Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see nud̲j̲ūm ].

, the thorn-tail lizard ( Uromastix spinipes). Cognate synonyms exist in other Semitic languages. The animal, found in abundance in the homeland of the Arabs, is often mentioned and described in ancient poetry and proverbs. Much of the information on the animal derives from just these sources which are freely quoted in later zoological works. The ḍabb was eaten by the ancient Arabs who relished it as tasty food; still it is reported that the tribe of Tamīm, who were especially fond of eating it, were ridiculed on that account by…

b. Udd b. Ṭābīk̲h̲a b. al-Yās ( K̲h̲indif ) b. Muḍar b. Nizār b. Maʿadd was the eponymous hero of the well known Arab tribe of that name. With their “nephews” ʿUkl b. ʿAwf, Taym, ʿAdī, and T̲h̲awr b. ʿAbd Manāt b. Udd, Ḍabba formed a confederacy called al-Ribāb. The Ribāb were in alliance with Saʿd b. Zayd Manāt, the greatest clan of Tamīm. This alliance has never been broken by the other confederates. These, indeed, were formations of rather moderate size, whereas the Ḍabba by means of their power sometimes were able to follow their own policy. Of the three clans of Ḍabba, Ṣuraym had in the…

, (plur. dawābb ), any living creature which keeps its body horizontal as it moves, generally quadruped. In particular, beast of burden or packanimal: horse, donkey, mule, camel (cf. Lane, s.v.). Burāḳ, the legendary steed ridden by the Prophet at his ascension ( miʿrād̲j̲ ), is given the name dābba by al-G̲h̲īṭī and in the commentaries. The word acquires a particular significance from its use in the Ḳurʾān, XXVII, 82 in the sense of the archetypal “Beast”, equivalent to the term θήριον in the Apocalypse of St. John. The …

(a.), “tanner”, frequent as a nisba in mediaeval and modern Arabic. In pre-Islamic Arabia, the tanners were Jewish craftsmen. During the lifetime of the Prophet, his Companions, such as al-Ḥārit̲h̲ b. Ṣabīra, Sawda, Asmāʾ bint ʿAmīs and others, were associated with tanning. Saʿd b. ʿĀʾid̲h̲ al-Ḳaraẓ, one of the Companions of Muḥammad, was busy trading in fruit of the acacia ( ḳaraẓ ) which was widely used as a material for the processing of leather. During the Umayyad, ʿAbbāsid and Mamlūk periods, there were many Jewish and Arab trade…

Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī al-Usaydī , b. 605/1208-9, d. 699/1300, was, according to the eyewitness and probably interested testimony of al-ʿAbdarī, the unique true scholar in al-Ḳayrawān of his time. If one can believe an anecdote which states that he owed his cognomen of al-Dabbag̲h̲ to the fact that his great-grandfather disguised himself as a tanner in order to avoid the office of ḳāḍī , he must have stemmed from an ancient family of Ḳayrawānī faḳīhs . Al-ʿAbdarī, who visited him in 688/1289 and received from him a general id̲j̲āza for the transm…

Aḥmad b. Yahyā b. Aḥmad b. ʿAmīra , an Andalusian scholar of the 6th/12th century. According to the information that he gives us in his works concerning himself and his family, he was born at Vélez, to the west of Lorca, and he began his studies in Lorca. He travelled in North Africa (Ceuta, Marrākus̲h̲, Bougie) and even reached Alexandria, but he appears to have spent the greater part of his life at Murcia. He died at the end of Rabī II 599/beginning of 1203. Of his writings only…

[see al-mufaḍḍal ].

(variant forms Dabḳa and Dabḳū ) was a locality in the outer suburbs of Damietta, noted for the manufacture of high quality woven material, which it exported to the whole of the Muslim empire. The location of Dabīḳ cannot be fixed more exactly. It is found mentioned along with other cities that have disappeared, such as S̲h̲aṭā, Tinnīs, or Tūna, which were probably on the islands of Lake Menzāleh. Fine cloths embossed with gold were made there, and, during the Fāṭimid period, turbans of multicoloured linen. These textiles were so sumptious that dabīḳī soon became …

, a locality in the ʿAzāz region of northern Syria. It lies on the road from Manbid̲j̲ to Anṭākiya (Ṭabarī, iii, 1103) upstream from Aleppo on the river Nahr Ḳuwayḳ. In Assyrian times its name was Dabigu , to become Dabekôn in Greek. It lies on the edge of the vast plain of Mard̲j̲ Dābiḳ where, under the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids, troops were stationed prior to being sent on operations against Byzantine territory. The Umayyad caliph Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik lived in Dābiḳ for some time, and after his death and buri…

[see dwīn ]

(p.) “scribe, secretary”, the term generally used in the Persian cultural world, including the Indo-Muslim one (although in the later centuries it tended to be supplanted by the term munshī , so that Yule-Burnell, Hobson-Jobson , a glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and phrases, London 1886, 328, record “dubeer” as being in their time “quite obsolete in Indian usage”), as the equivalent of Arabic kātib and Turkish yazi̊d̲j̲i̊ ,. The word appears as dipīr / dibīr (Pahlavi orthography dpy ( w) r, see D.N. MacKenzie, A concise Pahlavi dictionary, London 1971, 26) in Sāsānid Per…

