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, ʿalī b. mūsā b. ʿalī b. arfaʿ (Rāfiʿ) rāsuh al-andalusī al-ḏj̲ayyānī (515-93/1121-97), a preacher of Fez, and member of a family of whom one person (Ibn Arfaʿ Rāsuh) is mentioned in the 5th/11th century at Toledo as a composer of muwas̲h̲s̲h̲aḥāt (Ibn al-K̲h̲aṭīb has preserved ten examples in his D̲j̲ays̲h̲ al-taws̲h̲īḥ , Nos. 49-58; cf. S.M. Stern, Les chansons mozarabes, Palermo 1953, 43-4; E. García Gómez, Métrica de la moaxaja y métrica española , in al-And ., xxxix (1974), 25). ʿAlī b. Mūsā’s fame rests on a poem in 1,414 verses (rhyme -ṭā , metre ṭawīl ) on the…

(p.), lit. “the one sitting on the [sheep’s] skin”, the title given to the baba or head of a dervish tekke in Persian and Ottoman Turkish Ṣūfī practice, e.g. amongst the Bektās̲h̲īs [see bektās̲h̲iyya ]. (Ed.) Bibliography J.K. Birge, The Bektas̲h̲i order of dervishes, London 1937, 57 n. 2, 269.

(t.), the Ottoman Turkish form of Ar. mufattis̲h̲ , lit. “one who searches out, enquires into something”. In the Ottoman legal system of the 12th/18th century, below the Great Mollās [see mollā ] there was a layer of five judges called müfettis̲h̲ , whose duties were to oversee and enquire into the conducting of the Imperial ewkāf or pious foundations [see waḳf ], three of them being resident in Istanbul and one each in Edirne and Bursa (see Gibb and Bowen, ii, 92). In the 19th century, and with the coming of the Tanẓīmāt [ q.v.] reforms, müfettis̲h̲ was the designation for the overseers an…

, a right-bank affluent of the Greater Zāb river [see Zāb ], which drains the kūra of Nak̲h̲la, to the east of Mawṣil; locally, it is called Barrīs̲h̲ū. It was on the banks of this river that there took place, on 10 Muḥarram 67/6 August 686, a decisive battle between Ibrāhīm b. Mālik al-As̲h̲tar [ q.v.] and ʿUbayd Allāh b. Ziyād [ q.v.]. After having suffered a defeat at ʿAyn Warda [ q.v.], ʿUbayd Allāh made for ʿIrāḳ with his army, but was intercepted by the forces of Ibn al-As̲h̲tar, who was fighting in the name of al-Mūk̲h̲tār [ q.v.]. According to tradition, ʿUmayr b. al-Ḥubāb al-Sulamī, …

Ottoman Ṣūfī poet of Edirne in the early 12th/18th century. His birth date is unknown, but he was a Mewlewī murīd at that order’s Murādiyya convent in Edirne, where he received his instruction from the famous s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Enīs Red̲j̲eb Dede (d. 1147/1734-5). He himself died of plague in Edirne in 1145/1732-3 and was buried in the convent. His dīwān of poetry was praised by early authorities as being good, but has not survived. (Ed.) Bibliography Fatīn, Ted̲h̲kere, Istanbul 1271/1855-6, 385 Esrār Dede, Ted̲h̲kere, Istanbul Univ. Libr. ms. T. 89, p. 281 S̲h̲ekīb Dede, Sefīne-yi Mewlewiyān, C…

, Abu ’l-K̲h̲aṭṭāb muslim (or Salm, or ʿAbd Allāh) b. Muḥriz , famous musician and singer of Mecca, who lived in the 1st-2nd/7th-8th centuries. A mawlā of Persian origin of the ʿAbd al-Dār b. Kusayy and the son of a sādin of the Kaʿba, he was first the pupil of Ibn Misd̲j̲aḥ [ q.v.], and then of ʿAzzat al-Maylāʾ [ q.v.], going to Medina to receive lessons from her; he then completed his musical education in Persia and Syria, where he studied Greek music. He is said to have later chosen what seemed best to him from these different musical traditions and i…

