Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

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Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs

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The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Second Edition) Online sets out the present state of our knowledge of the Islamic World. It is a unique and invaluable reference tool, an essential key to understanding the world of Islam, and the authoritative source not only for the religion, but also for the believers and the countries in which they live. 

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Laʿaḳat al-Dam

(912 words)

Author(s): Pellat, Ch.
“lickers of blood”, the name given to a group of clans of Ḳurays̲h̲. According to tradition, Ḳuṣayy [ q.v.] had allocated to the different subdivisions of Ḳurays̲h̲ the quarters which they were to occupy in Mecca and had entrusted to the Banū ʿAbd al-Dār various local offices: administration of the dār al-nadwa and bearing the standard ( liwāʾ ), the furnishing of provisions ( rifāda ) and drink ( siḳāya ) to the pilgrims, and custodianship of the Kaʿba ( ḥid̲j̲āba [see kaʿba ]). However, the Banū ʿAbd Manāf thought themselves more worthy of these privile…

Laʿb

(5 words)

[see laʿib ].

Labāb

(457 words)

Author(s): Bregel, Yu.
(from Pers. lab-i āb “riverside”), the irrigated region along the banks of Amū Daryā [ q.v.] in its middle course. The name, though of Persian origin, became known apparently only in modern times, when this region became one of the main centres of the settlement of the Turkmens. The exact limits of the region have never been defined; it seems that it extended as far as Darg̲h̲ān (the southernmost town of K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.]) in the north and as far as Kālif [ q.v.] in the south. In pre-Mongol times a narrow tract of cultivated land stretched along both the left and the right ba…

Labbai

(1,012 words)

Author(s): Mines, M.
(Tamil ilappai , thought by Tamil ʿulamāʾ to derive from labbayka , the pilgrims’ cry [see talbiya ]), a community of Tamil-speaking Muslims residing in or originating from Tamilnadu State, South India. Labbai is a generic term incorporating four subdivisions, the Marakkayar, Kayalar, Rawther and Labbai. All four groups are Sunnīs, the first two predominantly of the S̲h̲āfiʿi school, while the latter two are Ḥanafīs. The Marakkayars and Kayalars predominate in the southern coastal regions o…

Labbayka

(5 words)

[see talbiya ].

Labībī

(454 words)

Author(s): Bruijn, J.T.P. de
, the pen-name of a Persian poet who lived at the end of the 4th/11th and the beginning of the 5th/12th century. His personal name as well as almost any other particulars of his life are unknown. The Tard̲j̲umān al-balāg̲h̲a has preserved an elegy by Labībī on the death of Farruk̲h̲ī [ q.v.], which means that the former was probably still alive in 429/1037-8. A ḳaṣīda attributed to him by ʿAwfī is addressed to a mamdūḥ by the name of Abu ’l-Muẓaffar, who in that source is identified with a younger brother of the G̲h̲aznavid Sultan Maḥmūd. But it i…

Labīd b. Rabīʿa

(1,514 words)

Author(s): Brockelmann, C.
, Abū ʿAḳīl , Arab poet of the muk̲h̲aḍram . He belonged to the family of Banū D̲j̲aʿfar, a branch of the Kilāb, who belonged to the Banū ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa (see Ibn al-Kalbī-Caskel, Tab. 93 and Register, ii, 374-5). According to Ibn Saʿd, vi, 21, he died in 40/660-1 in the night on which Muʿāwiya arrived in al-Nuk̲h̲ayla to conclude peace with al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī. Others, like Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, iii, 657, whom Nöldeke ( Fünf Moʿallaqât , ii, 51) thinks ought to be followed, give 41 A.H., others again 42. He is said to have reached an unusually great age (al-Sid̲j̲istānī, K. al-Muʿammarīn

Labin

(1,588 words)

