Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, ʿAbd Allāh , polemicist, copyist, translator, printer and painter, born in Aleppo 1680, died at the Monastery of Mār Yuḥannā, al-S̲h̲uwayr, Lebanon, 30 August 1748. The son of a Greek Orthodox goldsmith, Zāk̲h̲ir learned his father’s trade before studying with Christian scholars and the Muslim s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Sulaymān al-Naḥwī He worked as a copyist for the Catholic missionaries in Aleppo amongst others, especially for the Jesuits, whose translations of works of theology and spirituality he also rend…

(a.), in Islamic art, “ornament, ornamentation”. The word is connected with the noun zuk̲h̲ruf “gold” > “ornamental work” used in Ḳurʾān, XVII, 95/93, bayt min zuk̲h̲ruf, and there is an adjective muzak̲h̲raf “ornamented”; the origin of zuk̲h̲ruf seems to be in a deformation, via Syriac, of Grk. zōgrapheō “to paint”, see Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Qurʾān , Baroda 1938, 150. ¶ Islamic ornament possesses certain qualities that, even if not exclusive to this art, are sufficiently distinct to be recognisable. One is that it is independent from the u…

, local pronunciation Zāk̲h̲ō, a Kurdish town on the Lesser K̲h̲ābūr river [ q.v.] in northern ʿIrāḳ, situated about 8 km/5 miles from the Turkish border and 20 km/12 miles from the Syrian border (lat. 37° 2′ N., long 42° 8′ E.). It became world-famous after the Gulf War (1990) when thousands of Kurdish refugees, fearing retaliation by the ʿIrāḳī army, tried to escape to Turkey but eventually were resettled in Zāk̲h̲ū or near it; as a result, by 1992 Zāk̲h̲ū’s population rose to about 350,000 (?), compared to only about 30,000 (?) in 1950. In addition to the largely Kurdish Muslim populat…

, ʿAlī b. al-Ḳāsim b. Muḥammad al-Tud̲j̲lbī al-Fāsi, Abu ’l-Ḥasan (d. 912/1507), famous Mālikī jurist, whose laḳab is explained in the sources as being unconnected with the trade of making skin vessels for holding wine. He studied K̲h̲alīl’s Muk̲h̲taṣar with Muḥammad b. Ḳāsim al-Ḳawrī al-Miknāsī al-Fāsī (d. 872/1468) and al-Mawwāḳ al-G̲h̲arnāṭī (d. 897/1492), whose al-Tād̲j̲ wa ’l-iklīl he also transmitted. Al-Zaḳḳāḳ is the author of an urd̲j̲ūza [see rad̲j̲az ] in which he explained the basic principles of the Mālikī legal school, entitled al-Manhad̲j̲ al-muntak̲h̲ab ilā uṣūl…

(a.), a tree that figures in Islamic eschatology as growing in Hell, with bitter fruit which the damned are condemned to eat. It is mentioned in the Ḳurʾān three times (XXXVII, 60/62; XLIV, 43; LVI, 52). The lexicographers explain it as an evil-smelling tree that grows in the Tihāma, but also as a medically beneficial one that grows in the Jordan valley around Jericho; and as a foodstuff of the Arabs, composed of fresh butter with dates (see Lane, 1239a-b). Richard Bell, The Qurʾān translated, ii, 556 n. 1, cited as a parallel the same word in Syriac meaning “the hogbean”; Bell…

, the Ottoman Turkish name for the Greek island of Zakynthos, Ital. Zacinto, Fr. and Eng. Zante, the southernmost of the Ionian islands, lying off the westernmost tip of the Peloponnese [see mora ]. Lost to Byzantium in 1185, it passed under the control of various Western powers until 1328 when it was seized by the Italian Tocco family, whose Ionian Islands dominions were to prosper till the later 15th century, receiving large numbers of refugees from the Greek mainland. Zakynthos, together with Cephalonia and Levkas/Aya Mavra [see levkas ], was briefly capture…

