Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

(a., masc. or fem.), a measure for grain "of the value of 4 mudd ( modius ) according to the custom of Medina" ( LʿA ; al-Ḵh̲wārazmī, Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm , ed. Van Vloten, 14). If the cubic contents of the ṣāʿ , like that of the mudd, varied with town and district as far as commercial transactions were concerned, the value of the ṣāʿ was from the canonical point of view fixed in religious law by the Prophet in the year 2/623-4 when he laid down the ritual details of the orthodox feast of ʿīd al-fiṭr , which carried with it the compulsory giving of alms called zakāt al-fiṭr , the value of which in grain was one ṣāʿ…

(a.) "hour", hence "clock". 1. In technology. Monumental water-clocks are described in detail in two Arabic treatises. Al-Ḏj̲azarī [ q.v. in Suppl.] in his book on mechanical contrivances completed in Diyār Bakr in 602/1206 describes two such machines. Riḍwān b. al-Sāʿātī, in a treatise dated 600/1203, describes the water-clock built by his father Muḥammad at the Ḏj̲ayrūn gate in Damascus (see E. Wiedemann and F. Hauser, Über die Uhren in Bereich der Islamischen Kultur , in Nova Acta der Kaiserl . Leop . Deutschen Akad . der Naturforscher , ciii [1918], 167-27…

(a.), happiness, bliss, a central concept in Islamic philosophy to describe the highest aim of human striving, which can be reached through ethical perfection and increasing knowledge. In non-philosophical literature, the term (as opposed to s̲h̲aḳāwa , s̲h̲aḳwa , s̲h̲aḳāʾ , s̲h̲aḳā ) describes either happy circumstances in life (see for instance Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad , ed. Cairo 1313/1895-6, i, 168, 29-30, iii, 407, last section), the unexpected happiness of a long life ( Musnad, iii, 332, 28), preservation from temptations ( ibid., i, 327, 9-10; Abū Dāwūd, Sunan , Kitāb al-Fitan …

, Nawāb of Awadh or Oudh (regn. 1798-1814). His brother Aṣaf al-Dawla had died in September 1797, but after a four months’ interim, Āṣaf al-Dawla’s putative son Wazīr ʿAlī Ḵh̲ān was set aside and the British governor-General Sir John Shore installed in his place Saʿādat ʿAlī Ḵh̲ān, who had been living under British protection in Benares since 1776. His reign is noteworthy for the extension of British control over the Oudh territories. A treaty concluded with the late Nawāb in 1775 had placed these terri…

, Saʿīd ( Abī ) YaʿḲūb Yūsuf al-Fayyūmī (269-331/882-942), Jewish theologian, philosopher and philologist who wrote in Arabic, considered through his independence and breadth as the initiator of several Jewish intellectual disciplines, and a pioneer in mediaeval Jewish philosophy; he was one of the very few Jewish thinkers covered by the Arabic biographers (cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist , i, 320). 1. Life He was born at Dīlās in the province of Fayyūm in Egypt, but little is known of his youth except that his father, of humble origin, had the reputation of bei…

or the Sabaeans (Greek Σαβαῖοι), the name of a folk who were bearers of a highly developed culture which flourished for over a millennium before Islam, together with three other folks, Maʿīn, Ḳataban and Ḥaḍramawt [ q.vv.]. The main Sabaean centre was at Maryab (later Mārib, see maʾrib ) in Yemen with its fertile oasis on the western edge of the desert known to Arab geographers as Ṣayhad (modern Ramlat al-Sabʿatayn). In early historical times there were also Sabaean settlements in the Wādī Ad̲h̲ana above the great dam wh…

, Fatḥ ʿAlī Ḵh̲ān , Persian poet, was born in Kās̲h̲ān, probably in 1179/1765, and died in 1238/1822-3. His people belonged originally to Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān. and came from the Dunbalī stock, a tribe of Kurds settled in the region of Ḵh̲ūy. Members of his family held jobs as governors and administrators under the Zand and Ḳād̲j̲ār rulers. His father, Āḳā Muḥammad, was governor of Kās̲h̲ān under the Zands, and his eldest brother, Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḵh̲ān, was minister to the Zand ruler Luṭf ʿAlī Ḵh̲ān ( r. 1203-9/1789-94). Ṣabā also seems to have been identified with this monarch, and i…

