Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, viceroy of Egypt, born in 1813, son of Aḥmad Ṭūsun (1793-1816) and grandson of Muhammad ʿAlī [ q.v.]. He succeeded to his uncle Ibrāhīm, who died 10 Nov. 1848. From his very accession he showed great hostility to foreigners. The reforms undertaken during the preceding period he chose to consider as dangerous and blameworthy innovations that were best abandoned. Most of the schools opened by Muhammad ʿAli were closed, as well as the factories, workshops and sanitary institutions; he even gave orders to destroy t…

, khedive of Egypt, born in Alexandria, 14 July 1874, died in Geneva 20 Dec. ¶ 1944. He studied in the Theresianum in Vienna together with his brother Muḥ. ʿAlī (b. 9 Nov. 1875) and succeeded to his father, Muḥ. Tawfīḳ [ q.v.], on 8 Jan. 1892. He soon came into conflict with the diplomatic agents and consuls general of England in Cairo, first Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer), and then Lord Kitchener [see miṣr ]. When in August 1914 the world war broke out, ʿAbbās Ḥilmī was in Istanbul, where he had arrived in the summer. Having been wounded on 25 July in an attempt on hi…

, styled the Great, king of Persia of the Ṣafawī dynasty, second son and successor of Muḥammad Ḵh̲udābanda, was born on 1 Ramaḍān 978/27 January 1571, and died in Māzandarān on 24 Ḏj̲umāḍā I 1038/19 January 1629, after a reign of 42 solar (43 lunar) years. In 980/1572-3 he remained at Harāt when his father moved to S̲h̲īrāz. In 984/1576-7 Ismāʿīl II put to death the lala (tutor) of ʿAbbās, and appointed ʿAlī Ḳulī Ḵh̲ān S̲h̲āmlū governor of Harāt with orders to execute ʿAbbās himself. ʿAlī Ḳulī procrastinated, and, when the death of Ismāʿī…

[see sikka ]

[see sāmarrā ] ¶

( Banu ’l-ʿAbbās ), the dynasty of the Caliphs from 132/750 to 656/1258. The dynasty takes its name from its ancestor, al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib b. Hās̲h̲im, the uncle of the Prophet. The story of the origins and nature of the movement that overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate and established the ʿAbbāsid dynasty in its place was for long known only in the much-revised version put about when the dynasty had already attained power, and, with it, respectability. A more critical version was proposed by G. van Vloten ( De opkomst der Abbasiden in Chorasan , Leiden 1890, and Recherches …

[see ṣafawids ]

[see Ṭubna ]

, old town of Ifrīḳiya (Tunisia), three miles to the S.E. of al-Ḳayrawān. It was also known by the name of Ḳaṣr al-Ag̲h̲āliba and al-Ḳaṣr al-Ḳadīm. It was built by Ibrāhīm b. al-Ag̲h̲lab, the founder of the Ag̲h̲labid dynasty, in 184/800, the same year in which he was appointed amīr of Ifrīḳiya, after the revolt of some leaders of the Arab d̲j̲und . He gave his foundation the name al-ʿAbbāsiyya in honour of the ʿAbbāsids, his masters. The town contained baths, inns, sūḳs and a Friday-mosque with a minaret of cylindrical form, built of bricks and adorned …

, son of Fatḥ ʿAlī S̲h̲āh, born in Ḏh̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 1203/Sept. 1789, in the small town of Nawā, died on 10 Ḏj̲umādā II 1249/25 Oct. 1833. Although not the eldest son, he was made heir to the throne because his mother also belonged to the Ḳād̲j̲ār family. Europeans who knew him were unanimous in their praise of his bravery, generosity and other excellent qualities. R. G. Watson ( History of Persia , 128-9) describes him as "the noblest of the Kajar race". He was passionately devoted to the military art, and, with the aid of, successively, Ru…

, historian of the Mug̲h̲al period in India. Little is known about him personally, but he was a member of a Sarwānī Afg̲h̲ān family which had settled in Banūr town (in the sarkār of Sirhind). His ancestor got 2,000 bīg̲h̲ās of land as a maintenance grant during the reign of Bahlūl Lōdī. It was resumed by Bābur in 932/1526, and S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Bāyazīd Sarwānī, the grandfather of ʿAbbās, had to leave for Rōh for this reason. S̲h̲ēr S̲h̲āh Sūr restored it to S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Bāyazīd when the latter returned after the expulsio…

Abu'l-Fidāʾ, Taḳwīm “Taḳwīm al-buldān”, ed. J.-T. Reinaud and M. de Slane, Paris 1840 Abu'l-Fidāʾ, Taḳwīm, tr. “Gèographie d'Aboulfèda, traduite de l'arabe en français”, vols. i, ii/1 by M. Reinaud, Paris 1848; vol. ii/2 by St. Guyard, 1883 Ag̲h̲ānī, Brünnow “The XX1st vol. of the Kitāb al-Aghānī”, ed. R.E. Brünnow, Leiden 1883 Ag̲h̲ānī, Tables “Tables alphabètiques du Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī”, rédigées par I. Guidi, Leiden 1900 Ag̲h̲ānī1 or [2] or [3] Abu'l-Farad̲j̲ al-Iṣfahānī, “al-Ag̲h̲ānī”; [1]Būlāḳ 1285; [2]Cairo 1323; [3]Cairo 1345- ALA “Arabic Literature of Africa”, ed. R…

