Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Ḥabābī (Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi, 25 December 1923–23 August 1993) was a Moroccan writer and philosopher who established a personalist philosophy (shakhṣāniyya) in a Third World, Arabic, and Muslim context. He was one of the leading figures of modern philosophy in the Arab world during the era of decolonisation, having developed a new philosophical vocabulary and an intercultural hermeneutical approach to reconcile Third World societies and Islamic religious traditions with modernity. Central to his tho…

Ḥabāʾib (Ar. sing. ḥabīb; Indonesian sing. habib), which literally means the “beloveds,” is an honorific used to address and refer to the descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad ( sāda) in the Ḥaḍramawt valley of southern Arabia, Southeast Asia, and the Swahili coast of East Africa. In particular, the term is used to refer to the Bā ʿAlawī (Children of ʿAlawī), that is, a sāda lineage that traces its descent to ʿAlawī b. ʿUbaydallāh (d. at the beginning of the fifth/eleventh century), whose grandfather, Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā (d. 345/956) is said to have first migrated …

Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib al-Marwazī (fl. third/ninth century) was a brilliant mathematician (the name al-Ḥāsib means “the calculator”) and astronomer active during the period of the great blossoming of the sciences under the patronage of the ʿAbbāsids. Born in Merv, he lived in Baghdad, Damascus, and Samarrāʾ (sometime after the founding of the city in 221/836) during the reigns of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Maʾmūn (198–218/813–33) and al-Muʿtaṣim (218–27/833–42). According to Ibn al-Nadīm ( al-Fihrist, 275), he lived to an age of more than a hundred, …

Ḥabīballāh (Ḥabībullāh) Khān (1872–1919) was son of the amīr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (r. 1880–1901) and a slave girl from the court of Jahāndār Shāh, the mīr (amīr) of Badakhshān (r. 1864–9). He succeeded ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and ruled Afghanistan from 3 October 1901 to 20 February 1919, when he was assassinated at Kalla-gūsh, in Laghmān. Ḥabīballāh Khān inherited a functioning administrative and military system. His first official communications indicated the young amīr’s intention to continue the isolationist policies of his father: In order to shield his country from foreign…

Ḥabīb b. Maslama al-Fihrī, a brilliant general and close ally of the caliph Muʿāwiya, belonged to the Quraysh tribe, more precisely, to the Muḥārib b. Fihr branch of Quraysh. He played a major role in the conquest of the Jazīra and Armenia. His raids on Byzantine territory earned him the nickname Ḥabīb al-Rūm, “Ḥabīb of the Byzantines,” which can also be understood, ironically, as “the beloved one of the Byzantines.” The agreements of capitulation that he concluded with the people of Tiflīs (Tbilis…

Habsi (Ḥabsī)/Hasbi (Ḥasbī), Gedizli or Geduzi (Gedūzī, “of Geduz”) was a pen name of an Ottoman poet (d. after 960/1553) whose real name, date of birth, and year of death are unknown. He was born in Geduz (Gediz), in the principality of Germiyan (Kütahya), where he received his medrese (madrasa) education. After moving to Istanbul, where his elder brother, the better-known poet Keşfi (Keşfī), had been living for years, he first wrote poems under the pen name Habsi. The available biographical data introduce him as a tragic figure. Spending muc…

Hacı Bayram-ı Veli (Ḥāccī Bayrām-ı Velī) (749?-833/1348?-1430) was the founder of the (Bayrāmī) tarika ( ṭarīqa, lit., “way,” i.e., Ṣūfī order), which inspired the later (Melāmī) order (formed shortly after Hacı Bayram’s death, and whose members have worn since the origin the normal clothes of their day, and are followers of the doctrine of the “oneness of being” (waḥdat al-wujūd) going back to the teachings of the famous mystic of Andalusian origin Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240 in Damscus). There are no extant sources from his period that refer to him, and w…

Hacı Halil Paşa (Ḥācī Khalīl Paşa, c. 1065–1145/1655–1733) served as grand vizier of the Ottoman empire from Ramazan (Ramaḍān) 1128/August 1716 until Ramazan 1129/August 1717 and oversaw the loss of key strategic positions in Southeast Europe to the Habsburg dynasty of Austria. Halil Paşa was of Albanian origin and built his career as member of the bostancı (būstāncī, member of the Imperial guards) corps), rising to the post of bostancıbaşı ( bostānci başı, head of the Imperial guards) in 1123/1711. Despite being officially appointed the beylerbeyi ( beglerbegi, governor-general) …

Fuʾād Ḥaddād (1927–85) was a poet who wrote in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Born in Cairo to a Lebanese father, he was well versed in Classical Arabic and the colloquial traditions and was educated in French. He was instrumental in the birth of shiʿr al-ʿāmmiyya al-miṣriyya, a movement of poetry in the Egyptian colloquial dialect that veered away from the poetics of zajal, a traditional form of colloquial verse, and moved towards that of the contemporaneous modernist Arabic poetry. Ṣalāḥ Jāhīn (d. 1986), another pioneer of shiʿr al-ʿāmmiyya, whose first anthology was published in …

Al-Ṭāhir al-Ḥaddād (1899–1935) was a traditionally educated trade unionist and women’s-rights activist best known for his work in the latter field during the French protectorate in Tunisia (1881–1956). “Woman is the mother of humankind,” reads the first sentence of his 1930 book Imraʾatunā fī l-sharīʿa wa-l-mujtamaʿ (“Our woman in sharīʿa and society”; al-Ḥaddād, Imraʾatunā, 13). With these words, revealing both his concern for defending the role of women in public life and his debt to patriarchal views of women as childrearers, he began what beca…

Ha Decheng (哈德成, Islamic name Hilāl al-Dīn, 1888–1943) was a Chinese-speaking Muslim (Hui) reformer and scholar-educator, originally from Shaanxi Province. He received both a Confucian and an Islamic education. When his father died, he assumed his position as imām of the Zhejiang Road Mosque in Shanghai. In 1913, he established the Xiexing import-export company with other Muslim entrepreneurs from Shanghai, seeing this as an opportunity to raise funds for reformist Muslim education and the Islamic revival movement. Ha acted as the m…

Hadice Turhan Sultan (Khadīja ṭurkhān Sulṭān) (d. 10 Şaban (Shaʿbān) 1094/4 August 1683) was the favourite consort, or haseki (khāṣekī), of the Ottoman sultan İbrahim (İbrāhīm) I (r. 1049–58/1640–8) and the mother of Sultan Mehmed (Meḥmed) IV (r. 1058–99/1648–87). There are no records of her early life prior to entering the Ottoman harem, but she was most likely captured during a slave raid into the Russian steppes and entered the harem of Sultan İbrahim in 1049/1640, when she was approximately twelve years old. A…

Hadım Mesih Mehmed Paşa (Khādim Mesīḥ Meḥmed, c. 901–98/c. 1495–1589) was an Ottoman grand vizier during the reign of Sultan Murad III (Murād, r. 982–1003/1574–95). He was Bosnian and was made a eunuch when he was placed in the palace, where later he served as the sultan’s treasurer. He served as an ak ağa ( aq agha, white eunuch) in the sultan’s household, one of approximately forty white eunuchs serving in the palace in the early tenth/sixteenth century. They were supervised by the kapı ağası ( kāpī aghası, chief white eunuch), who was a close advisor to the sultan and controlled access to the e…