(a.), pl. asbāb , literally "rope" ( ḥabl ), the basic sense as given by the lexicographers (cf. LʿA ), coming to designate anything which binds or connects. It is "anything by means of which one gains an end ( maḳṣūd ; al-Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ānī) or an object sought" ( maṭlūb ; in the Baḥr al-d̲j̲awāhir ). One can mention asbāb with the sense of "bonds" in Ḳurʾān, II, 166: "When the bonds [which unite them] are broken...". Ibn ʿAbbās interpreted this as friendship ( mawadda ); Mud̲j̲āhid, "alliance" ( tawāṣul ) in this context. The sense is also found of "a means of achi…

, a state consisting of over 29,000 square miles of territory on the northern coast of the island of Borneo and a constituent part of Malaysia since 1963. Formerly it was known as North Borneo (1877-8 to 1946) and was governed by the British North Borneo Company (incorporated by Royal Charter in 1881) by virtue of agreements between the Company and the Sultans of Brunei [ q.v. in Suppl.] and Sulu [ q.v.]. In July 1946 the Company transferred all its rights to Britain and the territory became a Crown Colony which lasted until 1963 when Sabah joined the Federation of Malaysia. The Muslim populatio…

, Arabian dynasty from the ʿUtūb branch of the ʿAnaza tribe, rulers of al-Kuwayt [ q.v.] from ca. 1165/1752 until the present. They presided over its development from a small port dependent on pearling, fishing and the transit trade with India to its current position as an independent, oil-rich state. Āl Ṣabāḥ originated in Nad̲j̲d and migrated with other members of the ʿUtūb to Ḳaṭar [ q.v.] in about 1085/1674 and then to al-Kuwayt early in the 12th/18th century. The rise to power of the founder of the dynasty, Ṣabāḥ I ( ca. 1165-71/1752-6), remains obscure. His claim to authority was…

(Ottoman orthography, Ṣabāḥ ul-Dīn ʿAlī), Turkish novelist and short story writer, born in Komotini [see gümüld̲j̲ine, in Suppl.], eastern Thrace (now in Greece), on 12 February 1906 or 25 February 1907, died on 2 April 1948. His father was the army Captain Ali Salahaddin and he had his elementary education in Istanbul, Çanakkale, and Edremit. His childhood in Çanakkale during World War I was to leave deep emotional traces on him; later, when the family came to Edremit, the area was under invasion and they fou…

("Prens" Sabahattin) (1877-1948), late Ottoman political theorist. Ṣabāh al-Dīn was born in Istanbul, the elder son of Dāmād (imperial son-in-law) Maḥmūd Ḏj̲elāl al-Dīn Pas̲h̲a. His mother was Senīḥa Sulṭān, a younger sister of Sultan ʿAbd al-Hamīd II. He was educated privately. When his father fled to Paris in 1899, Ṣabāḥ al-Dīn and his younger brother Luṭf Allāh accompanied him. Ṣabāḥ al-Dīn came to the fore as one of the leading Young Turk emigré publicists and politicians. Backed by his father’s wealth, he soon became a serious com…

, modern Turkish Sapanca, a town in northwestern Anatolia, in the classical Bithynia, situated on the southeastern bank of the freshwater lake of the same name and to the west of the Sakarya river (lat. 40° 41′ N., long. 30° 15′ E.). Almost nothing is known of its pre-Islamic history, although there are Byzantine remains; the name may be a popular transformation of Sophon. According to Ewliyā Čelebi, the town was founded by a certain Ṣaband̲j̲ī Ḳod̲j̲a, but this last must be merely an eponymous hero. It seems to appear in history only i…

, Sebasṭiyya , the Arabic name of various towns in the Near East. 1. The ancient Samaria, which Herod had changed to Σεβαστή in honour of Augustus. The form Σεβάστεια—as in the case of other towns of this name—was presumably also used, as the Arabic name (which is sometimes also written Sabaṣṭiyya) suggests. By the end of the classical period, the town, overshadowed by the neighbouring Neapolis (Sichem; Arabic, Nābulus), had sunk to be a small town (πολίκνιον) and played only an unimportant part in the Arab period. It was conquered by ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ while Abū Bakr ¶ was still caliph; the inh…