, Mīrzā , Lakhnawī , an Urdū poet, who devoted himself to writing and reciting highly devotional elegies on the death of the martyrs of Karbalā. He was a son of Mīrzā G̲h̲ulām Ḥusayn, who is claimed to be a grandson of Mullā Hās̲h̲im S̲h̲īrāzī (a brother of the famous Ahlī of S̲h̲īrāz, d. 934/1536-7). Salāmat ʿAlī was born in Ballīmārān, Dihlī on 11 Ḏj̲umāda I 1218/29 August 1803; he accompanied his father as a child to Lucknow and there received a good education. He studied all the usual Persian and Arabic texts on religious and foreign sciences ( manḳūl wa maʿḳūl ) from well-known ʿulamāʾ …

, “The school of religions”, a work in Persian describing the different religions of and in particular the religious situation in Hindustān in the 11th/17th century; it is the most complete account in the Persian language, later than the Bayān al-adyān (6th/12th century), which is accurate but concise, and than the Tabṣirat al-ʿawāmm (7th/13th century), written from the S̲h̲īʿite point of view. The sources of the Dabistān derive partly from the sacred books of the different religious persuasions, partly from verbal information given to th…

, in Turkish zabit , an Ottoman term for certain functionaries and officers, later specialized to describe officers in the armed forces. In earlier Ottoman usage Ḍābiṭ seems to indicate a person in charge or in control of a matter or of ( ? the revenues of) a place ( e.g. Ewḳāf ḍābiṭi , Wilāyet ḍābiṭi etc.; examples, some with place-names, in Halit Ongan, Ankara’nın I Numaralı Şer’iye Sicili , Ankara 1958, index, and L. Fekete, Die Siyāqat-Schrift , i, Budapest 1955, 493 ff.; cf. the Persian usage in the sense of collector — Minorsky, Tad̲h̲kirat al-Mulūk , index). The…

, assessment of taxable land by measurement, applied under the later Dihlī sultanate and the Mug̲h̲als; land so measured is called ḍabṭī . See Ḍarība , 6.

, in Turkish zabtiyye , a late Ottoman term for the police and gendarmerie. Police duties, formerly under the control of various janissary officers, were placed under the jurisdiction of the Serʿasker ([ q.v.] see also bāb-i serʿaskerī ) in 1241/ 1826, and in 1262/1846 became a separate administration, the Ḍabṭiyee Mus̲h̲īriyyeti (Ḷutfī iii 27-8). At about the same time a council of police ( med̲j̲lis-i ḍabṭiyye ) was established, which was later abolished and replaced by two quasi-judicial bodies, the dīwān-i ḍabṭiyye and med̲j̲lis-i taḥḳīḳ- After several further changes the mus̲h̲īr…

, Ḍabʿ (A. ḍubʿ , ḍubuʿ , ḍibāʿ , aḍbuʿ , maḍbaʿa ), grammatically feminine singular nouns designating the hyena (Persian: kaftār , Turkish: ṣi̊rtlan , Berber: ifis , pl. ifisen ) irrespective of sex or species (see Ch. Pellat, Sur quelques noms d’animaux en arabe classique , in GLECS, viii, 95-9). From this vague generic term, additional forms have been derived to differentiate the sexes: ḍibʿān , pl. ḍabāʿīn for the male (alongside d̲h̲īk̲h̲ , pl. d̲h̲uyūk̲h̲ ) and ḍibʿāna , pl. - āt , for the female. The word ḍabuʿ (preferable to ḍabʿ ) is of Sumero-Akkadian origi…

, a town of mediaeval Transoxania, in the region of Soghdia, and lying on a canal which led southwards from the Nahr Ṣug̲h̲d and on the Samarḳand-Karmīniyya-Buk̲h̲ārā road. The site is marked by the ruins of Ḳalʿa-yi Dabūs near the modern village of Ziyaudin (=Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn), according to Barthold, Turkestan3 , 97. It lay in a prosperous and well-watered area, say the mediaeval geographers, and Muḳaddasī, 324, cf. R.B. Serjeant, Islamic textiles, material for a history up to the Mongol conquest, Beirut 101, mentions in particular the brocade cloth known as Wad̲h̲ārī produced there. Dabūsi…

( Dābōē ), the founder of the Dābūyid dynasty in Gīlān [ q.v.]. The tribe claimed to be of Sāsānid extraction through Dābūya’s father, Gīl Gāwbāra. Their residence was the town of Fūman [ q.v.]. The dynasty clung to Zoroastrianism for a long time, and repeatedly defended the land against the Arabs, until the last ruler, K̲h̲ūrs̲h̲īd̲h̲ II (758/60, 141 or 142 A.H.) had to flee before the superior force of the ʿAbbāsids, and put an end to his own life in Daylam (Ṭabarī, iii, 139 f.). One of his daughters, whose name is unknown, became the wife of the Caliph al-Manṣūr. The names of the members of t…

[see d́hākā ].

[see ḥisāb al-ʿaḳd ].