Hadim Süleyman (Khādim Süleymān) Paşa (c. 861–954/1457–1547) was an Ottoman admiral and statesman under Sultan Süleyman (Süleymān) I (r. 926–74/1520–66). The sobriquet hadim ( khādim, literally, “servant”) indicates that he was a palace eunuch. Most available sources claim that he was Macar ( Mācār, Hungarian), although he would have been enslaved and castrated before the Ottoman absorption of southern Hungary in 948/1541. He may have been captured from forces allied with the Habsburg Empire during the conquests of Mehmed (Meḥmed) II (r.…

Ḥadīth (Ar. lit., speech, narrative, pl. aḥādīth) is the technical term for Muslim Tradition about the exemplary practice of the prophet Muḥammad, enshrined in his words (aqwāl, sing. qawl) and deeds (afʿāl, sing. fiʿl) and his tacit approval (taqrīr) of his Companions’ words and deeds (for a more detailed nomenclature, see al-Ḥākim, Madkhal, 81). Ḥadīth is also each individual tradition about what the Prophet said, did, or tacitly approved. In contrast to the ontological status of the Qurʾān as God’s uncreated (qadīm) speech, ḥadīth—the substantive form of the adjective “new”…

Ḥadīth commentary (sharḥ al-ḥadīth, pl. shurūḥ al-ḥadīth, or, more rarely, tafsīr al-ḥadīth or taʾwīl al-ḥadīth) is the practice of interpreting a report or a collection of reports attributed to Muḥammad, his Companions, exemplars amongst the early generations of Muslims, or, for Shīʿīs, the Imāms. Construed broadly, the term could include any formal or informal oral or written gloss on a given ḥadīth. Narrowly defined, the practice of ḥadīth commentary refers to a cumulative and transregional tradition of line-by-line Muslim scholarly exegesis on individual ḥadīth and ḥadīth co…

In ḥadīth criticism the discipline of al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl (impugning and accrediting) is aimed at evaluating the uprightness ( ʿadāla) of transmitters ( rijāl, lit. “men”) populating the chains of transmission ( isnād, pl. asānīd) of Muslim traditions ( ḥadīth, pl. aḥādīth). If the isnād is the genealogical tree of ḥadīth, then the evaluation of transmitters can be seen as an extension into the science of ḥadīth of the traditional genealogical pursuits of the Arabs, with added legal, theological, sectarian, political, literary, and ethnic concerns. Closely re…

Like other Muslims, Ibāḍīs have long employed ḥadīth (in the general sense of what was related about the Prophet and his community) in seeking to understand how Islam should be understood and practised (Wilkinson, Ibāḍism, 126). Up to the sixth/twelfth century, however, Ibāḍīs preserved attitudes towards ḥadīth that, on the one hand, remained closer to earlier Islamic approaches to it, but, on the other hand, increasingly diverged from Sunnī and later Shīʿī norms concerning ḥadīth. Since the sixth/twelfth century, Ibāḍīs have progressively adopted Sunnī standards for ḥadīth. This…

Ḥadīth qudsī (plur. aḥādīth qudsiyya, lit., holy tradition; also ḥadīth ilāhī, ḥadīth rabbānī, plur. aḥādīth ilāhiyya/rabbāniyya, lit., divine tradition; khabar, report, plur. akhbār, sometimes used instead of ḥadīth) designates a direct-discourse statement ascribed to God—hence the preferred translation “divine saying”—that is not from the Qurʾān but is reported normally in ḥadīth format, with supporting isnād (chain of transmitters), on the authority of the prophet Muḥammad. A divine saying is distinguished formally from a Qurʾānic revelation and…

The Hadiyya of Ethiopia was a political entity belonging to the Muslim federation of Adal and inhabiting a large territory in southeastern Ethiopia between the seventh/thirteenth and the tenth/sixteenth centuries. The Hadiyya consisted of Cushitic- and Semitic-speaking ethnic groups who shared several cultural features, such as a strong Islamic influence and an agropastoralist economy. The groups that are presently labelled Hadiyya proper are part of the Highland East Cushitic cluster and are relat…

Ahmed Messali Hadj (Aḥmad Miṣālī al-Ḥājj, 1898–1974) was an Algerian politician and leader of Algerian nationalism. He was born in Tlemcen, in western Algeria, to a family earning their livelihood from agriculture and temporary jobs in the city. Messali studied in a French primary school in Tlemcen, although his education was interspersed with professional apprenticeships. According to family tradition, he also received a religious education in the Darqāwī Ṣūfī order. After serving in Bordeaux dur…

Ḥaḍra in Ṣūfism is generally translated as Presence—that is, it is capitalised to indicate the divine locus of the Ṣūfī’s mystical goal. The word also refers to the culminating moment in the sacred conclave of the Ṣūfī order (Ar. ṭarīqa, lit., way), in which the devotees go through a transcending experience. Meanings associated with the word therefore range from the theological implications of the mystical encounter to the socially cohesive experience of attending to spiritual realities with other like-minded seekers. It was given it…

Members of the Arab Ḥaḍramī diaspora in Southeast Asia, particularly those who settled in the Malay world, originally migrated from Ḥaḍramawt in southern Yemen, where they were influenced by push factors such as poverty, drought, and political disturbance, and pull factors, such as trading opportunities and Islamic missionary work in Southeast Asia. Their settlement and incorporation into and coexistence with new host societies occurred during three historical periods, the pre-colonial, colonial, and po…

Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ was a Persian lyric poet who lived in Shiraz from about 715/1315 to 792/1390. He is widely known for his Dīvān, a collection of five hundred poems. His work crowns four centuries of Persian poetry. Lyric poetry, far removed from any sort of literality, allowed him to convey his exceptional experience of love: “It was love that taught me to speak” ( Dīvān, 53, 4; all references in this article are to vol. 1 of the 1983 Khānlarī edition; the ghazal number is followed by the couplet number). This resulted from his seduction by a beloved one who “pillage…

Hafiz İsmail (Ḥāfiẓ Ismāʿīl) Paşa (1171–1222/1758–1807) was an Ottoman statesman, grand vizier, and grand admiral. He was born in Istanbul, the son of a bostancı ( bostānci, gardeners of the imperial palaces), and grew up in the Bostancı Corps (Bostānci Ocak), where he became hasekiağası (khāṣekīāghāsı) on 12 Safer (Ṣafar) 1212/6 August 1797. On 18 Safer 1213/1 August 1798/, he was promoted to the post of bostancıbaşı ( bostānci başı, head of the Bostancı Corps), where he drew the attention of Selim (Selīm) III (r. 1203–22/1789–1807), and on 19 Recep (Rajab) 1219…

