Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, the name given in popular parlance to Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Mīrzā ʿAlī K̲h̲ān, Pathan mullah and agitator along the Northwestern Frontier of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent in both the later British Indian and the early Pakistani periods, d. 1960. A member of the Torī K̲h̲ēl group of the ʿUt̲h̲mānzay Wazīrs of North Wazīrīstān, probably one of the most unreconciled of the Pathan tribes of the Frontier in British times, he came to especial prominence in 1936-7, inflaming the Tōrī Ḵh̲ēls and the Mahsūds of the Tochi valley against the British…

, ṭīra and zad̲j̲r are terms which merge into one another and together correspond to and express adequately the concept of “omen” and of οι̉ωνóς. Faʾl , a term peculiar to Arabic and equivalent to the Hebrew neḥas̲h̲īm and the Syriac neḥshē , originally meant natural omen, cledonism. It appears in very varied forms, ranging from simple sneezing (al-Ibs̲h̲īhī, Mustaṭraf , trans. Rat, ii 182), certain peculiarities of persons and things that one encounters (al-Nuwayrī, Nihāya , 133 ff., trans, in Arabica , viii/1 (1961), 34-7), to the interpretation of the…

, Sphere, in particular the Celestial Sphere. a. Etymology and semantic evolution. The word falak (pl. aflāk ) occurs already in the Ḳurʾān with the specific significance “celestial sphere” (xxi, 34 “it is He who has created night and day, the Sun and the Moon, each of which moves in its own sphere”; similarly xxxvi, 40). Etymologically and semantically it has a long history: it can be traced back to Sumerian origins, where the stem bala (≷ * pilak ) already has the meaning “to be round” or also “to turn around”. In Akk. it appears as pilakku , which denotes the whorl o…

(Ar.), Turkish: falaḳa , falāḳa , falaḳ Persian: falaka , falak; Byzantine Greek: φάλαγγας; Moroccan: ḳarma , arma . One of the favourite punishments of the masters in the Ḳurʾānic schools (see kuttāb ) was to give the pupil a bastinado on the soles of the feet, more or less severe according to the offence. (There exist detailed scales; see Ibn Saḥnūn, op. cit. infra ). One or more assistants ( ʿarīf ) immobilized the victim’s feet with the help of an apparatus sometimes called miḳṭara , but more often falaḳa. It existed in three different forms: 1) a plank with two holes in it, of t…

, Maḥmūd Pas̲h̲a , was born in 1230/ 1815 at al-Ḥiṣṣa (province of al-G̲h̲arbiyya), and received his early schooling in Alexandria. He subsequently attended, firstly as a pupil, and then as an officer-instructor, the polytechnic school at Būlāḳ (Muhandisk̲h̲āne) founded by Muḥammad ʿAlī. In 1850-1 he was sent to Paris, to specialize in astronomy under Arago. He returned to Cairo in 1859. Afterwards he directed the team which, on the orders of the Khedive Saʿīd, mapped Egypt. H…

, Muḥammad Falakī, poetastronomer of S̲h̲irwān and pupil of K̲h̲āḳānī, is the author of a lost dīwān of Persian poetry, of which 1512 verses have been recovered and published. Falakī lived 49 years, ca. 501/1108 - ca. 550/1155 and like Abu ’l-ʿAlāʾ and K̲h̲āḳānī was a courtpoet of the S̲h̲irwāns̲h̲āh Abu ’l-Hayd̲j̲ā Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn Minūčihr II, who succeeded his father Farīdūn I on the throne of S̲h̲irwān in 514/1120 and ruled for 37 years until c. 551/1156. The statement of his contemporary K̲h̲āḳānī, that Falakī’s life was short-lived and that Manūčihr II ruled for 30…

, pl. of faylasūf , formed from the Greek φιλόσοφος. By its origin this word primarily denotes the Greek thinkers. Al-S̲h̲ahrastānī gives a list of them: the seven Sages who are “the fount of philosophy ( falsafa ) and the beginning of wisdom ( ḥikma ) ” , then Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, Xenophanes, Zeno the elder, Democritus, the philosophers of the Academy, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Homer (the poet whose wisdom inspired Greece for, with the Greeks, poetry preceded ph…

[see bayzara , čaki̊rd̲j̲i̊-bas̲h̲i̊ , dog̲h̲and̲j̲i̊ ]

[see filāḥa ]

[see dawraḳ ]

