Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936)
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Subject: Middle East And Islamic Studies
Edited by: M. Th.Houtsma, T.W.Arnold, R.Basset and R.Hartmann
The Encyclopaedia of Islam First Edition Online (EI1) was originally published in print between 1913 and 1936. The demand for an encyclopaedic work on Islam was created by the increasing (colonial) interest in Muslims and Islamic cultures during the nineteenth century. The scope of the Encyclopedia of Islam First Edition Online is philology, history, theology and law until early 20th century. Such famous scholars as Houtsma, Wensinck, Gibb, Snouck Hurgronje, and Lévi-Provençal were involved in this scholarly endeavor. The Encyclopedia of Islam First Edition Online offers access to 9,000 articles.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
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The Encyclopaedia of Islam First Edition Online (EI1) was originally published in print between 1913 and 1936. The demand for an encyclopaedic work on Islam was created by the increasing (colonial) interest in Muslims and Islamic cultures during the nineteenth century. The scope of the Encyclopedia of Islam First Edition Online is philology, history, theology and law until early 20th century. Such famous scholars as Houtsma, Wensinck, Gibb, Snouck Hurgronje, and Lévi-Provençal were involved in this scholarly endeavor. The Encyclopedia of Islam First Edition Online offers access to 9,000 articles.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Zāʾ
(138 words)
, Zāy, 11th letter of the Arabic alphabet, with the numerical value of 7. For its palaeographical pedigree, see arabia, plate i. It belongs to the sibilants (
al-ḥurūf al-asalīya) and corresponds to the same sound in the other Semitic languages. It is pronounced like English and French
z. In the spoken Arabic of to-day
z may also represent other sounds of the classical language, such as
d̲h̲ and
ẓ. In Persia and Turkey Arabic
ḍ is often pronounced
z. (A. J. Wensinck) Bibliography W. Wright,
Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, Cambridge 1890, p. 57
sq. A. Schaade,
Sibawaihī’s Lautleh…
al-Zāb
(868 words)
, the name of two left bank tributaries (al-Zawābī) of the Tigris. 1. The Upper or Great Zāb (
Zāb al-aʿlā or
al-akbar) was known already to the Assyrians as
Zabu ēlū, the “Upper Zāb”. The Greeks called it
Lykos (Weissbach, s. v., N°. 12 in Pauly-Wissowa,
R.E., vol. xiii., col. 2391
sq.; on the name see J. Markwart,
Südarmenien, Vienna 1930, p. 429
sq.), the Byzantines however have again ό μέγαΣ ΖάβαΣ (Theophan.,
Chron., ed. de Boor, p. 318, 320). In Syriac it was called
Zābhā, in Armenian
Zaw (Thomas Arcruni, ed. Patkanean, 111/iv., p. 143; transl. Brosset, in
Collection d’hist. Arméniens, i. 1…
Zāb
(1,014 words)
, a region of Algeria. The name Zāb (plur.
Zibān) is given to the area around Biskra measuring about 125 miles from W. to E. and 30 to 40 from N. to S. It is a rather flat plain shading in the south into the Sahara and bordered on the north by the southern slopes of the Saharan Atlas, but having easy communication with the depression of the Hodna and the plateaus of Constantine through a wide gap which opens up between the hills of Zāb and the Awrās. Being subject to desert influences Zāb has only rare a…
Zābag
(1,925 words)
(), inaccurately transcribed
Zābed̲j̲ < Sanskrit
Jāvaka, the name of an island. The Arabic transcription, so far as I am aware, goes back to the ninth century a. d. We do not see why the Arabic has rendered by a sonant the guttural occlusive surd of the Sanskrit. The fact that we might be dealing with a form borrowed from a highly sonorous Prākrit hardly seems to me to require to be considered here. The Chinese knew this place-name as early as the seventh century under various forms which are reproduced in Chinese characters in
L’empire sumatranais de Çrīvijaya: S̲h̲e-li Fo-s̲h̲e < Skr.
Śrī Vijay…
Zabīd
(881 words)
, a town in the Tihāma of Yaman, on the road running from north to south from Mecca to ʿAden, halfway between the Yaman highlands and the Red Sea, about 16 miles from the coast. At this distance the country is suitable for agriculture in view of the better water-supply, and the town itself is adjoined by two wādīs, in the north the Wādī Rimaʿ and the south the perennial Wādī Zabīd, from which it has taken the name which has replaced the original al-Ḥusaib. In contrast to the rest of the Tihāma it is famous for its gardens with date-palms, ¶ a little corn, indigo and various medicinal plants; th…
Zabūr
(843 words)
(a.), probably a loanword from the South, but already used by pre-Islāmic poets in the sense of “writ”; in this sense it is still found in al-Farazdaḳ,
Naḳāʾiḍ, lxxv. 1. From the second Makkan period onwards, Muḥammad uses the plural
zubur in order to denote the revealed books (Sūra xxvi. 196; iii. 181; xvi. 46; xxxv. 23) as well as the heavenly writings, in which human deeds are recorded (Sūra liv. 43, 52). The singular zabūr, on the other hand, occurs in the Ḳurʾān exclusively in connection with Dāwūd. In the early Sūra xvii. 57 Muḥ…
Ẓafār
(6,076 words)
, 1. now a group of ruins near an insignificant village in southern Yaman, about 10 miles S. W. of Yarīm, celebrated in ancient times as the capital of the Ḥimyar kingdom (also called Ẓafāri; see Yāḳūt,
Muʿd̲j̲am, iii. 576; i. 196; South Arabian inscriptions give the radicals
ẓ-p[f]-r; it is reproduced in Ethiopie as
Ṣafār). ¶ The royal city is mentioned by Pliny,
Natur. Hist., vi. 104 as
regia Sapphar and in the
Periplus Mar. Erythr., § 23 as μητρόπολιΣ ΣαΦάρ in which χαριβαήλ (Karibaʾil), “king of the Homerites (Ḥimyar) and Sabaeans” ruled, of that dynasty which, succ…
al-Zafayān
(100 words)
, nickname of the rad̲j̲az poet ʿAṭāʾ b. Usaid Abu ’l-Miḳāl (according to another reading: Miḳdām). He belonged to the Banū ʿUwāfa, a branch of the tribe of Saʿd b. Zaid Manāt b. Tamīm, whence he was known as al-Saʿdī or al-Tamīmī. It is clear from one of his poems that he went through the rising of Abū Fudaik (73 = 692) and was roughly a contemporary of al-ʿAd̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲. (H. H. Bräu) Bibliography A few quoted fragments of his
urd̲j̲ūza’s from a defective copy of the
Dīwān, ed. by Ahlwardt in
Sammlungen alter arab. Dichter, Berlin 1903, vol. ii.
