Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

(a.), monasticism. The term is derived from rāhib [ q.v.] “anchovite, monk”; it occurs in the Ḳurʾān once only, in a complicated passage (sūra LVII, 27) that has given rise to divergent interpretations: “And we put in the hearts of those who followed Jesus, compassion and mercy, and the monastic state ( rahbāniyya ); they instituted the same (we did not prescribe it to them) only out of a desire to please God. Yet they observed not the same as it ought truly to have been observed. And we gave unto such of them as believed, their reward; but many of them have been doers of evil.” According to some of …

(a., pl. ruhbān , rahābīn , rahābina ), a monk. The figure of the monk is known to pre-Islamic poetry and to the Ḳurʾān and Tradition. The pre-Islamic poets refer to the monk in his cell, the light of which the traveller by night sees in the distance and which gives him the idea of shelter. In the Ḳurʾān, the monk and the ḳissīs , sometimes also the aḥbār , are the religious leaders of the Christians. In one place it is said that rabbis and monks live at the expense of other men (sūra IX, 34) and that the Christians have taken as their masters instead of God their aḥbār and their monks as well as al-Mas…

(a.), “travelling by camel”, a term applied in Arabic poetry to themes involving a desert journey. In its specific meaning it denotes a section of the polythematic ḳaṣīda [ q.v.], following the nasīb [ q.v.], where the poet describes his camel and his travels. The term is derived from the verb raḥala “to saddle a camel” or “to mount a camel”. In Arabic poetics, the raḥīl is not classified among the “genres” ( ag̲h̲rāḍ ) of poetry, nor is the term used in a technical sense. Mediaeval critics usually paraphrase the theme (cf. Ibn Ḳutayba, S̲h̲iʿr , 14). In the D̲j̲āhiliyya [ q.v.], poets allude to…

, in the Bible Rachel, wife of Jacob, mother of Joseph and Benjamin, is not mentioned in the Ḳurʾān. There is, however, a reference to her in sūra IV, 27: “Ye may not have two sisters to wife at the same time; if it has been done formerly, God now exercises pardon and mercy.” This is said to allude to Jacob’s marriage with Liyā and Rāḥīl; before Moses revealed the Tora, such a marriage was valid. Al-Ṭabarī gives this explanation in his Annals , i, 356, 359-60. Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, i, 90, adopts it. But already in Tafsīr , iv, 210, al-Ṭabarī explains the verse correctly: Muḥ…

[see allāh ].

(a.), a Ḳurʾānic term (attested 114 times), denoting either kindness, benevolence (synonym of raʾfa ) or—more frequently—an act of kindness, a favour (synonym of niʿma or faḍl ). Al-most invariably, the term is applied to God; in only three verses is there reference to the raḥma which humans have, or should have, in their relationships with others: sons towards their father and mother (XVII, 24), married couples between themselves (XXX, 21), Christians among themselves (LVII, 27). The French translation by “miséricorde”, although often used, is misleading, since in curr…

[see Ḳurṣān. iii].

[see basmala ; Ḳurʾān ].

, Algerian Ṣūfī order ( ṭarīḳa ) called after Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Gas̲h̲tulī al-D̲j̲urd̲j̲urī al-Azharī Abū Ḳabrayn, who died in 1208/1793-4. It is a branch of the K̲h̲alwatiyya [ q.v.] and is said to have at one time been called Bakriyya after Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī al-S̲h̲āmī. At Nafṭa [ q.v.], in Tunisia, and some other places it is called ʿAzzūziyya after Muṣṭafā b. Muḥammad b. ʿAzzūz. Life of the founder. His family belonged to the tribe Ayt Smāʿīl, part of the Gas̲h̲tula confederation in the Ḳābiliyya D̲j̲urd̲j̲ura; having studied at his home, and th…

(a.), pledge, security; rāhin , the giver and murtahin , the taker of the pledge. The Ḳurʾān (II, 283), obviously in confirmation of pre-Islamic legal usage, provides for the giving of pledges ( rihānun maḳbūḍa ) in business in which a definite period is concerned, if the preparation of a written document is impossible. The part here played by the security as evidence of the existence of an obligation is in Islamic law much less important than that of securing the fulfilment of a demand. From the latter point of view, the traditions are mainly concerned with two questions: a. whether the secu…

