Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, Ḥabīb allāh (1808-54) was the greatest Persian poet of the Ḳād̲j̲ār period. He was born at S̲h̲īrāz, lost his father, the poet Guls̲h̲an, at the age of eleven and found a patron in the governor of S̲h̲īrāz, Ḥasan ʿAlī Mīrzā S̲h̲ud̲j̲āʿ al-Salṭana, who gave him the pen-name of Ḳāʾānī. As a court panegyrist he was granted by Muḥammad S̲h̲āh the title of Ḥassān al-ʿAd̲j̲am . He settled in Tehran shortly before 1848 and was favoured by Nāṣir al-Dīn S̲h̲āh with the title of Malik al-S̲h̲uʿarāʾ . Ḳāʾānī was a man of erudition, and the first Persian poet to master French. His dīwān …

, a region of Mali with an area of around 54,000 square km. It is bounded on the north by Mauritanian Hōd̲h̲, on the south by Beledugu and Fuladugu, and on the west by the River Senegal from the western branch of the River Kulu as far as the Baoulé junction. The rivers of this vast schistose plateau tilting to the south east flow into Senegal. The climate is that of the Saharan zone: a brief season of abundant rain followed by a very long dry season. The vegetation is wooded or shrubbed ¶ savannah. The land on the river banks often produces two harvests. The main crops are millet, maize…

, the most famous sanctuary of Islam, called the temple or house of God ( Bayt Allāh ). It is situated almost in the centre of the great mosque in Mecca. Muslims throughout the whole world direct their prayers to this sanctuary, where every year hundreds of thousands of pilgrims make the greater ( ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ ) or lesser ( ʿumra ) pilgrimage. Around it they gather and make their ritual circuits; around the Kaʿba the young Muslim community spent the early years of Islam. For the Muslim community the Kaʿba holds a place analogous to that of the temple in Jerusalem for ancient Jewry. I. The Kaʿba and …

, Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar (1230-88/1815-71), poet, man of letters and religious figure, and one of the precursors of reform in Tunisia. After having learnt the Ḳurʾān, Arabic language and the rudiments of fiḳh , he left the kuttāb or Ḳurʾān school and plunged into individual readings of the mystics, and especially, the writings of Ibn al-ʿArabī [ q.v.]. Under this influence, he spent his youthful life as a dervish. At the age of 18, his wanderings took him as far as Libya, where at Misrāṭa he met a famed Ṣūfī master, the s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Muḥammad āfir al-Madanī (d. 1854). In this s̲h̲ayk…

, Abū Iṣhāḳ b. Mātiʿ b. Haysuʿ/Haynūʿ , a Yemenite Jew who became a convert to Islam, probably in 17/638 (al-Ṭabarī, i, 2514), and is considered the oldest authority on Judaeo-Islamic traditions. Ḥibr/ḥabr , from the Hebrew ḥāber , the scholarly title immediately below rabbi current among Babylonian Jewish scholars, is presumed to be equivalent to the Arabic ʿālim (al-K̲h̲awārizmī, Mafātīḥ , 35); in Kaʿb al-Aḥbār the plural is a determinative complement, while in the less frequent Kaʿb al-Ḥabr the latter element is in apposition to Kaʿb. Lidzbarski ( De propheticis ... legendis arabici…

[see laʿb ].

, chief of the rebellion which overthrew the Ottoman sultan Selīm III. Originally from Kastamuni, a town in north western Anatolia, he was chosen as their leader by the yamaks (supernumerary janissaries) of the Rumelikavak fortresses on the Bosphorus, who rioted on 17 Rabīʿ I 1222/25 May 1807 upon the instigation of the ḳāʾim-maḳam of the grand vizier, Köse Mūsā Pas̲h̲a, and the S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Islām ʿAṭāʾ Allāh Efendi. He conducted the rebellion in an orderly manner, put to death the principal organizers of the Niẓām-i d̲j̲edīd [ q.v.] and served the aims of the instigators of the …

(a.) “guarantee”, a juridical term used mainly in connection with fiscal practice, in a manner which is still very difficult to define precisely. The particular field with which this discussion is concerned is a double one—that of the levying of the land-tax, k̲h̲arād̲j̲ [ q.v.], and that of special taxes, mukūs . As was already the case before the Arab conquest both in the Byzantine Empire and under the Sasanids, local communities were held jointly responsible by the Treasury for the payment at the required time of the ful…

, a Muslim people of the Caucasus. In Russian they are called Kabardintsi̊, in Turkish Kabartaylar; other designation, Käsäg. The name of the Kabards was first mentioned as Cheuerthei by Barbaro, who visited the Caucasus in 1436. Its etymology remains uncertain. The Kabard language belongs to the eastern branch of the Adi̊ghe (Čerkes) linguistic group, which is also referred to as “high Adi̊ghe”. According to the 1926 Soviet census, there were 139,925 Kabards ethnically and 138,925 linguistically. The census of 1939 records 164,000 Kabards. The Kabards live in the basin of Uppe…

, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥusayn al-Tamgrūtī al-Darʿī al-Raḳḳī (from al-Raḳḳa [ q.v.], his native town), a very famous Moroccan saint. Born in the zāwiya of Sayyid al-Nās as it was called (from the name of the Prophet), the founder of which was Abū Isḥāḳ al-Anṣārī, known under the name of Sayyidī Ibrāhīm al-Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲, he grew up there in prayer and asceticism. Accompanied by the son of this latter, Aḥmad, he went to the zāwiya of Tamgrūt, founded by Abū Ḥafṣ, ʿUmar b. Aḥmad al-Anṣārī, in Ramaḍān 983/Dec.-Jan. 1575-76, and settled there until his death on Friday 12 …

[see mīzān ].