Al-Ḥāfiẓ li-Dīn Allāh Abū l-Maymūn ʿAbd al-Majīd was the eleventh caliph of the Fāṭimid line (r. 297–567/909–1171). Born in ʿAsqalān in 467/1074 or 468/1075 to a son of the caliph al-Mustanṣir (r. 427–87/1036–94), he was the oldest surviving male in the royal family in 524/1130, when his cousin and predecessor, al-Āmir, was assassinated. Absent a clear heir to the throne—the infant son al-Ṭayyib, whose birth had been announced earlier, seems to have left the picture—authorities in the palace decla…

Hafız (Ḥāfıẓ) Post was the nickname of the Istanbul musician and composer Mehmed (Meḥmed, 1040?–1101/1630?-90). He was also a poet and noted calligrapher, but is renowned above all for his musical achievements, and has the reputation of being, after Itri (ʿIṭrī, d. 1123/1712), the most significant Ottoman composer of the second half of the eleventh/seventeenth century. He was a distinguished performer on the tanbur ( ṭanbūr, a long-necked lute) and a singer, and although not a court musician, he was a major musical figure during the reign of Mehmed (Meḥmed) I…

Ḥafṣa bt. al-Ḥājj (d. 589/1191) was the preeminent female poet of sixth/twelfth-century Granada. She is considered the last major female poet from al-Andalus; in fact, there are only a few other female poets who were her contemporaries, but hardly anything is known about them, and only a few lines of their poetry are preserved in the classical sources. Compared to those contemporaries and other female poets of al-Andalus, Ḥafṣa bt. al-Ḥājj garnered a rich body of akhbār (reports about her in historical sources). Al-Maqqarī (d. 1041/1632), a biographer and scholar origin…

Ayşe Hafsa Sultan (ʿĀʾisha Ḥafṣa Sulṭān) (d. 940/1534) was the concubine of Selim (Selīm) I (r. 918–26/1512–20), mother of his only surviving son, Süleyman (Süleymān) I (r. 926–74/1520–66), and probably also of one or more of his daughters. Often alleged to have been a princess of the Crimean Giray dynasty, Hafsa was, in fact, a slave recruit like other royal mothers from the mid-ninth/fifteenth century onwards. Hafsa spent her life at Süleyman’s side, first in Trabzon (on the Black Sea), Selim’s …

Abū ʿAmr or Abū Yaḥyā Ḥafṣ al-Fard (fl. c. 200/815) was a prominent theologian; a disciple of Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (d. c.200/815), he was traditionally counted among the Mujbira (Determinists). Little is known of Ḥafṣ al-Fard’s life. His full name is unknown and it is not certain whether he was a native of Egypt (min ahl Miṣr), whence he came to Basra, as related by Ibn al-Nadīm (229), or if he migrated to Egypt (dakhala ilā Miṣr) in the generation of the jurist (faqīh) Ibn ʿUlayya (d. 218/832), as mentioned by Ibn al-Zayyāt (167; Van Ess, 2:729). Ḥafṣ al-Fard studied in Iraq. Although he is liste…

Throughout the reign of the Ḥafṣid dynasty (626–982/1228–1574) a rich and varied architecture flourished in Ifrīqiya—today’s Tunisia, with the Libyan province Ṭarābulus (Tripoli) to the east and the two Algerian provinces of Bijāya (Bougie) and Quṣanṭīna (Constantine) to the west. It is testimony to the Ḥafṣids’ profound cultural contribution. Two main periods of intense architectural activity can be identified: the seventh/thirteenth and the ninth/fifteenth centuries, the former reflecting Almohad-Andalusī…

The Ḥafṣids (Banū Ḥafṣ) were a dynasty that ruled mostly in the eastern region of the Maghrib (Ifrīqiya) from 627/1229 to 982/1574. Their name derives from Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Hintāti (d. 571/1176), the leader of one of the tribes that helped ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (r. 524–58/1130–63) establish the Almohad (al-Muwaḥḥid) empire after the death of the Mahdī Ibn Tūmart in 524/1130. The Ḥafṣids claimed the mantle of the Almohads and have thus been seen as the second Almohad dynasty, after that of the Muʾminids…

Hagar (Ar. Hājar) was the Egyptian servant girl of Abraham (Ar. Ibrāhīm) who gave birth to Ishmael (Ar., Ismāʿīl). Although the Qurʾān makes no reference to her, later traditions mention Hagar by her name or as the “Mother of Ishmael” (Umm Ismāʿīl), or in a general connection with Ishmael. According to the Islamic narratives, Hagar was given as a gift by the king of Egypt, and Sarah allowed Abraham to take Hagar (al-Thaʿlabī, 79–80). After the birth of Ishmael, however, Sarah became jealous and …

Islamic hagiography has been written in Central Asia for nearly a millennium, and in that time the prevailing form and evident function of hagiographical texts has shifted dramatically. Elements of hagiography—the lives and deeds of saints, or “friends of God” (awliyāʾ)—can be found in multiple Muslim literary genres, including ṭabaqāt (generations), ḥikāyāt (tales), tadhkira (remembrance), dāstān (story, in Persian), mathnavī (long poem rhyming AA, BB, CC...), and risāla (treatise). Stories about Muslim saints appear in all these genres in Central Asia, define…

Tadhkira and malfūẓāt have been the major genres of hagiography in South Asia. Tadhkira describes the saintly lives of Ṣūfīs in the tradition of works written in the Middle East and Central Asia, whereas malfūẓāt, the recorded discourses of a Ṣūfī master, evolved in India. The first Ṣūfī text written in South Asia, ʿAlī al-Hujwīrī’s (d. 465–9/1073–7) Kashf al-maḥjūb (“The revelation of the veiled”), contained biographical sketches of pious Muslims and Ṣūfīs, yet none of them had lived in India. Local hagiographical tradition dates back to early eighth/…

The longstanding devotion of Muslims in Southeast Asia to commemoration of and supplication through the intercession of deceased Muslims is expressed in the literary corpus (including hagiographies) of the peoples of the region and in their rituals, pilgrimages, and performances. These reveal appropriations of notable figures from Arab and Persian traditions, as well as localised conventions of commemorative practice that have developed around distinguished Southeast Asian Muslims. Diverse motivations have underpinned th…

Discussions of sanctity (walāya) in Persian and Turkish hagiography serve as teaching tools in Ṣūfī circles, to reach out to wide audiences and to call for devotion to holy men. The first hagiographies in Persian appeared in the fifth/eleventh century, and the earliest in Anatolian Turkish were composed in the seventh/thirteenth century (Paul, Au début; Paul, EIr; Hagen; Ocak, Kültür). Both traditions continue today, not only through the oral reading and glossing of hagiographies but also in the literary production of biographies of recent saints. 1. Persian hagiographies It is in …

Ḥājib (pl. ḥujjāb) is a courtly and military title that was in use in many Islamicate societies from the first/seventh to the fourteenth/twentieth century. Although routinely translated as “chamberlain,” the title was applied at different times to doorkeepers, military officers, governors, prime ministers, and petty kings. When ḥājibs were many and served different institutions, their chiefs were distinguished by inflated titles: ḥājib al-ḥujjāb, al-ḥājib al-kabīr, ḥājib-i buzurg, ulugh ḥājib, amīr ḥājib, and so on. Sometimes ḥājibs had compound titles to reflect speci…

Ḥusām al-Dīn ʿĪsā b. Sanjar b. Bahrām b. Jibrāʾīl b. Khumārtikīn b. Ṭāshtikīn al-Irbilī al-Ḥājirī (d. c.632/1235) came from a lower social stratum but became famous through his poetry. Born around 582/1186, al-Ḥājirī came from a Turkish-speaking family of soldiers from Irbil, which blossomed under the Begtiginid ruler Muẓaffar al-Dīn Gökbürī (r. 586–630/1190–1232). Al-Ḥājirī experimented with new poetic forms like strophic poetry and, especially, two-line poems of various kinds, including some in the vernacul…

Sultan Haji, also known as Sultan Abul Nazar Abdul Kahar (r. as co-ruler with his father from 1676, then as sole ruler 1680–7), was the seventh ruler of the Sultanate of Banten, West Java. He was the oldest legitimate son of Sultan Abulfath Abdul Fattah, later known as Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa (c.1625–95, r. 1651–82). From the time of his youth, Abul Nazar strongly embraced Islam. He studied with Yusuf al-Maqassari (also known as Yusuf Taj al-Khalwati, d. 1699), a respected Islamic scholar from Mak…

Al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf b. Maṭar (fl. 169–218/786–833) was reportedly the first person to translate Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s Almagest into Arabic. Nothing is known of his personal life. The Arabic translation of the Almagest, ascribed to both al-Ḥajjāj and Elias, son of Sergius, is extant. When compared with the later Arabic version attributed to Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn (d. 297/910), the differences between the two versions suggest that they are independent translations. Arabic sources report that al-Ḥajjāj translated the Elements at the request of the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (r…

ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Makkī al-Āṣafī Ulughkhānī, called also Ḥājjī l-Dabīr (b. 946/1539–40), wrote an Arabic history of Gujarat titled Ẓafar al-wālih bi-Muẓaffar wa-ālihi (“The excellent victories of Muẓaffar and his family”). The exact date of his death is unknown, but his text indicates that he was still alive in the third decade of the eleventh century/second decade of the seventeenth century. Most of our biographical information on Ḥājjī l-Dabīr comes only from his text. Ḥājjī l-Dabīr was born in Mecca to Sirāj …

Ḥājjī Pasha (Turk. Hacı Paşa, d. 810s/1410s or early 820s/1420s) was an Anatolian religious scholar and physician, known in Arabic-language sources as Ḥājjī Bāshā Jalāl al-Dīn al-Khiḍr b. ʿAlī b. al-Khaṭṭāb al-Aydīnī. He travelled to Cairo to study Islamic subjects, because Anatolia was, at that time, not yet important in religious learning. In Cairo, Ḥājjī Pasha met not only with local teachers but also with other Anatolian luminaries, such as Mullā Shams al-Dīn Fanārī (d. 834/1431), who would later become an important early …

Unsī al-Ḥājj (1937–2014) was a Lebanese poet, journalist, literary critic, and translator, who was recognised as the pioneer of the Arabic prose poem (qaṣīdat al-nathr). He was a pillar of the modernist magazine Shiʿr (“Poetry,” 1957–70). He was born in Beirut on 27 July 1937 and attended the Carmelite and Franciscan schools, the Lycée Français, and Madrasat al-Ḥikma. His mother died when he was seven. His father, Louis al-Ḥājj (from the village of Qaytūlī, in Jazzīn district), was editor-in-chief of al-Nahār newspaper and managing editor of the magazine Ṣawt al-ajyāl, later renamed al…

An Umayyad poet of the Asad tribe, al-Ḥakam b. ʿAbdal al-Asadī was born in Kufa and spent most of his life in Iraq (d. c. 102/720). He was lame and hunchbacked or hemiplegic, disabilities which he sometimes mentioned in his poetry. When ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr, seeking the caliphate, gained control of Iraq and expelled the Umayyad officials in 64/684, Ibn ʿAbdal followed them to Damascus, where he was admitted into the entourage of the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 65–86/685–705). After the restoration of Umay…

Al-Ḥakam b. Muḥammad b. Qanbar al-Māzinī (second/eighth century) was a poet from Basra, whose surviving verses are largely invective, along with some love poetry. Ibn Qanbar (not Qunbur as in al-Aghānī, 14, and GAS), as he was usually called, is portrayed in one main source, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, al-Aghānī, 14:161–8, on which the small entry in al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī, 13:125–6 depends. With evidence from this narrow base of information one may conclude that Ibn Qanbar lived mainly in Baghdad, where he and al-Farazdaq (d. 114/732), who praised the Quray…

Al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, the sixth of the Fāṭimid caliphs, ruled from his accession at the age of eleven on 28 Ramaḍān 386/14 October 996 until his mysterious disappearance one night at the end of Shawwāl 411/mid-February 1021. His reign was noted for an unusual range of strange, even bizarre, actions that engendered a mixed, enigmatic historical record that is difficult to judge. Even his contemporaries, both those who supported him and his opponents, had trouble making sense of what happened and w…

The term ḥākimiyya is a neologism that first appeared in Arabic translations of the works of the Indo-Pakistani scholar and activist Abul Aʿla Maududi (Abū l-Aʿlā Mawdūdī, 1903–79), founder of the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami (Jamāʿat-i Islāmī). The word is derived from the Arabic root “ ḥ-k-m,” which appears in various forms about two hundred times in the Qurʾān, with a range of different meanings: to judge, to decide, to rule, and so forth. Maududi argues that, when applied to God (as, for instance, in Q 12:40: “ inna al-ḥukm illā li-llāh”), this root refers to God’s one fundamen…

Abū Saʿd al-Muḥassin b. Muḥammad b. Karāma al-Jishumī, known as al-Ḥākim al-Jishumī (d. 494/1101), was a Muʿtazilī theologian, Ḥanafī jurist, and exegete of the Qurʾān. Al-Jishumī was born in 413/1022 in the town of Jishum, located near Bayhaq in western Khurāsān. He came from a family that traced its lineage back to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661) through his son Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya (d. 81/700). Al-Jishumī started his religious education in Jishum and moved around Khurāsān to further his command of several fields. He studied ḥadīth and Muʿtazilī theology with Abū Ḥāmid al-Naj…

Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥakīm (961–93/1554–85) was a younger half-brother and major political competitor of Akbar (r. 963–1014/1556–1605), third emperor of the Mughal Empire. He was born in 961/1554 to the Mughal emperor Humāyūn (r. 937–47/1530–40, 962–3/1555–6) and Māh Chuchak Bīgam (d. 971/1564), the fourth and youngest of Humāyūn’s wives. Mīrzā Ḥakīm and Akbar were the only sons of Humāyūn to survive to adulthood. Following Humāyūn’s death in 963/1556, the nascent Mughal empire was divided between Mīrzā…

Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm (1898–1987) is widely regarded as the founder of the modern Egyptian theatre and was also a major contributor to the development of the Arabic novel. He was born in Alexandria, and his early enthusiasm for literature was reinforced when he moved to Cairo to complete his schooling. There he attended productions by the Lebanese actor and impresario Jūrj Abyaḍ (1880–1959) and others, and began writing and improvising plays in colloquial Arabic for the popular theatre. He was briefly arrested during the 1919 revolt, for which he had composed patriotic songs. The themes of a…

Al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (“The Sage of Termez,” d. probably 298/910), is considered the most productive mystic author of his time, although some major aspects of his thought remain too little known. His full name, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan b. Bashīr, indicates that his paternal ancestors were Muslim for at least three generations. He was born between 205/820 and 210/825, in Termez (Ar., Tirmidh), a commercial town in the old province of Khurāsān (in present-day Uzbekistan), on the bo…

Hakkari is the name of a Kurdish tribal agglomeration as well as the current name of a mountainous region in the southeast corner of Turkey. The Hakkari are known in northern Iraq, in a foothill district centred on ʿAmadīya and ʿAqra, east of Mosul, in the sixth to seventh/twelfth to thirteenth centuries; the Turkish princes of Mosul (Zankī/Zengi, Badr al-Dīn Luʾluʾ (r. 631–57/1234–59), etc.) made frequent attempts to acquire their castles. By the mid-eighth/fourteenth century, the Hakkari had migrated to the present Hakkari region, which was centred on two massifs…

Halay is a genre of chain dance performed in eastern and southeastern Anatolia and surrounding countries; it includes various forms, step patterns, styles, and rhythms. The term is sometimes used also for the music or rhythmic pattern that accompanies a halay (e.g., Sivas halayı, named for the province in central Anatolia, or halay ritmi). Originally performed in rural areas, halay is today performed also in urban settings, as on stage, in weddings, or in protests. The dancers form a single line or one or several circles, standing shoulder to shoulder a…

Judah (Abū l-Ḥasan) ben Samuel Halevi (d. 535/1141) was a fine example of the flourishing Jewish culture in al-Andalus from the fourth/tenth century to the sixth/twelfth. He is widely regarded as the greatest Hebrew poet of the Middle Ages and one of the most important Jewish theologians ever. 1. Life Little is known of Judah Halevi’s early life. Scholars disagree about his date of birth (assertions vary from 462/1070 to 478/1085); his place of birth (Toledo, the small Christian town of Tudela in present-day northern Spain, or an unknown place …

Ḥālī is the pen name of Alṭāf Ḥusayn (b. c.1837, d. 1914), an Urdu poet, literary critic, essayist, biographer, educational and social reformer, and translator. Most of what we know about his life, especially early on, comes from an autobiographical sketch that he wrote in 1901, titled Tarjuma-yi Ḥālī (Biographical entry for Ḥālī). The piece was later published in Maqālāt 1:261–70. 1. Life Ḥālī was born in the town of Panipat, about eighty kilometres north of Delhi. By his own claim, his paternal ancestor Malik ʿAlī immigrated to India in the seventh/thirteenth century and was given a jāgīr…

Ḥalīma bt. Abī Dhuʾayb (first/seventh century) features in Arabic-Islamic sources as the most prominent of the prophet Muḥammad’s several nurses who breastfed and cared for him in his first years of life (al-Ḥalabī, 1:94). The presumably earliest detailed record of Ḥalīma’s story is found in the Sīra compilation by Ibn Isḥāq (d. c.151/768; the Sīra is known in the abridged version produced by Ibn Hishām, d. 218/833 or 213/828). This text describes the arrival of Ḥalīma and her husband in Mecca, together with other women of her desert tribe, the Saʿ…

Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥalīmī al-Qāḍī al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Ḥalīm al-Bukhārī al-Jurjānī al-Shāfiʿī (b. 338/949–50, d. Jumādā I 403/1012–3, or Rabīʿ I), was a traditionist, legal scholar, and theologian. He was born in Bukhara or Jurjān to a free woman of Jurjān; his half-brother, Abū l-Faḍl al-Ḥasan, was born the same year to a female Turkish slave. He studied ḥadīth in Bukhara under several masters, including Abū Bakr b. Khanb (not Ḥabīb) al-Bukhārī al-Baghdādī al-Dihqān (d. 350/961), whose lessons al-Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī (d. 404/1014) also attended. Al-Ḥalīmī visited Nīsh…

For most authorities of the Islamic mystical tradition, ḥāl (pl. aḥwāl) refers to a positive but fleeting psychological state born of the aspirant’s relationship with God. The Arabic term does not appear in its nominal form in the Qurʾān, but the verbs ḥāla, yaḥūlu, and ḥīla each occur once (Q 8:24, 11:43, 34:54). The verbal form is used in a way closest to its Ṣūfī sense, to convey the idea of such a transitory state, in Q 8:24: “Know that God comes between (yaḥūlu bayna) a man and his own heart.” Al-Hujwīrī (d. 465–9/1073–7) may have had this verse in mind when he defined the ḥāl as a state that …

Halkevleri (People’s Houses) are community cultural and social institutions in the Republic of Turkey, first opened in 1932 by the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP, Republican People’s Party, RPP) to disseminate the party’s ideological precepts. The CHP’s goal was to create a modern cultural and social life for the republic’s citizens, to replace the Ottoman Empire’s traditional ümmet (religious community). The single-party CHP government could easily educate the new republic’s younger generation in modern state primary schools but needed alternatives to…

The term ḥāl ( “state,” pl. aḥwāl) was introduced into kalām (rationalist theology) by the Muʿtazilī Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321/933). Modern scholarship has proposed various interpretations of its meaning and function. Ahmed Alami suggested that the concept of ḥāl was an element of a new ontology that broke radically with the conception of God as absolutely transcendent. There is, however, a broader scholarly consensus that the theory of ḥāl was an attempt to resolve the theological problem posed by God’s multiple attributes. 1. The theory of ḥāl in Muʿtazilī theology The concept of ḥ…

Ham is included, in later reports, amongst the three sons of Noah (the other two being Shem, the oldest, and Japheth, the youngest; al-Rabghūzī, 67) who survived the Flood and landed with the Ark. The Qurʾān mentions the story of Noah in several passages but offers scant information regarding his family. In some passages, reference is made to a wicked wife (Q 66:10) and an impious son (Q 11:40–6), who is usually identified in later traditions as Canaan or Yām. His three sons helped Noah build th…

Ḥamā is a city in central Syria on the north-south road between Aleppo and Damascus. It lies on both sides of the Orontes River (Nahr al-ʿĀṣī) amidst cultivated lands that are irrigated by water that is lifted to higher ground along the riverbanks by wooden water wheels. Ḥamā has been settled since antiquity. It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as Hamath, the capital of a Canaanite kingdom, and its ancient site was on a tell that in later eras supported the citadel. Conquered and destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BCE, t…

The Danish excavations on Ḥamā’s citadel hill in the 1930s yielded clear evidence that the site has been occupied since the Bronze Age. Structural remains were scarce, however, and we know only enough to be confident that the hill has been used in all major periods, including scattered indications of Byzantine fortification. One of the most recognisable structures was the “house of mosaics,” which showed uninterrupted occupation from Byzantine into early Islamic times. Excavations alongside the Gree…

