[see ibrāhīm ].

, The Arabic name for Hebron, a town in southern Palestine, 32 km. south of Jerusalem ¶ (31° N 34° E), the only urban centre in the southern Judaean hills and their virtual capital and commercial centre. It has given its name to the entire mountainous region surrounding it, which is known as Ḏj̲abal al-K̲h̲alīl , while the whole plateau is known by the name of Ḏj̲abal Ḳays , due to the local tradition which regards the fellahin of the area as of Ḳaysī origin (cf. Volney, Voyage , Paris 1787, ii, 194-5, 197). Hence in the Bedouin dialects of southern Palestine, Ḳēsī means a …

b. ʿamr b. tamīm al-farāhidī ( al-furhūdī ; see W. Caskel, Ǧamharat an-nasab , ii, 343 f.) al-azdī al-yaḥmadī al-baṣrī abū ʿabd al-raḥmān , important Arab philologist. Born in ʿUmān, he grew up in Baṣra where he died, at over seventy, in 175/791, or 170/786, or 160/776 (Zubaydī, Ṭabaḳāt , 47; Marzubānī, Muḳtabas , 56; Fihrist , 42). As a young man he adhered to the Ṣufriyya [ q.v.], but he embraced Sunnī orthodoxy under the influence of his teacher Ayyūb al-Sak̲h̲tivānī (d. 131/748,) a well-known traditionist and …

[see al-k̲h̲alīl ].

, Syrian Maronite journalist, historian, and pioneer of Arab theatre. Born 1850 in Beirut, he died in Alexandria on 25 November 1884. He studied Arabic, French and Italian. He worked on his uncle Nīḳūlā’s al-Misḅāḥ newspaper in Beirut and wrote for al-Nad̲j̲āḥ and al-Zahra . He was employed in the customs in Beirut in 1876. In the family tradition he became involved with the theatre with an adaptation, Mayy wa-Hūrās (Beirut 1875 written 1868), of Corneille’s tragedy Horace , to which he had added poetry and songs. Seeking material support for a theat…

[see ibn s̲h̲āhīn ].

[see ibrāhīm al-k̲h̲alīl ].

, the name of a family of Ottoman Turkish scholars who stemmed from the village of Ṭas̲h̲ Köprü (“stone bridge”) near Ḳasṭamūnī [ q.v.] in northern Anatolia. Famous members of the family include: 1. Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Muṣṭafā , preceptor of Sultan Selīm I [ q.v.]. ¶ He was born at Ṭas̲h̲ Köprü in 857/1453, and died on 12 S̲h̲awwāl 935/19 July 1529 in Istanbul. He studied in Bursa and Istanbul under celebrated scholars, and then progressed through a series of medrese …

, name of the sixteenth metre in Arabic prosody, added to al-K̲h̲alīl b. Aḥmad’s list by al-Ak̲h̲fas̲h̲ al-Awsaṭ [ q.v.]. It is also called …

, “pertaining to air”. Al-K̲h̲alīl said and repeated: al-alif al-layyina, al-wāw , al-yāʾ are hawāʾiyya , that is to say fi ’ l-hawāʾ , “in the air [exhaled]” ( Le Monde Oriental , xiv (1920), 44-5). For Sībawayhi (ii, 454, 1. 21 f.), al-alif is al-ḥarf al-hāwī , to be understood, according to the S̲h̲arḥ al-S̲h̲āfiya (iii, 261, 1. 14, 264, 1. 4), as d̲h̲u ’l-hawāʾ “which has some [exhaled] air”. These two expressions, …

, abū mālik al-aʿrābī , mawlā of the Banū Saʿd, had learnt the ʿarabiyya in the desert and had settled at Baṣra. Since his mother had married Abu ’l-Baydāʾ [ q.v.], he acted as rāwiya to this last, but he owed his fame to his incomparable knowledge of the Arabic language, since, according to an oft-mentioned tradition, he knew it in its entirety, whereas al-Aṣmaʿī had only one-third of it, Abū ʿUbayda (or al-K̲h̲alīl b. Aḥmad) half of it and Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī (or Muʾarrid̲j̲) two-thirds of it. His speciality was rare words. Abū Mālik was allegedly the author of at least two works, a K. K̲h̲alḳ al-…

(a.), the name of the fourteenth metre in Arabic prosody [see ʿarūḍ ]. Theoretically, it comprises Three feet: mustafʿilun / fāʿilātun / fāʿilātu…

