Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see baḳāʾ ].

(pl. afnāk ; from Pers. fanak / fanad̲j̲ ) may refer, at different times and with different authors, to various animals of different orders or families. In the Muslim west fanak is commonly applied to the fennec-fox, Fennecus zerda , a small wild member of the genus Vulpes of the Canidae with very large ¶ ears, a pale dun coat, and a spreading bushy tail. The nocturnal habits of this puny carnivore, and its essentially desert distribution from the Sahara to Arabia, have caused it to be practically ignored by Arabic writers, naturalists, encyclopaed…

[see fener and manār ].

[see fenārī-zāde ].

, the (modern) Arabie name for art. Individual treatment of aspects of the art of Islam will be found in articles under the following headings; ¶ the examples are given as a guide and are not intended to be exhaustive. 1. Techniques, e.g., architecture, bināʾ (building), fak̲h̲k̲h̲ār (the potter’s craft), fusayfisāʾ (mosaic), ḳalī (carpets), k̲h̲aṭṭ (calligraphy), ḳumās̲h̲ (textiles), metalwork, taṣwīr (painting), etc. 2. Materials, e.g., ʿād̲j̲ (ivory), billawr (crystal), d̲j̲iṣṣ (plaster), k̲h̲azaf (pottery and ceramics), ʿirḳ al-luʾluʾ (mother-of-pearl), libās …

[see al-fāʾū].

(A., pl. fiʾrān , fiʾara , fuʾar ) masculine substantive with the value of a collective (noun of singularity faʾar ) designates, like the Persian mūs̲h̲ , firstly, among the Rodents ( ḳawāriḍ , ḳawāḍim ), the majority of types and species of the sub-order of the Myomorphs (with the Dipodids, Glirids, Murids, Spalacids and Cricetida), secondly, among the Insectivores ( ākilāt al-ḥas̲h̲arāt ), the family of the Soricids. The term is applied equally well to the largest rats as to the smallest s̲h̲rews and gerbils. The adjectives of abundance faʾir , faʾira , mafʾara and mafʾira …

, a small district on both sides of the middle Jaxartes at the mouth of its tributary, the Aris, which flows from Isfid̲j̲āb. It is also the name of the principal settlement in this district. The older Persian form Pārāb occurs in Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , (72, 118 ff., 122), the form Bārāb in Iṣṭak̲h̲rī (346) and Muḳaddasī (273; but also Fārāb) as well as in the later Persian sources. The extent of the district in both length and breadth was less than a day’s journey (Ibn Ḥawḳal, 390 ff.). According to Masʿūdī ( Tanbīh , 366) the region was flooded annually at the end of Ja…

, Abū Ibrāhīm Isḥāḳ b. Ibrāhīm , lexicographer. The early sources are sparse in regard to him. Only Yāḳūt gives him a whole notice ( Udabāʾ , vi, 61-5 = Irs̲h̲ād , ii, 226-9); al-Suyūṭī reproduces a few extracts from this adding nothing ( Bug̲h̲ya , i, 437-8); and al-Ḳifṭī speaks of him only incidentally in his Inbāʾ (i, 52-3), in his notice on Abu ’l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī. His date of birth is unknown, but he probably died in 350/961 (the date given by Brockelmann, 12, 133, and Kraemer, 212). He was the maternal uncle of al-Ḏj̲awharī, author of the Ṣiḥāḥ (d. ca. 400/1009 [ q.v.]), which keeps al-Fārāb…

, al-Malik al-Nāṣir Zayn al-Dīn Abu ’l-Saʿādāt , 26th Mamlūk Sultan of Egypt and second of the Circassians [see čerkes ii and burd̲j̲iyya ]. The son of Sultan Barḳūḳ [ q.v.] and a Greek mother, S̲h̲īrīn. Farad̲j̲ was born in Cairo in 791/1389 and succeeded to the Sultanate upon the death of his father on 15 S̲h̲awwāl 801/20 June 1399. Owing to his youth Farad̲j̲ began his reign under the guardianship of two of his father’s amīrs : Tag̲h̲rī Birdī al-Bas̲h̲bug̲h̲āwī (father of the historian) and Aytimis̲h̲ al-Bad̲j̲asī, but disagreements among the amīr s and their fa…

[see nādira ].

