Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, “house of wisdom”, used by Arab authors to denote in a general sense the academies which, before Islamic times, spread knowledge of the Greek sciences, and in a particular sense the institute founded in Cairo in 395/1005 by the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim. Since the short-lived appearance of the Bayt al-Ḥikma [ q.v.] of al-Maʾmūn, several libraries had been founded in ʿIrāḳ and Persia providing not only information on traditional learning, but also an introduction to classical sciences ( ʿulūm al-awāʾil ) (see Dār al-ʿilm ). Such establishments were very successful in Egypt under t…

, a Persian word meaning “court (language)” from dar [ q.v.]. In Arabic authors such as al-Maḳdisī (335), Yāḳūt (iii, 925), and Fihrist (19), we find the Darī language (also Fārsī Darī ) described as the ¶ spoken and written language of the (Sasanian) court. It was also the language of government and literature. After three centuries of Muslim rule in Persia it was written down in the Arabic script, and came to be called Fārsī or New Persian. The fact that New Persian literature arose and flourished in K̲h̲urāsān and Transoxiana because of politic…

Persian “the iron gate”, also called Derbend-i Āhanīn. The Arabic form is Bāb al-Ḥadīd , old Turkish Tämir qapiy. A name used for various passes in the eastern Islamic world. The most famous pass called dar-i āhanīn , is the pass in Mā warāʾ al-Nahr (Transoxiana), in the Baysuntau Mountain Range near the modern village of Derbent located on the old road between Samarḳand and Tirmid̲h̲. Perhaps the earliest mention of this “Iron Gate” is in the account of the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang who went through the pass about 630 A.D. and described it briefly. The first mention of this ¶ pass under its …

(1)—(6): See Vol. II, 142-58. (7) —Indonesia. The classical Malay chronicles are not very eloquent about matters of taxes and tolls, and the collections of undang-undang, or laws, are more concerned with court rituals than with legal or fiscal questions. More materials are available for the tax regulations under the Dutch administration. Thus F. de Haan’s eminent work on Priangan . De Preanger Regentschappen onder het Nederlandsch Bestuur tot 1811, 4 vols., Batavia-The Hague 1911 ff., contains a lot of valuable information. But with regard to the Islamic kingdoms…

, one of the words most generally used to denote a tax, applied in particular to the whole category of taxes which in practice were added to the basic taxes of canonical theory. These latter ( zakāt or ʿus̲h̲r , d̲j̲izya and k̲h̲arād̲j̲ , etc.) and their yield in the “classical” period, have been covered in a general survey in an earlier article, Bayt al-māl , and a detailed description of the methodes of assessment and collection will be given under their respective titles, in particular under k̲h̲arād̲j̲; along with k̲h̲arād̲j̲ and zakāt will be included associated taxes and payments…

, “house of science”, the name given to several libraries or scientific institutes established in eastern Islam in the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries. After the disappearance of al-Maʾmūn’s Bayt al-Ḥikma [ q.v.], a man of letters called ʿAlī b. Yaḥyā al-Munad̲j̲d̲j̲im (d. 275/888), friend of al-Mutawakkil and, later, al-Muʿtamid, built a library at his own expense in his residence at Karkar, near Bag̲h̲dād. It was called K̲h̲izānat al-Kutub , and was open to scholars of all countries (Yāḳūt, Irs̲h̲ād , v, 459, 467). Another writer and poet, the S̲h̲āfiʿī faḳīh …

[see tamīm ]. ¶

, ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Raḥman b. al-Faḍl b. Bahrām b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Abū Muḥammad al-Samarḳandī belonged to the B. Dārim b. Mālik, a branch of Tamīm. He travelled in search of traditions and learned them from a number of authorities in al-ʿIrāḳ, Syria and Egypt. Among those who transmitted traditions on his authority were Muslim b. al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲āj and Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmid̲h̲ī. Al-Dārimī lived a simple, pious life devoted to study, and acquired a reputation for knowledge of Ḥadīt̲h̲ , reliability, truthfulness and sound judgement. He was asked to accept office as ḳāḍī …

, Muṣṭafā , Turkish author of the 7th/14th century. Very little is known of his life. He was born blind ( ḍarīr ) in Erzurum where he studied; later he travelled in Egypt, Syria and Karaman. His works which have come down to us are: 1. Tard̲j̲umat al-Ḍarīr , an enlarged free translation, interspersed with many original verse passages, of Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Bakrī al-Baṣrī’s (6th/13th century) version of the sīra of Ibn Isḥāk, filled with stories and legends borrowed from various sources. It consists of five volumes and was written by the order o…

