Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see taʾrīk̲h̲ , i].

or d̲h̲āt al-himma , name of the principal heroine of a romance of Arab chivalry entitled, in the 1327/1909 edition, Sīrat al-amīra D̲h̲āt al-Himma wa-waladihā ʿAbd al-Wahhāb wa ’l-amīr Abū ( sic) Muḥammad al-Baṭṭāl wa-ʿUḳba s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-ḍalāl wa-S̲h̲ūmadris al-muḥtāl , which, in the subtitle, describes itself as “the greatest history of the Arabs, and the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphs, comprising the history of the Arabs and their wars ..... and including their amazing conquests”. Also known is the title Sīrat al-mud̲j̲āhidīn wa-abṭāl al-muwaḥḥidīn al-amīra D̲h̲ū ( sic) ’l-Himma w…

[see taʾrīk̲h̲ , i].

, Turkmen dynasty, which ruled for nearly two centuries (738/1337-928/1522) from Elbistan over the region Marʿas̲h̲-Malatya, as clients first of the Mamlūk and later of the Ottoman Sultans. Name: The use in Arabic sources of the spellings Dulg̲h̲ādir and Tulg̲h̲ādir and in one of the dynasty’s inscriptions of Dulḳādīr (see R. Hartmann, Zur Wiedergabe türkischer Namen ..., Berlin 1952, 7; this spelling occurs also in Bazm u Razm , Istanbul 1918, 456) indicates that the Arabicized forms D̲h̲u ’l-Ḳadr and D̲h̲u ’l-Ḳādir, usual in the later Ott…

[see iskandar ].

(or K̲h̲ulaṣa ). D̲h̲u ’l-K̲h̲alaṣa refers to the sacred stone (and the holy place where it was to be found) which was worshipped by the tribes of Daws, K̲h̲at̲h̲ʿam, Bad̲j̲īla, the Azd of the Sarāt mountains and the Arabs of Tabāla. “It was a white quartziferous rock, bearing the sculpture of something like a crown. It was in Tabāla at the place called al-ʿAblāʾ, i.e., White Rock ( TʿA , viii, 3) between Mecca and the Yemen and seven nights’ march from the former ( i.e., approximately 192 kilometres or 119 miles). The guardians of the sanctuary were the Banū Umāma of the Bāhila…

, a personage twice mentioned in the Ḳurʾān (XXI, 85 and XXXVIII, 48, probably second Meccan period), about whom neither Ḳurʾānic contexts nor Muslim exegesis provides any certain information. John Walker ( Who is D̲h̲u ’l-Kifl ?, in MW, xvi (1926), 399-401) would like the name to be understood in the sense of “the man with the double recompense” or rather “the man who received recompense twice over”, that is to say Job (Ayyūb [ q.v.]; cf. Job xlii, 10). Without being certain, this explanation does not lack probability; in any case, no better suggestion has been put fo…

T̲h̲awbān b. Ibrāhīm al-Miṣrī . This early Ṣūfī was born at Ik̲h̲mīm, in Upper Egypt, about 180/796. His father was a Nubian and D̲h̲u ’l-Nūn was said to have been a freedman. He made some study of medicine and also of alchemy and magic and he must ¶ have been influenced by Hellenistic teaching. Saʿdūn of Cairo is mentioned as his teacher and spiritual director. He travelled to Mecca and Damascus and visited the ascetics at Lubbān, S. of Antioch; it was on his travels that he learnt to become a master of asceticism and self-discipline. He met with hostility from the Muʿtazila [ q.v.] because he up…

, in Arabic Bānū D̲h̲i ’l-Nūn, a prominent family of al-Andalus, originally Berbers of the tribe of Hawwāra. Their name appears to be the Arabicization of an earlier Zannūn (cf. Ibn ʿId̲h̲ārī, Bayān , iii, 276) which would explain the alternative spelling D̲h̲unnūn (ad̲j̲ D̲h̲unnūnī). In the 5th/11th century, during the first period of the Tarty Kings’ ( Mulūk al-Ṭawāʾif ), the D̲h̲u ’l-Nūnids ¶ ruled, with Ṭulayṭula (Toledo) as their capital, from Wādi ’l-Ḥid̲j̲āra (Guadalajara) and Ṭalabīra (Talavera) in the N. to Murcia in the S. The original territory of the Banū D̲h̲i ’l-Nūn …