, collective designation of seven patron saints venerated in certain Moroccan towns and tribal areas, as well as in some parts of Algeria. Probably the oldest group of this kind are the Seven of the Rad̲j̲rād̲j̲a (Regraga), a Berber maraboutic tribe (later: family) belonging to the Ḥāḥā (Maṣmūda) and composed of the descendants of 13 saints (the original seven plus six affiliates), whose tombs and zāwiyas are located west, east and on top of their holy mountain, Ḏj̲abal al-Ḥadīd, between al-Sawīra (Mogador) and the Tansift in S̲h̲ayāẓima (Chiadma) country. According to local traditi…

(a.), lit. dyer, is a technical term which was applied to a group of skilled craftsmen in Islamic Middle East and North Africa. In a polemical ¶ writing, the Arab writer al-Ḏj̲āḥiẓ argued that the dyers, tanners, cuppers, etc. were exclusively Jewish in the early Islamic period, but historians like al-Ḵh̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī and other writers have indicated names of Muslims bearing the name al-Ṣabbāg̲h̲ which may indicate the involvement of Muslims in the dyer’s profession at least during later Islamic centuries. A stateme…

(a.), or, with the usual weakening of final hamza , Ṣābī , plural Ṣābiʾūn , Ṣābiʾa , Ṣāba , in English “Sabian” (preferably not “Sabaean”, which renders Sabaʾ [ q.v.]), a name applied in Arabic to at least three entirely different religious communities: (1) the Ṣābiʾūn who are mentioned three times in the Ḳurʾān (II 62, V 69, XXII 17) together with the Christians and Jews. Their identity, which has been much debated both by the Muslim commentators and by modern orientalists, was evidently uncertain already shortly after the time of Muḥamma…

(a.), the name of two rather mysterious groups in early Islamic times: 1. Ṣābiʾat al-baṭāʾiḥ . The Mesopotamian dialectal pronunciation of ṣābiʿa , where the ʿayn has been transformed into y or ī , also occurs in Mandaean (cf. Lidzbarski, Ginzā ; Nöldeke, Mandäische Grammatik ; R. Macuch, Handbook , 94, 1. 16: ṣabuia ). This substantive, which became current in Mecca during the period of Ḳurʾānic preaching, irrespective of its etymology, derives from the Semitic root ṣ-b-ʿ (Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac; Ethiopic ṣabk̲h̲a ), corresponding to ṣ-b-g̲h̲ in Arabic. Th…

(a.), lit. “foregoers”: a term occasionally applied in S̲h̲īʿism to the Prophet, Imāms, and Fāṭima in recognition of their status as preexistent beings and the first of God’s creatures to respond to the demand “Am I not your Lord?” ( a-lastu bi-rabbikum ?). The term derives primarily from Ḳurʾān, LVI, 10-11 ( wa ’l-Ṣābīḳūn al-Ṣābīḳūn ulāʾika ’l-muḳarribūn ); there are also examples of verbal usage (e.g. “how could we not be superior to the angels, since we preceded them ( sabaḳnāhum ) in knowledge of our Lord?” al-Kirmānī, Mubīn , i, 304). The S̲h̲īʿī concept o…

(a.), pi. subul , literally “way, road, path”, a word found frequently in the Ḳurʾān and in Islamic religious usage. 1. As a religious concept. Associated forms of the Arabic word are found in such Western Semitic languages as Hebrew and Aramaic, and also in Epigraphic South Arabian as s 1 bl (see Joan C. Biella, Dictionary of Old South Arabic , Sabaean dialect, Cambridge, Mass. 1982, 326). A. Jeffery, following F. Schwally, in ZDMG, liii (1899), 197, surmised that sabīl was a loanword in Ḳurʾānic usage, most likely taken from Syriac, where s̲h̲ebīlā has both the l…

, Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar (b. 1862 in S̲h̲emākha, d. 1911 in Bākū), Azerbaijani satirical poet and journalist. After the First Russian Revolution of 1905, a humorous and satirical literature grew up in Russian Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān, seen especially in the weekly journal Mollā Naṣreddīn founded at Tiflis in 1906 by Ḏj̲elāl Meḥmed Ḳulī-zāde [see d̲j̲arīda. iv], which attacked the old literary forms, backwardness in education and religious fanaticism, achieving a circulation also in Turkey and Persian Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān. One of the writers in it was Ṣābir (who als…

a Persian poet of the first half of the 6th/12th century. His dīwān , which has been published twice (ed. ʿAlī Ḳawīm, Tehran 1331 S̲h̲ ./1952-3, and ed. M.ʿA. Nāṣiḥ, Tehran 1343 S̲h̲./1964), consists almost entirely of panegyrics praising the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan Sand̲j̲ar (511-52/1118-57), the Ḵh̲wārazms̲h̲āh Atsi̊z (521-68/1127-72) and various persons at their respective courts, in particular Sand̲j̲ar’s raʾīs-i Ḵh̲urāsān , Mad̲j̲d al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Musawī, the poet’s principal patron. The rivalry between his two royal master…

, "Seveners", a designation for those S̲h̲īʿīsects which recognise a series of seven Imāms. Unlike the name It̲h̲nā ʿas̲h̲ariyya or "Twelvers" the term Sabʿiyya does not occur in mediaeval Arabic texts; it seems to have been coined by modern scholars by analogy with the first term. The name is often used to designate the Ismāʿīliyya [ q.v.], but this is not correct, because neither the Bohora nor the Ḵh̲ōd̲j̲a Ismāʿīlīs count seven Imāms. The term can be applied only to the earliest stage of the development of the Ismāʿīlī sect, during which the Ismā…

(a.), pl. sibāk̲h̲ , the term used by the mediaeval Arabic geographers for salt marshes or lagoons and for the salt flats left by the evaporation of the water from such areas. Thus they employ it for describing the salt flats characteristic of parts of the Great Desert of central and eastern Persia (the present Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr and Das̲h̲t-i Lūṭ) and of the adjacent province of Sīstān (Ibn Ḥawḳal, ed. Kramers, 407, 415, tr. Kramers-Wiet, 397, 404; al-Muḳaddasī, 488; cf. A. Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11 e siècle . iii . Le milieu naturelle, Paris-The Hagu…

(p.), the Indian style, is the third term of a classification of Persian literature into three stylistic periods. The other terms, sabk-i Ḵh̲urāsānī (initially also called sabk-i Turkistānī ) and sabk-i ʿIrāḳī , refer respectively to the eastern and the western parts of mediaeval Persia. The assumption underlying this geographical terminology is that the shifts of the centre of literary activity from one area to another, which took place repeatedly since the 4th/10th century, were paralleled by a stylisti…

(a.), usually rendered "patience, endurance". The significance of this conception can hardly be conveyed in a West European language by a single word, as may be seen from the following. According to the Arabic lexicographers, the root ṣ-b-r , of which ṣabr is the nomen actionis, means to restrain or bind; thence ḳatalahu ṣabr an “to bind and then slay someone”. The slayer and the slain in this case are called ṣābir and maṣbūr respectively. The expression is applied, for example, to martyrs and prisoners of war put to death; in the Ḥadīt̲h̲ often to animals that— c…

( ṣabir , ṣabur ) (a.) denotes the aloe, a species of the Liliaceae , which was widespread in the warm countries of the ancient world, mainly in Cyprus and on the mountains of Africa. The leaves of many varieties provide fibres ("aloe-fibres") for spinning coarse cloths, and from the aloe’s dark-brown wood a valued perfumery is won. Important was also the aloe drug, i.e. the juice pressed from the leaves, whose Greek name ἀλόη was borrowed by the Arab pharmacologists as āluwī . In the West, the name apparently was pronounced ṣibar , which survives in Spanish acibar . The…

or Sabratha , one of the three ancient cities (Leptis Magna = Lebda; Oea = Tripoli; and Sabratha or Sabrata = Ṣabra) which made up Tripolitania. Ṣabra Manṣūriyya [ q.v.], another town ¶ 33 km/20 miles to the west of Tlemcen in Algeria bore (Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn, ʿIbar , Beirut 1959, vii, 524), and still bears today, this same name, after having assumed that of Turenne in the colonial period. The homonomy here is fortuitous. Ṣabrāṭa—now a tourist town and the centre of an archaeological zone along the littoral some 75 km/48 miles west of Tripoli and 35 km…

