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(a.), pl. nawāḳīs , a kind of rattle once used and in some places still used by Eastern Christians to summon the community to divine service. It is a board pierced with holes which is beaten with a rod. The name, which comes from the Syriac nāḳōs̲h̲ā , is not infrequently found with the verbs ḍaraba or ṣakka in the old Arabic poets, especially when early morning is to be indicated, e.g. ʿAntara, app.; Labīd, 19, 6; ZDMG, xxxiii, 215; Mutalammis, ed. Vollers, 178, v. 6; al-Aʿs̲h̲ā, in Nöldeke’s Delectus , 26; Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī , xix, 92. According to tradition, Muḥam…

, later often pronounced Munā , a place in the hills east of Mecca on the road from it to ʿArafa [ q.v.]. The distance between the two is given by al-Muḳaddasī as one farsak̲h̲ , while Wavell calls it five miles and says the continuation to ʿArafa is nine miles. Minā lies in a narrow valley running from west to east, 1,500 paces long according to Burckhardt, surrounded by steep barren granite cliffs. On the north side rises a hill called T̲h̲abīr. Travellers from Mecca come down into the valley by a hill path with steps in it; this is the ʿAḳaba [ q.v.] which became famous in connection with Muḥam…

is an old Arabic formula of invocation: "Allāh!", for which also Lahumma is found (cf. Nöldeke, Zur Grammatik d. class. Arab., 6). Whether, as Wellhausen supposes in his Reste arabischen Heidentums 2, 224, it was originally meant for the god Allāh, higher than and different from the old Arabian gods, is rather doubtful, because every god might be invoked as "the God" (just as "the Lord". It was used in praying, offering, concluding a treaty and blessing or cursing (see Goldziher, Abhandlungen z. arab . Philol ., i, 35 ff.; cf. also the expression Allāhuma ḥayyi =much …

b. Ismāʿīl b. al-Ḥasan b. Zayd , a descendant of the preceding, founder of an ʿAlid dynasty in Ṭabaristān [ q.v.]. The high-handed rule of the Ṭāhirids on the one hand and, on the other, the settlement of ʿAlid elements in the region led to a rising in favour of al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, al-dāʿī al-kabīr , in 250/864. Al-Ḥasan, who was living at Rayy, was proclaimed sovereign by a section of the population of Ṭabaristān and received the allegiance of Wahsūdān b. Ḏj̲ustān of Daylam [ q.v.]. He succeeded in defeating the Ṭāhirid troops and seizing the towns of Āmul and Sāriya, while D̲j̲us…

, the last wife that Muḥammad married. She stemmed from the Hawāzin tribe of ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa and was a sister-in-law of al-ʿAbbās. After she had divorced her first husband, a T̲h̲aḳafi, and her second, the Kuras̲h̲ī Abū Rukm, had died, she lived as a widow in Mecca where the Prophet wooed her, primarily no doubt for political reasons, on the ʿumra allowed to him in the year 7/629. His wish to marry her in Mecca was refused by the Meccans, in order not to prolong his stay there; the marriage therefore took place in Sarif, a village north of Mecca. Her brother-in-law al-ʿAbbās acted as her walī …

b. Rabīʿa , mother of Muʿāwiya; this Meccan woman, who belonged to the clan of the ʿAbd S̲h̲ams (see the list of her maternal ancestors in Muḥ. b. Ḥabīb, Muḥabbar , 19), had mairied as her third husband Abū Sufyān b. Ḥarb, to whom she bore other children besides the future caliph. Traditions hostile to the Umayyads draw an extremely repellant portrait, apparently something of a caricature, of this short, stout woman who quite certainly had a highly passionate temperament and who on different occasions m…

b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib was a pious man, who, following the example of his father and grandfather, abandoned all political aspirations and reconciled himself to ʿAbbāsid rule. His daughter became the wife of al-Saffāḥ while he himself lived at the Caliph’s court, and is even said to have occasionally communicated the views of his ʿAlid relatives and their dependants to al-Manṣūr. In 150/767 al-Manṣūr made him governor ¶ of Medina, but in 155/772 he aroused the Caliph’s wrath and was dismissed, imprisoned and had his property confiscated. But restitution was made to…

