Search

, 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.) 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…

, 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…

(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…

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…

, Abu ’l-Ḥusayn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Ḏj̲ubayr al-Kinānī , Andalusian traveller and writer, born at Valencia 540/1145, into a family which had settled in Spain in 123/740. He studied at Játiva, where his father was a civil servant, and received the traditional instruction of young men of his class, that is to say he learnt the rudiments of the religious sciences and of belles-lettres at the same time, but not without learning how to exercise his poetic skill. His talents won for him …

(a.), collective noun indicating the two main species of the camelidae , the camelus dromedarius, or dromedary, with a single hump, and the camelus bactrianus, or camel proper, with two humps. The latter species, common in Central Asia, in western China and in northern Persia, was known to the Arabs under the name of fālid̲j̲ (pl. fawālid̲j̲ ); the crossing of two-humped stallions with Arab female camels ( ʿirāb ) produced the species called buk̲h̲t (sing, buk̲h̲tī , pl. bak̲h̲ātī ) which did not breed and which was used mainly as a beast of burden (see al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Ḥayawān …

, Maḥmūd b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Sindī b. S̲h̲āhak , Abu ’l-Fatḥ , poet of the 4th/10th century whose death is variously given in the sources between 330/941 and 360/971, but which must have taken place ca. 350/961. Originally from a family of Sind [see ibrāhīm b. al-sindī ], he was born at al-Ramla and lived at al-Mawṣil at the court of Abu ’l-Hayd̲j̲āʾ ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥamdān [see ḥamdānids ], and then at Aleppo, in the entourage of Sayf al-Dawla [ q.v.]; he also made several journeys to Egypt, Bag̲h̲dād, Damascus and Jerusalem. His verses are described by R. Blachère, Motanabbî …

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan aḥmad b. D̲j̲aʿfar b. Mūsā b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī al-Nadīm (and also al-Ṭunbūrī , because he played the tunbūr , lute (Fr.: “pandore”)). A philologist and transmitter of traditions, singer and musician, poet and wit and a descendant of the Barmakids. He was reputedly born in 224/839, and died at the age of a hundred, at Wāsiṭ in S̲h̲aʿbān 324/June-July 936. A man of very varied culture, but little religion, of doubtful morals and repulsive appearance (he was dirty and ugly, and owed…

, ʿabd al-g̲h̲affār b. ʿabd al-wāḥid b. wahb , Arab poet of ʿIrāḳ, born at al-Mawṣil ¶ about 1220/1805, died at al-Baṣra 1290/1874. After settling in Bag̲h̲dād, he established a connection with the wālī Dāwūd Pās̲h̲ā. The latter, at his request, sent him to India for treatment to correct the defective power of speech which had gained him his sobriquet of al-Ak̲h̲ras ("the mute"), but he refused to undergo the operation. The panegyrics which he addressed to Dāwūd Pās̲h̲ā and ʿAbd al-Bā…

, Abū Isḥāḳ Ibrāhīm b. Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṭarābulusī, philologist, native of Ad̲j̲dābiya (between Barḳa and Tripoli), who lived in the 6th/12th century and died in about 650/1251. He is the author of a number of works, of which reference is made particularly to his Kitāb al-Anwāʾ (ed. Damascus 1964, by ʿIzzat Ḥasan, as al-Azmina wa’l-anwāʾ ) and to a short treatise on lexicography entitled Kifāyat al-mutaḥaffiẓ wa-nihāyat al-mutalaffiẓ , printed in Egypt in 1285/1868 and in Beirut in 1305/1887. (Ch. Pellat) Bibliography Yāḳūt, Udabāʾ, i, 130 Suyūṭī, Bug̲h̲ya, 178 Ḥād̲j̲d̲…

(A), technical term of the Ḵh̲awārid̲j̲ [ q.v.], used, in a general sense, of religious murder, the putting to death in particular by the Azāriḳa [ q.v.] of Muslims and pagans who objected to their still rudimentary doctrine. However this meaning seems to be the result of a semantic evolution (even an involution), the verb istaʿraḍa (tenth form) meaning “to ask someone to display his possessions” and, thence, “to give an account of his opinions”; the istiʿrāḍ is thus the interrogation to which the enemies of these sectarians were subjected on falli…

, Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAmmār b. Ḥusayn b. ʿAmmār , poet and vizier of al-Andalus. Born in 422/1031 in a village near Silves, he belonged to a poor and obscure family and his claim to be of Yemenī origin is doubtful. After beginning his studies at Silves, he received at Cordova an advanced literary education and then tried to make his literary talent pay, travelling throughout Spain in search of patrons. Nothing appears to have survived of his first panegyrics, addressed, it seems wi…

al-ḥimmānī al-rād̲j̲iz , a poet of Baṣra who owed his name to the fact that his mother gave birth to him by a palm tree ( nak̲h̲la ). He was given the kunya s of Abu ’l-Ḏj̲unayd and Abu ’l-ʿIrmās and the name of Yaʿmar (or Ḥazn, or Ḥabīb b. Ḥazn) b. Zāʾida b. Laḳīṭ, but it is possible that he forged a fictitious genealogy to attach himself to the Saʿd b. Zayd Manāt of Tamīm; in fact, al-Farazdaḳ, angry at being released from jail at his intervention, ¶ calls him a daʿī , and Ibn al-Kalbī does not cite him in his D̲j̲amhara . It is said that he was ejected by his father, on ac…

(Ṣuraymī in Ibn al-Kalbī), (al-)ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ b. ʿAbd Allāh (d. 40/660), a Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ī who is said to have been the first to proclaim that “judgement belongs only to God” ( taḥkīm ; cf. al-Mubarrad, Kāmil , Cairo edn., 917), but who is famed in history because of his being one of the three plotters sworn to kill simultaneously ʿAlī b. Abi Ṭālib [see ibn muld̲j̲am ], ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ, [ q.v.] and Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān. Al-Burak accordingly proceeded to Damascus and stabbed Muʿāwiya whilst he was praying, but only managed to wound him in the hip. According to trad…

, pl. ḳaynāt or ḳiyān “female singing slave”. The Arab lexicographers do not completely agree on the primitive meaning of the term (see LA, TA, etc. s.v.), the real origin of which is unknown to them. They tend to apply it in the first place to a female slave ( ama , d̲j̲āriya ), charged in general with various tasks; secondly, and more specifically, to the female singer who had a servile status ( ama or d̲j̲āriya mug̲h̲anniya ). Some lexicographers are inclined to connect ḳayna with a Vth form taḳayyana “to embellish oneself” (al-Was̲h̲s̲h̲āʾ, Muwas̲h̲s̲h̲ā , 164, uses the expression al-imāʾ a…

, the usual cognomen of a Tamīmite noble of Baṣra named abū baḥr ṣak̲h̲r (sometimes, but erroneously, called al-Ḍaḥḥāk) b. ḳays b. muʿāwiya al-tamīmī al-saʿdī , of the family of Murra b. ʿUbayd; through his mother, he was descended from the Bāhilite clan Awd b. Maʿn. He was born before Islam and, probably at an early age, lost his father, killed by the Banū Māzin. His biographers state that he was deformed from birth and that he had undergone an operation. His cognomen ( al-aḥnaf ) derives from the fact that his feet were misshapen, but he also had other ab…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Bassām al-S̲h̲antarīnī , Andalusian poet and anthologist, a native of Santarem. Forced to flee from his native town when it was taken by Alfonso V of Castile (485/1092-3), he went to Cordova for the first time in 493/1100 and, during the following years, undertook at Seville the compiling of his D̲h̲ak̲h̲īra and the collecting of the dīwāns of some great poets of the 5th/11th century: al-Muʿtamid, Ibn Wahbūn, Ibn ʿAmmār; he also collected the correspondence of the prince of Murcia, Ibn Ṭāhir, and collected in o…

al-Namarī (al-Numayrī), appellative of a family of Cordovan scholars, the principal representative of which is Abū ʿUmar Yūsuf b. ʿAbd Allāh , born in 368/978. He studied in his native city under masters of repute, engaged in correspondence with scholars of the East and travelled all over Spain “in search of knowledge”, but never went to the East. Considered the best traditionist of his time, he was equally distinguished in fiḳh and in the science of genealogy. After displaying Ẓāhirī tendencies at first, in which he resembled his friend Ibn …

