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, (modern al-S̲h̲arāʾiʿ?), a deep and irregular valley with clusters of palm trees, situated a day’s journey from Mecca on one of the roads to al-Ṭāʾif [ q.v.], the scene of the famous battle, the second mentioned by name in the Ḳurʾān (IX, 25-26), fought early in S̲h̲awwāl 8/630 soon after the conquest ( fatḥ ) of Mecca. The confederate tribe of Hawāzin with its subsection of T̲h̲aḳīf began mobilizing its forces soon after the Prophet left Medina. The confederates apparently hoped to attack the Muslim force investing Mecca. As…

, Syria, etymologically, “the left-hand region”, because in ancient Arab usage the speaker in western or central Arabia was considered to face the rising sun and to have Syria on his left and the Arabian peninsula, with Yaman (“the rig̲h̲thand region”), on his right (cf. al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ ., iii, 140-1 = § 992; al-Muḳaddasī, partial French tr. A. Miquel, La meilleure répartition pour la connaissance des provinces , Damascus 1963, 155-6, both with other, fanciful explanations). In early Islamic usage, the term bilād al-S̲h̲ām covered what in early 20th-…