Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

[see ḳanāt ].

[see ḥikāya , taḳālīd ].

[see funduḳ ].

[see g̲h̲id̲h̲āʾ ].

[see k̲h̲ārid̲j̲iyya ].

[see g̲h̲āba ].

[see zināʾ ].

[see burd̲j̲ , ḥiṣār , ḥiṣn , ḳalʿa , sūr ].

[see al-fuṣtāt ].

[see fuʾād ].

[see fulbé ].

…

[see ifrag̲h̲a ].

[see al-ifrand̲j̲ ].

was in the middle ages the name of the village now called La-Garde-Freinet, lying in a gap in the Mt. des Maures (département of Var, France). This locality only finds a place in this Encyclopaedia because it was occupied for 80 years by Muslim pirates who had come from Spain between 278-81/891-4. Having gained a footing in the gulf of Saint-Tropez, they occupied a natural fortress (Fraxinet, Freinet) near the modern village of La-Garde-Freinet; “soon reinforced by new groups from the Iberian peninsula, the invaders visited the county of Fréjus with fire and the sword, ¶ and sacked the ch…

[see d̲j̲umḥuriyya , ḥurriya ].

[see farāmūs̲h̲-k̲h̲āna , farmāsūniyya ].

[see ik̲h̲tiyār , ḳadar ].

[see k̲h̲irḳa , ṣūf ].

[see ʿawāṣim , g̲h̲āzī , murābiṭ , ribāṭ , t̲h̲ug̲h̲ūr ].

[see pičpek ].

, king of Egypt. Aḥmad Fuʾād was born in the Gizeh palace on 26 March 1868, of a Circassian mother. In 1879 his father, the Khedive Ismāʿīl, who had been deposed by the Sublime Porte, took him with him into exile. He studied in Geneva and Turin, and in 1885 entered the Italian military academy. At Rome in 1887, as a second-lieutenant in the artillery, he frequently visited the Italian royal family. Having been Ottoman military attaché at Vienna, he finally returned (1892) to Egypt after a stay a…

, Kečed̲j̲i-zāde Meḥmed , five times Ottoman Foreign Minister and twice Grand Vizier, was born in Istanbul in 1815, the son of the poet ʿIzzet Molla [ q.v.]. Upon his father’s exile to Sivas in 1829 Fuʾād switched from the usual theological curriculum to the new medical school, where he learned French, the key to his future career. From 1834-5 he spent three years as an army doctor in Tripoli in Africa; but since the Po…

, Abū ʿAlī al-Tālaḳānī, of ¶ the tribe of Tamīmī, an early Ṣūfī, disciple of Sufyān al-T̲h̲awrī, was born in Samarḳand, grew up in Abiward, and in his youth was a highway robber. After his conversion, he betook himself to the study of Ḥadīt̲h̲ at Kūfa. He was summoned to give ascetic addresses to Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd, who called him “The chief of the Muslims”. He settled in Mecca and died there 187/803. Mentioned frequently as a transmitter of Traditions, he was also a …

( fawdand̲j̲ , fawtand̲j̲ , etc.) is mint Mentha L. (Labiatae). The term is of Persian, and ultimately of Indian origin ( pūdana ), which explains the various ways of transcription in the Arabic rendering. Under the name ḥabaḳ mint was well-known to the Arab botanists (Aṣmaʿī, K. al-Nabāt , ed. ʿAbd Allāh al-G̲h̲unaym, Cairo 1392/1972, 17). They describe it as a fragrant plant with an acrid taste, square-sectioned stalk and leaves similar to those of the willow. It often grows near water and resembles the water-mint, called nammām . The Beduins considered it as…

