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ʿAbd al-Karīm , a notorious crypto-Manichean ( zindīḳ , [ q.v.]), belonging to a great family (he was the maternal uncle of Maʿn b. Zāʾida [ q.v.]). According to the most reliable information, he lived first at Baṣra, where (although even this is doubtful) he is supposed to have been a disciple of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī [ q.v.], from whom he parted on account of the latter’s doctrinal inconsistency regarding the problem of freewill and determinism. What is more certain is that he frequented a very mixed milieu, rubbing shoulders with Muʿtazilis such as ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and Wāṣil b. ʿAtāʾ [ qq.v.], with p…

, names of the two sons of Adam [ q.v.] in Muslim tradition: Heb̲el and Ḳāyin in the Hebrew Bible (for the distortion and assimilation through assonance of the two words, compare the pairs of words Ḏj̲ālūt-Ṭālūt, Hārūt-Mārūt, Yād̲j̲ūd̲j̲-Mād̲j̲ūd̲j̲; Ḳāyin is, however, attested sporadically). Although the Ḳurʾān does not give these names, it tells however (CV, 27-32/30-5, Medinan period) the story of the two sons of Adam, one of whom killed the other because his own sacrifice was refused when his brother…

, Jewish sect of the adepts of ʿĀnān b. David ( c. 760 A.D.), rather incorrectly considered to be the founder of the Karaite schismatic faction; his schism was only one of many which affected Rabbinical Judaism during the 8th-9th centuries. The Muslim authors seem to have taken most of their information about ʿĀnān and his sect from Karaite sources, especially Ḳirḳisānī, but they have only used a small part of the mass of information supplied by him. The author of the al-Badʾ wa ’l-Taʾrīk̲h̲ represents ʿĀnān as a sort of Muʿtazilite, who professes the divi…

, Abu ’l-Walīd Marwān (Hebrew name Yōnāh, Latin name Marinus [?]), Jewish physician and philologist, born at Cordova circa 380/990, died at Saragossa about fifty years later. His very important works, written in Arabic, as a grammarian and lexicographer of the Hebrew language do not concern us here. Ṣāʿid b. Aḥmad Ibn Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī (whose notice was reproduced by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa), however, praises him as a logician and the author of an epitome of pharmacology, which is mentioned also by Ibn al-Bayṭār. (G. Vajda) Bibliography The study by S. Munk (who had correctly deduced th…

, Abū ʿImrān Mūsā b. ʿUbayd allāh [Maymūn] al-Ḳurṭubī , usually called Moses Maimonides in English and German, Moїse Maїmonide in French, Jewish theologian and physician, born in Cordova in 1135, died in Fusṭāṭ in 1204. A member of a scholarly Jewish family long established in Muslim Spain, Moses Maimonides received his earliest education in his native town which, however, he was compelled to leave with his family in about 1149 on account of the Almohad invasion and the policy of hostility adopted by the new dynasty [see al-muwaḥḥidūn ] towards the religious mi…

, D̲j̲aʿd , heretic, was a native of K̲h̲urāsān but spent most of his life at Damascus; he was imprisoned and then put to death, on the orders of His̲h̲ām b. ʿAbd al-Malik [ q.v.], by K̲h̲ālid al-Ḳasrī [ q.v.] on the day of the Feast of Sacrifices as a substitute for the ritual sacrifice of a sheep; the sources vary on the place and date of his execution: Kūfa or Wāsiṭ, 124/742 or 125/743. Very few facts are known on the doctrinal position of D̲j̲aʿd b. Dirham; it is, however, clear that anti-Marwānid political propaganda and theolog…