, an oasis in the eastern Libyan desert, in Egypt, situated approximately on lat. 27° N. and long. 28° E., equidistant from the Nile and the Libyan frontier. It is a halting stage between the oases of al-Dāk̲h̲la 170 km. to the south-west and those of al-Baḥriyya 160 km. to the north-north-east; the routes are motorable only with difficulty. Al-Farāfra is a single village of about 1,000 inhabitants. Its mud huts surround a slightly raised fortification. Village and oasis are situated in a vast p…

, town in south-western Afg̲h̲ānistān, capital of the district ( ʿalā-ḥukūmat ) of the same name. The town is located on the Farāh river 62° 5′ E. 32° 23′ N., alt. 1738 m. Farāh is located where trade routes from Harāt, Ḳandahār and Seistān join and the site has been occupied from ancient times. The name of the river is probably found in Avestan Fradaθā ( Yas̲h̲t , xix, 67). The town is mentioned by many classical authors under various names; Prophthasia, Propasta, and Phrada (see Bibliography). Farāh is not mentioned in Arabic works dealing with the conquests, but it is mentioned…

, the name of a place in Māzandarān, situated 36° 50′ N., 53° 2′ 38″ E., 17 m. north of Sārī and 26 m. north-west of As̲h̲raf [ q.v.], near the mouth of the Tid̲j̲in (or Tīd̲j̲ān, or Tid̲j̲īna) river. Formerly known as Ṭāhān, the site was renamed Faraḥābād by S̲h̲āh ʿAbbās I, who in 1020/1611-2 or 1021/1612-3 ordered the construction of a royal palace there. Around the palace were built residences, gardens, baths, bazaars, mosques and caravanserais. The new town, according to Pietro della Valle, was peopled by S̲h̲āh ʿAbbā…

, (Anṭūn being the family name; 1874-1922), Arab author and journalist. Trained in a Greek-Orthodox school near Tripoli (now in Lebanon), he migrated to Egypt, and published a journal in Alexandria. He then migrated to the U.S.A. but, following the Turkish revolution of 1908, went back to Egypt and became active in the national movement. Well versed in French literature (and translations) he was attracted mostly by social-political-ethical and philosophical-religious themes, but he lacked method, system, and consistency. His adherence to Westernism …

(a.), plural of farīḍa [see farḍ ], literally “appointed or obligatory portions”, is the technical term for the fixed shares in an estate (½, ¼, ⅓, ⅛, ⅔ and 1/16) which are given to certain heirs, who are called d̲h̲awu ’l-farāʾiḍ or aṣḥāb al-farāʾiḍ , on the basis of Ḳurʾān, IV, 11-2 and 176. These Ḳurʾānic enactments aim at modifying a system of purely agnatic succession, under which only men can inherit, in favour of the nearest female relatives (including half-brothers on the mother’s side), the spouse, and also the father (who is protected against ¶ being excluded by existing male de…

, a Muslim sect in Bengal established at the beginning of the 19th century by Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī S̲h̲arīʿat Allāh. The setting in which the sect was born and developed was eastern Bengal in the period immediately following the British conquest. Peasant life in that State, perhaps more than in other parts of India, was influenced by Hindu customs and practices. At that time the virtual loss of political supremacy by a section of the governing Muslim class, the support which the British sometimes gave to the Hindu elements, the unbridled power of the zamīndār s [ q.v.], rich landed proprietors bot…

(P. farāmūsh “forgotten” and k̲h̲āna “house”), the word used in Iran to designate a centre of masonic activities. The term seems to have originated in India, where a masonic lodge was first founded by the British in 1730. The earliest known references in Persian sources to the idea of freemasonry in general and to Indian masonic activity in particular can be found in the writings of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf S̲h̲ūs̲h̲tarī D̲j̲azāʾirī, a Persian émigré to India. Writing in 1801, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf believed that the reason why the Indians and the Persian-speaking people of India call the freemasons farāmūs̲h…

, a family of prominent Indian Ḥanafī theologians and mystics flourishing from the 12th/18th century to the present day. The family traces its ancestry through the great scholar and mystic Ḵh̲wād̲j̲a ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī of Harāt to Ayyūb Anṣārī, the Prophet’s host in Medina. It is not known when the family migrated to India but, according to the family biographers, one ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn settled in Sihālī of the Awadh [ q.v.] province of north India during the 8th/14th century. His descendant, Mullā Ḥāfiẓ, was acknowledged as a distinguished ʿālim by the emperor Akbar who made a generous madad-i maʿ…

(a.) (pl. afrās , furūs , fursān ) denotes the Horse ( Equus caballus), in the sense of saddle-horse; philologists further restrict the meaning of the word to “saddle-horse of the Arabian breed”. This original name is applied to both sexes without distinction, and serves as a noun of unity for the collective of the species k̲h̲ayl ( Equidae ); hence this term is found in agreement with either gender, the feminine, however, seeming the more usual, in ancient Arabic (see Ch. Pellat, Sur quelques noms d’animaux en arabe classique , in GLECS, viii, 95-9). The word faras , pronounced fras , pl. frāsāt…