'The lands of the Eastern Caliphate Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem conquest to the time of Timur' [‎186] (223/586)

'mmmm
186 JIBAL. [CHAR
by the Arabs to the two chief provincial cities, KMah and Basrah,,
which hence were known as Al-'Irakayn—meaning 'the Two
(capitals of) 'Irak.' This was the older and classical usage; but
in the latter part of the sth (nth) century the Saljftks had come
to rule over all western Persia, having their capital at Hamadan,
and they also governed Mesopotamia, where the Abbasid Caliph
resided. From him they received the title of Sultan of the Two
'Iraks, which seemed fitting to their case, and the second of the
two Traks soon came to be understood as meaning the province
of Jibal, where the Saljuk prince more especially resided, which
thus by the vulgar came to be known for distinction as Persian
'Irak. This is the account of the matter given by Yaktlt, who
states that the Persians in his day, but incorrectly and as a modern
usage, called the province Persian Trak. Yaktit himself uses
the older name of Al-Jibal, for which his contemporary Kazvini,.
writing also in Arabic, gives the Persian equivalent of Kuhistan
(the Mountain province). The name Jibal, however, apparently
became completely obsolete after the Mongol conquest, and Mus-
tawfi in the Sth (14th) century nowhere uses it. He divides the
older Jibal province into two parts, the smaller being Kurdistan
on the west, the larger moiety Persian Trak on the east; and the
name of 'Irak is still in use at the present day, for that part of
the older Jibal province which lies south-west of Tihran is now
locally known as the Trak district 1 .
Pour great cities Kirmisin (later Kirmanshah), Hamadan^
Ray, and Isfahan—were from early days the chief towns of the
four quarters of this province. In Buyid times, namely in the
4th (10th) century, according to Ibn Hawkal, the offices of the
government were at Ray ^ at the close of the next century
Hamadan became the capital under the Persian Saljrlks; but at all
times Isfahan would appear to have been the largest and generally
the most flourishing city of the Jibal province. In the present
work it will be found convenient to describe the province as
divided into the dependencies of its four great cities, and to begin
with the western quarter, that dependent on Kirmanshah, which
since the days of the Saljtiks has been commonly known as
Kurdistan, signifying the land of the Kurds.
1 Yak. ii. 15. Kaz. ii. 228. Mst. 141.