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, S̲h̲ams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Dāniyāl b. Yūsuf al-K̲h̲uzāʿī al-Mawṣilī , b. ca . 646/1248, d. 710/1310, Arab writer in Egypt. Born in Mawṣil; from the age of 19, he lived in Cairo, studying and practising ophthalmology. In literary and colloquial Arabic poetry and versified prose, he wrote some of the earliest shadow-plays in mediaeval Egypt. He apparently composed some Arabic poems too, but he is mainly memorable for the keen observation reflected in his dramatic works. All three plays were actually intended for production, and the manuscripts were most probably intended to serve ¶ as gu…

(a., plural katātib ), itself probably plural of kātib (“scribe”), a type of beginners’ or primary school. The term is frequently synonymous with maktab in Arabic and Persian and mektep in Turkish. In Ottoman it was also called mekteb-k̲h̲āne or mekteb-i ṣi̊byān or ṣi̊byān mektebi, (“children’s school”); later, in the Tanẓīmāt era, it was more generally referred to as ibtidāʾī mekteb (“beginner’s school”) and then as ilk mekteb (“primary school”). European writers have often called it “Ḳurʾānic school”. The kuttāb was formerly widespread in Islamic la…

(a.), pl. makātib , was an appellation for the Islamic traditional school frequently known also as kuttāb [ q.v.; a brief discussion of the uses of maktab will be found there]. The same applies to its equivalents in Persian, maktab, and in Turkish, mekteb . In Egypt, the Copts too used maktáb to denote their own traditional schools. Later, however, the term came also to mean “school”, more generally, as in the Ottoman Turkish mekteb-i ṣanāʾiʿ (“vocational school”) or even mekteb gemisi (“training ship”). In both Ottoman Turkish and Arabic the term was borrowed, mainly during…

, YaʿḲūb b. Rafāʾīl Ṣanūʿ (also James Sanua), prolific Jewish Egyptian journalist and playwright (1839-1912). He indirectly influenced the ʿUrābī Revolt by teaching, lecturing, writing and performing short satirical plays and first starting the publication of Abū Naḍḍāra Zarḳāʾ ("the man with green spectacles"), ¶ an anonymous lithographic sheet, enlivened by cartoons, in the Egyptian fallāḥīn dialect. Because he had criticized the Khedive and his counsellors, he had to leave Egypt in 1878; but he continued to publish his newspaper in Par…

( sīnimā ). History. Cinema is a newly imported art into the Muslim world; as such, it is a facet of the Western impact on the inhabitants and expresses their interest in Western technical achievements and forms of entertainment. Silent films were apparently first imported into Egypt by Italians (1897), attracting considerable interest. Film shows for Allied troops, during World War I, familiarized many Near Easterners with the cinema. The influx of foreign films, the constru…

(a.) treaty, agreement: 1. In earlier times: See for this, ʿahd ; baḳṭ ; imtiyāzāt . 2. In modern times. We find muʿāhede or muʿāhedet in Ottoman Turkish: moʿāhede , moʿāhedat , in Persian and Urdu. The Ottoman official term for “treaty” was either muʿāhede, borrowed from the Arabic, or ʿahd-nāme , borrowed from the Persian. At the height of Ottoman power, most treaties constituted one-sided proclamations, phrased as expressions of the Sultan’s own will to grant privileges to foreign states or their subjects. These were generally called ʿahd-nāme [see imtiyāzāt ,…

(a.), a noun of place from the verb d̲j̲alasa “to sit down” and, by extension, “to sit”, ¶ “to hold a session”; starting from the original meaning of “a place where one sits down, where one stays”, thence “a seat” (J. Sadan, Le mobilier au Proche-Orient médiéval , Leiden 1976, index), the semantic field of mad̲j̲lis is of very wide extent (see the dictionaries of Lane, Dozy, Blachère, etc.). Among the principal derivative meanings are “a meeting place”, “meeting, assembly” (cf. Ḳurʾān, LXVIII, 12/11), “a reception hall (of a ca…

, georges (b. Beirut, 5 May 1880; d. Cairo, 21 May 1959), a Syrian Christian who became a prominent protagonist of the modern Egyptian theatre. After acting in school-plays, Abyaḍ attempted a career as a clerk; unhappy with this work, he moved in 1898-9 to Egypt, then the centre of the young theatre in Arabic. In Alexandria and Cairo, he attended theatrical performances, both local and foreign, then, with a group of Egyptian amateurs, repeatedly tried his own hand, with some success. The turning …