(a. pl. ruʾūs / arʾus ), “head”, in geography the common word for “cape” (cf. Latin caput → cape), but it is also used with the meaning of “headland, promontory”. The Musandam Peninsula in ʿUmān is sometimes called Raʾs Musandam, while the small territory occupying the northern tip of the Peninsula is called Ruʾūs al-D̲j̲ibāl “the Mountain tops”. Raʾs Tannūra [ q.v.], the terminal of pipelines in eastern Saudi Arabia, derives its name from the tip of a small peninsula, at which the modern port is situated. In the name Raʾs al-K̲h̲ayma [ q.v.] “Tent Point”, the word raʾs …

( = ʿAfīf al-Dīn?) b. Ḥātim b. Muslim al-Maḳdisī al-S̲h̲āfīʿī. the author of a work in Arabic on ancient Egypt of which the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris once possessed a ms. of the 10th/16th century, now lost, but of which there exists a French translation by the translator of al-Makīn [ q.v.], Pierre Vattier (d. 1667), and published at Paris in 1666 under the title L’Égypte de Murtadifils du Gaphiphe , où il est traité des Pyramides , du débordement du Nil et des autres merveilles de cette Province , selon les opinions et traditions des Arabes . This version, in its…

, a place in the northeastern part of the mediaeval Indian province of Gud̲j̲arāt [ q.v.], lying to the east of modern Pat́an. It is mentioned in the history of the Muslim sultans of Gud̲j̲arāt as a pilgrimage centre much revered by the local Hindus but sacked in ca. 816/1414 by Sultan ¶ Aḥmad I b. Tātār K̲h̲ān, who destroyed the temples there and imposed the d̲j̲izya or poll-tax on the inhabitants. (Ed.) Bibliography M. Habib and K.A. Nizami (eds.), A comprehensive history of India. V. The Delhi Sultanate ( A.D. 1206-1526), Delhi etc. 1970, 853-4.

, son of the famous Mālik b. al-Ḥārit̲h̲ al-Nak̲h̲aʿī [see al-as̲h̲tar ] and himself a soldier attached to the ʿAlid party. It is said that he had already fought at Ṣiffīn [ q.v.] in the ranks of ʿAlī, but his historical importance is based on his action in support of al-Muk̲h̲tār b. Abī ʿUbayd [ q.v.]. In fact he seems to have hesitated before joining the agitator, and the chroniclers themselves consider that it was necessary for the latter to forge a letter which purported to be written by Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya to Ibrāhīm before the latter agr…

, Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ras̲h̲īd al-Sid̲j̲ilmāssī , Moroccan scholar who owned his nisba to Ibrāhīm b. Hilāl (d. 903/1497; see Brockelmann, S II, 348), the ancestor of a family of intellectuals in Sid̲j̲ilmāssa. He was born in that town in 1113/1701, and began his studies there, going on to Fās for them, and then returning to the Tāfilālt, where he gathered round himself numerous pupils. He also obtained id̲j̲āzas from various eastem scholars on the occasions of two pilgrimages. He died at Madag̲h̲ra (Tāfilālt) on 21 Rabīʿ I 1175/20 October 1761. Al-Hilālī owed his fame …

arabic language and literature. Al-ʿarabiyya , sc. lug̲h̲a , also lisān al-ʿarab , is: The Arabic language in all its forms. This use is pre-Islamic, as is shown by the appearance of lās̲h̲ōn ʿărāb̲h̲ī in third-century Hebrew sources, arabica lingua in St. Jerome’s Praefatio in Danielem this probably is also the sense of lisān ʿarabī ( mubīn ) in Ḳurʾān, xvi, 103 (105); xxvi, 195; xlvi, 12 (11). (2) Technically, the Classical Arabic language (Cl. Ar.) of early poetry, Ḳurʾān, etc., and the Literary Arabic of Islamic literature. This may be distinguished from ʿarabiyya in the wider sense as al…

was in the middle ages the name of the village now called La-Garde-Freinet, lying in a gap in the Mt. des Maures (département of Var, France). This locality only finds a place in this Encyclopaedia because it was occupied for 80 years by Muslim pirates who had come from Spain between 278-81/891-4. Having gained a footing in the gulf of Saint-Tropez, they occupied a natural fortress (Fraxinet, Freinet) near the modern village of La-Garde-Freinet; “soon reinforced by new groups from the Iberian peninsula, the invaders visited the county of Fréjus with fire and the sword, ¶ and sacked the ch…