, poor, a loanword which has shown remarkable vitality. It goes back to the Assyrian muskénu, “poor” (in the Laws of Hammurabi it is a name for a class between those enjoying full citizenship and slaves; according to L. W. King: freemen who do not belong to the ruling race). In the meaning “poor” it has passed into Aramaic ( meskīn), Hebrew ( miskēn), North Arabic ( miskīn or, against analogy, maskīn), into Southern Arabic and Ethiopie ( meskīn). It has passed from Arabic into Italian as meschino and into French as mesquin. In Arabic, on the analogy of the form mifʿīl, it is usually of common g…

or Aṭrābulus, the Greek Tripolis, a town in Syria near the coast of the Mediterranean, north of Ḏj̲ubail. It lies partly on and partly beside a hill at the exit of a deep ravine through which flows a river, the Nahr Ḳadīs̲h̲a (Arabic Abū ʿAlī). West of it stretches a very fertile plain covered with woods, which terminate in a peninsula on which lies the port of al-Minā. The harbour is protected by a series of rocky islets lying in front of it and by the remains of an old wall. The old Phoenician …

(pl. ḥunafāʾ) appears repeatedly in the Ḳorʾān as the name of those who possess the real and true religion; e.g. in Sūra, x. 105; xxii. 32; xxx. 29; xcviii. 4 etc. It is used particularly of Abraham as the representative of the pure worship of God. As a rule it contrasts him with the idolaters as in iii. 89; vi. 79, 162; x. 105; xvi. 121, 124; xxii. 32; but in one or two passages it at the’ same time describes him as one who was neither a Jew nor a Christian; e. g. ii. 129: they (the Ahl al-Kitāb) say, become Jews or Christians that ye may be rightly guided! But thou shalt say: the religion of Abraham as a ḥanīf; …

b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, surnamed Abu ’l-Faḍl, uncle of Muḥammed. He was only three or, according to Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, two years older than the latter. He was a merchant and, differing in this very much from his brothers Abū Ṭālib and ʿAbd Allāh, he made a large fortune; he lent money at interest and possessed a garden at Ṭāʾif; according to Ibn His̲h̲ām (p. 953) and ¶ Ṭabarī (i. 1739), he took in his commerce travels the style of a descendant of the ancient kings. It may therefore well be, as it is reported, that the right of supplying drink to pilgrims was conferre…

, the ancient Gerasa, at the foot of the southeastern part of the ʿAd̲j̲lūn range, in a little valley whose waters flow into the Wādi ’l-Zarḳā, the Wādi ’l-Dēr or Wādī Ḏj̲aras̲h̲, the Chrysorroas of the Greeks. The town is first mentioned in the Maccabee period and appears to have been one of the Hellenistic towns which arose after Alexander the Great. After being incorporated in the Jewish kingdom by Alexander Jannaeus, it again won its freedom probably through Pompey’s efforts and was reckoned as…

, a town in Arabia, the residence of Muḥammad after the Hid̲j̲ra, and capital of the Arab empire under the first caliphs. The real Arabic name of the town was Yat̲h̲rib, Jathrippa (this is the correct reading) in Ptolemy and Stephan Byzantinus, Jt̲h̲rb in Minaean inscriptions (M. Hartmann, Die arabische Frage, p. 253 sq.). Al-Madīna on the other hand is a descriptive word “the town” and is taken from the Aramaic, in which Medīnta means strictly, “area of jurisdiction” and hence town (of some size). In the Meccan sections of the Ḳurʾān it is found as an appellative with the plural al-Madāʾin, wh…

, in Theophanes, Chronographia, 347: Sapphin, in a Syriac inscription of the beginning of the ninth century ṣfʾ (Chabot in J. A., 1900, p. 285), a place not far from the right bank of the Euphrates, west of Raḳḳa, between it and Balis, separated from the river by a strip of marshland an arrowshot broad (according to B.G.A., vii. 22, 15: 500 ells) and two parasangs long, overgrown with dense willows and Euphrates palms, full of waterholes, through which a single paved road led to the Euphrates. The place was made famous by the great battle fought there in…

, the old capital of the Ammonites, in the Old Testament Rabbat Benē ʿAmmōn or Rabba, later Rabbatamana, Amman, Ammana or called by the hellenistie name Philadelphia. This city, which at the time of the Romans was of great importance, was taken by Yazīd b. Abī ¶ Sufyān after the capture of Damascus (14 = 635). It became the capital of the fruitful region of al-Balḳāʾ with a trade in corn, sheep and honey. The inhabitants were, at the time of al-Muḳaddasī, principally S̲h̲īʿas. The magnificent ruins date back to Roman times, with the excepti…