Author(s): Pellat, Ch.
or Libn (coll.; singular labina , libna ) designates in Arabic the unfired brick whose use in building dates back to the earliest antiquity; to speak only of the present domain of Islam, some traces have survived above-ground on the Iranian plateau, in Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt, where this material was used in the Pharaonic period to build palaces and royal tombs as well as poor hovels; it is certain that it was also in use in the Arabian peninsula and North Africa. The hog-backed bricks of Mesopotamia appear to be no longer used, and the labina generally has a geometric, fairly reg…

Labla

(1,068 words)

Author(s): Bosch-Vilá, J.
, the name given by Arabic authors to Niebla , ancient Ilipla, which was the seat of a bishop in the Visigothic period and which is situated about 40 miles to the west of Seville in the right bank of the Rio Tin to (in the modern province of Huelva). Certain authors, notably Yāḳūt, also call it al-Ḥamrāʾ because of the reddish colour of its walls and of its environs. It was the main town of one of the kūras of the G̲h̲arb al-Andalus [ q.v.]; it must have been integrated within the great division of Is̲h̲bīliya [ q.v.], and separated from it in the course of the administrative reorganisation. The kūra

Laccadives

(1,368 words)

Author(s): Forbes, A.D.W.
, a group of coral islands in the south-eastern Arabian Sea lying off the Malabar Coast of India between lat. 8° and 12°30′ N., and between long. 71° and 74° E. Under British Indian rule these were formerly the Laccadive Minicoy and Amindivi Islands; but in 1956 the group was brought under a single administration to form the Indian Union Territory of Lakshadweep (Sanskrit: Lakṣadvīpa “the hundred thousand islands”). There are in all 27 islands and islets of which ten—Maliku, Kalpeni, Kavrathi, Androth, Agathi, Amin…

Ladāk̲h̲

(491 words)

Author(s): Jackson, P.
, a region of the extreme north of India. It lies between lat. 32° and 36° N and long. 75° and 80° E, and is bounded on the north and east by the Chinese territories of Sin-kiang and Tibet, on the south by the Indian province of Himačāl Prades̲h̲, on the north-west by Baltistān, and on the west by Kas̲h̲mīr, of which it now constitutes a province, covering an area of 30,220 sq. miles. Its capital is Leh. Ladāk̲h̲ is known to the Tibetans as Mangyāl or Māryul. The population may be divided into four racial groups, Čāmpās, Ladāk̲h̲īs, Baltīs and Dārds, of whom the first thr…

Lād̲h̲iḳ

(1,350 words)

Author(s): Planhol, X. de
the name of several Anatolian towns, and the Turkish form, phonetically identical, of the name of Laodicea (Λαοδίκεια), which, since the imperial period often appears in inscriptions with the form Λαδίκεια, accented on the second syllable (cf. Robert, Villes d’Asie Mineure 2, Paris 1962, 283); Modern Turkish orthography Lâdik. 1. Lād̲h̲iḳ near Denizli, Laodicea of Lycos, or Laodicea of Phrygia. The ruins are located at a place called Eski Hisar, 8 km. to the north of the centre of Denizli, the acropolis standing on a hill which dominates the v…

al-Lād̲h̲iḳiyya

(3,759 words)

Author(s): Elisséeff, N.
(European transcriptions: Lattaquié, Latakia), a major Syrian port, was known by the Greek name of Λαοδίκεια ἡ ἐπι θαλάσση, and later by the Latin name of Laodicea ad Mare, whilst the Crusaders called it La Liche. In the second millenium, the settlement bore the name of Ramitha of the Phoenicians and was dependent, before taking its place, on Ugarit, a powerful metropolis lying 8 miles/12 km. to the north. It was in 327 B.C., or six years after the death of Alexander that Seleucus Nicator (301-281 B.C.) founded on this site ¶ a city to which he gave the name of Laodicea in honour of h…

Lad̲j̲āʾ

(973 words)

