the Rovuma river, and the north of Portuguese East Africa. They are an enterprising and intelligent race, and have spread into British territory south of Lake Nyasa and throughout the Shire districts. They are the tallest and strongest of the natives in the Mozambique country, have negroid features and faces which are noticeable for their roundness, and, for Africans, have light skins. They have long been popular among Europeans as carriers and servants. They earned, however, a bad name as slave-traders, and gave much trouble to the British authorities in Nyasaland until 1896, when they were reduced to submission. They do not tattoo except for tribal marks on their foreheads. The women wear disks of ivory or burnished lead in the sides of their nostrils, and some, probably of Anyanja origin, disfigure the lip with the pelele or lip-ring. The Yaos have elaborate ceremonies of initiation for the youth of both sexes. They bury their dead in a contracted position, the grave being roofed with logs and earth sprinkled over, in the case of a rich man, some of his property is buried with him and the rest is inherited by his eldest sister's son.
See Miss A. Werner, The Natives of British Central Africa (1906); Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa (1897); H. L. Duff, Nyasaland under the Foreign Office (1903). For the Yao language see Bantu Languages.
YA'QŪBĪ [Ahmad ibn abl Ya'qub ibn Ja'far ibn Wahb ibn Waḍiḥ] (9th century), Arab historian and geographer, was a great-grandson of Waḍiḥ, the freedman of the caliph Manṣur. Until 873 he lived in Armenia and Khorasan; then he travelled in India, Egypt and the Maghrib, where he died in 891. His history is divided into two parts. In the first he gives a comprehensive account of the pre-Mahommedan and non-Mahommedan peoples, especially of their religion and literature. For the time of the patriarchs his source is now seen to be the Syriac work published by C. Bezold as Die Schatzhöhle. In his account of India he is the first to give an account of the stories of Kalila and Dimna, and of Sindibad (Sinbad). When treating of Greece he gives many extracts from the philosophers (cf. M. Klamroth in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vols. xl. and xli.). The second part contains Mahommedan history up to 872, and is neither extreme nor unfair, although he inherited Shi‘ite leanings from his great-grandfather. The work is characterized by its detailed account of some provinces, such as Armenia and Khorasan, by its astronomical details and its quotations from religious authorities rather than poets.
Edition by T. Houtsma (2 vols., Leiden, 1883). Ya‘qūbī’s geography, the Kitab id-Buldān, contains a description of the Maghrib, with a full account of the larger cities and much topographical and political information (ed. M. de Goeje, Leiden, 1892).
YĀQŪT, or Yakut (Yaqut ibn 'Abdallah ur-Rūmī) (1179-1229), Arab geographer and biographer, was born in Greece of Greek parentage, but in his boyhood became the slave of a merchant of Hamah (Hamath), who trained him for commercial travelling and sent him two or three times to Kish in the Persian Gulf (on his journeys, cf. F. Wüstenfeld, "Jacut's Reisen" in the Zeitschr. d. deutsch. morg. Gesellschaft, vol xviii. pp. 397-493). In 1194 he quarrelled with his master and had to support himself by copying; he took advantage of the opportunity of studying under the grammarian al-‘Ukbarī. After five years he returned to his old master and again travelled for him to Kish, but on his return found his master dead, and set up for himself as a bookseller and began to write. During the next ten years he travelled in Persia, Syria, Egypt and visited Merv, Balkh, Mosul and Aleppo. About 1222 he settled in Mosul and worked on his geography, the first draft of which was ready in 1224. After a journey to Alexandria in 1227 he went to Aleppo, where he died in 1229. In his large geography, the Mu‘jam ul-Buldān (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, 6 vols., Leipzig, 1866-73), the places mentioned in the literature or the stories of the Arabs are given in alphabetical order, with the correct vocalization of the names, an indication whether they are Arabic or foreign and their locality. Their history is often sketched with a special account of their conquest by the Moslems and the name of the governor at the time is recorded. Attention is also given to the monuments they contain and the celebrities who were born in them or had lived there. In this way a quantity of old literature, both prose and poetry, is preserved by Yāqūt.
