Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

The term Jabarti (Ar. Jabartī) refers traditionally to all Muslim people living in the Horn of Africa, members of diverse communities, of different ethnic origins, and speakers of many local languages. There are several etymologies of the term: Ar. jabbār (strong; strong warrior), Geʾez agbert (servant of God), Tigrinya gabari (servant, tenant), the name of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, legendary father of the Darod Somali clan, or the Arabic word jabart (burning land), which was used to describe the territory of present-day southern Ethiopia and the home of mediaev…

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥasan al-Jabartī (1166–1240/1753–1825) was a Cairene scholar best known for his account of the French occupation of Egypt from 1213/1798 to 1216/1801 and for the hybrid chronicle-biographical compendium, ʿ Ajāʾib al-āthār fī l-tarājim wa-l-akhbār (“The marvelous chronicles. Biographies and events”), that he compiled later in life. The Jabartī family descended from Muslim scholars from the part of the Horn of Africa known as Jabart, corresponding roughly to present-day eastern Ethiopia, northwestern Somalia, and Djibouti. In h…

Abū Muḥammad Jābir b. Aflaḥ al-Ishbīlī or al-Andalusī was a mathematician and theoretical astronomer who lived most likely in Seville during the first half of the sixth/twelfth century. Virtually nothing is known about his life, but his chronology seems well established due to the fact that: 1) Maimonides (d. 601/1204; Guide, 268–9) says that he was acquainted with Jābir’s son; 2) According to Ibn al-Qifṭī (d. 645/1248), Joseph ben Yehudah ben Shamʿūn (d. 623/1226) brought Jābir’s Iṣlāḥ al-Majisṭī (“Revision of the Almagest”) from Ceuta to al-Fusṭāṭ before 583/1187, where he…

Jābir b. Ḥayyān (b. first half of the second/eighth century, d. c.200/815?) is the alleged author of a vast corpus of mainly alchemical writings. Scholars, however, dispute his very existence and his authorship of that corpus. 1. Biography The earliest biography (with extensive bibliography) is in Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist (c.380/990, ed. Flügel, 354–8, ed. Sayyid, 2/1:450–8, trans. Fück, 95–104). From this and other biographic accounts—e.g., Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī, 61, trans. Blachère, 111; Ibn al-Qifṭī, 160–1; Ibn Khallikān, 1:291 n. 128 (on Jaʿfar…

Abū l-Shaʿthāʾ Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī al-ʿUmānī al-Yaḥmidī al-Jawfī al-Baṣrī was a prominent jurist and traditionist and the founding father of the Ibāḍī movement in Basra. He was born in 18/639 or 21/642 in Nizwā (or Firq, near Nizwā) in Oman. He assumed the leadership of the Ibāḍī community of Basra upon the death of ʿAbdallāh b. Ibāḍ (d. 89/708), the eponym of the movement. Like the latter, Jābir b. Zayd maintained good relations with the Umayyad rulers, but, towards the end of the first/seventh century, he was exiled,…

Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī (1935–2010) was one of the most influential Arab philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, his major work comprising the four volumes of Naqd al-ʿaql al-ʿArabī (“The critique of Arab reason”). Al-Jābirī played a significant role in shaping the 1980s and 1990s debate on aṣāla (authenticity), muʿāṣara (contemporaneity), and ḥadātha (modernity) by demanding an “epistemological break” ( qaṭīʿa ībistīmūlūjiyya) with unscientific thought systems and pleading for rationality, realism, and the separation of religion and science. His own pref…

Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Jābirī (1940–2009), one of Tunisia’s most prominent writers and critics in the post-independence era, was born in Tozeur, Tunisia, where he received his early education. As a teenager, he moved to Tunis, where he obtained his high school diploma before leaving for Iraq to pursue higher studies. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Arabic literature from the University of Baghdad in 1971, he returned to Tunisia and taught at the high school level before joining the Ministry of…

Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā (1920–94) was a Palestinian novelist, short-story writer, literary and art critic, free-verse poet, essayist, prolific translator, and amateur painter. Born in 1920 in Bethlehem to a family whose original name was Chelico (as spelled by the family) and who belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Church, he went to school and church in Bethlehem until the age of twelve. He then moved with his family to Jerusalem, where he continued his education and graduated in 1937 from the Arab Colle…

Jacob was a prophet mentioned in several Qurʾānic verses. He is mentioned along with Abraham, for what they recommended to his sons (Q 2:132). His name appears after the names of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac (Q 2:136, 140, 3:84, 4:163) and, in some passages, before the names of other prophets, as representing the revelation given to Abraham and his progeny or in relation to prophecy. He is usually mentioned after Isaac: Isaac and his son Jacob and with their progeny were given to Abraham (Q 19:49…

Jacob bar Shakkō (d. 638–9/1240–1), known also as Severus, was a Syrian Orthodox Christian monk and scholar. Born in the village of Barṭelli, east of Mosul, he entered the nearby monastery of Mār Mattay, and later became its abbot and bishop. The way in which his name is recorded in the sources suggests that Jacob was his episcopal name, while the more episcopal-sounding Severus was the name by which he was known before becoming bishop. Barhebraeus (d. 685/1286, Chronicon ecclesiasticum, Louvain 1872–7, 2:409–11) tells us that Bar Shakkō studied “grammar and the first book…