, or also Madīnat ʿIzz al-Islām , a royal city founded between 334 and 336/945-8, at half-a-mile to the southeast of Ḳayrawān, by the Fāṭimid caliph al-Manṣūr— whence its name—in order to commemorate his victory over the rebel Abū Yazīd [ q.v.], on the very spot, so we are told, of a decisive battle. The name. Ṣabra means "a very hard stone" ( LʿA , Beirut 1955, iv, 441, 442). Like ṣak̲h̲r "rock", the term is attested as a personal name (al-Ṭabarī, index; al-Mālikī, Riyāḍ , Beirut 1983, i, 250) or as that of a clan (Kaḥḥāla, Muʿd̲j̲am ḳabāʾil al-ʿArab , Beirut 1968, ii, 6…

(a.), seven, is a number of greatest importance in both the Semitic and the Iranian traditions as it combines the spiritual Three and the material Four. Its history probably begins in Babylon with the observation of four lunar phases of seven days each. The seven planets (including sun and moon) have reigned supreme in human thought since Antiquity. Each of them is connected with a specific colour, scent and character. Niẓāmī’s (d. in the early 7th/13th century [ q.v.]) Persian epic Haft paykar is the finest elaboration of these ideas. The imagined seven stations between the …

(a.), the sabbath, and thus ( yawm al- ) sabt , Saturday (technically, Friday evening to Saturday evening); it is also suggested to mean "a week", that is from sabt to sabt, as well as a more general sense of a long period of time. The word has been the common designator of the day which follows yawm al-djumʿa [see d̲j̲umʿa ] since early Islamic times at least [see zamān ]. Clearly related to the Aramaic word s̲h̲abbetā and ultimately Hebrew s̲h̲abbāt , the word was given an appropriately Islamic sense by the Ḳurʾān and later Muslim theological interpretation. The Ḳurʾān associates Jews, the …

, Ceuta , a town of northern Morocco. It is situated 16 km/10 miles to the south of Gibraltar on the Moroccan coast, 60 km/38 miles to the north-west of Tetouan and 210 km/130 miles from Fās. Sabta has the form of a peninsula, ending in a small mountain (the Ḏj̲abal al-Minā or Mt. Hacho, 193 m/633 feet), which has played the double role of a natural acropolis and a watch point. The isthmus of the peninsula, 60 m/197 feet in height, is attached to the mainland by a narrow strip of land, easily defensible. The old town had its counterpart in the Marīnid town, the Āfrāg [ q.v.]. Explanations of the placen…

, Aḥmad b. Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲ī, Abu ’l-ʿAbbās, renowned Moroccan saint, born at Sabta (Ceuta) in 524/1130, not to be confused, in the text of Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn ( Muḳaddima ), with a homonym who lived in a later period and was the inventor of a circular divinatory table known as the zāʾirad̲j̲a , al-ʿālam . Two accounts afford a glimpse of his career, which was contemporaneous with that of the great saint of Tlemcen Abū Madyan al-Andalusī (520-94/1126-97): that of the ḳāḍī al-Tādilī and that of Ibn Ḥāmawayh, which is more concise, …

[see sebüktigin ].

(a.), soap. Prodest et sapo, Gallorum hoc inventum rutilandis capillis; fit ex sebo et cinere ... duobus modis, spissus ac liquidus, uterque apud Germanos maiore in usu viris quam feminis (Pliny, Hist . nat . 28, 191). According to this passage, soap is a Gallic invention but the word itself is of German origin. The Romans borrowed it in the form of sapo , the Greeks from the latter as σάπων, which in its turn found its way into Arabic as ṣābūn . The word denotes a mixture of fat or tallow and vegetable ashes, used to dye the hair red; it was brought on the market in solid or liquid form. In Spain, ṣābūn al…