, (officially, al-Fujairah), one of the seven Trucial S̲h̲ayk̲h̲doms in Arabia and the only one lying in its entirety on the eastern side of the peninsula separating the Gulf of ʿUmān from the Persian Gulf. The tiny state is wedged between the Sultan of Muscat’s territory of Rūs al-Ḏj̲ibāl. to the north, and the once independent territory of Kalbā (Kalba in Yāḳūt, TA, and the Ḳāmūs of al-Fīrūzābādī) to the south. Kalbā, since 1371/1952 a part of the Trucial S̲h̲ayk̲h̲dom of al-S̲h̲āriḳa (Sharjah), lies between al-Fud̲j̲ayra and the centr…

, Muḥammad b. Sulaymān (885 ?-963/1480?-1556), (in Turkish Fuzūlī) one of the most illustrious authors of Classical Turkish literature. He was born in ʿIrāḳ at the time of the Aḳ-Ḳoyunlu (White Sheep Dynasty) domination, probably at Karbalā, although Bag̲h̲dād, Ḥilla, Nad̲j̲af, Kirkūk, Manzil and Hīt are also mentioned as his birthplace. It is reported on uncertain authority that his father was muftī of Ḥilla, that he was taught by one Raḥmat Allāh, that he first took to poetry when he fell in love with this teacher’s daughter and that his literary taste was formed by the Ād̲h̲arī poet Ḥabībī. It can, however, be said with certainty that Fuḍūlī came from an educated family and was himself fully trained in all the learning of the age. His learning is also attested by the titles of Mollā and, later, Mawlānā which are given to him. It appears that his education commenced at Karbalā and was continued at Ḥilla and Bag̲h̲dād. Meḥmed b. Sulaymān (v. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲…

, the seven “jurists” of Medina, to whom tradition attributes a significant role in the formation of fiḳh . J. Schacht, who was especially interested in these fuḳahāʾ , wrote ( Esquisse d’une histoire du droit musulman , Paris 1952, 28; cf. idem, An introduction to Islamic law, Oxford 1964, 31): “The Medinans ... traced back the origin of their special brand of legal teaching to a number of ancient authorities, who died in the final years of the first and the early years of the second century of the Hegira. In a later period, seven of them were chosen as representatives; these are the ‘seven jurisconsults of Medina’ ... Almost none of the doctrines attributed to these ancient authorities can be considered as authentic. The transmission of the…

[see fulbe ].

, pl. of Pullo (called Fula(s) in Gambia and Sierra Leone; usual French name: Peuls; usual English name: Fulani; their language is variously called Fula, Fulani, Peul (French usage), Ful (German usage), their own name for it being variously Pular , in Senegal, Gambia and Sierra Leone, and Fulfu̇lde , in Mali and territories further east), a pastoral people—the only people of white (or red) stock in negro Africa—the ‘cattle-men’ who for more than a thousand years have been moving in groups across Africa at its greatest wid…

( Fūmin ), the centre of a region ( ḳaṣaba ) in Gīlān [ q.v.], with (in 1914) about 27,000 inhabitants (mostly S̲h̲īʿī Persians: Gīlak) whose main crops are rice and some cereals, and who also produce silk. The town of Fūman is 21 km. W.S.W. of Ras̲h̲t [ q.v.] on the right bank of the Gāzrūdbār and it contains some four hundred houses. Before the advent of Islam in the 7th-8th century it was the seat of the Dābūya dynasty [ q.v.] and for part of the middle ages it was considered the most important town in Gīlān. After the country’s surrender to the Mongols in 1307, the prince…

[see ʿabd al-fattāḥ fūmanī ].

Origins: The Fund̲j̲ appear in the early 10th/16th century as a nomadic cattle-herding people, gradually extending their range down the Blue Nile from Lūl (or Lūlū), an unidentified district, to Sinnār. The foundation of Sinnār, subsequently the dynastic capital, is ascribed to ʿAmāra Dūnḳas in 910/1504-5. Hypotheses of remoter Fund̲j̲ origins among the Shilluk, in Abyssinia, or among the Bulala, are unsubstantiated, while the Sudanese tradition of their Umayyad descent is a typical device for the legitimation of a parvenu Muslim dynasty. Fund̲j̲ kings to the establishment of…

, a term of Greek origin (πανδοχεĩον) used, particularly in North Africa, to denote hostelries at which animals and humans can lodge, on the lines of the caravanserais or k̲h̲ān s of the Muslim East. These hostelries consist of a court-yard surrounded by buildings on all four sides. The ground floors are generally used to house animals from caravans or owned by passing country-dwellers and also, when necessary, any merchandise stored there until such time as the consignee takes delivery of it. On the upper floor (usually there is only one), small rooms give onto a gallery which encircles the entire building; it is here that people are housed. The gate to the street is large enough to allow fully laden animals to pass through. In the Middle Ages it of…

[see d̲j̲anāza ].

[see pécs ].

[see fund̲j̲ ].

…

is the Arabic name of the Euphrates, called in Sumerian bu-ra-nu-nu, Assyr. Purātu , Hebrew , Syriac ; in Old Persian it was ¶ called Ufrātu , whence Middle Persian Frat , modern Turkish Firat . On the name and the notices by authors in antiquity see Pauly-Wissowa, art. Euphrates (by Weissbach). The main stream of the Euphrates is formed by the junction of two principal arms, now called the Karasu (length 450 km./280 miles) and the Murad-suyu (650 km./400 miles). The former, though the shorter, long bore (and in its lower course still bears) t…

[see ibn al-furāt ].

, a term used interchangeably in Ottoman documents and Arabic texts with firda , in reference to personal taxes. Attested in Ottoman Egypt after about 1775 as one of the many illegal charges imposed on peasants by soldiers of the provincial governors, in 1792 this tax was legalized under the name Firdat al-taḥrīr , as a comprehensive levy to replace all the previous illegal charges. …

, i.e., Пορφúριος, Porphyry (A.D 234-about 305) of Tyre, amanuensis, biographer and editor of Plotinus, and outstanding as the founder of Neoplatonism as a scholastic tradition. The philosophical syllabus common in Arabic philosophy is ultimately due to him: since his days it became customary to use the lecture courses of Aristotle as set-books in the Neoplatonic schools of late antiquity and to start with the Categories . He himself wrote commentaries on Aristotle and Plotinus, which seem to have reached the Arabs either in their origina…

[see ʿizzet pas̲h̲a, aḥmed ].

, soteriological expression used in the Ḳurʾān. The word occurs in various connexions in the Ḳurʾān and is usually translated as “discrimination”, “criterion”, “separation”, “deliverance”, or “salvation”, where it is translated at all. The Aramaic word purḳān on which it is modelled, ¶ means “deliverance”, “redemption”, and (in the Christian sense) “salvation”. The Arabic root faraḳa , which must be considered as another element in the furḳān of the Ḳurʾān, means “to separate”, “to divide”, “to distinguish”. Sūra VIII, 29 runs: “O believers, if you fear God, He will assign you a furḳān…

, one of the two terms used by the Arabs to denote the Persians, the other being al-ʿAd̲j̲am [ q.v.]. In the following lines we shall attempt to show in precisely what way the Arabs were acquainted with the Persians and their civilization; for other aspects, see īrān . From remotest antiquity, the Arabian peninsula had maintained relations with Persia; shortly before Islam, these connexions were established, in the north-east, through the Lak̲h̲mids [ q.v.] of al-Ḥīra, and, in the south, through the medium of the Yemen, a vassal of Persia, and the Abnāʾ [ q.v.] who were settled in the cou…

[see siyāsa ].

[see fiḳh, uṣūl ].

, the pseudonym of two Persian poets: (1) Abu ’l-Ḳāsim K̲h̲ān, younger son of Fatḥ ʿAlī K̲h̲ān Ṣabā, poet laureate at the court of Fatḥ ʿAlī S̲h̲āh Ḳād̲j̲ār, was regarded as one of the scholars of ¶ his time and had been well educated. He spent some time in Mas̲h̲had in the civil service and, after the crown prince ʿAbbās Mīrzā had visited the region, he entered his service, principally as a poet. Later he returned to Tehrān where he retired from public life and lived until the end of the 19th century. (2) Muḥammad Mahdī ibn Muḥam…

[see furūgh 2].