, 15th letter of the Arabic alphabet, conventional transcription ḍ ; numerical value, according to the oriental order, 800 [see abd̲j̲ad ]. The definition of the phoneme presents difficulty. The most probable is: voiced lateralized velarized interdental fricative (see J. Cantineau, Consonantisme , in Semitica , iv, 84-5). According to the Arab grammatical tradition: rik̲h̲wa mad̲j̲hūra muṭbaḳa . For the mak̲h̲rad̲j̲ , the s̲h̲ad̲j̲riyya of al-K̲h̲alīl (al-Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī, Mufaṣṣal , 2nd ed. J. P. Broch, 190, line 20) is difficult to define exactly (see De Sacy, Gr. Ar.2, i, 26, n…

, ās̲h̲iḳ mūsā-og̲h̲lu weli , 19th century Turkish folk poet (1790?-1870?), was a member of the Afs̲h̲ār tribe which lived in the Taurus Mountains in S. Anatolia. His father was also a poet and took his mak̲h̲laṣ from the same family name. It is said that for a time Dadalog̲h̲lu acted as imām in the villages and as secretary to the tribal chiefs. As a result of government action against his tribe, which rebelled because it was unwilling to undergo conscription or taxation, he was transported with the rest of …

the domestic fowl. The word is a noun of unity which, according to Arab lexicographers, may be applied to both the male and the female. Alternative pronunciations are did̲j̲ād̲j̲a and dud̲j̲ād̲j̲a . In more recent local usage (cf. Jayakar, Malouf), did̲j̲ād̲j̲at al-baḥr and did̲j̲ād̲j̲at al-ḳubba denote certain kinds of fish, just as the corresponding Hebrew The animal, which is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, was known to the Arabs from pre-Islamic times. D̲j̲āḥiẓ reports (ii, 277 f.) that it was given to poets as a reward for their literary ach…

the “deceiver”, adjective of Syriac origin, daggālā , joined to the word m e s̲h̲iḥā or n e bīyā (Peshitto, Matth., xxiv, 24). In Arabic, used as a substantive to denote the personage endowed with miraculous powers who will arrive before the end of time and, for a limited period of either 40 days or 40 years, will let impurity and tyranny rule the ¶ world which, thereafter, is destined to witness universal conversion to Islam. His appearance is one of the proofs of the end of time. The characteristics attributed to him in Muslim eschatological legends combin…

, an important, purely nomadic camel-breeding Sunnī (Mālikī) tribe of south-western ʿIrāḳ, whose dīra has been for the last 150 years in the steppe south of the Euphrates and S̲h̲aṭṭ al-ʿArab from the neighbourhood of Zubayr to that of Samāwa. Their immigration into ʿIrāḳ, dating from about 1220/1805, was caused by bad relations with the then powerful and fanatical rule of Ibn Saʿūd, who forcibly demanded their obedience. Their earlier history traces legendary origins in Nad̲j̲d and even in the Ḥid̲j̲āz; but in fact the modern tribe represents evidently a conglomeration of various badw …

[see D̲h̲unūb , dafn al-].

, a stitched or bound booklet, or register, more especially an account or letter-book used in administrative offices. The word derives ultimately from the Greek διφθέρα “hide”, and hence prepared hide for writing. It was already used in ancient Greek in the sense of parchment or, more generally, writing materials. In the 5th century B.C. Herodotus (v, 58) remarks that the lonians, like certain Barbarians of his own day, had formerly written on skins, and still applied the term diphthera to papyrus rolls; in the 4th Ctesias ( in Diodorus Siculus ii, 32; cf. A. Christensen, Heltedigtning og …

, in Turkish defterdār , keeper of the daftar [ q.v.], an Ottoman term for the chief finance officer, corresponding to the Mustawfī [ q.v.] in the eastern Islamic world. According to Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī ( Ṣubḥ , iii, 485, 494, 525, 526), the title Ṣāḥib al-Daftar already existed in the Fāṭimid administration, for the official in charge of the Daftar al-Mad̲j̲lis , that is, of accounts and audits. The title Daftark̲h̲ w ān — Daftar -reader—appears in the time of Saladin (B. Lewis, Three Biographies from Kamāl ad-Dīn , in Fuad Köprülü Armağanı , Istanbul 1953, 343), and r…

the collection of registers in which were entered, during the Ottoman period, the results of the surveys made every 30 or 40 years until the beginning of the 11th/17th century, in accordance with an old administrative and fiscal practice. The imperial registers or Daftar-i K̲h̲āḳāni consisted primarily of a list of the adult males in the ¶ villages and towns of the Empire, giving, by the side of their names and the names of their fathers, their legal status, their obligations and privileges according to the economic and social class to which they bel…

the tak̲h̲alluṣ of Nawwāb Mīrza K̲h̲ān (originally called Ibrāhīm, Āʾīna-i Dāg̲h̲ ), one of the most distinguished Urdū poets of modern times. He was a son of Nawwāb S̲h̲ams al-Dīn K̲h̲ān. ruler of Fīrūzpur D̲j̲hirkā, and Wazīr Begam (usually called Čhot́ī Begam). Nawwāb Mīrzā was born in Čāndnī Čawk, Dihlī on 12 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 1246/25 May 1831 (cf. his horoscope in D̲j̲alwa-i Dāg̲h̲ , 9). When S̲h̲ams al-Dīn K̲h̲ān was hanged (Oct. 1835) for his part in the murder of Mr. W. Fraser, Resident of Dihlī, Nawwāb Mirzā K̲h̲ān’s mother…

“land of the mountains”; this name is an unusual linguistic phenomenon, since it consists of the Turkish word dāg̲h̲ , mountain, and of the suffix which, in the Persian language, distinguishes the names of countries; this name seems to have appeared for the first time in the 10th/16th century). An autonomous Republic of the R.S.F.S.R. with an area of 19,500 sq. miles and a population of 958,000 inhabitants (1956), it is made up of two quite distinct parts: the Caucasian Range and the cis-Casp…

, “branding and verification”, a term used in Muslim India for the branding of horses and compilation of muster rolls for soldiers. The system of dāg̲h̲ (horse branding) was first introduced in India by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī (695-715/1296-1316), and was revived by S̲h̲ēr S̲h̲āh Sūrī (947-52/1540-5). The system of double ranks ( d̲h̲āt and suwār ) made its appearance during the second half of Akbar’s reign. The motive probably was to compel every manṣabdār actually to maintain the number of horses and cavalry men expected of him for imperial s…

[see zuhāk ].

