Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

(a.), a word signifying “path, way” in the literal and “fashion, manner” in the figurative sense, which has become the technical term used to denote “grammar”. The scholar al-K̲h̲wārazmī declares that this art ( ṣināʿa ) is called grammatikē in Greek ( Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm , ed. G. van Vloten, 42), and the lexicographer al-Azharī observes that the Greeks describe naḥw as “the science of words and the study of this science” (quoted by Ibn Manẓūr in the Lisān al-ʿArab ). The majority of sources agree in seeing Abu ’l-Aswad al-Duʾalī [ q.v.] as the founder of Arabic grammar. It was at the re…

(a.), “forbidding wrong”, in full al-amr bi ’l-marʿrūf wa ’l-nahy ʿan al-munkar , “commanding right and forbidding wrong”. The term is used to refer to the exercise of legitimate authority, either by holders of public office or by individual Muslims who are legally competent ( mukallaf ), with the purpose of encouraging or enforcing adherence to the requirements of the S̲h̲arīʿa . This article deals mainly with the duty of individual Muslims in this regard; technically, this is usually considered to be a collective obligation ( farḍ kifāya ) [see farḍ ]. 1 Terminology. The term is taken …

(a.), literally “substitute, delegate” ( nomen agentis from n-w-b “to take the place of another”), the term applied generally to any person appointed as deputy of another in an official position. 1. In pre-modern usage. The term was used, more especially, in the Mamlūk and Dihlī Sultanates, to designate ( a) the deputy or lieutenant of the sultan, and ( b) the governors of the chief provinces. In the Mamlūk system the former, entitled nāʾib al-salṭana al-muʿaẓẓama wa-kāfil al-mamālik al-s̲h̲arīfa al-islāmiyya , was the vice-sultan proper, who administer…

[see isāf ].

, properly Pīrī-zāde (after his father Pīrī K̲h̲alīfe Muṣṭafā Čelebi, a celebrated Ottoman poet of the 17th century, d. in 1077/1666-7. To distinguish him from the 19th century poet and Mewlewī adherent Ṣāliḥ Nāʾilī of Monastir (who died in 1293/1876 in Cairo) he has since been called Nāʾilī-yi Ḳadīm, “old Nāʾilī”, the later poet being referred to as Nāʾilī-yi D̲j̲edīd, “new Nāʾilī”. Nāʾilī was born in Istanbul presumably about the beginning of the 17th century (as we are led to assume based on indications in his Dīwān ). He enjoyed a good education, upon the…

(1065-1128/1655-1716) Ottoman historian. Muṣṭafā Naʿīm, known by the mak̲h̲laṣ Naʿīmā, was born in Aleppo, probably in 1065/1655, the son of a Janissary commander. As a young man he entered, ca. 1100/1688-9, the palace corps of balṭad̲j̲i̊lar [ q.v.] in Istanbul and received a thorough scribal education, developing particular interests in literature, history and astrology. He may also have attended classes at the Beyazīd mosque. Graduating from the balṭad̲j̲i̊ ¶ corps, he was apprenticed to the kātib s of the dīwān-i hümāyūn , and appointed secretary to…

of Temesvár, Timişoara, Ott. Ṭi̊mi̊s̲h̲war, Ṭi̊mi̊s̲h̲warī al-Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ Ibrāhīm (1107/1695-?), Ottoman author, with the penname ( tak̲h̲alluṣ [ q.v.]) Naʿīm(ī). Born in Ṭi̊mi̊s̲h̲war [ q.v.] as an offspring of a typical borderer family, he left his native town after the Habsburg conquest of 1716 and spent his further life in the service of high dignitaries (Muḥsin-zāde ʿAbd Allāh Pas̲h̲a, G̲h̲āzī al-Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ Ḥusayn Pas̲h̲a, Nāʾilī ʿAbd Allāh Pas̲h̲a) as dīwān kātibi . Works: (1) Ḥadīḳatü’l-s̲h̲ühedāʾ , finished in 1157/1744, but enlarged by an appendix ( d̲h̲ayl …

, Nāyin , a small town (lat. 53° 05’ E., long. 32° 52’ N., altitude 1,408 m/4.620 feet) on the southwestern edge of the Great Desert of central Persia and on the road connecting Yazd with Iṣfahān and Ḳum. The town seems to have a pre-Islamic history, but nothing is known of this. The mediaeval Islamic geographers place it in the sardsīr or cooler upland regions and describe it as administratively within Fārs (al-Iṣṭak̲h̲rī) but as dependent on either Yazd or Iṣfahān. According to Mustawfī, Nuzha , 69, tr. 77, its citadel (whose ruins are still visible) had w…

, Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥusayn G̲h̲arawī (1277-1355/1860-1936), a prominent S̲h̲īʾī religious leader, an active supporter of the Persian constitutional revolution of 1324/1906, and a noted constitutionalist ideologue. He was born into a religiously distinguished family of Nāʾīn [ q.v.] where his father, Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Mīrzā ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, and his grandfather, Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Mīrzā Muḥammad Saʿīd, both in turn held the title of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Islām . He received his primary education in Nāʾīn; and then, in 1294/1877, he moved to Iṣfahān, pursuing his studies in uṣūl al-fiḳh …

or Naʾitas, originally Nawāts, meaning seamen, is a regional Indian term applied to Muslims of Arab and Persian descent who settled on the coast of Konkan (the coastal plain of Mahārās̲h̲tra state; hence they are also known as Konkanī Muslims) and in Kanara (region along the Malabar [ q.v.] coast of the Arabian Sea in what is now western Karnātaka state; see K.B. Faridi, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency , ix, pt. 2, Gujarat population, Musalmans and Parsis , Bombay 1899, 14-15). They are the descendants of the earliest Muslim trading communities on…

