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(“deifiers of ʿAlī”), a vague and popular designation of sects connected with, and issued from, S̲h̲īʿa extremism ( g̲h̲ulāt , [ q.v.]). In Persia and Kurdistān it covers chiefly the Ahl-i Ḥaḳḳ [ q.v.] and Ḳi̊zi̊l-bas̲h̲ [ q.v.], but may occasionally refer to such smaller communities as Ṣarli, S̲h̲abbak [ qq.v] etc. (Ed.)

, a basalt desert, “a district covered with black broken stones, which looks as if it had been burned by fire”. Such ḥarras , which owe their origin to subterranean volcanoes which have repeatedly covered the undulating desert with a bed of lava, are found particularly in the east of Ḥawrān and stretch from there to Medina. Al-Samhūdī, K̲h̲ulāṣat al-wafāʾ bi-ak̲h̲bār dār al-Muṣṭafā , Mecca ed., 1316, 38 gives a detailed description of a great earthquake at Medina which began on 1 D̲j̲umādā II 654/26 June 1256 and lasted several days (see also Wüstenfeld, Geschichte von Madyna …

, conventionally Tindouf , a small town in the southwestern part of modern Algeria, in the governorate ( wilāya ) of Saoura and at the southwestern end of the Hamada of the Dra near where the modern borders of Algeria, Morocco, the former Spanish Sahara and Mauritania meet (lat. 27° 42’ N., long. 80° 10’ W.). It is now on the road connecting western Alger…

Pas̲h̲a (1272-1343/1855-1924), late Ottoman statesman and close counselor of Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd II [ q.v.]. Born in Damascus (hence his nickname “ʿArab”) as the son of a wealthy local notable, Hōlō Pas̲h̲ā, he was educated in his hometown and in Beirut and became proficient in Turkish and French. Counted among the reformers, he edited a weekly in Arabic and Turkish, named Dimas̲h̲ḳ . Moving to Istanbul, he eventually joined the ranks of the chamberlains ( ḳurenā ) of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and then became a Second Secretary ( ikind̲j̲i kātib ) of the Mābeyn [ q.v.]. He gained great influence ¶ at co…

, the name of various places in the Middle East. These include: 1. A settlement of Diyār Muḍar in al-Ḏj̲azīra, placed by Yāḳūt in the district of al-Ruhā [ q.v.] or Edessa and said to have been laid out by the ʿAbbāsid governor of Syria ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ṣāliḥ. He also quotes a (now lost) history of Mawṣil by the Ḵh̲ālidiyyāni [ q.v.] that the caliph al-Mahdī began the work of fortification there. …

(a., pl. wulāt ), from the root w-l-y “to be near something”, hence “to be in charge of something”, comes to mean “person in authority, governor, prefect, administrator manager”, with the maṣdar of wilāya for his office and/or sphere of competence. The word occurs once in the Ḳurʾān, XIII, 12/11, applied to God in the sense of “patron, protector”. See on aspects of the function of the governor in mediaeval Islamic times, amīr . A near-synonym is ḥāk…

(a.), pls. aymān , aymun , literally, “the right hand”, but often used in Arabic with the transferred sense of “oath”. In human life and activity, the right hand often symbolises power and the ability to initiate actions. The Arabic word yamīn has such connotations as fortune and prosperity, whilst the wider term yad …

, a village in the oasis of Marw in K̲h̲urāsān, according to al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , ed. Ḥaydarābād, ix, 94-5 (who names various ʿulamāʾ from it; cf. also Yāḳūt, Buldān , ed. Beirut, iv, 49), two farsak̲h̲s from the chef-lieu Marw al-S̲h̲āhid̲j̲ān [ q.v.]. Its chief f…

, a nisba borne by members of the famed Egyptian family of s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ s of the Bakriyya Ṣūfī order [see al-bakrī b. abi ’l-surbūr and bakriyya ]; …

, a town of Kirmān province, central Persia (lat. 30° 25ʹ N., long. 56° 00ʹ E., altitude 1,572 m/5,156 ft.), situated on the Yazd road 120 km/74 miles to the west of Kirmān city. It is the cheflieu of a s̲h̲ahrastān or district of the same name. Known also as Bahrāmābād, in 1991 it had an estimated population of 87,798 ( Preliminary …

, name given to the eastern Hazāra inhabiting the mountainous region of central Afg̲h̲ānistān between Kābul and Harāt; in Irān, the region of Mas̲h̲had, Balūčistān (near Quetta), and in the S.S.R. of Turkmenistān, the oasis of Kus̲h̲ka (district of Maki) [see hazāra ]. (Ed.)

(A.), son. The Arab grammarians and lexicographers, who tend to trace all words to three root elements, generally attribute ibn to a root *b.n.w. ¶ and consider that it derives from a hypothetical *banaw un by loss of the 3rd sonant radical. Others state that the root is b.n.y. and that the word ibn comes from the verb banā / yabnī ʿalā “set up [a tent] on”, and, by extension, “marry”. In reality, we have an ancient Semitic biliteral, which is nevertheless triliteralized in the relative adjective banawī and in the abstract noun bunuwwa . The fern, bint , formed with the fem. indicator -t, has a ri…

, a slave singing-girl ( ḳayna [ q.v.]) in the earliest days of Islam. She is mentioned as being in the poetry and music-making circles of Medina in ʿUt̲h̲mān’s caliphate, i.e. the middle years of the 7th century A.D., and as being the teacher ( …

, a town and district in southern Kurdistān, since the Ottoman reconquest of ʿIrāḳ from the Ṣafawids in the 11th/17th …

(a.), name. In Arabic-Islamic usage the full name of a person is usually made up of the following elements: 1) kunya; 2) ism; 3) nasab ) ; 4) nisba . A certain number of persons are also known by a nickname ( laḳab ) or a pejorative sobriquet ( nabaz ) which, when the name is stated in full, cornes after the nisba. From the end of the 3rd/9th century, the use of an honorific before or after the kunya became more and more frequent with persons of some importance. 1) The kunya [ q.v.], usually a name compound with Abū (“father of”) or Umm …

(a., pl. awsima ), in modern Arabic usage a decoration, order, medal or badge of honour. The roots w-s-m and w-s̲h̲-m mean basically “to mark, brand [an animal]”, an important feature of nomadic life when ownership of beasts like horses and camels had to be determinable. For this idea of branding, marking, in Arabic desert life, see …

(a.), writing. i.—In the Arab world. The Arabic writing used, according to tradition, as early as the lifetime of Muḥammad, for setting down the sacred text of the Ḳurʾān, subsequently underwent a diffusion corresponding to the expansion of the Islamic faith and to the development of the Islamic civilisation in which it came to full fruition. A script of alphabetic and phonological type, belonging to the vast family of Semitic scripts, it shows in this capacity the characteristics of a consonantal script, with vocalisation signs added in the form of …

, purification incumbent upon the Believer after the fulfilment of his natural needs. This practice, which is described in detail, is obligatory (recommended only according to Abū Ḥanīfa) and must be carried out either immediately, or before performing the ṣalāt or any other act which requires a state of ritual purity. (Ed.) Bibliography All the works of fiḳh, ik̲h̲tilāf, etc. deal wit…

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, modern Turkish Ulu Dağ, a small but imposing mountain range in northwestern Anatolia, to the south-east of Bursa [ q.v.] and now in the il or province of Bursa. It is some 32 km/20 miles by 13 km/8 miles in extent, and its forest-clad slopes rise to a peak of 2,493 m/8,170 feet (lat. 40° 05′ N., long. 28° …