Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, a theologico-juridical school in mediaeval Islam which may be situated, among mad̲h̲hab s as a whole, “at the furthest limit of orthodoxy” (R. Brunschvig, Polémiques médiévales autour du rite de Mālik , in Études d’Islamologie , ii [1976], 83). It is, furthermore, the only school that owes its existence and its name to a principle of law, Ẓāhirī in this case. Thus it relies exclusively on the literal ( ẓāhir ) sense of the Ḳurʾān and of Tradition, rejecting raʾy , but also ḳiyās [ q.vv.], although the latter is retained by al-S̲h̲āfiʿī (d. 204/820 [ q.v.]) who is regularly cited as the po…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan (or Abū Hās̲h̲im) ʿAlī b. al-Ḥākim bi-amr Allāh, seventh Fāṭimid caliph and the fourth to reign at Cairo in Egypt. After the death of al-Ḥākim on 27 S̲h̲awwāl 411/14 February 1021, Sitt al-Mulk [ q.v.], the latter’s half-sister, refused to recognise the rights of the heir presumptive, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (or ʿAbd al-Raḥmān) b. Ilyās, al-Ḥākim’s cousin, designated walī al-ʿahd by the latter in 404/1014-5 and at the time governor of Damascus (A.F. Sayyid, al-Dawla al-fāṭimiyya , tafsīr d̲j̲adīd , Cairo 1413/1992, 108-9, 117-18). Recall…

, local ruler in northern Palestine in the 18th century ( ca. 1690-1775). His father and grandfather had already been multazim s of Tiberias, and as a young man, Ẓāhir al-ʿUmar struck an alliance with the al-Ṣaḳr tribe of eastern Galilee and made Tiberias his first power base. The 1730s were filled with efforts to expand his realm and consolidate his rule. In 1738 he conquered the fortress of D̲j̲iddīn, which controlled the region of Tars̲h̲īḥa, Wabar and Abū Sinān, and Ṣafad surrendered to him…

(a.), two terms of Arabic theological and philosophical discourse, the first, ẓāhir , meaning “outward, external, exoteric sense”, hence “apparent, manifest sense”, and the second, bāṭin , its antonym, meaning “hidden, inner, esoteric sense”. This pair of words occurs together four times in the Ḳurʾān: in VI, 120, to describe the outwardness and the inwardness of a sin; in XXXI, 20, as adjectives to describe God’s blessings, both manifest and hidden; in LVII, 3, as names of God to mean that He is th…

, conventionally Dhahran, a town of Saudi Arabia (lat. 26° 18’ N., long. 50° 05’ E.) in the eastern province ( al-minṭaḳa al-s̲h̲arḳiyya ), situated in the Dammām oilfield just south of the Gulf port of al-Dammām. Near the site of the original discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia in 1938, the town did not really develop until after 1945 with the exploitation of oil by the Aramco company, one of whose main centres it still remains today. Situated on a hill in the town, the government-sponsored College…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim K̲h̲alaf b. al-ʿAbbās, important Andalusian physician. Virtually nothing is known of his life or education, though it is assumed from his nisba that he came from or resided in Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ [ q.v.], near Cordova, where a royal residence and governmental centre was established in 325/936 by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III al-Nāṣir [see ʿabd al-raḥmān. 3]. His residence there is confirmed by references within his writings to patients being “amongst us in al-Zahrāʾ” ( ʿindanā bi ’l-Zahrāʾ ). His direct connection with the court is a matter of specu…

, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd , Syrian Arab politician and journalist, author of numerous writings advocating political, social and religious reform ¶ [see iṣlāḥ. i.]. The date of his birth in Ḥimṣ is not certain; in Arabic sources, it ranges from 1855 to 1863 or even 1871 (see Tarabein, 118 n. l, and ʿAllūs̲h̲, Madk̲h̲al , 12). He was born into a Sunnī family claiming descent from al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī and Fāṭima [ q.vv.], and from the latter’s honorific title, al-Zahrāʾ , the family derived its nisba . Over several generations, it had held the position of naḳīb al-as̲h̲rāf [ q.v.] in Ḥimṣ. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd receiv…

(a.), sing, zahriyya , from zahr “flower, blossom” (or, more precisely, “yellow flower, yellow blossom”), like nawriyyāt [ q.v.], designates poetry dedicated to the description of flowers. The term is attested in the list of chapters of the Dīwān of Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī [ q.v.]. 1. In Arabic. Descriptions of meadows ( rawḍ , riyāḍ ) and flowers are encountered sporadically already in d̲j̲āhilī poetry. In the nasīb [ q.v.], the comparison of the scent of the beloved with the fragrance of a blooming meadow could result in a detailed description of the meadow (in th…

(a., pl. zuʿamāʾ ), “chief”, “leader”. Etymologically, zaʿīm denotes the spokesman of a group of individuals such as a tribe, or, metaphorically, claimant to the name of this group; but zaʿīm has long been used, according to different periods of history, in a political or military sense. Of the seventeen occurrences of the term in the Ḳurʾān, in two cases (LXVIII, 40: sal-hum ayyahum bid̲h̲ālika zaʿīmun ; and XII, 72: wa-anā bihi zaʿīm un) it appears in the sense of “guarantor”, “trustee”, a meaning which recurs in numerous treatises of Islamic law. Al-Ḳalkas̲h̲andī ( Ṣubḥ al-aʿs̲h̲ā …