, lit. ‘he who wears a piece of cord’, nickname given to the famous Arab poet G̲h̲aylān b. ʿUḳba, who died in 117/735-36. He earned the name on account of a small charm which he hung around his neck by a piece of string. He was from the Saʿb b. Milkān clan, an offshoot of the ʿAdī tribe which originated from the ʿAbd Manāt peoples of Central Arabia. On his mother’s side he was related to the Asad tribe. If we accept that he died at the age of forty, his date of birth would be 77/696. This information is however open t…

is the soubriquet of a god borrowed from the Nabataeans, known in Aramaic as ds̲h̲r , Dusares (E. Littmann, T̲h̲amūd und Ṣafā , 30). These soubriquets for gods formed from the pronoun d̲h̲ū (feminine d̲h̲āt ) were of frequent use in Southern Arabia (G. Ryckmans, Les religions arabes préislamiques 2, 44-5; W. Caskel, Die alten semitischen Gottheiten , 108-9). According to Ibn al-Kalbī, D̲h̲u ’l-S̲h̲arā was a divinity of the Banu ’l-Hārit̲h̲ of the tribe of the Azd ( Kitāb al-Aṣnām , ed. Aḥmad Zakī 2, 37). Ibn His̲h̲ām records that D̲h̲u ’l-S̲h̲arā “was an image belonging to Daus and the ḥimā …

[see d̲h̲u’l-nūnids ].

, burial of offences, a nomadic practice which consists of a make-believe burial of the offences or crimes of which an Arab is accused. According to S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn al-ʿUmarī ( al-Taʿrīf bi ’l-muṣṭalaḥ al-sharīf , Cairo 1312, 165 ff.), almost the only source, this curious ceremony was practised as follows. A delegation consisting of men who had the full confidence of the culprit appeared before an assembly of notables belonging to the tribe of the victim, to whom they said: “We wish you to perform the dafn for So-and-so, who admits the truth of your accusati…

, Yūsuf As̲h̲ʿar , pre-Islamic king of the Yemen. According to a tradition probably deriving from Wahb b. Munabbih ( Tīd̲j̲ān , 2 ff.) and repeated by the Arab chroniclers (Ibn Ḳutayba, Maʿārif , 277; al-Dīnawarī, Ak̲h̲bār , 63; al-Ṭabarī, i, 540 ff.; Ibn K̲h̲aldūn, ʿIbar , i, 90; al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , i, 129 etc.), Lahayʿa b. Yanūf (Lak̲h̲īʿa, Lak̲h̲īʿa Yanūf D̲h̲ū S̲h̲anātir; al-Ṭabarī, i, 540; see also Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, ii, 250) abandoning himself to unnatural practices with the sons of the aristocracy, the young D̲h̲ū Nu…

[see sayf ].

[see ʿarabiyya and other languages].

[see almās ].

[see ʿāmir b. ṣaʿṣaʿa ].

[see ḳumās̲h̲ ].

, an extensive gravel plain in northeastern Arabia, bounded roughly on the east by the depression of al-S̲h̲aḳḳ (which forms the western boundary of the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait Neutral Zone), on the west by the wādī of al-Bāṭin, and on the south by the gravel ridge of al-Warīʿa. The plain extends northward from Saudi Arabia into the Shaikhdom of Kuwait for a distance of about 20 kms. It has an area of c. 30,000 sq. kms. and is remarkable for its firm, almost featureless surface, sprinkled with pebbles of limest…

, poetic nickname of abū ʿalī muḥammad b. ʿalī b. razīn al-k̲h̲uzāʿī . ʿAbbāsid poet, born 148/765 and died 246/860. His birthplace is uncertain; the cities of Kūfa and Ḳarḳīsiya are given as his places of birth. According to the accounts in the Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī , he spent his youth in Kūfa from which he was forced to flee because of some mischievous activity. Diʿbil’s apprenticeship as a poet was under the tutelage of Muslim b. al-Walīd [ q.v.]. However, he soon made a reputation for himself as is indicated from his relationship with K̲h̲alaf al-Aḥmar (d. 180/796) and M…

[see ḳāmūs , muʿd̲j̲am ].

