(Beni Suef, Beni Souef) a town in Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile, 75 m. (120 km.) south of Cairo. According to al-Sak̲h̲āwī (902/1497) the old name of the town was Binumsuwayh, from which popular etymology derived the form Banī Suwayf (the of Ibn Ḏj̲īʿān, al-Tuḥfa al-Saniyya , 172, and the of Ibn Duḳmāḳ, Intiṣār , v, 10, ought probably to be read ). In still more ancient times the capital of this district was Heracleopolis Magna, 10 m. (16 km.) west of Banī Suēf, which only attained importance under Muḥammad ʿAlī. From the time of the division of Egypt into provinces ( mudīriyya …

, Ḥasanayn , founder of the al-Ḥisāfiyya al-S̲h̲ād̲h̲iliyya ṭarīḳa . He was born in 1265/1848-9 in the village’of Kafr al-Ḥiṣāfa, Ḳalyūbiyya province, Egypt. Originally he was a k̲h̲alīfa [ q.v.] of an offshoot of the Madaniyya branch of the Darḳāwa [ q.v.], known as al-Makkiyya al-Fāsiyya. He had been initiated into this ṭarīḳa by its founder, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Fāsī (d. 1288/1872), when in Mecca for “The pilgrimage in the year of the latter’s death. He defied as unlawful certain forms of d̲h̲ikr [ q.v.] characteristic of the ṭarīḳa and introduced into it certain elements of …

( al-ḏj̲āmiʿ al-azhar ). This great mosque, the ‘brilliant one’ (a possible allusion to Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ, although no ancient document ¶ confirms this) is one of the principal mosques of present-day Cairo. This seat of learning, obviously Ismāʿīlī from the time of its Fāṭimid foundation (4th/9th century), whose light was dimmed by the reaction under the Sunnī Ayyūbids, regained all its activity—Sunnī from now on—during the reign of Sultan Baybars. Its influence is due on the one hand to the geographical and politic…

, a famous town in mediaeval times, in Middle Egypt, situated between the Baḥr Yūsuf and the foothills of the Libyan range, 15 km. West of Banī Mazār, a railway station 198 km. south of Cairo. It is the ancient Oxyrhynchus, in Coptic Pemdje. During the Byzantine period it was a flourishing city, renowned for its churches and numerous monasteries. According to a Coptic legend, the Virgin and the Child Jesus are supposed to have stayed there during the Flight from Egypt. Certain Muslim exegetes have found a verse of the Ḳurʾān (XXIII, 52), …