, Abū Unays (or Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ), son of a blood-letter ( ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ām , Ibn Rusta, BGA vii, 215), head of the house of Ḳays. He is reported to have been of a vacillating character ( d̲j̲aʿala yuḳadd̲j̲mu rid̲j̲l an wa-yuʾak̲h̲k̲h̲iru uk̲h̲rā , Ag̲h̲ānī xvii, 111) and this is ¶ borne out by his changing attitude towards the ruling Umayyad house, in which he proved easy to influence. He was a keen follower of Muʿāwiya, first as head of the police ( ṣāḥib al-s̲h̲urṭa ), and then as governor of the d̲j̲und of Damascus. In the year 36/656, al-Ḍaḥḥāk defeated the ʿ…

, Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ite leader, opponent of Marwān b. Muḥammad ( — Marwān II). During the disturbances which followed the murder of the Caliph al-Walīd II, the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲ites resumed their campaign in Ḏj̲azīra and pushed forward into ʿIrāḳ, their leader at first being the Ḥarūrite Saʿīd b. Bahdal, and, after his death of the plague, al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Ḳays al-S̲h̲aybānī, an adherent of the above-mentioned Ibn Bahdal. Several thousand fighters assembled under the standard of al-Ḍaḥḥāk; there were even among them Ṣufrites from S̲h̲ahrazūr. who, at that time, according to al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ …

, the name given to a pre-Islamic war waged during the latter half of the 6th century A.D. between two closely related tribes of G̲h̲aṭafān, the Banū ʿAbs and the Banū D̲h̲ubyān, or more accurately the Banū Fazāra, a sub-tribe of D̲h̲ubyān. The war took its name from a stallion called Dāḥis, over which the quarrel arose, and which became proverbial for bad luck. The real reasons for the war are probably to be sought in the enmity generated by the domination by ʿAbs of all G̲h̲aṭafān, as well as Hawāzin, which had reached its peak around the middle of the cen…

, erroneous spelling of Dihistān [ q.v.].

Islands , a group of islands off the west coast of the Red Sea, opposite Muṣawwaʿ (Eritrea), with their centre about 40 10ʹ E., 15 45ʹ N. of about 125 islands, including tiny islets, rocks and reefs, the two largest are Dahlak al-Kabīr and Nūra. Others are Nokra, Dohol, Harat Kubarī, Daraka and Dinifarik̲h̲. All are flat and low, with deeply indented coasts and scanty rain and vegetation; some are normally or seasonally inhabited, to a total in all of 1500 to 2500 persons, T…

, Sayyid Aḥmad b. Zaynī , born in Mecca towards the beginning of the 19th century, was from 1288/1871 Muftī of the S̲h̲āfiʿīs and S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-ʿUlamāʾ (head of the corporation of scholars and therefore of the body of teachers in the Ḥaram ) in his native city. When the Grand S̲h̲arīf ʿAwn al-Rafīḳ, because of a dispute with the Ottoman Governor ʿUt̲h̲mān Pas̲h̲a, removed himself to Madīna, Daḥlān followed him there but died soon afterwards from the fatigue of the journey in 1304/ 1886. Particularly in his later ye…

—in Saʿūdī Arabia—a long, narrow arch of nafūd or dune desert, varying in width from 10 to 75 km., extending around an eastward curve for a total length of over 1,000 km., connecting the Great Nafūd of the northwest with the Empty Quarter (al-Rubʿ al-K̲h̲ālī [ q.v.]) of the south, lacking in natural water sources except along the fringes, but furnishing a favourite area of pasturing. In the past separating the interior area of al-Yamāma from the coastal region of al-Baḥrayn, al-Dahnāʾ today serves as an informal boundary between the Province of Nad̲j̲d and the…

, Persian dahna , dahāna , marmar-i sabz (‘green marble’), Turkish dehne-i frengi, malachite, the well known green copper-ore. The description of the mineral in the Rasāʾil Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafā goes back to the pseudo-Aristotelian lapidary. According to that, the malachite is formed in copper mines from the sulphur fumes which combine with ¶ copper to form layers. Its colour is compared to that of the chrysolith ( zabard̲j̲ad ), although it does appear in different shades: dark green, veined, the shade of peacock’s feathers, and pale green, wit…

, a corridor 418 miles long by 125 miles wide, between Togoland and Nigeria, is one of the earliest known countries on the Gulf of Guinea. The coast is low-lying, fringed with lagoons, while the central zone is formed of table-land and isolated mountains; the northern part is higher, slanted across by the mountains of Atacora, which rise to about 800 metres. In the south especially, the humidity is high and the temperature fairly constant although there are two rainy and two dry seasons. The population of Dahomey, nearly two million inhabitants, is chiefly composed of Fon (cent…

