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, an encampment of Arab Bedouins in which the tents (sing, k̲h̲ayma ) are arranged in a circle or an ellipse, forming a sort of enceinte around the open space in the middle ( murāḥ ) where the cattle pass the night; this very ancient way of laying out an encampment is still to be found among the Bedouins of the east (northern Syria, Mesopotamia) and among all the nomads or semi-nomads of North Africa. The name of dawār which is given to it appears already in the writings of certain travellers ¶ and geographers of the middle ages. In the East, the exact form of the word is dawār or dwār …

(pl. ḥarāṭīn ), the name given, in north-west Africa, to certain elements of the population of the oases in the Saharan zone. From the ethnic point of view, they seem to have arisen from inter-breeding, perhaps at some very remote period, between white invaders and the indigenous negroid inhabitants (calling to mind the enigmatic Bāfūr in Mauritania). But the Ethnic type of the Ḥarāṭīn is markedly different from that of the Negroes; those from Southern Morocco are sometimes e…

(pl. burūd̲j̲ , abrādj , and abrid̲j̲a ), square or round tower, whether adjacent to a rampart or isolated and serving as a bastion or dungeon. Special meanings: each of the twelve signs of the zodiac, considered as solar ‘mansions’; more or less fortified country house standing alone amidst gardens (Eastern Mag̲h̲rib); tower used as a lighthouse ( burd̲j̲ al-manār ); tower used as a dovecote, especially for carrier pigeons ( burd̲j̲ al-ḥamām ; see J. Sauvaget, La poste aux chevaux dans l’empire des Mamlouks , Paris 1941, no. 157); masonry pier of a bridge;…

, name borne in mediaeval times by the north-western extremity of the Moroccan Middle Atlas. This territory lay to the south of Fez and Meknès. It was bounded to the east by the upper course of the Wādī Subū (=Wādī Gīgū); westwards, it extended as far as the upper course of the Wādī Umm-Rabīʿ (=Wādī Wānsīfan); its southern boundary was the so-called Tīg̲h̲ānīmīn pass, where the Malwiyya rises. It coincided with the territory now occupied by the Berber-speaking tribes called in Arabic: Bnī Mṭīr, …

, a cape forming the extreme north-western point of Morocco and of Africa, 7 or 8 miles west of Tangier, the ancient Ampelusia Promontorium. Al-Idrīsī does not mention it; al-Bakrī knows of it as a hill jutting out into the sea, 30 miles from Arzila [see aṣīla ] and 4 from Tangier, which has springs of fresh water and a mosque used as a ribāṭ . Opposite it on the coast of al-Andalus is the mountain of al-Ag̲h̲arr (= Ṭarf al-Ag̲h̲arr > Trafalgar). The name Is̲h̲bartāl (probably connected with the Latin spartaria = places overgrown with esparto) given it by al-Bakrī is not known to the natives. (G.S. C…

i. — general In Arabic, the word nafṭ (Persian nafṭ) is applied to the purest form ( ṣafwa ) of Mesopotamian bitumen ( ḳīr —or ḳār — bābilī ). Its natural colour is white. It occasionally occurs in a black form, but this can be rendered white by sublimation. Nafṭ is efficacious against cataract and leucoma; it has the property of attracting fire from a distance, without direct contact. Mixed with other products (fats, oil, sulphur etc.) which make it more combustible and more adhesive, it constituted the basic ingredient of “Greek fire”, a liquid incendiary compo…

, often contracted to māristān , from Persian bīmār ‘sick’ + the suffix -istān denoting place, a hospital. In modern usage bīmāristān is applied especially to a lunatic asylum. ¶ i. Early period and Muslim East . According to the Arabs themselves (cf. Maḳrīzī, Ḵh̲iṭaṭ , ii, 405), the first hospital was founded either by Manāḳyūs, a mythical king of Egypt, or by Hippocrates, the latter of whom is said to have made for the sick in a garden near his house a xenodokeion , literally ‘lodging for strangers’. The authority for this statement is given by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa ( ʿUyūn , …