, Ḥusnī (1889-1949), the first head of state in the Syrian Republic to arise out of a military coup. An officer in the Ottoman Army and then in the Special Forces of the French mandate [see mandates and al-s̲h̲ām. 2 (b)], Ḥusnī al-Zaʿīm was born in Aleppo into a Kurdish family of Hamāt. He was imprisoned in 1944-5 for complicity with the Vichy army, but at independence, the colonel al-Zaʿīm was made inspector-general of the police. Wishing to put an end to the corruption (to which he himself was no stranger), on 30 March 1949 he overt…

[see meḥmed zaʿīm ].

[see mappila ]. ¶

(a.) or Zāʾirad̲j̲a , a divinatory technique which, in the same manner as geomancy [see k̲h̲aṭṭ ] and d̲j̲afr [ q.v.], and under various outside influences, had a wide diffusion in the mediaeval Islamic lands. It involved a mechanical means of calculating portents, strongly imbued with magic and astrology, in which were strongly mingled the talismanic sciences, based on the ʿilm al-k̲h̲awāṣṣ “knowledge of secret properties”, the ʿilm al-awfāḳ “knowledge of conjunctions”, ʿilm al-ṭilasmāt “knowledge of talismans” and ʿilm al-ḥurūf “knowledge of letters” [see ḥurūf ]. D̲j̲afr and ḥur…

[see ʿubayd-i zākānī ].

, one of the earliest Ismāʿīlī missionaries in ʿIrāḳ. In modern literature, the name, a Persian diminutive of Zakariyyāʾ (originally Zakarōye), is often misread as Zikrawayh. Zakarawayh came from the village of al-Maysāniyya near Kūfa and was the son of one of ʿAbdān’s [ q.v.] first missionaries; he propagated the Ismāʿīlī doctrine among the Bedouin of the tribe of Kulayb on the fringes of the desert west of Kūfa. When in 286/899 a schism split the Ismāʿīlī community, he was instrumental in doing away with his master ʿAbdān who had aposta…

, also Zakariyyā, the father of John the Baptist, reckoned in the Ḳurʾān (VI, 85) along with John, Jesus, and Elias as among the righteous. The name most likely entered Arabic via its Syriac rendering. The Ḳurʾān gives the substance of Luke i. 5-25, as follows: Zakariyyāʾ guards the Virgin Mary [see maryam , at Vol. VI, 630] in the niche ( miḥrāb ) and always finds fresh fruits there. He prays to God; angels announce to him that a son will be born to him, Yaḥyā, a name not previously given to anyone, a pious man, a prophet, Jacob’s hei…

, Abū Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad b. Zakariyyā, Zayn al-Dīn al-Sunaykī, Egyptian scholar and Ṣūfī, born ca. 823/1420. After growing up in a humble milieu in the S̲h̲arḳiyya, he had the opportunity of making his way to Cairo to study Islamic sciences; he was the pupil of Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar al-ʿAsḳalānī [ q.v.]. At the same time, he frequented Ṣūfī circles and became associated with numerous initiatory “paths” ( ṭuruḳ [see Ṭarīḳa ]). In his role as scholar ( ʿālim ), he excelled in particular in S̲h̲āfiʿī law, for which he composed commentaries which soon became part of the courses in the madrasa s (such as the S̲h̲…

, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Ḥadīt̲h̲ Mawlānā Muḥammad , an Indian traditionist and influential member and ideologist of the Tablīg̲h̲ī D̲j̲amāʿat [ q.v.], d. 1982. He was related by birth to the leaders of this movement and closely linked with them. Born in his ancestral village of Kāndhala in what was then the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), he was educated in esoteric religious studies at the seminary in Sahāranpūr [ q.v.], which was affiliated to the school of Deoband [ q.v.], under the direction of his father. He also had K̲h̲alīl Aḥmad Ambat̲h̲awī as his teacher of ḥadīt̲h̲ …

(a.), the obligatory payment by Muslims of a determinate portion of specified ¶ categories of their lawful property for the benefit of the poor and other enumerated classes or, as generally in Ḳurʾānic usage, the portion of property so paid. 1. Introduction. There is disagreement as to when the obligation of zakāt was imposed: according to a common opinion, this occurred in the month of S̲h̲awwāl of the year 2/624 after the introduction of zakāt al-fiṭr in S̲h̲aʿbān of the same year, or, according to others, at the same time as zakāt al-fiṭr. Others place its intr…

, conventionally Zagazig , a town in the east of the Nile delta of Egypt, 90 km/55 miles to the northeast of Cairo. It is now the chef-lieu of the S̲h̲arḳiyya province, and in 1998 had almost 270,000 inhabitants. The town was founded in the first third of the 19th century on the baḥr Muwīs, a canal following the ancient course of the Tanaitic branch of the Nile. The Egyptian ruler Muḥammad ʿAlī Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.] entrusted to a specialist hydraulic engineer, Aḥmad al-Bārūdī, the construction of six dams on this canal and its branches, in order to irrigate the S̲h̲arḳiyya …