(a.), “the places of emission of the letters”, i.e. the points of articulation of the phonemes of Arabic. The singular may be either mak̲h̲rad̲j̲ , noun of place from form I of the verb k̲h̲arad̲j̲a “go forth, be emitted”, or else muk̲h̲rad̲j̲ , passive participle of form IV ak̲h̲rad̲j̲a “emit, send forth” serving as the noun of place. The word ḥurūf (sing, ḥarf ) denotes both the graphic elements of the language ( = letters) and the phonetic ones ( = consonants and vowels) which they represent. The first description which we possess of the points of articulation of the 29 Arabic phonemes is that of al-K̲h̲alīl (d. 175/791 [ q.v.]) in his K. al-ʿAyn (ed. Anastase al-Karmalī, Bag̲h̲dād 1914, 4, 11. 8-9). This description is given according to two classifications, which present certain differences. In t…

, Abū Maʿbad (or Abū Bakr ) ʿAbd Allāh b. Kat̲h̲īr al-Dārānī al-Makkī , one of the “seven readers” [see ḳirāʾa ] of the Ḳurʾān. Born at Mecca, in 45/665, in a family of Iranian origin which had emigrated to the Yemen, he was a mawlā of ʿAmr b. ʿAlḳama al-Kinānī. He followed the trade of dealer in perfumes ( ʿaṭṭār , in the Ḥid̲j̲āz: dārānī ). His authorities were the Companion ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Sāʾib, Mud̲j̲āhid and Dirbās. His direct pupils were Ibn Abī Bazzā, or Bazzī, and Muḥamma…

, ʿIzz al-Dīn Abu ’l-Nad̲j̲ā al-Sanhūrī al-Miṣrī, a Mālikī jurisconsult and ḥadīt̲h̲ expert. He came to head the Mālikī school of Cairo, whither he migrated from Sanhūr at the age of twenty-one (probably around 966/1558-9). He is particularly known for his mastery of ḥadīt̲h̲, having dictated the "Six Books", and attracted numerous well-known scholars from Syria and the Hid̲j̲āz. He is said to have written several wo…

, Arab philologist and jurisprudent, grandson of the Umayyad governor of K̲h̲urāsān Naṣr b. Sayyār al-Kinānī al-Layt̲h̲ī (d. 131/748, 85 years old [ q.v.]). Sometimes he is identified as the son of the latter or even as the son of an alleged third son of his grandfather, Rāfiʿ, who might be confused with the well-known Rāfiʿ b. Layt̲h̲ b. Naṣr b. Sayyār [see hārūn al-ras̲h̲īd ]. The biographical information about al-Layt̲h̲ (or Layt̲h̲) is meagre. He studied grammar and lexicography under the versatile scholar and ḳāḍī , of Kūfa, Ḳāsim b. Maʿn (d. 175/791?),…

the tenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, transcribed as /r/, and with a numerical value of 200, according to the eastern letter order [see abd̲j̲ad ]. Definition . Vibrant, apical, alveolar and voiced. This trilled consonant is produced by a series of movements of the tongue produced a little behind the gums of the incisors. Sībawayh calls the consonant /r/“hard” ( s̲h̲adīd ) and “repeated” ( mukarrar ), because of the repetition ( takrīr ) of the tongue’s movement during the sound’s production. For al-K̲h̲alīl. the /r/ is a “pointed” ( d̲h̲awlaḳī ) consonant beca…

(a., pl. mak̲h̲ālīf ), a term of mediaeval Islamic administrative geography used particularly in Yemen. The sources usually state that it is the equivalent of Arabic kūra [ q.v.] “administrative province” (Nas̲h̲wān al-Ḥimyarī, Die auf Südarabien bezüglichen Angaben im Šams al-ʿulūm , Leiden-London 1916, 34) or Persian rustāḳ [ q.v.] “rural area” (al-K̲h̲alīl b. Aḥmad, cited by Yāḳūt, Buldān , Beirut 1374-6/1955-7, i, 37, tr. Wadie Jwaideh, The introductory chapters of Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-buldān , Leiden 1959, 56-7), with a fanciful explanation tha…

b. Wardūs , Abu ’l-Ḳāsim…

, the twenty-fourth letter of the Arabic alphabet, transliterated as m, with the numerical value of 40 according to the eastern order [see abd̲j̲ad ]. Definition: occlusive , bilabial , …