, Muḥammad’s first wife, was a daughter of Ḵh̲uwailid of the Ḳurais̲h̲ family of ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā. The authorities are unanimous in saying that when she made Muḥammad’s acquaintance and took him into her service she was a well-to-do merchant’s widow who was carrying on business independently. She had been twice married previously and had children of both marriages. The one husband was a Mak̲h̲zūmī, the other a Tamīmī, Abū Hāla, whose real name is variously given; but this Abū Hāla is also mentioned…

, a prophet mentioned in the Ḳurʾān who, according to Sūra xi. 91, came later than Hūd, Ṣālih and Lot; according to Sūra xxvi. 176—189 which belongs to the middle Meccan period he was sent to the “people of the thicket” ( al-Aika) who are again mentioned in 1. 13; xv. 78; xxxviii. 12. In the later Meccan Sūras, xi. 85—98; xxix. 35 sq.; vii. 83—91, he appears ¶ among the inhabitants of Madyan [q. v.] as their brother Only later commentators identify him with the unnamed father-in-law of Moses the Old Testament Jethro who lived in Madyan mentioned in xxviii. 21 sqq. (cf. v. 45), but there is no fo…

(a.), corruption of a document, whereby the original sense is altered. It may happen in various ways, by direct alteration of the written text, by arbitrary alterations in reading aloud the text which is itself correct, by omitting parts of it or by interpolations or by a wrong exposition of the true sense. The Muslims found occasion to deal with this conception in connection with those passages in the Ḳurʾān where Muḥammad accused the Jews of falsifying the books of revelation given them, i. e. the Thora, ḥarrafū [cf. ḳorʾān, vol. ii. 1066a]. This accusation was really the only way of…

, a town on the pilgrim road and on the railway from Damascus to Medīna (according to Yāḳūt four days’ journey from al-Ḥid̲j̲r and 12 from Medīna). It lies on a slight undulation of the sandy plain and has a very good well, probably the one mentioned in Arab legend. ¶ The most important building is the pilgrim’s fort built according to the inscription in 1064 (1654), the oldest parts of which can easily be distinguished from the later restorations. Beside it is a modern mosque built of beautifully hewn stones. Euting found the place empty excep…

, also called Badr Ḥunain, a small town southwest of Medīna, a short night’s journey distant from the coast situated at the union of the rood from Medīna and the caravan route from Syria to Mecca. The houses were, when Burckhardt visited it, built partly of clay and partly of stone and surrounded by a wretched mud wall. The inhabitants were, for the most part, Beduins of whom many however had only their booths in the town while they spent the night in their tents on the hills. In the time of Muḥamma…

, later often pronounced Munā, a place in the hills east of Mecca on the road from it to ʿArafa [q. v.]. The distance between the two is given by Muḳaddasī as one parasang, while Wavell calls it five miles and says the continuation to ʿArafa is nine miles. Minā lies in a narrow valley running from west to east, 1,500 paces long according to Burckhardt, surrounded by steep barren granite cliffs. On the north side rises a hill called T̲h̲abīr. Travellers from Mecca come down into the valley by a hill path with steps in it; this is the ʿAḳaba [q. v.] which became famous in connection with Muḥamma…

, a town on the frontier between Asia Minor and Syria, the birthplace of the apostle Paul. It lies in a very fertile plain through which flows a river (Cydnos, later Nahr Baradīn). Situated at the junction of several important roads and not far from the sea, even in ancient times it played an important part as a trading centre and was distinguished in the Hellenistic period for the activity of its intellectual life. Christianity spread early there and bishops and metropolitans of Ṭarsūs are mentioned in the Acts of the Councils. When the Arabs had conquered these regions, the Umaiy…

is mentioned by Muḳaddasī as the district in which Bait Ḏj̲abrīn [q. v., p. 597] was situated. It is the Hebrew Darom, the South, which term the Jews particularly applied to the southwest plain on the coast of Judaea and appears in Eusebius (who distinguishes it from Eleutheropolis) as Daroma. It is wrongly described by certain Arab historians as the goal of the expedition, on which Muḥammad shortly before his death was going to send Usāma b. Zaid; its real objective was, as is clear from the account of the campaign which was afterwards carried out, the southern lands east of Jordan. The name al…