, time, especially infinitely extended time (cf. Lane; al-Bayḍāwī on K. 76.1). The pre-Islamic Arabs, as is shown by many passages in their poetry, regarded time (also zamān , and al-ayyām , the days) as the source of what happened to a man, both good and bad; they thus give it something of the connotation ¶ of Fate, though without worshipping it (W. L. Schrameier, Über den Fatalismus der vorislamischen Araber , Bonn 1881; Th. Nöldeke, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics , i, 661 b; for possible parallels cf. A. Christensen, Iran , 149 f., 157—Zurvān as both time …

, holders of materialistic opinions of various kinds, often only vaguely defined. This collective noun denotes them as a whole, as a firḳa , sect, according to the Dictionary of the Technical Terms , and stands beside the plural dahriyyūn formed from the same singular dahrī , the relative noun of dahr, a Ḳurʾānic word meaning a long period of time. In certain editions of the Ḳurʾān it gives its name to sūra LXXVI, generally called the sūra of Man; but its use in XLV, 24 where it occurs in connexion with the infidels, or rather the ungodly, erring and blinded, appears to …

, a place in the province of D̲j̲īza, some 40 kms. south of Cairo, to the west of the Nile on the edge of the desert. A necropolis and pyramids dating from the first dynasties of the Old Kingdom are situated there. These relics of the age of the Pharaohs are mentioned by al-Harawī and al-Maḳrīzī without a precise description being given. Abū Ṣāliḥ speaks of a great church and an important monastery there. The present-day hamlet is insignificant and the name continues to be well known solely on account of the pyramids. (G. Wiet) Bibliography Ibn Mammātī, 138 al-Harawī, Ziyārāt, 39 Abū Ṣāliḥ, fol.…

, aḥmad b. ibrāhīm , Turkish poet of the end of the 8th/14th and the beginning of the 9th/15th century. The scanty information about his life is scattered in his works and in ted̲h̲kires . A ḳādī by profession, he began to gain prominence as a poet at the court of the Germiyān in Kütahya under princes Sulaymān and Yaʿḳūb II. He seems to have travelled a great deal in Anatolia and in the Balkans. During the chaotic years of struggle between the sons of Bāyezīd I after the battle of Ankara (804/1402), he entered the service of one of them, amīr Sulaymān in Edirne, whose court had become a gatheri…

(rarely, dāʿiya ), “he who summons” to the true faith, was a title used among several dissenting Muslim groups for their chief propagandists. It was evidently used by the early Muʿtazilites [ q.v. in EI 1]; but became typical of the more rebellious among the S̲h̲īʿīs. It appears in the ʿAbbāsid mission in K̲h̲urāsān; and in some Zaydī usage. It was ascribed to followers of Abu ’l-K̲h̲aṭṭāb. It was especially important in the Ismāʿīlī and associated movements (which were called daʿwa , “summons”), where it designated generically the chief authorized representatives of the imām . Among the …

[see al-d̲j̲arḥ waʾl taʿdīl ].

, the term used for the administration of crown lands in the Ottoman Empire during the last quarter of the 19th century. Saniyya lands were the mulk (private freehold) of the Sultan. They were administered by a well-organised establishment, the Dāʾira Saniyya , which had branch offices in areas where these lands were abundant. After the revolution of 1908, Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd II ceded his private properties to the state. The lands continued to be called saniyya , but they were transferred to the newly-formed department of al-Amlāk al-mudawwara . Within months of the accession to the…

, name of an Egyptian province in the eastern region of the Delta. It owes its name, which is an Arabicized form of the Coptic Tkehli, to the town called Daḳahla which was situated between Damīra and Damietta, a little closer to the latter than the former. At one time famous for its paper mills, it is now but an insignificant village. The province was created at the end of the 5th/11th century and it has survived till today with some changes in its boundaries. At present it extends along the eastern bank of the Damietta branch of the Nile, which marks its …

, the capital of Senegal, is situated at the tip of the Cape Verde peninsula. Its position ¶ is the westernmost outpost of the ancient world (its longitude reaches 17° 16′ W. at the point of the Almadies). The region of Dakar, which covers almost the whole of the peninsula, is subdivided into three parts: (1) An eastern highland area (more than 100 m. in altitude); the N’Diass range rises some 70 m. above lake Tanma; to the east, the relief consists of hills or low plateaux with very gentle…

[see daḳahliyya ].

(deccan). This word is derived from the Sanskrit word daks̲h̲iṇa ‘right (hand)’, hence ‘south’, since the compass points were determined with reference to the rising sun. The conventional line dividing north India from the south is formed by the south-western spurs of the Vindhyas along with their continuation called the Satpuŕās; peninsular India to the south of this line is usually further divided into (i) Deccan proper, extending up to the Tungabhadra, and (…

[see urdū ],

The dictionaries ( LA, TA, etc.) give a general meaning, “interior, inward, intimate”, and two particular derived meanings, (1) guest, to whom protection should be assured, and (2) stranger, passing traveller, person of another race. The first of the particular meanings relates to an institution of nomadic common law which guarantees protection, in traditional ways, to whoever requests it. Although the concept has at all times existed, it has never been incorporated into Islamic law, which has no te…

, [see ʿabd al-raḥmān ].

[see al-wāḥāt ].

[see urdū ].

, Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad (or Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad), the poet to whom we owe the oldest known text of the national epic in the Persian language. His place of birth is uncertain (Ṭūs, Buk̲h̲ārā, Balk̲h̲ or Samarḳand); he was born between 318 and 329/930 and 940, for he was at least twenty years old when he became panegyrist to the amīrs of Čag̲h̲āniyān, then of the Sāmānid amīr Manṣūr b. Nūḥ (350-366/961-976); further, Firdawsī, who continued after him the composition of The Book of the Kings ( S̲h̲āhnāma ), assures us that Daḳīḳī was a young man when…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh , Moroccan saint born at Sid̲j̲ilmāsa. He and a certain Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Aṣamm who was assassinated in 542/1147-8 belonged to one of the small circles of Ṣūfīs generally disapproved of by authority. This Abū ʿAbd Allāh had already been imprisoned at Fez at the same time as some of his companions, among whom one was al-Daḳḳaḳ, who on the orders of Tās̲h̲ufīn b. ʿAlī the Almoravid was afterwards released. No one knows the date of birth of this saint, nor that of his death. All the same, one can be sure that towards the middle of the 6th/…

(or Daḳūḳ ), a small town in the D̲j̲azīra province of the ʿAbbāsid empire, some 25 miles S.E. of Kirkūk on the Mosul-Bag̲h̲dād trunkroad, was known to the later Arab geographers and perhaps emerged into urban status, though never eminence, in the 5th/11th century. Some medieval brickwork and a minaret survive. The later and present name (from 9th/15th century, or earlier) was Ṭāwūḳ or Ṭāʾūḳ. The town, on flat ground immediately west of the foothills, stands healthy and well-…

, 8th letter of the Arabic alphabet, transcribed d; numerical value 4, in accordance with the order of the letters in the Syriac (and Canaanite) alphabet, where d is the fourth letter [see abd̲j̲ad ]. It continues a d of common Semitic. Definition: voiced dental occlusive; according to the Arab grammatical tradition: s̲h̲adīda , mad̲j̲hūra . For the mak̲h̲rad̲j̲ : niṭʿiyya according to al-K̲h̲alīl (al-Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī, Mufaṣṣal , 2nd ed. J. P. Broch, 191, line 1), who places the point of articulation at the niṭʿ (or niṭaʿ ), the anterior part of the hard pala…

, Abū Zayd Nāḳid , mawlā of the Fahm tribe, musician and ẓarīf in Medina, born about 70/690, died about 145/762. Like his teacher Ṭuways (d. 92/710) he was a muk̲h̲annat̲h̲ —hence the proverb “more effeminate than al-Dalāl”—and is said to have been castrated by order of one of the caliphs, either Sulaymān or His̲h̲ām [but see K̲h̲aṣī ]. His musical gifts and ready wits he used as an entertainer of Qurays̲h̲ women and a singer at weddings, accompanying himself on a tambourine ( duff ). He composed highly artistic ( kat̲h̲īr al-ʿamal ) melodies in a style called g̲h̲ināʾ muḍʿaf …

(Gr. σημεῖον) is an ambiguous term; it can mean sign or indication, every proof through the inference of a cause from its effect or the inference of the universal from the particular in opposition to the proof from a strictly deductive syllogism in which the particular is deduced from the universal; and finally it is used as synonymous with proof, ἀπόδειξις, burhān generally.. Aristotle treats the “proof from a sign” in the last chapter of his Analytica Prior a. According to him “proof from a sign” is an enthymeme, i.e., a syllogism in which one premiss is suppressed (ἐνθύμημα, ḳiyās iḍmārī or ḳ…

(ar.) “broker”, “agent”. Dallāl , literally “guide”; is the popular Arabic word for simsār , sensal . In the Tād̲j̲ al-ʿArūs we find, on the word simsār: “This is the man known as a dallāl ; he shows the purchaser where to find the goods he requires, and the seller how to exact his price”. Very little is known from the Arabic sources about the origins of these brokers, who have been of such great importance in economic affairs. The dallāl corresponded to the Byzantine μεδίτης. In the absence of any systematic earlier studies, only certain items of information collected at r…

(Dalmacija in Serbocroat), a historic province of Yugoslavia, formerly covering parts of the Federal Republics of Croatia (the territory of contemporary Dalmatia), of Montenegro and a very small section of Bosnia-Herzegovina. I. Generalities Skirted by the Adriatic Sea, Dalmatia stretches in a north-west-south-east direction at the foot of the Dinaric mountain ranges (Velebit, Svilaja, Biokovo) from the peninsula of Istria (according to some authors, only from the island of Pag) to the Albanian frontier, marked by the river Bojana. But in fact, the territory designated by …

, the headquarter town of the Ḳaḍā of K̲h̲āliṣ in the liwā of Diyālā, central ʿIrāḳ (44° 30′ E, 33° 50′ N). The population of the town —all settled ʿIrāḳī Arabs, with S̲h̲īʿī predominance over Sunnī—was some 10,000 in 1367/1947, and that of the ḳaḍā 70,000; the two dependent nāḥiyas are those of K̲h̲ān Banī Saʿd and Manṣūriyya (formerly Dalī ʿAbbās). The name Daltāwa is said by ʿIrāḳī scholars to be a corruption of an original Dawlatābād. Surrounded by date-gardens, the town is watered from the K̲h̲āliṣ canal, an important offtake from the Diyālā, right bank. Though stil…

[see Nud̲j̲ūm ].

[see sikka ].

