Jibal

Not to be confused with Jabal.

Jibāl (Arabic: جبال), also al-Jabal (Arabic: الجبل), was the name given by the Arabs to a region and province located in western Iran, under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates.

An 1886 map of the 10th-century Near East showing the province of Jibal

Its name means "the Mountains", being the plural of jabal ("mountain, hill"), highlighting the region's mountainous nature in the Zagros.^[1][2] Between the 12th and 14th centuries, the name Jibal was progressively abandoned, and it came to be mistakenly referred to as ʿIrāq ʿAjamī ("Persian Iraq") to distinguish it from "Arab Iraq" in Mesopotamia.^[1][3][4] The region never had any precisely defined boundaries, but was held to be bounded by the Maranjab Desert in the east, by Fars and Khuzistan in the south, by Iraq in the south-west and west, by Adharbayjan in the north-west and by the Alborz Mountains in the north, making it roughly coterminous with the ancient country of Media.^[1][3]

Under the Abbasid Caliphate, Jibal formed a separate province, with its capital usually at Rayy, until the Abbasids lost control in the early 10th century.^[3] For most of the 9th century, however, the area was ruled by an autonomous local dynasty, the Dulafids.^[3][5] In the late 10th and early 11th century, the larger portion of Jibal became one of the Buyid emirates, while the south passed to the Kakuyids.^[3]

The language spoken in Jibal was known as Pahlavi, known as Fahla or Bahla in Arabic records. Although Pahlavi literally means Parthian, the name had come to mean "heroic, old, ancient". "Pahlavi" most likely referred to a group of northwestern Iranian languages and dialects, which are still spoken today, such as Talysh, Southern Tati, or variants of Adhari.^[6]

References

1. Lockhart 1965, p. 534.
2. Le Strange 1905, p. 185.
3. Bosworth 1998, p. 538.
4. Le Strange 1905, pp. 185–186.
5. Donner 1995, pp. 476–477.
6. Paul 2000.

Sources

• Bosworth, C. E. (1998). "ʿERĀQ-E ʿAJAM(Ī)". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Volume VIII/5: English IV–Eršād al-zerāʿa. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 538. ISBN 978-1-56859-054-7.
• Donner, Fred M. (1995). "DOLAFIDS". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Volume VII/5: Divorce IV–Drugs. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 476–477. ISBN 978-1-56859-023-3.
• Le Strange, Guy (1905). The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia, from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc. OCLC 1044046.
• Lockhart, L. (1965). "D̲j̲ibāl". In Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam. Volume II: C–G (2nd ed.). Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 534. OCLC 495469475.
• Paul, Ludwig (2000). "Persian Language i. Early New Persian". In Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.). Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition. Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation.