Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

Serat Cabolek (The book of Cabolek) is a Javanese-language text about a religious debate in eighteenth-century Java. The modern Indonesian scholar Soebardi accepts a tradition that the work was composed by the poet Yasadipura I (1729–1803), but this ascription is improbable. Although the earliest surviving manuscripts are from the nineteenth century, the text seems to have been composed in the 1730s, probably in the court circles of Kartasura. According to Serat Cabolek, Kyai Haji Ahmad Mutamakin was a Muslim scholar and teacher from Cabolek, a village on the north…

Cadiz (Sp. Cádiz, Ar. Qādis) was founded (as Gadir or Agadir) by the Phoenicians in the second millennium B.C.E. It later became a Roman colony, under the name Augusta Julia Gaditana. It was ignored as a city by the Muslim conquerors, even though its region was controlled by them. The district capitals in what is now the province of Cádiz—which are known only for the fourth/tenth century—were Jerez de la Frontera (Ar. Sharīsh), Arcos (Arkush), and Medina-Sidonia (Ar. Madīna Shadūna). The ports i…

Caesarea Maritima (Ar. Qayṣariyya, Heb. Keisarya, Qesarya) of classical antiquity was a Palestinian harbour some twenty-five miles south of the site of present-day Haifa. The construction of the harbour on the Phoenician ruins known as the Tower of Strabo (one of the ancient kings of Sidon) was begun by the Edomite king Herod the Great (r. 37–4 B.C.E.), in honour of his suzerain, the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar, and thus bore the latter’s name (Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land. An archaeological guide from earliest times to 1700 (London 1980), 160; Muir’s historical atlas, Londo…

Tacizade Cafer Çelebi (Tācīzāde Caʿfer Çelebi) (856?–921/1452?–1515) was a leading Ottoman poet, prose stylist, and administrator, principally during the reign of Bayezid (Bāyezīd) II (r. 886–918/1481–1512). He was born in Amasya, where his father Taci (Tācī) Beg (d. 890/1485) was a member of Bayezid’s princely household, possibly his personal secretary. Cafer and his brother Sadi (Saʿdī) Çelebi (d. 922/1516) both studied at leading medreses in Bursa and both graduated to teaching careers. Cafer Çelebi’s first teaching post in Simav, western Anatolia, also required him to act as k…

Cafer (Caʿfer) Efendi (b. c. 1570/977–8; d. after 1623/1032–3) was an Ottoman writer who authored an account of the life and works of the ser mimaran-ı hassa ( ser-miʿmārān-i khāṣṣa, chief imperial architect) Sedefkar Mehmed Ağa (Ṣedefkār Meḥmed Agha, d. 1032/1622–3), entitled Risāle-i miʿmāriyye (Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, Yeni Yazma 339), dating to 1023/1614. Little is known of the author beyond what is found in his book. Although he does not identify his place of origin, he does say that it was a month’s travel from …

Cain and Abel (Ar. Qābīl wa-Hābīl) are the two sons of Adam and Eve hinted at in a Qurʾānic passage exhorting the Prophet to recite the story of two sons of Adam (Q 5:27). Each brother offered a sacrifice, but the offering of only one of them was accepted, because the other was not God-fearing. The latter promised to kill the former (Q 5:28–9) and did so (Q 5:30). Then God sent a raven that dug up the earth to show him how to bury the corpse of his brother, and the murderer cried “Woe is me! Am I …

Cairo, with 260,000 inhabitants on the eve of the modern period, was the second-largest city in the Ottoman Empire after Istanbul. In 1798, Egypt, and with it the city of Cairo, were invaded by the French. The occupation, which lasted until 1801, was met with recurrent popular revolt and left large sections of the city devastated. Reform and beautification came with the various dynasties in power from 1805 to 1952: initially the city was under nominal Ottoman suzerainty, subsequently under British occupat…

In the Ottoman period—the era between the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 923/1517 and the French expedition to Egypt of 1798 to 1801— Cairo, with its prestigious past, was the capital of the Ottoman province of Egypt, the second largest city in the Ottoman Empire in terms of population, and an important hub of commercial transit. Up until the 1950s Ottoman Cairo was best known through the descriptions written by the scholars of the French expedition to Egypt, who produced the enormous, detailed study Description de l’Égypte. It was also known for its monuments, 199 of which were in…

Çaka (or possibly Çakan) Bey was a Turkish emir who founded an Islamic polity based on the town of Smyrna (modern İzmir) in or just before 473–4/1081, one of a number of states set up by Turkish military strongmen in Anatolia in the years following the Saljūq victory over the Byzantines at Manzikert (Malazgirt, 463/1071). Very little is known about his activities during his period of rule, and our knowledge is based almost exclusively on The Alexiad, a Greek biography of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos written by his daughter Anna towards the middle of the sixt…

Çakeri (Çākerī) (also known as Çakeri Sinan/Çākerī Sinān Beg and Yusuf-ı Çakeri/Yūsuf-ı Çākerī, with the real name Sinan/Sinān, d. after 900/1494–5) is the pen name of a poet celebrated for his divan ( dīvān, collection of his own poems) and his mesnevis ( methnevīs) Yūsuf u Züleyhā and Leylā vü Mecnūn, written during the reign of Bayezid II (Bāyezīd II, r. 886–918/1481–1512). Çakeri’s date and place of birth and death are unknown. According to tezkires ( tedhkires, collections of short biographies of poets), he preferred the pen name Çakeri (slave, servant) because he …