, Arabic orthography of the Turkish word il, more correctly él , which has undergone a wide semantic development (see Radloff, Versuch ..., i, 803-5, 1471). (1) It is defined by V. Thomsen as signifying, in its numerous occurrences in the Orkhon inscriptions: “un peuple ou une réunion de peuples considerés comme formant un tout indépendant et organisé et ayant à sa tête un kagan” ( Inscriptions de l ’Orkhon déchiffrées , Helsingfors 1896, 135), and thus approximately “empire”. In this sense it often appears in conjunction with the word budun (? read boδ un), “confederation of tribes”, or…

, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh , a Muʿtazilī of the Bag̲h̲dād branch and a native of Samarḳand. The date of his birth is unknown, but he is known to have reached a great age and to have died in 240/854. He began life as a tailor, and his parents prevented him from continuing his studies, but Ḏj̲aʿfar b. Ḥarb [ q.v.] took him under his care and initiated him in the Iʿtizāl . Possessing a lively intelligence, knowledge of many subjects, and a lofty moral sense, he enjoyed the esteem and respect of al-Muʿtaṣim, who seems to have used him as …

b. Muḥammad b. (al-) Ḥasan b. K̲h̲alaf b. Ḥāzim al-Anṣārī al-Ḳarṭād̲j̲annī abu ’l-Ḥasan , poet, grammarian and theorist of rhetoric, born in 608/1211 in Cartagena, in a family of Awsī ancestry. From his father, who was ḳāḍī of the town, he received an education oriented towards grammar, the Arabic language, tradition and Mālikī fiḳh ; he continued his studies in Murcia, ¶ and then in Seville and Granada and came under the influence of al-S̲h̲alawbīn [ q.v.], who inspired him to study Greek philosophy through the medium of the works of the philosophers writing in Arabic,…

, Ḥamdūn b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī al-Mirdāsī al-Fāsī (1174-1232/1760-1817), “one of the most outstanding scholars of the reign of Mawlay Sulaymān” (1206-38/1792-1823), according to E. Lévi-Provençal, Les historiens des Chorfa , Paris 1922, 342, n. 5). As the faḳīḥ appointed to the Moroccan sultan, he filled the office of muḥtasib of Fās, then of ḳāʾid of the G̲h̲arb, before devoting a great part of his activites to literature. He is the author of several commentaries and glosses, of epistles of a religious character and of an account of the pilg…

, ‘the Sea of the Greeks’, or al-baḥr al-rūmī , ‘the Greek Sea’, i.e. the Mediterranean, both names being in use from an early date to denote especially the E. Mediterranean, where Byzantine fleets were liable to be encountered. As ¶ the Muslim conquests extended, these names were applied to the whole Mediterranean, for which Baḥr al-Rūm is still in use. The Mediterranean was also called al-Baḥr al-S̲h̲āmī, or Baḥr al-S̲h̲ām, ‘the Sea of Syria’, and Baḥr al-Mag̲h̲rib, ‘the Sea of the West’. The sea thus variously named began, according to Arabic geographers, considerably to th…

(a., from the form IV verb aḥalla ), literally, “those who make lawful [what is unlawful]”, an expression used in early Islamic historical texts to denote those who had shed the blood of al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī [ q.v.]; it was accordingly especially used by those seeking vengeance against the Umayyads for the clash at Karbalāʾ [ q.v.] and by the partisans of the Ahl al-Bayt , the proto-S̲h̲īʿa. Above all, it was used by al-Muk̲h̲tār b. Abī ʿUbayd [ q.v.] at the time of his revolt in Kūfa (66-7/685-7), including by al-Muk̲h̲tār himself when he extracted allegiance ( bayʿa ) fro…

, Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Manṣūr , known as Ibn al-K̲h̲ayyāṭ , ¶ grammarian, a native of Samarḳand who lived in Baṣra and Bag̲h̲dād. In Bag̲h̲dād he is said to have quarrelled over grammatical matters with al-Zad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ (d. 316/928 [ q.v.]). Among his pupils are mentioned Abu ’l-Ḳāsim al-Zad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ī and Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī. The latter, in a reply to Sayf al-Dawla, denied having tried to denigrate Ibn al-K̲h̲ayyāṭ (see Yāḳūt); and from this we learn also that at a certain period of his life the grammarian became afflicted …

(a.), also irtid̲j̲āʿ , the term coined in modern Arabic for reaction in the political sense (from r-d̲j̲-ʿ “to return”). Towards the same end of the political spectrum appear also the terms muḥāfiẓ “conservative” and muḥāfaẓa “conservatism”; cf. A. Ayalon, Language and change in the Arab Middle East , New York-Oxford 1987, 125. (Ed.)