Amīr Sayyid ʿAlī b. Shihāb al-Dīn Hamadānī (714–86/1314–85) was a prominent Ṣūfī shaykh of Iran and Central Asia known for his substantial body of writings, for his training of disciples in an initiatory lineage that came to be defined, soon after his era, as “Kubravī,” and for his legendary role as an Islamiser of Kashmir, where the title Shāh-i Hamadān and other epithets attest to his reputation. Our chief sources on his life are two early hagiographies produced by figures in his Ṣūfī lineage: the Khulāṣat al-manāqib (“The epitome of the (accounts of) virtues”) was written soon…

Badīʿ al-Zamān Abū l-Faḍl Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Hamadhānī (358–98/959–1008) was an important literary figure of the fourth/tenth century. While he was known throughout his life mainly as a composer of poetry and letters, he is famed for his invention of the maqāma genre—short narratives written in ornate rhymed prose ( sajʿ) often featuring picaresque themes. Born in Hamadhān, in western Iran, he spent much of his life in the cities of eastern Iran, including Nīshāpūr, Sarakhs, Ṭūs, and Marw. 1. Life Al-Hamadhānī was a student of the famed grammarian Ibn Fāris (d. 394/1004).…

Ḥamādisha (Ḥmādsha in the local pronunciation) are the members of a loosely and diversely organised religious confraternity or “path” (ṭarīqa) that traces its spiritual heritage to two Moroccan saints ( walīs or sayyids) of the late eleventh/seventeenth and early twelfth/eighteenth centuries, Sīdī Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ḥamdush (d. 1131/1718–9 or 1135/1722–3, known popularly as Sīdī ʿAlī) and Sīdī Aḥmad Dghughī (dates unknown). Although little is known historically of the two saints, their lives, like those of other popular North African saints, are rich in l…

Aḥmad Ḥamāh Allāh al-Tishītī, called Shaykh Ḥamāllāh (for Ḥamā Allāh, “the one who stands up for God”) (b. c. 1882–3, d. 1943), was a Tijānī shaykh (teacher) with a following mostly in former French West Africa and a symbol of resistance to colonial rule. The documentary record on Ḥamāllāh is scant and selective, so most of the richest studies of his life and followers draw on oral accounts. Ḥamāllāh was born in Nioro, in northwestern Mali, into a merchant family from the Tichitt region. He was educated in Islamic sciences in the Hodh region in Mauritania and sh…

Hāmān is mentioned six times in the Qurʾān, in connection with Moses. He is mentioned along with Pharaoh “and their soldiers” (Q 28:6, 8, in Arberry’s translation) and again, when Pharaoh, in addressing his council, says, “Kindle me, Hāmān, a fire upon the clay, and make me a tower, that I may mount up to the God of Moses” (Q 28:38). In another passage, Pharaoh orders him to build the tower so that he might “reach the cords, the cords of the heavens” (Q 40:36–7). In two other passages, Hāmān is …

Ḥamās, lit. “zeal”, is the acronym for Ḥarakat al-Muqāwama al-Islāmiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement), which was founded in 1987, during the First Intifāḍa, as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood Association (Jamāʿat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which had been occupied by Israel in 1967. The Muslim Brotherhood Association in Palestine dates to mid-1940, established at the initiative of relatives of the group’s Egyptian founder, Ḥasan al-Bannā (assassinated 1949). Up until 1987, the modus operandi of the Association’s P…

ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī b. ʿAṭiyya b. (al-)Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Ḥaddād al-Hītī al-Ḥamawī (d. 936/1530), best known as al-Shaykh ʿAlwān (ʿAlawān is incorrect), was a Ṣūfī master of Syria whose career as a commander of right and forbidder of wrong spanned the end of the Mamlūk period and the beginning of the Ottoman Empire. Before his initiation by the itinerant Maghribī shaykh ʿAlī b. Maymūn (d. 917/1511), little of ʿAlwān’s life is reported, beyond the names of the teachers with whom he pursued a curriculum of uṣūl al-dīn (principles of religion), ḥadīth (early Islamic tradition…

Ḥamdān b. Abān al-Lāḥiqī (d. c.235/849) was a minor Arabic poet of the early ʿAbbāsid period. The date of his death can only be guessed from the fact that he was a son of the poet Abān al-Lāḥiqī (d. c.200/815), particularly well-known for his muzdawijas (poems composed of rhyming couplets), and a contemporary of the Basran poet ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. al-Muʿadhdhal (d. c.240/854). He seems to have spent part of his life in Basra. According to al-Nadīm (d. 385/995?), his poems once filled fifty folios. Just a small portion of Ḥamdān’s oeuvre has been preserved and can be found in the Akhbār al-shuʿarāʾ…

The Hamdānids were the Ismāʿīlī polity ruling Ṣanʿāʾ and the surrounding regions between 492/1099 and the Ayyūbid invasion in 570/1174. There were three successive independent dynasties: Banū Ḥātim I, Banū l-Qubayb, and Banū Ḥātim II. The Hamdānids are often referred to also as the Banū Ḥātim (or Ḥātimids) and are not to be confused with the Syrian Ḥamdānids (written with ḥāʾ). 1. Background and context Following the end of the Yuʿfirid dynasty (r. 232–387/847–998), Ṣanʿāʾ was fought over for decades by the elites of the surrounding tribes, with occasional in…

Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ b. al-Ashʿath was the leader of the Qarmatian movement in the sawād (rural district) of Kufa. Al-Ṭabarī (3:2125) has Karmītah, which is supposed to mean “red-eyed.” The diminutive form Qarmāṭūya is used by al-Nawbakhtī and Niẓām al-Mulk. Originally a carrier (who transported goods on oxen) from the village of al-Dūr in the ṭassūj (subdistrict) of Furāt Bādaqlā (east of Kufa), he was converted to the early Ismāʿīlī movement by the dāʿī (propagandist) al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī. The date 264/878 given for his conversion by a much later report may be approximate…

Abū ʿAlī Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. Ḥamdawayh (c.200–70/816–84), known as al-Ḥamdawī (or al-Ḥamdūnī, an incorrect version of his patronymic often found in the sources), was a Basran secretary poet, who mainly composed satiric epigrams. Hailing from nearby Maysān, he spent most of his life in Basra, employed presumably in the local administration. He socialised with local notables and entertained good relations with several contemporary poets and philologists. His fame rests on two series of witty epigrams. The first thematises the used, supposedly threadbare ṭaylasān (hooded cloak)…

Hamdullah Efendi (Shaykh Ḥamdallāh, 833–926/1436–1520) is widely recognised as a founder of Ottoman calligraphy. He was born in Amasya. His father, Mustafa (Muṣṭafā) Dede, was a Suhrawardī shaykh who had migrated from Bukhara to Anatolia. Hamdullah used as his patronymic “Ibn Mustafa Dede” or “Ibnü’ş-Şeyh (Ibn al-Shaykh).” He received his first religious education from his father. His calligraphy teacher was Hayreddin Marʿaşidir (Khayr al-Dīn Marʿashī, d. 875/1471), who had studied with Abdullah al-Sayrafî (ʿAbdallāh al-Ṣ…

Abū Ṣāliḥ Ḥamdūn b. Aḥmad b. ʿUmāra (or ʿImāra) b. Ziyād b. Rustam al-Qaṣṣār al-Naysābūrī (d. 271/884–5) was a Ṣūfī master of Nīshāpūr and a leader of the Malāmatiyya (lit., school of blame), whose proponents thought that all outward appearence of religiosity was ostentation and that real piety should remain hidden. The Malāmatiyya spread throughout Khurāsān under his influence (al-Sulamī, Ṭabaqāt, 123–9). Ḥamdūn was a disciple of Salm (or Sālim) b. al-Ḥasan al-Bārūsī, whom he recognised as his master (ustādh) (al-Sulamī, Mustakhraj, § 1, 339). Little is known about al-Bārūs…

Sultan Hamengkubuwana I (r. 1749–92)—commonly known as Sultan Mangkubumi, after his princely name—was the first ruler of the kingdom of Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia, and the greatest king of Java’s Mataram dynasty, after Sultan Agung (r. 1613–46). His year of birth is uncertain, with various sources giving dates ranging from 1709 to 1717, the latter year being more likely. In his younger years he was a prince about whom prophecies of future greatness were told, a collector of literature, a …

Muhammad b. ʿAṭā Allāh Maḥmūd (d. 643/1246), popularly known as Shaykh Ḥamīd al-Dīn Qāḍī Nāgawrī, was a renowned Ṣūfī scholar of mediaeval India, who was affiliated with both the Suhrawardī and Chishtī silsilas (spiritual lineage or initiatic genealogy) (the Suhrawadiyya is traditionally said to have been founded by Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234) and spread quickly to the Middle East and as far as India and Indonesia; the Chishtiyya was founded in Chisht, a small town near Herat, about 318/930 by Abū Isḥāq Shāmī (t…

Abū Aḥmad Ḥamīd al-Millat wa-l-Dīn (d. Rabīʿ II 677/September 1278), popularly known as Shaykh Ḥamīd al-Dīn Ṣūfī l-Saʿīd Nāgawrī Sivālī, was an eminent Ṣūfī scholar of mediaeval India. He was born in Delhi immediately after the Ghūrid conquest of the city (589/1193). He was a descendant of Saʿīd b. Zayd (d. c.51/671), a Companion of the Prophet. According to hagiographical accounts, he lived a licentious life but soon felt disgust for it, repented of his past sins, and adopted a life of abstinence and piety. He d…

Hamidi (Ḥāmidī, b. 843/1439–40), known as Hamidi-i Acem (Ḥāmidī-yi ʿAcem), Hamidi-i İsfahani (Ḥāmidī-yi İsfahānī), and Molla or Mevlana Hamidi (Mollā or Mevlānā Ḥāmidī), was a poet and calligrapher. He was born in Isfahan and, after completing his education there, he spent some time in Baku at the court of the Shīrvānshāh rulers. During the reign of Sultan Mehmed II (Meḥmed, r. 848–50/1444–6 and 855–86/1451–81), Hamidi first went to Anatolia and then to Istanbul. Despite his Turkish origins, he …

Muḥammad al-Ḥāmid (1910–69) was a Muslim religious scholar ( ʿālim), a Ṣūfī, and the founder of the Muslim Brother movement in Hama, Syria, the city in which he was born and raised. He was a son of Maḥmūd al-Ḥāmid (d. 1916), shaykh of the Naqshbandī Ṣūfī brotherhood in Hama. His mother belonged to the al-Jābī family, one of the city’s foremost families of ʿulamāʾ and men of letters. After he lost both his parents during the First World War, he was raised by his elder brother, the nationalist poet Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥāmid (1897–1961), who encouraged him to obtai…

Ḥamīd Qalandar (Ḥamīd al-Dīn Dihlavī, d. 768/1366–7) was the compiler of an Indo-Persian malfūẓ (lit., conversation, pl. malfūẓāt), Khayr al-majālis (“The best of assemblies”) which records the assemblies of the renowned Chishtī Ṣūfī, Naṣīr al-Dīn Maḥmūd “Chirāgh-i Dilhī” (d. 757/1356). Both Ḥamīd and his father, Tāj al-Dīn, were initially disciples of Niẓām al-Dīn Awliyā of Delhi (d. 725/1325). The nickname Qalandar (a wandering ecstatic dervish) was given him by Niẓām al-Dīn. Ḥamīd lived at Kīlūgaṛhī, a newly fo…

Muhammad Hamidullah (Muḥammad Ḥamīdallāh, 1908–2002) was born on 19 February 1908 into a family of Sunnī scholars in the princely state of Hyderabad. Hamidullah’s family is known as Ahl Nawāʾit (the people from Nawāʾit), a Muslim group on the Indian Subcontinent who claim descent from members of the Banū Hāshim who migrated from Mecca to the Indian Subcontinent in about the second/eighth century. Hamidullah’s great-grandfather, Maulvi Mohammed Ghawth Sharful-Mulk (d. 1822), was a well-known schol…

Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah (1908–81), known by the acronym Hamka, which he adopted as a pen name in 1936, is a prominent figure in Islam in modern Indonesia. He gained a high profile as a populist exponent of the neo-Ḥanbalī Salafism of Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935), for his role in the reformist organisation Muhammadiyah, and as a popular author. At least two universities are named after him, and, in 2011, he was awarded posthumously, by a committee for the documentation of national history, the title of pahlawan (hero), in recognition of his contribution to the “Indonesian people and nation.” H…

Al-Naṣīr (= Naṣīr al-Dīn) b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Munāwī al-Ḥammāmī (609–712/1212 or 1213–1312) was a Cairene bath operator and poet whose epigrams, riddles, and strophic poems were widely acclaimed. He was one of several Ayyūbid and Mamlūk poets who, despite their humble origins and limited scholarly training, not only became popular with the middle classes but also captured the attention of elite udabāʾ (littérateurs). He was born in Munyat Banī Khaṣīb (hence the nisba al-Munāwī), but at some stage he moved to Cairo, where he earned his living by running bathhouses and…

Ḥammūda Bāshā (Pasha) (r. 1196–1229/1782–1814) was the son of ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn Bey (r. 1172–96/1759–82) and a Georgian slave (jāriya). He was designated heir to the throne at the age of eighteen, when his father requested that the Ottoman sultan issue a firman of investiture for Ḥammūda. The investiture ceremony took place in Bārdū Palace, in Tunis, on 1 Muḥarram 1191/9 February 1777. The Muslim religious scholars (ʿulamāʾ), the heads of civil and military institutions, and the notables of the city of Tunis renewed the bayʿa (pledge of allegiance) to him on his father’s death i…

Moses Hamon, a Jewish physician to Sultan Süleyman (Süleymān) I (r. 926–74/1520–66), was a member of a prominent Jewish family, originally from Granada, that immigrated to Istanbul in the period around 900/1495. Typical of Jewish medicine at the time, Hamon descended from a family of physicians, a practice that perpetuated the craft within particular families. Moses was a second-generation physician to the Ottoman sultans. Soon after his family’s arrival in Istanbul, Moses’s father, Joseph, was e…