, an Arabic word used particularly in the Beduin dialect form fəllāg , pl. fəllāga (in the western press principally in the pl., with the spelling: fellagar fellagah, fellagha ), and denoting in the first place the brigands and subsequently the rebels who appeared in Tunisia and Algeria. A connexion with falaḳa [ q.v.] “instrument of torture”, of which the etymology is, in any case, obscure (see Arabica , 1954/3, 325-36), is certainly tobe ruled out. On the other hand, the Arabic root FLḲ (comp. FLD̲J̲, FLḤ, etc.) seems worthy of retention; Tunisian rural and nomadic dialects make use of fləg …

, although strictly signifying the Fulānī [ q.v.], is used in the Nilotic Sudan generally for Muslim immigrants from the western Bilād al-Sūdān , and in particular for those from northern Nigeria. The term has largely superseded the older Takārīr or Takārna (which had a similarly loose application), presumably after the Fulānī conquests under ʿUt̲h̲mān dan Fodio. The Takārīr/Fallāta immigrants are primarily pilgrims en route to Mecca: their first appearance in the Nilotic Sudan can hardly have been before the establishment of ¶ Muslim sultanates in Dār Fūr [ q.v.] and Waddāī during …

, name of two districts ( ṭassūd̲j̲ ) of ʿIrāḳ, Upper and Lower Fallūd̲j̲a, which occupied the angle formed by the two arms of the lower Euphrates which flow finally into the Baṭīḥa [ q.v.], the Euphrates proper to the west (this arm is given various names by the geographers and is now called S̲h̲aṭṭ al-Hindiyya) and the nahr Sūrā (now S̲h̲aṭṭ al-Ḥilla) to the east. (Ed.) Bibliography Suhrāb, K. ʿAd̲j̲āʾib al-aḳālīm al-sabʿa, ed. H. von Mžik, Leipzig 1930, 124-5 Ṭabarī, index Balād̲h̲urī, Futūḥ, 245, 254, 265, 457 Bakrī, index Yāḳūt, s.v. Yaʿḳūbī-Wiet, 140 Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲, v, 337 A. Musil, T…

, name of an ancient locality, still existing, of ʿIrāḳ; it is situated on the Euphrates down-stream from al-Anbār [ q.v.] and near Dimmimā, from where the nahr ʿĪsā branched off towards Bag̲h̲dād. At al-Fallūd̲j̲a nowadays the main road from Bag̲h̲dād crosses the Euphrates. (Ed.) Bibliography Muḳaddasī, 115 Suhrāb, 123 Iṣṭak̲h̲rī, 84 Ibn Ḥawḳal, 165 Musil, The middle Euphrates, 269-71 Le Strange, 66, 68 (distinguishing two villages of the same name, the second at the point where the nahr al-Malik branches off; but there seems to be some confusion here) M. Canard, H’amdânides, 147.

, book of divination. In the Muslim East (especially in Iranian and Turkish countries), in order to know if not the future, at least the signs or circumstances that are auspicious for some decision, recourse is still sometimes made to certain procedures (cf. Massé, Croyances , ch. XI: divination), among others to two kinds of books: 1. collections of poems ( dīwān of Ḥāfiẓ); 2. special works ( fāl-nāma). Consulting the dīwān, an act within the reach of everyone, consists in opening the book at random and interpreting the text which first strikes the eye (for details, see Massé, op. cit., 244-5…

(pl. fulūs ), the designation of the copper or bronze coin current in the early centuries of the Islamic era. The term fals for copper coinage, like those of dīnār and dirham for gold and silver, is of Greek origin, deriving from φόλλις, the name of the Byzantine copper coin. Fals denotes any and all copper or bronze coins, regardless of size or weight. The system of varying denominations in which Byzantine copper coinage was originally issued seems already to have disintegrated prior to the Arab conquests. By the time the…

1.—Origins. The origins of falsafa are purely Greek; the activity of the falāsifa [ q.v.] begins with Arabic translations of the Greek philosophical texts (whether direct or through a Syriac intermediary). Thus falsafa\appears first as the continuation of φιλοσοφία in Muslim surroundings. But this definition leads at once to a more precise formulation: since strictly orthodox Sunnī Islam has never welcomed philosophic thought, falsafa developed from the first especially among thinkers influenced by the sects, and particularly by the S̲h̲īʿa; and this arose …

[see mag̲h̲os̲h̲a ].

[see ʿāʾila ].

[see mirwāḥa ].