The parts of this work relating to Persia have been extracted and translated by Barbier de Meynard under the title Dictionnaire géographique, historique et littéraire de la Perse (Paris, 1871). Some account of its sources is given in F. J. Heer's Die historischen und geographischen Quellen in Jacut's geog rap his chem Wörterbuch (Strassburg, 1898), and the material relating to the Crusades is treated by H. Derenbourg, "Les Croisades d'apres le dictionnaire géographique de Jacout" in the volume of the Centenaire de I'école des langiies orientates vivantes, 71–92. A digest of the whole work was made by Ibn 'Abdulhaqq (d. 1338) under the title Marāṣid ul-Ittilā (ed. T. G. J. Juynboll, Leiden, 1850–1864). Yaqut also wrote a dictionary of geographical homonyms, the Mushtarik (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1846). Besides all this activity in geography Yaqut gave his attention to biography, and wrote an important dictionary of learned men, the Mu'jam ul-Udabā. Parts of this work exist in MS. in different libraries; vol. i. has been edited by D. S. Margoliouth, Irshād al-Arib Il ā Mārifat al Adib (London, 1908).
YARKAND (Chinese name Sochē Fu), the chief town of the principal oasis of Chinese Turkestan, on the Yarkand-Darya, in 38° 25′ N., 77° 16′ E., and 3900 ft. above sea-level. The settlements of the Yarkand oasis occupy the S.W. corner of E. Turkestan, and are scattered along the numerous rivers which issue from the steep slopes of the Pamir in the W., and the Karakoram and Kuen-Lun Mountains in the S. The oasis of Kashgar limits it in the N., and a tract of desert separates it from the oasis of Khotan in the S.E. The Yarkand-Darya and its numerous tributaries, which are fed by the glaciers of the mountain regions, as also many rivers which are now lost in the steppe or amidst the irrigated fields, bring abundance of water to the desert; one of them is called Zarafshan ("gold-strewing"), as much on account of the fertility it brings as of its auriferous sands. Numberless irrigation canals carry the water to the fields, which occupy a broad zone of loess skirting the base of the mountains. In the spurs of the mountains there are rich pasturage's, where goats, yaks, camels, sheep and cattle are reared. The oasis of Yarkand is regarded as the richest of E. Turkestan, and its population probably numbers about 200,000 inhabitants. Wheat, barley, rice, beans and various oil-yielding plants are grown, and melons, grapes, apples and other fruits. The cotton tree and the mulberry are cultivated in the warmer parts of the oasis. Gold, lead and precious stones are found in the mountains, though only the first-named is worked. Yarkand is renowned for its leather-ware and saddlery. Carpets and silk fabrics, cotton and woollen goods are manufactured. The population consists of Persians, who now speak Turkish, and of Turkish Sarts.
The town of Yarkand, which has a population of about 100,000 (5000 houses in the city, and as many in Yanghishar and the suburbs), is situated on the river of the same name, five days' journey S.E. from Kashgar. It is surrounded by a thick earthen wall, nearly 4 m. long, with towers in the Chinese style of architecture, and is well watered by canals. The square fortress of Yanghishar, which was built by the Chinese, stands within 400 yds. of the walls of the town. This is one of the three strong places in Chinese Turkestan. The ten mosques and madrasas of Yarkand, although poorer than those of Bokhara or Samarkand, enjoy wide renown in the Moslem world. There is a brisk trade, especially in horses, cotton, leather-ware and all kinds of imported manufactured goods.
Yarkand is surrounded by a number of smaller towns, the chief of which are—Yanghi-hissar, which has about 600 houses, Tashkurgan on the-Pamirs, Posgam (1600 houses), Kargalyk, at the junction of the routes leading to Ladakh and Khotan (2000 houses), Sanju (2000), Tagarchi, Kartchum, Besh-taryk (1800) and Guma (3000).
Yarkand was very imperfectly known until the second half of the 19th century. Marco Polo visited it between 1271 and 1275, and Goes in 1603; but the continuous wars (see Turkestan) prevented Europeans from frequenting it, so that until 1863 the information borrowed from medieval travellers and from Chinese sources, with that supplied by the pundit Mir Isset Ullah in 1812, was all that was known about the Yarkand region. The first European who reached it in the 19th century was Adolph Schlagintweit, who passed by Yarkand in August 1857, but was killed a few days later at Kashgar. The pundit Mohammed Hamid visited it