Hampi, the name of a village in the southern Indian state of Karnataka (latitude N 15.30°, longitude E 76.46°), is used, by extension, to refer to the ruins of the larger city of Vijayanagara that surround it. Vijayanagara was the capital of an empire that dominated lower peninsular India for more than two hundred years (c. 748–973/1347–1565) and was the southern neighbour of the Bahmanī sultanate (748–934/1347–1528). Although Vijayanagara’s rulers were Hindu and its culture generally followed t…

ʿAbduh al-Ḥāmūlī (also Ḥamūlī, b. possibly 1836, 1841, or 1845, d. 12 May 1901) was the most famous vocalist and composer of late nineteenth-century Egypt. Sī ʿAbduh, as he was known, gained iconic stature as the renewer of Arabic music in the khedival era, along with his main competitor in composition, Muḥammad ʿUthmān (d. 1900). Most of the information concerning his life is to be found in the almost hagiographical essay on his art written by Qasṭandī Rizq, from 1936 to 1947; later sources provide little additional information. Ḥāmūlī was born in …

Ḥamza b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib b. Hāshim (d. 3/625), the son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and Hāla bt. Wuhayb b. ʿAbd Manāf, was the paternal uncle and foster brother (through a common wet nurse) of the prophet Muḥammad. He was three years older than the Prophet and was known as both Abū Yaʿla and Abū ʿUmāra. He had three sons and a daughter, but they died before him and produced no offspring. Ḥamza was known for his stubbornness and skills as a warrior. Ḥamza’s conversion to Islam was prompted by an incident in which Muḥammad was attacked by Abū Jahl b. Hāshim (d. 2/624) near the Kaʿba. …

Ḥamza b. ʿAlī (d. after 411/1021), one of the founders of the Druze movement, was a dissident Ismāʿīlī propagandist ( dāʿī) active during the reign of the Fāṭimid caliph and Ismāʿīlī Imām al-Ḥākim (r. 386–411/996–1021). Thirty of the 113 Rasāʾil al-ḥikma (“Epistles of wisdom”), the sacred writings of the Druze, are attributed to him (according to the traditional order, Ḥamza wrote epistles 6 to 35). It is not easy to determine his role in the early years of the Druze movement, as our main sources, the Christian chronicler Yaḥyā b. Saʿ…

Ḥamza b. Bīḍ al-Ḥanafī, an Umayyad poet from Kufa, was born in the second half of the first/seventh century and died in 116/734. His nisba “al-Ḥanafī” refers to the ancient Arab tribe of Ḥanīfa b. Lujaym, a section of the Bakr b. Wāʾil. His genealogy (nasab) is recorded by Ibn al-Kalbī (pl. 156) and in a slightly different form by al-Āmidī (100), who is followed by Ibn Mākūlā (7:365), who is, in turn, the source for Ibn ʿAsākir (15:192). Nearly all the biographers agree that Ḥamza, although a dissolute libertine ( khalīʿ mājin, in Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī’s al-Aghānī), was a gifted poet who …

Shaykh Ḥamza Makhdūm (900–84/1495–1576), popularly known as Maḥbūb al-ʿĀlam (“Beloved of the world”), leader of the Suhravardī order in Kashmīr in the tenth/sixteenth century, was born in Tijr, Kashmir, to Shaykh ʿUthmān Rayna (the Suhravardīs claim that their order was founded in Baghdad by the Persian-born scholar, Ṣūfī theorist, and preacher Abū Ḥafs Suhravardī, d. 632/1234; the Suhravadiyya spread rapidly throughout the Middle East, established a stronghold in northern and northwestern India, …

The Romance of Ḥamza is the most widely read popular epic of the Muslim world (Marzolph, Ḥamza-Nāme). No one author can be identified as having invented or written the romance, even though various Persian sources attribute its compilation to a certain Abū l-Maʿālī Nīshāpūrī, a poet at the court of Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 995–1038/1587–1629; Sabri, 32–3). Its origins lie in popular traditions relating, on the one hand, to Ḥamza b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. 3/625), paternal uncle of the prophet Muḥammad, and, o…

Ḥamzat-Bek (Ḥamza Bīk) b. ʿAlī Iskandar-Bek al-Hūtsādī al-Awārī al-Dāghistānī (1789–1834) was, between 1832 and 1834, the political and military leader (imām) of the jihād movement that fought for the implementation of Islamic law in Daghestan, against the Daghestani Muslim communities and principalities that maintained customary law (ʿādāt) and against the Russian army that supported parts of the local nobility. The son of an Avar nobleman from the village of Gotsatl, on the Avar Plateau of central Daghestan, and a mother of non-noble background, Ḥamza…

Aḥmad b. Abī Bakr al-Ḥanafī (d. late sixth/twelfth century) was a Syrian author known only for his innovative maqāmas, brief stories written in rhymed prose. Little is known about his life, and he is confused in several sources with various other authors (Hämeen-Anttila, 190–205, and 380, no. 54; Stewart). His only known work is a collection of thirty maqāmas dedicated to Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Shahrazūrī, the qāḍī of Aleppo (d. 586/1190), and probably written in 573–5/1178–9. He may also have written a work titled al-Sawāniḥ, which is not known to be extant. Like many other authors of maqām…

Hikayat Hang Tuah (“The tale of Hang Tuah”) is a lengthy Malay text compiled during the seventeenth (and possibly early eighteenth) century recording the glory of the Sultanate of Melaka and the exemplary life of its greatest warrior, Hang Tuah. The first half of the narrative follows the template of classical Malay accounts of royal courts, wars, diplomacy, and court intrigues. The second half, while still concerned with the kingdom of Melaka, also includes episodes that describe particular event…

Perched in the High Atlas between Jabal Azūkī and Jabal Azlāghān and founded in the tenth/sixteenth-century by the saint Sīdī Saʿīd al-Ḥanṣālī (d. 1114/1702), the Ḥanṣāliyya zāwiya coveted by political rulers and the subject of academic studies. Like similar institutions across the Muslim world, the Ḥanṣāliyya zāwiya (lit., nook or corner (of a building)) is an oratory or prayer room that can serve as a lodging and kitchen for travellers and members of a local Ṣūfī brotherhood in their daily devotional and spiritual exercises. It is small, with room for only a few residents. The word zāwiy…

Jamāl al-Dīn Aḥmad Hānsavī (d. 659/1261) was a senior disciple of the Chishtī master Bābā Farīd al-Dīn “Ganj-i Shakkar” (d. 664/1265–6), who had settled in the Panjābī city of Ajodhan (present-day Pakpattan). He led an austere life of poverty and was amongst the first Chishtīs who wrote books (the Chishtiyya probably originated towards the end of the sixth/twelfth century in Chisht, near Herat, and was introduced into India by Muʿīn al-Dīn Sijzī, d. 627/1230). Jamāl al-Dīn was a descendant of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767), the founder of the Ḥanafī school of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), an…