Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

(the Ottoman Turkish name for Chios, the Greek name of this island and of its capital; ṣaḳi̊z means “gum mastic”, a testimony to the product for which Chios was famous), an island in the eastern Aegean alongside the Turkish coast, from which only 8 km/5 miles separate it at the narrowest point of the strait of Chios ( Ṣaḳi̊z bog̲h̲azi̊ ); the large peninsula of Karaburun on the mainland, jutting north, separates the island’s northern half from the gulf and port of Smyrna [see izmir in Suppl.]. With an area of 841 km2, it is the fifth largest island of the Aegean after Crete [see iḳrītis̲h̲ …

(a.), pl. ṣikāk , a technical term of early Islamic financial, commercial and legal usage, appearing in Persian, through a standard sound change, as čak , meaning “document, contract of sale, etc.”, which has been suggested—for want of any other etymology—as the origin of Eng. “cheque”, Fr. “chèque,” Ger. “Scheck,” see E. Littmann, Morgenländische Wörter im Deutschen , 2 Tübingen 1924. The term’s range of applications is wide, see Lane, Lexicon , 1709. In legal contexts, it has a similar meaning to sid̲j̲ill [see sid̲j̲ill. 1.], sc. a signed and sealed record of a judge’s decis…

(a.), lit. water-carrier, was a term denoting manual workers who carried water in a leather-bottle ( ḳirba ) or jar ( kūz ) on their shoulders or on a mule (and even on a camel in rare circumstances) in pre-modern towns and large villages as well as pilgrimage centres throughout the Middle East and North Africa. A leather bottle during the early Islamic period reportedly cost a modest sum of about 3 dirhams. The necessity for supplying drinking water to the thirsty and the poor members of the community was regarded, according to a tradition ( ḥadīt̲h̲ ), as a work of excellent charity ( ṣadaḳa …

, Abū YaʿḲūb yūsuf b. Abī Bakr b. Muḥammad al-K̲h̲wārazmī Sirād̲j̲ al-Dīn, influential rhetorician writing in Arabic. He was born in K̲h̲wārazm on 3 D̲j̲umādā I, 555/11 May 1160 according to most sources, or in the year 554, according to his contemporary Yāḳūt ( Irs̲h̲ād , ed. Rifāʿī, xx, 59). He died toward the end of Rad̲j̲ab 626/mid-June 1229 in Ḳaryat al-Kindī near Almālig̲h̲ in Farg̲h̲āna. In spite of his fame already during his lifetime, the circumstances of his life are shrouded in obscurity—a fact most likely …

, one of the early poets in Čag̲h̲atay Turkish (“early” meaning, before Mīr ʿAlī S̲h̲īr Nawāʾī’s [ q.v.] time). He lived around 802/1400, presumably in Samarḳand, but certainly all his lifetime in Transoxania. As we can infer from the dedications of his ḳaṣīdas , his patrons included K̲h̲alīl Sulṭān (ruler in Samarḳand 807-12/1405-9), Ulug̲h̲ Beg (812-53/1409-49) and Arslan K̲h̲wād̲j̲a Tark̲h̲an. Almost all the information about his person is gained from remarks made about him by Nawāʾī in his Mad̲j̲ālis an-nafāʾis and in the Muḥākamat al-lug̲h̲atayn . Alth…

, a village in the Egyptian province of al-D̲j̲īza, on the western bank of the Nile, near the mountain ridge that separates the fertile lands of the Nile Valley from the desert, approximately 20 km to the south of Cairo. In the 9th/15th century this locality seems to have been better known under the name of Arḍ al-Sidra (cf. Ibn al-D̲j̲īʿān, Tuḥfa , 139, 1. 18; S. de Sacy, Relation de l’Egypte par Abd Allatif médecin arabe de Bagdad , Paris 1810, 671; cf. also Ramzī, al-Ḳāmūs al-d̲j̲ug̲h̲rāfī li ’l-bilād al-miṣriyya , ii/3, 45; Halm, Ägypten nach den mamlukischen Lehensregistern …

