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D̲j̲anāza

(810 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
(or D̲j̲ināza , Ar.) a corpse, bier, or corpse and bier, and then, funeral. It was sunna [ q.v.] to whisper the S̲h̲ahāda [ q.v.] in the ear of a dying man whose face was turned towards Mecca. The dead body was washed by those of the same sex though ¶ there were exceptions; Abū Bakr [ q.v.] gave orders that he should be washed by his widow. It was a mark of piety for one at the point of death to wash himself in readiness. The body was not stripped entirely and was washed several times, always an uneven number, and for the last sidr leaves or camphor was steeped in the water. I…

Dunyā

(441 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
(Ar.), the feminine of the elative adjective meaning ‘nearer, nearest’, is used in the Ḳurʾān, often combined with ‘life’ to mean This world. It had more or less This sense before Islam (Noeldeke, Muʿallaḳāt des ʿAmr und des Ḥārith , 49). The heaven of the dunyā is the lowest of the seven; dunyā is what is contained in the succession of night and day, is overshadowed by the sky and upheld by the earth, is all that the eye can see, the world of the seen ( s̲h̲ahāda ). In the realm of the spirit it includes all that Christians mean by the world and the flesh and…

Zunnār

(785 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A. S.
In the form zunnārā this word occurs in Aramaic; in Syriac it is as old as Ephraem and means a girdle worn by monks. It comes obviously from a derivative of the Greek zōnē. In classical Arabic it denotes any girdle, especially that worn by d̲h̲immīs. Christians, Jews, Magians, etc. (As a rule only one or two of the protected religions are named by our authorities but, unless the contrary is stated, it is to be assumed that the statements apply to all). In modern Arabic it means the locks of hair worn by Jews on the “corners of the head” (L…

ʿArrāf

(456 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
(a.; the abstract is, ʿirāfa ) one of the names for a diviner. Literally “eminent in knowledge” or “a professional knower”; the European equivalent would be “wise woman” with a change of sex. There are several synonyms. Ṭabīb (physician); “I said to the ʿarrāf of Yamāma, “Treat me, for if you cure me you are indeed a physician”; and “I will give the ʿarrāf of Yamāma his due and the ʿarrāf of Nad̲j̲d, if they cure me.” The two were respectively Rabāḥ b. ʿAd̲j̲ala and al-Ablaḳ al-Asadī. Kāhin (diviner) [ q.v.] is especially one who deduces his answer from the words, behaviour or circum…

al-Bag̲h̲dādī

(316 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
, ʿabd al-ḳāhir b. ṭāhir , abū manṣūr al-S̲h̲āfiʿī , d. 429/1037. His father took him to Nīs̲h̲āpūr for his education and there he made his home. Most of the scholars of Ḵh̲urāsān were his pupils and he could teach 17 subjects, especially law, principles, arithmetic, law of inheritance and theology. He left Nīs̲h̲āpūr because of rioting by Turkmens and went to Isfarāʾīn where he soon after died. He was learned in literature as well as in law, was rich, helped other scholars and his …

Rasūlids

(1,633 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A. S.
, name of a dynasty. The family of Rasūl came to the Yaman [q. v.] with Tūrāns̲h̲āh, the Aiyūbid [q. v.] conqueror. Rasūl was probably a Turkmen though descent from the royal house of G̲h̲assān [q.v.] was claimed for him; he got his name because a caliph employed him as ambassador. ʿAlī b. Rasūl and his three sons became important. The last Aiyūbid Masʿūd put two of the sons in prison in 624 (1227) but the third Nūr al-Dīn ʿUmar, who had already been governor of Mecca, was made atābek [q. v.] and, on the departure of Masʿūd, governor of the Yaman. Masʿūd died on his way to Egypt so …

Rassids

(1,441 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A. S.
, name of a dynasty. Zaidī historians make no distinction between the Zaidī imāms in Dailam [q. v.] and those in the Yaman [q. v.]; this article deals only with the Yaman. For some periods the Zaidī historians are detailed, ¶ for others there are only casual references in writers whose main interest was elsewhere, so details are often uncertain and it is doubtful if some rulers claimed to be imāms. The name is taken from a property near Mecca, al-Rass by name, which belonged to the grandfather of the first imām, al-Ḳāsim al-Rassī, who…