Jacob of Edessa (d. 89/708) was a renowned polymath Syriac scholar and the Miaphysite (i.e., Syriac Orthodox or monophysite) bishop of Edessa. His extant writings include many of the most important Christian observations concerning the first century of Islam. According to later mediaeval historians, Jacob was born in about 11/632 in the province of Antioch. Ordained as bishop of Edessa (present-day Urfa, Turkey) in about 64/684, Jacob gained a reputation for strict adherence to church regulations.…

Jaʿd b. Dirham was an Umayyad-era heretic who was executed by Khālid al-Qasrī sometime during the latter’s reign as governor of Iraq (105–120/724–738), either in Kufa or in the provincial capital Wāsiṭ. Details about his activities, origins, and beliefs are both limited and tainted by later exaggerations and revisions. None of his writings or doctrinal statements survive. Jaʿd reportedly lived for a time in Damascus, but originated in either Khurāsān or Ḥarrān, in the Jazīra. He eventually fled fr…

Jadidism (from Ar. uṣūl jadīda, new sources) was a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century project to transform Turco-Islamic cultures within or indirectly influenced by the Russian Empire. Jadidism emerged between the 1840s and 1870s amongst Muslim intellectuals as a fragmented but spirited call for educational reform and wider dissemination of practical knowledge through the modern press. It became, by the early twentieth century, an all-encompassing social movement committed to modernity that…

Shams al-Dīn Abū l-Faḍl Jaʿfar b. Abī Yaḥyā Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Buhlūlī (d. 573/1177–8) was a Yemeni Zaydī Shīʿī theologian and judge, hence his common name al-Qāḍī Jaʿfar. His life and intellectual career reflect the country’s complex sectarian landscape and are linked to developments that occurred first during the sixth/twelfth century. He occupies a central role in the Zaydī narrative of an important endeavour of cultural exchange between the members of the community based in the northern highlands of Yemen and their co-religionists in the Caspian region of northern Iran. In …

Abū l-Faḍl Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad b. Ḥarb al-Hamdānī (d. 236/850) was an early Muʿtazilī theologian of Baghdad, who was also known by the less favourable nisba of al-Ashajj (“the one with a head-wound”) in some non-Muʿtazilī sources (for example, al-Nasafī, 2:649). The record in which his theology and biography survive is highly fragmented. Of the twelve extant titles of works attributed to him, only one, titled Kitāb al-uṣūl (“The book of the principles of religion”), has survived in part, and its attribution to him is not entirely certain (Madelung, Frühe muʿtazi…

Abū Muḥammad Jaʿfar b. Mubashshir b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Thaqafī (d. 234/849) was an early Muʿtazilī theologian of Baghdad who hailed from the city of Tūṣ, in eastern Iran. A polymath, he was renowned for his knowledge of Prophetic traditions (ḥadīth) and jurisprudence, his eloquence, and his asceticism. He is also remembered as a disciple of Abū Mūsā l-Murdār (d. 226/841), a key figure among Muʿtazilī ascetics in Baghdad. The nisba “al-Qaṣabī” (“the sugarcane seller”) was used pejoratively and only by his opponents. His brother Ḥubaysh (d. 258/872) was also a sc…

Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (“the trustworthy”; d. 148/765), commonly referred as Abū ʿAbdallāh in the Shīʿī sources, is the sixth Imām of the Twelver (Ithnāʿasharī) branch of Shīʿī Islam and the eponym of the Twelver school of law (madhhab). He is the most important figure connected with the propagation of a specifically Shīʿī corpus of ḥadīth (“traditions”) comprising religio-legal norms, doctrinal statements, Qurʾānic exegesis, and theology. Indeed, in the canonical collections of Twelver ḥadīth more traditions are cited from Jaʿfar than from all the other Imāms combined. T…

Jafr is a political-eschatological divinatory discourse originally associated with the Shīʿī Imāms that, over time, came to refer to a range of divinatory practices and millenarian discourses and became nearly synonymous with the science of letters (ʿilm al-ḥurūf). 1. Jafr in early Shīʿī sources In early Shīʿī sources, a jafr is a text or collection of texts that forms an important basis of the esoteric knowledge possessed by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), cousin and son-in-law of Muḥammad, and the later Imāms, particularly regarding political…

Sharaf al-Dīn Abū ʿAlī Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Jaghmīnī (al-Chaghmīnī) al-Khwārazmī (d. c.618/1221–2) composed multiple scientific works (in astronomy, arithmetic, astrology, and medicine) in Arabic in the late sixth/twelfth and early seventh/thirteenth centuries under the auspices of the Khwārazmshāhs in Central Asia. Two of his compositions in particular became popular textbooks: an introduction to Ptolemaic theoretical astronomy, al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī ʿilm al-hayʾa al-basīṭa; and a medical treatise, al-Qānūnča (“The ‘little Qānūn’”), an abridgement of Ibn Sīn…

Salīm Muḥammad Nūr al-Dīn Jahāngīr (b. 17 Rabīʿ I 977/30 August 1569, d. 27 Ṣafar 1037/29 October 1627), posthumously known, according to the Mughal dynastic tradition, as Janāt Makānī (whose place is in heaven), was the fourth emperor in the Tīmūrid-Mughal line, established in India in 932/1526 by the Tīmūrid-Chaghatay prince Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur (r. 932–7/1526–30). Although Jahāngīr’s reign began and ended in princely rebellion, the period of his rule was one of relative peace and stability. Unlike the reign of hi…