Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

(a.) denotes a large agnatic group, the members of which claim to be descended from one common ancestor; this word is generally understood in the sense of tribe. It derives from the Arabic root ḳ-b-l , of which the form ḳābala signifies to meet, to be face to face with. The definition given by al-Nuwayrī ( Nihāya , ii, 269), the only one, we believe, which refers to its morphology, refers specifically to this etymology: “the ḳabīla was so named because its component parts are placed face to face and in equal numbers”. Its structure seems indeed to …

, North Indian mystic and poet (d. ca. 1448). Although Kabīr is regarded as one of the most influential saint-poets of mediaeval Northern India, there is very little authentic information concerning his life. We can reliably state that he was born in Benares to a family of low-caste Muslim weavers called d̲j̲ulāhā s, probably in the opening years of the 9th/15th century. Beyond this, various hagiographies of Kabīr, depending on the authors’ sectarian affiliation, make competing claims that he was a Muslim Ṣūfī, a Hindu with …

(a., pl. kabāʾir ), a term of Islamic theology meaning “grave [sin]”, occurring in Ḳurʾān, II, 42/39, 138/143 and passim . It was the stimulus for much discussion amongst theologians and sectaries like the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲ites [ q.v.] on what constituted a grave sin and how committing one affected a man’s salvation. For a discussion, see k̲h̲aṭīʾa .

[see Supplement].

(Gabès), a town in Tunisia on the gulf of the same name (the Little Syrte of antiquity), 404 km. to the south of Tunis and 150 km. from Gafsa [see ḳafsa ]; it has 40,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,200 are Europeans, and is the chief town of a governorate with a population of 204,000 (1966 census). The town of Gabès, divided since 1957 into four districts, includes the old townships of Manzil, situated higher up the Oued-Gabès, and D̲j̲āra, situated downstream, localities which have always been divided by fie…

(or Ibn al-Ḳābiṣī ), Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. K̲h̲alaf al-Maʿāfirī (324/935-403/1012), one of the principal representatives of the Mālikī school of Ḳayrawān, of which he was the leader after the death of Ibn Abī Zayd (d. 386/996). His father, a native of al-Maʿāfiriyyīn in the neighbourhood of Gabès, had married a woman from Ḳayrawān. An oral tradition affirms that al-Ḳābisī, Ibn Abī Zayd and Sīdī Maḥrez (Muḥriz b. K̲h̲alaf) were first cousins, since their fathers had married …

, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿUt̲h̲mān b. ʿAlī , Abu ’l-Ṣaḳr , astrologer, came from one of two towns called Ḳabīṣa (Yaḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am al-buldān , iv, 308 of the Beirut ed.), the one two farsak̲h̲s east of Mawṣil and the other near Sāmarrā. He is said by Ibn al-Nadīm (ed. Flügel, 265; quoted by Ibn al-Ḳifṭī, ed. Lippert, 64) to have studied Ptolemy’s Almagest under ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-ʿImrānī of Mawṣil (d. 344/955-6) “in our time”; Ibn al-Ḳifṭī adds that this refers to 370/980-1. Al-Ḳabīṣī is in fact cited by al-ʿImrānī in his In electionibus horarum (J. M. Millás Vallicrosa, Las traducciones orientales, Mad…

, D̲j̲abal al-Ḳabḳ (the most common rendering), al-Ḳabk̲h̲ ( e.g., Masʿūdī) or al-Ḳabd̲j̲ ( e.g. Ṭabarī, Yāḳūt), Turkish Kavkaz, the name given by the Muslims to the Caucasus Mountains. The form ḳabḳ may derive from Middle Persian kāfkōh “the mountain of Kāf”, Armenian kapkoh ; in Firdawsī we find the Caucasus called kūh-i ḳāf (Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik , i, 45, cf. Marquart, Ērānšahr , 94). A village called Ḳabḳ is also mentioned by Ibn Rusta, 173, tr. Wiet, 201, as being the first stage on the road from Harāt to Isfizār and Sīstān. 1. Topography and ethnology. The Caucasus became k…

History. 1. For the early Islamic period up to the Mongol and Tīmūrid periods, see Vol. III, 343-50. 2. The period 1500-1800. Compared to previous and later epochs, these three centuries are among the least studied periods in the history of the Caucasus. The main reason for that lies not in the unavailability of sources but rather in their inaccessibility until the recent past. The Russian ¶ archives the most used ones are far from having been fully scrutinised. In the Ottoman archives, only the surface has been scratched, chiefly due to the efforts of French …