, a small town of Persian Kurdistan, now the chef-lieu of a s̲h̲ahrastān or county in the province of Kurdistān (lat. 36° 14′ N., long. 46° 15′ E.). It lies on the western side of the upper D̲j̲ag̲h̲atū Čay valley some 77 km/50 miles to the southeast of Mahābād [ q.v.] and on the road southwards to Sanandad̲j̲ and Kirmāns̲h̲āh [ q.vv.]. The Kurdish population are from the Mukrī tribe, S̲h̲āfiʿī Sunnīs and with the Naḳs̲h̲bandī Ṣūfī order influential amongst them. In the early 20th century, the local k̲h̲ān was a relative of the wālī s of Ardalān and Sanandad̲j̲. In ca. 1950 Saḳḳiz town had a po…

, the name of one or more cities in Western Eurasia. The location of this city (or cities) is still unclear. It is unrecorded in the classical Islamic geographies. Maḥmūd al-Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī (tr. R. Dankoff and J. Kelly ¶ Cambridge, Mass. 1982-5, i, 330), who finished writing his Dīwān lug̲h̲at al-Turk in ca. 469/1077, notes it as “a city near Bulg̲h̲ār. It is Suwār.” The latter was a tribal name ( Saviri /Σαβίροι of the Latin and Byzantine sources) of one of the constituent elements of the Volga Bulg̲h̲ārs. In this regard, Togan ( Ibn Faḍlān’s Reisebericht , 203-4, cite…

, dialectically Sla, current French and English form Salé , a town of Morocco on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Būragrag (older Asmir), situated on a flat, sandy stretch of land. Pre-18th century sources often mix up S̲h̲alla, Salé and Rabāṭ. * Selā would mean “crag, cliff in Punic (though not in fact attested in extant Punic texts) but a Phoenician past for the town is based only on hypothesis. Ibn Ḥawḳal, tr. Kramers-Wiet, 78, mentions a town and some ribāṭ s on the river of Salā, whilst al-Bakrī states that ʿĪsā, the son of Idrīs II, was the rul…

[see ṣalāḥ al-dīn ].

, a term of Islamic law and financial practice. As a noun doing duty for the verbal noun of aslafa , it is accorded a long entry in Lane (1403, col. 3), from which it can be seen that it is a word with a range of meanings relating to financial transactions of which the basic feature is a prepayment or a loan. A point that is not made in this entry, but which Lane would have done well to make for the benefit of the general, as opposed to the specialist, user of his lexicon is the essentially legal nature of the material utilised by his authorities for the various explanations of the word. In works of classica…

, a neo-orthodox brand of Islamic reformism, originating in the late 19th century and centred on Egypt, aiming to regenerate Islam by a return to the tradition represented by the “pious forefathers” ( al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ, hence its name) of the Primitive Faith. For definition, background, origins, doctrines and general aspects see iṣlāḥ ; muḥammad ʿabduh ; ras̲h̲id riḍā . 1. In North Africa. (a) Tunisia. Tunisia was the first Mag̲h̲rib country to receive a reformist (though not purely salafī ) message from the East. Muḥammad ʿAbduh visited Tunis (Decemb…

(a.), lit. “the predecessors and the successors”, names given to the first three generations and to the following generations of the Muslim community respectively. It was the Sunna [ q.v.] rather than the Ḳurʾān which instituted one of the most characteristic traits of the Islamic vision of history by imposing the idea a priori that this history was said to have begun with a golden age, which was said to have been inevitably followed by a period of relaxation of standards, deviation and finally of division. A saying of the …

(1931-81), leading Egyptian poet, critic, playwright, translator and journalist. He was born in al-Zaḳāzīḳ in the Delta; in his early youth he learnt the Ḳurʾān by heart and read the classical poets and the modern romantics such as Ibrāhīm Nād̲j̲ī and Maḥmūd Ḥasan Ismāʿīl. Later on, during the 1940s he joined the Ik̲h̲wān al-Muslimūn [ q.v.], but soon became disenchanted with their ideology and became interested in secular social realism, a view which he expressed in his al-Nās fī bilādī (“The people in my country”). Ṣalāḥ graduated from Cairo University in…

