, Ṣīrat , an Arabic popular romance of an epico-fantastical nature, inspired in a very remote fashion by the life of the eponymous individual [ q.v.] Known in numerous manuscript versions, of which the earliest dates from the 11th/17th century, the story was probably composed in Mamlūk Egypt between the 9th/15th and 10th/16th centuries; the identity of the hero’s principal antagonist, Sayf (Sayfa) Arʿad, emperor of Ethiopia from 1344 to 1372, rules out an earlier date. As for the attribution of the story to Abu ’l-Maʿālī…

, an influential clan in pre-Islamic Ḥaḍramawt, first attested about the middle of the 5th century A.D. by inscriptions (with the spelling Yzʾn ) in the Wādī ʿAmāḳīn, in the Ḥabbān area. A little later they emerge as closely allied with the important Sabaean clan Gdn , and by the early 6th century they were probably the most powerful family in the Himyarite kingdom [see Ḥimyar ; tubbaʿ ], claiming “lordship” (signified by the prefix D̲h̲ū) over virtually the whole of what had been, up to around 300 A.D., the ancient kingdom of Ḥaḍramawt, to…

, "the sons", a denomination applied to the following: (I) The descendants of Saʿd b. Zayd Manāt b. Tamīm, with the exception of his two sons Kaʿb and ʿAmr. This tribe inhabited the sandy desert of al-Dahnāʾ. (Cf. F. Wüstenfeld, Register zu den geneal. Tabellen der arab. Stämme ). (II) The descendants born in Yaman of the Persian immigrants. For the circumstances of the Persian intervention in Yaman under Ḵh̲usraw Anūs̲h̲irwān (531-79) and the reign of Sayf b. Ḏh̲ī Yazan, as told by the Arabic authors, cf. sayf b. d̲h̲ī yazan. After the withdr…

, son of Kāmd̲j̲ār, a Persian general of K̲h̲usraw Anūs̲h̲arwān (A.D. 531-79 [see kisrā ]). The name would apparently stem from MP vēhrēz “having a good abundance”, see Nöldeke, Gesch . der Perser und Araber , 223 n. 2, and Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch , 340, but was in origin a title, since the Byzantine historian Procopius names the commander of the Sāsānid emperor Kawād’s expedition into Georgia and Lazica (early 5th century) as having the title Ouarizēs (< * wahriz ); see daylam, at Vol. II, 190a. In response to an appeal ca. 570, via the Lak̲h̲mids [ q.v.], from Sayf b. D̲h̲ī Yazan, the …

, Persian governor in the Yemen towards the end of the Prophet Muḥammad’s lifetime. A Persian presence had been established in the Yemen ca. 570 A.D. when there had taken place a Yemenī national reaction under the Ḥimyarī prince Abū Murra Sayf b. D̲h̲ī Yazan [see sayf b. d̲h̲ī yazan ] against the Ethiopian-backed governor Masrūḳ b. Abraha. The Persian Emperor Ḵh̲usraw Anūs̲h̲irwān had sent troops to support Sayf b. D̲h̲ī Yazan, and eventually, a Persian garrison, with a military governor at its head, was set up in Ṣanʿāʾ. It was the progeny of …

1. S̲h̲iḳḳ is the name of two diviners or kāhins who allegedly lived shortly before the rise of Islam. According to the Abrégé des merveilles , S̲h̲iḳḳ the Elder was the first diviner among the ʿArab al-ʿĀriba. He is a completely fabulous personage. Like the Cyclops, he had only one eye in the middle of his forehead or a fire which split his forehead into two ( s̲h̲aḳḳa “to split”). He is also confused with al-Dad̲j̲d̲j̲āl [ q.v.], Antichrist, or at least Dad̲j̲d̲j̲āl is of his family. He is said to have lived chained to a rock on an island where volcanic phenomena occur…

