(a.), a term found in Arabic literature, ¶ but apparently of non-Arabic origin, denoting the peoples of Black Africa, and especially those with whom the Arabs came into contact through their voyages and trade in the western part of the Indian Ocean and living in the eastern parts of Africa. For the territories in question, the term bilād al-Zand̲j̲ was used. 1. As a territorial term. Here, it forms the second of al-Idrīsī’s four divisions of the eastern coast of Africa. The term first occurs in Strabo (A.D. 6), who uses a Greek form Azania ; in Latin, Pliny (A.D. 79) writes of Azania as north of …

By the Baḥr al-Zand̲j̲ the Arabs mean the W. part of the Indian Ocean, Baḥr al-Hind [ q.v.] which washes the E. coast of Africa from the Gulf of Aden i.e., the Ḵh̲alīd̲j̲ al-Barbarī to Sufāla and Madagascar, which was as far as the scanty knowledge of the Arabs extended. The name is derived from the adjoining coast, which is called the Bilād al-Zand̲j̲ or Zanguebar, ‘land of the Zand̲j̲’. The name Zand̲j̲ is applied by the Arabs to the black Bantu negroes, who are sharply distinguished from the Berbers and Abyssinians. The n…

[see baḥr al-hind , baḥr al-zanḏj̲ , dar-es-salaam , eritrea , gedi , habas̲h̲ , kilwa , malindi , mogadis̲h̲u , mombasa , somali , swahili , tanganyika, zanḏj̲ibār , etc.].

, known as ṣāḥib al-zand̲j̲ , was the leader of the Zand̲j̲ [ q.v.], the rebel negro slaves who for fifteen years (255-270/868-83) terrorised southern ʿIrāḳ and the adjoining territories. He was born in Warzanīn, a village near Rayy, and is said by some authorities to have been of Arab origin, being descended from ʿAbd al-Ḳays on his father’s side and from Asad on his mother’s. His name is generally given as ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm. According to Ibn al-Ḏj̲awzī ( al-Muntaẓam , Hyderabad 1357, v, 2, 69) his real name was ¶ Bihbūd̲h̲. Al-Bīrūnī ( Chronology , 332;…

, the capital of the ephemeral Zand̲j̲ “state” and of the movement which violently shook lower ʿIrāḳ and lower K̲h̲ūzistān between the years 255/869 and 270/883 [see ʿalī b. muḥammad ]. We have very little information about the first camping places of the insurgents, and absolutely nothing about the very first one, that which existed at Furāt al-Baṣra at the place called Biʾr Nak̲h̲l. Nor do we know anything about the second one, that of the Maymūn canal, except that it was sown with stakes on which were impaled the heads of …

, Amīn aḥmad , a Persian biographer of the later 10th/16th and early 11th/17th centuries. ¶ Hardly anything is known of his life. He belonged to Rayy, where his father K̲h̲ w ād̲j̲a Mīrzā Aḥmad was celebrated for his wealth and benevolence. The latter was in high favour with S̲h̲āh Ṭahmāsp and was appointed by him kalāntar [ q.v.] of his native town. His paternal uncle K̲h̲ w ād̲j̲a Muḥammad S̲h̲arīf was vizier of K̲h̲urāsān, Yazd and Iṣfahān, and his cousin G̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ Beg a high official at the court of the Emperor Akbar. Amīn himself is said to have visited I…

is the usual name amongst the Arabs for the Indian Ocean, which is also called Baḥr al-Zand̲j̲ from its W. shores or—the part for the whole—al-Baḥr al-Ḥabas̲h̲ī. The expression Baḥr Fāris also sometimes includes the whole ocean. According to Ibn Rusta, 87, its E. shores begin at Tīz Mukrān, its W. at ʿAdan. Abuʾ l-Fidāʾ, Taḳwīm , transl, ii, 27 = text, 22, gives Baḥr al-Ṣīn as its E boundary, al-Hind as the N. and al-Yaman as the W., while the S. is unknown. The various parts of the ocean bear special names derived from various lands and islands. If we neglect the N. arms, Baḥr…

, i.e. ‘the Encircling Sea’, also called Baḥr Uḳiyānūs al-Muḥīṭ, or simply Uḳiyānūs, the circumambient Ocean of the Greeks (’Ωκεανός). By some it was named al-Baḥr al-Ak̲h̲ḍar, ‘the Green Sea’. It was regarded as enclosing the habitable world on all sides, or at least on three sides, W., N. and E. (Masʿūdī, Tanbīh, 26), since the S. boundary of the inhabited world was the equator. According to Kaʿb al-Aḥbār [ q.v.] reported by Ḳazwīnī ( Cosmography , ed. Wüstenfeld, i, 104), seven seas encircled the earth, of which the last enclosed all the others. There was general agreement that the pr…

is the nut in general, and in particular the class of the walnut ( Juglans regia L.), rich in varieties. Term and object are of Persian origin ( gawz ), as correctly recognised by the early Arab botanists (Abū Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī, The book of plants, ed. B. Lewin, Uppsala-Wiesbaden 1953, 86, l. 14). They also relate that the walnut-tree is widespread in the Arab peninsula, especially in the Yemen, and that its wood is appreciated because of its firmness; shields made from wood of the walnut-tree are mentioned also in poetry because of their hardness: ṣaḥīfatu tursin d̲j̲awzuhā lam yut̲h̲aḳ…

, in origin the name of a town, is the legal name of the People’s Republic of Moçambique in south-east Africa. It lies south of Tanzania, and borders on Malawi, Zimbabwe, the Republic of South Africa and Swaziland. The state became independent from Portugal in 1975, and is formally Marxist and atheist, but the constitution “guarantees the freedom of citizens to practise or not to practise a religion”. In 1980 the population was ca. 12.5 m., of whom 13.5%, or 1,685,000, were Muslims, 15 to 20% Roman Catholics, 5% Protestants, and the rest pagan. The Muslims are found …

