Lit. ‘island,’ peninsula or a territory situated between large rivers. Applied to each of the 12 territories in which the pre-Fatimid Ismaili organisation is reported to have divided the world for its operations, and which were defined by geographic, ethnic and linguistic parameters. In the Fatimid period, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 974) lists the lands of the Arabs, Byzantines, Slavs, Nubians (or Turks), Khazars, Hindis, Sindhis, East Africans, Abyssinians, Chinese, Persians and Berbers. Later, in the Anjudan period (15th–17th centuries) the term was used for the regions inhabited by the Nizari community.