(a.), a term frequently applied to mediaeval Islamic textiles, from silks to woollen materials, and denoting a pattern of lines in the cloth forming quadrangular compartments, i.e. checks (Dozy, Supplément, i, 352). Such cloths seem to have been woven almost everywhere in the Islamic lands; see R.B. Serjeant, Islamic textiles, material for a history up to the Mongol conquest, Beirut 1972, index s.v. (Ed.)

, literally “leaf”, which has become the usual term in modern Arabic for a newspaper, its adoption being attributed to Fāris al-S̲h̲idyāḳ [ q.v.]. Its synonym ṣaḥīfa is less used in the sing., but the plural ṣuḥuf is more common than d̲j̲arāʾid . Some interest in the European press was shown by the Ottomans as early as the 18th century and, it would seem, excerpts from European newspapers were translated for the information of the dīwān (Prussian despatch from Constantinople, of 1780, cited by J. W. Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches , vi, Gotha 1859, …

, the nisba of several persons originally from Majorca (Mayurḳa [ q.v.]) or residents of the island. In his Muʿd̲j̲am al-buldān , iv, 720-3, s.v. Mayurḳa, Yāḳūt mentions a certain number. In addition to al-Ḥumaydī [ q.v.], the best-known person with this last nisba, one should mention the name of Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ṭunayz, who seems to have led quite a lively existence. According to Yāḳūt, iv, 722-3, he was a good grammarian (cf. al-Suyūṭī, Bug̲h̲ya , 327) who was also concerned with the Ḳurʾān readings; he naturally collected ḥadīt̲h̲ s at…

, the ancestor of the Banū Kalb, the strongest group of the Ḳuḍāʿa [ q.v.]. His mother, Umm al-Asbuʿ, was so called because all her sons were named after wild animals (T. Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge , 75 ff.). The Kalb were, according to the genealogical system (Ibn al-Kalbī, Ḏj̲amharat al-nasab etc.), of Yemenite descent, but sometimes they claimed for political reasons to belong to the Northern Arabs or even to Ḳurays̲h̲. I.—Pre-Islamic period Their greatest chieftain was Zuhayr b. Ḏj̲anāb. who had great authority among the northern tribes; so he was sent by Abraha [ q.v.] to control the Bak…

, the capital of Mauritania [see mūrītāniyā ]. It was created ex nihilo near a site occupied by a small village and a ksar [see Ḳaṣr ]. The choice of its situation was made the object of serious studies, since it was necessary that it should be accessible, easily supplied with drinking water and distant ¶ enough from the Senegal River to escape inundations like that of 1950. Several plans of urban design were put forward even before independence was conceded to Mauritania (1960), and construction work, begun in 1958, has not ceased since that date i…

, a muzāwad̲j̲a [ q.v.] in the Arabic manner used of two aspects of the single idea of nobility. The second term denotes kinship, the relationship, particularly ancestral, i.e. the genealogy of an individual or a tribe, the record of which, in the time of the D̲j̲āhiliyya, was carefully maintained by the nassāba and which, under Islam, formed a branch of history [see nasab ]. The nasab , which was an element of honour, was based not only on consanguinity but also on maternal descent, although the relationship on the paternal side, which wa…

, ilyās (usual orthography, Elias Abou Chabakeh), Maronite poet, journalist and translator (1903-47). He was born in Providence, R.I., whilst his parents were travelling in the United States, but he spent all his life in Lebanon, dividing his time between his home in the village of Zūḳ Mīk̲h̲āʾīl (in Kisrawān), from which his family came, and the cafés and editorial offices of Beirut, to which he went each day. His father held some estates in the region of Khartoum, but in 1914, when he went there, was murdered by bandits. Hence the young orphan had soon to inter…

, a station on the Kūfa to Mecca Pilgrimage route, the so-called Darb ¶ Zubayda [ q.v. in Suppl.]. It lay in Nad̲j̲d in what is now the northeastern corner of Saudi Arabia, towards the ʿIrāḳī border, in approx. lat. 28° 50′ N., long. 43° 20′ E. some 180 km/112 miles north-north-east of Fayd [ q.v. in Suppl.]. It is mentioned by such geographers as Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih, Ibn Rusta, Ḳudāma and al-Muḳaddasī, and such pilgrims as Ibn D̲j̲ubayr and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa passed through it. It was the birthplace of the 2nd/8th century poet Ibn Mutayr [ q.v.]. Today, the site of al-T̲h̲aʿlabiyya is in the s…