, an old Arabian goddess. The name (from al-ilāhat; cf. alilat) means “the goddess” but was the proper name of a definite deity, according to the Arabs themselves (e. g. Ibn Yaʿīs̲h̲, ed. Jahn, p. 44, 23) the sun. She is found as early as the Nabataean and Palmyran inscriptions and was later worshipped by various Beduin tribes (e.g. the Hawāzin; Ibn His̲h̲ām, p. 849, 13). An oath by al-Lāt is frequently found in the poets, e. g. Abū Saʿd in Ibn His̲h̲ām, p. 567, 7, Mutalammis, ed. Vollers, p. 2, 1, ʿAws b. Had̲j̲ar, ed. Geyer, p. 11, 2, and even in al-Ak̲h̲ṭal, Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī, vii. 173. She had …

, the emigrants, a name often applied in the Ḳurʾān to those followers of Muḥammad who had migrated from Mecca to Medīna with him. The word is derived from hid̲j̲ra, which does not mean “flight” but breach, dissolution of an association based on origin, in the place of which a new connection is formed. The term muhād̲j̲ir is not applied to the Prophet himself bat only to those who migrated with him and later made up a considerable portion of the population of Medīna. The followers of the Prophet who were natives of Mecca were given the name Anṣār [q. v.] to distinguish them from the Muhād̲j̲…

, the ancient Bethlehem. The Arab geographers describe the town as the birthplace of Jesus, where there are an incomparably beautiful church (the Basilika built by Constantine), the grotto where Jesus was born, the graves of David and Solomon (which Christian tradition had previously located here, cf. R. Hartmann in Zeitschr. des deutschen Palästina- Vereins, xxxiii. 180 et seq.) and the palm mentioned in the Ḳorʾān (Sura 19, 25) — a most wonderful tree for there are no other palms in the district. — The description given by Bishop Arculfus of Bethlehe…

, a castle in Ṣanʿā in the Yaman, famous for its size and splendour. Hamdānī and other contemporary geographers give very full descriptions of it, but by that time it had long been merely a gigantic ruin. It is said to have been already destroyed when the Abyssinians conquered the Yaman in 525 a. d. It was then rebuilt, however, for, according to an oft quoted verse, which is ascribed by some to the father of the celebrated Umaiya b. Abi ’l-Ṣalt, it was the abode of Ḏh̲ū Yazan’s son, after the Persians had conquered South Arabia about 570. Several …

, Tadmur, now Tudmur, theancient Tadmor, called Palmyra by the Greeks (probably a corruption of the older name by a popular etymology; cf. Hommel, in Z.D.M.G., xliv. 547; M. Hartmann, in Z.D.P. V., xx/ii. 128 sqq.) lies northeast of Damascus in the great desert in an oasis watered by two springs. The water is sulphurous but drinkable after it has settled. The climate is unfavourable, having great differences of temperature between day and night and being unbearably hot in summer and sometimes having snow in winter. What it lacked…

, daughter of Muḥammad. That he had four daughters by Ḵh̲adīd̲j̲a is repeated by all authorities, but there is no agreement regarding their order, which clearly shows that they aroused little interest in the early period. It is further suspicious that practically the same story is told of two of them, Roḳaiya and Umm Kult̲h̲ūm. They are both said to have married sons of Muḥammad’s uncle Abū Lahab [q. v.] but were forced by their father to divorce them when Muḥammad began his career as a prophet.…

, Ḏj̲ēdūr, is the name now given to the district east of northern Ḏj̲ōlān (cf. the article d̲j̲awlān) separated from it by the upper Nahr al-Ruḳḳād. Al-Nuḳra is its southern continuation. It is only rarely mentioned by Arab authors. Yāḳūt distinguishes it from Ḏj̲awlān but adds that others combine the two districts. He also mentions it as the district in which lay al-Ḏj̲ābiya [q.v., p. 988]. His statements are however, as for these districts in general, somewhat unreliable, for he says that the towns of Ṣaramān,…

in South Arabia means “town” and is therefore often found in place-names; for example there was a Had̲j̲ar in Nad̲j̲rān, one in Ḏj̲āzān and several in Mād̲h̲in, all in South Arabia. The best known is Had̲j̲ar in southern Baḥrain, the ancient capital of the land. It lay in a fertile district rich in palms ( Ḥamāsa, p. 811, v. 1; whence the proverb, Prov. Arab., ed. Freytag, iii. 539) and exported a celebrated kind of date-honey. The population was very mixed (cf. Nöldeke, Ṭabarī, transl., p. 59 et seq.). Under Persian rule a Persian governor, to whom the Arab chief was subordinate, …