(a.), a term connected with nuḳāwā , a generic noun denoting alkaline plants utilised for washing linen and whitening cloths. These are plants which grow stems without any leaves; as soon as they dry up, they become white. They give linen a dazzling white colouring. By analogy, the term denotes also a “rite of reconciliation” which was used in the Ḥid̲j̲āz and which was used for righting injuries. This was done in the following manner: The party causing the offence stops on the threshhold of the aggrieved party, holding a knife in each hand, and says: al-naḳā naḳānā wa ’l-naḳā naḳiyyu ’l-r…

(a.) “contradicting poems, flytings”, pl. of naḳīḍa (from the verb naḳaḍa “to destroy, undo, rebut, oppose”), synonymous with munāḳaḍāt (from the verbal form III nāḳaḍa ): a form of poetic duelling in which tribal or personal insults are exchanged in poems, usually coming in pairs, employing the same metre and rhyme. It is thus part of invective poetry or hid̲j̲āʾ [ q.v.]. Such duels were an established form in pre-Islamic times, and had their origin in the slanging-matches between members of ¶ different clans or tribes which took the place of, or formed the preliminaries fo…

(in Bedouin pronunciation, Nagb), the Negev desert of southern Palestine, in what is now the State of Israel. It stretches from the coastal plains of Mad̲j̲dal and the southern Hebron hills down to the Gulf of ʿAḳaba [ q.v.]. The name Negev is originally Hebrew, meaning “the dry land”, and is mentioned several times in Genesis (e.g. xii. 9, xiii. 1, xx. 1, etc.) as the place where Abraham often encamped with his livestock and where he dug the well eventually called ¶ Beʾers̲h̲evaʿ (Ar. Biʾr al-Sabʿ [ q.v.]). The place-name Nagb is not found in Classical Arabic historical or geograp…

(a.), the portion of the dowry handed over at the conclusion of a marriage, see mahr . In modern Arabic, it has the sense of “money”, see sikka .

(a.), “[literary] criticism”, in modern Arabic, al-naḳd al-adabī , in mediaeval times most commonly used in the construct naḳd al-s̲h̲iʿr “criticism of poetry”. The critic is nāḳid (pl. nuḳḳād or naḳada ) or, more rarely, naḳḳād ; the form VIII verbal noun intiḳād is a synonym of naḳd . The term originated in the figurative use ( mad̲j̲āz ) of naḳd in the sense of “assaying (coins) and separating the good from the bad” (for the mad̲j̲āz character, see al-Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī. Asās al-balāg̲h̲a , Beirut n.d., col. 469c, and for an extended analogy between assayer and critic, see al-Tawḥīdī, al-Muḳ…

(a.), denotes the act of violating a religious covenant ( ʿahd or mīt̲h̲āḳ ), occasionally used in S̲h̲īʿsm and, more commonly, Bahāʾism [ q.v.], where the standard English term is “covenant-breaking”. The terms ʿahd and mīt̲h̲āḳ are Ḳurʾānic (II, 27, 63, 83; III, 81; VIII, 56; XIII, 20, ¶ 25; XVI, 91, etc.), where they refer to God’s general covenant with men or His prophets, or to specific covenants, such as that with the Banū Isrāʾīl [see mīt̲h̲āḳ ]. In S̲h̲īʾī tradition, the Prophet entered into a specific mīt̲h̲āḳ concerning the succession of ʿAlī. Each Imām in turn enters int…

b. Yazīd , al-Kūfī , Abū ʿImrān , a Successor ( Tābiʿī ), Kūfan traditionist and lawyer, who enjoyed a certain fame, b. ca . 50/670, d. ca. 96/717. His informants were above all ʿAbd Allāh b. Masʿūd [ q.v.] but also Anas b. Mālik and ʿĀʾisha [ q.vv.]. He seems to have been part of the latter’s circle, and transmitted from her a fair number of items concerning in particular the behaviour of women and husband-and-wife relations, beginning with her own marriage with the Prophet. It is not without significance that a number of these items of information were critically examined by an Ibn Ḳutayba. But it…

[see al-madīna. 3].

, Nak̲h̲čuwān , the name of a town in Transcaucasia which is also the chief town of a region of the same name, until the early 19th century a largely independent khanate and in former Soviet Russian administrative geography part of the Azerbaijan SSR but an enclave within the Armenian Republic. Both town and region lie to the northwest of the great southern bend of the Araxes river, since 1834 here the frontier between Persia and Russian territory. The town of Nak̲h̲čiwān is …

(a.), substantive of a collective nature (unit, nak̲h̲la , pl. nak̲h̲īl ) denoting the date palm ( Phoenix dactylifera ) of the order Palmae , sub-order Coryphineae . In Persian it is nak̲h̲l or k̲h̲urma , in Turkish hurma ag̲h̲ad̲j̲i̊ , in Hebrew tāmār and in Tamaḥaḳ, according to the sex, azzay/tazzayt, émellé/tamellalt , tadamant . This attractive tree with dioecious flowers is probably one of the first to be known and exploited by mankind in the hot and arid zones of Africa and the Orient. The important role which has always been played by the date palms and their fruits [see tamr …