, abu ’l-s̲h̲aʿt̲h̲āʾ ʿabd allāh b. ruʾba , Arab poet of the Tamīm tribe, who resided mainly in al-Baṣra; it is probable that he was born during the caliphate of ʿUt̲h̲mān (23-35/644-56), and he died in 97/115. Little is known about his life, except that he had to joust with his Kūfan rival Abu ’l-Nad̲j̲m al-ʿId̲j̲lī [ q.v.]. The main characteristic of al-ʿAd̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲’s poetry—like that of his son Ruʾba [ q.v.]—is the constant and exclusive use of the rad̲j̲az metre in poetical compositions marked by a very rich vocabulary and a laborious construc…

, a tribe belonging to the group which the genealogists distinguished under the name of the Butr [ q.v.] and which formed one of the two great Berber peoples, the other being the Barānis [ q.v.]. They seem to have become fixed fairly early in Libya and to have spread over all the Mag̲h̲rib, where the elements which are encountered there sporadically were largely sedentaries or sedentarised. Mediaeval authors mention Nafzāwa as far as Sid̲j̲ilmāsa and even as far as Awdag̲h̲ost [ q.vv.], but this tribe is known above all today for having given its name to a region of Tunisia t…

, Abū ʿUt̲h̲mān Yazīd b. Ziyād b. Rabīʿa b. Mufarrig̲h̲ al-Ḥimyarī , minor poet of Baṣra in the 1st/7th century. There are doubts about his Ḥimyarī origin, and it is possible that his ancestor Mufarrig̲h̲ was a slave. Ibn Mufarrig̲h̲’s ¶ date of birth is not known, and the earliest traditions about him tell of his romantic attachment to a Persian woman of Ahwāz in approximately the years 36-40/657-60. Later he was attached to ʿUbayd Allāh b. Abī Bakra [ q.v.] and Saʿīd b. ʿUt̲h̲mān b. ʿAffān, but his career took a completely different direction from the time when he decided…

, Abu ’l-Walīd/Abū Ḵh̲ālid ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. D̲j̲urayd̲j̲ al-Rūmī al-Ḳuras̲h̲ī al-makkī (80-150/699-767), Meccan traditionist of Greek slave descent (the ancestor being called Gregorios) and probably a mawlā of the family of Ḵh̲ālid b. Asīd. ¶ After having first of all become interested in gathering together traditions of philological, literary and historical interest, he brought together ḥadīt̲h̲s from the mouths of ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ, al-Zuhrī, Mudd̲j̲āhid, ʿIkrima and other famous persons, and passed them on, notably to Wakīʿ, Ibn al…

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 sud…

, 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.v.]; when the Porte decided to restrict the independence which Dāwūd had until then enjoyed in Bag̲h̲dād, ʿAbd al-Bāḳī at first accompanied his uncle Ḳāsim Pas̲h̲a, who failed in his mission, and then ʿAlī Riḍā Pas̲h̲a who made him his deputy; he r…

, 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 , “popular story-teller or preacher, deliverer of sermons” whose activity considerably varied over the centuries, from preaching in the mosques with a form of ḳurʾānic exegesis to downright charlatanism. This term does not appear in the Ḳurʾān, although the verb ḳaṣṣa is quite often used (see Flügel, Concordantiae ) always, except in VI, 57, with the meaning “to recount, to relate, to report” a generally edifying narration [see ḳiṣṣa ] and frequently in the first person, when the narrator is God Himself. The LA (root ḳṣṣ ) reproduces ḥadīt̲h̲s in which appear the word ḳāṣṣ …

, 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, Big̲h̲āl 120; al-Danīrī, s.v.; cf. al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Tarbīʿ , ed. Pellat, index, s.v.), and the mule, the offspring of a he-ass and a mare, the morphological characteristics of the two varieties being midwa…

al-Sabtī , Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. His̲h̲ām b. Ibrāhīm b. Ḵh̲alaf , lexicographer, grammarian, adīb and versifier. He was probably born at Seville, and certainly died in that city in 577/1182, after having lived for a long time at Ceuta. We know very little of his life, but his biographers list his masters and his pupils and indicate the titles of his works, amongst which one notes several commentaries; one may merely remark that these included a s̲h̲arḥ on the Maḳṣūra of Ibn Durayd, which was especially appreciated by al-Ṣafadī ( Wāfī , ii, 1301) and al-Bag̲h̲dādī ( Ḵh̲izāna …