, a town in the centre of a fertile plain in the land east of Jordan, east of the southern end of the Dead Sea, about two hours’ journey south of Kerak, celebrated for the defeat of the Muslims there in Ḏj̲umādā I of the year 8. According to the Arabic account, the reason why Muḥammad sent 3,000 men to this region was that an envoy whom he had sent to the king (presumably the imperial commandant) of Boṣrā had been murdered by a G̲h̲assānid, but the real reason seems to have been that he wished t…

b. Rabāḥ, the first Muʾad̲h̲d̲h̲in, a slave of Abyssinian origin, who belonged to a man of the tribe of Ḏj̲umaḥ b. ʿAmr, was early attracted by Muḥammad’s preaching and joined his little band of followers. For this he was persecuted by the Prophet’s enemies, but remained steadfast in his belief in the one God, which induced Abū Bakr to purchase him and give him his freedom. He fled with Muḥammad to Medīna where he immediately found a welcome from Saʿd b. Ḵh̲ait̲h̲ama. He afterwards dwelled in the…

, a mountain about three miles north of Medīna, celebrated for the battle fought there in the year 3 which ended unfavourably for Muḥammad. It is a part of the great range of hills which runs from north to south but here spreads to the east over the plain and thus forms an independent group of hills. The rocky walls surmounted by a rectangular plateau — without peaks, Yāḳūt says — “which rise like masses of iron” (Burton) above the plain are quite destitute of trees and plants and only the face …

, corresponds in name to the Bas̲h̲an of the Old Testament, the etymology of which is given by the Arabic bat̲h̲na “soft, fertile area”. Historically however it does not coincide with the kingdom of Bas̲h̲an, mentioned in the Old Testament, which comprised the whole northern half of the Eastern land of Jordan, but was first applied to the district of Batanaea which in the Graeco-Roman period only denoted one, though a central, section of this kingdom. As the districts of Gaulanitis, Trachonitis and Auranitis were then ¶ distinguished from Batanaea the Arabs mention also Ḏj̲awān a…

, a prophet who was sent to the Arab people T̲h̲amūd. He is, as usual, depicted as a sign and a warning in the style of Muḥammad; he demanded that his countrymen should turn to him and pray to Allāh alone (Sūra 7, 71, 11, 64, 26, 141); he called their attention to the benefits received from God (7, 72, 51, 43) and prided himself on seeking for no reward from them (26, 145). But they rejected him abruptly, called him bewitched (26, 153), a man like themselves, who could make no claim to revelatio…

, the founder of Islām, was a native of the city of Mecca, out of which the energetic Ḳurais̲h̲ had in the sixth century created a flourishing centre of commerce by exploiting the much visited places of pilgrimage there. In consequence of the unreliability of the sources at our disposal the very first question a biographer has to ask, namely when was his hero born, cannot be answered with certainty. That Muḥammad’s activity in Medīna covered ten years (622-632) is certain; but we have no certain…

or Fiḥl, among the Jews Pḥl, called Pella by the Greeks in allusion to the name of the Macedonian town, at the present day the ruins of Faḥil on the western slopes of the land east of Jordan. It belonged to the Decapolis and is particularly celebrated because the Christians went thither on leaving Jerusalem before its destruction; it afterwards belonged to Falaestina Secunda and was the see of a bishop. About six months after the battle of Ad̲j̲nādain in Ḏh̲u ’l-Ḳaʿda of the year 13 (January 635) the…

I. A town on the Syrian coast south of Lādiḳīya, the ancient Gabala. The town, which was fortified, was abandoned by its inhabitants when the Muslims conquered the coast-towns in the year 17; but Muʿāwiya had it peopled again and built a new citadel outside the old one. In 245 = 859, it suffered severely from an earthquake. When the Byzantines were gaining ground again in the xth century, they recaptured Ḏj̲abala in 357 = 968 along with other neighbouring towns, on the death of the Hamdānid Saif al-Dawla; on this occasion 35,000 men, women and children are said…

, the ancient Paneas, so called from Paneion, a grotto sacred to Pan above the main source of the Jordan at the foot of Hermon; its later name Caesarea Philippi was, as was so often the case, ousted by its more ancient one. The grotto and the town of Paneas (and the surrounding district also of the same name) are first mentioned in the Hellenistic period, although it is probable that a predecessor of this place is concealed in a name given to this district in the Old Testament. Herod the Great b…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh, a native of Medīna of the Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲ī tribe of Salima. After taking an active part in the sanguinary tribal ¶ battles in Medīna, he was won over to Islām even before the Ḥid̲j̲ra and took part in the momentuous second meeting at the ʿAḳaba [q. v.]. He was a poet and along with Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit [q. v.] and ʿAbd Allāh b. Rawāḥa [q. v.] was employed by Muḥammad to glorify his military exploits and answer the polemical poems of the enemies. He did not fight at Badr [q. v.] but was in most of the other…