[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…

( Farsān ), a group of islands in the Red Sea opposite Abū ʿArīs̲h̲. They are not mentioned in the Periplus . In the Martyrdom of St Arethas the Φαρσὰν islands are said to have contributed seven ¶ hips to the Christian expedition against the Yaman. The name is tribal. According to Hamdānī, the Banū Farasān, though claimed as Himyarī by the Ḥimyarī genealogists, belonged to Tag̲h̲lib and had once been Christian; there were ruined churches on the islands. They were at war with the Banū Mad̲j̲īd and traded with Abyssinia. They were al…

(A., pl. k̲h̲ayl al-māʾ , k̲h̲uyūl al-māʾ ) and synonyms faras , al-baḥr faras al-nahr , faras nahrī , ḥiṣān al-baḥr , denoting the hippopotamus, are nothing other than Arabic translations of its Greek name ὁ ἵππος ὁ ποτάμιος in the works of Herodotus, then ίπππόταμος in the works of Galen and Aristotle; Herodotus also calls it ὁ ἵππος του̑ Νείλον, whence faras al-Nīl “horse of the Nile” and Pliny simply translated the Greek as equus fluviatilis. In Nubia it bears the name birnīḳ and in the Touareg country, agamba (pl. igambaten ) and bango (pl. bangōten ). The epithets k̲h̲inzīr al-māʾ …

, “the lump of dough”, properly Tammām b. G̲h̲ālib (Abū Firās), famous Arab satirist and panegyrist, died at Baṣra about 110/728 or 112/730. Born in Yamāma (Eastern Arabia) on a date 1 which is uncertain (probably after 20/640), this poet was descended from the sub-tribe of Mud̲j̲ās̲h̲iʿ, of the Dārim group of the Tamīm. His father, G̲h̲ālib [ q.v.], is said to have played some part, in the Baṣra area, in the conflict between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya; to this fact must be attributed the later idea that al-Farazdaḳ entertained pro-ʿAlid sympathies which, howev…

(adj, can be taken as a subst.), pl. afrād , used of the individual, and so with the meanings of only , solitary , unique , incomparable; the half , that is to say one of a pair or couple (pl. firād , Ḳāmūs root f.r.d); and other derivative meanings. The word has been used to denote Allāh, as the single Being who has no parallel: al-fard fī ṣifāt Allāh (al-Layt̲h̲, Lisān , iv, 327/iii, 331a), but it does not occur in the Ḳurʾān or in ḥadīt̲h̲ s as an epithet of Allāh. It is for that reason that al-Azharī ( ibid.) found fault with this usage. There is every reason for believing’ that al-fard was at that time…

(a.), also farīḍa , literally “something which has been apportioned, or made obligatory”, and as a technical term, a religious duty or obligation, the omission of which will be punished and the performance of which will be rewarded. It is one of the so-called al-aḥkām al-k̲h̲amsa , the “five qualifications” by which every act of man is qualified in religious law [see aḥkām ]. A synonym is wād̲j̲ib . The Ḥanafī school makes a distinction between farḍ and wād̲j̲ib, applying the first term to those religious duties which are explicitly mentioned in the proof texts (Ḳurʾān and sunna …

[see nud̲j̲ūm ]

, Ferg̲h̲ānā, a valley on the middle Jaxartes (Si̊r-Daryā), approximately 300 km. long and 70 km. wide, surrounded by parts of the Tians̲h̲an mountains: the Čatkal range (Ar. Ḏj̲adg̲h̲al. up to 3,000 m. high) on the north, the Ferg̲h̲ānā mountains (up to 4,000 m.) on the east, and the Alai mountains (up to 6,000 m.) on the south. The only approach (7 km. wide) accessible in all seasons is in the west, at the point where the Jaxartes leaves the valley and where the trade-route (and since 1899 the railway from Samarḳand to Ōs̲h̲) enters it. The Farg̲h̲ānā valley covers approximately 23,000 km.2; t…

, the name of two tenth-century historians, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḏj̲aʿfar (b. 282/895-6, d. 362/972-3) and his son, Abū Manṣūr Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh (327/939-398/1007). ʿAbd Allāh’s great-grandfather had been brought to the ʿIrāḳ from Farg̲h̲āna and had become a Muslim under al-Muʿtaṣim. ʿAbd Allāh himself was a student of the great Ṭabarī, whose works he transmitted, and he achieved high rank in the army. ¶ He went to Egypt where his son, it seems, was born, and he and his family remained there. He wrote a continuation of al-Ṭabarī’s historical work, entitled al-Ṣila or al-Mud̲h…

, the mediaeval astronomer Alfraganus . His full name is Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Kat̲h̲īr al-Farg̲h̲ānī, that is to say, a native of Farg̲h̲āna in Transoxania; not everyone, however, is agreed upon his name: the Fihrist only speaks of Muḥammad b. Kat̲h̲īr, and Abu ’l-Farad̲j̲ of Aḥmad b. Kat̲h̲īr, while Ibn al-Ḳifṭī distinguishes between two persons, Muḥammad and Aḥmad b. Muḥammad, in other words father and son; however it is very probable that all the references are to the same personage, an astron…

[see ferhād pas̲h̲a ].