and Iran, and the Usuli positions were from that time virtually co-terminous with Shi‘a law as such.
Bihbahani not only reasserted the legitimate or even obligatory nature of ijtihad but also made it incumbent on all who had not attained the qualifications for ijtihad to follow, in matters of religious law, those who had. This process is known as taqlid (“imitation”), and the scholar practicing ijtihad who is selected for imitation is called the marja’ al-taqlid (“source of imitation”). The structuring of the Shi‘a community that this implied, with obedience to a practitioner of ijtihad made a matter of religious duty, greatly elevated the status of the religious jurists and had a profound impact on Iranian history and society. It paved the way for the political activism of the Shi‘a ‘ulama’ throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and may even be regarded as an ancestor of the Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979.
The principles of the Usuli school were further refined by Shaykh Murtada Ansari (d. 1864), who had stress on the necessity of choosing as marja’ al-taqlid the most learned jurist available, and by Akhund Muhammad Kazim Khurasani (d. 1911). The doctrine of wilayat al-faqih (“the vice-regency of the jurist”), according to which a jurist may claim full governmental powers, may be regarded as a radical but nonetheless logical working out of the implications of Usuli doctrine. In elaborating it, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1989) was able to cite indications scattered in the works of earlier Usuli scholars.
Usulis are the majority Twelver Shi'a Muslim group. They differ from their now much smaller rival Akhbari group in favoring the use of ijtihad, i.e. reasoning in the creation of new rules of fiqh; in assessing hadith to exclude traditions they believe unreliable; and in considering it obligatory to obey a mujtahid when seeking to determine Islamically correct behavior.
After the crushing of the Akhbaris in the late 18th century, the Usuli became the dominant school of Twelver Shi'a and formed an overwhelming majority within the Twelver Shia denomination.
The Usuli believe that the Hadith collections contained traditions of very varying degrees of reliability, and that critical analysis was necessary to assess their authority. In contrast, the Akhbari believe that the sole sources of law are the Qur'an and the Hadith, in particular the Four Books accepted by the Shia. Everything in these sources is in principle reliable, and outside them there was no authority competent to enact or deduce further legal rules.
In addition to assessing the reliability of the Hadith, Usuli believe the task of the legal scholar is to establish intellectual principles of general application (Usul al-fiqh), from which particular rules may be derived by way of deduction: accordingly, legal scholarship has the tools in principle for resolving any situation, whether or not it is specifically addressed in the Qur'an or Hadith.
The dominance of the Usuli over the Akhbari came in last half of the 18th century when Muhammad Baqir Behbahani led Usulis to challenge Akhbari dominance and completely routed the Akhbaris at Karbala and Najaf, to the point that only a handful of Shi'i ulama have remained Akhbari to the present day.
An important tenet of Usuli doctrine is Taqlid or "imitation", i.e. the acceptance of a religious ruling in matters of worship and personal affairs from someone regarded as a higher religious authority (e.g. an 'ālim) without necessarily asking for the technical proof. These higher religious authorities can be known as a "source of imitation" (Arabic, marja taqlid; Persian, marja) or less exaltedly as an "imitated one" (Arabic, muqallad). However, the muqallad's verdicts are not to be taken as the only source of religious information and the muqallad can be always corrected by other muqalladeen (the plural of muqallad) which come after him. Obeying a deceased taqlid is forbidden in Usuli.
Taqlid has been introduced by scholars who felt that Quranic verses and traditions were not enough and that ulama were needed not only to interpret the Quran and Sunna but to make new rulings to respond to new challenges and push the boundaries of Shia law in new directions. Critics also say a major motive behind introducing this was to collect Islamic taxes.
‘Utayba, Banu
‘Utayba, Banu (Banu ‘Utayba) ('Utaybah) (Uteibah) (Otaibah) (Otaiba</I.). Large Bedouin tribe in central Saudi Arabia which traces its genealogy back to Mudar and claims to belong to the Qays ‘Aylan.
'Utaybah is a large Sunni Muslim tribe of the Arabian Peninsula. As is the case with many other large tribal confederations in the region, the name 'Utaybah only appeared within the last few centuries. 'Utaybah's original territory was concentrated in the area around Taif, but in the 18th century, their lands extended to include central Nejd. The head of the family is the Bin Humaid family.
Until sometime in the 19th century, a large section of the tribe moved eastwards towards Nejd, which at the time was dominated by another large tribe known as Qahtan. A mighty war ensued between 'Utaybah and Qahtan which led to 'Utaybah taking over most of Qahtan's grazing lands in western Nejd, led by Prince Turki Bin Humaid, 'Utaybah pushed Qahtan further to the east and south. A large boulder in western Nejd where a group of Qahtani tribesmen made their last stand against 'Utaybah is still known today as Hassaat Ghatan ("Qahtan's Rock"). The tribe was mostly bedouin, however, a large number of them settled in the towns of Nejd. Sections of the tribe ended up moving as far east as Riyadh and as far north as Qassim. 'Utaybah, Mutayr and Qahtan are generally considered to be the largest tribes in Saudi Arabia today, though no reliable statistics exist.
The tribe for a long time maintained a cooperative attitude towards the Wahhabi movement championed by the Al Saud clan of Nejd in the 18th and 19th centuries, and tended to side more with the Sharifs of Mecca. In 1912, however, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, began an ambitious plan to settle the nomadic tribes within his domains (which at the time included Nejd and Arabia's eastern coastal areas). This was to be coupled with indoctrination of the tribesmen into the religious ideals espoused by Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, as the religious observance of the bedouin was hitherto considered to be somewhat loose. The new settlements were to be known as hijras and the accompanying religious movement was called the Ikhwan ("the Brotherhood"). As a result, a large number of 'Utaybi hijras sprung up across the land, especially in western Nejd. The most famous 'Utaybi hijras were 'Afif near Dwadmi, and Sajir near Shaqraa. A large contingent of 'Utaybah, led by Sultan ibn Bjad Bin Humaid aka Sultanaldeen, joined the Ikhwan, who were then deployed by Ibn Saud against his rivals as he sought to unite as much of Arabia under his rule as possible. The Ikhwan were instrumental in gaining control of the Hejaz for Ibn Saud, but they then grew resentful and restless. The 'Utaybi leader of Ikhwan joined with main Ikhwan leaders from other tribes in revolt, but they were defeated by Ibn Saud's forces at the Battle of Sbilla near Zilfi in northeastern Nejd in 1930. The 'Utaybi hijras remained, however, and the hijra of 'Afif became particularly prosperous and is now considered a city in its own right, lying approximately half-way between Riyadh and Mecca.
Many 'Utaybis have entered the Saudi armed forces in the last few decades, and their presence with other tribes is particularly heavy in the National Guard. Prominent members of the tribe include Khalaf ibn Hathal, a poet who rose to prominence during the First Gulf War, Juhayman Al-'Utaybi, the militant who led the 1979 seizure of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, and Dhaifallah Al-'Utaybi, mayor of Dammam and a former executive in the Saudi national oil company, Aramco.
The Otaibah tribe is subdivided into three major branches: Barga, Rwog, and Bano Saad (Sons of Saad). Each major branch is divided into many clans, each clan is divided into various families.
The meeting of the 'Utaybah Tribe is considered to be the biggest family meeting in the world.
‘Utayba, Banu (Banu ‘Utayba) ('Utaybah) (Uteibah) (Otaibah) (Otaiba</I.). Large Bedouin tribe in central Saudi Arabia which traces its genealogy back to Mudar and claims to belong to the Qays ‘Aylan.
'Utaybah is a large Sunni Muslim tribe of the Arabian Peninsula. As is the case with many other large tribal confederations in the region, the name 'Utaybah only appeared within the last few centuries. 'Utaybah's original territory was concentrated in the area around Taif, but in the 18th century, their lands extended to include central Nejd. The head of the family is the Bin Humaid family.
Until sometime in the 19th century, a large section of the tribe moved eastwards towards Nejd, which at the time was dominated by another large tribe known as Qahtan. A mighty war ensued between 'Utaybah and Qahtan which led to 'Utaybah taking over most of Qahtan's grazing lands in western Nejd, led by Prince Turki Bin Humaid, 'Utaybah pushed Qahtan further to the east and south. A large boulder in western Nejd where a group of Qahtani tribesmen made their last stand against 'Utaybah is still known today as Hassaat Ghatan ("Qahtan's Rock"). The tribe was mostly bedouin, however, a large number of them settled in the towns of Nejd. Sections of the tribe ended up moving as far east as Riyadh and as far north as Qassim. 'Utaybah, Mutayr and Qahtan are generally considered to be the largest tribes in Saudi Arabia today, though no reliable statistics exist.
