Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see d́hākā ].

[see ḥisāb al-ʿaḳd ].

, 15th letter of the Arabic alphabet, conventional transcription ḍ ; numerical value, according to the oriental order, 800 [see abd̲j̲ad ]. The definition of the phoneme presents difficulty. The most probable is: voiced lateralized velarized interdent…

, ās̲h̲iḳ mūsā-og̲h̲lu weli , 19th century Turkish folk poet (1790?-1870?), was a member of the Afs̲h̲ār tribe which lived in the Taurus Mountains in S. Anatolia. His father was also a poet and took his mak̲h̲laṣ from the same family name. It is said that for a time Dadalog̲h̲lu acted as imām in the villages and as secretary to the tribal chiefs. As a result of government action against his tribe, which rebelled because it was unwilling to undergo conscription or taxation, he was transported with the rest of …

the domestic fowl. The word is a noun of unity which, according to Arab lexicographers, may be applied to both the male and the female. Alternative pronunciations are did̲j̲ād̲j̲a and dud̲j̲ād̲j̲a . In more recent local usage (cf. Jayakar, Malouf), did̲j̲ād̲j̲at al-baḥr and did̲j̲ād̲j̲at al-ḳubba denote certain kinds of fish, just as the corresponding Hebrew The animal, which is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible,…

the “deceiver”, adjective of Syriac origin, daggālā , joined to the word m e s̲h̲iḥā or n e bīyā (Peshitto, Matth., xxiv, 24). In Arabic, used as a substantive to denote the personage endowed with miraculous powers who will arrive before the end of time and, for a limited period of either 40 days or 40 years, will let impurity and tyranny rule the …

, an important, purely nomadic camel-breeding Sunnī (Mālikī) tribe of south-western ʿIrāḳ, whose dīra has been for the last 150 years in the steppe south of the Euphrates and S̲h̲aṭṭ al-ʿArab from the neighbourhood of Zubayr to that of Samāwa. Their immigration into ʿIrāḳ, dating from about 1220/1805, was caused by bad relations with the then powerful and fanatical rule of Ibn Saʿūd, who forcibly demanded…

[see D̲h̲unūb , dafn al-].

, a stitched or bound booklet, or register, more especially an account or letter-book used in administrative offices. The word derives ultimately from the Greek διφθέρα “hide”, and hence prepared hide for writing. It was already used in ancient Greek in the sense of parchment or, more generally, writing materials. In the 5th century B.C. Herodotus (v, 58) remarks that the lonians, like certain Barbarians of his own day, had formerly written on skins, and still applied the term diphthera to papyrus rolls; in the 4th Ctesias ( in Diodorus Siculus ii, 32; cf. A. Christensen, Heltedigtning og …

, in Turkish defterdār , keeper of the daftar [ q.v.], an Ottoman term for the chief finance officer, corresponding to the Mustawfī [ q.v.] in the eastern Islamic world. According to Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī ( Ṣubḥ , iii, 485, 494, 525, 526), the title Ṣāḥib al-Daftar already existed in the Fāṭimid administration, for the official in charge of the Daftar al-Mad̲j̲lis , that is, of accounts and audits. The title Daftark̲h̲ w ān — Daftar -reader—appears in the time of Saladin (B. Lewis, Three Biographies from Kamāl ad-Dīn , in Fuad Köprülü Armağanı , Istanbul 1953, 343), and r…

the collection of registers in which were entered, during the Ottoman period, the results of the surveys made every 30 or 40 years until the beginning of the 11th/17th century, in accordance with an old administrative and fiscal practice. The imperial registers or Daftar-i K̲h̲āḳāni consisted primarily of a list of the adult males in the ¶ villages and towns of the Empire, giving, by the side of their names and the names of their fathers, their legal status, their obligations and privileges according to the economic and social class to which they bel…

the tak̲h̲alluṣ of Nawwāb Mīrza K̲h̲ān (originally called Ibrāhīm, Āʾīna-i Dāg̲h̲ ), one of the most distinguished Urdū poets of modern times. He was a son of Nawwāb S̲h̲ams al-Dīn K̲h̲ān. ruler of Fīrūzpur D̲j̲hirkā, and Wazīr Begam (usually called Čhot́ī Begam). Nawwāb Mīrzā was born in Čāndnī Čawk, Dihlī on 12 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 1246/25 May 1831 (cf. his horoscope in D̲j̲alwa-i Dāg̲h̲ , 9). When S̲h̲ams al-Dīn K̲h̲ān was hanged (Oct. 1835) for his part in the murder of Mr. W. Fraser, Resident of Dihlī, Nawwāb Mirzā K̲h̲ān’s mother…

