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, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Ruʿaynī al-Ḳurṭubī al-Kafīf , Andalusian poet and kātib , considered one of the greatest scholars of the early 5th/11th century in the field of Arabic language and literature. Son of a grain merchant (hence the name by which he was commonly known, often wrongly written Ibn al-K̲h̲ayyāṭ), he owed his chance to study to a family of ḳuḍāt at Cordova, the Banū D̲h̲akwān [see ibn d̲h̲akwān ], who had taken him under their care. He was afflicted from birth by a malformation of the eyes and lost his sight at an …

, Abu ’l-Mustahill , an Arab poet of Kūfa (60-126/680-743) who is not to be confused with two earlier and lesser known Asadīs, al-Kumayt b. Maʿrūf and al-Kumayt b. Thaʿlaba (see Ibn al-Kalbī-Caskel, Ḏj̲amhara . ii, 373; Ibn Sallām, Ṭabaḳāt ; al-Āmidī, Muʾtalif , no. 571; Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Iṣāba , nos. 7498 and 7499; etc.). Al-Kumayt applied himself in an indirect fashion to the poetry and the language of the Bedouins, and he was acquainted with poets such as al-Farazdak, Ru’ba b. al-ʿAd̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ and the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲ī al-Ṭirimmāḥ, whose hostility towar…

, patronymic of an Andalusian family, several members of which played an important rôle during the Umayyad caliphate. The most famous of them is without doubt Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī Ibn Ḥazm [see the following article], but some brief details on the Banū Ḥazm are given here, since confusions often arise. (1) ʿAlī’s father was Abū ʿUmar Aḥmād b. Saʿīd b. Ḥazm b. G̲h̲ālib b. Ṣāliḥ b. K̲h̲alaf . A dignitary at the court of the ḥād̲j̲ib al-Manṣūr Ibn Abī ʿĀmir and that of his son al-Muẓaffar, he was greatly affected by the serious events which occurred in 399/1009 [see al-andalus …

, Abū Bakr al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Bas̲h̲s̲h̲ār b. Ziyād Ibn al-ʿAllāf (so called because his father was a seller of ḳatt ) al-Nahrawānī , poet and traditionist who lived to be a hundred (218-318/833-930), becoming blind in his old age. He frequented the court at Bag̲h̲dād and was an intimate particularly of al-Muʿtaḍid and Ibn al-Muʿtazz. He knew much poetry and composed a great deal himself, so much indeed that his works, collected by a member of his family and accompanied by accounts of his relations with the persons on whom he had written panegyrics, occupied four hundred waraḳa …

, muḥammad b. isḥāḳ b. ibrāhīm b. abi ’l-mug̲h̲īra b. māhān (213-75/828-88), a famous humorist of the ʿAbbāsid court, who was also a faḳīh , astrologer, oneiromancer, poet and man of letters, and who wrote some forty works, both serious and jesting, even burlesque and obscene. Of Kūfan origin, he was first of all ḳāḍī in the district from which he derived his nisba , Ṣaymara, near Baṣra, at the mouth of the Nahr Maʿḳil, but his vivid penchant for coarse humour very early earned him a reputation as a buffoon sufficient for him to be admi…

, pre-Islamic Arab poet. The name Laḳīt does not necessarily mean that the person bearing it was a foundling; but in the present instance, whilst the genealogists know all the poet’s ancestors (see Ibn al-Kalbī-Caskel, D̲j̲amhara , Tab. 174 and Register, ii, 377), the ductus of his father’s name has given rise to divergent readings; maʿbad (Ibn al-Kalbī, loc. cit.; al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Bayān , i, 42, 43, 52; Ibn Durayd, Is̲h̲tiḳāḳ , 104; al-Āmidī, Muʾtalif , 175); maʿmar (Ibn Ḳutayba, S̲h̲iʿr , 152-4; LA, s.v. l-ḳ-ṭ ); and yaʿmar/yaʿmur (al-S̲h̲ammāk̲h̲, apud al-Mubarrad, Kāmil …

, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar, also known as Ibn Abi ’l-ʿAzāḳir , a heretic of the ʿAbbāsid period (d. 322/934), who went so far as to claim that the deity was incarnated in himself. Initially an Imāmī committed to the study of alchemy, he devoted to this discipline several works such as Kitāb al-K̲h̲amāʾir , K. al-Ḥad̲j̲ar , S̲h̲arḥ K. al-Raḥma of D̲j̲ābir [ q.v.]. He subsequently formulated the doctrines of the ʿAzāḳiriyya, borrowing elements from various philosophical and religious groups: antinomians ( ibāḥiyya [see ibāḥa ]), upholders of ḥulūl [ q.v.], Mazdaeans, Manichaeans, etc. He had som…

(a.), “encyclopaedia”. 1. In Arabic. In the sense of “a work dealing with all the sciences and arts”, the idea of an encyclopaedia was not expressed in Classical Arabic, and it was not until the 19th century that the expression dāʾirat al-maʿārif “ circle of items of knowledge” was coined, corresponding approximately to the etymological meaning of the word current in Western languages, and not until the 20th that a neologism, mawsūʿa , emerged, which contains an idea of breadth, of wide coverage, etc. Nevertheless, the absence of a perfectly ad…

(a.) generic term (nomen unitatis: k̲h̲ubza ) meaning bread, whatever the cereal employed, e.g. corn [see ḳamḥ ], barley [see s̲h̲aʿīr ], rice [see ruzz ] etc., and whatever the quality, the shape and the method of preparation. There exists nevertheless, in literary Arabic and, to a greater degree in the various dialects, a certain number of metaphors and of specific terms which cannot all be mentioned in this brief article, and the ellipsis of the word k̲h̲ubz , in expressions denoting a particular type, causes the semantic range of the fundamental notion to be appreciably enlarged: thus k̲…

, asʿad b. ʿiṣma , one of the most famous informants of the Baṣran philologists in the 2nd/8th century, notably, of al-Aṣmaʿī [ q.v.]. This Bedouin teacher, settled in southern ʿIrāḳ, may have received his curious kunya ( baydāʾ = “desert”) from the admirers forming a circle around him. He also wrote poetry, transmitted by another teacher, a certain Abū ʿAdnān, who is allegedly the author of several works (in particular, of a K. al-Naḥwiyyīn and a K. G̲h̲arīb al-ḥadīt̲h̲ , ¶ Fihrist , 68), and whom al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ praised greatly for his erudition and his fine language ( Bayān …

, surname given to an Arab poet who lived in the 6th century A.D., belonged to ¶ the tribe of Dubayʿa and was called D̲j̲arīr b. ʿAbd al-Masīh; another name, ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā, given to his father in some sources, appears to signify that this polytheist had been the first of his family to convert to Christianity. Al-Mutalammis was the maternal uncle of Ṭarafa [ q.v.], and both figure in a narrative which may contain only an essence of truth but that the philologists and anthologists of the Middle Ages considered to be a trustworthy account of a series of perfect…

, surname of the Syrian Arabic poet ʿAbd al-Salām b. Rag̲h̲bān b. ¶ ʿAbd al-Salām b. Ḥabīb b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Rag̲h̲bān b. Yazīd b. Tamīm. This latter had embraced Islam at Muʾta [ q.v.] under the auspices of Ḥabīb b. Maslama al-Fihrī [ q.v.], whose mawlā he became. The great-grandfather of the poet, Ḥabīb, who I was head of the dīwān of salaries under al-Manṣūr, gave his name to a mosque at Bag̲h̲dād, masd̲j̲id Ibn Rag̲h̲bān (al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Buk̲h̲alāʾ , ed. Ḥād̲j̲irī 327, trans. Pellat, index; al-Ḏj̲ahs̲h̲iyārī, 102; Le Strange, Baghdad , 95). Dīk al-Ḏj̲inn, born at…

, Abu ’l-Ḥakam (229-76/844-88), sixth Umayyad amīr of Cordova and the son of a slave belonging to Muḥammad I b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II (d. 273/876). During his father’s lifetime, he filled military functions on various occasions, somewhat honorific to begin with, since it is mentioned that, as early as 242/856, he had gone to blockade—without great success—Toledo [see ṭulayṭula ] which had rebelled. Over the next years, he had occasion to command some summer expeditions ( ṣāʾifa ) against the Christians, notably in 251/865. In 263/877 he marched against Merida (see mārida …