The tribe for a long time maintained a cooperative attitude towards the Wahhabi movement championed by the Al Saud clan of Nejd in the 18th and 19th centuries, and tended to side more with the Sharifs of Mecca. In 1912, however, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, began an ambitious plan to settle the nomadic tribes within his domains (which at the time included Nejd and Arabia's eastern coastal areas). This was to be coupled with indoctrination of the tribesmen into the religious ideals espoused by Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, as the religious observance of the bedouin was hitherto considered to be somewhat loose. The new settlements were to be known as hijras and the accompanying religious movement was called the Ikhwan ("the Brotherhood"). As a result, a large number of 'Utaybi hijras sprung up across the land, especially in western Nejd. The most famous 'Utaybi hijras were 'Afif near Dwadmi, and Sajir near Shaqraa. A large contingent of 'Utaybah, led by Sultan ibn Bjad Bin Humaid aka Sultanaldeen, joined the Ikhwan, who were then deployed by Ibn Saud against his rivals as he sought to unite as much of Arabia under his rule as possible. The Ikhwan were instrumental in gaining control of the Hejaz for Ibn Saud, but they then grew resentful and restless. The 'Utaybi leader of Ikhwan joined with main Ikhwan leaders from other tribes in revolt, but they were defeated by Ibn Saud's forces at the Battle of Sbilla near Zilfi in northeastern Nejd in 1930. The 'Utaybi hijras remained, however, and the hijra of 'Afif became particularly prosperous and is now considered a city in its own right, lying approximately half-way between Riyadh and Mecca.
Many 'Utaybis have entered the Saudi armed forces in the last few decades, and their presence with other tribes is particularly heavy in the National Guard. Prominent members of the tribe include Khalaf ibn Hathal, a poet who rose to prominence during the First Gulf War, Juhayman Al-'Utaybi, the militant who led the 1979 seizure of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, and Dhaifallah Al-'Utaybi, mayor of Dammam and a former executive in the Saudi national oil company, Aramco.
The Otaibah tribe is subdivided into three major branches: Barga, Rwog, and Bano Saad (Sons of Saad). Each major branch is divided into many clans, each clan is divided into various families.
The meeting of the 'Utaybah Tribe is considered to be the biggest family meeting in the world.
Banu 'Utayba see ‘Utayba, Banu
'Utaybah see ‘Utayba, Banu
Uteibah see ‘Utayba, Banu
Otaibah see ‘Utayba, Banu
Otaiba see ‘Utayba, Banu
‘Utba ibn Ghazwan ibn al-Harith
‘Utba ibn Ghazwan ibn al-Harith (Utbah ibn Ghazwan) (d. c. 636/639). One of the first Companions of the Prophet. He is best known as the founder of Basra.
Utbah ibn Ghazwan was a well known companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He was the seventh person to convert to Islam and participated in the hijra to Abyssinia but returned to stay with Muhammad in Mecca before making the second hijrah to Medina. He fought at the battle of Badr (624), the battle of Uhud (625), the Battle of the Trench (627) and many others, including the battles of Yamamah.
During the caliphate of Umar (r.634-644), Utbah commanded a force of 2,000 men in a campaign against Ubullah which lasted from June through September 635. Once Uballa was occupied, Utba sent a force across the Tigris River which occupied the district of Furat, followed by Meisan and Abarqubaz. He was soon appointed governor of Basra (Iraq) by the caliph. In 639 Utba left for the Hijaz to perform hajj and to request Umar to relieve him of his office as governor. Umar refused, but while returning to Basra Utbah fell from his camel and died. He was succeeded by al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah as governor.
Utbah ibn Ghazwan see ‘Utba ibn Ghazwan ibn al-Harith
‘Utba ibn Ghazwan ibn al-Harith (Utbah ibn Ghazwan) (d. c. 636/639). One of the first Companions of the Prophet. He is best known as the founder of Basra.
Utbah ibn Ghazwan was a well known companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He was the seventh person to convert to Islam and participated in the hijra to Abyssinia but returned to stay with Muhammad in Mecca before making the second hijrah to Medina. He fought at the battle of Badr (624), the battle of Uhud (625), the Battle of the Trench (627) and many others, including the battles of Yamamah.
During the caliphate of Umar (r.634-644), Utbah commanded a force of 2,000 men in a campaign against Ubullah which lasted from June through September 635. Once Uballa was occupied, Utba sent a force across the Tigris River which occupied the district of Furat, followed by Meisan and Abarqubaz. He was soon appointed governor of Basra (Iraq) by the caliph. In 639 Utba left for the Hijaz to perform hajj and to request Umar to relieve him of his office as governor. Umar refused, but while returning to Basra Utbah fell from his camel and died. He was succeeded by al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah as governor.
Utbah ibn Ghazwan see ‘Utba ibn Ghazwan ibn al-Harith
‘Utbi, Abu Nasr Muhammad al-
‘Utbi, Abu Nasr Muhammad al- (Abu Nasr Muhammad al-‘Utbi) (c.961-1036). Arab historian from Rayy. He was the author of a history of the reign of the Ghaznavid Nasir al-Dawla Sebuktigin, the governor of Khurasan on behalf of the Samanids, of his son Mahmud and of the early years of his grandson Mas‘ud I.
Abu Nasr Muhammad al-‘Utbi see ‘Utbi, Abu Nasr Muhammad al-
‘Utbi, Abu Nasr Muhammad al- (Abu Nasr Muhammad al-‘Utbi) (c.961-1036). Arab historian from Rayy. He was the author of a history of the reign of the Ghaznavid Nasir al-Dawla Sebuktigin, the governor of Khurasan on behalf of the Samanids, of his son Mahmud and of the early years of his grandson Mas‘ud I.
Abu Nasr Muhammad al-‘Utbi see ‘Utbi, Abu Nasr Muhammad al-
‘Uthman Abu Bakr Digna
‘Uthman Abu Bakr Digna (Digna) (c. 1840-1926). Governor and general of the Mahdiyya in the Eastern Sudan. He was a slave trader who joined Muhammad al-Mahdi in 1883.
Digna, 'Uthman Abu Bakr see ‘Uthman Abu Bakr Digna
Digna see ‘Uthman Abu Bakr Digna
‘Uthman Abu Bakr Digna (Digna) (c. 1840-1926). Governor and general of the Mahdiyya in the Eastern Sudan. He was a slave trader who joined Muhammad al-Mahdi in 1883.
Digna, 'Uthman Abu Bakr see ‘Uthman Abu Bakr Digna
Digna see ‘Uthman Abu Bakr Digna
‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan
‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (Usman ibn ‘Affān) (c. 579, Taif, Arabia - July 17, 656, Medina, Arabia). Third caliph (r.644-656). ‘Uthman was an early, pre-hijra convert to Islam. He belonged to the Banu Umayya and accepted the teaching of the Prophet several years before the hijra.
He was a rich merchant and married the Prophet’s daughter Ruqayya. He is believed to have taken part in the migration to Abyssinia and in the Hijra to Medina, but he did not take part in the battle of Badr. After the death of Ruqayya, he married Umm Kulthum, another daughter of the Prophet. After the murder of ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab in 644, he was elected caliph by a council of the six oldest Companions, a council that was named by ‘Umar on his deathbed. ‘Uthman was chosen because he was a member of the Prophet’s family through his marriages, because he was an Umayyad and probably because he was the most outstanding candidate, since ‘Ali, al-Zubayr ibn al- ‘Awwam, Talha ibn ‘Ubayd Allah, Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas and ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf ruled one another out. Since he was an Umayyad, his appointment may be seen as a victory of the old Meccan oligarchy.
During his caliphate many serious grievances were uttered, the first and perhaps gravest charge being that he appointed members of his family to the governorships in the provinces of Syria and Egypt. He also assigned the booty of the expeditions not entirely to the soldiers, but reserved a share for his governors and family by developing the system of fiefs. Cutting down the military pensions because of the economic crisis following the sudden enriching of the Arab masses also increased the number of malcontents. One of the steps which contributed very greatly to stirring up the religious element against ‘Uthman was the official edition of the Qur’an, the destruction of the provincial copies being considered most odious.
In 650, the first movements of rebellion began in Iraq, which was suffering most from the economic crisis, especially in Kufa, and spread to Egypt. In 655, rebel factions advanced on Medina. ‘Uthman gave in to all their demands, but on returning, the Egyptians found a letter from the caliph to his foster brother ‘Abd Allah ibn Sa‘d (Ibn Abi Sarh), the governor of Egypt, containing an order to put to death or mutilate the leaders of the movement. ‘Uthman denied that the letter was genuine, but his house became besieged.