, Abū Ayyūb Sulaymān b. Yaḥyā (in Hebrew: S̲h̲elōmōh ben Yehudāh; the Latin Avencebrol; Gabirol, or rather Gebirol, is perhaps Ḏj̲ubayr plus the Romance diminutive suffix - ol), Jewish poet and philosopher, born at Malaga circa 411/1021-2, died at Valencia 450/1058 (but this date is not absolutely certain). In addition to his works, mainly poetry, written in Hebrew, which do not concern us here, Ibn Gabirol wrote in Arabic a short treatise on morals ( Iṣlāḥ al-ak̲h̲lāḳ ), which summarizes without much originality (but adapting them to the needs of t…

, “possessors of the Scripture” (or “people of the Book”). This term, in the Ḳurʾān and the resultant Muslim terminology, denotes the Jews and the Christians, repositories of the earlier revealed books, al-Tawrāt [ q.v.] = the Torah, al-Zabūr [ q.v.] — the Psalms, and al-Ind̲j̲īl [ q.v.] = the Gospel. The use of this term was later extended to the Sabeans ( al-Ṣābiʾa [ q.v.])—both the genuine Sabeans, mentioned in the Ḳurʾān alongside the Jews and the Christians (= Mandeans), and the spurious Sabeans (star-worshippers of Ḥarrān)—to the Zoroastrians ( Mad̲j̲iūs [ q.v.]), and, in India, e…

, name of a person whom the Ḳurʾān associates with Pharaoh ( Firʿawn [ q.v.]), because of ¶ a still unexplained confusion with the minister of Ahasuerus in the Biblical book of Esther. To the details given s.v. firʿawn , should be added the fact that, according to al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , ii, 368, Hāmān built the canal of Sardūs, but Firʿawn obliged him to repay to the peasants the money which he had extorted from them for this. (G. Vajda) Bibliography given in the art. firʿawn see also J. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 149 A. Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Qurʾān, 284.

In one of its admonitions to the unbelieving Jews of Medina, the Ḳurʾān (II, 102/96) expresses itself thus (from A. J. Arberry’s translation): “[the children of Israel] follow what the Satans recited over Solomon’s Kingdom. Solomon disbelieved not, but the Satans disbelieved, teaching the people sorcery, and that which was sent down upon Babylon’s two angels Hārūt and Mārūt; they taught not any man, without they said, “We are but a temptation; do not disbelieve …””. The Ḳurʾānic narrative, linked somewhat artificially with Solomon, whose relations with demons are well-known [see sulay…

Nūr al-Dīn or Aṣīl al-Dīn ; his dates are uncertain but almost certainly not before the end of the 7th/13th century; author of a ḳaṣīda in lām on the names of God (see al-asmāʾ al-Ḥusnā and d̲h̲ikr ); each verse of this ḳaṣīda is reputed to possess mysterious virtues, given in detail by the commentaries of which the text has several times been the object (the best-known is that by the Moroccan mystic, Aḥmad al-Burnusī Zarrūḳ, d. 899/1493). The ḳaṣīda Dimyāṭiyya holds a considerable place in the worship of the semiliterate, in particular in North Africa…

, person mentioned twice in the Ḳurʾān (second Meccan period): XIX, 57/56-58/57, “And mention in the Book Idrīs; he was a true man ( ṣiddīḳ ), a Prophet. We raised him up to a high place”, and XXI, 85-86, “And [make mention of] Ismāʿīl, Idrīs, D̲h̲u ’l-Kifl—each was of the patient, and We admitted them into Our mercy; they were of the righteous” (tr. A. J. Arberry). Among the explanations suggested for This name, obviously foreign and adapted, like the name Iblīs [ q.v.], to the pattern ifʿīl , may be mentioned that of Casanova (in JA, cciv, 358, followed by Torrey, The Jewish foundation of Islam, N…

(or ʿamāliḳa ), the Amalekites of the Bible. Not mentioned in the Ḳurʾān, this ancient people is connected by Muslim literary tradition to the genealogical table in Genesis x, either to Shem (through Lud-Lāwud̲h̲ or Arpak̲h̲s̲h̲ad), or to Ham. They take the place of the Philistines (the people of Ḏj̲ālūt-Goliath) and of the Midianites (Balaam persuaded them to incite the Israelites to debauchery), and the Pharaohs are alleged to be of their race. On the other hand, in the myt…

