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Adhruḥ (Udhruḥ in much modern scholarship) is a small town in southern Jordan, about fifteen kilometres east of Petra. Ptolemy included an Adrou (Αδρου) among the towns of Arabia Petraea, and Arab geographers confirm that it was a principal town of the surrounding Sharāt region (Le Strange, 35, 39, 384). It was the location of a large Roman fort, the remains of which still stand. Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī (d. 350–60/961–71) suggested that this fort was built by the Ghassānids (Ḥamza, 117), although the …

The Ḥums (sing. Aḥmasī) were a cultic association in the pre-Islamic period, centred on the Meccan tribe of Quraysh but involving members also of other groups. They are often defined in the sources primarily as a pietist group. Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), for example, defines al-taḥammus as “intense exertion in the [practice of one’s] faith” (al-tashaddud fī l-dīn) (Ibn Qutayba, 616), and Julius Wellhausen argued that there is nothing peculiarly Meccan about every instance of taḥammus (Wellhausen, 85–6). It is clear, however, from the extensive discussions of the cultic obs…

Mālik b. al-Ḥārith b. ʿAbd Yaghūth b. Maslama b. Rabīʿa b. al-Ḥārith b. Jadhīma b. Saʿd b. Mālik b. al-Nakhaʿī, known generally as al-Ashtar (d. 37/657–8 or the following year), of the “southern” tribe of Madhḥij, was one of the principal Kufan agitators against the caliphate of ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 23–35/644–56) and a close supporter of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (r. 35–40/656–61) during the first fitna. He appears as a minor figure in Arabic narratives of the conquest of Syria. It was apparently as a result of a blow sustained at the Battle of al-Yarmūk (ca. 15/636) …

The Dār al-Nadwa (Council House) was a compound in Mecca, north of the Kaʿba, supposedly founded by Quṣayy to host various administrative and ritual functions. Most reports identify it as a meeting place where weighty matters concerning Mecca and Quraysh could be discussed, hence its name, but other uses are also listed (e.g., Ibn Saʿd, 1/1:39–40; al-Azraqī, 1:109–10), including its use for the conclusion of marriages, declarations of war, circumcision of boys, and the seclusion of menstruating wo…

Hijar (sing. hijra) refers to two Arabian practices of demarcating and protecting space. The name of the practices is linked to the prophet Muḥammad’s hijra (emigration) from Mecca to Medina in the year 1/622. In Yemen, hijar are protected enclaves in tribal territories. It has been suggested by Puin, Serjeant, and others that the practice may be of pre-Islamic origin and connected with the Ancient South Arabian term hgr (usually vocalised hagar), which seems, in extant inscriptions, to denote administratively important towns. Madelung, however, has argued convinci…

The Kaʿba is a cuboid structure in the centre of Mecca and is the most prominent sacred structure in the Islamic world. Also known as God’s house (bayt Allāh), it is the direction of prayer (qibla) for Muslims across the world and the focal point of several rituals performed by pilgrims undertaking the ḥajj and the ʿumra (the lesser pilgimage). It is approximately fifteen metres tall at its highest point, and its four sides are between approximately ten and thirteen metres long. Inside the Kaʿba, the roof is supported by three pillars. The façade wal…

Khaybar is a settlement in the Ḥijāz, approximately 150 kilometres north of Medina. According to al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956)—followed by Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī (d. 487/1094) and Yāqūt (d. 626/1229)—the distance from Medina equated to eight postal stations (al-Masʿūdī, 256; al-Bakrī, 2:521; Yāqūt, 2:503). Islamic-era sources place it within the administrative dependencies (aʿrāḍ) of Medina (Ibn Khurradādhbih, 129, 248; Ibn Rusta, 177; al-Muqaddasī, 53). Al-Hamdānī (writing in the early fourth/tenth century) adds, perhaps somewhat tentatively, that it w…

Medina is a city in the Ḥijāz (in modern Saudi Arabia), approximately 340 kilometres north of Mecca; its early history up to the Ottoman period tells of its development from a small town into a holy city and a centre for Islamic learning. The name is usually said to derive from the term madīnat al-nabī (the Prophet’s city), which was the name adopted for the settlement sometime after the prophet Muḥammad’s migration (hijra) to the area in 1/622. For much of the pre-modern era, the area of Medina has been a collection of smaller settlements bounded within tracts of v…

d. after 1079. Mesopotamia. Jacobite. A native of Takrīt and a physician, Yaḥyā is credited with having compiled a now lost work of chronological tables in Arabic ( Zīj al-tawārīkh), which dealt with the whole period from Adam to the 11th century. Several citations from a work of his have been preserved by later Arabic historians, all of which deal with Seleucid building projects; these could be from the Zīj al-tawārīkh, or possibly from a separate work on the foundation of cities.Harry MuntBibliography Literature G. Graf, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, 1944-53, 2,…

ca 980(?) - after 1034, maybe as late as 1066. Egypt & Syria. The Melkite author of an Arabic continuation of Eutychius, he is also credited with three extant theological treatises.The continuation of the history of Eutychius runs from 938 until his own times. No surviving manuscript of this work goes beyond 1034, but it has been suggested that Yaḥyā may have taken it further, even up to 1066. So that his readers would not be confused by finding different versions of his work, Yaḥyā notes that he began it in Egypt at an anon…

[Saʿīd ibn Bitrīq] 877-940. Egypt. Melkite patriarch of Alexandria, author of an Arabic universal history from Creation to the mid-10th century. Saʿīd was born in Fustāt (Old Cairo), trained as a physician, and became patriarch taking the name Eutychius in either 933 or 935. His election aroused opposition among some of Egypt's Melkites, but he remained in office until he died on 11 May 940. Several works on medicine and apologetics are attributed to Eutychius, but he is most famous for his universal history, one of the first written in Arabic by a Christian.This chronicle was known by …

Fadak was an agricultural village in the northern Ḥijāz somewhere near Khaybar, which is about one hundred fifty kilometres from Medina. Fadak was the centre of a long-running dispute between the reigning caliphs and the family of the prophet Muḥammad, which continued through the first three Islamic centuries. After this period, Fadak recedes from view and by the ninth/fifteenth century it was possible for two experts on Ḥijāzī geography—al-Fīrūzābādī (d. 817/1415) and al-Samhūdī (d. 911/1506)—t…