“land of the mountains”; this name is an unusual linguistic phenomenon, since it consists of the Turkish word dāg̲h̲ , mountain, and of the suffix which, in the Persian language, distinguishes the names of countries; this name seems to have appeared for the first time in the 10th/16th century). An autonomous Republic of the R.S.F.S.R. with an area of 19,500 sq. miles and a population of 958,000 inhabitants (1956), it is made up of two quite distinct parts: the Caucasian Range and the cis-Casp…

, “branding and verification”, a term used in Muslim India for the branding of horses and compilation of muster rolls for soldiers. The system of dāg̲h̲ (horse branding) was first introduced in India by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn K̲h̲ald̲j̲ī (695-715/1296-1316), and was revived by S̲h̲ēr S̲h̲āh Sūrī (947-52/1540-5). The system of double ranks ( d̲h̲āt and suwār ) made its appearance during the second half of Akbar’s reign. The motive probably was to compel every manṣabdār actually to maintain the number of horses and cavalry men expected of him for imperial s…

[see zuhāk ].

, Abū Unays (or Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ), son of a blood-letter ( ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ām , Ibn Rusta, BGA vii, 215), head of the house of Ḳays. He is reported to have been of a vacillating character ( d̲j̲aʿala yuḳadd̲j̲mu rid̲j̲l an wa-yuʾak̲h̲k̲h̲iru uk̲h̲rā , Ag̲h̲ānī xvii, 111) and this is ¶ borne out by his changing attitude towards the ruling Umayyad house, in which he proved easy to influence. He was a keen follower of Muʿāwiya, first as head of the police ( ṣāḥib al-s̲h̲urṭa ), and then as governor of the d̲j̲und of Damascus. In the year 36/656, al-Ḍaḥḥāk defeated the ʿ…

, Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ite leader, opponent of Marwān b. Muḥammad ( — Marwān II). During the disturbances which followed the murder of the Caliph al-Walīd II, the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲ites resumed their campaign in Ḏj̲azīra and pushed forward into ʿIrāḳ, their leader at first being the Ḥarūrite Saʿīd b. Bahdal, and, after his death of the plague, al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Ḳays al-S̲h̲aybānī, an adherent of the above-mentioned Ibn Bahdal. Several thousand fighters assembled under the standard of al-Ḍaḥḥāk; there were even among them Ṣufrites from S̲h̲ahrazūr. who, at that time, according to al-Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ …

, the name given to a pre-Islamic war waged during the latter half of the 6th century A.D. between two closely related tribes of G̲h̲aṭafān, the Banū ʿAbs and the Banū D̲h̲ubyān, or more accurately the Banū Fazāra, a sub-tribe of D̲h̲ubyān. The war took its name from a stallion called Dāḥis, over which the quarrel arose, and which became proverbial for bad luck. The real reasons for the war are probably to be sought in the enmity generated by the domination by ʿAbs of all G̲h̲aṭafān, as well as Hawāzin, which had reached its peak around the middle of the cen…

, erroneous spelling of Dihistān [ q.v.].

Islands , a group of islands off the west coast of the Red Sea, opposite Muṣawwaʿ (Eritrea), with their centre about 40 10ʹ E., 15 45ʹ N. of about 125 islands, including tiny islets, rocks and reefs, the two largest are Dahlak al-Kabīr and Nūra. Others are Nokra, Dohol, Harat Kubarī, Daraka and Dinifarik̲h̲. All are flat and low, with deeply indented coasts and scanty rain and vegetation; some are normally or seasonally inhabited, to a total in all of 1500 to 2500 persons, T…