, ναντίον, “contrary” is one of the four classes of opposites, ἀντικείμενα, mutaḳābilāt , as discussed by Aristotle in his Categories x (and also in his Metaphysics v, 10). There are four classes of opposites: 1) relative terms; 2) contraries; 3) privation and possession; 4) affirmation and negation. The fact that there are contraries implies that there must be a substratum in which they inhere, for it is impossible, even for God, to change, e.g., the White into the Black, although a white thing may become black. There are things which have necessarily one of two contraries, e.g., illness a…

, the Arabic name (used always without the article al-) of the easterly of the “Two Rivers” of ʿIrāḳ, the Tigris. The name is a modernized and Arabicized form of the Diglat of the Cuneiform, and occurs as Ḥiddeḳel in the Book of Genesis. The river (Dicle Nehri in modern Turkish) rises in the southern slopes of the main Taurus, ¶ south and south-east of Lake Golcük. Its upper course, with its many constituent tributaries, drains a wide area of foothills and plain, which formed the northern half of the ʿAbbāsid province of D̲j̲azīra) in which stood the imp…

, a people comprising five small Ibero-Caucasian Muslim nationalities, whose total number reaches, according to a 1955 estimate, some 18,000. Ethnically close to the Andi [ q.v.] and the Avar [ q.v.], they inhabit the most elevated and inaccessible regions of Central Dāg̲h̲istān, near to the Georgian frontier. It is necessary to distinguish: 1. The Dido proper (T̲s̲ez T̲s̲unta), numbering about 7,200, distributed in 36 awls along the upper reaches of the Ori-T̲s̲kalis. 2. The Bežeta (Kapuči, Kapčui, Bes̲h̲ite, K̲h̲wanal), the most developed of the Dido peoples (2,500…

, a town in the Sudan Republic, 360 km. SW of Timbuctoo and 200 km. ENE of Segou. Geographical position: lat. 13° 55′ N.—long. 4° 33′ W. (Gr.). Altitude: 278 m. The etymology of this name (often wrongly spelt Djenné) is unknown but the most likely is Dianna = the little Dia (Dia is an ancient Sudanese town, 70 km. to the NW.). Dienné was mentioned for the first time in 1447 by the Genoese Malfante, under the name Geni. The town is situated in the flood-area of the Niger and the Bani, 5 km. from the left bank of the latter river, to which it is connected by a navigable chann…

[see diwrīgī ].

[see ḥisāb al-ʿaḳd ].

, the title of the hereditary ruler of the Banī ʿĀmir tribal group in the Agordat district of western Eritrea and in the eastern Sudan; he is also senior member of the aristocratic Nabtab class or caste, who, for historical reasons no longer possible to elucidate, form the superior stratum in every Banī ʿĀmir section. The title is believed of Fund̲j̲ origin, and may recall days when the tribe was, in the 10th/16th and 11th/17th centuries, intermittently tribute-paying to the Nilotic but Muslim F…

[see ossetes ].

, name of two towns, and their respective districts in north-eastern Īrān: 1) A town north-east of Harāt, the capital of the southern part of the Bādg̲h̲īs [ q.v.] region, and the second largest town in that region (“half the size of Būs̲h̲and̲j̲”), and according to Yāḳūt (i, 461), the capital of the whole of Bādg̲h̲īs around the year 596/1200. The town was situated upon a hill in a fertile area, and near a silver mine; it was built of brick. In 98/716-7, Dihistān is mentioned as the seat of a Persian dihḳān (Ṭabarī, ii, 1320); ca. 426/1035, it came into the possession of a Turkish dihḳān (these tit…

, arabicized form of dehkān , the head of a village and a member of the lesser feudal nobility of Sāsānian Persia. The power of the dihḳāns derived from their hereditary title to the local administration. They were an immensely important class, although the actual area of land they cultivated as the hereditary possession of their family was often small. They were the representatives of the government vis-à-vis the peasants and their principal function was to collect taxes; and, in the opinion of Chr…

[see nūr al-Ḥaḳḳ al-dihlawī ].

, the popular name of Ḳuṭb al-dīn aḥmad abu’l-fayyāḍ , a revolutionary Indian thinker, theologian, pioneer Persian translator of the Ḳurʾān, and traditionist, the first child of the 60-year-old S̲h̲āh ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-ʿUmarī of Dihlī, by his second wife, was born in 1114/1703 at Dihlī, four years before the death of Awrangzīb. A precocious child, he memorized the Ḳurʾān at the early age of seven and completed his studies with his father, both in the traditional and rational sciences…

1. — History. The city of Dihlī, situated on the west bank of the river D̲j̲amnā [ q.v.] and now spread out between 28° 30′ and 28° 44′ N. and 77° 5′ and 77° 15′ E., was the capital of the earliest Muslim rulers of India from 608/1211 (see dihlī sultanate ), and remained the capital of the northern dynasties (with occasional exceptions: Dawlatābād, Agra, and Lahore (Lāhawr), [ qq.v.], were the centres favoured by some rulers) until the deposition of Bahādur S̲h̲āh in 1858; from 1911 it became the capital of British India, and after 1947 of Independent India. The usual Romanized form of the nam…