, 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 sometimes mentions with pride (Yākūt, v, 363), al-Ḵh̲uraymī (the form al-Ḵh̲uzaymī is erroneous) derived his nisba from his being a mawlā , not directly of Ḵh̲uraym al-Nāʿim, as most of his biographers ¶ have it, but of his descendants, viz. Ḵh̲uraym b. ʿĀmir and his son ʿUt̲h̲mān (see Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīk̲h̲ , ii, 434-7; v, 126-8). He seems to have lived in Mesopotamia, Syria, al-Baṣra, where he frequented dissolute poets su…

“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, children and slaves from the attacks of the peoples of the East and of the West, Dalūka is said to have surrounded the Ni…

(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, wa…

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.] …

, 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, in any case, obscure (see Arabica , 1954/3, 325-36), is certainly tobe ruled out. On the other hand, the Arabic root FLḲ (comp. FLD̲J̲, FLḤ, etc.) seems worthy of retention; Tunisian rural and nomadic dialects make use of fləg …

, Arabic name of a Mozarab Christian [see mozarabs ] whose true name was Recemundo (Recemundus in Latin = Raymond) and who owes his place in the EI to the role which he ¶ played in the service of the Umayyad caliphs of Spain ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III al-Nāṣir (who reigned from 300 to 350/912-61 [ q.v.]) and al-Ḥakam II al-Mustanṣir (350-68/961-76 [ q.v.]), and to his involvement in the presentation of the well-known Calendar of Cordova . Recemundo was a Cordovan who, with his command of Latin and of Arabic, was able to render considerable services to the caliphal chancellery wh…

(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-d̲j…

, 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 , Rome) brought together, in the first part of his study (xvii/2 [1948], 167-204) 77 poetical fragments attributed to al-Muṭīʿ and also provided an exemplary critical study of the materials given by the biographers, anthologists and other authors of adab works, concerning this poet, whose personality is difficult to e…

, 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, in an atmosphere untroubled by events of any magnitude. On the other hand, it has only been po…

, 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)…

(Banū) or Midrārids , minor Berber dynasty which was established in Sid̲j̲ilmās(s)a [ q.v.] and which enjoyed relative independence until its final collapse in 366/976-7. The history of this dynasty can be briefly outlined, thanks to al-Bakrī [ q.v.], who lived in the 5th/11th century and thus possessed quite recent information in order to write the chapter that he devotes to it ( Mug̲h̲rib , 148 ff., Fr. tr. 282 ff.), before Ibn ʿId̲h̲ārī (7th-8th/13th-14th century [ q.v.]), Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn (8th/14th century [ q.v.]) and several historians of the Mag̲h̲rib and Mas̲h̲riḳ were abl…

, muḥammad b. abi ’l-k̲h̲aṭṭāb , adīb of the end of the 3rd/9th or of the beginning of the 4th/10th century, and known only as the author of the Ḏj̲amharat ashʿār al-ʿArab (ed. Būlāḳ 1308/1890). No personal details about the author can be derived from this collection, and the only relevant data are two isnād s, one (p. 13) going back to al-Hayt̲h̲am b. ʿAdī (d. ca. 206/821 [ q.v.]) through two intermediaries, and the other (p. 14) going back to Ibn al-Aʿrābī (d. 231/846 [ q.v.]) through one intermediary; these isnāds would thus allow us to date the Ḏj̲amhara approximatel…

, Ḏj̲uwayra , Ḏj̲uwayriyya or Ḥārit̲h̲a b. al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ (or again Ḥanẓala b. al-S̲h̲arḳī , which was more probably, however, the name of Abu ’l-Ṭamaḥān al-Ḳayni, see S̲h̲iʿr , 229), pre-Islamic poet of al-Ḥīra, contemporary of al-Mund̲h̲ir b. Māʾ al-Samāʾ (about 506-554 A.D.), who put him in the charge of his horses. The expression d̲j̲ārun ka-d̲j̲ārl Abī Duʾād , which appears in a line of Ḳays b. Zuhayr and has become proverbial, gave rise to several traditions showing Abū Duʾād as the “protégé” of a noble and generous d̲j̲ār, who is either al-Mund̲h̲ir, al-Ḥarit̲h̲ b. Ḥamm…