al-Zahāwī
(1,825 words)
, Ḏj̲amīl Ṣidḳī, the greatest Arabic poet of modern ʿIrāḳ, born in Bag̲h̲dād on 29th Ḏh̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 1279 (June 18, 1863), died on Feb. 23, 1936. His father Muḥammad Faiḍī al-Zahāwī, muftī of Bag̲h̲dād, was of Kurdish descent of the house of al-Bābān, members of which had once been emīrs of Sulaimānīya [q.v.]; according to a legend, they trace their family back to the famous Arab general Ḵh̲ālid b. al-Walīd [q.v.]. His grandfather lived for a time in Zahāw in Persia, whence the
nisba. His mother was also of Kurdish descent. He was a pupil of his father in the traditional Muslim br…
al-Ẓāhir
(255 words)
bi-Amr Allāh Abū Naṣr Muḥammad b. al-Nāṣir, an ʿAbbāsid Caliph. As early as Ṣafar 585 (March-April 1189) the caliph al-Nāṣir had designated his eldest son Muḥammad as his successor. Later however, he changed his mind in favour of his younger son ʿAlī but since the latter died in 612 (1215—1216) and al-Nāṣir had no other male heirs, he had to come back to Muḥammad and again have homage paid to him as heir-apparent. Regarding the treatment given the future commander of the faithful in his father’s house…
Ẓahīr al-Dīn
(133 words)
(Saiyid) al-Marʿas̲h̲ī, son of the Saiyid Nāṣir al-Dīn, descendant of a family of ¶ Saiyids, Persian statesman and historian, born in 815 (1412), was at the court of Muḥammad, Sulṭān of Gīlān, for whose son Kārgiā Mīrzā ʿAlī he composed the Chronicle of Ṭabaristān from the earliest times to 881 (1476). The sovereign employed him on various missions, sent him to the help of Malik Iskandar, son of Malik Kayomart̲h̲ of Rustamdār, who was fighting his brother Malik Kāʾūs and entrusted him with other military expeditions; among these …
Ẓahīr-i Fāryābī
(224 words)
, Abu ’l-Faḍl Ṭāhir b. Muḥammad, Persian poet of the xiith century, born at Fāryāb near Balk̲h̲ in 551 (1156), a pupil of Ras̲h̲īdī of Samarḳand, entered the service of Ardas̲h̲īr b. Ḥasan,
ispahbad of Māzandarān (d. 607 = 1210), then went to the court of Tog̲h̲ān, prince of Nīs̲h̲āpūr (d. 582= 1186); after being imprisoned for six years, he left Ḵh̲urāsān for’ʿIrāḳ ʿAd̲j̲amī where he wrote panegyrics on the Atābek Ḳizil-Arslān b. Ildigiz about 583 (1187). Towards the end of his life, he retired from the world and led a life of…
al-Ẓāhirīya
(1,288 words)
, a school of law, which would derive the law only from the literal text (
ẓāhir) of the Ḳurʾān and Sunna. In the “branches” of law (
furūʿ al-fiḳh) it still further increased the number of contradictory detailed regulations by many divergencies, peculiar to it alone. More important is its significance for the principles of legislation (
uṣūl al-fiḳh), the development and elucidation of which it considerably furthered by its uncompromising fight against
raʾy, ḳiyās, istiṣḥāb, istiḥsān and
taḳlīd [q. v.]. In the ʿIrāḳ the Ẓāhirī
mad̲h̲hab, also called Dāʾūdī after its founder [see dāʾūd b.…
Ẓāhir al-ʿOmar
(607 words)
In Syria, he is called Ḍāhir (local pronunciation of Ẓāhir) al-(āl-)ʿOmar, from the name of his father ʿOmar, s̲h̲aik̲h̲ of the Banū Zaidān, nomads who had settled in the district of Ṣafad [q. v.]. In 1750, Ẓāhir lord of Tiberias and the upper Jordan, came to an arrangement with the Metwalis of Galilee to drive out the Turkish officials by degrees; after which he seized the ruined port of ʿAkkā which was to serve him as an outlet for the export of cotton and silk. He repopulated the town and hu…