, alocality in Togo(9° 25′N., 0° 50′E.), 24 km. to the north of Bassari, an important market whose prosperity, in pre-colonial times, was based ¶ partly on the barter of crude iron given to the Kabre iron-smiths of Lama-Kara in exchange for slaves, and partly on its function as a halting place on the kolacaravan routes. The presence in Kabou of Muslim outsiders (particularly Ḥawsa and D̲j̲erma) was therefore not unusual. It was a certain Oukpane, a native of Kalanga (about ten km. to the west of Bassari), who founded the village of Kabou, probably during the first …

(a.), tomb was first applied to the pit used as a burial place for a corpse, as was the term ḍarīḥ , giving rise to its habitual use in the text of numerous epitaphs containing the expression hād̲h̲ā ḳabru ... “This is the grave of . . .”. Originally distinguished from the term ṣandūḳ , “cenotaph” (cf., J. Sauvaget, “ Les perles choisies” d’Ibn ach-Chihna , Beirut 1933, 212 and “ Les trésors d’or ” de Sibt al-ʿAjamī , Beirut 1950, 184), it had the more general meaning of the tumulus or construction covering the grave to bring it to notice, a custom c…

, in Spanish Cabra, a town in a mountainous region of Andalusia to the south-east of Cordoba, situated at an altitude of 448 m. on the slopes of the Sierra de Cabra; at present it is the centre of a partido judicial of the province of Cordoba and has a population of 20,000. The Muslim town of Ḳabra, which succeeded the Roman Igabrum — one of the principal cities of Baetica according to Pliny — ranked as one of the fortresses of al-Andalus. Colonised by the d̲j̲und of Wāsiṭ in ʿIrāḳ in the time of the governor Abu ’l-K̲h̲aṭṭār al-Kalbī (125/743-127/745) under…

[see badw (IIa), yürük , zakāt , and silāḥ ].

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim K̲h̲alaf b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-G̲h̲āfiḳī , poet and letter-writer, from the island in the Guadalquivir called Ḳabtawra or Ḳabtūra (formerly Caput Tauri, Ibn K̲h̲aldūn—de Slane, Hist . des Berbères , ii, 113; today Isla Mayor, south of Seville). The son of a Sevillian scholar, he was born in S̲h̲awwāl 615/December 1218-January 1219. After the fall of Seville (646/1248) he moved to Ceuta, where he became head of the chancellery of the ʿAzafid emirate; following the death of the amīr Abu ’l-Ḳāsim al-ʿAzafī he left Ceuta for Tunis and there taught ḥadīt̲h̲ …

, Banu ’l -, a family of 5th/11th-century al-Andalus whose Arabic nasab was the Banū Saʿīd. They comprised three brothers who were poets and also secretaries to the Afṭasid prince of Badajoz, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Mutawakkil (464-88/1072-95 [ q.v. and afṭasids ]), and then were subsequently in the chancery of the Almoravids. The laḳab of al-Ḳabṭūrnuh (according to other sources, al-Ḳabṭūrnah or al-Ḳubṭūrnuh) suggests an Hispanic origin, probably one stemming from the Low Latin * capiturnus “having a large head”. The first of the …

1. A river of Afg̲h̲ānistān and the Northwest Frontier region of Pākistān, 700 km. long and rising near the Unai Pass in lat. 34° 21′ N. and long. 68° 20′ E. It receives the affluents of the Pand̲j̲hīr, Alingar, Kunar and Swat Rivers from the north, and the Lōgar from the south, and flows eastwards to the Indian plain, joining the Indus at Atak (Attack). The Ḥudūd al-ʿālam (end of 4th/10th century) calls it “the River of Lamg̲h̲ān”, and describes it as flowing from the mountains bordering on Lamg̲h̲ān and Dunpūr, passing by Nangrahār (sc. …

[see bayʿ ].

, the upper basin of the Kābul River (see preceding article), vaguely defined in early Islamic times as the region between Bāmiyān in the west and Lamg̲h̲ān in the east. The geographer Muḳaddāsī (c. 375/985) includes within it all the country north of G̲h̲azna and Zābulistān, i.e., the Lōgar valley, cf. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 349; and it is only about this time that the term “Kābul” becomes specialised for the name of the town rather than being applied to the whole region of Kābulistān. In contemporary Afg̲h̲…

, S̲h̲ams al-Maʿālī Abu’l-Ḥasan (reigned 366-71/977-81 and ¶ 388-403/998 to 1012-13), fourth ruler of the Ziyārid dynasty which had been founded by Mardāwīd̲j̲ b. Ziyār [ q.v.] and which ruled in Ṭabaristān and Gurgān (Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ān). Like other families rising to prominence in the “Daylamī interlude” of Persian history, the Ziyārids endeavoured to attach themselves to the pre-Islamic Iranian past, and Ḳābūs’s grandson Kay Kāʾūs makes Ḳābūs’s ancestors rulers of Gīlān in the time of Kay K̲h̲usraw ( Ḳābūs-nāma , Preface). As under his predecessors, suze…

[see kay kāʾūs ].