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, a Copt maiden, according to one statement, daughter of a man named S̲h̲amʿūn, who was sent with her sister Sīrīn by the Muḳawḳis [ q.v.]in the year 6 or 7/627-9 to Muḥammad as a gift of honour (according to another authority there were four of them). The Prophet made her his concubine, while he gave Sīrīn to Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit [ q.v.]. He was very devoted to her and gave her a house in the upper town of Medina, where he is said to have visited her by day and night; this house was called after her the mas̲h̲raba of the mother of Ibrāhīm. To the great joy of the Prophet,…

, an ancient oasis settlement of northwestern Arabia, now in Saudi Arabia (lat. 27° 37’ N., long. 38° 30’ E.). According to the mediaeval Islamic geographers, it lay in the region called al-Maḥad̲j̲d̲j̲āt, and was four days’ journey south of Dūmat al-D̲j̲andal [ q.v.]; al-Muḳaddasī, 107, 250, 252, localises it at three stages from al-Ḥid̲j̲r [ q.v.] (in fact, Taymāʾ is some 110 km/70 miles from al-Ḥid̲j̲r/ Madā’in Ṣāliḥ), four stages from Tabūk [ q.v.] and four from the Wādī ’l-Ḳurā [ q.v.]. It lies in a depression, the length of which J.A. Jaussen and R. Sauvignac put at 3.2…

¶ , “the Pure Soul”, ʿAlid rebel, together with his full brother Ibrāhīm [ q.v.] against the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr at Medina in 145/762-3. He and Ibrāhīm had, according to al-Wāḳidī, been brought up as future rulers, and Muḥammad was called al-Mahdī by his father. As early, as the reign of the Umayyad caliph His̲h̲ām, the two sectarians al-Mug̲h̲īra b. Saʿīd al-ʿId̲j̲lī and Bayān b. Samʿān [ q.v.], who did not recognise Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Bāḳir [ q.v.], endeavoured to make propaganda for him. When signs of the imminent collapse of Umayyad rule became apparent after …

, the Acco (ʿAkkō) of the Old Testament, the Ptolemais of the Greeks, the Acre of the French, town on the Palestinian seaboard. ʿAkkā was captured by the Arabs under the command of S̲h̲uraḥbīl b. Ḥasana. As the town had suffered in the wars with the Byzantines, Muʿāwiya rebuilt it, and constructed there naval yards which the Caliph His̲h̲ām later transferred to Tyre. Ibn Ṭūlūn constructed great stone embankments round the port; al-Maḳdisī, whose grandfather executed the work, gives an interestin…

an isolated mountain (known locally as a ḥaḍba ) located in Nad̲j̲d at about 24° 48′ N, 43° 54′ E, some 60 km. north-west of al-Dawādimī, 25 km. south and east of Nafī, and 15 km. west of Wādī al-Ris̲h̲āʾ. The mountain, which consists of reddish stone, rises abruptly from the surrounding gravel plains. About seven km. in length and three km. wide, D̲j̲abala runs from south-west to northeast with three main wādīs descending from its slopes…

(a.) verbal noun of ṭāfa with bi of place, “encircling”; in the language of religious cults the running round or circumambulation of a sacred object, a stone, altar, etc. There are traces of the rite having existed among the Israelites, cf. especially Ps. xxvi. 6, and the ceremony of the feast of booths in the time of the Second Temple, where the altar is circumambulated once in the first six days and seven times on the seventh. The rite, however, was also found among Persians, Indians, Buddhists, Romans and others and is t…

(a.), religion, sect. Although the Arab philologists claim this term as a native Arabic word (cf. Nöldeke, in ZDMG, lvii ‘903], 413), their explanations are so farfetched as to render it almost certain that the term stems from Hebrew and Jewish and Christian Aramaic milla , Syriac melltā “utterance, word”, translating the Greek logos . It does not seem to have any pre-Islamic attestations, hence may have been a borrowing by Muḥammad himself. In the Ḳurʾān, it always means “religion”. It occurs fifteen times, including three ti…

[English edition] حياة النبيّ ومسيرته وفقا للشّهادة [انظره] التي هي جوهر العقيدة الإسلاميّة، فإنّ الاعتقاد في أنّ محمَّدا رسولُ الله لا يسبقه إلاّ الاعتقاد أن لا إله إلاّ الله. ولمحمّد دور جليل للغاية صُلْبَ تلك العقيدة. وقد أكّد القرآن والسنة الإسلاميّة في الآن نفسه أنّ محمّدًا هو إنسان خالص الإنسانيّة ليست له أيّة قوّة خارقة. وأنْ يكون محمّدٌ واحداً من أعظم الأشخاص في تاريخ العالم من جهة ما كان للحركة التي أسّسها من تأثير عالميّ، فذلك أمرٌ لا يمكن التّشكيك فيه جدّيّا. فكيف حدث نجاحه غير العادي؟ هناك إجابة لاهوتيّة هي: أنّ الله اختار محمّدا رسولا ل…