, Muḥammed’s mother. According to the genealogies she was the daug̲hter of Wahb b. ʿAbd Manāf of the family of Zuhra and of his wife Barra of the family of ʿAbd al-Dār, both families of Mecca. The expression of the poet Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit of Medīna: “we have brought him (Muḥammed) forth” (Nöldeke, Delectus, p. 74, 6) would, according to ordinary usage; signify that his mother was of Medīna; but according to the traditions of the Arabs this is not possible, and this expression as also the allusions to Muḥammed’s maternal uncles as living at Medīna …

(a.), pl. nawāḳīs, a kind of rattle used and in some places still used by Christians in the east to summon the community to divine service. It is a board pierced with holes which is beaten with a rod. The name, which comes from the Syriac nāḳūs̲h̲ā is not infrequently found with the verbs ḍaraba or ṣakka in the old Arabic poets, especially when early morning is to be indicated, e. g. ʿAntara, app.; Labīd, N°. 19, 6; Z.D.M.G., xxxiii. 215; Mutalammis, ed. Vollers, p. 178, v. 6; al-Aʿs̲h̲ā in Nöldeke’s Delectus, p. 26; Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī, xix. 92. According to tradition, Muḥammad hesitated b…

, a Copt maiden, according to one statement, daughter of a man named S̲h̲amʿūn, who was sent with her sister Sīrīn by Muḳawḳis [q.v.] in the year 7 a.h. to Muḥammad as a gift of honour (according to another authority there were four of them). The Prophet made her his concubine, while he gave Sīrīn to Ḥassan b. T̲h̲ābit. He was very devoted to her and gave her a house in the upper town of Madīna, where he is said to have visited her by day and night; this house was called after her the mas̲h̲raba of the mother of Ibrāhīm. To the great joy of the Prophet, she bore bim a son whom he called I…

, “Praise be to Allāh”, a religious formula, frequent in the Ḳurʾān. It is an accusative of exclamation from a root which does not occur in Arabic (the verb sabhaḥa is rightly explained by the grammarians as derived from the noun), but which goes back as a loanword to Aramaic and was also adopted in Hebrew and Ethiopie, viz.: s̲h̲ebaḥ “to praise”. Muḥammad probably found the expression somewhere among “the possessors of a scripture”, as it is not probable that he himself should have created such a form from a non-Arabic verb. It is also evidence of an extensive use of the word that subḥāna is foun…

, an old Arabian goddess, whose name means “the Strong, the Powerful”. She was especially associated with the G̲h̲aṭafān (cf. Yāḳūt, i. 296) but her principal sanctuary was in the valley of Nak̲h̲la on the road from Ṭāʾif to Mecca (cf. Yāḳūt, iv. 765 sqq.) to which Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit (ed. Hirschfeld, xci. 3, where nak̲h̲la is to be read) refers. It consisted of three samura (acacia) trees in one of which the goddess revealed herself. It also included the sacred stone (Wāḳidī, transl. Wellhausen, p. 351) and the so-called G̲h̲abg̲h̲ab, a cave into wh…

, a place roughly halfway between Minā and ʿArafat where the pilgrims returning from ʿArafat spend the night between the 9th and 10th Ḏh̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a, after performing the two evening ṣalāts. On the next morning they set off before sunrise and climb up through the valley of Muḥassir to Minā. Other names for this place are al-Mas̲h̲ʿar al-ḥarām, from Sūra ii. 194 and Ḏj̲amʿ (cf. Lailat Ḏj̲amʿ: Ibn Sʿad, II/i. 129, 6)i but Ḏj̲amʿ, According to another statement, comprises the whole stretch between ʿArafat and Minā, both included, so that Yawm Ḏj̲amʿ (Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī, vi. 30, 11) is …