, Abū Miḥd̲j̲an, a negro poet of the Arabic language who is said to have belonged, originally, to a Kinānī of Waddān, a small village close to Medina (see al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , Arabic index, s.v.); it could, however, be supposed that the locality in question is rather the main settlement of the oasis of D̲j̲ufra [ q.v.] which bears the same name, since the available information regarding the biography of Nuṣayb indicates that he was a native of Africa. In any case, attempting to establish his origin would be futile, since this has been the object of…

(a.), pl. k̲h̲iṣyān “castrated man, eunuch”. I.—In the central Islamic lands. From the 4th/10th century especially, several euphemisms were applied to eunuchs, who were numerous in the palaces and frequently invested with important functions: notably k̲h̲ādim (coll. k̲h̲adam , pl. k̲h̲uddām ), muʿallim , s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ , ustād̲h̲ (see M. Canard, Ak̲h̲bâr ar-Râdî ..., i, 210-1, note), later on ṭawās̲h̲ī (which, according to al-Maḳrīzī, Hist , des Sultans Mamlouks , tr. Quatremère, 1/2 (1849), 132, comes from the Turkish ṭābūs̲h̲ī = Osmanli̊ tapug̲h̲či̊ …

(pl. ʿatāʾir ) denoted, among the Arabs of the d̲j̲āhiliyya , a ewe (and by extensions its sacrifice) offered as a sacrifice to a pagan divìnity, either as a thanksgiving following the fulfilment of a prayer (concerning in particular the increase of flocks), or when a flock reached the total of a hundred head (cf. the word faraʿa ) ; the head of the idols before which the sacrifice was performed was smeared with the blood of the victims. If one bears in mind on the one hand that these sacrifices (which were also called rad̲j̲abiyya ; hence the phrase rad̲j̲d̲j̲aba ʿatīrat an) took place in the m…

(A.), “bravery”, “valour” (used nowadays together with ḥamās , to translate “enthusiasm”), is the title of a certain number of poetic anthologies which generally include brief extracts chosen for their literary value in the eyes of the anthologists and classified according to the genre to which they belong or the idea which they express; these works are related to a more general category, that of “poetic themes”, maʿānī ’l-s̲h̲iʿr [ q.v.], but differ from it in the apparent effacement of the author who abstains from any comparison or judgement and imposes his tast…

b. Abi K̲h̲alīfa Muḥammad b. S̲h̲uʿayd b. Ṣak̲h̲r al-D̲j̲umaḥī , (d. 305/917-18), littérateur, poet, traditionist and ḳaḍī of Baṣra. He was a mawlā of D̲j̲umaḥ of Ḳurays̲h̲ and the nephew, on his mother’s side, of Ibn Sallām [ q.v.]. He was born in and died at Baṣra, where he made himself the transmitter of a fairly extensive number of religious, historical, literary and genealogical traditions. He also received a legal training sufficient for him to act as the ḳāḍī of Baṣra towards 294/907 with functions delegated by the Mālikī ḳāḍī Abū Muḥammad Yūsuf b. Yaʿḳū…

, abū muḥammad sulaymān b. mihrān , traditionist and Ḳurʾān "reader". Born in 60/679-680, or 10 Muḥarram 61/10 October 681, of a Persian father, he lived at al-Kūfa and died probably in Rabīʿ I 148/May 765. He received traditions from al-Zuhrī and Anas b. Mālik, and his instructors in ḳirāʾa , were: Mud̲j̲āhid, al-Nak̲h̲aʿī, Yaḥyā b. Wat̲h̲t̲h̲āb, ʿĀṣim; Ḥamza was his disciple. His "reading", which followed the tradition of Ibn Masʿūd and Ubayy, appeared in the list of "the fourteen". A great admirer of ʿAlī, he is supposed to have furnished the poet al-Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī [ q.v.] with the m…

, S̲h̲ihāb al-dīn Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Tilimsānī al-Fāsī al-Mālikī , man of letters and biographer, born at Tilimsān (Tlemcen) in ca. 986/1577, d. at Cairo in D̲j̲umādā II 1041/Jan. 1632. He belonged to a family of scholars, natives of Maḳḳara (about 12 miles from Msīla [see masīla ]). One of his paternal ancestors, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Maḳḳarī, had been chief ḳāḍī of Fās and one of the teachers of the famous Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-K̲h̲aṭīb [ q.v.] of Granada. He himself received a wide education from his early youth; one of his principal teach…