(A.), pl. dimāʾ “blood”, also “blood-guilt” [see diya , ḳatl ]. In the present article it will be appropriate to mention the numerous blood sacrifices offered by the Muslims, but we will not concern ourselves with the theory, nor is it our intention to list them [see d̲h̲abīḥa , [see ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ , ʿīd al-aḍḥā ]. We will confine ourselves to a brief survey of the beliefs relative to blood and the uses to which it is put or to which it may be put by Muslims in the various circumstances where the sacrifice of an animal is required, and the role attributed to it in magic and therapy. Arabic texts of the Mi…

, “son-in-law”, an honorific title given to mīr muḥammad bāḳir b. s̲h̲ams al-dīn muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī al-astarābadī , Called also al-Muʿallim al-T̲h̲ālit̲h̲ , the “third teacher” in philosophy ¶ after al-Fārābī. This title properly belongs to his father who was the son-in-law of the famous S̲h̲īʿī theologian ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-ʿĀlī al-Karakī, called al-Muḥaḳḳiḳ al-T̲h̲ānī (Brockelmann, S II, 574), but it was extended to the son, who is more correctly called Dāmādī or Ibn al-Dāmād. Born at Astarābād, Mīr-i Dāmād spent h…

, a Persian word meaning son-in-law, used as a title by sons-in-law of the Ottoman Sultans. Under the early Sultans, princesses ( sulṭān ) of the reigning house were occasionally given in marriage to the vassal princes of Asia Minor, for example, to the Ḳaramānog̲h̲lu, and even to the vezirs and generals of the sovereign; the case of the saint Amīr Sulṭān of Bursa, who married a daughter of Bāyazīd I is, however, unique not only for that but also for later periods. We afterwards find Grand Vezirs…

, one of the last Grand Vezirs of the Ottoman Empire. Meḥmed Ferīd, son of Ḥasan ʿIzzet, a member of the Council of State (S̲h̲ūrā-yi Dewlet), was born in Istanbul in 1853, served in minor diplomatic posts, and, upon his marriage (1886) to ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd II’s sister Medīḥa, was made member of the Council of State and senator, and given the rank of Pas̲h̲a. In 1911 he became co-founder and chairman of the Ḥürriyet we Iʾtilāf Fi̊rḳasi̊ [ q.v.]. After the Ottoman defeat he served his brother-in-law Meḥmed VI as Grand Vezir (4 March to 2 October 1919 and 5 April to 21 October …

, (? -1125/1713), Ottoman Grand Vizier. The sources refer to him sometimes as “Moralī”, i.e., “from the Morea” and sometimes as “Enis̲h̲te”, i.e., “brother-in-law” (of the sultan, in this instance). He became a čokadār and then, in 1095/1683-4, rose to the rank of silāḥdār . On the accession to the throne of Süleymān II in Muḥarrem 1099/November 1687 he was made governor of Egypt (with the status of vizier)—an appointment that he held until 1101/1689-90, when, according to the Sid̲j̲ill-i ʿOt̲h̲mānī, he became mutaṣarri̊f of Brusa and Nicomedia (Izmid). Ḥ…

b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Ḥammūya b. Ḥasanawayh , Ḥanafī jurist who, as Chief Ḳāḍī of Bag̲h̲dād, stands at the head of a family dynasty holding the positions of ḳāḍī or ḳāḍī ’l-ḳuḍāt down through the years. The following sketch is based mostly on al-Ḏj̲awāhir al-muḍiyya fī ṭabaḳāt al-Ḥanafiyya by ʿAbd al-Ḳādir b. Abi ’l-Wafāʾ al-Ḳuras̲h̲ī (d. 775/1373). The best way to distinguish between them is ¶ by the use of their patronymic ( kunya ) and first name ( ism ). Among the eighteen identifiable members of th…

b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Hammūya , son of Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Dāmag̲h̲ānī [ q.v.]. He was born in 449/1057, studied law, and was accepted as s̲h̲āhid-notary by his father in 466/1073-4, and was appointed by him ḳāḍī of the East Side quarter of Bāb al-Ṭāḳ in Bag̲h̲dād and of a part of the countryside, a jurisdiction which was that of his maternal grand-father Abu ’l-Ḥasan Aḥmad al-Simnānī, who had just died in 466/1074 (see D̲j̲awāhir, ii, 95-6). In the year of these two appointments, Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Dāmag̲h̲ānī was only 16 years of age; such…

(a.), in Islamic law, the civil liability in the widest meaning of the term, whether it arises from the non-performance of a contract or from tort or negligence ( taʿaddī , literally “transgression”). Prominent particular cases are the liability for the loss of an object sold before the buyer has taken possession ( ḍamān al-mabīʿ ), for eviction ( ḍamān al-darak ), for the loss of a pledge in the possession of the pledgee ( ḍamān al-rahn), for the loss of an object that has been taken by usurpation ( ḍamān al-g̲h̲aṣb ), and for loss or damage caused by artisans ( ḍamān al-ad̲j̲īr , ḍ . al-ṣunnāʿ …

, in the financial sense, ‘farming’ (of taxes). See bayt al-māl .

, a name derived from the ancient Egyptian Timinhur, the city of Horus. It is not surprising that a number of cities of this name are to be found, almost all in the Nile Delta. I. Damanhūr al-S̲h̲ahid. Damanhūr “of the Martyr”, one of the northern suburbs of Cairo. This was the name still used by Yāḳūt, but the village was later known as Damanhūr S̲h̲ubrā. a name which was however already known to al-Muḳaddasī. Ibn Mammātī calls it simply Damanhūr. The two names are sometimes inverted and certain authors speak of S̲h̲ubrā Damanhū…

[see maʿdin ].