Opposition to ‘Uthman’s caliphate formed in Medina, especially among members of the family of the Prophet and other Meccans, and more overtly in Iraq and Egypt. The Companions, including ‘Ali, maintained an attitude of neutrality and ‘A’isha, the widow of the Prophet, who was opposed to ‘Uthman, left for Mecca. ‘Uthman refused to abdicate. It is not known whether it was Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, the son of the first caliph and brother of ‘A’isha, or another who gave the coup de grace. In June 656 of the Christian calendar, a group of Egyptian army rebels with grievances invaded Medina and mortally wounded ‘Uthman. This assassination established a woeful precedent in Islamic history.
‘Ali was subsequently elected caliph, but he was destined to be challenged by Mu‘awiya, the Umayyad governor of Syria. The political, and soon also the religious unity of Islam was at an end and the period of schisms and civil wars had begun.
In the final analysis, history shows that the outstanding achievement of ‘Uthman’s reign was his establishment of the definitive text of the Qur’an shortly after 650. The Qur’an became a living legacy of ‘Uthman’s short, turbulent reign.
A chronology of Uthman’s life reads as follows:
Uthman was probably born in Mecca around 580 of the Christian calendar, the member of the powerful Umayyad clan. We do not know with any certainty which year he was born, nor where -- but Mecca is most likely.
In the early seventh century, Uthman became a wealthy merchant, and a gentleman of his time.
In 615, Uthman became a Muslim. Although some sources indicate that his conversion may have actually occurred at a later date.
Around 620, Uthman married Muhammad’s daughter Ruqaiya.
In 624, Ruqaiya died during the Battle of Badr, preventing Uthman from participating in the battle.
Around 625, Uthman married another daughter of Muhammad, Umm Kulthum.
In 644, Uthman was chosen the new caliph. There had been seven candidates, but the other ones were controversial. Uthman was a compromise candidate, and was not chosen because any particular outstanding quality of his own.
In 650, there were rebellions in Iraq and Egypt, protesting against Uthman’s policy of distributing wealth and land won in the war.
In June of 656, Uthman was besieged in his own home by a group of Egyptian Muslims. It is believed that Muhammad’s favorite wife. Aisha played a central part in the campaign against Uthman. On June 17, Uthman was assassinated in Medina by Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr. Following this death, tensions in the Muslim world became even more problematic than under the last years of his reign. He would be succeeded by Ali as caliph.
Uthman is credited for having centralized the administration of the Muslim state, and it was during his reign that the compilation of the Qur’an was completed.
Uthman was the last caliph who could enjoy unity in the Muslim world, even if there was much displeasure with his regime. This displeasure came from a number of reasons. The most important reason was his policy towards war booty from the many military expeditions. Soldiers and officers felt that Uthman confiscated to large parts of the booty for his own administration and his family. He established a system of landed fiefs and distributed many of the provincial governorships to members of his family.
The dissatisfaction of his time was no more problematic than what other rulers had to cope with, including his predecessor Umar. As a matter of fact, Uthman’s politics were a continuation of Umar’s. But Uthman was not a particularly strong leader, and to a large degree controlled by his family. His politics would eventually result in his death. Through his weakness, Uthman became one of the most important men of early Islam, paving for the first schisms in the religion, schisms that still exist (Sunni, Shi‘a, and Khariji).
Another source of discontent was the process of compiling the Qur’an. The qurra’, who were the bearers of the sacred text both in verbal and written form, exercised a power which was openly questioned by contemporary Muslims. The qurra’ was suspected of both holding back passages, as well as manipulating other passages.
Islamic history, particularly Sunni history, remembers Uthman in positive terms, calling him handsome, generous, and plain rather than luxurious. It is said that Uthman was one of the most handsome and charming men of his time. Uthman was well known for his reported generosity. During Muhammad's time, while in Medina, he financed the project for the construction of the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi and purchased the well Beer Rauma, which he dedicated to the free use of all Muslims. Uthman’s generosity continued after he became caliph.
Uthman apparently led a simple life even after becoming the Caliph of the Rashidun Empire, though it would have been easy for a successful businessman such as him to lead a luxurious life. The caliphs were paid for their services from bait al-mal, the public treasury, but Uthman never took any salary for his service as a Caliph, as he was independently wealthy. Uthman also developed a custom to free slaves every Friday, look after the widows and orphans, and give unlimited charity. His patience and endurance were among the characteristics that made him a successful leader. He was a devoted Muslim. As a way of taking care of Muhammad’s wives, he doubled their allowances. Uthman wasn't completely plain and simple, however: Uthman built a Palace for himself in Medina, known as Al-Zawar, with a notable feature being doors of precious wood. Although Uthman paid for the palace with his own money, Shia Muslims consider it his first step towards ruling like a King. Uthman's sister Amna bint Affan was married to Abdur Rahman bin Awf, one of the closest companion of Muhammad.
Usman ibn 'Affan see ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan
‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan (Usman ibn ‘Affān) (c. 579, Taif, Arabia - July 17, 656, Medina, Arabia). Third caliph (r.644-656). ‘Uthman was an early, pre-hijra convert to Islam. He belonged to the Banu Umayya and accepted the teaching of the Prophet several years before the hijra.
He was a rich merchant and married the Prophet’s daughter Ruqayya. He is believed to have taken part in the migration to Abyssinia and in the Hijra to Medina, but he did not take part in the battle of Badr. After the death of Ruqayya, he married Umm Kulthum, another daughter of the Prophet. After the murder of ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab in 644, he was elected caliph by a council of the six oldest Companions, a council that was named by ‘Umar on his deathbed. ‘Uthman was chosen because he was a member of the Prophet’s family through his marriages, because he was an Umayyad and probably because he was the most outstanding candidate, since ‘Ali, al-Zubayr ibn al- ‘Awwam, Talha ibn ‘Ubayd Allah, Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas and ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf ruled one another out. Since he was an Umayyad, his appointment may be seen as a victory of the old Meccan oligarchy.
During his caliphate many serious grievances were uttered, the first and perhaps gravest charge being that he appointed members of his family to the governorships in the provinces of Syria and Egypt. He also assigned the booty of the expeditions not entirely to the soldiers, but reserved a share for his governors and family by developing the system of fiefs. Cutting down the military pensions because of the economic crisis following the sudden enriching of the Arab masses also increased the number of malcontents. One of the steps which contributed very greatly to stirring up the religious element against ‘Uthman was the official edition of the Qur’an, the destruction of the provincial copies being considered most odious.
In 650, the first movements of rebellion began in Iraq, which was suffering most from the economic crisis, especially in Kufa, and spread to Egypt. In 655, rebel factions advanced on Medina. ‘Uthman gave in to all their demands, but on returning, the Egyptians found a letter from the caliph to his foster brother ‘Abd Allah ibn Sa‘d (Ibn Abi Sarh), the governor of Egypt, containing an order to put to death or mutilate the leaders of the movement. ‘Uthman denied that the letter was genuine, but his house became besieged.
Opposition to ‘Uthman’s caliphate formed in Medina, especially among members of the family of the Prophet and other Meccans, and more overtly in Iraq and Egypt. The Companions, including ‘Ali, maintained an attitude of neutrality and ‘A’isha, the widow of the Prophet, who was opposed to ‘Uthman, left for Mecca. ‘Uthman refused to abdicate. It is not known whether it was Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr, the son of the first caliph and brother of ‘A’isha, or another who gave the coup de grace. In June 656 of the Christian calendar, a group of Egyptian army rebels with grievances invaded Medina and mortally wounded ‘Uthman. This assassination established a woeful precedent in Islamic history.
‘Ali was subsequently elected caliph, but he was destined to be challenged by Mu‘awiya, the Umayyad governor of Syria. The political, and soon also the religious unity of Islam was at an end and the period of schisms and civil wars had begun.
In the final analysis, history shows that the outstanding achievement of ‘Uthman’s reign was his establishment of the definitive text of the Qur’an shortly after 650. The Qur’an became a living legacy of ‘Uthman’s short, turbulent reign.
A chronology of Uthman’s life reads as follows:
Uthman was probably born in Mecca around 580 of the Christian calendar, the member of the powerful Umayyad clan. We do not know with any certainty which year he was born, nor where -- but Mecca is most likely.
In the early seventh century, Uthman became a wealthy merchant, and a gentleman of his time.
In 615, Uthman became a Muslim. Although some sources indicate that his conversion may have actually occurred at a later date.
Around 620, Uthman married Muhammad’s daughter Ruqaiya.
In 624, Ruqaiya died during the Battle of Badr, preventing Uthman from participating in the battle.
Around 625, Uthman married another daughter of Muhammad, Umm Kulthum.
In 644, Uthman was chosen the new caliph. There had been seven candidates, but the other ones were controversial. Uthman was a compromise candidate, and was not chosen because any particular outstanding quality of his own.