, the paternal uncle of the Prophet, was the son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and Hāla bint Wuhayb. He played a part in negotiating with K̲h̲uwaylid b. Asad, the father of K̲h̲adīd̲j̲a. for the Prophet’s marriage, and on his conversion became one of the bravest champions of Islam, although he had previously been an opponent of the new religion. He defended the Prophet against the insults of Abū D̲j̲ahl, took part in the action against the Jewish Ḳaynuḳāʿ clan, and led an expedition to the sea coast at al…

, an Arabic romance of a chivalric nature which forms part of the 1001 Nights (nights 44 to 146 in the Būlāḳ ed., Chauvin no. 277), but also with independent attestations. The intrigue, which is particularly complex (résumé in Chauvin, Bibliographie , vi, 112-24), falls within the general framework of the Arab-Byzantine wars, like the romance of Ḏh̲u ’l-Himma [ q.v.], but unlike this last, has no reference to any recognisably historical substratum; the events narrated are in a vague past "before the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān" but after the adv…

, sobriquet (“person of outstanding handsomeness amongst the Yemenis”) of a minor Umayyad poet of the Ḥid̲j̲āzī school, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ismāʿīl b. Kulāl al-K̲h̲awlānī, d. ca. 90/707. Two of the earliest sources on him, Muḥammad b. Ḥabīb’s K. Asmāʾ al-mug̲h̲tālīn , 273, and al-Balād̲h̲urī’s Ansāb al-as̲h̲rāf fol. 656a, state that one of his ancestors stemmed from the Abnāʾ al-Furs , the Persian soldiers and officials sent out to Yemen to aid Sayf b. Ḏh̲ī Yazan against the Abyssinians, but there are contradictory traditions on his Y…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥ. b. ʿUmar b. Muḥ. b. ʿUmar b. Muḥ. b. Muḥ. b. ʿUmar b. Muḥ. al-Ḥimyarī , al-Ḥad̲j̲rī al-Ruʿaynī , al-Tilimsānī (and not al-Tūnusī as Ibn Ḳunfud̲h̲ mistakenly says), Arab poet born at Tlemcen in 650/1252 and assassinated at Granada in 708/1308. On his origins, which he traces to the tribe of Ḥimyar in the Yemen, there is known only what he himself states in his poems; of the early part of the 58 years of his life we know only that he knew poverty and lived in “a room in a funduḳ with sheepskins for bed-covers”, that he was able to give himself free…

, Aḥmad b. ʿAbd allāḥ , Yemenite historian whose full name is Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Rāzī. The date of his birth in Ṣanʿāʾ is unknown; he died there ca. 460/1068. The little that is known of this historian is owed to al-D̲j̲anadī (d. 732/1332) who, in his book al-Sulūk (ms.), indicates that he was a native of the capital of the Yemen, and that he was an imām , well informed in matters of fiḳh and ḥadīt̲h̲ . Furthermore, it seems that he was a Sunnī, a fact to which his work alludes, and al-D̲j̲anadī attributes to him an “extensi…

, sometimes connected with nifrīt , wicked, is an epithet expressing power, cunning and insubordination. In spite of its aberrant form, the word seems to be of Arabic origin. The lexicographers consider it to derive from the verb ʿafara , “to roll someone in the dust” and, by extension, “to bring low”. The word is used rarely in Arabic poetry of the time of the Hid̲j̲ra and is found only once in the Ḳurʾān. To Solomon’s request that he should be brought the throne of the queen of Sheba, “an ʿifrīt of the d̲j̲inns said, ‘I shall bring it to you before you can rise f…

(or “popular sīra ”), the modern Arabic designation (coined by Arab folklorists in the 1950s) for a genre of lengthy Arabic heroic narratives that in western languages are called either “popular epics” or “popular romances” ( Volksroman ). These narratives, which in their manuscript corpus refer to themselves equally as either sīra or ḳiṣṣa [ q.vv.], are works of adventure and romance primarily concerned with depicting the personal prowess and military exploits of their heroes. Pseudo-historical in tone and setting, they base many of their central c…

