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, Fāris (1875?-1962) a Syrian politician, a Christian, who played a very important role over a period of almost half a century. Born in a Lebanese village on the slopes of Mount Hermon, he studied at Ṣaydā then at the school in Beirut which was later to become the American University, while also working as a teacher. When family affairs took him to Damascus in 1899, he took up residence in the Syrian capital, learned Turkish and French and was employed as an interpreter in t…

“the two sūras of taking refuge [from evil]”, the name given to the two last sūras (CXIII and CXIV) of the Ḳurʾān, because they both begin with the words ḳul : aʿūd̲h̲u bi-rabbī . . . min . . . , “Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of. . . against . . . “, and are pronounced as prayers intended to dispel the evils engendered by the devil, evil spirits, the practice of magic, etc. The plural al-muʿawwid̲h̲āt is also found equally applied to these two sūras and to ¶ the preceding one, set forth in the form of a credo; this plural appears especially in al-Buk̲h̲ārī ( daʿawāt , bāb 12) in re…

(a.), a dish of meat cooked in sour milk, sometimes with fresh milk added, and with spices thrown in to enhance the flavour. This dish, which Abū Hurayra [ q.v.] is said to have particularly appreciated (see al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , viii, 403 = § 3562, where a piece of poetry in praise of maḍīra is cited), must have been quite well sought-after in mediaeval times (al-Ḏj̲āḥiẓ, however, does not cite it in his K. al-Buk̲h̲alā ’; see nevertheless al-T̲h̲aʿālibī, Laṭāʾif , 12, tr. C. E. Bosworth, 46). Its principal claim to fame comes from al-Hamad̲h̲ānī’s al-Maḳāma al-maḍīriyya …

, conventionally Taroudant, a town in the Sūs region of southern Morocco situated in lat. 30° 31′ N., long. 8° 55′ W. at an altitude of 250 m/820 feet. It lies 4 km/2½ miles from ¶ the right bank of the Wādr Sūs and some 83 km/51 miles from Āgādīr [ q.v.] and the Adantic coast. The old town is enclosed by a lengthy, high, early 18th-century crenellated wall with five gates. Tārūdānt was an important town in mediaeval Islamic times. It formed part of the Almoravid empire from 421/1030 onwards, but a century later was conquered by the Almohads. It was at Tārūdānt that…

, the name by which the author of the Descrittione dell’ Africa is generally known, who was in fact originally called al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Zayyātī (or al-Fāsī). He was born in Granada between 894 and 901/1489 and 1495 into a family which had to emigrate to Morocco after that city’s fall [see g̲h̲arnāṭa ], and was brought up in Fās, where he received a good education and very soon entered the service of the administration there. Whilst still a student, he was employed for two years in the mental hospital, which he describes in detail ( Description , tr. Epaulard, i, 188 [see bīmāristān…

, a city of the Pegu district of Burma and the country’s capital, situated on the Rangoon (Hlaing) River (lat. 16° 47′ N., 96° 10′ E.). It was developed as a port in the mid-18th century by the founder of the last dynasty of Burmese kings, with a British trading factory soon established there and with flourishing groups of Parsee, Armenian and Muslim merchants. In 1852, during the Second Anglo-Burmese War, it passed definitively under British ¶ control, and Rangoon became a more modern city, and also, through immigration, largely Indian in composition. These last includ…

or Bag̲h̲būr , title of the Emperor of China in the Muslim sources. The Sanskrit * bhagaputra and the Old Iranian * bag̲h̲aput̲h̲ra , with which attempts have been made to connect this compound, are not attested, but a form bg̲h̲pwhr (= * bag̲h̲puhr ), signifying etymologically “son of God”, is attested in Parthian Pahlavī to designate Jesus, whence Sogdian bag̲h̲pūr , Arabicized as bag̲h̲būr and fag̲h̲fūr ; these forms were felt by the Arab authors as the translation of the Chinese T’ien tzŭ “son of heaven” (cf. Relation de la Chine et de l’Inde , ed. and tr. J. Sau…

(Ḥas̲h̲awiyya, Ḥus̲h̲wiyya, or Ahl al-Ḥas̲h̲w), a contemptuous term derived from ḥas̲h̲w (“farce” and hence “prolix and useless discourse”) and with the general meaning of “scholars” of little worth, particularly traditionists; this term is sometimes associated with g̲h̲ut̲h̲āʾ and g̲h̲ut̲h̲ar , and even with raʿāʿ , “the scum of the populace” (Ibn Ḳutayba, Muk̲h̲talif , 96; tr. Lecomte, 90), and used by some Sunnis of extremist traditionists or those whose researches are of very little value. Fairly close to Nābita [ q.v.] and to Mud̲j̲bira [ q.v.], it is used, in a narrower se…

(a.) means New Year’s Day, lit. “beginning of the year”, i.e. 1 al-Ṃuharram. For the difference with Raʾs al-sana, see Lane, Lexicon , s.v. ʿām . Sunnī Muslim law does not prescribe any particular celebration for the first month of the year, except that a voluntary fast-day is recommended on the tenth [see ʿās̲h̲ūrāʾ ]. However, the first ten days of the month are considered as particularly blessed (Lane, Manners and customs, chs. ix, xxiv). The S̲h̲īʿa know several celebrations during this month [see muḥarram ; taʿziya ]. In most Islamic countries, New Year’…

, said to mean “uplands”, a district of mediaeval northern K̲h̲urāsān, comprising the fertile plain, famed for its grain production, through whose western part the Atrek river [ q.v.] flows. The plain lies between the modern Kūh-i Hazār Masd̲j̲id and Kūh-i Bmālūd/Kūh-i S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān mountain chains. Its urban centre was K̲h̲abūs̲h̲ān, the later Kūčān [ q.v.]. See kūčān for further details. (Ed.)

(French form, saїda ), a town of Algeria, the chef-lieu of the department ( wilāya ) of the same name, situated 175 km/108 miles from Oran (Wahrān [ q.v.]) and 95 km/59 miles from Mascara (al-Muʿaskar [ q.v.]), at an altitude of 900 m/2,950 feet. It is on the wādī Saʿīda, in touch with the Causse of Oran (hills of Saïda) and the High Plains, limestone plateaux which form part of the Atlas of the Tells, to ¶ the east of the hills of Ouarsenis (Wans̲h̲arīs). The town had about 30,000 inhabitants and the department about 200,000 in 1987. The region is suitable for raising c…

(a.), sodomy. There does exist in Arabic a verb lāṭa meaning “to attach oneself, to join oneself to”, but liwāṭ appears to be rather a maṣdar of lāṭa or lāwaṭa , denominative of Lūṭ [ q.v.], i.e. Lot; in modern Arabic there are also the terms liwāṭa , mulāwaṭa , talawwuṭ , etc., as well as a large number of euphemisms and of dialectical and slang terms. The homosexual is called lūṭī or lāʾiṭ (pl. lāṭa), or mulāwiṭ , when he is the active partner, although the distinction is often difficult to establish; the passive is maʾbūn , and his perversion, ubna ; among the synonyms, the most common is muk̲h̲annat…

, the titles respectively of the 74th and 73rd sūras of the Ḳurʾān, derived from the first verse of each one of them which may be translated “O you covered in a cloak!” The first term is the active participle of a form V, tadat̲h̲t̲h̲ara , denominative verb from dit̲h̲ār “over garment”, and the second, also an active participle, from form V, tazammala “to wrap oneself [in a garment]”, the infix t of mutadat̲h̲t̲h̲ir and mutazammil being simply assimilated to the first radical. The two sūras are Meccan, and the opening verses of the first sūra may …