In 650, there were rebellions in Iraq and Egypt, protesting against Uthman’s policy of distributing wealth and land won in the war.
In June of 656, Uthman was besieged in his own home by a group of Egyptian Muslims. It is believed that Muhammad’s favorite wife. Aisha played a central part in the campaign against Uthman. On June 17, Uthman was assassinated in Medina by Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr. Following this death, tensions in the Muslim world became even more problematic than under the last years of his reign. He would be succeeded by Ali as caliph.
Uthman is credited for having centralized the administration of the Muslim state, and it was during his reign that the compilation of the Qur’an was completed.
Uthman was the last caliph who could enjoy unity in the Muslim world, even if there was much displeasure with his regime. This displeasure came from a number of reasons. The most important reason was his policy towards war booty from the many military expeditions. Soldiers and officers felt that Uthman confiscated to large parts of the booty for his own administration and his family. He established a system of landed fiefs and distributed many of the provincial governorships to members of his family.
The dissatisfaction of his time was no more problematic than what other rulers had to cope with, including his predecessor Umar. As a matter of fact, Uthman’s politics were a continuation of Umar’s. But Uthman was not a particularly strong leader, and to a large degree controlled by his family. His politics would eventually result in his death. Through his weakness, Uthman became one of the most important men of early Islam, paving for the first schisms in the religion, schisms that still exist (Sunni, Shi‘a, and Khariji).
Another source of discontent was the process of compiling the Qur’an. The qurra’, who were the bearers of the sacred text both in verbal and written form, exercised a power which was openly questioned by contemporary Muslims. The qurra’ was suspected of both holding back passages, as well as manipulating other passages.
Islamic history, particularly Sunni history, remembers Uthman in positive terms, calling him handsome, generous, and plain rather than luxurious. It is said that Uthman was one of the most handsome and charming men of his time. Uthman was well known for his reported generosity. During Muhammad's time, while in Medina, he financed the project for the construction of the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi and purchased the well Beer Rauma, which he dedicated to the free use of all Muslims. Uthman’s generosity continued after he became caliph.
Uthman apparently led a simple life even after becoming the Caliph of the Rashidun Empire, though it would have been easy for a successful businessman such as him to lead a luxurious life. The caliphs were paid for their services from bait al-mal, the public treasury, but Uthman never took any salary for his service as a Caliph, as he was independently wealthy. Uthman also developed a custom to free slaves every Friday, look after the widows and orphans, and give unlimited charity. His patience and endurance were among the characteristics that made him a successful leader. He was a devoted Muslim. As a way of taking care of Muhammad’s wives, he doubled their allowances. Uthman wasn't completely plain and simple, however: Uthman built a Palace for himself in Medina, known as Al-Zawar, with a notable feature being doors of precious wood. Although Uthman paid for the palace with his own money, Shia Muslims consider it his first step towards ruling like a King. Uthman's sister Amna bint Affan was married to Abdur Rahman bin Awf, one of the closest companion of Muhammad.
Usman ibn 'Affan see ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan
‘Uthman ibn Maz‘un ibn Habib
‘Uthman ibn Maz‘un ibn Habib (d. 625). One of the earliest Companions of the Prophet. He took part in the emigration to Abyssinia and in the battle of Badr. In hadith, ‘Uthman is the most characteristic representative of the ascetic tendencies in early Islam, and he is said to have asked the Prophet’s permission to castrate himself.
‘Uthman ibn Maz‘un ibn Habib (d. 625). One of the earliest Companions of the Prophet. He took part in the emigration to Abyssinia and in the battle of Badr. In hadith, ‘Uthman is the most characteristic representative of the ascetic tendencies in early Islam, and he is said to have asked the Prophet’s permission to castrate himself.
Utrush, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-
Utrush, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al- (Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Utrush) (c.844-917). Ruler in Tabaristan and recognized as Imam by the Zaydis, including those of Yemen. He went from Medina to Tabaristan where al-Hasan ibn Zayd ibn Muhammad had founded the Zaydiyya. He conducetd ‘Alid propaganda from Gilan and, having defeated the troops sent by the Samanid Ahmad Ii ibn Isma‘il (r. 907-914), he established a little ‘Alid state at Amul in east Mazandaran, which lasted until 1126.
Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Utrush see Utrush, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-
Utrush, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al- (Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Utrush) (c.844-917). Ruler in Tabaristan and recognized as Imam by the Zaydis, including those of Yemen. He went from Medina to Tabaristan where al-Hasan ibn Zayd ibn Muhammad had founded the Zaydiyya. He conducetd ‘Alid propaganda from Gilan and, having defeated the troops sent by the Samanid Ahmad Ii ibn Isma‘il (r. 907-914), he established a little ‘Alid state at Amul in east Mazandaran, which lasted until 1126.
Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Utrush see Utrush, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-
Uways I
Uways I (Shaikh Uvais) (Oways) (b. 1341). Ruler of the Jalayirids (r.1356-1374).
Uways was a Jalayirid ruler of Iraq (1356-1374) and Azerbaijan (1360-1374). He was the son of Hasan Buzurg and the Chobanid Delsad Katun.
Shortly after Uways succeeded his father, the old enemy of the Jalayirids, the Chobanids, were overrun by the forces of the Blue Horde under Jani Beg in 1357. Malek Asraf was executed, and Azerbaijan was conquered. Following Jani Beg’s withdrawal from Azerbaijan, as well as his son Berdi Beg’s similar abandonment of the region in 1358, the area became a prime target for its neighbors. Uways, who at first had recognized the sovereignty of the Blue Horde, decided to take the former Chobanid lands for himself, even as a former amir of Malek Asraf’s named Akhichuq attempted to keep the region in Mongol hands. Despite a campaign that ended prematurely, as well as the brief conquest of Azerbaijan by the Muzaffarids, Uways conquered the area in 1360. In addition to Baghdad, he also had Tabriz, another large city, under his control.
During his reign, Uways sought to increase his holdings in Persia. He became involved in the power struggles of the Muzaffarids, supporting Shah Mahmud in his efforts against his brother Shah Shuja. Shah Mahmud married one of Uways’ daughters, and received support around 1363 in his conquest of Shiraz. In 1364 Uways campaigned against the Shirvan Shah Kai-Ka’us, but a revolt begun by the governor of Baghdad, Khwaja Mirjan, forced him to return to reassert his authority. In 1366 Uways marched against the Black Sheep Turkmen, defeating their leader, Bairam Khwaja, at the battle of Mush. Later, he defeated the Shirvan Shah, who had attacked Tabriz twice in the meantime. In an effort to extend further east, he fought against Amir Vali, who ruled in Astarbad, and defeated him in Ray. When his brother Amir Zahid died in Ujan, however, he was forced to turn back. The governorship of Ray was trusted in the hands of a Qutlugh Shah, who was followed two years later by ‘Adil Aqa.
Due to his campaigns, Uways spent a great deal of time in Persia. He died in Tabriz in 1374. During his lifetime, the Jalayirid state reached its peak in power. In addition to his military adventures, which were considerable, he was known for his attempts to revive commercial enterprise in the region, as well as his patronage of the arts. His chronicler, Abu Bakr al-Qutbi al Ahri, wrote of Uways’ deeds in the Tarikh-i Shaikh Uways. Uways was succeeded by his son Hasan.
Shaikh Uvais see Uways I
Oways see Uways I
Uways I (Shaikh Uvais) (Oways) (b. 1341). Ruler of the Jalayirids (r.1356-1374).
Uways was a Jalayirid ruler of Iraq (1356-1374) and Azerbaijan (1360-1374). He was the son of Hasan Buzurg and the Chobanid Delsad Katun.
Shortly after Uways succeeded his father, the old enemy of the Jalayirids, the Chobanids, were overrun by the forces of the Blue Horde under Jani Beg in 1357. Malek Asraf was executed, and Azerbaijan was conquered. Following Jani Beg’s withdrawal from Azerbaijan, as well as his son Berdi Beg’s similar abandonment of the region in 1358, the area became a prime target for its neighbors. Uways, who at first had recognized the sovereignty of the Blue Horde, decided to take the former Chobanid lands for himself, even as a former amir of Malek Asraf’s named Akhichuq attempted to keep the region in Mongol hands. Despite a campaign that ended prematurely, as well as the brief conquest of Azerbaijan by the Muzaffarids, Uways conquered the area in 1360. In addition to Baghdad, he also had Tabriz, another large city, under his control.