, Louis , a person of the second rank in the Nahḍa [ q.v.], born at Dayrak on 20 April 1833, died in Los Angeles, 24 April 1931. With an original first name John, and born a Syrian Catholic, he attended the seminary at Charfé and then the Pontifical College for Propaganda at Rome, where he was ordained priest in 1863 (he renounced his priestly orders in 1899). He taught Latin at the Syrian Protestant College and founded the journal al-Naḥla ("The Bee"), which he took up again in London in 1877. He became a British representative in Cairo, accompanied ʿUrābī Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.] into exile in Ceylon, s…

Abū Naṣr Bahāʾ al-Dīn (330-416/942-1025), official and vizier of the Buy ids in Fārs. Beginning his career in high office as deputy to S̲h̲araf al-Dawla’s vizier Abū Manṣūr b. Ṣāliḥān, he subsequently became briefly vizier himself for the first time in 380/990 and for S̲h̲araf al-Dawla’s successor in S̲h̲īrāz. Bahāʾ al-Dawla [ q.v. in Suppl.]. He was vizier again in S̲h̲īrāz in Ḏj̲umādā I 386/May-June 996, this time for over three years, and in 390/1000 in Baghdād as deputy there for the vizier Abū ʿAlī al-Muwaffaḳ. Sābūr, although a native of S̲…

b. Sābūr , Christian physician and pharmacologist (d. 21 Dhu ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 255/30 November 869). Sābūr grew up in the Nestorian milieu of Ḵh̲ūzistān [ q.v.]. He must have been educated at the "Academia Hippocratica" in Gondēs̲h̲āpūr [ q.v.], where he later held a position in the famous local hospital, and rose to be one of the leading physicians of his time. In Gondēs̲h̲āpūr he practised medicine and pharmacology until he was appointed court physician by the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mutawakkil [ q.v.] and his successors. Sābūr died "as a Christian" ( naṣrāniyy an ), perhaps in Sāmarrāʾ [ q.v.]. T…

(Sabaya on Philby’s map), a town in the Tihāmat ʿAsīr [see tihāma ; ʿasīr and map] in wouth-western Saudi Arabia, at about 30 km/21 ¶ miles inland north-east of the port of D̲j̲ayzān [ q.v.]. In 1339/1920 Sayyid Muḥammad al-Idrīsī (see below) concluded a treaty with Ibn Suʿūd ¶ [see ʿabd al-ʿazīz āl suʿūd, in Suppl.], but after his death in 1340/1922-3 internal dissensions among the Idrīsiyya led to a Suʿūdī protectorate. The Imām of Yemen maintained a claim to the Idrīsid territories, but the Treaty of al-Ṭāʾif (1353/1934) determined that they belong to Saudi Arabia, including Ṣabyā [see ʿaṣ…

, Ramaḍān ʿAlī , a Nizārī Ismāʿīlī dāʿī of the 20th century, and an emissary of the Imām of the time, Sulṭān Muḥammad S̲h̲āh Ag̲h̲a Ḵh̲ān III. He was born towards the end of the 19th century in Bombay into an established family of traders and was as a youth apprenticed with his uncle, a businessman in Gwādar. There he acquired an interest in learning more about Ismāʿīlī thought and began to deliver lectures on religious topics to members of the community. He moved subsequently to Karachi to continue his business activities and became prominent in the community as a wāʿiẓ …

, the name for two towns of the eastern Iranian world. 1. Sabzawār in western Ḵh̲urāsān was, together with Ḵh̲usrūd̲j̲ird, one of the two townships making up the administrative district of Bayhaḳ [ q.v.], the name by which the whole district was generally known in mediaeval Islamic times. It lay in the cultivable zone on the northern rim of the Das̲h̲t-i Kawīr or Great Desert. Sabzawār itself is described in the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 102, §23.2, as a small town and as the chef-lieu ( ḳaṣaba ) of a district; the Arabic geographers merely mention it as a stage along the roads of Ḵh̲urāsān and as a rūstāḳ…

, Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ Mullā Hādī b. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ Mahdī (1212-95 or 1298/1797-1878 or 1881), Persian philosopher of the Ḳād̲j̲ār period, best-known for his commentary on, and revival of the ideas of Saḍr al-Dīn al-S̲h̲īrāzī, Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640 [ q.v.]). Born in Sabzawār to a landowning merchant family, Mullā Hādī studied Arabic language and grammar in his home city and fīḳh , logic, mathematics and ḥikma in Mas̲h̲had. He then studied in Iṣfahān with such scholars as Mullā ʿAlī Nūrī (d. 1246/1830-1), the first of the Ḳād̲j̲ār-period scholars…

