Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

Al-Sayyida ʿĀʾisha al-Mannūbiyya (595–665/1199–1267, according to Amri 2008) was a woman of unusual fame in seventh/thirteenth-century Ifrīqiyya, then under Ḥafṣid rule. (The Ḥafṣids were a Berber dynasty, which ruled from 627/1229 to 982/1574 over territories of Ifrīqiya (modern Tunisia) stretching, in its heyday, from the east of modern Algeria to the west of modern Libya). She was one of the few women about whom a hagiography (manāqib) was written. Born in the village of al-Mannūba (La Manouba), 6 kilometres west of Tunis, she would travel to that city to s…

A manṣab was a decimal rank ranging from ten into the thousands applied in the Mughal Empire to government officials called manṣabdārs (the Indo-Persian word manṣab (from Ar. manṣib) means “office, dignity, rank position”). The manṣab system may have been inspired by the Turco-Mongol decimal system of military organisation (Subrahmanyam, 300–1), but Mughal manṣabs were granted for all types of government service, not just the military. Manṣabs were sought-after positions conferred by the emperor; they represented one’s place in the administrative…

Al-Manṣūra (the victorious) is a town in Lower Egypt near Damietta (Dimyāṭ) and capital of the province (mudīriyya) of Daqahliyya. The town was founded in 616/1219 by the Ayyūbid sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil (r. 615–35/1218–38) as a camp fortified against the Crusaders, who had conquered Damietta in Shaʿbān 616/November 1219. Situated at the fork of the branches of the Nile near Damietta and Ushmūm Ṭannāḥ (present-day Ushmūm al-Rummān), the town dominated the two most important waterways of the eastern Nile Delta an…

Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-ʿAbbās al-Manṣūr was the second ʿAbbāsid caliph (r. 136–58/754–75). 1. The ʿAbbāsid Revolution Surprisingly little is known about the life of Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr in the period before the ʿAbbāsid Revolution. Since he is said to have been between 63 and 68 when he died (al-Ṭabarī, 390), he could have been born as early as 90/708–9. However, the date is likely somewhat later, as he was supposedly born at the ʿAbbāsid estate of al-Ḥumayma in Jordan, and, according to al-Yaʿqūbī (2:347), his grandfather, ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh (d. c.117/735–6), and the extended family were not forced to take up r…

Al-Manṣūr b. Abī ʿĀmir (known in the West as Almanzor or Almansor) was the common name of Abū ʿĀmir (ʿAbdallāh) Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmir b. Muḥammad b. al-Walīd b. Yazīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik al-Maʿāfirī al-Manṣūr (325–92/938–1002). His honorific surname (laqab) al-Manṣūr (the victorious) was adopted in 371/981, after his crushing victory in a battle at the tower of San Vicente (present-day Torrevicente), near Atienza. This was just one of his fifty-six daring and successful forays against the northern kingdoms a…

Al-Manṣūr bi-llāh (or al-Manṣūr bi-Naṣr Allāh), Abū Ṭāhir Ismāʿīl, was the third Fāṭimid Imām-caliph (r. 334–41/946–53) after his father, al-Qāʾim. Born in the Tunisian administrative capital Raqqāda, most likely in 301/913-14, he was the only Fāṭimid caliph whose whole life was spent in North Africa. The official account of his designation as his father’s successor has the covenant (ʿahd) dated to Monday, 7 Ramaḍān 334/12 April 946, shortly before the latter’s death on 13 Shawwāl/18 May of the same year. In this period, the young prince, now clearly a…

Al-Manṣūr bi-llāh al-Qāsim b. ʿAlī al-ʿIyānī b. ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī was a Zaydī Imām who ruled in Upper Yemen from Rabīʿ I 389/February 999 until his death on 9 Ramaḍān 393/12 July 1003 (Ibn Yaʿqūb, 287; al-Muḥallī, 2:119–20; al-Sharafī, 1:208). His great-grandfather Muḥammad was the cousin of Imām al-Hādī ilā l-Ḥaqq Yaḥyā (d. 298/911), who founded the Zaydī imāmate in Yemen in 284/897. Al-Qāsim (the future al-Manṣūr) was born in Tabāla, on the road from Mecca to Yemen (al-Hamdānī, 62, 167, 258, 430; Ibn Khurradādhbih, 133; Yāqūt, 2:9–10), in the territory of the Banū Khathʿam. He lived not far from Tabāla, in the fertile Wādī Tarj, south of Bīsha (al-Hamdānī, 166–7, 258, 261–2; Yāqūt, 2:21–2; Sprenger, 126–7). Later sources mention that he was born in 310/922–3 (al-Khazrajī, 1713;…

Al-Manṣūr bi-llāh al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad (r. 1006–29/1597–1620), also known as al-Qāsim al-Kabīr (al-Qāsim the Great), was the eponymous founder of the Qāsimī dynasty (al-dawla al-Qāsimiyya) of Zaydī Shīʿī Imāms from which the last Imāmī dynasty in Yemen also traced their descent. In later literature, he is usually referred to as al-Manṣūr al-Qāsim, following his Imāmī title, al-Manṣūr bi-llāh. He is best remembered for having revived the resistance against the Ottoman occupation and thus for preparing the ground for the subsequent expulsion of the Ottomans from Yemen, a task completed by his son al-Muʾayyad Muḥammad (r. 1029–54/1620–44). His descendants effectively ruled Yemen for…