, etymologically “retailer of vegetables”, this word has become the equivalent of the present English “grocer” taken in its widest sense. With the latter significance it has passed into Persian and Turkish, and, from Turkish, into the Balkan languages. In its etymological meaning, the word was known in the Spanish Arabic of Valencia in the 7th/13th century, glossed by olerum venditor. But in the dialect of Granada (end of the 9th/15th century), it corresponded to the Castilan regaton ( = regrattier ) "retailer of foodstuff s in general”, which was also rendered by k̲h̲aḍḍār . At the begin…

(or Abad̲j̲ad or Abū Ḏj̲ad ), the first of the eight mnemotechnical terms into which the twenty-eight consonants of the Arabic alphabet were divided. In the East, the whole series of these voces memoriales is ordered and, in general, vocalized as follows: ʾabd̲j̲ad hawwaz ḥuṭṭiy kalaman saʿfaṣ ḳaras̲h̲at t̲h̲ak̲h̲ad̲h̲ ḍaẓag̲h̲ . In the West (North Africa and the Iberian peninsula) groups no. 5, 6 and 8 were differently arranged; the complete list was as follows: ʾabad̲j̲id hawazin ḥuṭiyin kalamnin ṣaʿfaḍin ḳurisat t̲h̲ak̲h̲ud̲h̲ ẓag̲h̲s̲h̲in . ¶ The first six groups of the Ori…

, name of one of the two groups of tribes which together constitute the Berber nation [ q.v.], that of the other being the Butr. It represents the plural of the name of their common eponynxous ancestor: Burnus; for a possible origin of this name see butr. According to Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn, the Barānis comprised five great peoples: Awraba, ʿAd̲j̲īsa, Azdād̲j̲a, Maṣmūda-G̲h̲umāra. Kutāma-Zawāwa, Ṣanhād̲j̲a, Hawwāra. Whether, however, the last three belong to this group is a matter of controversy; they are considered by some to be descendants of Ḥimyar…

, small Berber tribe belonging to the great ethnic group of the desert Ṣanhād̲j̲a (the Berber phoneme g is usually rendered in Arabic script by a d̲j̲īm but Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn, in his system of transcription, writes it as a kāf which, in the original manuscript, presumably had a diacritical point placed above or below). They lived in the southern part of what is now Mauritania, to the north of the Senegal and in contact with the ocean. To the south their territory bordered the land of the Negroes; to the north, in the…

and isṭabl (a.; pl. iṣṭablāt and rarely aṣābil , according to LA, s.v.), etymologically stable , that is to say the building in which mounts and baggage animals (equidae and camelidae) are kept tethered and, by metonomy, the actual stock of such animais belonging to one single owner. Iṣṭabl is the arabization of the low-Greek στάβλον/σταβλíον/σταυλíον(see Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis , Lyons 1688, s.v.), which ¶ in turn derives from the Latin stabulum . This is one of the so-called terms “of civilization” which hav…

, a large Berber tribe of the Barānis family. Its exact origin does not seem to have been known to the Arab and Berber genealogists, who simply make them brethren of the Ṣanhād̲j̲a, Haskūra and Gazūla; others give them a Ḥimyarite origin like the Hawwāra and the Lawāta [ q.vv.]. The Lamṭa were one of the nomadic tribes who wore a veil ( mulat̲h̲t̲h̲amūn ). One section lived on the south of the Mzāb, between the Massūfa on the west and the Tārga (Tuareg) on the east; they even seem to have extended as far as the Niger. In the south of Mo…