, ʿthe Land of Islam’ or, more simply, in Muslim authors, dārunā , ‘our Country’ is the whole territory in which the law of Islam prevails. Its unity resides in the community of the faith, the unity of the law, and the guarantees assured to members of the umma [ q.v.]. The umma, established in consequence of the final revelation, also guarantees the faith, the persons, possessions and religious organization, albeit on a lower level, of d̲h̲immīs , the followers of the creeds of Christianity and Judaism which sprang from earlier revelations, and of the Zoroastrians ( Mad̲j̲ūs ) [cf. d̲h̲imma , d̲…

, a village and a watering place in Nad̲j̲d located at 42° 56′ N., 24° 46′ E., on the Darb al-Sulṭānī pilgrim route from al-Baṣra to Mecca ( Handbook , ii, 189). The village was a much frequented halting place for pilgrims, for the junction with the route from al-Baḥrayn was here. The district of Ḍariyya, according to Ibn Bulayhid, was a wide territory in Nad̲j̲d celebrated by the poets in pre-Islamic times for its sweet water and pasturage. The famous Ḥimā Ḍariyya is said to have been named after the village and was part of the district (Yāḳūt, iii, 457). There is some doubt as to when the ḥimā …

[see al-dirʿiyya ]

, plural of the nisba Darḳāwī, a religious brotherhood founded in north Morocco at the end of the 18th century by an Idrīsī sharīf , Mawlāy al-ʿArbī al-Darḳāwī. His name is supposed to come from the appelation of one of his ancestors who used to be called Abū Darḳa, the man with the leather shield. He was the pupil at Fās of another Idrīsī s̲h̲arīf , ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Djamal, an adept of the mystical doctrine of al-S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilī [ q.v.], and after the latter’s death, he organized a brotherhood inspired by this doctrine. The seat of this group was at first the zāwiya o…

The Egyptian State Archives, consisting of the administrative records of the governments of Egypt from the start of the sixteenth century until the present time, and stored at the Citadel and in the Abdine Palace in Cairo. The extant archives of the Ottoman treasury and administration in Egypt from the time of its conquest by Selīm I in 922/1517 until it became autonomous under Muḥammad ʿAlī at the start of the nineteenth century are located at the Citadel ( al-Ḳalʿa ) archives, which were built by Muḥammad ʿAlī in 1242/1827 to store the materials rema…

[see dār al-ʿulūm (d.)].

, in modern pronunciation Derna, a town on the northern coast of Cyrenaica which is to-day the second most important in the region after Beng̲h̲āzī. It is situated in a little plain along the banks of a wādī of the same name, bounded by the plateau of the al-D̲j̲abal al-Ak̲h̲ḍar, which forms a steep slope to the south and touches the sea to the east and west, but thanks to its never-failing springs it is rich in palms (8,000) and in orange and other fruit trees. Darna owes its origin to the Greeks who founded …

, a kind of town hall in Mecca in the time of Muḥammad. The building was to the north of the Kaʿba, on the other side of the square in which the ṭawāf took place. It was the gathering place of the nobles ( malaʾ ). The Dār al-Nadwa is said to have been built by Ḳuṣayy [ q.v.], who is taken to be the ancestor of the Ḳurays̲h̲ and founder of the Kaʿba. He bequeathed it to ʿAbd al-Dār and then to ʿAbd Manāf and his son Hās̲h̲im and Hās̲h̲im’s descendants. “All matters of import to the Ḳurays̲h̲” are said to have taken place there up to the coming of Islam…

[see saray ].

, “Abode of Peace”, is in the first place a name of Paradise in the Ḳurʾān (vi, 127; x, 26), because, says Bayḍāwī, it is a place of security ( salāma ) from transitoriness and injury, or because God and the angels salute ( sallama ) those who enter it. Hence it was given to the city of Bag̲h̲dād by al-Manṣūr, as well as Madīnat al-Salām (cf. bag̲h̲dād , and also the geographical lexicon of Yāḳūt, ad init.). For the capital of Tanganyika see dar-es-salaam. (T.H. Weir*)

, also less correctly darsan, a Sanskrit word ( darśana , from the root dṛś “see”) meaning “showing, being visible”; hence, the ceremonial appearance of a king to his subjects. This Hindū practice was adopted by the Mug̲h̲al emperor Akbar ( Āʾīn-i Akbarī , i, 73) and his immediate successors. The English traveller Coryat records that Ḏj̲ahāngīr in Āgra used to present himself three times a day from a canopied window. The failure of S̲h̲āhd̲j̲ahān to appear during his illness at the end of 1067/September 1657 led to rumours of his death. The practice of dars̲h̲an was …