(a., pl. zalāʾid̲j̲ , also zallīd̲j̲ , a word somehow related to Perso-Arabic lād̲j̲ward/lāzward “lapis lazuli” (see Dozy, Supplément, i, 598; idem and W.H. Engelmann, Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dérivés de l’arabe , 2Leiden 1869, 229), a mosaic composed of fragments of pottery squares with a coloured enamelled surface. The technique involved is more one of marquetry than mosaic, since the pieces are cut into shape according to the place they will occupy in the motif as a whole (G. Audisio, La marquetterie de terre émaillée ( mosaїque de faїence ) dans l’art musulman d’Occ…

, a decisive battle which took place in Muslim Spain near Badajoz (479/1086) and was won by the Almoravids [see al-murābiṭūn ] in their first encounter with Alfonso VI of Castile. Alfonso’s capture of Toledo (478/1085) posed a great threat to the Ṭāʾifa princes of al-Andalus, driving them to seek the help of the Almoravid sovereign of Morocco, Yūsuf b. Tās̲h̲ufīn [ q.v.], who responded to their appeal and called on the Andalusī amīrs to join his campaign. On learning of the advance of the Muslim troops, Alfonso raised his siege of Saragossa ¶ and sought help from Sancho Ramírez of Arago…

, Manṣūr b. D̲j̲aʿfar al-Ḍārib, famous lute-player at the early ʿAbbāsid court. He was a dark-skinned muwallad of humble, possibly “Nabatean” origin from Kūfa [see barṣawma , in Suppl.]. Under the tuition of Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī [ q.v.], his future brother-in-law who gave him an education in “Arab music” ( al-g̲h̲ināʾ al-ʿarabī ), he became one of the rare musicians to be proverbially known as an instrumentalist without being a singer ( aṭrab min ʿūd Zalzal ). He seems first to have appeared at court under the caliph al-Mahdī ( r. 158-69/775-85). Under Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd ( r. 170-93/786-809)…

(a.), also Zilzāl , pl. zalāzil , earthquake, a fact of life in many parts of the Islamic world, from Morocco to Southeast Asia, a zone that coincides in large part with the great Alpide belt stretching from the Azores to the Indonesian archipelago. Along this zone of collision between the Eurasian plate to the north and various smaller tectonic plates to the south, the main areas of activity within the Islamic heartlands are the Anatolian fault zone, the Dead Sea-Jordan transfor…

, a small town of mediaeval Islamic K̲h̲wārazm [ q.v.]. It lay between the small town of Nūzwār and Gurgand̲j̲ [ q.v.], the later mediaeval capital of the province. In the 8th/14th century Ibn Baṭṭūṭa placed it as a village four miles from the “city of K̲h̲wārazm”, i.e. New Urgenč [ q.v.], the city which had grown up after the Mongols had in 618/1221 devastated Old Urgenč (= the later Kunya/Kuhna “Old” Urgenč) ( Riḥla , iii, 6, tr. Gibb and Beckingham, iii, 543). It never seems to have been of more than modest size. Al-Muḳaddasī, 289, mentions tha…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar, called D̲j̲ār Allāh, one of the outstanding scholars of later mediaeval Islamic times who made important contributions, first, in the fields of the linguistic sciences of grammar, philology, lexicography and the collecting of proverbs, in which sciences ¶ he was, despite his own Iranian descent, a strong proponent of the Arab cause vis-à-vis the Persophile partisans of the S̲h̲uʿūbiyya [ q.v.]; and second, in the fields of theology and Ḳurʾān exegesis, his approach to these being that of the Muʿtazila [ q.v.], of whom he may be considered as one of …

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Maḥmūd ʿUmar . 2. Contributions in the fields of theology, exegesis, ḥadīt̲h̲ and adab . His father, as imām of the local mosque in Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲ar, taught him the Ḳurʾān, but since he lacked the means to support the further education of his son, he wanted him to become a tailor. Yielding to his son’s wishes, however, he brought him to the capital of Ḵh̲wārazm, Ḏj̲urd̲j̲āniyya, which henceforth became his permanent home and where he first earned his sustenance by copying for a wealthy patron. His ambition was a high secretarial career in governme…