, al-Malik al-Nāṣir Abu ’l-Muẓaffar Yūsuf b. Ayyūb ( Saladin ), the founder of the dynasty of the Ayyūbids [ q.v.], and the champion of the d̲j̲ihād against the Crusaders (born 532/1138, died 589/1193). Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, or Saladin as he is normally known in Europe, was a Kurd, whose family originated from Dvīn in Armenia. His father Ayyūb and his uncle S̲h̲īrkūh [ q.v.] found service in the Sald̲j̲ūḳ state, and Saladin was born at Takrīt on the Tigris above Bag̲h̲dād while Ayyūb was acting as governor there. The family transferred its services to Zangī [ q.v.] and then to his son and successo…

, the name of the administrative capital of the Southern Region (Ẓafār [ q.v.], Dhofar, also D̲j̲anūbiyya) of the Sultanate of Oman [see ʿumān ) and of the plain in which the town is situated. The town stands on the shore of the Indian Ocean and is 850 km/528 miles as the crow flies south-west of the capital of the Sultanate, Muscat [see masḳaṭ ] and about 120 km/75 miles from the present border with the Republic of Yemen. The town is the seat of the Minister of State and the Wālī of Dhofar. The town is a modern one which has developed from a small market town only in the post-1970 perio…

(a.), a term of Islamic law. It is used to designate a particular contract classifiable as a contract of sale ( bayʿ [ q.v.]) and synonymous, in appropriate contexts, with the term salaf , nobably in ʿIrāḳī works of classical jurisprudence. Regarded as a category of transaction in its own right, salam has as its fundamental principle prepayment by a purchaser ( al-musallim) for an object of sale ( al-musallam fīhi , i.e. ¶ merchandise constituting the subject-matter of the contract) to be delivered to him by the vendor ( al-musallam ilayhi) on a date at the end of a specified period. …

(a.), verbal noun from salima , “to be safe, uninjured”, used as substantive in the meaning of “safety, salvation”, thence “peace” (in the sense of “quietness”), thence “salutation, greeting” (cf. Fr. salut ); on the statements of the older Arab lexicographers, see LʿA 1, xv, 181-3, passim. The word is of frequent occurrence in the Ḳurʾān, especially in the sūras which are attributed to the second and third Meccan periods. The oldest passage that contains salām is XCVII, 5, where it is said of the Laylat al-Ḳadr , “It is salvation until the coming of the dawn”. Salām i…

, Abū Ḥāzim al-Mak̲h̲zūmī, called al-Aʿrad̲j̲ “the Lame” (d. ca. 140/757), traditionist and judge in Medina, regarded as a protein Ṣūfī mystic; he was of Persian origin. Various aphorisms ( ḥikam ) and elegant sayings of his are preserved in citations, and also his answers to questions put to him by the Umayyad caliph Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik [ q.v.]; also, a collection of his masāʾil [see al-masāʾil wa ’l-ad̲j̲wiba ] is extant in manuscript. (C.E. Bosworth) Bibliography Zirikli, Aʿlām, iii, 171-2 Sezgin, GAS, i, 634-5 R. Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion. Eine Studie zum Umayyaden…

, a poet of pre-Islamic times, was a member of the clan al-Ḥārit̲h̲, which belonged to the large division of Saʿd b. Zayd Manāt of the tribe Tamīm. Ibn Sallām al-D̲j̲umaḥī places him in the 7th class of poets ( Ṭabaḳāt al-s̲h̲uʿarāʾ , ed. Hell, Leiden 1916, 36). He is reckoned among the excellent poets of the D̲j̲āhiliyya [ q.v.] of whom only a few poems are preserved ( al-muḳillūn ). According to two events mentioned in his verses, he must have flourished during the second half of the 6th century of our era. The Naḳāʾiḍ of D̲j̲arīr and al-Farazdaḳ [ q.vv.] give two poems of Salāma, not included in his d…