During his reign, Uways sought to increase his holdings in Persia. He became involved in the power struggles of the Muzaffarids, supporting Shah Mahmud in his efforts against his brother Shah Shuja. Shah Mahmud married one of Uways’ daughters, and received support around 1363 in his conquest of Shiraz. In 1364 Uways campaigned against the Shirvan Shah Kai-Ka’us, but a revolt begun by the governor of Baghdad, Khwaja Mirjan, forced him to return to reassert his authority. In 1366 Uways marched against the Black Sheep Turkmen, defeating their leader, Bairam Khwaja, at the battle of Mush. Later, he defeated the Shirvan Shah, who had attacked Tabriz twice in the meantime. In an effort to extend further east, he fought against Amir Vali, who ruled in Astarbad, and defeated him in Ray. When his brother Amir Zahid died in Ujan, however, he was forced to turn back. The governorship of Ray was trusted in the hands of a Qutlugh Shah, who was followed two years later by ‘Adil Aqa.
Due to his campaigns, Uways spent a great deal of time in Persia. He died in Tabriz in 1374. During his lifetime, the Jalayirid state reached its peak in power. In addition to his military adventures, which were considerable, he was known for his attempts to revive commercial enterprise in the region, as well as his patronage of the arts. His chronicler, Abu Bakr al-Qutbi al Ahri, wrote of Uways’ deeds in the Tarikh-i Shaikh Uways. Uways was succeeded by his son Hasan.
Shaikh Uvais see Uways I
Oways see Uways I
Uymaq
Uymaq. Term which, in Iran and Inner Asia, refers to a chieftaincy under the authority of a headman supported by military retainers and allied lineages.
Uymaq. Term which, in Iran and Inner Asia, refers to a chieftaincy under the authority of a headman supported by military retainers and allied lineages.
Uzbek
Uzbek (Ozbek). The most numerous non-European peoples in Central Asia are the Uzbek. By the far the greatest number live in Uzbekistan. A large number live in Afghanistan, while a few live in China and Mongolia. The Uzbek are the world’s second largest Turkic-speaking group after the Anatolian Turks.
The early Uzbek were probably one of the components of the Turko-Mongolian Golden Horde, which dominated Russia and western Siberia from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries. The ethnonym “Uzbek” may have its origin in the name of Uzbek, Khan of the Golden Horde from 1313 to 1340. The term itself means “self-lord” or “one’s own prince.” With the breakup of the Horde during the fifteenth century, the nomadic Uzbek moved southward and established themselves by mid-century in the lower reaches of the Syr and Amu rivers. There they challenged the power of the Timurid rulers of Transoxiana, the last of whom, Babur, they displaced in the early sixteenth century. (Babur went on to found the Mughal dynasty in India.) Further Uzbek expansion southward was blocked by the Safavid dynasty of Iran.
Over the years, the Uzbek became increasingly sedentary, engaging mainly in agriculture, but with some involvement in commerce and crafts. They became participants in the area’s Turko-Iranian variant of the Islamic civilization. Three Uzbek dominated khanates had emerged by the eighteenth century. Kokand, Bukhara and Khiva. The majority of the Uzbek were incorporated into the Russian Empire during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the course of the Russian Revolution and Civil War (1917-1923) more than 500,000 Uzbek migrated to northern Afghanistan, where they are a major component of the Uzbek community found there presently. In 1924, Soviet authority having been established in Central Asia, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was organized, incorporating within its boundaries most of the Uzbek in the Soviet Union. The first capital of the Uzbek republic was Samarkand, a traditional cultural center; Tashkent, the former czarist administrative center of Turkestan Province, became the capital in 1931. Under Soviet Russian direction a modernization program was pursued, consisting of secularization, collectivization, industrialization and education.
The Uzbek are Hanafi Sunni Muslims, with some pre-Islamic shamanist and Zoroastrian influences remaining in folkways. Islam was brought forcibly to Transoxiana by the Arab conquerors during the eighth century. Conversion to Islam did not become extensive in
the steppes until the fourteenth century. At the end of the fifteenth century, when the early Uzbek began their move into Transoxiana, they were already Muslim. The Uzbek khanates supported Islamic cultural institutions. With the establishment of Soviet power the religious life of the Uzbek changed. They became subject to officially sponsored secularization, which included invalidating Muslim law, abolishing adat and sharia courts, confiscating waqfs and closing maktab and madrasa schools. Many mosques were closed, and the Islamic clergy persecuted. The overt practice of Islam was discouraged.
Uzbeks were rivals to the Safavids in the sixteenth century.
Nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars and travelers followed earlier chroniclers, such as the Khivan ruler Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan (r. 1642-1663) in his Shajara-i Turk, in holding the view that the Uzbeks took their group name from the last powerful Golden Horde potentate, Uzbek (or Ozbeg) Khan (r. 1312-1340), the Islamic proselytizer. Logically, the domain of that khan became the realm of the Uzbek and, it was thought, thereby acquired the designation Uzbekistan. Arabic and Persian sources referred to the Uzbeks as the followers of the ruler of the Golden Horde as well as to an Uzbek land located astride the Volga River with its capital at Sarai. These sources thus placed the center of the Uxbek territory near the prominent westernmost bend in the lower reaches of the Volga.
For modern historians, placing the Uzbek lands so far south and west in the Dasht-i Kipchak (Kipchak steppe) created interpretive tension, because the large tribal confederation of medieval Uzbeks was elsewhere, according to early manuscripts, and remained some sixteen hundred kilometers distant to the northeast for decades after 1340. This contradiction persuaded several European and Russian researchers to look for an etymological explanation of the name Uzbek that would avoid the link to a specific terrain. Some scholars accepted the idea that the Turkic reflexive pronoun oz (“self”) had combined with the noble title bek to form a type of name common in various languages in many tribal societies beyond the Uzbek one. That combination would mean, they reasoned, “master of himself, ” “the man himself, ” and the like.
As a personal name, Uzbek had been known and recorded at least a century before the rise of Uzbek Khan on the Volga. But by the late twentieth century, scholars had lost enthusiasm for the theory of an eponym like him or for the idea that the Uzbek group name must have come from one of their own chieftains -- a practice quite well known among Mongol-Turkic people.
The history of the nomadic Uzbeks, in contrast to the record of Uzbek Khan’s followers, shows their emergence from the wreckage of the Shaiban ulus (“domain”). Shaiban (d. 1249), a grandson of the Mongol conqueror Jenghiz Khan (d. 1227), held sway in his time in western Siberia north of the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash, east and southeast of the Ural chain of hills. The Uzbek center, Tura, west of the Tobol River, served as the capital of the earliest known Uzbek confederation of tribes under young Abu al-Khair Khan between 1428/1429 and 1446. In fact, most relevant sources observe that the Uzbek lands remained in northwestern Siberia until almost the middle of the fifteenth century. Some twenty years after Abu al-Khar Khan moved his capital south to the warmer country on the east bank of the middle Sayhun (Syr Darya) River, an onslaught of Kalmuk Mongols pushing westward from Dzungaria devastated the Uzbeks, costing the Uzbeks their khan and their lands in 1469. Only two years earlier, Uzbek tribal unity had suffered a permanent blow when large dissident numbers split away to become what are today Kazakhs.
Although the polity and territory of the Uzbeks once more lost focus, no later than 1488 a new leader appeared to rally what were reputed to be the ninety-two Uzbek tribes around him. This was Abu al-Khair Khan’s educated grandson, Muhammad Shaibani Khan (r.1451-1510). Trained at combat by his grandfather, Muhammad Shaibani Khan gave most of his attention and huge energy to penetrating even farther south into the realm of the Timurid dynasty (1370-1506) southwest of the Syr Darya, which included the historic cities of Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Herat. By 1499, the Uzbeks had invaded Transoxiana in full force, and they proceeded to drive out or destroy all meaningful Timurid opposition.
This mass migration of Uzbeks from the Kipchak steppe brought with it a great political change and significant alteration of ethnic (Uzbek) and dynastic (Shaibanid) names. It reconstituted the basis for an Uzbekistan on entirely new ground. The new rulers of the area, like their predecessors in Transoxiana, were Muslim, but less tolerant than earlier rulers, who had heterodox and Shi‘ite tendencies. The Shaibanids viewed this new territory not as Uzbekistan, however, for they remained indifferent to an ethnic definition of their homeland. Instead, dynastic reach and power held political attention, and Islam, along with Turkic and Persian aesthetics, pervaded cultural life. Uzbek leaders invariably headed the governments, khanates, and amirates that followed one another in the southern part of western Turkestan throughout the next five centuries. These entities, remembered by dynastic names linked either to a human eponym (Shaiban), regions (Astrakhan, Khiva, Bukhara, Khokand), or tribes (Manghit, Ming, Qongrat) never selected the name Uzbek for their states throughout that five hundred years.
