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(a.), ou Ṣābī, pl. Ṣābiʾūn, Ṣābiʾa, Ṣāba, les Sabéens (ne pas confondre avec le peuple portant le même nom en français, ci-dessus s.v. Sabaʾ). Nom appliqué en arabe à au moins trois communautés religieuses entièrement distinctes: (1) Les Ṣābiʾūn qui apparaissent trois fois dans le Ḳurʾān (II, 62; V, 609; XXII, 17) associés aux Chrétiens et aux Juifs. Leur identité, très controversée chez les commentateurs musulmans comme chez les orientalistes modernes, était de toute évidence déjà incertaine peu après l’époque de Muḥammad, et le reste encore de nos jours. Ce n’étaient évidemment pas des Mandéens (comme l’ont cru Chwolsohn et beaucoup d’autres), et sans doute pas des Elchasaϊtes (voir plus bas, s.v. …

«roi des rois», titres royaux en persan. Ils remontent aux rois achéménides de l’ancienne Perse, qui, à partir de Darius I (521-486 av. J.-C.) se qualifient dans leurs inscriptions de xšāyaθiya «roi» (de la racine xšay- «gouverner», apparentée au sanskrit kṣayati «posséder» et au grec χτάομαι «acquérir») et de xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām «roi des rois». Plus tôt encore, le titre de «roi des rois» avait été utilisé par les souverains d’Assyrie et d’Urartu (dans le Caucase), et il n’est pas invraisemblable que les Perses l’aient emprunté à ces derniers (voir O. G. von Wesendonck, The title «Kī…

, pseudonyme de plusieurs poètes persans de différentes époques. Parmi eux figure l’auteur du Saʿādat-nāma, une collection de préceptes moraux en quelques 300 vers, attribués à tort, dans des manuscrits et dans les éditions imprimées, à Nāṣiri Ḵh̲usraw [ q.v.], le poète ismāʿīlien bien-con…

(a.) 1. Emploi kurʾānique et en arabe ancien. Sid̲j̲ill est un mot arabe désignant différents types de documents, en particulier ceux de nature officielle ou juridique. Il a longtemps été admis (tout d’abord, semble-t-il par Fraenkel) que ce terme remontait en définitive au latin sigillum qui signifie, dans la langue classique, «cachet» («cachet-matrice» et «cachetimpression»), mais qui était aussi utilisé en latin du Moyen-Age pour désigner des documents sur lesquels un sceau était porté; il fut emprunté par le grec byzantin comme σιγιλλ(ι)ον, «cachet, traité, édit impérial», puis parvint à l’arabe via l’araméen (par exemp…

, Muʾayyid al-dīn Abū Ismāʿ…

1. Le mot. Zindīḳ, plur. zanādiḳa, nom collectif/abstrait zandaḳa, est un mot arabe emprunté (du moins en première instance) au perse dans le sens précis et limité de «manichéen» (syn. mānawī ou le quasi-araméen manānī), utilisé également d’une façon plus large pour désigner un «hérétique», un «renégat» ou un «incroyant», reprenant le sens de mulḥid, murtadd et …

, ou S̲h̲awarwa, Banū, lectures conventionnelles du nom d’une famille de clercs et d’hommes de lettres ḥanafites à Iṣfahān dans le courant du VIe/XIIe siècle. Le nom n’a pas été expliqué, et pourrait sans doute être lu plutôt (en persan)…

, Muʾayyid al-Dīn Abū Ismāʿīl al-Ḥusayn …

, a Turkish dynasty …

…

, the 12th and 13th letters of the Arabic alphabet. Both letters have the same form ( rasm ), which derives from that of the Aramaic letter s̲h̲īn , and are distinguished only by diacritics, s̲h̲īn having three dots above, while sīn is in principle unpointed ( muhmal ), though in carefully written manuscripts it can be distinguished by a V-shaped sign above the letter, or else by three dots below. In the Eastern form of the abd̲j̲ad [ q.v.], sīn occupies the position of Aramaic semkat̲h̲ and, like this, has the numerical value 60, while s̲h̲īn has the position of Aramaic s̲h̲īn ( = 300), but in th…

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(p.) “province”, “provincial capital”, “[large] town”. The word continues Middle Persian s̲h̲ahrestān , which has the same meanings, though it is certainly possible that it goes back even further to an unattested Old Persian * xšaça-stāna- …

