Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see ṣayd ].

[(1) see ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ ; (2) see ḥarb —i].

(a., pl. afdiya ) “redemption, repurchase, ransoming”. The dictionaries give several meanings for fidāʾ and its derivatives, amongst which fidāʾī offers especial interest [see fidāʾī , fidāʾiyyān-i islām ]. Another word derived from the same root, fidya , appears in the Ḳurʾān to denote the fast which compensates for the days of Ramaḍān in which fasting has not been practised (II, 180/184, 192/196) or the impossibility of purchasing a place in paradise (LVII, 14/15). The verbal forms fadā , tafādā and iftadā are more common there (e.g. fadaynā-hu in regard to…

(or, more often, fidāwī ), one who offers up his life for another, a name used of special devotees in several religious and political groups. Among the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs it was used of those members who risked their lives to assassinate the enemies of the sect. They acted also on behalf of political allies of the Nizārīs, sometimes at a price. At Alamūt they may have become, in later years, a special corps; but normally tasks of assassination seem to have been assigned to anyone…

, a small politico-religious terrorist group based in Tehrān which during its twelve years of activity (1943-55) became notorious for its responsibility for numerous political murders. The Fidāʾiyyān were organized secretly, but held open rallies and announced their aims publicly. Their goals included strict enforcement of the s̲h̲arīʿa and the ending of irreligiousness. They combined fundamentalism with violent xenophobia, and considered attacks on foreigners and politicians with foreign connexions a defence of the Dār al-Islām . ¶ The Fidāʾiyyān proclaimed the governm…

, silver, because of the variety of its application was in great demand in Muslim society. Its abusive accumulation, however, was to be avoided, since, according to the Ḳurʾān, “those who treasure up gold and silver and do not expend them in the way of Allāh” would meet with a painful punishment ( Sūra ix, 34). Functionally the significance of silver resembled that of gold (see d̲h̲ahab ). Its economic importance arose from the fact that silver, along with gold, constituted the basis for the official Muslim coinage (see dirham). Under normal economic circumstances the value of silve…

“sacrilege”; ḥarb al-fid̲j̲ār “the sacrilegious war” is the name of a war waged towards the end of the 6th century A.D. during the holy months between the Ḳurays̲h̲ and Kināna on the one side and the Ḳays-ʿAylān (without the G̲h̲aṭafān) on the other. Our sources mention eight days on which fighting took place. The first three of them—usually put together as the first war but sometimes counted as the first three wars—were mere brawls. Of real importance w…

, (which becomes, according to the area concerned, fedu , fadu , fadwa and even fdīya ) is a general designation among Syro-Palestinians for a blood sacrifice made for purposes of atonement. From this point of view, its meaning is close to that of ḍaḥiyya . Indeed, in the Negeb and other parts of former Palestine, these two terms are sometimes used to designate one and the same thing. In fact, however, while the ḍaḥiyya is essentially an offering to the dead made on the occasion of ʿīd al-aḍḥā , the fidya , on the other hand, is practised in the interests of the l…

[see d̲j̲āgīr , iḳṭāʿ , tīmār ].

( bābā ), pseudonym of a celebrated Persian poet whose patronymic, like his first name, is unknown. He was a native of S̲h̲īrāz where he started by helping his brother, a cutler by trade, and it was on that account that he first took the pseudonym Sakkākī when he began to write poetry. In his youth, which was spent at S̲h̲īrāz, he lived a life of debauchery, and then made a journey to Herāt where he became acquainted with the great poet Ḏj̲āmī, but his poetry was not apprecia…

(?-938/1532), Ottoman poet. Very little is known of his early life, except that he was a native of Trabzon and that after a summary education he became a minor clerk in government offices in Istanbul, where together with his fellow-poets and boon-companions he frequented taverns and places of amusement, leading an irregular and dissolute life. He seems to have lived in near poverty and without proper patronage, in spite of the poems which he dedicated to the great. We are told of his extraordina…

[see tīn ].

(Ar. Fad̲j̲īd̲j̲ ), a group of seven ḳsūr isolated in the south-east of Morocco and surrounded on three sides by the Algerian frontier. It is situated | to the east of the d̲j̲abal Grūz at the meeting point of the Sahara Atlas and the Sahara plateau, in a broad hollow 850-900 metres in altitude (long. 1° 15′ W., lat. 32° 5′). The seven ḳṣur fall into three groups: al-Ūdāg̲h̲īr, al-ʿAbīd, Awlād Slīmān and al-Maïzz to the north-west, the two Ḥammām (Fūḳānī and Taḥtānī) to the north-east, and Zenāga, the most important, two kilometres to …

[see faḥl ].

, Abū Isḥāḳ Ibrāhīm b. Abi ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad , composed in 632/1234 an anthology of the works of Spanish stylists and poets of the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries entitled Kanz al-kuttāb ¶ wa-muntak̲h̲ab al-ādāb (see H. Krafft, Die ar., pers . und türk . Hdss . der k. k. orient. Akademie zu Wien , Vienna 1824, no. 147). (C. Brockelmann)

[see bibliography , fahrasa , ibn al-nadīm , ṭūsī ].

(a.), originally “understanding, knowledge, intelligence”, and applied to any branch of knowledge (as in fiḳh al-lug̲h̲a , the science of lexicography), has become the technical term for jurisprudence, the science of religious law in Islam. It is, like the iurisprudentia of the Romans, rerum divinarum atque humanarum notifia and in its widest sense covers all aspects of religious, political and civil life. In addition to the laws regulating ritual and religious observances ( ʿibādāt ), containing orders and prohibitions, it includes the whole fie…

, pl. afkār , thought, reflection. The Ḳurʾān employs the 2nd and 5th forms of the root fkr , to urge men “to reflect”. In the vocabulary of falsafa and ʿilm al-kalām , the maṣdar fikr denotes the intellectual faculty in the act of thought, reflecting upon an object of intellection. It is distinguished from idrāk , the intellectual faculty of grasping, of perception. The result of the operation of fikr is expressed by the noun of unity fikra . In taṣawwuf , fikr is used habitually in contrast to d̲h̲ikr [ q.v.], recollection. Fikr can thus be translated by reflectio…

[see tewfīk fikret ].

, ʿAbd Allāh Pas̲h̲a , an Egyptian statesman, poet and prose-writer, regarded as one of the authors who have helped to give a simpler, more modern character to Arabic literary style. Born in 1250/1834 in Mecca where his father, an Egyptian officer, was serving, and later brought up in Cairo, he studied at al-Azhar and consorted with the Ṣūfīs. From 1267/1851 he was an administrative official and attracted the attention of Khedive Ismāʿīl who, in 1284/1866, chose him to teach Ar…