, a personage twice mentioned in the Ḳurʾān (XXI, 85 and XXXVIII, 48, probably second Meccan period), about whom neither Ḳurʾānic contexts nor Muslim exegesis provides any certain information. John Walker ( Who is D̲h̲u ’l-Kifl ?, in MW, xvi (1926), 399-401) would like the name to be understood in the sense of “the man with the double recompense” or rather “the man who received recompense twice over”, that is to say Job (Ayyūb [ q.v.]; cf. Job xlii, 10). Without being certain, this explanation does not lack probability; in any case, no better suggestion has been put fo…

, The Goliath of the Bible appears as D̲j̲ālūt in the Ḳurʾān (II, 248/247-252/251) (the line of al-Samawʾal where the name occurs is inauthentic), in assonance with Ṭālūt [ q.v.] and perhaps also under the influence of the Hebrew word gālūt , “exile, Diaspora”, which must have been frequently on the lips of the Jews in Arabia as elsewhere. The passage of the Ḳurʾān where he is referred to by name (his introduction in the exegesis of V, 25 seems to be sporadic and secondary) combines the biblical account of the war…

(the carpenter), legendary character who gave his name to the sanctuary below mount Silpius at Antāḳiya [ q.v.] where his tomb is reputed to be. He is not mentioned in the Ḳurʾān; nevertheless Muslim tradition finds him there, in sūra XXXVI, 12 ff., under the description of the man who was put to death in a city ( ḳarya ) not otherwise specified, having urged its inhabitants not to reject the three apostles who had come to proclaim the divine message to them. According to Muslim tradition the “city” was Antioch and the anonymous be…

, traditionist born in 613/1217 on the island of Tūnā between Tinnīs and Damietta; at the end of his career he was professor at the Manṣūriyya and at the Ẓāhiriyya in Cairo, where he died in 705/1306. Apart from the works listed by Brockelmann, to be supplemented by the recent study of A. Dietrich, ʿAbdalmuʾmin b. Xalaf ad-Dimyāṭī’nin bir muhācirūn listesi , in Şarkiyat Mecmuasi , iii (1959), 125-55) he has left a dictionary of authorities, often cited and used by subsequent historians and biographers, called Muʿd̲j̲am S̲h̲uyūk̲h̲ ; it only survives at the pre…

b. baʿūr (ā), Bilʿam b. Beʿor of the Hebrew Bible. The Ḳurʾān does not mention him, unless perhaps in an allusion in vii, 175 [174] 176 [175]. The commentators and historians keep the main elements of the Biblical story in their accounts of him (Numbers xxii-xxiv, xxxi, 8) and following the Jewish Aggada which likewise has given other features of his portrait, make him responsible for the fornication of the Israelites with the daughters of Moab and Midian (Numbers xxv); note that he tends to absor…

Muslim tradition has retained only a weak and rather confused record of the two biblical characters bearing the name Daniel, the sage of ancient times mentioned by Ezekiel (xiv, 14, 20 and xxviii, 3) and the visionary who lived at the time of the captivity in Babylon, who himself sometimes appears as two different people. Furthermore, the faint trace of a figure from the antiquity of fable combining with the apocalyptic tone of the book handed down in the Bible under the name Daniel, makes Dāniy…

, the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible. The Ḳurʾān does not mention him. He is a very complex figure in Muslim tradition and here we can record only the outstanding points. It retains in the first place the main Biblical features, using to an unusual degree the texts of the prophets Jeremiah and even Isaiah, and establishing a connexion between Buk̲h̲t-Naṣar and Sennacherib, whom it makes the great-grandfather of the former. It also confuses him sometimes with later rulers such as Cyrus and Ahasuerus…