, Egyptian journalist, encyclopaedist, socialist, political campaigner, enthusiastic moderniser and “westerniser”. Born ca. 1887 to a well-to-do Coptic family near Zagazig, he died on 5 August 1958. He attended both Christian and Muslim kuttāb s, a school of the Coptic Charitable Society, and then the “national” school. From there he went to the Tawfīḳiyya (where he taught briefly in 1919), and the Khedivial College in Cairo. As a youngster he read avidly the Arab dailies and reviews, that spread the new ideas from Europe and made accessible European literature; to al-Muḳtaṭaf …

, two characters who figure prominently in a series of pre-modern philosophical and mystical allegories written in Arabic and Persian. The characters are first mentioned by Ibn Sīnā [ q.v.], in the ninth chapter of his Kitāb al-Is̲h̲ārāt wa’ l-tanbīhāt , where he discusses the “Stages of the Gnostics” ( maḳāmāt al-ʿārifīn ). Here he states that: Gnostics have stages and degrees by which they are favoured over others while in their earthly life. It is as if their bodies were garments that they had removed and striped away (to move) toward the Realm of Sanctity ( ʿālam al-ḳuds …

[see s̲h̲alamanḳa ].

, a town in central Syria in the district of Orontes (Nahr al-ʿĀṣī), about 25 miles south-east of Ḥamāt and 35 miles north-east of Ḥimṣ (for the town’s exact situation, see Kiepert’s map in M. von Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf , Berlin 1899, i. 124 ff., and ii, 401; National Geographic Atlas of the World , 5th ed., Washington D.C. 1981, 178-9). Salamiyya lies in a fertile plain 1,500 feet above sea level, south of the D̲j̲abal al-Aʿlā and on the margin of the Syrian steppe. The older and more correct pronunciation…

(p.), commander. From the older Pahlavi sardār there arose as early as the Sāsānid period the form sālār with the well-known change of rd to l and compensatory lengthening of the a (cf. Grundr. d. Iran. Phil ., i,a 267, 274). The synonymous word in modern Persian sardār is not a survival of the ancient sardār, but is a modern formation; indeed, the elements from which the ancient word was composed still exist in the modern language. The old Armenian took over the Pahlavi sālār in the form sałar ; the form sardār which would give * sardar in Armenian is not found in the…

, a Muslim and Turkic-speaking minority in Northwestern China. They are otherwise called Sa-la in Chinese. Their total population in the P.R.C. is about 69,000 and the greater part of them live in the Sala Autonomous Prefecture of Hsün-hua, Ch’ing-hai province; the population here was ca. 49,000 in 1984. The Salar oral traditions unanimously tell that they emigrated from Samarḳand to Hsün-hua in 1370 under the reign of the first Ming Emperor. They are regarded to have originated from Salar (or Salor [see salur ]) tribesmen of the Turkmen nation distributed…

(Sir), the title by which Mīr Turāb ʿAlī, a Sayyid of Persian descent and one of the greatest of modern Indian statesmen, was best known. He was born at Ḥaydarābād, Deccan, on 2 January, 1829, and, his father having died not long after his birth, was educated by his uncle, Nawwāb Sirād̲j̲ al-Mulk, Minister of the Ḥaydarābād State. He received an administrative appointment in 1848, at the age of 19, and on his uncle’s death in 1853 succeeded him as Minister of the State. He was engaged in reforming the administration unt…

(a.), ritual prayer. Unlike other types of prayer—in particular the prayer of supplication [see duʿāʾ ], the remembrance of the Divine Names [see d̲h̲ikr ] or Ṣūfī confraternities’ litanies [see wird ]—the ṣalāt , principal prayer of Islam, forms part of the ʿibādāt or cultic obligations. The word clearly derives from the Syriac ṣelōt̲ā “prayer” and had adopted its Arabic form before the Islamic period (see Jeffery, 198-9). The structure of this article will be as follows: I. In the Ḳurʾān. A. General insistence on prayer. In the Sacred Book of Islam, ṣalāt stands out prominently in an…