[see dimas̲h̲ḳ ].

, the highest point in the mountains on the borders of Northern Persia (cf. Alburz ), somewhat below 36° N. Lat. and about 50 miles north-east of Tehran. According to de Morgan it rises out of the plateau of Rēhne to a height of 13,000 feet above it. The various estimates of its height differ: Thomson estimates it at 21,000 feet (certainly too high), de Morgan at 20,260 feet, Houtum Schindler at 19,646, Sven Hedin at 18,187, and in the last edition of Stieler’s Handatlas (1910) it is given as 18,830 feet. Its summit, perpetually snow-clad and almost always…

a town on the main highway between Tehran and Mas̲h̲had, some 344 km. east of Tehran; also, a station on the railway between Tehran and Mas̲h̲had. At an altitude of n 15 metres, it has a population of 9,900 (1950). One km. to the south of the town is the mound called Tappa Ḥiṣār where excavations conducted by the University of Pennsylvania in 1931 uncovered prehistoric burials and the plaster-decorated remains of a building of the Sāsānid period. The oldest Islamic structure—possibly the earlies…

[see dimyāṭ ]. ¶

[see naḥw ].

, Muḥammad b. Mūsā b. ʿĪsā Kamāl al-dīn , was born in Cairo about the beginning of the year 742/1341 (according to a note in his own handwriting quoted by al-Sak̲h̲āwī, 59) and died there in 808/1405. Later dates of his birth, as given in some sources (745/1344 or 750/1349), would hardly be consistent with certain details of his biography. His nisba is derived from the northernmost of the two townlets both called Damīra near Samannūd in the Delta. After first gaining his livelihood as a tailor in his native town he decided to become a professional theologian, choosing as h…

[see Ḥaraka ].

, a port on the Persian Gulf and capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The name formerly designated a tower fort, located at 26° 27′ 56′′ N., 50° 06′ 06′′ E., on a reef near the ¶ shore north of the present town. The origin of the fort is not known, although the structure razed in 1957 to make way for a small-craft pier appeared to date from the time of the redoubtable D̲j̲alāhima sea captain Raḥma b. D̲j̲ābir [ q.v.]. Ibn D̲j̲ābir built a fort at al-Dammām after allying himself with Āl Saʿūd about 1809, but the Saʿūdīs destroyed it in 1231/1816 when he deserted th…

( Demnate , Demnat ), a small Berber town situated on the edge of the Great Atlas in Morocco, 120 km. east of Marrākush, at an altitude of 960 m., on a small hill overlooking the fertile valley (barley, beans) of the Oued Tassawt, the slopes of which are covered with olive-trees and vines. The town is surrounded by a rectangular wall and includes a məllāḥ (Jewish quarter); in fact almost half the population, which stands at about 4,000, consists of Jews, whose numbers however are diminishing regularly. Local trade on a large scale in oil…

Aḥmad , Egyptian historian of the 12th/18th century. Nothing is known of his life beyond the fact that he held the post of katk̲h̲udā of the ʿAzabān regiment in Cairo, but he may have been a relative of the rūznāmed̲j̲i Ḥasan Efendi al-Damurdās̲h̲ī, who flourished in the early 11th/17th century, and about whose doings he is well informed). His chronicle, al-Durra al-muṣāna fī ak̲h̲bār al-kināna , covers the period 1099-1169/1688-1755. It reveals unfamiliarity with Arabic, and the sense is sometimes garbled or obscure. Nevertheless it is …

[see sikka ].

[see danḳalī ].

[see raḳṣ ].

, Dandānaḳān , a small town in the sand desert between Marw and Sarak̲h̲s in mediaeval K̲h̲urāsān and 10 farsak̲h̲ s or 40 miles from the former city. The site of the settlement is now in the Turkmenistan SSR, see V.A. Zhukovsky, Razvalini̊ Starago Merva , St. Petersburg 1894, 38. The geographers of the 4th/10th century mention that it was well-fortified and was surrounded by a wall 500 paces in circumference, the baths and a ribāṭ or caravanserai lying outside this wall (Ibn Ḥawḳal2 , 436-7, 456, tr. Kramers-Wiet, 422, 440; Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. Minorsky, 105). Whe…

, Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd b. ʿUmar al-Umawī , Mālikī lawyer and above all, “reader” of the Ḳurʾān, born at Cordova in 371/ 981/2. After having made his pilgrimage to Mecca and spent some time in Cairo between 397/1006 and 399/1008, he returned to his birthplace but was soon forced to flee, first to Almeria and finally to Denia (Dāniya, whence his nisba ), where he settled down and died in 444/1053. Among more than 120 works which he wrote and enumerated himself in an urd̲j̲ūza , only about ten are known (see Brockelmann, I, 407, S I, 719); two of them deal …

[see dāniyāl ]

[see d̲j̲āmiʿa ].

, a Turcoman dynasty which reigned in northern Cappadocia from the last quarter of the 5th/11th century until 573/1178. The origins and first conquests of its founder, Amīr Dānis̲h̲mend, are obscure. Appearing in Cappadocia during the years of anarchy which followed the death, in 781/1085, of the Sald̲j̲ūḳid Sulaymān b. Kutlumi̊s̲h̲, he became involved in the events of the First Crusade. When historians became interested in him they resorted to legends or imagination to fill the gaps in their kn…