After 1924, the Russian authorities formed a new political administrative unit within the Soviet Union called the Uzbekistan Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituent part of the Soviet Union. However, Soviet managers allocated large parcels of land to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and similar units in a pattern that appeared to constitute a sort of negative ethnic gerrymandering intended to disperse and dilute the Soviet Uzbeks beyond and within their unit boundaries. The 1979 Soviet census told the story. Of the 12.5 million Uzbeks then inhabiting the Soviet Union, 15 percent lived outside the Uzbekistan, mainly in Tajikistan, Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. At the same time, well over 1.3 million non-Uzbek Central Asians resided in Uzbekistan, principally Kazakhs, Tajiks, and Kirghiz.
The motive of the Soviet policy of “dilution” was to diminish the influence of Uzbeks throughout Central Asia’s southern reaches, an expanse they dominated almost until the twentieth century. The census report also recorded a persistent rapid growth in the numbers of Soviet Uzbeks inside and outside their assigned eponymous territorial unit. By 1979, Uzbeks had become the third largest ethnic group as well as the leading Turkic nationality of the Soviet Union. This trend generated between 1959 and 1979 a modest rise (to 68.6 percent) in the proportion of Uzbeks among the population of Uzbekistan. Russian and Ukrainian colonists settling in the region of Uzbekistan beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through the twentieth moved mainly to urban centers. They largely account for the low proportion of Uzbeks in Uzbekistan. Also, the presence of these outsiders reduced Uzbeks to a minority or slight plurality of inhabitants in Tashkent, the capital, and in most other large towns of the constituent republic. As a result, the outsiders also held a significant percentage of industrial and bureaucratic employment, leaving 70 percent of the Uzbeks in Central Asia still residing in the countryside in 1979. This distribution promised to change only slowly, for Uzbeks in Uzbekistan could not readily find either adequate housing or suitable employment in the city. Moreover, Uzbeks, like other Central Asians, did not choose to migrate in any substantial numbers to colder, culturally alien parts of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, its growing numbers gave the Uzbek group some grounds for confidence in its ultimate physical survival, despite its brief modern experience as a politically constituted namesake group for Uzbekistan.
Soviet political and cultural leaders continued to manipulate the content and meaning of national identity in the Soviet Union. One important instance of this management of group identities occurred about 1947, when Russian and Uzbek authors writing official histories of Uzbekistan (no unofficial ones could appear under Soviet censorship) began to treat the ages before the sixteenth century in a special way. Few of the older scholars seemed to have participated in this abrupt switch, which was led not by an Uzbek scholar but evidently by the Russian Marxist historian Alexsandr Yakubovskii (1886-1953). He and his associates chose the new Uzbek republic as a geographical reference point, declaring all history prior to 1925 on that land and all Turkic people found there at any time before that year to be Uzbek back to deepest antiquity.
Approved Soviet historiography for Central Asia since World War II, therefore, features Timurid dynastic, political, and cultural leaders as Uzbeks but, with noticeable selectivity, ignores the important role of the Shaibanids and their successors in shaping the life and civilization of western Turkestan. This revisionist policy has produced, among other effects, a confusion of historical identities for the main actors in the formative fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Soviet histories gave, without qualification, the Uzbek to the archenemies of the contemporary Uzbeks: the Timurid rulers Ulug Beg (1394-1449), Timur’s grandson; and Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), whom the Uzbek troops routed from his small realm in Central Asia. These articulate leaders, along with Muhammad Shaibani Khan, expressed themselves clearly in regard to each other. Babur despised the Uzbeks, he said. Ulug Beg was defeated by them in combat against the forces of the predecessors of Abu al-Khair Khan near Saghanak in 1427, a loss that led to disgrace for him and his field commnaders.
Both Marxist periodization and Soviet ideology necessitated this rewriting of Uzbek history in order to permit a highly selective class interpretation of Central Asian history. To downplay the active Uzbek nomadic place in Uzbekistan’s history, this new conception substitutes a racial and territorial foundation for Uzbek group identity for the old sense of unity based on group name and tribal legacy. These complex guidelines, followed carefully by subsequent Uzbek historians, were never fully absorbed in the group consciousness of the Uzbeks. After World War II, the Uzbeks remained unchallenged by any new school of Marxist thought studying Central Asian history. Added to these doctrinal treatments of Uzbek history, the lingering imperfections of the 1924-1925 ethnic partition of Central Asia, seemingly blurred the Uzbek consciousness into a feeling of broader Central Asian identity, an attitude consistent with the actual situation of the Uzbeks up to the Russian invasion that began in the 1850s.
The Uzbek habitat, which they share with the Tajik and other ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan, is an arid zone that has inland drainage systems and a continental climate. It includes sedentary agriculturalists, but the pattern of semi-sedentary groups dominates, particularly in Afghanistan. Local ecology greatly influences livestock distribution. Fundamentally, sheep and goats are mountain animals, although sheep are less adaptable than goats and tend to flounder in the snow. Both fat-tailed (fat used as cooking oil) and karakul (Persian) lamb skins are major exports from both sides of the Amu Darya River. Cattle and camels (dromedaries) thrive in transitional forest steppes and semi-deserts. The most important modern beast of burden, however, is the donkey. Horses, prestige animals, are ridden, and sometimes the Uzbek drink kumyss, fermented mare’s milk.
After 1973, Afghanistan was racked by coup d’etat, civil war and the 1979 Soviet invasion. The one million Uzbek (the largest Turkic speaking minority in Afghanistan), along with other Afghan minority groups, hoped that the founding of the Republic of Afghanistan in 1973 would guarantee them wider participation in political life above the tribal level. The plans of the republic (never implemented seemed to move towards more equitable distribution in regional economic development and more regional autonomy for the minority groups.
Even after the April 1978 coup d’etat and formation of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), the leftist power elite initially indicated it would respect the uniqueness of the minority groups. Unwise reform programs instituted by the DRA struck at the core of many basic cultural patterns, however, and the Uzbek among others, felt the government to be anti-Islamic, anti-Uzbek, pro-Communist and pro-Russian.
Ozbek see Uzbek
Uzbeks were rivals to the Safavids in the sixteenth century.
Nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars and travelers followed earlier chroniclers, such as the Khivan ruler Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan (r. 1642-1663) in his Shajara-i Turk, in holding the view that the Uzbeks took their group name from the last powerful Golden Horde potentate, Uzbek (or Ozbeg) Khan (r. 1312-1340), the Islamic proselytizer. Logically, the domain of that khan became the realm of the Uzbek and, it was thought, thereby acquired the designation Uzbekistan. Arabic and Persian sources referred to the Uzbeks as the followers of the ruler of the Golden Horde as well as to an Uzbek land located astride the Volga River with its capital at Sarai. These sources thus placed the center of the Uxbek territory near the prominent westernmost bend in the lower reaches of the Volga.
For modern historians, placing the Uzbek lands so far south and west in the Dasht-i Kipchak (Kipchak steppe) created interpretive tension, because the large tribal confederation of medieval Uzbeks was elsewhere, according to early manuscripts, and remained some sixteen hundred kilometers distant to the northeast for decades after 1340. This contradiction persuaded several European and Russian researchers to look for an etymological explanation of the name Uzbek that would avoid the link to a specific terrain. Some scholars accepted the idea that the Turkic reflexive pronoun oz (“self”) had combined with the noble title bek to form a type of name common in various languages in many tribal societies beyond the Uzbek one. That combination would mean, they reasoned, “master of himself, ” “the man himself, ” and the like.
As a personal name, Uzbek had been known and recorded at least a century before the rise of Uzbek Khan on the Volga. But by the late twentieth century, scholars had lost enthusiasm for the theory of an eponym like him or for the idea that the Uzbek group name must have come from one of their own chieftains -- a practice quite well known among Mongol-Turkic people.
The history of the nomadic Uzbeks, in contrast to the record of Uzbek Khan’s followers, shows their emergence from the wreckage of the Shaiban ulus (“domain”). Shaiban (d. 1249), a grandson of the Mongol conqueror Jenghiz Khan (d. 1227), held sway in his time in western Siberia north of the Aral Sea and Lake Balkhash, east and southeast of the Ural chain of hills. The Uzbek center, Tura, west of the Tobol River, served as the capital of the earliest known Uzbek confederation of tribes under young Abu al-Khair Khan between 1428/1429 and 1446. In fact, most relevant sources observe that the Uzbek lands remained in northwestern Siberia until almost the middle of the fifteenth century. Some twenty years after Abu al-Khar Khan moved his capital south to the warmer country on the east bank of the middle Sayhun (Syr Darya) River, an onslaught of Kalmuk Mongols pushing westward from Dzungaria devastated the Uzbeks, costing the Uzbeks their khan and their lands in 1469. Only two years earlier, Uzbek tribal unity had suffered a permanent blow when large dissident numbers split away to become what are today Kazakhs.