(a., p.), literally, “the act of Muslim worship performed upside-down”, one of the extreme ascetic practices found among extravagant members of the dervish orders, ¶ such as in mediaeval Muslim India among the Čis̲h̲tiyya [ q.v.], where it formed part of the forty days’ retreat or seclusion ( k̲h̲alwa , arbaʿīniyya , cǐlia ) undertaken to heighten spiritual awareness [see k̲h̲alwa ]. This practice was one of those done in tortured or difficult circumstances, in this case hanging on the end of a rope over the mouth of a well; see čis̲h̲tiyya, at Vol. II, 55b, and hind. v. Islam, at Vol. III,…

(a.), “the prayer of fear”. In a context of warfare “in the way of God”, the text reads in Ḳurʾān, IV, 102: “When you are with the believers and you perform the prayer at their head, let a group of them pray with you, while they stand ready with their arms, and keep behind you during the prostration. Then let another group which has not yet prayed come to pray with you, while they stand guard, with weapons to hand. Those who refuse to believe would prefer that you lay aside your arms and your ba…

[see taṣliya ].

[see al-nāṣir al-salāwī ].

(a.), “crucifixion”. In Islamic doctrine and practice, it refers to a criminal punishment in which the body of the criminal, either living or dead, is affixed ¶ to or impaled on a beam or tree trunk and exposed for some days or longer. Before Islam, many cultures, including the Persian and Roman ones, practised crucifixion as a punishment for traitors, rebels, robbers and criminal slaves (M. Hengle, Crucifixion in the ancient world, London 1977). The Ḳurʾān refers to crucifixion in six places. The significant verse for legal practice is V, 33: “The recompense of those who make war on ( yuḥārib…

, a Turkish dynasty of mediaeval Islam which, at the peak of its power during the 5th-6th/11th-12th centuries, ruled over, either directly or through vassal princes, a wide area of Western Asia from Transoxania, Farg̲h̲āna, the Semirečye and K̲h̲wārazm in the east to Anatolia, Syria and the Ḥid̲j̲āz in the west. From the core of what became the Great Sald̲j̲ūḳ empire, subordinate lines of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ family maintained themselves in regions like Kirmān (till towards the end of the 6th/12th century), Syria (till the opening years of…

, a line of Atabegs which ruled in Fārs during the second half of the 6th/12th century and for much of the 7th/13th one (543-681/1148-1282). They were of Türkmen origin, and Maḥmūd Kās̲h̲g̲h̲arī considered them as a clan of the Og̲h̲uz tribe [see g̲h̲uzz ], giving their particular tamg̲h̲a ( Dīwān lug̲h̲āt al-Turk , Tkish. tr. Atalay, i, 56, iii, 141, 414); later sources such as Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn, Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī’s Taʾrīk̲h̲-i Guzīda and Abu ’l-G̲h̲āzī’s S̲h̲ad̲j̲ara-yi Tarākima were uncertain whether Salg̲h̲ur was a clan or the name of an eponymo…

, also Silḥīn, the name of the royal palace of the Sabaean kings in their capital Mārib [ q.v.]. The house of Salḥīn ( bytn slḥn ; e.g. CIH 373) is the building of ancient South Arabia which is most frequently mentioned in the Sabaic inscriptions of the first three centuries A.D. Its name is also attested in the forms Salḥēn and Σιλεῆ in the title of the Abyssinian king ʿĒzānā in Ethiopic and Greek inscriptions of the fourth century A.D. from Aksum. Owing to the lack of excavations, the original site of the palace of Salḥīn in the area of the ancient town of Mārib has not yet been discovered. Arab tradit…

(a.) pls. ṣulub , şulbān , a cross, and, particularly, the object of Christian veneration. The term is used for cross-shaped marks e.g. brands on camels and designs woven into cloth, and in legal contexts for the instrument of execution. The Ḳurʾān refers in six places to the act of crucifying as a punishment. Four of these are set in ancient Egypt: in sūra XII, 41, Yūsuf predicts that one of the men jailed with him will be crucified and birds will eat from his head; in VII, 124, XX, 71, and XXVI, 49, Pharaoh vows to crucify the magic…