, the 28th letter of the Arabic alphabet, with the numerical value 10. It stands for the semivowel y and for the long vowel ī , which the grammarians analyse as short i ( kasra ) plus yāʾ . For the shortening of final -ī before hamzat al-waṣl , see wāw . ϒāʾ is also used, like alif and wāw, as a “support” for medial or final hamza [ q.v.], reflecting presumably the ancient Ḥid̲j̲āzī dialect loss of hamza in certain positions with concomitant glides. In word-final position, alif maḳṣūra (that is to say: long ā not followed by hamza) is written sometimes with alif and sometimes with yāʾ. In the latter case, it can be transliterated as …

(better Sōzanī), Muḥammad b. ʿAlī (or Masʿūd?) al-Samarḳandī, Persian satirical poet of the 6th/12th century. A native of Nasaf (Nak̲h̲s̲h̲ab), he eulogised several of the Ḳarak̲h̲ānid rulers of Samarḳand, from Arslān S̲h̲āh Muḥammad II (495- ca. 523/1102- ca. 1129) up to Ḳi̊li̊č Ṭamg̲h̲āč K̲h̲ān Masʿūd II ( ca. 556-74/ …

(a.), or, with the usual weakening of final hamza , Ṣābī , plural Ṣābiʾūn , Ṣābiʾa , Ṣāba , in English “Sabian” (preferably not “Sabaean”, which renders Sabaʾ [ q.v.]), a name applied in Arabic to at least three entirely different reli…

, Kitāb , “the Letter of Tansar”, a political treatise from Sāsānid Persia, known in the Islamic world through an Arabic translation, probably by Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ [ q.v.], from a lost original in Pahlavi. It was ostensibly written by “Tansar” (a misreading, in Pahlavi script, for Tusar, perhaps an abbreviation of * Tus-artēs̲h̲tār , Avestan Tusa-raθaēštar- “T. the warrior”), the chief priest of the first Sāsānid king, Ardas̲h̲īr I ( ca. 224-40), to Gus̲h̲tāsp, the king of Ṭabaristān, encouraging him to submit to Ardas̲h̲īr and, more generally, justifying the Sāsāni…

a Persian poet of the first half of the 6th/12th century. …

, the pen-name of several Persian poets of various periods, among them the author of the Saʿādat-nāma , a collection of moral precepts in some 300 verses, wrongly ascribed, in mss. and in the printed editions, to the famous 5th/11th-century Ismāʿīlī poet Nāṣir-i K̲h̲usraw [ q.v.]. This poem was first published by E. Fagnan, together with a (rather inadequate) French translation, from a Paris manuscript in ZDMG, xxxiv (1880), 643-74, reprinted (from Fagnan, with some emendations) in the appendix to the edition of Nāṣir’s Safar-nāma published in Berlin, Kavi…

, the 27th letter of the Arabic alphabet (or the 26th, if hāʾ is placed after wāw ), with the numerical value 6. It has two principal functions in Arabic orthography, standing either for the semivowel w or for the long vowel ū . Traditional Arabic grammar reduces these two functions to one by analysing …

(properly Rōd̲h̲akī, arabicised as al-Rūd̲h̲akī) the leading Persian poet during the first half of the 4th/10th century and author of the earliest substantial surviving fragments of Persian verse. Al-Samʿānī gives his name as Abū ʿAbd Allāh D̲j̲aʿfar b. Muḥammad b. Ḥakīm b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ādam al-Rūd̲h̲akī al-S̲h̲āʿir al-Samarḳandī, says that he was born in Rōd̲h̲ak, a suburb of Samarḳand, and that he also died there in 329/940-1; there are, however, reasons to think that this date might be a…

