(a.), deviator, apostate, heretic, atheist. The religious meaning of the term is derived from the basic sense of the root l-ḥ-d “to incline, to deviate”. There is no evidence of pre-Islamic usage in a religious meaning. The Islamic usage arose on the basis of the Ḳurʾānic verses VII, 180: “Leave those who deviate ( yulḥidūna , var . yalḥadūna ) in regard to His names”; XLI, 40: “Verily, those who deviate in regard to Our signs ( yulḥidūna fī āyātina ) are not hidden from Us”; and XXII, 25: “Whoever seeks in it (sc. the sacred Mosque of Mecca) to perpetrate deviation ( bi-ilḥād …

[see mulḥid ].

, Muʾayyid al-Dīn Abū Ismāʿīl al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Muns̲h̲iʾ al-Iṣbahānī, secretary, Arabic poet and alchemist. He was born in 453/1061 at Iṣfahān, and his poems give ample testimony of his lasting attachment to his native town. He entered the service of Sald̲j̲ūḳs at the time of Malik S̲h̲āh and went on to become chief secretary under that ruler’s son, Muḥammad I, with the tides muns̲h̲iʾ , mutawallī dīwān al-ṭug̲h̲rāʾ and ṣāḥib dīwān al-ins̲h̲āʾ ; in short, he was the second most senior official (after the wazīr ) in the civil administration of the Sald̲j̲…

, a name given in mediaeval times to the followers in Syria of the Nizārī branch of the Ismāʿīlī sect. The name was carried from Syria to Europe by the Crusaders, and occurs in a variety of forms in the Western literature of the Crusades, as well as in Greek and Hebrew texts. In the form ‘assassin’ it eventually found its way into French and English usage, with corresponding forms in Italian, Spanish and other languages. Af first the word seems to have been used in the sense of devotee ¶ or zealot, thus corresponding to fidāʿī [ q.v.]. As early as the 12th century Provençal poets compare the…

, Abū Mūsā ʿĪsā b. Ṣubayḥ , a Muʿtazilī theologian from Bag̲h̲dād who died in 226/840-1. He was a pupil of Bis̲h̲r b. al-Muʿtamīr [ q.v.], the founder of the Muʿtazilī school of Bag̲h̲dād. and had discussions with fellow-Muʿtazilīs, among them Abu ’l-Hud̲h̲ayl al-ʿAllāf [ q.v.]. According to the Fihrist , he wrote 35 treatises, mostly on Muʿtazilī themes: on the oneness of God ( tawḥid ), on justice, knowledge, the createdness of the Ḳurʾān and theodicy; they include criticisms of his fellow-Muʿtazilīs al-Nad̲j̲d̲j̲ār, T̲h̲umāma b. As̲h̲r…

, b. Nūr Allāh b. Aḥmad al-Miʿmār (mason/architect), al-Ṣiddīḳī , one of the leading Čis̲h̲tī saints of his time, who was responsible for the revival of this order in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent when Muslim society was in a state of utter disorder. He was born at S̲h̲āhd̲j̲ahānābād (Delhi), whence his nisba al-Ḏj̲ahānābādī. on 24 Ḏj̲ūmādā II 1060/24 June 1650, eight years before Awrangzīb’s accession to the throne. His ancestors, builders and masons by profession, originally hailed from K̲h̲od̲j̲and [ q.v.]. His father and grandfather both played leading roles in the b…

, eldest son of S̲h̲āh D̲j̲ahān and Mumtāz Maḥall, was born near Ad̲j̲mēr on 19 Ṣafar 1024/20 March 1615. He received his first manṣab [ q.v.] of 12,000 d̲h̲āt /6000 sawār in 1042/1633, as also the d̲j̲āgīr of Ḥisār-Fīrūza, regarded as the appendage of the heir-apparent. The same year he was given the nominal command of an army despatched to defend Ḳandahār which was threatened by the Persians, and again in 105 2/1642 when the threat was ¶ renewed. The attack, however, did not materialize. In 1055/1645, he was given the governorship of the ṣūba of Ilahābād to which were added the ṣūbas …

1. The word. Zindīḳ , pl. zanādiḳa , abstract/collective noun zandaḳa , is an Arabic word borrowed (at least in the first instance) from Persian, and used in the narrow and precise meaning “Manichaean” (synonym: Mānawī , or the quasi-Aramaic Manānī ), but also loosely for “heretic, renegade, unbeliever”, in effect as a synonym for mulḥid , murtadd or kāfir . The earliest attestation of the word, in any language, is in the Middle Persian inscription of the Zoroastrian high priest ¶ Kirdīr on the so-called Kaʿba-yi Zardus̲h̲t, from the end of the 3rd cent…

, holders of materialistic opinions of various kinds, often only vaguely defined. This collective noun denotes them as a whole, as a firḳa , sect, according to the Dictionary of the Technical Terms , and stands beside the plural dahriyyūn formed from the same singular dahrī , the relative noun of dahr, a Ḳurʾānic word meaning a long period of time. In certain editions of the Ḳurʾān it gives its name to sūra LXXVI, generally called the sūra of Man; but its use in XLV, 24 where it occurs in connexion with the infidels, or rather the ungodly, erring and blinded, appears to …

, leader of a famous long-running rebellion in the province of Reíyo (Málaga) in Muslim Spain who, in 267/880, rebelled against the Umayyad amīr s of Cordova, and two years before his death in 305/918, eventually surrendered conditionally to the amīr, later caliph, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III al-Nāṣir. Towards the end of the 3rd/9th century, mainly as a result of the weakness of the Umayyad amirate, al-Andalus experienced several uprisings, mostly by neo-Muslims ( muwalladūn ). The rebellion of the muwallad ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣūn was the most da…

“pīr-i raws̲h̲ān (or raws̲h̲an ) b. ʿabd allāh ḳāḍī b. s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ muḥammad , the founder of a religious and national movement of the Afg̲h̲āns (called pīr-tārīk by the Mug̲h̲al historians etc., after Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Mullā Muḥammad, commonly known as Mullā Zangī, a teacher of the Pīr’s chief opponent Āk̲h̲und Darwīza, who was the first to dub him thus ( Tad̲h̲kira f. 92). He claimed descent through S̲h̲. Sirād̲j̲ al-Dīn (his fifth ancestor) from (Abū) Ayyūb al-Anṣārī, the famous Companion of the Prophet, (his 21st ancestor). His mother Aymana (varr. Bih-bīn, Bīban, Maʾāt̲h̲ir al-Umarāʾ …

, one of the “religious sciences” of Islam. The term is usually translated, as an approximate rendering, “theology”. I.—Definition. It is difficult to establish precisely when ʿilm al-kalām came to mean an autonomous religious science (or branch of knowledge). In any case, whereas the term fiḳh meant originally —especially in the Ḥanafī school (cf. fiḳh akbar) —speculative meditation, hence distinguished from ʿilm in the sense of traditional knowledge, the term kalām , literally “word”, quickly acquired the senses of “conversation, discussion, controversy” (cf. A. J. Wensinck, Th…