Although the polity and territory of the Uzbeks once more lost focus, no later than 1488 a new leader appeared to rally what were reputed to be the ninety-two Uzbek tribes around him. This was Abu al-Khair Khan’s educated grandson, Muhammad Shaibani Khan (r.1451-1510). Trained at combat by his grandfather, Muhammad Shaibani Khan gave most of his attention and huge energy to penetrating even farther south into the realm of the Timurid dynasty (1370-1506) southwest of the Syr Darya, which included the historic cities of Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Herat. By 1499, the Uzbeks had invaded Transoxiana in full force, and they proceeded to drive out or destroy all meaningful Timurid opposition.
This mass migration of Uzbeks from the Kipchak steppe brought with it a great political change and significant alteration of ethnic (Uzbek) and dynastic (Shaibanid) names. It reconstituted the basis for an Uzbekistan on entirely new ground. The new rulers of the area, like their predecessors in Transoxiana, were Muslim, but less tolerant than earlier rulers, who had heterodox and Shi‘ite tendencies. The Shaibanids viewed this new territory not as Uzbekistan, however, for they remained indifferent to an ethnic definition of their homeland. Instead, dynastic reach and power held political attention, and Islam, along with Turkic and Persian aesthetics, pervaded cultural life. Uzbek leaders invariably headed the governments, khanates, and amirates that followed one another in the southern part of western Turkestan throughout the next five centuries. These entities, remembered by dynastic names linked either to a human eponym (Shaiban), regions (Astrakhan, Khiva, Bukhara, Khokand), or tribes (Manghit, Ming, Qongrat) never selected the name Uzbek for their states throughout that five hundred years.
After 1924, the Russian authorities formed a new political administrative unit within the Soviet Union called the Uzbekistan Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituent part of the Soviet Union. However, Soviet managers allocated large parcels of land to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and similar units in a pattern that appeared to constitute a sort of negative ethnic gerrymandering intended to disperse and dilute the Soviet Uzbeks beyond and within their unit boundaries. The 1979 Soviet census told the story. Of the 12.5 million Uzbeks then inhabiting the Soviet Union, 15 percent lived outside the Uzbekistan, mainly in Tajikistan, Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. At the same time, well over 1.3 million non-Uzbek Central Asians resided in Uzbekistan, principally Kazakhs, Tajiks, and Kirghiz.
The motive of the Soviet policy of “dilution” was to diminish the influence of Uzbeks throughout Central Asia’s southern reaches, an expanse they dominated almost until the twentieth century. The census report also recorded a persistent rapid growth in the numbers of Soviet Uzbeks inside and outside their assigned eponymous territorial unit. By 1979, Uzbeks had become the third largest ethnic group as well as the leading Turkic nationality of the Soviet Union. This trend generated between 1959 and 1979 a modest rise (to 68.6 percent) in the proportion of Uzbeks among the population of Uzbekistan. Russian and Ukrainian colonists settling in the region of Uzbekistan beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing through the twentieth moved mainly to urban centers. They largely account for the low proportion of Uzbeks in Uzbekistan. Also, the presence of these outsiders reduced Uzbeks to a minority or slight plurality of inhabitants in Tashkent, the capital, and in most other large towns of the constituent republic. As a result, the outsiders also held a significant percentage of industrial and bureaucratic employment, leaving 70 percent of the Uzbeks in Central Asia still residing in the countryside in 1979. This distribution promised to change only slowly, for Uzbeks in Uzbekistan could not readily find either adequate housing or suitable employment in the city. Moreover, Uzbeks, like other Central Asians, did not choose to migrate in any substantial numbers to colder, culturally alien parts of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, its growing numbers gave the Uzbek group some grounds for confidence in its ultimate physical survival, despite its brief modern experience as a politically constituted namesake group for Uzbekistan.
Soviet political and cultural leaders continued to manipulate the content and meaning of national identity in the Soviet Union. One important instance of this management of group identities occurred about 1947, when Russian and Uzbek authors writing official histories of Uzbekistan (no unofficial ones could appear under Soviet censorship) began to treat the ages before the sixteenth century in a special way. Few of the older scholars seemed to have participated in this abrupt switch, which was led not by an Uzbek scholar but evidently by the Russian Marxist historian Alexsandr Yakubovskii (1886-1953). He and his associates chose the new Uzbek republic as a geographical reference point, declaring all history prior to 1925 on that land and all Turkic people found there at any time before that year to be Uzbek back to deepest antiquity.
Approved Soviet historiography for Central Asia since World War II, therefore, features Timurid dynastic, political, and cultural leaders as Uzbeks but, with noticeable selectivity, ignores the important role of the Shaibanids and their successors in shaping the life and civilization of western Turkestan. This revisionist policy has produced, among other effects, a confusion of historical identities for the main actors in the formative fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Soviet histories gave, without qualification, the Uzbek to the archenemies of the contemporary Uzbeks: the Timurid rulers Ulug Beg (1394-1449), Timur’s grandson; and Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), whom the Uzbek troops routed from his small realm in Central Asia. These articulate leaders, along with Muhammad Shaibani Khan, expressed themselves clearly in regard to each other. Babur despised the Uzbeks, he said. Ulug Beg was defeated by them in combat against the forces of the predecessors of Abu al-Khair Khan near Saghanak in 1427, a loss that led to disgrace for him and his field commnaders.
Both Marxist periodization and Soviet ideology necessitated this rewriting of Uzbek history in order to permit a highly selective class interpretation of Central Asian history. To downplay the active Uzbek nomadic place in Uzbekistan’s history, this new conception substitutes a racial and territorial foundation for Uzbek group identity for the old sense of unity based on group name and tribal legacy. These complex guidelines, followed carefully by subsequent Uzbek historians, were never fully absorbed in the group consciousness of the Uzbeks. After World War II, the Uzbeks remained unchallenged by any new school of Marxist thought studying Central Asian history. Added to these doctrinal treatments of Uzbek history, the lingering imperfections of the 1924-1925 ethnic partition of Central Asia, seemingly blurred the Uzbek consciousness into a feeling of broader Central Asian identity, an attitude consistent with the actual situation of the Uzbeks up to the Russian invasion that began in the 1850s.
The Uzbek habitat, which they share with the Tajik and other ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan, is an arid zone that has inland drainage systems and a continental climate. It includes sedentary agriculturalists, but the pattern of semi-sedentary groups dominates, particularly in Afghanistan. Local ecology greatly influences livestock distribution. Fundamentally, sheep and goats are mountain animals, although sheep are less adaptable than goats and tend to flounder in the snow. Both fat-tailed (fat used as cooking oil) and karakul (Persian) lamb skins are major exports from both sides of the Amu Darya River. Cattle and camels (dromedaries) thrive in transitional forest steppes and semi-deserts. The most important modern beast of burden, however, is the donkey. Horses, prestige animals, are ridden, and sometimes the Uzbek drink kumyss, fermented mare’s milk.
After 1973, Afghanistan was racked by coup d’etat, civil war and the 1979 Soviet invasion. The one million Uzbek (the largest Turkic speaking minority in Afghanistan), along with other Afghan minority groups, hoped that the founding of the Republic of Afghanistan in 1973 would guarantee them wider participation in political life above the tribal level. The plans of the republic (never implemented seemed to move towards more equitable distribution in regional economic development and more regional autonomy for the minority groups.
Even after the April 1978 coup d’etat and formation of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), the leftist power elite initially indicated it would respect the uniqueness of the minority groups. Unwise reform programs instituted by the DRA struck at the core of many basic cultural patterns, however, and the Uzbek among others, felt the government to be anti-Islamic, anti-Uzbek, pro-Communist and pro-Russian.
Ozbek see Uzbek
Uzun Hasan
Uzun Hasan (Uzun Hassan) (b. 1423/1425, Amida [now Diyarbakır, Turkey] - d. January 6, 1478, Tabrīz [now in Iran]. Most important ruler of the Akkoyunlu dynasty (r. [1453?] 1457-1478). The nickname Uzun, “the Long,” referred to his height.
From 1453, he was a prince of Diyarbakr, and from 1467 until his death sovereign of a powerful state comprised of Diyarbakr, eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. In the west, he made alliance with the Qaramanids against the Ottomans. In 1467, he defeated the Qara Qoyunlu Jihan Shah and conquered the Timurid Abu Sa‘id. He entered into negotiations with Venice against the Ottomans, but the latter routed him in 1473. He thrice invaded Georgia, and succeeded in coming to an agreement with the Burji Mameluke about the frontier between Egypt and his own lands.