(a.), time. 1. In philosophy Time, for those who recognised the authority of the Greeks, sc. the falāsifa [ q.v.], had numerous meanings: it denoted the near millennium and a half that separated them from the “first master”, and it signified that of which Aristotle (Arisṭūṭālīs [ q.v.]) had propounded the theory in the 4th and 8th books of the Physics , a work which, ancient though it was, seemed to them as if written only yesterday; see al-Ṭabīʿa , ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī, Cairo 1964-65, 2 vols., tr. of the Physics by Isḥāḳ b. Ḥunayn [ q.v.], accompanied by commentaries of Abū ʿAlī b. Sa…

(p., lit. “land-holder”), a term used in Muslim India for landowners, possessors of estates. It seems to be a term of exclusively Indian origin; it does not appear in pre-modern lexicons compiled in Persia, while, on the other hand, it occurs in fairly early Persian texts and in lexicons compiled in India. It is defined in an 8th/14th-century dictionary, the Farhang-i Ḳawwās as “controller of a territory”. The historians Ḍiyāʾ Baranī (d. 758/1357 [ q.v.]) and S̲h̲ams Sirād̲j̲ ʿAfīf (d. ca. 802/1400 [see s̲h̲ams al-dīn. i. sirād̲j̲ ʿafīf ]) employ it generally for Hindu chiefs outsi…

, the name found in pre-modern usage for a region of what is now eastern Afgh̲ānistān, also appearing in mediaeval Arabic usage as its Arabic equivalent Bilād al-Dāwar. The region straddled the courses of the upper Helmand river and the Arg̲h̲andāb to the north of their confluence at Bust, hence it was bounded on the north by Zābulistān and al-Ruk̲h̲k̲h̲ad̲j̲ [ q.vv.] on the south and southeast, but the boundaries of all these regions were indeterminate, and Zamīndāwar, in particular, seems often to have been confused in the sources with that of Zābulistān. The early Arabic geographers …

, a town on the left bank of the Oxus river [see āmū daryā ] in mediaeval Islamic Central Asia. It lay some 190 km/120 miles upstream from Āmul-i S̲h̲aṭṭ [see āmul. 2.] in the direction of Tirmid̲h̲ [ q.v.], hence this Āmul was sometimes called “the Āmul of Zamm”, from Zamm’s being the next crossing-place along the river (see e.g. al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ , 410). Zamm was significant as a crossing-place connecting K̲h̲urāsān with Mā warāʾ al-nahr [ q.vv.]. It figures in historical accounts of the early Arab invasions of Transoxania as an entry-point for armies aiming at Payk…

(a.), the sacred well located at the perimeter of the sacred complex of Mecca. It is situated to the east of the Kaʿba [ q.v.] alongside the wall where the “Black Stone”, al-ḥad̲j̲ar al-aswad , is enshrined, a little further from the centre than the maḳām Ibrāhīm [ q.v.], the “station of Abraham”. The well is currently a subterranean arrangement, also opening towards the east. The sacred water is distributed through taps (on earlier architectural features since the beginning of the ʿAbbāsid era, see M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Pèlerinage , 77-80, where is found information concerning the ḳub…

(a.), in early Arabic “the confused noise of distant thunder” (Lane, 1249b), but widely used in the sources for early Islamic history for the priests of the Magians reciting and intoning the Zoroastrian prayers and scriptures, producing (to the Arabs’ ears) an indistinct, droning sound. Thus in al-Ṭabarī, i, 1042, we have the zamzama of the Herbadhs, in 2874 the muzamzim or adherent of Zoroastrianism, and in 2880 zamzama for the Zoroastrian rites and zamāzima for the Magians in general. The term may have passed into Christian Sogdian texts, probably in the early Islamic period, as zmzmʾ …

(p.), conventionally Zenana, lit. “female, womanly”, whence the particular use of the term especially in Muslim India for the private quarters of the womenfolk in a house, the equivalent of Arabic ḥarīm [ q.v.], ḥaram and Turkish ḥaramli̊ḳ . See Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson , a glossary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases, 2 London 1903, 980; and ḥarīm .