, the fourteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, transcribed /ṣ/, with the numerical value of 90, according to the eastern order [see abd̲j̲ad ]. In the Mag̲h̲ribī order /ṣ/ takes the place of /s/ (thus 60) and /ḍ/ the place of /ṣ/. For an explanation of this fact, similarly attested in a Thamudic abecedary, see M.C.A. Macdonald (in Bibl .). Definition: an alveolar sibilant, voiceless and velarised ("emphatic") in articulation. As a phoneme / ṣ / is defined by the oppositions / ṣ -s/, / ṣ -ṭ /; it is thus velarised and sibilant. In Ḳurʾānic recitation, or elevated style of recitation in g…

, Atabeg of Fārs [see salg̲h̲urids ].

, a town approximately 240 km/150 miles to the north of the chief town of the Yemen, Ṣanʿāʾ [ q.v.], situated on the southern edge of the Ṣaʿda plain, and the administrative capital of the province ( muḥāfaẓa ) of the same name. The town is about 1,800 m/5,904 ft. above sea level and in the 1986 census in the Yemen had a reported population of 24,245 persons. The inhabitants of the province numbered 323,110. Although al-Hamdānī, 67, informs us that the town was called Ḏj̲umāʿ in pre-Islamic times, certain Sabaic inscriptions mention hgrn ṢʿDTm , "the town Ṣaʿda", tog…

[see saʿīda ].

(a.), a term with many meanings, including those of thirst, voice, echo, and screech-owl in the sense of hāma , which denotes a bird charged with taking shape in the skull of someone who has been murdered, etc. (see the lexica). It is this latter sense which interests us here. In effect, the pre-Islamic Arabs believed that after death, above all after a violent death, out of the blood of the skull ( hāma) and parts of the body there arose a bird called hāma (or hām , the male owl; see Yāḳūt, Buldān , iii, 376), which returned to the tomb of the dead man until vengea…

(a.) (sing, ṣadafa ) denotes two classes of molluscs: 1. Mussels ( Lamellibranchiata ); 2. Snails ( Gastropoda ), both including the mother-of-pearl. Pearls [see al-durr ; luʾluʾ ], originating from the excrescences in the interior of the pearl mussel ( ṣadaf al-durr , al-ṣadaf al-luʾluʾī ), are of great economic importance. To the edible mussels belong the oysters ( aṣṭūrū < ὄστρειον) and, as a popular foodstuff, the common mussel, Mytilus edulis L., Gr. μύαχες, which, from the ancient pharmacology of Dioscurides, came into the Arabic pharmacopoeias as miyāḳis …

, Abū ʿAlī Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. Fīrruh (from the Romance word fiero , i.e. al-ḥadīd ) b. Muḥammad b. Ḥayyūn b. Sukkara/Sukkaruh al-Ṣadafī al-Saraḳusṭī, known commonly as Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī or Ibn Sukkara, Muslim Spanish scholar and traditionist. According to ʿIyāḍ, he was born in Saragossa around the year 454/1062. He studied in that town, among others, with Abu ’l-Walīd al-Bād̲j̲ī [ q.v.], in Valencia with al-ʿUd̲h̲rī and in Almería with Ibn Saʿdūn al-Ḳarawī and Ibn al-Murābiṭ. He travelled to the East on 1 Muḥarram 481/1088, performing the pilgrimage and…

, the equivalent of mahr [ q.v.], dowry. Lane gives ṣadāḳ , with the alternative ṣidāḳ (noting that the former is more common but the latter more "chaste"), plurals ṣuduḳ , ṣudḳ , and aṣdiḳa as "the mahr of a woman". Amongst the other alternative forms given by Lane the most commonly found is ṣaduḳa (pl. ṣaduḳāt ) and the form IV verb of the same root, aṣdaḳa , means to name or give a ṣadāḳ upon taking a woman in marriage. Al-Ḏj̲azīrī says that it is derived from ṣidḳ truth, honesty, sincerity as it is an indication of the husband’s desire to marry by the givin…