, the Jordan, Hebrew (ha) Yardēn, but in LXX, Josephus, Pliny and others ó ¶ ΙορδάνηΣ. The etymology of the word is obscure and it is even thought by some to be a loanword (cf. the river name ΙαρδανοΣ in Crete). After the Crusades the name al-S̲h̲arīʿa (al-kabīra), the “(great) watering-place” came into use and is still the most usual name among the Beduins. 1. The Jordan is formed by the combination of three streams: al-Ḥasbānī, Nahr Leddān and Nahr Bānyās. Shortly after their junction, the Jordan reaches the Ḥūle district and here flows through the lake of…

or according to others Mug̲h̲ammis, a valley near Mecca on the borders of the sacred area. According to tradition, Abraha [q. v.] ordered his army to encamp here when he was going to attack Mecca, but was prevented from doing so as birds slew his soldiers by dropping stones on them. In Mug̲h̲ammas is shown the tomb of the Ṭāʾifī Abū Rig̲h̲āl who died here after acting as guide to Abraha. He was so hated by the Meccans for this that the custom grew up of casting stones on his grave [cf. al-d̲j̲amra]. Whether this explanation is true or not is unknown, but in any case a verse of Hassān b…

, daughter of Muḥammad. Tradition knows even less of her than of her sister Ruḳaiya and this little consists mainly of a repetition of what is told of the latter. Umm Kult̲h̲ūm is said to have married a son of Abū Lahab but to have been divorced by him by his father’s orders before the marriage was consummated; what this means is discussed in the article roḳaiya. The view there expressed that Umm Kult̲h̲ūm was really married to a son of Abū Lahab is supported by the usual “and literal interpretation of her kunya (her real name is nowhere recorded). That at a later date efforts should ha…

, greatgrandson of Ḥasan, the eldest son of ʿAlī and Fāṭima, was one of the ʿAlids who did not spend their time passively awaiting the fulfilment of their aspirations, but endeavoured to realise them by personal effort. He and his brother Ibrāhīm had, according to Wāḳidī, been brought up as future rulers and Muḥammad was called al-Mahdī by his father. As early as the reign of the Umaiyad caliph His̲h̲ām, the two sectarians al-Mug̲h̲īra [q. v.] and Bayān [q. v.] who did not recognise Muḥammad b. …

, Tiberias, a town on the western side of the lake of Tiberias (sea of Galilee) ( Buḥairat Ṭabarīya) through which the Jordan flows to the south; the lake is rich in fishes, is 13 miles long, 6 broad and lies 700 feet below the level of the Mediterranean; the town is long and narrow as it is shut in by the steep hills on the west which come right down to the water, north and south of the town. S.S.W. of the town is the Mount of Herod. Ṭabarīya had probably a predecessor in a little town in this ¶ region mentioned in the Old Testament (on account of the hot springs some identify it with Hammat,…

, a district in the north of the country east of the Jordan. The modern Ḏj̲ōlān is bounded in the west by the Jordan, in the north by the slopes of Hermon, in the east by the Nahr al-Ruḳḳād and the Nahr al-ʿAllān and in the south by the Yarmūk. It is divided into a high lying northern part and a lower southern part. The north is wild and covered with shapeless blocks of lava; its former wealth of forest, particularly oak-trees, has now practically disappeared, but it is covered with a rank growt…

b. Zaid b. Ḥasan, a great-grandson of ʿAlī. He was a pious man, who, following the example of his father and grandfather, abandoned all political aspirations and reconciled himself to ʿAbbāsid rule. His daughter became the wife of the Caliph Abu ’l-ʿAbbās, while he himself lived at the Caliph’s court, and is even said to have occasionally communicated the views of his ʿAlid relatives and their dependants to al-Manṣūr. In 150 = 767 al-Manṣur made him governor of Medīna, but in 155 = 772 he aroused …

, an ancient Arab deity. According to the Arab tradition he was a god who owned a reserved grazing-ground ( ḥimā) among the Dawsites (Wüstenfeld, Genealogische Tabellen, 10, 20) with a hollow into which the water trickled down from the rocks, which is in agreement with the fact that the name ʿAbd Ḏh̲u ’l-S̲h̲arā is found in this tribe. According to al-Kalbī (Wüstenfeld, ¶ 10, 24) also, this deity was worshipped among the related Banu ’l-Ḥārit̲h̲; cf. also Lane, was, according to whom the site of his cult was al-Sarāt. We meet with Ḏh̲u ’l-S̲h̲arā (Dusares) …

b. Zaid b. Muḥammad, a greatgrandson of the preceding, founder of an ʿAlid dynasty in Ṭābaristān. The high-handed and ruthless rule of the Ṭāhirids produced such resentment in this country that a number of men, under the ¶ influence of the strong ʿAlid sentiment in these regions, looked around for a man of ʿAlī’s line to whom they could entrust the government. They therefore turned to Ḥasan who was living in Raiy and had been recommended to them by another ʿAlid; the choice proved a fortunate one, for Ḥasan possessed an energy and …