(a.), an adjective generally meaning "righteous", "virtuous", "incorrupt", used in the science of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.] criticism as a technical term indicating a transmitter who, although otherwise praised for his upright conduct, is known to have brought into circulation one or more traditions spuriously ascribed to the Prophet Muḥammad. It is the contents of such traditions, as well as their underlying meaning, that characterise their recognized inventor as ṣāliḥ rather than as waḍḍāʿ , i.e. "forger", or kad̲h̲d̲h̲āb , "liar". Transmitters labelled ṣāliḥ, or its presumably slig…

, an Arab tribe that the genealogists affiliate with the large tribal group, Ḳuḍāʿa [ q.v.]. Around A.D. 400, it entered the Byzantine political orbit and became the dominant federate ally of Byzantium in the 5th century, its foederati . It is practically certain that Salīḥ penetrated the Byzantine frontier from the region of Wādī Sirḥān. Ptolemy in his Geography speaks of a toponym, Ζαϒμαΐς, in northern Arabia, identifiable with the Arabic Salīḥid name, Ḍud̲j̲ʿum/Ḍad̲j̲ʿum, and one of the affluents of Wādī Sirḥān is called Ḥidrid̲…

, a prophet who, according to the Ḳurʾān, was sent to the people T̲h̲amūd [ q.v.]. He is mentioned by name nine times in the Ḳurʾān, with the fullest versions of the story being told in VII, 73-9, XI, 61-8, XXVI, 141-59, and XXVII, 45-53; nineteen additional references to T̲h̲amūd by name, including extensive passages in LIV, 23-32 and XCI, 11-5, provide parallel accounts and specific details without mentioning the name Ṣāliḥ. The story of Ṣāliḥ follows the standard Ḳurʾānic pattern of commission, mission, rejection and punishment (see ḳurʾān. 6.d; J. Wansbrough, Quranic studies, Oxford…

b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Ḳuddūs al-Baṣrī, Abu ’l-Faḍl, a famous poet of the 2nd/8th century, and one of the first victims of the official inquisition inaugurated by the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Mahdī, died in 167/783. In this year Bas̲h̲s̲h̲ār b. Burd [ q.v.] and Ṣāliḥ were accused of zandaḳa [ q.v.] and executed. References to Ṣāliḥ’s poetry abound in the literature, but little concrete detail is known about his life. He was a mawlā of Asad or al-Azd. His father ʿAbd al-Ḳuddūs, son of a convert, probably of Persian origin, is supposed to have compose…

b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAbbās , member of the ʿAbbāsid family (92-152/711-69) who played an important part in the success of the ʿAbbāsid revolution in Syria, assisting his brother ʿAbd Allāh in the assault on Damascus and, with Abū ʿAwn ʿAbd al-Malik b. Yazīd al-ʿAtakī leading the pursuit of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān b. Muḥammad to Egypt. He was appointed governor of Egypt on 1 Muḥarram, 133/9 August 750 and remained there for a year, establishing ʿAbbāsid power. On 1 S̲h̲aʿbān 1, 133/4 March 751 he was moved to Palestine and in the same year sent Saʿīd b. ʿAbd Allāh to lead the first ṣāʾifa [ q.…

[see mirdās, banū ].

, a personage mentioned for the first time in the 4th/10th century in the text of Ibn Ḥawḳal, Ṣurāt al-arḍ , as having lived 200 years before and having been the alleged prophet of the Barg̲h̲awāta, a Berber confederation of the Maṣmūda group, installed in the region of Tasmana, between Salé and Azemmour in Morocco. Ṣāliḥ’s father, Ṭarīf b. S̲h̲amaʿūn b. Yaʿḳūb b. Isḥāḳ, perhaps of Jewish origin, had been a companion of Maysara al-Matg̲h̲arī, who had led a rising in 122/740 in northern Morocco at the time of the Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ite r…

b. Ṣāliḥ b. Ḥusayn b. Ḵh̲aḍir (d. 839/1436), amīr of the Druze family of the Banū Buḥtur whose family divided up, amongst brothers and cousins, the coastal region and mountain of the S̲h̲ūf in present-day Lebanon, the area lying between Beirut and Sidon, with its chef-lieu as the little town of ʿAbay, from the 5th/11th century to the end of the 9th/15th one. Ṣāliḥ b. Yaḥyā is above all known for having written a history of his family, published for the first time, from the B.N. unicum (fonds arabe 1670), in the journal al-Machriq (1898-9), and then issued in book f…