, the principal Muslim kingdom in northern India from its establishment by Iletmis̲h̲ (608-633/1211-1236) until its submergence in the Mug̲h̲al empire under Akbar (963-1014/1556-1605). The establishment of the Dihlī sultanate was made possible by the Indian campaigns of the G̲h̲ūrid Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām and his lieutenant Ḳuṭb al-Dīn Aybak. Having recovered G̲h̲aznī from the G̲h̲uzz in 568/1173, in 571/1175 Muḥammad b. Sām captured Multān and Učč, hoping to by-pass the G̲h̲aznawid posse…

With the exception of the coinage [see sikka ] and a very few ceramic fragments (a few described in J. Ph. Vogel, Catalogue of the Dehli museum of archaeology, Calcutta 1908; for the pottery fragments of the ʿĀdilābād excavations see H. Waddington, in Ancient India , i, 60-76), the only body of material for the study of the art of the Dihlī sultanate is monumental. Most of the ¶ monuments are in Dihlī itself and are described s.v. dihlī . The remainder are mostly described under the appropriate topographical headings, and are listed here in more or less chronological order. The first major und…

(or Daḥya ) b. K̲h̲alīfa al-Kalbī , Companion of the Prophet and a somewhat mysterious character. He is traditionally represented as a rich merchant of such outstanding beauty that the Angel Gabriel took his features; and, when he arrived at Medina, all the women ( muʿṣir , see LA, root. ʿṣr ) came out to see him (Ḳurʾān, LXII, n, may be an allusion to this occurrence). There is no reason to accept the suggestion put forward by Lammens ( EI 1, s.v.) of some commercial connexion with Muḥammad; we only know that a sudden death put ¶ a stop to a projected marriage between a niece of Diḥya and …

, the cock. The word is perhaps of non-Semitic origin. No cognate synonyms seem to exist in the other Semitic languages, except in modern South Arabian (Leslau, Lexique soqoṭri , 1938, 126). The cock is mentioned quite often in ancient Arabic poems and proverbs and in the ḥadīt̲h̲ . In zoological writings it is described as the most sensual and conceited of birds. It is of feeble intelligence, as it cannot find its way to the hen-house when it falls from a wall. Yet it possesses a number of laudable properties: it is cou…

, a fortress situated on that part of the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf called the Sīf ʿUmāra, not far from the island of Ḳays [ q.v.], and famous in the 4th/10th century. It was known under three designations, Ḳalʿat al-Dīkdān, Ḥiṣn Dikbāya and Ḥiṣn Ibn ʿUmāra, as well as the Persian one Diz-i Pisar-i ʿUmāra ( Ḥudūd al-ʿālam , tr. 126). It stood guard over a village of fishermen and a port which could shelter some 20 ships, and according to Ibn Ḥawḳal (tr. Kramers and Wiet, 268-9), following Iṣṭak̲h̲rī (140), no-one could get u…

, surname of the Syrian Arabic poet ʿAbd al-Salām b. Rag̲h̲bān b. ¶ ʿAbd al-Salām b. Ḥabīb b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Rag̲h̲bān b. Yazīd b. Tamīm. This latter had embraced Islam at Muʾta [ q.v.] under the auspices of Ḥabīb b. Maslama al-Fihrī [ q.v.], whose mawlā he became. The great-grandfather of the poet, Ḥabīb, who I was head of the dīwān of salaries under al-Manṣūr, gave his name to a mosque at Bag̲h̲dād, masd̲j̲id Ibn Rag̲h̲bān (al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Buk̲h̲alāʾ , ed. Ḥād̲j̲irī 327, trans. Pellat, index; al-Ḏj̲ahs̲h̲iyārī, 102; Le Strange, Baghdad , 95). Dīk al-Ḏj̲inn, born at…

[see māʿ ].