, Muḥammad al-Rūmī , early Ottoman Ḥanafī scholar and father of Ḳuṭb al-Dīn-zāde Muḥammad [ q.v.]. He was born at Iznīḳ [ q.v.] and died there on 8 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḳaʿda 821/7 December 1418. Popular story puts him in contact with the conqueror Tīmūr when the latter occupied Anatolia, and he was the author of commentaries on the work of the great Spanish mystic Ibn al-Arabī [ q.v.]. (Ed.) Bibliography Ṭās̲h̲köprüzāde, al-S̲h̲aḳāʾiḳ al-nuʿmāniyya, Beirut 1395/1975, 24, German tr. O. Rescher, Constantinople-Galata 1927, 18-19.

(Berb.), argan-tree ( argania spinosa or argania sideroxylon), a tree of the family Sapotaceae which grows on the southern coast of Morocco. A shrub with hard, tough wood, it produces a stone whose kernel, when ground, yields a much-valued oil; the oil-cakes are given to cattle. The word is also known to some of the Arabic-speakers of Morocco, but they look upon it as a loan-word. (Ed.) Bibliography Ibn al-Bayṭār, no. 1248 L. Brunot, Textes arabes de Rabat, ii, Glossary, Paris 1952, 6-7 V. Monteil, Contribution ŕ l’étude de la flore du Sahara occidental, ii, Paris 1953, no. 409 (with a bibl.) A.…

(a.), pl. ḳanawāt , ḳanā , ḳunī , aḳniya , “canal, irrigation system, water-pipe”. Used also for a baton, a lance, etc., the term originally meant “reed” [see ḳaṣab ] and it is with this meaning and that of “rush” that the word ḳanū is known in Akkadian (cf. Zimmern, Akkad. Fremdwörter , Leipzig 1915, 56); becoming ḳanä in Hebrew and ḳanyā in Aramaic, it passed into Arabic and was also borrowed in Greek and Latin in the forms χάννα χάννη (χάνη), canna ; by an evolution parallel to that of ḳanāt , the Latin word canalis “in the shape of a reed”, acquired the meaning of “pipe, canal”. In Persian ḳanāt is u…

, conventionally Dhafarah, the interior region of the shaykhdom of Abū Ẓaby [ q.v.], now a constituent of the United Arab Emirates [see al-imārāt al-ʿarabiyya al-muttaḥida , in Suppl.], the undefined southern frontier of which marches with the easternmost part of Saudi Arabia. Al-Ẓafra forms the traditional territory of the Banū Yās [ q.v.] and the Banu ’l-Manāṣīr [ q.v.]. (Ed.) Bibliography J.G. Lorimer, Gazeteer of the Persian Gulf, ʾ Oman and Central Arabia, Calcutta 1908-15, ii.A, 412-26.

, a former slave of Yemenī origin (on the D̲j̲uras̲h̲, see Ibn al-Kalbī-Caskel, Tab. 278), who was freed, and then was married to al-Mahdī, to whom she bore three children, Mūsā (al-Hādī), Hārūn (al-Ras̲h̲īd) and a daughter called al-Bānūḳa (Ibn Ḳutayba, Maʿārif , 380). According to a tradition given in particular by al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī ( Wuzarāʾ , 136), she suckled al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā b. K̲h̲ālid al-Barmakī, whilst al-Faḍl’s mother provided milk for Hārūn; this kind of alliance through co-lactation would accordingly explain the de…

(Ar.), a term applied to a wild animal or bird which passes from right to left before a traveller or hunter; although opinions differ on this point, this is generally interpreted as a bad omen, because, it is said, it presents its left side to the hunter who does not have time to take aim at it; an animal which passes from left to right ( sāniḥ ) is on the contrary of good omen. The nāṭiḥ approaches from the front, and the ḳaʿīd from the rear. (Ed.) Bibliography Freytag, Einleitung, 163 Wellhausen, Reste 2, 202 Doutté, Magic at religion, 359 Ḏj̲āḥiẓ. Tarbīʿ, ed. Pellat, index L.A. s.v. Maydānī, under ma…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan, poet, man of letters and S̲h̲āfiʿī faḳīh of the 5th/11th century, known as Ibn Abi ’l-Ṣaḳr al-Wāsiṭī. Born in D̲h̲u’l-Ḳaʿda 409/March-April 1019, he died on 14 D̲j̲umādā I 498/1 February 1105. A disciple, at the Niẓāmiyya [ q.v.] in Bag̲h̲dād, of al-S̲h̲īrāzī (393-476/1003-83 [ q.v.]) whose funeral elegy he wrote, he is noted for his ardent attachment to S̲h̲āfiʿī doctrine, and he composed on this topic some poems called s̲h̲āfiʿiyya . He himself collected his verses in a Dīwān in one volume which may have allowed him to exercise his gif…