A Turkish tribal conqueror in the mold of Timur, Uzun Hasan extended Akkoyunlu power over most of Persia, excluding Khurasan. He extinguished the rival Karakoyunlu dynasty in 1467 and defeated the Timurid Abu Sa’id in 1469. He played an active role in international politics, allying with Venice against the Ottomans and martyring the Christian princess Theodora Komnene of Trebizond.
The Akkoyunlu arose at a time and in an area of religious heterodoxy. Although Uzun Hasan was a Sunni Muslim who patronized the religious establishment, he also had high regard for popular religious leaders. He formed an alliance, cemented by marriage ties, with the Shi‘ite Safavid family, partly in opposition to their common enemy, the Karakoyunlu. However, under Shah Isma‘il (Uzun Hasan’s grandson), the Safavids drove the Akkoyunlu from Persia.
Uzun Hasan promoted a number of state laws to regularize and centralize revenue collection, and instituted more equitable land taxes. He was a great builder who created a magnificent palace complex and maidan (now destroyed) in his capital, Tabriz.
Uzun Hasan was decisively defeated by the Ottomans in1473, a blow from which the Akkoyunlu never recovered. He died at the age of fifty-two and was buried at the Nasriyya mosque in Tabriz.
With the death of Kara Osman, founder of the Ak Koyunlu dynasty, in 1435, a civil war ensued among his descendants. By 1453 Uzun Ḥasan had emerged victorious and succeeded to the throne. His principality, centered at Amida, was surrounded by two hostile powers. In the east, the rival Turkmen dynasty of Kara Koyunlu, led by Jahān Shāh; and in the west, the growing power of the Ottomans. Uzun Ḥasan entered into a series of alliances to secure his western flank. He made a major move in 1458 by marrying Catherine, the daughter of Kalo-Ioannes, the Christian emperor of Trebizond (in northeastern Anatolia). He also strengthened diplomatic ties with Venice, Muscovy, Burgundy, Poland, and Egypt and with the Karamanid dynasty of south-central Anatolia.
In 1461 Uzun Ḥasan began his campaigns against the Kara Koyunlu. With the death of Jahān Shāh in 1467, Uzun Ḥasan was able to annex territories in Azerbaijan and Iraq. By 1469 he had occupied all of Iran. Uzun Ḥasan’s support of the Karamanids, however, precipitated war (1472) with the Ottomans (August 1473), who decisively defeated the Ak Koyunlu at the Battle of Terjan and thus emerged supreme in Anatolia.
Hasan, Uzun see Uzun Hasan
Uzun Hassan see Uzun Hasan
Hassan, Uzun see Uzun Hasan
Uzun Hasan (Uzun Hassan) (b. 1423/1425, Amida [now Diyarbakır, Turkey] - d. January 6, 1478, Tabrīz [now in Iran]. Most important ruler of the Akkoyunlu dynasty (r. [1453?] 1457-1478). The nickname Uzun, “the Long,” referred to his height.
From 1453, he was a prince of Diyarbakr, and from 1467 until his death sovereign of a powerful state comprised of Diyarbakr, eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan. In the west, he made alliance with the Qaramanids against the Ottomans. In 1467, he defeated the Qara Qoyunlu Jihan Shah and conquered the Timurid Abu Sa‘id. He entered into negotiations with Venice against the Ottomans, but the latter routed him in 1473. He thrice invaded Georgia, and succeeded in coming to an agreement with the Burji Mameluke about the frontier between Egypt and his own lands.
A Turkish tribal conqueror in the mold of Timur, Uzun Hasan extended Akkoyunlu power over most of Persia, excluding Khurasan. He extinguished the rival Karakoyunlu dynasty in 1467 and defeated the Timurid Abu Sa’id in 1469. He played an active role in international politics, allying with Venice against the Ottomans and martyring the Christian princess Theodora Komnene of Trebizond.
The Akkoyunlu arose at a time and in an area of religious heterodoxy. Although Uzun Hasan was a Sunni Muslim who patronized the religious establishment, he also had high regard for popular religious leaders. He formed an alliance, cemented by marriage ties, with the Shi‘ite Safavid family, partly in opposition to their common enemy, the Karakoyunlu. However, under Shah Isma‘il (Uzun Hasan’s grandson), the Safavids drove the Akkoyunlu from Persia.
Uzun Hasan promoted a number of state laws to regularize and centralize revenue collection, and instituted more equitable land taxes. He was a great builder who created a magnificent palace complex and maidan (now destroyed) in his capital, Tabriz.
Uzun Hasan was decisively defeated by the Ottomans in1473, a blow from which the Akkoyunlu never recovered. He died at the age of fifty-two and was buried at the Nasriyya mosque in Tabriz.
With the death of Kara Osman, founder of the Ak Koyunlu dynasty, in 1435, a civil war ensued among his descendants. By 1453 Uzun Ḥasan had emerged victorious and succeeded to the throne. His principality, centered at Amida, was surrounded by two hostile powers. In the east, the rival Turkmen dynasty of Kara Koyunlu, led by Jahān Shāh; and in the west, the growing power of the Ottomans. Uzun Ḥasan entered into a series of alliances to secure his western flank. He made a major move in 1458 by marrying Catherine, the daughter of Kalo-Ioannes, the Christian emperor of Trebizond (in northeastern Anatolia). He also strengthened diplomatic ties with Venice, Muscovy, Burgundy, Poland, and Egypt and with the Karamanid dynasty of south-central Anatolia.
In 1461 Uzun Ḥasan began his campaigns against the Kara Koyunlu. With the death of Jahān Shāh in 1467, Uzun Ḥasan was able to annex territories in Azerbaijan and Iraq. By 1469 he had occupied all of Iran. Uzun Ḥasan’s support of the Karamanids, however, precipitated war (1472) with the Ottomans (August 1473), who decisively defeated the Ak Koyunlu at the Battle of Terjan and thus emerged supreme in Anatolia.
Hasan, Uzun see Uzun Hasan
Uzun Hassan see Uzun Hasan
Hassan, Uzun see Uzun Hasan
‘Uzza, al-
‘Uzza, al- (“the Powerful”). Ancient, pre-Islamic Arabian (Meccan) goddess, who was especially associated with the Banu Ghatafan, but whose principal sanctuary was in the valley of Nakhla on the road from Ta’if to Mecca. She gradually acquired a predominant position among the Quraysh and formed with al-Lat and Manat a trinity, called “Allah’s daughters” by the Meccans. Al-‘Uzza was also worshiped by the Lakhmids of al-Hira. After the taking of Mecca, the Prophet sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to destroy the sanctuary of al-‘Uzza.
Al-Uzzá was one of the three chief goddesses of Arabian religion in pre-Islamic times and was worshiped as one of the daughters of Allāh by the pre-Islamic Arabs along with Allāt and Manāt. Al-‘Uzzá was also worshiped by the Nabataeans, who equated her with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Ourania (Roman Venus Caelestis). A stone cube at aṭ-Ṭā’if (near Mecca) was held sacred as part of her cult. She is mentioned in the Qur'an Sura 53:19 as being one of the female idols that people worshiped.
Al-‘Uzzá, like Hubal, was called upon for protection by the pre-Islamic Quraysh. "In 624 at the battle called 'Uhud', the war cry of the Qurayshites was, "O people of Uzzā, people of Hubal!" Al-‘Uzzā also later appears in Ibn Ishaq's account of the Satanic Verses.
The Powerful see ‘Uzza, al-
‘Uzza, al- (“the Powerful”). Ancient, pre-Islamic Arabian (Meccan) goddess, who was especially associated with the Banu Ghatafan, but whose principal sanctuary was in the valley of Nakhla on the road from Ta’if to Mecca. She gradually acquired a predominant position among the Quraysh and formed with al-Lat and Manat a trinity, called “Allah’s daughters” by the Meccans. Al-‘Uzza was also worshiped by the Lakhmids of al-Hira. After the taking of Mecca, the Prophet sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to destroy the sanctuary of al-‘Uzza.
Al-Uzzá was one of the three chief goddesses of Arabian religion in pre-Islamic times and was worshiped as one of the daughters of Allāh by the pre-Islamic Arabs along with Allāt and Manāt. Al-‘Uzzá was also worshiped by the Nabataeans, who equated her with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Ourania (Roman Venus Caelestis). A stone cube at aṭ-Ṭā’if (near Mecca) was held sacred as part of her cult. She is mentioned in the Qur'an Sura 53:19 as being one of the female idols that people worshiped.
Al-‘Uzzá, like Hubal, was called upon for protection by the pre-Islamic Quraysh. "In 624 at the battle called 'Uhud', the war cry of the Qurayshites was, "O people of Uzzā, people of Hubal!" Al-‘Uzzā also later appears in Ibn Ishaq's account of the Satanic Verses.
The Powerful see ‘Uzza, al-
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