, S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Mād̲j̲id b. Muḥammad b. ʿAmr b. Duwayk b. Yūsuf b. Ḥasan b. Ḥusayn b. Abī Maʿlaḳ al-Saʿdī b. Abī ’l-Rakāʾib al-Nad̲j̲dī , was one of the greatest Arab navigators of the Middle Ages. He lived in the second half of the 9th/15th century; the exact dates of his birth or death are not known. Ibn Mād̲j̲id ¶ belonged to an illustrious family of navigators. His father and grandfather were both muʿallims (“master of navigation”, see G. Ferrand, Instructions nautiques, iii, 182-3) by profession and were well-known as experts of the Red Sea. They wrote treatise…

, (“the marshland”), the name applied to a meadowlike depression which is exposed to more or less regular inundation and is therefore swampy. It is particularly applied by the Arab authors of the ʿAbbāsid period to the very extensive swampy area on the lower course of the Euphrates and Tigris between Kūfa and Wāṣiṭ in the north and Baṣra in the south, also frequently called al-Baṭāʾiḥ (plural of al-Baṭīḥa) and occasionally, after the adjoining towns, the Baṭīhat ( Baṭāʾiḥ ) al-Kūfa , al-Wāṣiṭ or al-Baṣra . The existence of considerable swamps in southern Babylonia goes back to hi…

(a.) (fern, namira , pl. anmār , numūr , numur , numr , nimār , nimāra , anmur; Mag̲h̲rib nmer , pl. nmūrd ), masculine noun designating the panther ( Panthera pardus ) better known, in Africa, by the name of “leopard” (from leo-pardus; Old French leupart, liepart, lyépart; Old English leparde, lebarde, libbard). In Berber, it is called ḳinas , agarzam , in Morocco, ag̲h̲ilas in Kabylia, and damesa , anaba , washil in Tamahaḳ. In Turkish it is known by the name of pars and in Persian as palang . This large feline, the most ferocious of the family, along with the lion and tiger, is ubiq…

, Waḳwāḳ, Wāḳ Wāḳ , Wāḳ al-Wāḳ , al-Wāḳwāḳ (a.), a name, possibly onomatopoeic, of uncertain origin, found in mediaeval Islamic geographical, zoological and imaginative literature. One of the most mystifying place names in the geographical literature, it refers variously to an island or group of islands, inhabited by a darkskinned population who speak a distinct language; a people or race; and a tree producing humanfruit. There is also the cuckoo bird, onomatopoeically known as Wāḳwāḳ. 1. The island or islands of Wāḳwāḳ. (a) Introduction There are many stories connected with it …

, a name said to be of S. Arabian origin [See ḥabas̲h̲at ], applied in Arabic usage to the land and peoples of Ethiopia, and at times to the adjoining areas in the Horn of Africa. Although it has remained a predominantly Christian ¶ country, Ethiopia has an important Muslim population, and has moreover had relations with the world of Islam since the days of the Prophet. These will be examined under the following headings: (1) history, (2) the spread of Islam, (3) Ḥabas̲h̲ in Muslim geographical writings, (4) Ethiopian languages spoken by Muslims. A final section will deal with the Aḥābīs̲h̲ …

, one of the main branches of the K̲h̲ārid̲j̲īs [ q.v.], representatives of which are today found in ʿUmān, East Africa, Tripolitania (D̲j̲abal Nafūsa and Zuag̲h̲a) and southern Algeria (Wargla and Mzab). The sect takes it name from that of one of those said to have founded it, ʿAbd Allāh b. Ibāḍ al-Murrī al-Tamīmī. The form usually employed is Abāḍiyya; this is true not only of North Africa ( e.g., in the D̲j̲abal Natūsa, cf. A. de C. Motylinski, Le Djebel Nefousa , Paris 1898-9, 41 and passim ), where it is attested in the 9th/15th century by the Ibāḍī writer al-Barrādī ( Kitāb Ḏj̲awāhir al-mun…

(a.), “trafficking, trade, commerce”. 1. Introductory remarks. The term is taken in the Arabic lexica to be the maṣdar or verbal noun of tad̲j̲ara “to trade”. Like many of the terms in the Arabic commercial vocabulary, this is a loanword from Aramaic and Syriac. Jeffery thought ( pace earlier authorities as cited in Fraenkel, Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen , 181-2, who derived tid̲j̲āra from an original noun tād̲j̲ir “merchant”, Syriac tagārā , verb ʾ et̲t̲agar “to trade”, cf. ʾ agrā “wage, fee, hire, reward”) that tid̲j̲āra should be derived directly from Aramaic and …

, the geographical region there which they substantially inhabit. The Somali people may be divided into two major socio-economic groups: nomadic pastoralists and sedentary agriculturalists; in addition to these are people who live and work in the towns. The sedentary agriculturalists live primarily along and between the two main rivers the Shabeelle and the Jubba whilst the nomadic pastoralists live in the surrounding areas, namely the northern, western and south-western regions. The pastoralists rear ca…

, a canal to the south of Baṣra (called after a client of the caliph al-Manṣūr), the most important among the canals that in the Middle Ages flowed from the west into the main channel of the Tigris, the Did̲j̲a al-ʿAwrāʾ of Arabic authors, i.e. the modern S̲h̲aṭṭ al-ʿArab. Its bed still exists. It was on its bank that the Zand̲j̲ rebels built in the 3rd/9th century the great fortress of al-Muk̲h̲tāra. (M. Streck) Bibliography Le Strange, 47 f. M. Streck, Babylonien nach den arab. Geogr., Leiden 1900, i, 42. ¶

, 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…