Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

, a fortress situated on a lime-stone rock in the middle of the river Indus (27° 43′ N and 68° 56′ E), which is identified with the Sogdi of Alexander. The island is connected with Rōhrī and Sukkur by a cantilever bridge. With the decline of Arōr, the ancient Hindū capital of Sind, about the middle of 2nd/8th century, when the river Indus changed its course, Bhakkar soon attained the highest strategie importance. The island must have been fortified and…

, formerly a princely State in India, now forming a part of Rād̲j̲astʿhān, lying between 26° 43′ and 27° 50′ N. and 76° 53′ and 77° 46′ E. with an area of 1,982 sq. miles. The chief city is Bharatpūr, situated in 27° 13′ N. and 77° 30′ E., 34 miles from Agra, with a population of 37,321 in 1951. Paharsar, 14 miles from Bharatpūr, was first conquered in the 5th/11th century by the troops of Maḥmūd of G̲h̲azna, under the Sayyid brothers, D̲j̲alāl al-Dīn and ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn, who claimed descent from Imām D̲j̲aʿfar al-Ṣādiḳ, in about 3 hours, as the local tradition goes, whence the place derives its name pahar…

A district in Gud̲j̲arāt [ q.v.] in the present Bombay State, India, of about 1450 sq.m. and with a population of some 300,000; the Islamic population was about 20% of the total prior to partition in 1947, but much of this has since moved to Sind in Pakistān. The principal class of Muslims was Bohrā [see bohorās ]. Bharoč is also the name of the principal town of that district, Lat. 21°42′N., Long. 73° 2′E. It is first known as a town within the Mawrya dominions, and later (c. 150 A.D.) to have been in the hands of Parthian Sāhas; from the Middle Indian form bharugaccha- of the Sanskrit bhṛgukṣetra- …

, the Pand̲j̲āb form of the Rad̲j̲put word Bhāti, the name of a widely distributed Rad̲j̲pūt tribe associated with the area stretching from Jaisalmer to the western tract of the Pand̲j̲āb between Fatḥābād and Bhatnair. Large numbers of those settled in the Pand̲j̲āb accepted Islam. According to one of their traditions the Jādons of Jaisalmer were driven from Zābulistān to the Pand̲j̲āb and Rād̲j̲putāna, the branch settling in Rād̲j̲putāna being named Bhāti. The references in the Čač-nama to the Bhaṭṭi king of Ramal in the Thar desert confirm the legends preserved in Tod’s Annals and ant…

, head-quarters of the Govindgarh taḥṣīl of the former Patiala State, now merged with the Pand̲j̲āb State of the Indian Union, situated in 30° 13′N. and 75° E. Population (1951) was 34,991. An ancient town, seat of the Bhātiyā or Bhattī Rād̲j̲pūts, it commanded the strategie routes from Multān to Rād̲j̲asthān and the Gangetic valley, including such historic places as Pānīpat and farther on Indrāpat (Delhi), for invaders from the north-west of the Indian sub-continent. In ancient times it stood on an affluent of the Ghaggar rivulet which still flows past Ambālā [ q.v.] and the surrounding ¶ …

, s̲h̲āh ʿabd al-laṭīf (1689-1752), a Sindhi poet belonging to a priestly family of Matiari Sayyids. He lived for a large part of his life at Bhit (“sandhill”), a small hamlet near Hala in the district of Haydarābād in Sind. He is the national poet of Sind. His poetry is Ṣūfī in nature, as the poet, though not a man of great learning or education, was deeply impressed by the mystical thought of D̲j̲alāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose influence is evident in many of his poems. These poems were gathered together after his death by his followers and made into a collection which is called the Risalo . They are ¶ writt…

, formerly a princely State in India, lying between 22° 29′ and 23° 54′ N. and 76° 28′ and 78° 51′ E. with an area of 6,878 sq. miles, with a population of 838,474 in 1951. It was the second most important Muslim State, next to Ḥaydarābād [ q.v]. Bhōpāl was founded by a military adventurer, Dōst Muḥammad Ḵh̲ān, a native of Tīrāh (in the tribal area of present-day Pakistan) who belonged to the Mirzaʾī Ḵh̲ēl tribe of the Āfrīdī Pathans. In 1120/1708 he went to Delhi, at the age of 34, in search of employment, and succeeded in obtaining from Bahādur S̲h̲āh I [ q.v.], emperor of Delhi, the lease of Bērāsia par…

(city), Capital of the Indian province of Madhya Pradesh, situated in 23° 16ʹ N. and 77° 25ʹ E. on a sandstone ridge and on the edge of two ¶ beautiful lakes, the Puk̲h̲tah-Pul Talāō and the Baṛā Talāō, famed throughout India for natural charm and picturesque surroundings, was founded by Dōst Muḥammad Ḵh̲ān, an Orakzaʾī Āfrīdī in 1141/1728 when he built the Fatḥgaṛh fort, named after his Indian wife, Fatḥ Bīoī, and connected it by a wall to the old dilapidated fort, ascribed by tradition to the legendary Rād̲j̲ā Bhōd̲j̲, a…

[see kanīsa ].