Tea appears to be mentioned for the first time in an Arabic text by the author of the Ak̲h̲bār al-Ṣīn wa’l-Hind (ed. and transl. by J. Sauvaget, 18), under the form sāk̲h̲ , whereas al-Bīrūnī, Nubad̲h̲ fī Ak̲h̲bār al-Ṣīn , ed. Krenkow, in MMIA, xiii (1955), 388, calls it more correctly d̲j̲aʾ . It was introduced into Europe towards the middle of the 16th century by the Dutch East Indies company; but it is only in the middle of 17th century that its use spread, particularly in England. In Morocco the first mention of tea dates back to 1700. It was a French merchant, with business co…

, henna (known to botanists as the Lawsonia alba of Lamarck, a name preferable to the L. inarmis of Linnaeus, which corresponds only to the young form of the plant, the adult form being spinosa ), shrub whose leaves possess medical properties and are used as a dye. In Arabic, the word most commonly used is ḥinnāʾ , but in the earlier language there were used other words which, however, were applied also to other dye-producing plants: saffron ( zaʿfarān ), safflower ( ḳurṭum , ʿuṣfur ) and curcuma ( kurkum ); these are yarannā and raḳūn , riḳān , irḳān ; the three last are perhaps connected with yaraḳān…

(the broken plural Maṣāmida is also found), one of the principal Berber ethnic groups forming a branch of the Barānis. If we set aside the Maṣmūda elements mentioned by al-Bakrī in the neighbourhood of Bône, the post-Islamic Maṣmūda seem to have lived exclusively in the western extremity of the Mag̲h̲rib: and as far back as one goes in the history of the interior of Morocco, we find them forming with the Ṣanhād̲j̲a [ q.v.], another group of Barānis Berbers, the main stock of the Berber population of this country. Indeed, from the first Arab conquest in the 1st/7th ce…

(also, but more rarely: Dār al-ṣanʿa ). Etymologically, this compound can be translated “industrial establishment, workshop”. In fact it is always applied to a State workshop: for example, under the Umayyads in Spain to establishments for gold and silver work intended for the sovereign, and for the manufacture and stock-piling of arms. But the sense most widely used is that of “establishment for the construction and equipment of warships”: dār ṣināʿa li-ins̲h̲āʾ al-sufun ; or simply dār al-ins̲h̲āʾ , which also occurs. This does not include the arsen…

, blessing. In the Ḳurʾān, the word is used only in the plural: barakāt , like raḥma and salām , are sent to man by God. It can be translated by “beneficent force, of divine origin, which causes superabundance in the physical sphere and prosperity and happiness in the psychic order”. Naturally, the text of the Ḳurʾān ( kalāmu-llāh ) is charged with baraka . God can implant an emanation of baraka in the person of his prophets and saints: Muḥammad and his descendants are especially endowed therewith. These sacred personages, in their turn, may communicate the effluvi…

, agriculture. Falḥ , the act of cleaving and cutting, when applied to the soil has the meaning of “to break up in order to cultivate”, or “to plough”. Fallāḥ “ploughman”, filāḥa “ploughing”. But from pre-Islamic times the word filāḥa has assumed a wider meaning to denote the occupation of husbandry, agriculture. In this sense it is synonymous with zirāʿa , to which the ancients preferred filāḥa (all the earlier writers called their works on agriculture Kitāb al-Filāḥa ). At the present time this latter word is very widely used in North Africa, both …

Arabic name of a small ancient Berber tribe in south-western Morocco, doubtless related to the Ṣanhād̲j̲a group [ q.v.]. In association with the Lamṭa [ q.v.], their kinsmen, they led a nomadic life south of the Anti-Atlas. But, at quite ¶ an early date, some of them began to settle in the western part of This mountain (D̲j̲abal Hankīsa); their chief settlement was at Tāg̲h̲d̲j̲īzat, now known as Tāg̲h̲d̲j̲īd̲j̲t, 80 km. south-south-east of Tīznīt. It was among them that ʿAbd Allāh b. Yāsīn was born, the originator of the religious and political movement of the Murābiṭūn [ q.v.]. The Ḏj̲azū…