, the nickname given to a person who rebelled in Transoxania during the caliphate of al-Mahdī (158-69/775-85 [ q.v.]) and who hid his face beneath a ḳināʿ , i.e., a veil (of silk), or, as a plausible tradition holds, a mask of gold which he had made for himself. His real name is not known with certainty, and there is a choice between ʿAṭāʾ, Ḥakīm, His̲h̲ām b. Ḥakīm and Hās̲h̲im; it is moreover related that he assumed this latter name for himself and that his partisans’ war-cry was “O Hās̲h̲im, help u…

, the title of an anonymous work written to the greater glory of the Berbers of Morocco and al-Andalus, existing in a ms. of the Bibliothèque Générale of Rabat (cote 1020 D). E. Lévi-Provençal published from this, as Fragments historiques sur les Berbères au moyen âge — Nubad̲h̲ taʾrīk̲h̲iyya fī ak̲h̲bār al-Barbar fi ’l-ḳurūn al-wusṭā (Collection de textes arabes publiée par l’Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines, i, Rabat 1934), the following extracts: a chapter from Ibn Ḥayyān’s Muḳtabis on the relations of al-Manṣūr Ibn Abī ʿĀmir [ q.v.] with the Berbers of the Mag̲h̲rib (pp. …

(a.), “my lord”, an honorific title borne by the Moroccan sultans of the S̲h̲arīfian dynasties (Saʿdids and ʿAlawids) who were descended from al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī [see ḥasanī ], with the exception of those who were called Muḥammad and whose title was therefore Sayyidī/Sīdī (but the form Maḥammad freely altered does not exclude the usage of Mawlāy in ¶ front of the monarch’s name). The articles devoted to the two dynasties considered [see ʿalawīs and saʿdids ] contain or will contain in general sufficient information on the constituent sultans, but som…

(Ital. posta ), borrowed into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic in the 19th century in the forms p/ bōsta , p/ bōsṭa to designate the new conception of European-style postal services in the Near East. In more recent times, it has been replaced at the formal level by barīd [ q.v.], a revival of the mediaeval Arabic term for the state courier and intelligence services, but būsta / busṭa and būstad̲j̲ī “postman” continue in use in the Arab Levant at the informal level, and posta remains the standard term in Modern Turkish. In modern Persian also post , from the French poste , is used. (Ed.)

(a.), a term denoting the dyeing of certain parts of the body (and especially, in regard to men, the beard and hair) by means of henna [see ḥinnāʾ ] or some similar substance. It is still used in this sense today, but is used moreover for the items of make-up and cosmetics employed by modern women; the reader may find under marʾa information about those items of cosmetics used by women attached to the traditional usages. (Ed.)

(d. 235/849), a K̲h̲azar military slave or g̲h̲ulām [ q.v.] who had been bought in 199/815 by the future caliph al-Muʿtaṣim, and who played an important role in the reigns of his master, of al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ and of al-Mutawakkil. At the opening of al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ’s caliphate, he was, with As̲h̲nās, the “mainstay of die caliphate”. After being commander of die guard in Sāmarrā, in 233/847 he was made governor of Egypt, but delegated his powers there to Hart̲h̲ama b. Naṣr (Ibn Tag̲h̲rībardī, Nud̲j̲ūm , ii, 265; al-Maḳrīzī, K̲h̲iṭaṭ , ed. Wiet, v, 136). It was he who, in…

, Mullā ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Tayd̲j̲awzī , a Kurdish poet who composed an ʿAḳīda-nāma and a celebrated dīwān in the Hawrāmī dialect of Gūrānī. He was born ca. 1222/1807 at Tāwagōz in D̲j̲awānrūd and died at Sars̲h̲āta, on the river Sīrwān near Ḥalabd̲j̲a, ca. 1300/1883. (Ed.) Bibliography V. Minorsky, The Gūrān, in BSOAS, xi (1943-5), 94 Pīramērd, Dīwān-i Mawlawī, 2 vols., Sulaymānīya, 1938-40 ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Sad̲j̲d̲j̲ādī, Mēz̲h̲ū-y adab-ī kurdī, Bag̲h̲dād 1952.