(“Shadow fantasy”), popular Arabic name for the shadow-play, possibly brought over from South-East Asia or India and performed in Muslim lands from the 12th century A.D. to the 20th one. Although occasionally presented during the long evenings of the Ramaḍān fast, it has now virtually disappeared with the spread of education, the cinema and television. The only extant texts of medieval Arabic shadow-plays were composed in the 7th/13th century A.D. by an Egyptian ophthalmologist, Ibn Dāniyāl [ q.v.], and consist of a humorous pageant of Egyptian life under the Mamlūk ruler Baybars I [ q.v…

(a.), “scene”, increasingly employed as “theatre” (in the same sense as “Bühne” in German); frequently synonymous with tiyātrō (from the Italian). 1. In the Arab East. Primarily an artistic and literary phenomenon of the last two centuries, the Arab theatre has its roots in local performances of passion plays [see taʿziya ], marionette and shadow plays [see ḳaragöz ], mimicry and other popular farces, and was affected by the then contemporary (rather than the classical) foreign theatre as well. Although some popular open-air plays…

(in Arabic al-Waḥda al-Islāmiyya ; in Ottoman Turkish Ittiḥād-i̊ Islām , in modern Turkish İslam ittihadi ), the ideology aiming at a comprehensive union of all Muslims into one entity, thus restoring the situation prevalent in early Islam. The religious element of the unity of all Muslims had been advocated since the days of Muḥammad, but acquired an added political significance in the 19th century. The Turkish term was used politically by Turkish writers and journalists since the 1860s, …

(p.), means a sign, banner, seal (and hence letter of a prince), or order/decoration. As a loanword in Ottoman Turkish, it basically denoted a sign or mark and also designated the sultan’s signature, or ṭug̲h̲ra [ q.v.] and, by extension, a document bearing it (its scribe was a nis̲h̲ānd̲j̲i̊ [ q.v.]); the standards of the Janissaries or Yeñi Čeri [ q.v.]; the insignia on military, naval and other uniforms; and, ¶ later, decorations bestowed by the sultan. In 19th and 20th century literary Arabic, nis̲h̲ān ( also nīs̲h̲ān ), similarly a loanword, had essential…

(a.), freemasonry (also in Arabic: Firmāsūniyya , Māsūniyya and Bināya Ḥurra ; in Turkish, Franmasonluk , Farmasonluk , Masonluk ). I. In the Ottoman empire and its successor states. Freemansonry first penetrated the Empire via lodges (Arabic mahfil ; Turkish mahfel , loca ) established by Europeans. As many of the lodges were established without the authority of organised freemasonry, they were frequently short-lived. Several lodges were reported in Aleppo, Izmir and Corfu in 1738, in Alexandretta in the early 1740…

, Mārūn b. Ilyās (b. Sidon, 9 February 1817, d. Ṭarsus, 1 June 1855), pioneer of modern playwriting in Arabic. A Maronite, al-Naḳḳās̲h̲ belonged to that Christian group which had already begun to display cosmopolitan tendencies, particularly in Beirut, where he resided from 1825 onwards, eventually assuming several positions in municipal administration. He knew Arabic, Turkish, Italian and French well. As a merchant, he travelled frequently, e.g. in 1846 he visited Egypt and t…

The mandate (Arabic intidāb ; Turkish manda , from the French) was essentially a systemoftrusteeship, instituted by the League of Nations after the end of the First World War, for the ¶ administration of certain territories detached from the vanquished states, chiefly the Ottoman and German Empires. The concept of the mandate has been variously understood as either a new world order or, contrariwise, merely as a façade for neo-colonialism, with other interpretations ranging between these two extremes. Essentially, the option …

, an ideology advocating an overall union of Arabs ( waḥdat al-ʿArab , al-waḥda al-ʿArabiyya ). Ideologues of Pan-Arabism have consistently recommended such union on the basis of several elements of commonality: (a) Language and culture, considered the ultimate expression of the entire Arab nation and one of its major links with the ¶ past (including the Islamic past; many Arabs have expressed their nationalism in Islamic terms), (b) History, preoccupation with which afforded immersion in a common past glory differing from the 20th century situati…

, Adnan (1899-1961), Turkish statesman. Born and educated in Izmir, he studied at the Ankara University Faculty of Law, following service in the First World War and Turkey’s War of Independence. His political activity commenced upon his joining Ali Fethi Okyar’s Free Party in 1930, when he became this party’s chairman in Aydın. When the party was closed down, he joined the People’s Party (later called Republican People’s Party, RPP) and was elected repeatedly to the Grand Na…

(a., Pers. millī , kardan , Tkish. devletleştirme ), all neologisms for nationalisation (in Turkish, probably with Verstaatlichung in mind), i.e. the state’s assumption of control or ownership of natural resources, services or economic enterprises, from private individuals or corporations. The explicit or implicit reasoning offered is that nationalisation conforms with social advancement and the public good. The term was employed in 19th-century Europe, together with the political and socio…