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or Mirḳās (a.), a kind of mutton sausage. There would probably be no reason to devote an article to this culinary speciality had it not enjoyed for some time in Europe, and especially in France, an unexpected success, being known as “merguez”, after the arrival of a considerable number of Mag̲h̲ribī immigrants and above all, repatriates from the lands of North Africa, where the word and the thing itself were not widespread, it seems, until a relatively recent period. Thus there is a problem worthy of examination. Sausages are not unknown in the East, where they are called by the Turkish name sud̲j̲uḳ , or the Latin laḳāniḳ/maḳāniḳ/naḳāniḳ which Dozy has already mentioned ( Suppl, s.vv.), tracing them back to lucanica , which shows a Roman influence, and remarking that Ibn al-Ḥas̲h̲s̲h̲aāʾ’s gloss on the Manṣūrī of al-Rāzī explains the first of these Three words as the Mag̲h̲ribī mirkās . In the West als…

, ʿAbd al-Bāḳī , an ʿIrāḳī poet and official, born in Mosul in 1204/1790, who traced back his ancestry to ʿUmar b. al-K̲h̲aṭṭāb, whence his nisba of al-Fārūḳī or al-ʿUmarī. While still very young, he became an assistant of the wālī of Mosul and was later appointed governor of the town by Dāwūd Pas̲h̲a [ q.…

, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim Hibat Allāh b. Abī ʿAbd Allāh al-Faḍl b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī al-Bag̲h̲dādī , traditionist, oculist, and especially poet, of Bag̲h̲dād, born in 478 or 479/1086, died 28 Ramadān 558/30 August 1163. Although he was the author of medical works which have not survived, and also transmitted ḥadīt̲h̲s without incurring the reproof of critics, Ibn al-Ḳaṭṭān is known chiefly for his vigorous satires which, as Goldziher says ( Muh . St., ii, 60), “spared neither the caliph nor anyone else”, for his mud̲j̲ūn and for his wit, as we…

(a.), pl. ḳuṣṣāṣ …

, mule (pl. big̲h̲āl , fem. bag̲h̲la ; but some think that bag̲h̲l denotes the hybrid without distinction of sex, and that bag̲h̲la is a singulative form which applies both to the male and female); the same word denotes both the hinny, the offspring of a stallion and a she-ass (cf. however kawdar in al-Masʿūdī, ii, 408; contra : al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Big̲…

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, Isḥāḳ b. Ḥassān b. Ḳūhī , Arab poet, died probably under the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn, about 206/821. The scion of a noble family of Sogdiana, which he s…

(Ar. pl. balāyā ), a name given, in the pre-Islamic era, to the camel (more rarely the mare) which it was the custom to tether at the grave of its master, its head turned to the rear and covered with a saddle-cloth (see al-D̲j̲āḥịz, Tarbīʿ , ed. Pellat, index), and to allow to die of starvation; in some cases, the victim was burnt and, in other cases, stuffed with t̲h̲umām (Ibn Abiʾ l-Ḥadīd, S̲h̲arḥ Nahd̲j̲ alBalāg̲h̲a , iv 436). Muslim tradition sees in this practice proof that the Arabs of the d̲j̲āhiliyya believed in the resurrection, because the animal thus s…

“the wall of the Old Woman” (the form Ḥāʾiṭ al-Ḥad̲j̲ūz is sometimes found, ¶ notably in al-Harawī) the name given by Arabic writers to a wall said to have been built by the mythical queen of Egypt, Dalūka [= al-ʿAd̲j̲ūz], who is said to have mounted the throne after the army of al-Walīd b. Muṣʿab [ sic = the Pharaoh of Moses], in pursuit of the Israelites, had been engulfed by the Red Sea. In order to protect the surviving women, child…

(Nukūr) was the name of a town in northern Morocco (Rīf) situated approximately 140 km./90 miles (by road) to the west of Melilla [ q.v.], in a plain which extends between two small coastal rivers, joining at a place called Agdal [on this term, see āgdāl ], then separating before flowing into the Mediterranean, the Nakūr and the G̲h̲ays/G̲h̲īs: a riḅāt [ q.v.] had been constructed on an elevation. The town itself was built some 10 km/7 miles from the Mediterranean coast among inlets which sheltered a number of small harbours. The best known, al-Mazimma, was situated at the rear of a bay protected by several islands; the Spaniards gave it the name of Alhucemas [see EI 1, s.v.] the French, that of Albouzeme/Albouzemes and modern Moroccans call it al-Husayma [ …