, sigla and conventional signs are nowadays called in Arabic muk̲h̲taṣarāt “abridgements” or rumūz “symbols”, but there does not seem to have been any specific term for them in the classical period, even though from the very beginnings of Islam copyists, scribes and specialists in all sorts of disciplines were led to use them. This is why it has been thought suitable to bring together here a list of the main abbreviations found in the mediaeval texts, together with some examples of those taken up by our contemporaries. One should first of all recall that a certain number of the sur…

is the ordinary word for "slave" in Arabic of all periods (the usual plural in this sense is ʿabīd , although the Ḳurʾān has ʿibād : xxiv, 32), more particularly for "male slave", "female slave" being ama (pl. imāʾ ). Both words are of old Semitic stock; Biblical Hebrew uses them in the same meaning. Classical Arabic also expresses the idea of "slave", in the singular of both genders and in the collective, by the generic term raḳīḳ , which however is not found in the Ḳurʾān. On the other hand, the Ḳurʾān frequently uses the term raḳaba , literally "neck, nape of the nec…

(A.; plur. of badal , "substitute"), one of the degrees in the ṣūfī hierarchical order of saints, who, unknown by the masses ( rid̲j̲āl al-g̲h̲ayb [cf. g̲h̲ayb ]), participate by means of their powerful influence in the preservation of the order of the universe. The different accounts in the ṣūfī literature show no agreement as to the details of this hierarchy. There is also great difference of opinion as to the number of the abdāl : 40, e.g. Ibn Ḥanbāl, Musnad , i, 112, cf. v, 322; Hud̲j̲wīrī, Kashf al-Maḥd̲j̲ūb (Zhukowsky), 269, (transl. Nicholson, 214), 300 (al-Makkī, Ḳūt al-Ḳulūb …

, plural ʿAbādil , ʿAbādila and, in the Ṭurfat al-Aṣḥāb , ʿAbdiliyyūn with i, is now most commonly used as a collective name for the inhabitants of Laḥd̲j̲ in S. Arabia. Aḥmad Faḍl believes this usage to date from the time when S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Faḍl b. ʿAlī b. Ṣalāḥ b. Sallām b. ʿAlī al-Sallāmī al-ʿAbdalī, made Laḥd̲j̲ independent of the Zaydī Imām (1145/1732-3) and founded the dynasty by which it has since been ruled (see laḥd̲j̲ ). According to the Ṭurfat al-Aṣḥāb (7th/13th cent.) the original clan of the ʿAbādil are descended from Ḵh̲awlān b. ʿAmr b. Alḥāf b. Ḳuḍāʿa; al-Ḵh̲azr…

, the former name of the Afghān tribe now known as the Durrānī; they belong to the Sarbanī branch of the Afg̲h̲āns. According to their own tradition, they derived their name from Abdāl (or Awdāl) b. Tarīn b. S̲h̲ark̲h̲abu̲n b. Ḳays; Abdāl was so called because he was in the service of an abdāl or saint named Ḵh̲wād̲j̲a Abū Aḥmad of the Čis̲h̲tiyya order. The Abdālīs for long inhabited the province of Ḳandahār, but early in the reign of S̲h̲āh ʿAbbās I, pressure from the G̲h̲alzay tribe caused them to move to the province of Harāt. S̲h̲āh ʿAbbās made S…

(frequently Ibn ʿAbbās, without the article), Abu l-ʿAbbās, called al-Ḥibr ‘the doctor’ or al-Baḥr ‘the sea’, because of his doctrine, is considered one of the greatest scholars, if not the greatest, of the first generation of Muslims. He was the father of Ḳurʾanic exegesis; at a time when it was necessary to bring the Ḳurʾān into accord with the new demands of a society which had undergone a profound transformation, he appears to have been extremely skilful in accomplishing this task. He was born three years before the hid̲j̲ra, when the Hās̲h̲imite family was living shut u…

(Malay pronunciation Abdullah bin Abdulkadir), surnamed Muns̲h̲iʾ , i.e. teacher of languages, was "the greatest innovator in Malay letters" (R. O. Winstedt, A history of Malay literature, JMBRAS, 1940, ch. xii). He was born in 1796 in Malacca, where his grandfather, the son of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ ʿAbd al-Ḳādir, who came originally from Yaman, had settled. At an early age, ʿAbd Allāh received lessons in Malay from his father, who is said to have been an expert Malay scholar, and endeavoured to make himself fully master of this lan…

b. Marwān , son of the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān [ q.v.], was born about the year 60/680-1, perhaps somewhat earlier, as he is said to have been 27 years old in the year 85/704. He grew up in Damascus and accompanied his father in several campaigns. We first meet him as an independent general in the year 81/700-1, in one of the usual razzias against the Eastern Romans. Then in the year 82/701-2, he was sent with Muḥammad b. Marwān to help ¶ al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ against al-As̲h̲ʿat̲h̲ and played a part in the negotiations of Dayr al-Ḏj̲amād̲j̲im. Thereup…