, in Islamic science an astronomical handbook with tables, after the models of the Sāsānid Persian Zīk -i S̲h̲ahriyār , the Indian Sindhind [ q.v.], and Ptolemy’s Almagest and Handy Tables [see baṭlamiyūs ]. A typical zīd̲j̲ might contain a hundred folios of text and tables, though some are substantially larger than this. Most of the relevant astronomical and astrological concepts are clearly explained in the Tafhīm of al-Bīrūnī [ q.v.]. The history of Islamic zīd̲j̲s constitutes a major part of the history of Islamic astronomy [see ʿilm al-hayʾa ]. i. Etymology Arabic zīd̲j̲ (pl. zīd̲j̲āt ) is best translated as “astronomical handbook”; although it normally contains tables, it is not merely a “collection of astronomical tables”, but has explanatory material as well. Moreover (as Mercier has noted) Arabic authors apply this word also to Indian astronomical writings, although these do not contain tables. The Arabic word zīd̲j̲, which is also attested in the meaning “plumbline”, was generally recognised to be a borrowing from Persian. Al-K̲h̲wārazmī ( Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm , 219) and al-Bīrūnī ( al-Ḳānūn al-Masʿūdī , i, Ḥaydarābād 1954, 271; English tr. and commentary on the passage by de Blois, apud Panaino, 155-7), derive it from Persian …

, the third and sixteenth letters of the Arabic alphabet, with the numerical values in the abd̲j̲ad system of 400 and 9 respectively. In the modern standard pronunciation, the former represents a voiceless, slightly aspirated, dental (or dento-alveolar) stop; the latter a voiceless, unaspirated, dental (dento-alveolar) stop with simultaneous velarisation, i.e. with the back of the tongue lifted towards the soft palate. Sībawayh and his successors classify ṭāʾ as mad̲j̲hūr , which most modern scholars have understood to mean "voiced" [see ḥurūf al-hid̲j̲āʾ and the references c…

, secretary and prolific author in Arabic and Persian. A reputed descendant of the caliph ʿUmar, he was born either in Balk̲h̲ or Buk̲h̲ārā, but spent most of his life in Gurgānd̲j̲, the capital of K̲h̲ w…

or S̲h̲awarwa , banū , conventional readings for the name of a family of Ḥanafī clerics and men of letters in Iṣfahān during the 6th/12th century. The name has not been explained and should perhaps be read rather as (Persian) S̲h̲aβ-rō “black-face”. Although several members of the family are listed in biographical works, the only one about whom we have precise knowledge is S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Hibat Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Hibat Allāh b. Ḥamza al-maʿrūf bi -S̲h̲awarwa. a religious scholar who spent time in Damascus and…

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: …

(a., pl. tarād̲j̲im ), verbal noun of the verb tard̲j̲ama …

(p.), the name of a mythical bird. There are two passages in the Avesta referring to the “bird Saēna-” ( mərə γ ō saēnō ; Yašt 14: 41) or the “tree of Saēna-” ( vanam yam saēnahe ; Yašt 12: 17); the la…

, a long narrative poem in Persian by Fak̲h̲r al-Dīn Asʿad Gurgānī [ q.v.], written not long after 441/1050 and dedicated to Abū Naṣr b. Manṣūr, the governor of Iṣfahān on behalf of the Sald̲j̲ūḳids. The story, which is set in the distant and unspecified past, deals with the love affair between Wīs, the wife of King Mōbad of Marw, and Rāmīn, her husband’s younger brother. It tells of how the two lovers meet, how they are eventually discovered, and how Rāmīn rises in rebellion against his brother, in the end …

Muḥammad b. S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Ḥusaynī al-Kās̲h̲ānī, commonly called Taḳī Kās̲h̲ī , Persian scholar of the 10th-11th/16th-17th centuries. He was a pupil of the poet Muḥtas̲h̲am Kās̲h̲ī, whose dīwān he edited. His fame rests on his monumental compendium of Persian poetry K̲h̲ulāṣat al-as̲h̲ʿār wa-zubdat al-afkār , of which the first version was completed in 993/1585 and the enlarged second v…

(a.). 1. Ḳurʾānic and early Arabic usage. Sid̲j̲ill is an Arabic word for various types of documents, especially of an official or juridical nature. It has long been recognised (first, it seems, by Fraenkel) that it goes back ultimately to Latin sigillum , which in the classical language means “seal” (i.e. both “sealm…

, a Persian prosodist and minor poet at the Tīmūrid court in Harāt during the second half of the 9th/15th century. He is remembered for his text-book of Persian prosody ʿArūḍ-i Sayfī , which he completed in 896/1491; this has been published several times in India, notably with an English translation and extensive commentary in H. Blochmann’s The prosody of the Persians according to Saifi , Jami , and other writers, Calcutta 1872, a work which played an important role in making Persian poetical theory …

(p.) “town”. The word goes back to Old Persian xšaça- (cf. Avestan xšaθra- , Sanskrit kṣatrá- ; all from the same root as New Persian …