(a. Kānim), today the name of a prefecture (capital Mao) in the republic of Chad. It is bounded in the north by Borkou, in the east by Batha, in the south by Chari-Baguirmi, in the southwest by the department of Lac and in the west by the republic of Nigeria (population 170,000). Its borders do not correspond exactly to those of the region which was one of the most ancient kingdoms of Africa and stretched, according to the most widely. accepted view, as far as the caravan route from Kawar [ q.v] to Lake Chad in the west, to Baḥr al ¶ G̲h̲azal [ q.v.] in the south, to the depression of the Egueї in…

The name Kanuri, applied to both a language and to a people, appears to be of recent origin. The earliest known written occurrence is in the 18th century. The Kanuri language belongs apparently to the Teda-Daza group, mainly located east of Lake Chad. The most recent hypothesis is that Kanembu, the language of Kanem [ q.v.], evolved from various older Daza languages, as speakers of these moved south into Kanem; and that Kanuri in turn developed, partly through the influence upon Kanembu of languages of the Chadic family spoken west of Lake Chad, amo…

b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams , ancestor of the Umayyads, the principal clan of the Ḳuraysh of Mecca. His genealogy (Umayya b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf b. Ḳuṣayy) and his descendants are given in Wüstenfeld, Geneal . Tabellen , U, V, and Ibn al-Kabbī, in Caskel-Strenziok, i, nos. 8 ff. Like all other eponyms of Arab tribes and clans, his actual existence and the details of his life have to be accepted with caution, but too great scepticism with regard to tradition would be as ill-advised as absolute faith in its statement…

, the name given by the Yemenite historians to eight noble families of South Arabia who, before Islam, enjoyed important political privileges, either in the kingdom of Ḥimyar (from the end of the 3rd century AD to 520 [or 525]), or under the Abyssinian and Persian régimes which followed. Mat̲h̲āmina is a plural noun whose singular, which is not attested, could be *Mut̲h̲amman or *Mut̲h̲man (since these participles mean “repeated eight times”, “to the number eight”). It is certainly from the Arabic number t̲h̲amāniya “eight”, and not …

, or Barnū, the name—of doubtful etymology the root of which reappears in Beriberi (= Baribari) as their neighbours call the Kanuri— given to a region in the hinterland of West Africa and used: (a) loosely, of an area ne ver precisely defined in geographical terms, were there was established one of the major states of that part of the Western Sudan,—see para. 6 below,—and (b) of a province;—area, according to 1931 census, 45,900 square miles—lying between latitudes 10° and 13.5° N. and longitudes 10° and 14° E., in Northern Nigeria, containing that part of (a…

, Chad , a region of Inner Africa. The Republic of Chad (area: 1, 284,000 km2; population: about 4,000,000 in 1975) is one of the four states which emerged from the former French Equatorial Africa. The country stretches over 1,600 km. from south of latitude 8° N. to the north of latitude 23° N. Consequently, climate and vegetation vary from savannah woodland with an annual rainfall of more than 1,000 mm. in the south to the arid desert of the Sahara in the north. Chad is torn between two conflicting orientations, between North and Equatorial Africa. Islam has created a measure of cultural …

, ʿUrus (a., pl. aʿrās and ʿurusāt ), originally the leading of the bride to her bridegroom, marriage, also the wedding feast simply; whence a denominal verb form IV aʿrasa “to celebrate a marriage”. ʿArūs means both bridegroom and bride; in modern linguistic usage this term has, however, been supplanted by ʿarīs “bridegroom” and ʿarūsa “bride” (as early as the 1001 Nights , cf. Dozy, Suppl., ii, 110). Two kinds of weddings have to be distinguished: ʿurs is the wedding performed in the tribe or the house of the man, and ʿumra is the wedding performed in the house…