, the pseudonym of three Persian poets: 1) Mīrzā Muḥammad Iṣfahānī, a scholar and native of that town. During his travels in the middle of his life he attached himself to Tīmūr S̲h̲āh, amīr of Afghanistan (1187-1207/1773-93) and became his court poet. 2) Mīrzā ʿAbbās, son of Āḳā Mūsā Bistāmī, born in 1213/1798 in ʿIrāḳ, where his father was travelling. As a youth he travelled in Māzanderān and Karmān where he started his career as a poet, at first using the pseudonym “Miskīn”. After taking the n…

, (A.), the whole field of equestrian knowledge, both theoretical and practical, including the principles of hippology ( k̲h̲alḳ al-k̲h̲ayl ), the care of horses and farriery ( bayṭara ), and siyāsat al-k̲h̲ayl , a more exact rendering of the concept of “equitation” in European languages, which can be defined as the art of training and using correctly a saddlehorse. The words farāsa and furūsa , more rarely used, embrace the same group of ideas. If we consult the indexes of the classical catalogues, such as the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm or the exhaustive bibliographies on this subject compiled in the 19th century by Hammer-Purgstall, we gain the quite erroneous impression that a…

mosaic. The fact that the Arabic word for the mosaic itself is ultimately derived from the Greek ψῆφος, perhaps through Aramaic , and the word faṣṣ , used for the little coloured cubes which are arranged according to a pre-designed cartoon, derives from the Greek πεσσóς, leads us to consider this form of architectural decoration as a borrowing by Muslim art from Byzantine art. This borrowing is undeniable and we shall examine it ¶ later. All the same, apart from this importation from abroad, Muslim art of the early centuries seems to have included a form of mosaic wh…

, the first city to be founded in Egypt by the Muslim conquerors and the first place of residence of the Arab governors. It was built on the east bank of the Nile, alongside the Greco-Coptic township of Babylon or Bābalyūn [ q.v.], traces of which are still preserved in the ramparts of the Ḳaṣr al-S̲h̲amʿ. A bridge of boats, interrupted by the island of al-Rawḍa [ q.v.], linked the Ḳaṣr with the city of Giza (al-D̲j̲īza) on the other bank of the Nile. Al-Fusṭāṭ was partly built beside the river, which at that time followed a more easterly course, and partly on …

(accepted French spelling Fou ta), principal massif of tropical West Africa, situated at the north-east of the Republic of Guinea. This group of mountains has been thoroughly studied by J. Richard Molard (1913-51). It is twice the size of Switzerland and of very varied character. Its eastern section has a crystalline base which rises to about ¶ 700 m./3000 ft., with some peaks of over 1000 m./3,300 ft. The Tinkisso, a tributary of the Niger, rises there. The central Fouta is an internal “Tassili” divided into three masses: in the north the massif of …

[see fīt̲h̲āg̲h̲ūras ].

[see ṭarābulus (al-s̲h̲aʾm)].

, a term invented in about the 2nd/8th century as the counterpart of muruwwa [ q.v.], the qualities of the mature man, to signify that which is regarded as characteristic of the fatā , pl. fityān , literally “young man”; by this term it has become customary to denote various movements and organizations which until the beginning of the modern era were wide-spread throughout all the urban communities of the Muslim East. The study of these movements is made difficult by the fact that, in the course of history, t…

[see ibn al-fuwaṭī ].

, pl. of fayḏj̲ , (from Persian payk ), is the name not only of the couriers of the government Barīd [ q.v.], but also of the commercial mail serving the population at large. This term was common all over North Africa and Egypt during the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries, while on the Egypt-Syria route the word kutubī , letter-bearer, was used. Occasionally, rasūl appears in the same sense, although the latter is more regularly applied to special messengers (see below). Since only a few letters written in Arabic script on paper have been published, for the time being our information about the fuyū…

[see fuḍūlī ].