S̲h̲iʿr

(2,637 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A. S.
(a.), poetry. The earliest literature of the Arabs is poetical but the most ancient poems are not older than 500 a. d. We know nothing about its origin. We are told the name of the man who made the first ḳaṣīda, but in matters historical the Arabs abhorred a vacuum. Throughout the pre-islāmic period poetry is governed by the same set of conventions, the stereotyped beginning, conventional epithets, stock similes, a limited and arbitrary choice of subjects. These suggest a long previous history. Indeed one poet complains that his prede…

Ṭahāra

(539 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A. S.
(a.); grammatically ṭahāra is a maṣdar and means purity; it has also the technical sense of ceremonial, levitical purity and purification. It holds an important place in Islām, ¶ for “purity is half the faith”, a saying attributed to Muḥammad. Theologians divide defilements into material and mental; lawyers divide them into actual ( ḥaḳīḳī) and religious ( ḥukmī). Fiḳh deals with bodily, material impurity only. Sexual intercourse, menstruation, and child-birth are religious impurities. Actual impurities ( nad̲j̲is, q. v.) have a perceptible body. They are wine, pigs and…

Aligarh

(169 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A. S.
The Muḥammadan Anglo-Oriental college suffered badly from the non-cooperation movement in 1920 when the National University was founded in the town. This was active for a year or two but soon succumbed in all but name. The Muḥammadan Anglo-Oriental college was given its charter as a university in 1920 and adopted the scheme advocated by the Calcutta commission on education, so the institution contained a school, an intermediate college, and the university. The result was that a student, who too…

S̲h̲aiṭān

(1,241 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A. S.
, Satan. (See also Ḏj̲inn, Iblīs). “Every proud and rebellious one among d̲j̲inn, men and animals” is the meaning given in the dictionaries. As applied to spirits s̲h̲aiṭān has two distinct meanings with separate histories. The sense of devil goes back to Jewish sources and that of superhuman being has its roots in Arab paganism, though the two meanings interact. In the stories about Solomon a s̲h̲aiṭān is nothing more than a d̲j̲inn superior in knowledge and power to other d̲j̲inn. But even their powers are limited. Closely connected with this is the use of the word in the…

ʿAdī b. Musāfir

(846 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
al-Hakkārī , S̲h̲ayk̲h̲. ʿAdī , Ṣūfī leader. He was an Arab of Ḳurays̲h̲, an Umayyad, born at Bayt Fār near Baalbek; he met ʿAḳīl al-Manbid̲j̲ī, Ḥammād al-Dabbās, ʿAbd al-Ḳāhir al-Suhrawardī, ʿAbd al-Ḳādir al-Ḏj̲īlī, Abu ’l-Wafā al-Ḥulwānī and Abū Muḥammad al-S̲h̲anbakī. He travelled far, spending much time in the wilderness till he settled in Laylas̲h̲ (Lalēs̲h̲) near Mosul apparently before 505/1111, made for himself a convent there and started an order called the ʿAdawiyya. …

Baʿt̲h̲

(787 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
(Ar.), literally “to send, set in motion”; as a technical term in theology it means either the sending of prophets or the resurrection. 1. The Muʿtazila [ q.v.] said that God could not have done otherwise than send prophets to teach men religion as He must do the best He can for men; orthodoxy denied this but held that the sending of prophets was dictated by divine wisdom. One of the reasons for condemning Brahmins and the Sumaniyya was that they denied the existence of prophets. 2. Philosophy taught that resurrection ( baʿt̲h̲ , nas̲h̲r , nus̲h̲ūr ) was of the soul on…

Ahl al-Kisāʾ

(156 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
, the people of the cloak. According to a tradition Muḥammad went out one morning—at the time of the visit of the Nad̲j̲rān delegation in 10/631 [cf. mubāhala ]—wearing a figured black cloak; first Fāṭima, then ʿAlī and then al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn came and he took them under his cloak, hugging them and quoting from Ḳurʾān, xxxiii, 32: “God only desireth to put away filthiness from you as his household, and with cleansing to cleanse you”. The Sunnīs explains filthiness as unbelief but the Shīʿa explain…

al-Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ānī

(356 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad , called al-Sayyid al-S̲h̲arīf, was born in 740/1339 at Tād̲j̲ū near Astarābād̲h̲; in 766/1365 he went to Harāt to study under Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Rāzī al-Taḥtānī, but the old man advised him to go to his pupil Mubāraks̲h̲āh in Egypt; however he stayed in Harāt and went in 770/1368 to Ḳaramān to hear Muḥammad al-Aḳṣarāʾī who died before his arrival (al-Aḳṣarāʾī died in 773/1371: al-Durar al-kāmina iv, 207). He studied under Muḥammad al-Fanārī and went with him to Egypt where he heard Mubāraks̲h̲āh and Akmal al-Dīn Muḥa…