, the gates; passes across a chain of the Tellian Atlas Mountains—parallel to the Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ura, south of the depression of the Wādī Sahel. The French have retained the Turkish name for these passes, Damir Ḳapu , Iron Gates. The road and railway track from Algiers to Constantine both pass through the Great Gate, al-Bāb al-Kabīr , hollowed out by the Wadi Chebba. The Little Gate, al-Bāb al-Ṣag̲h̲īr , 3.5 km. to the east, is crossed by the Wādī Būktūn. It is the narrower of the two. These “gates”, which were not included in the network of Rom…

, a word of East Turkish origin, with the meaning of “little old mother”, “grandmother”, “woman of high rank”, “lady”. It is noted, with the sense of “woman of consequence”, “lady”, in the Ottoman-Turkish dictionary Lug̲h̲at-i Des̲h̲īs̲h̲ī , composed in 988/1580-1581. Bībī also means, in Anatolian Turkish, “paternal aunt”. Taken over into Persian at an early date, with the sense of “woman of the house”, “lady”, the word can be found in a verse of Anwarī (12th cent. A.D.) cited in the Farhang-i Nāṣirī . It was used in Ḵh̲urāsān during the 13th century as a …

, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad , 26th s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ of al-Azhar. He was born in the village of Biblāw near Dayrūṭ in Upper Egypt in Rad̲j̲ab 1251/November 1835. After a period of study and teaching at al-Azhar [ q.v.], he was employed at the Khedivial Library and became its Director ( nāẓir ) for a short period in 1881 and 1882. In the wake of the ʿUrābī insurrection in 1882, he was removed from this office, to which he had been appointed thanks to the help of his friend Maḥmūd Sāmī al-Bārūdī [ q.v.], one of the insurrection’s principal protagonists. Subsequently he held the office of Ḵh̲aṭīb …

[see tawrāt , zabūr , ind̲j̲īl ].

In the present article the word is used in the sense of a systematically arranged list of books, compiled for the benefit of those who need to know what has been written on a particular subject. The outstanding achievement in Islamic bibliography to appear before the adoption of printing in Islamic territories is the Fihrist . Its author, Ibn al-Nadīm [ q.v.], a bookseller ( warrāḳ ) in Bag̲h̲dād, compiled the work in 377/987-8 in the form of a bibliographical history of literature, arranged in ten books, the first six being concerned wit…

[see ḳurʿa ].

, innovation, a belief or practice for which there is no precedent in the time of the Prophet. It is the opposite of sunna and is a synonym of muḥdat̲h̲ or ḥadat̲h̲ . While some Muslims felt that every innovation must necessarily be wrong, some allowance obviously had to be made for changing circumstances. Thus a distinction came to be made between a bidʿa which was ‘good’ ( ḥasana ) or praiseworthy ( maḥmūda ), and one which was ‘bad’ ( sayyiʾa ) or blameworthy ( mad̲h̲mūma ). Al-S̲h̲āfiʿī laid down the principle that any innovation which runs contrary to the Ḳurʾān, the sunna, id̲j̲māʿ , or at̲h̲ar…

, a district in south-central India (the ‘Deccan’, [ q.v.]), and the headquarters town of that district, lat. 17° 55ʹ N., long. 77° 32ʹ E., population over 15,000, 82 miles north-west of Ḥaydarābād from which it is easily accessible by road and rail. The identification of Bīdar with the ancient Vidarbha (Briggs’s Ferishta , ii, 411) is now discounted, cf. G. Yazdani, Bidar : its history and monuments, Oxford 1947, 3. Bīdar was included in the Čālukya kingdom of Kalyāń, 4th-6th/10th-12th centuries, but was in the hands of the Kākatīyās of Warangal when conquered…

, mīrzā ʿabd al-ḳādir b. ʿabd al-ḵh̲āliḳ arlās (or Barlās), of Buk̲h̲āran origin, was born at ʿAẓīmābād (Patna) in 1054/1644, where his family had settled. He losthis father in 1059/1649 and wasbrought up by his uncle Mīrzā Ḳalandar (d. 1076/1665) and maternai uncle Mīrzā Ẓarīf (d. 1075/1664), who was well-versed in ḥadīt̲h̲ literature and fiḳh . In 1070/ 1659 he visited a number of places in Bengal along with Mīrzā Ḳalandar. In 1071/1660 he went to Cuttack (Orissa) where he stayed for three years. It was here in Orissa that Mīrzā Ẓarīf, who also ha…

, aḥmed , son of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ‘al-Kātib’ (and hence known as yazi̊d̲j̲i̊-og̲h̲lu aḥmed ) and younger brother of the famous Yazi̊d̲j̲i̊-og̲h̲lu Meḥmed, Turkish mystic writer and ‘popular educator’ who flourished in the middle of the 9th/15th century. The brothers, after studying under Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Bayram [ q.v.] of Ankara, lived a retired life together at Gelibolu, Aḥmed practising such austerities and becoming so emaciated that he was called—and calls himself in his books—‘Bī-d̲j̲ān’, i.e., ‘The Lifeless’. To judge from the date of the Muntahā (see below),…

[see vid̲j̲ayanagara ].