Manṣūr I b. Nūḥ Abū Ṣāliḥ (r. 350–65/961–76), also called Amīr-i Sadid (“The Righteous/Just Amīr”), was the sixth Sāmānid amīr to rule over a unified Transoxania and Khurāsān. His reign began at the height of Sāmānid imperial authority but was troubled by increasing challenges from his military commanders and by continuing conflicts with the Būyids (320–454/932–1062). When …

Manṣūr II b. Nūḥ II Abū l-Ḥārith (r. 387–9/997–9) ruled briefly as Sāmānid amīr over a much-reduced kingdom. By the time Manṣūr ascended to the throne, Khurāsān was under Ghaznavid (366–582/977–1186) authority, and the Turkish Qarakhānids (382–609/992–1212) had conquered much of the Sāmānids’ former Transoxanian domains, reaching as far as Samarqand. In the capital, Bukhārā, true power was in the hands of the military commander Fāʾiq Khāṣṣa (d. 3…

Sāʿadat Ḥasan Mant’o (1912–55) was a leading Urdu short-story writer who came into prominence during the 1940s in British India with his provocative writings on socially taboo subjects. 1. Early life He was born into a Kashmiri trading family in Samrala, in the Ludhiana district of Panjāb. His father, Khvāja Ghulām Ḥasan (d. 1932), a district session’s judge, had three sons and six daughters…

Manzikert (Turkish Malazgirt) is a town in eastern Anatolia, around forty kilometres north of Lake Van. There is al…

The community of Mappilas (also Mapila, Mappila, Mappilla, Moplah, and Mābīlā in Arabic and Moplā in Urdu) arose in the first/seventh century from interactions between Muslim Arab traders and coastal communities on the western coast of the Indian subcontinent. The Mappilas are distinct from Muslims elsewhere in India and mostly inhabit the Malabar Coast in the state of Kerala. British colonial administrative records state that “Mappila” is derived from the Malayalam words maha (great, Skr. mahā) and pil’l’a (child), an honorific title conferred on early Muslim immigrants…

Yusuf al-Maqassari (Muḥammad Yūsuf b. ʿAbdallāh Abū l-Maḥāsin al-Tāj al-Khalwātī al-Maqassarī) (1035–1111/1627–99) was one of the most prominent ʿulamāʾ in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago in the eleventh/seventeenth century, before he was exiled by the Dutch colonial government to Sri Lanka and then to South Africa. He was born in Gowa, a village near Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. He was called Tāj al-Khalwātī (“the crown of the Khalwātiyya Ṣūfī order”) and was known fondly in South Sulawesi as Tuanta Salamaka ro Gowa (“our gracious master from Gowa”). He was considered as the founder of Islam in South Africa.…

Ṣāliḥ b. Mahdī al-Maqbalī (1040–1108/1630–96) was a Yemeni scholar who advanced a Sunnī-oriented reform of Zaydism through his call for independent reasoning (ijtihād) based on the Qurʾān and Sunnī ḥadīth compilations and on the abolition of theological and legal schools. Al-Maqbalī was born in 1040/1630 in al-Maqbal in the south-western Yemeni highlands. In his early years, he lived in Thulāʾ, Shibām, and Kawkabān, where he received a traditional education in Zaydī-Muʿtazilī theology and Hādawī law. In his thirties, he moved to Ṣanʿāʾ to study ḥadīth scienc…

Shihāb al-Dīn Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Maqqarī al-Tilimsānī al-Mālikī al-Ashʿarī (986–1041/1578–1632) was a North African scholar, historian, and man of letters.…

Hülegü Khān (r. 654–63/1256–65) established Marāgha as capital of the Īlkhānate (654–754/1256–1353) in 657/1259, a year after his siege and large-scale destruction of Baghdad. Located 130 kilometres south of Tabriz, Iran, it became the site of an astronomical observatory directed by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1273–4), a Persian astronomer and mathematician who assembled a team of the best minds in what are today Spain, Morocco, Egypt, and Iran. The mathematical work on planetary orbits carried out the…

Muṣṭafā al-Marāghī (1881–1945) was the rector of al-Azhar University, a lawyer and magistrate, and an influential figure in Egyptian public life. Born in al-Marāghā (also spelled al-Maghāghā), in Upper Egypt, he learned the Qurʾān by heart at a very early age, and his father taught him the rudiments of Islamic sciences. He then moved to Cairo to continue his religious education. Disappointed with the instruction at al-Azhar, he often preferred to study alone, although he continued to attend class…

The Marathas (Marāťhās) are a linguistically defined people, speakers of the Indo-Aryan language Marathi (Marāťhī), spoken in western peninsular India since at least the second/eighth century. Most of this area now lies in the Indian state of Maharashtra. 1. Early contacts with Islam There is evidence of Greek, Roman, and Persian trade contacts along the west coast from early times. Diasporic merchant communities were found in port cities of the Indian Ocean littoral, and it is probable that, for several centuries, these represented the …

Khalīl Mardam Bik (Khalil Mardam Bey, 1895–1959) was a Syrian poet and littérateur, who in 1939 penned the Syrian national anthem. Born and raised in Damascus to an aristocratic and educated family of Turkish origins, he lost both parents during his teenage years, which had a profound effect on his psyche and left him with a sadness that he channelled into his poetry and literary studies. Despite becoming an orphan, he remained committed to his education, and, when he could no longer afford a private education, he studied ḥadīth (prophetic tradition), fiqh (Islamic law), and grammar w…