, Nizār Tawfīḳ (1923-98), the most widely read and, with over 18,000 lines of verse, the most prolific 20th-century Arabic poet, an important innovator of form and content. Ḳabbānī became a diplomat in 1945 after finishing his law studies in his native Damascus, but he left the service in 1966 so as to devote himself to full-time writing in Beirut, where he started his own publishing house (Dār Mans̲h̲ūrāt Nizār Ḳabbānī) in 1967. He died in London, where, after a short spell in Geneva, he had spent his last years. He was laid to rest in Damascus. Ḳabbānī’s highly poeti…

, opponent of Muḥammad at Medina, reckoned to belong to his mother’s clan al-Naḍīr, though his father was an Arab of the Nabhān section of Ṭayyiʾ. He presumably followed the Jewish custom of taking his religion from his mother, but it is doubtful if he was a scholar, as the words in a poem sayyid al-aḥbār (Ibn His̲h̲ām, 659, 12) would imply, if the poem were genuine. Aroused by the deaths of many leading Meccans at Badr, he went to Mecca and used his considerable poetic gifts (he is called faḥl faṣiḥ in K. al-Ag̲h̲ānī ) to incite Ḳurays̲h̲ to fight the Muslims. On hi…

, a minor Arab poet of the 1st/7th century whom Ibn Sallām ( Ṭabaḳāt , 485-9) places in the 3rd rank of Islamic poets. His genealogy varies with the different authors (Ibn al-Kalbī-Caskel, Tab. 165, no doubt provides the most accurate one), and very little is known of his life. Probably born during the earliest years of the Hid̲j̲ra , he made his appearance at the time of the battle of Ṣiffīn (37/657) as an intimate of Muʿāwiya, of whom, like most of the Tag̲h̲lib [ q.v.], he was a passionate supporter. The conflict with ʿAlī inspired him to write a number of poems, in particular…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh or Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān , one of the poets supporting Muḥammad, was an Anṣārī of the clan of Salima of the tribe of al-K̲h̲azrad̲j̲ [see al-anṣār ]. He must have been born before 600 A.D., since he is said to have taken part in the internal fighting in Medina before the Hid̲j̲ra, and to have been present at the second ʿAḳaba [ q.v.], when allegiance was sworn to Muḥammad. He was not present at Badr, but took part in most of the subsequent expeditions led by Muḥammad. At Uḥud he received several wounds and was the first to recognize Muḥammad after the rumour ¶ that he had been killed. S…

, an Arab poet and contemporary of the Prophet. A son of Zubayr b. Abī Sulmā [ q.v.], he seems to have given proof of his poetic talent at an early age; although belonging to the Muzayna, he lived with the D̲h̲ubyān and was involved in the wars of his tribe against the Ṭayyiʾ, the Ḳurays̲h̲ and the K̲h̲azrad̲j̲. His brother Bud̲j̲ayr was converted shortly before year 7 of the Hid̲j̲ra , but he refused vehemently to follow suit and wrote some satirical verses attacking Muḥammad. The latter officially sanctioned his murder. From that day, “the e…

(a.), verbal noun meaning “seizure”, “grasping”, “contraction”, “abstention”, etc., and used in the special vocabulary of various disciplines. i.—In fiḳh the word signifies taking possession of, handing over. In Mālikī law ḥiyāza is more frequently used. Tasallum is also employed to mean the act of handing over. Taking possession is accomplished by the material transfer of the thing when movable goods are involved; by occupation when it is a question of real estate, but also symbolically by the handing over of the keys or title deeds of the property. Ḳabḍ only …

(according to lexicographers the only correct form) or Kabd , Kibd , “the liver”. 1. Names for the liver and their semantic field. The Muslim peoples, like all others, recognised the internal organs of the human body and identified them with the analogous organs of animals. They also attributed to them one or another physiological and psychosomatic function based on observations which they interpreted according to mental structures that are only partially clear to us. Language itself testifies to these early identifications. As E. Bargheer says, “these are significant …

(?—934/1527), heretic of the early 10th/16th century. Originally from Persia, he came to Istanbul, where he was educated. In 934/1527 he was publicly maintaining, in different parts of the city, that the Ḳurʾān depended in large measure upon the Old and New Testaments, and that Jesus was superior to Muḥammad. Complaints being made to the authorities, on 8 Ṣafar 934/3 November 1527 Ḳābiḍ was brought before the imperial dīwān , where he was interrogated by the ḳāḍīʿaskers of Rumeli (Fenārīzade Muḥyī al-Dīn) and Anatolia (Ḳādirī Čelebi). He defended h…

[see hābīl ].