Mustafa Fevzi Çakmak (1292/1876–1950) was a Turkish marshal, statesman, and politician. He was born in Istanbul, into a military family with religious and revolutionary members. Except for one year of schooling in Salonika (Thessaloniki), he received his military education in Istanbul and graduated as a staff captain (Erkan-ı Harp Yüzbaşısı, Erkān-ı Ḥarb Yüzbāşısı) from the Erkan-ı Harbiye Mektebi (Erkān-ı Ḥarbiyye Mektebi, General Staff Academy) in 1316/1898. He served in the Balkans during his e…

Calatayud (Qalʿat Ayyūb) was a village in Spain (once a madīna of al-Andalus), in what is today the province of Zaragoza (Saragossa, Ar. Saraqusṭa) (Illustration 1). Located on the river Jalón (Shalūn), its name indicates that it must originally have been a fortress (qalʿa) connected with someone named Ayyūb, whose identity has been lost to memory—his connection with the tābiʿī Ayyūb b. Ḥabīb al-Lakhmī, a wālī who succeeded ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Mūsā b. Nuṣayr, cannot be proved. The earliest written sources referring to the settlement are the Muqtabis of Ibn Ḥayyān (d. 469/1076) and the Tarsīʿ…

Calatrava (Ar., Qalʿat Rabāḥ) is the site of a city of Muslim Spain. The ruins are located in Calatrava la Vieja, a small hill covering almost five hectares (Illustration 1). It is fifteen kilometres north-northeast of Ciudad Real, on the left bank of the Guadiana River (Wādī Yāna), on the road that linked Córdoba and Toledo. During the Middle Ages it was a swampy area. It has been excavated continuously since 1984, revealing evidence of an Iberian village on the same site (fourth-sixth century …

The Calendar of Córdoba is the title given by Reinhart P. A. Dozy to a calendar (Kitāb fī tafṣīl al-zamān wa-maṣāliḥ al-abdān) written in Córdoba, probably in the fourth/tenth century and not earlier than 361/972. Its Arabic text was edited by Dozy, together with a Latin translation attributed to Gerard of Cremona, entitled Liber Anoe (cf. K. al-Anwāʾ, below). Later, Charles Pellat revised and annotated this edition and added a French translation. The work was attributed, although without a firm textual basis, to ʿArīb b. Saʿīd, a Muslim physician and…

This entry examines the title, conventions, periodisation, and institutions of the caliphate up to 923/ 1517, when the Ottomans conquered Egypt and relocated the last ʿAbbāsid caliph, al-Mutawakkil III, to Istanbul, their capital. The Arabic word khalīfa (pl. khulafāʾ or khalāʾif ) means literally “successor,” “deputy,” “vice-gerent,” “inheritor,” and “substitute.” It is used as a title of the leader of the Muslim community after the death of the prophet Muḥammad (10/632). Various forms of the word were used to denote not only the ruler ( khalīfa) but also his office and reign ( khilāfa…

The call to prayer (adhān) is, according to Muslim jurists, intended primarily to inform believers that the time for prayer has arrived, but it also partakes of the character of an act of worship (ʿibāda); thus, the Mālikīs and Ḥanbalīs hold that valid performance of the call to prayer requires appropriate intent (nīya). It is desirable to perform the adhān in a state of ritual purity, although most scholars hold that it is technically valid even if performed in a state of major pollution (janāba). Performance of the ādhān is meritorious even in cases in which there is no need to i…

The Battle of the Camel took place on Thursday, 15 Jumādā I 36/9 November 656 on the outskirts of Basra, in southern Iraq. It marked the start of hostilities in the first fitna (civil strife), which followed the murder of the third caliph, ʿUthmān (r. 23–35/644–56), in Dhū l-Ḥijja 35/June 656. The victorious side was led by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, while the losing opposition was organised around Ṭalḥa b. ʿUbaydallāh (d. 36/656), al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām (d. 36/656), and ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr (d. 58/678). The battle is named for the ca…

Cameroon is a country on the Gulf of Guinea, on the western coast of Africa, between Nigeria, Chad, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo. It extends 1,200 kilometres from north to south, is triangular in shape, and covers 475,442 square kilometres. Its population was estimated at 23,450,000 in 2013. It has 590 kilometres of jagged coastline along the Atlantic. It comprises such a variety of biogeographical realms that it can be described as a miniatur…

Faruk Nafiz (Fārūq Nāfidh) Çamlıbel (1898–1973), a Turkish nationalist, poet, and playwright, was born in Istanbul (his father, Süleyman Nafiz, was a civil servant). He abandoned his medical studies to turn to writing and teaching, and from 1922 to 1946 he taught Turkish literature at several high schools in Kayseri, Ankara, and Istanbul. He became a deputy in parliament for the Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti, DP) in 1946, and continued to serve in this position until 1960. After the military inte…

The Çandarlı family was a family of viziers, ulema (ʿulemāʾ), and statesmen who played a key role in the creation of the Ottoman Empire and its institutions until the middle of the ninth/fifteenth century. The name Çandarlı (or Candarlı, or Cenderī) is first associated with Kara Halil Hayreddin (Qara Khalīl Khayreddīn) Paşa (d. 789/1387). The most widely accepted theory is that the name is derived from a village named Çender, probably village in the Sivrihisar area, in central Anatolia (not to be confused with the principality of Candar based in Kastamonu on the Black Sea coast). According…