Author(s): Gaube, H.
(literally “refuge”) is the largest, geologically-recent lava-field in the south of Syria, comprising a plain of ca. 900 square km. It has roughly the form of a triangle, the base of which is formed in the south by the line Izraʿ-S̲h̲ahba ( ca. 45 km.) and the apex of which lies ca. 48 km. to the north near Burrāḳ ( ca. 50 km. south-east of Damascus). In the north, the area is limited by the Wādī al-ʿAd̲j̲am, in the east by the Arḍ al-Bat̲h̲aniyya [see al-bat̲h̲aniyya ], in the south-east by the D̲j̲abal al-Durūz, in the south by the Nuḳra of Ḥawrān [ q.v.], in the south-west by D̲j̲awlān [ q.v.] and in…

Lad̲j̲d̲j̲ūn

(1,119 words)

Author(s): Bakhīit, M.A. Al-
, a small town in the Esdraelon plain in the vicinity of ancient Megiddo, in the north of Palestine, at lat. 32° 34′ N. and long. 35° 21′ E. It was the seat of the sixth Roman legion, on account of which it came to be known as Legio, and Lad̲j̲d̲j̲ūn is the Arabic adaptation of the Roman name. The town, which is 175 m. above sea level, is referred to by early Arab geographers as part of Ḏj̲und al-Urdunn bordering on the Ḏj̲und of Palestine. The Islamic…

Lād̲j̲īn

(725 words)

Author(s): Holt, P.M.
( Lāčīn ), al-Malik al-Manṣūr Ḥusām al-Dīn , alias S̲h̲uḳayr or al-As̲h̲ḳar , Turkish Mamlūk sultan. Originally a mamlūk of al-Malik al-Manṣūr ʿAlī b. Aybak, Lād̲j̲īn was purchased after his master’s deposition in 658/1259 by the future sultan Ḳalāwūn [ q.v.], on whose accession he was raised to the amirate, and sent to Damascus as governor of the citadel (D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 678/April 1280). His appointment alarmed the provincial governor, Sunḳur al-As̲h̲ḳar, who proclaimed himself sultan. The revolt was suppressed by an expeditiona…

Lafẓ

(1,061 words)

Author(s): Carter, M.G. | van Ess, J.
(a.), lit: “to spit out” (see WbKAS , letter L, ii/2, 989). 1. In grammar. Here it denotes primarily the actual expression of a sound or series of sounds, hence “articulation” and, more broadly, the resulting “linguistic form”. It has ¶ always been distinct from ṣawt “[individual] sound” (cf. Troupeau, ṣ-w-t , and see Bakalla, 39 ff. and 49 ff., for its use in Ibn D̲j̲innī (d. 392/1002 [ q.v.]), which provides the base for the modern Arabic terms for phonetics, ʿilm al-aṣwāt , and phonology, ʿilm waẓāʾif al-aṣwāt (and note also the neologism ṣawtiyya [ q.v.] for ¶ the collective description …

Laghouat

(2,207 words)

Author(s): Yver, G. | Merad, A.
( al-Ag̲h̲wāṭ ), Algerian town and oasis, administrative centre of a wilāya (district), 420 km. to the south of Algiers (long. 0° 30′ E. [Paris], lat. 33° 48′ N. Altitude: 787 m.). It was formerly the administrative centre of one of the four “Territories of the South” forming the region of Algeria administered under martial law, until the reform instituted by the law of 20 September 1947 ( Statut de l’Algérie ). On account of its geographical position, dominating the defence of the Sahara, as well as memories connected with the dramatic story …

Laḥad

(5 words)

[see ḳabr ].

Lāhawr

(5,211 words)

Author(s): Jackson, P. | Andrews, P.A.
( Lahore ), the principal city of the Pand̲j̲āb [ q.v.], situated on the left bank of the Rāwī about 700 feet above sea level, at lat. 31° 35′ N. and long. 74° 20′ E. Its strategic location in the ¶ fertile alluvial region of the upper Indus plain has guaranteed it an important rôle in Indian history, very often as a frontier stronghold and more recently as the capital of the Sikh [ q.v.] empire. Since 1947 it has been included in the republic of Pākistān, of which it is the second largest city. 1. History. Popular etymology connects the foundation of Lāhawr with the mythical Lava (Lōh), …
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