Aligarh

(652 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
, town (27° 53′ N., 78° 4′ E.) and district in the Meerut (Mīrat) division of Uttar Prades̲h̲ (formerly the United Provinces). In 1941 the district (1946 sq. miles=5024.5 sq. km.) had 1, 372, 641 inhabitants (186, 381 Muslims) and the town 112, 655 (51, 712 Muslims). The town was at first called Koil (Kol) and the citadel, built in 1542, was named Aligaṛh (high fort) when Nad̲j̲af Ḵh̲ān restored it in 1776; previously it had been called Ramgaṛh, occasionally Sābitgaṛh after one Sābit Ḵh̲ān or Muḥammadgaṛh. ¶ Koil, which was certainly an old town, was captured towards the end of the…

Burg̲h̲ūt̲h̲iyya

(363 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
take their name from Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā the secretary, who was called Burg̲h̲ūt̲h̲ (Ar. = flea). They hived off from the Nad̲j̲d̲j̲āriyya [ q.v.], holding with them that God has a nature ( māhiyya ), that His attributes only tell what He is not (generous says that He is not stingy) and He always knew what would happen. Peculiar to the Burg̲h̲ūt̲h̲iyya is the doctrine that God always ¶ speaks from His self or essence, i.e., that speech is an attribute of His essence, though a report says that according to them His speech is action ( lahu kalām faiʿlī ) whence it was conclude…

Ḥināṭa

(1,115 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
(a.), embalming. The root is common to the Semitic languages and meant at first “to change colour”, especially in ripening fruit (hence ḥinṭa , “wheat”) and then the stain left by fragrant oils etc. Both senses are preserved in Arabic and Hebrew. Ḥannāṭ (Ar.) is explained as one who follows the trade of ḥināṭa Samʿānī explains both ḥannāṭ and ḥannāṭī as corn-chandler. Aramaic alone seems to have hannāṭā meaning embalmer. Ḥanūṭ is perfume or scented unguent, but always in connexion with death; “when Arabs prepared to fight, they put ḥanūṭ on themselves and made …

Āk̲h̲ira

(188 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
, fem. of āk̲h̲ir , "the last", is a term used already in the Ḳurʾān for the life to come, according to the commentators properly al-dār al-āk̲h̲ira , "the last abode", as opposed to ( al-dār or al-ḥayāt ) al-dunyā , "the nearer or nearest abode or life", i.e. the present world. A synonym is maʿād . The same antithesis is expressed by the terms dār al-baḳāʾ , "the abode of everlasting existence", and dār al- fanāʾ , "the abode of transitoriness", and by the roots ʾ d̲j̲ l and ʿd̲j̲ l. Āk̲h̲ira also denotes the condition of bliss or misery in the hereafter, again as opposed to dunyā, the lot of man in …

al-Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ānī, ʿAli b. Muḥammad

(373 words)

Author(s): Tritton, A.S.
, sur-nommé al-Sayyid al-S̲h̲arīf, naquit en 740/1339 à Tād̲j̲ū, près d’Astarābādh: en 766/1365, il se rendit à Harāt pour étudier sous la direction de Ḳutb al-dîn Muḥammad al-Rāzī al-Taḥtānī, mais le vieil homme lui conseilla d’aller trouver son élève Mubāraks̲h̲āh en Egypte; il séjourna cependant à Herāt et alla en 770/1368 à Karamān pour entendre Muhammad al-Aḳṣarāʾi qui mourut avant son arrivée (en 773/1371; al-Durar al-kāmina, IV, 207). Il suivit les cours de Muḥammad al-Fanārī et alla avec lui en Egypte où il fut l’élève de Mubāraks̲h̲āh et d’Akmal al-d…
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