, the name of one of the seven types of post-classical poetry [see kān wa-kān ]. It was invented by the people of Bag̲h̲dād, and is connected with the saḥūr , i.e. the last part of the night when, during the month of Ramaḍān, it is still permitted to eat and drink and to take meals at that time; it derives its name from the expression ḳūmā li ’l-saḥūr which the singers recite after each strophe of a ramal or zad̲j̲al in praise of the master of the house. Contrary to what is generally believed, it does not seem that ḳūmā is the imperative dual, “Arise, both of you!”, but the singular ḳūman >ḳūmā …

b. Ḏj̲abala al-Asadī , satirical Arab poet of the 1st/7th century. Physically deformed, for he was hunch-backed and lame, he possessed some spitefulness, which shows in his diatribes, but he had a lively wit, prompt repartee, humour, and the subtlety of the G̲h̲āḍira clan to which he belonged [cf. al-g̲h̲āḍirī ]. He was born ¶ at Kūfa and lived there till ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr drove out the Umayyad authorities (64/684) whom he followed to Damascus where he was admitted to the intimacy of ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān. He then went back to Kūfa and was closely connected with Bis̲h̲r b. Marwān [ q.v.] whom he accompanied to Baṣra when the latter…

, an Arabic word used particularly in the Beduin dialect form fəllāg , pl. fəllāga (in the western press principally in the pl., with the spelling: fellagar fellagah, fellagha ), and denoting in the first place the brigands and subsequently the rebels who appeared in Tunisia and Algeria. A connexion with falaḳa [ q.v.] “instrument of torture”, of which the etymology is…

, Arabic name of a…

(a.) is one of those words whose richness discourages any attempt at exact translation. In its weakest sense, it approximates to hazl “jest” as opposed to d̲j̲idd “seriousness” [see al-d̲j̲idd wa ’l hazl ] and corresponds in an appreciable degree to frivolity. But its semantic field extends widely to the point that it can mean the most shameless debauchery, including vulgarity, coarseness, impudence, libertinage, obscenity and everything that may provoke coarse laughter, such as scatological humour. This word embarrassed the Arab lexicographers, who connected it with the root m-d̲j̲-n , which implies an idea of toughness and roughness; they glossed the participle mād̲j̲in , pl. mud̲j̲d̲j̲ān , which often parallels k̲h̲alīʿ “libertine, debauched”, as “one who commits sins, dishonourable acts, and is insensible to any reproach, due to his roughness and toughness”, or “who does not bother about what he does or what anyone says to him.” For al-Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī ( Asās al-balāg̲h̲a…

, Arab tribe, probably of Yemeni origin, who, having come from Arabia at the same time as the Banū Hilāl [ q.v.], crossed Egypt and Libya, entered the Mag̲h̲rib towards the middle of the 5th/11th century, led a nomadic life for a short time to the west of Gabès (Ibn K̲h̲aldūn. Berbères , i, 36), but left only a small number of their members in the south of Ifrīḳiya ( Berbères, i, 116; cf. R. Brunschvig, Ḥafṣides , ii, 170); in fact, they proceeded towards the west ( tag̲h̲riba ), following the northern border of the Sahara (cf. al-Zayyānī, Turd̲j̲umāna , Fr. tr. Confourier, in AM, vi [1906], 448, w…

al-Kinānī , a minor poet of Kūfa who lived in the last years of the Umayyads and the first ones of the ʿAbbāsids, making him a muk̲h̲aḍram [ q.v.] al-dawlatayn. G.E. von Grunebaum ( Three Arabic poets of the early ¶ Abbasid age, in Orientalia …

, Abu ’l-Hasan Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm , Bag̲h̲dādī philologist who according to all the known sources, died in 299/311-12; this date is nevertheless challenged by Yāḳūt who, believing that al-Ḵh̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī is in error, opts for 320/932. He was the pupil of al-Mubarrad and T̲h̲aʿlab [ q.vv.], and is said to have brought together the doctrines of the grammatical schools of both Baṣra and Kūfa, though his own preference was for the former; he was moreover the author of a work, no longer surviving, a K. al-Masāʾil ʿalā mad̲h̲hab al-naḥwiyyīn mimmā k̲h̲talafa fīhi al-Kūfi…

, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar , a minor poet who was born and lived in Baṣra. He was born at some time in the middle of the 2nd/8th century and died at a similarly uncertain date, probably during the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn (198-218/813-33) or during that of al-Muʿtaṣim (218-27/833-42). ¶ His existence, of which barely nothing is known, has attracted scant attention on the part of biographers in that he seems to have followed an unremarkable and leisurely career, …

, the name given in Muslim Spain to kinds of catalogues in which scholars enumerated, in one form or another, their masters and the subjects or works studied under their direction. The word fahrasa is an Arabicization of the Persian fihrist by means of a double vocalization -a- and the closing of the final tāʾ , a fairly frequent modification. In al-Andalus, it is completely synonymous with barnāmad̲j̲ , which is also Persian, while in the east it corresponds with t̲h̲abat , mas̲h̲īk̲h̲a ( mas̲h̲yak̲h̲a ) or muʿd̲j̲am (this last word is also used in the west). In the east, the best known of these works is al-Muʿd̲j̲am al-mufahras of Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar al-ʿAsḳalānī (d. 852/1449), still in manuscript (see Brockelmann, S II, 73), who …