, laḳab of a poet of the Banū Numayr [ q.v.] who lived in the 1st/7th century. His real name was ʿUbayd b. Ḥuṣayn (see his genealogy in Ibn al-Kalbī, D̲j̲amharat al-nasab , ed. W. Caskel, Leiden 1966, Taf. 92 and 112; for other sources see R. Weipert, Studien , 27-8), but he was commonly known as al-Rāʿī al-Numayrī. His kunya Abū D̲j̲andal refers to his son D̲j̲andal, who inherited his father’s poetical talent and produced some poems (for a collection of some fragments see N. Ḥ. al-Ḳaysī and H. Nād̲j̲ī, S̲h̲iʿr al-Rāʿī 8-13). Al-Rāʿī was a sayyid of his tribe and comma…

(“The Tunisian Scout”), the first official newspaper to be published in the Arabic language, appearing on 22 July 1860 and thereafter on a weekly basis. Considered the third-oldest newspaper of the Arab world [see d̲j̲arīda ], after al-Waḳāʾiʿ al-miṣriyya (1828) and the Algerian Moniteur , al-Mubas̲h̲s̲h̲ir (1847), this leading light of the Tunisian press was created by the twelfth Ḥusaynī Bey Ṣādiḳ (1859-82), at the instigation of the minister K̲h̲ayr al-Dīn [ q.v.], champion of the Tunisian reformist movement, with the object of promoting the reforms set in motion…

, a slave singing-girl ( ḳayna [ q.v.]) in the earliest days of Islam. She is mentioned as being in the poetry and music-making circles of Medina in ʿUt̲h̲mān’s caliphate, i.e. the middle years of the 7th century A.D., and as being the teacher ( ustād̲h̲a ) of the celebrated singer ʿAzza al-Maylāʾ [ q.v.]. (Ed.) Bibliography Ag̲h̲ānī 1, xvi, 13=3xvi, 162 H. G. Farmer, A history of Arabian music, London 1929, 46, 54, 147.

(a.), pl. ruʾasāʾ , from raʾs , “head”, denotes the “chief, leader” of a recognisable group (political, religious, juridical, tribal, or other). The term goes back to pre-Islamic times and was used in various senses at different periods of Islamic history, either to circumscribe specific functions of the holder of the office of “leadership” ( riʾāsa ) or as a honorific title ( laḳab [ q.v.]). 1. In the sense of “mayor” in the central Arab lands. Here, the raʾīs most commonly referred to was the head of a village, a city or a city-region. He emerged as…

(a.), pl. raʿāyā , literally “pasturing herd of cattle, sheep, etc.”, a term which in later Islam came to designate the mass of subjects, the taxpaying common people, as opposed to the ruling military and learned classes. 1. In the mediaeval Islamic world. Ḳurʾānic use of the verb raʿā and its derivatives ¶ covers the two semantic fields of “to pasture flocks” (e.g. XX, 56/54; XXVIII, 23) and “to tend, look after someone’s interests” (e.g. XXIII, 8; LVII, 27; LXX, 32). Since other Near Eastern religions and cultures have evolved the image of the …

(a.), literally “the act of bowing, bending”, a sequence of utterances and actions performed by the Muslim believer as part of the act of worship or ṣalāt , involving utterance of the takbīr and Fātiḥa , then the bending of the body from an upright position ( rukūʿ ) and then two prostrations ( sud̲j̲ūd ). See further ṣalāt . (Ed.)

[see abān b. ʿabd al-ḥamīd ].

(a.), from a root signifying “to guard”, “to wait”, “to observe, watch over”, is one of the names of God, with the sense of “guardian, vigilant one who knows everything that takes place”, but it is especially familiar as a term in Arabic love poetry, g̲h̲azal [ q.v.], where it denotes the person who, by watching or simply being present, prevents the lovers from communicating with each other. The character first appears in the amorous poetry of the Umayyad period (B. Blachère, Les principaux thèmes de la poésie érotique au siècle des Umayyades de Damas , in AIEO, v [1934-41], 82-128= Analecta …

(a.) “the sleeping child”. This term (in Mag̲h̲ribī dialects, rāged or bū mergūd ) is used to indicate a foetus which is considered to have stopped its development, continuing to stay in the womb in an unchanged condition for an indefinite period of time, after which it may “wake up” again and resume its development until it is born. The “falling asleep” and “waking up” may either take place spontaneously or (at least in the Mag̲h̲rib) be induced by a religious scholar ( fḳīh ) or by a midwife ( ḳābla ) with the help of charms (a written charm to that effect is f…

[see ibn al-raḳīḳ ].