the Isagoge of Porphyry [see furfūriyūs ]. According to Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī ( Ṭabaḳāt al-umam , ed. Cheikho, Beirut 1912, 49, tr. Blachère, Paris, 1935, 101), it seems that Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ [ q.v.] was the first person to translate this introduction to logic into Arabic. The Fihrist (i, 244), on the other hand, maintains that it was Ayyūb b. al-Raḳḳī, whc based himself on a Syriac translation. Among the Arabic adaptations of the Isagoge we possess that of Abu ’l-Ḥasan Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar al-Biḳāʿī al-S̲h̲afiʿī (see Brockelmann, S II, 177). with a commentary by al-Sanūsī (…

(a.). 1. As a term applied to the ancient South Arabian script. In the first couple of centuries AD, Sabaean and ¶ Ḳatabanian inscriptions used the term ms 3 nd for an inscribed bronze plaque affixed ( musnad ) to the wall of a temple; by the 5th-6th centuries AD it came to be applied to inscriptions engraved directly on a rock face. In early Islamic times, musnad designated any inscription in the pre-Islamic South Arabian alphabet, the earliest examples of which date back to the first half of the first millenium BC. This has close affinities both with the scri…

(p.), literally “the person who draws the curtain”, a term used among the dynasties of the eastern Islamic world from the Sald̲j̲ūḳ period onwards as the equivalent of Arabic ḥād̲j̲ib , i.e. for the court official, the chamberlain, who controlled access to the ruler, the latter being normally veiled from public gaze.. For this function, see Ḥād̲j̲ib . (Ed.)

, a valley some 30 miles/50 km northnorth-east of Mawṣil in ʿIrāḳ, in the ḳaḍāʾ of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲an and in a largely Kurdish mountain area, famed as the principal pilgrimage centre of the Yazīdī sect [see yazīdīs ]. The d̲j̲amāʿiyya of the Yazīdīs is held from the 23th to the 30th September O.S. (6th to the 13th October N.S.) each year, and revolves round the shrine of the founder, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ ʿAdī b. Musāfir [ q.v.] and the tombs of other early saints of the sect. The first European to attend and ¶ describe the festival seems to have been Sir Henry Layard in 1846 and 1849; a valuable des…

(“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 Algeria with Mauritania, with an airstrip, and has recently acquired economic and political importance because of the proximity of iron ore depos…

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. Bibliography Yāḳūt, Buldān, ed. Beirut, iii, 389-90. 2. A settlement to the north of the old city of Damascus, on the slopes of Mount Ḳāsiyūn [ q.v.]. Yāḳūt describes it as a large village with markets and ¶ a …

(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 ḥākim “one who exercises power, jurisdiction, etc.” Under the Ottomans, the wālī , also termed pas̲h̲a [ q.v.], was the governor of a province, eyālet …

(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 “hand in general” covers a vast semantic range: power, help’, strength, sufficiency, ability to act, etc. The right hand can have a cultic significance, as with the bronze hand, probably from the vicinity of Ṣanʿāʾ and now in the British Museum, with a South Arabian ex voto inscri…

, 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 fame is that, at the time of the ʿAbbāsid Revolution, in 130/747-8, the Umayyad governor of K̲h̲urāsān, Naṣr b. Sayyār [ q.v.], threatened by the rising under Abū Muslim, appointed his commander Abu ’l-D̲h̲ayyāl over Tūsān; but the latter’s oppressive behaviour prompted Abū Muslim to send a force which…

, 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 ]; it related to their claimed descent from the first caliph Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīḳ [ q.v.]. (Ed.)

, 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 results of September 1991 census, Statistical Centre of Iran, Population Division). Its chief claim to fame is as the home of the present (1993) head of state of the Islamic Republic of Iran “President and Prime Minister” ʿAlī Akbar Hās̲h̲imī Rafsand̲j̲ānī. (Ed.) Bibli…