, the name of various places in the Middle East. These include: 1. A settlement of Diyār Muḍar in al-Ḏj̲azīra, placed by Yāḳūt in the district of al-Ruhā [ q.v.] or Edessa and said to have been laid out by the ʿAbbāsid governor of Syria ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ṣāliḥ. He also quotes a (now lost) history of Mawṣil by the Ḵh̲ālidiyyāni [ q.v.] that the caliph al-Mahdī began the work of fortification there. Bibliography Yāḳūt, Buldān, ed. Beirut, iii, 389-90. 2. A settlement to the north of the old city of Damascus, on the slopes of Mount Ḳāsiyūn [ q.v.]. Yāḳūt describes it as a large village with markets and ¶ a …

, a Ṣūfī ṭarīḳa [ q.v.] from within the tradition established by the Moroccan Ṣūfī and teacher Aḥmad b. Idrīs (d. 1837 [ q.v.]). The exact origin and, indeed, the reason for the name of the Ṣāliḥiyya is unclear. It appears to be an offshoot of the Ras̲h̲īdiyya, the name given to ṭarīḳa founded by the Sudanese Ibrāhīm al-Ras̲h̲īd al-Duwayḥī (d. 1874, [ q.v. in Suppl.], a student of Ibn Idrīs. After his death in Mecca, Ibrāhīm al-Ras̲h̲īd’s zāwiya there was taken over by his nephew S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ b. Muḥammad b. Ṣāliḥ (d. 1919), who moved there from the Sud…

(a., pl. of ṣāliḥ ) "the virtuous, upright ones", cited in the Ḳurʾān at VII, 168, XXI, 105 and LXXII, 11, and 30 other times as ṣāliḥīn . The ṣāliḥ is associated by Ibn Taymiyya [ q.v.] with the ṣiddīḳ s, those asserting the truth, the s̲h̲ahīd s, martyrs and the abdāl , substitutes, as all representing the firḳa nād̲j̲iya , the sect which alone will be saved out of ¶ the 73 into which, according to a ḥadīt̲h̲ , the umma or community will be divided (see H. Laoust, La profession de foi de Ibn Baṭṭa , Damascus 1958, 17 n.). This ḥadīt̲h̲ is to be set by the side of Ḳurʾān, LXXII, 11, "And that so…

(a.), intact, sound, i.e. free of damage or blemish, thus "well" as opposed to "ill," and therefore a synonym of ṣaḥīḥ . The word is used as a technical term in various fields: 1. Applied to money, sālim means unclipped coins of full weight, or a sum of money free from charges and deductions. 2. In grammar, it denotes two things: in ṣarf (morphology) a "sound" root, i.e., one in which none of the radicals is a "weak" letter ( ḥarfʿilla , see ḥurūf al-hid̲j̲āʾ ), nor a hamza , nor a geminate; in naḥw (syntax) a word with a "sound" ending, no matter whether the preced…

, nom-de-plume ( mak̲h̲laṣ ) of Mirzā-zāde Meḥmed Emīn (1099-1156/1688-1743), an Ottoman author of a published biography of poets, a dīwān , several texts dealing with war, grammar and mysticism, a dictionary and an Ottoman translation of a Persian history, all of which are in manuscript form. Many of the details concerning his life are to be found in an autobiography included in his ted̲h̲kire-yi s̲h̲uʿarāʾ which is the work that qualifies him for inclusion in this encyclopaedia. The seventh child of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Islām Mirzā Muṣṭafā Efendi, Sālim was born in Istanbul in…