, or dikkat al-muballig̲h̲ . During the prayer on Fridays (or feast-days) in the mosque, a participant with a loud voice is charged with the function of muballig̲h̲ . While saying his prayer he has to repeat aloud certain invocations to the imām, for all to hear. In mosques of any importance he stands on a dikka . This is the name given a platform usually standing on columns two to three metres high, situated in the covered part of the mosque between the miḥrāb and the court. In Cairo numerous undated platforms are to be found. The oldest dated inscription, with the word d-k-t, dates back to Sulṭā…

, an ancient place in the Middle Atlas region of Morocco which owed its existence to the foundation in the last quarter of the 10th/16th century of a zāwiya [ q.v.], a “cultural” centre meant for teaching the Islamic sciences and Arab letters, and at the same time spreading the doctrine of the S̲h̲ād̲h̲iliyya [ q.v.] order, more precisely the branch known as the D̲j̲azūliyya [see al-d̲j̲azūlī , abū ʿabd allāh muḥammad ], and also sheltering the needy and travellers. In 1048/1638, the zāwiya dilāʾiyya or bakriyya (from the founder’s name, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Abū Bakr …

, founder of the kingdom of Mālwa [ q.v.], whose real name was Ḥasan (Firis̲h̲ta, Nawalkishore ed., ii, 234); or Ḥusayn (Firis̲h̲ta, Briggs’s tr., iv, 170; so also Yazdani, op. cit. below); or ʿAmīd S̲h̲ah Dāwūd ( Tūzuk-i Ḏj̲ahāngīrī . tr. Rogers and Beveridge, ii, 407, based on the inscriptions of the D̲j̲āmiʿ masd̲j̲id (= Lāt́ masd̲j̲id) in Dhār, cf. Zafar Hasan, Inscriptions of Dhār and Mānḍū , in EIM, 1909-10, 11-2 and Plates III and IV). He was believed to be a lineal descendant of ¶ Muʿizz al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sām, S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn G̲h̲ūrī, and this belie…

(?-1031/1622), Ottoman Grand Vizier, was of Croat origin. He rose in the Palace service to the rank of Čās̲h̲nigīr Bas̲h̲i̊, ¶ becoming thereafter Beglerbeg of Cyprus and then, in D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 1022/January 1614, Beglerbeg of Bag̲h̲dād. As Beglerbeg of Diyārbekir—an appointment bestowed on him in 1024/1615—he shared in the Erivān campaign of 1025/1616 against the Ṣafawids of Persia. His subsequent career until 1030/1621 is somewhat obscure. The Ottoman chronicles (cf. Pečewī, ii, 366; Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa, …

, in Turkish tongueless, the name given to the deaf mutes employed in the inside service ¶ ( enderūn ) of the Ottoman palace, and for a while also at the Sublime Porte. They were also called by the Persian term bīzabārī , with the same meaning. They were established in the palace from the time of Meḥemmed II to the end of the Sultanate. Information about their numbers varies. According to ʿAṭāʾ, three to five of them were attached to each chamber ( Kog̲h̲us̲h̲ ); Rycaut speaks of ‘about forty’. A document of the time of Muṣṭafā II (d. 1115/1703), cited by U…

, Dimas̲h̲ḳ al-S̲h̲ām or simply al-S̲h̲ām , (Lat. Damascus, Fr. Damas) is the largest city of Syria. It is situated at longitude 36° 18′ east and latitude 33° 30′ north, very much at the same latitude as Bag̲h̲dād and Fās, at an altitude of nearly 700 metres, on the edge of the desert at the foot of Diabal Ḳāsiyūn, one of the massifs of the eastern slopes of the Anti-Lebanon. To the east and the north-east the steppe extends as far as the Euphrates, while to the south it merges with Arabia. A hundred or more kilometres from the Mediterranean behind the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, a doubl…

S̲h̲ams al-Dīn abū ʿAbd allāh muḥammad b. Abī Ṭālib al-Anṣārī al-Ṣūfī , known as Ibn S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Ḥittīn, author of a cosmography and other works. He was s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ and imām at al-Rabwa, described by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa as a pleasant locality near Damascus, now the suburb of al-Ṣāliḥiyya, and d. at Ṣafad in 727/1327. Al-Dimas̲h̲ḳī’s best known work, Nuk̲h̲bat al-dahr fī ʿad̲j̲āʾib al-barr wa ’l-baḥr is a compilation dealing with geography in the widest sense, and somewhat closely resembling the ʿAd̲j̲āʾib al-mak̲h̲lūḳāt of al-Ḳazwīnī. Though the author’s standp…

, also called Dimotiḳa , a town in the former Ottoman Rumeli. Dimetoḳa lies in western Thrace, in a side valley of the Maritsa, and at times played a significant role in Ottoman history. The territory has belonged to Greece since the treaty of Neuilly (27 November 1919), again bears its pre-Ottoman name of Didymóteikhon, and lies within the administrative district (Nomos) of Ebros. It has a population of about 10,000, and is the seat of a bishop of the Greek church as well as o…