, a district in Central Arabia, so-called after a well with a village beside it on the road from Mecca to Baṣra, 32 Arab miles from Ḏj̲adīla, 18 (according to Ibn Rusta, 28) miles from Ṭik̲h̲fa. According to the Arabs, it took its name from Ḍarīya, the daughter of Rabīʿa, the mother of the Ḳuḍāʿī Ḥulwān. It was a much frequented halting-place for pilgrims, for here was the junction with the road from Baḥrain. It was under Medīna for administrative purposes. The district of Ḍarīya, of whose wells and mountains al-Bakrī gives a detailed account, included the area, called Ḥemmey (probably = Ḥimā) o…

b. ʿAbd Allāh, son of the greatgrandson of ʿAlī, ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan [q. v.] was brought up with his brother Muḥammad [q. v.] in the expectation of one day becoming Caliph. They therefore considered the ʿAbbāsids as usurpers and with all the more justice as before the fall of the Omayyads, Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar. is said to have paid homage to Muḥammad as Caliph. The brothers were therefore no little danger to him and as Caliph he sent officers to search for them, so that they were forced to wander from …

, a place near Medīna famous for the battle fought there between the related tribes of the Aws and Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲, some years before the Migration of Muḥammad and his adherents to that town. It belonged to the Jewish tribe of Ḳuraiẓa, and according to Samhūdī, was two miles east (to be more accurate south-east) of Medīna, above a cornfield called Ḳawrā. A few incidental mentions of the place in the traditions help to locate it more accurately. Muḥammad’s men, who slew Kaʿb b. Ashraf, went past the …

(a.) from ṭāfa with bi of place) encircling; in the language of ritual the running round or circumambulation of a sacred object, a stone, altar, etc. There are traces of the rite having existed among the Israelites, cf. especially Ps. xxvi. 6 (xxvii. 6, lxx.) and the ceremony of the feast of booths in the time of the Second Temple, where the altar is circumambulated once on the first six days and seven times on the seventh. The rite however was also found among Persians, Indians, Buddhists, Romans a…

, the last wife that Muḥammad married. She was the daughter of al-Ḥārit̲h̲ of the Hawāzin tribe of Ṣaʿṣaʿa and a sister-in-law of ʿAbbās. After she had divorced her first husband, a T̲h̲aḳīfī, and her second, the Ḳurais̲h̲ī Abū Rukm, had died, she lived as a widow in Mecca where the Prophet wooed her, primarily no doubt for political reasons, on the ʿumra allowed him in the year 7. His wish to marry her in Mecca was refused by the Meccans in order not to prolong his stay there; the marriage therefore took place in Sarif, ¶ a village north of Mecca. Her brother-in-law ʿAbbās acted as her gu…

, in the Talmud Kefar Ḥaṭṭīye, a village to the west of and above Tiberias on a fertile plain, the southern border of which is formed by a steep limestone ridge. At both the western and eastern ends of the ridge there is a higher summit called Ḳurūn Ḥaṭṭīn. A tradition, known in the xiith century, the origin of which is uncertain, places the tomb of the prophet S̲h̲uʿaib (Yitro) here; the little chapel, which has been rebuilt in modern times and is annually visited by the Druses, lies on an elevation in a rocky valley at the western summit. On the …

(a.) or Ḵh̲atma, the technical name for the recitation of the whole of the Ḳurʾān from beginning to end. It is an infinitive from k̲h̲atama, which is derived with the meaning “to end, to conclude” from the foreign word k̲h̲ātam, “seal, seal-ring” (Frānkel, Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen, p. 252), because the seal was affixed at the end of a document. The complete recitation of the Ḳurʾān is, especially if it is done within a short time, a meritorious achievement, e. g. in 8 nights, as Ubaiy b. Kaʿb is said to have done (Ibn Saʿd, 111/ii. 60, 23; cf. on ʿUt̲h̲mān ibid., 111/i. 53, 3). …

, a town on the east side of the Gulf of Akaba. The name is, connected with that of the tribe of Midianites known from the Old Testament (lxx.: Μαδιαμ, Μαδιαν; in Josephus Μαδιηνίται, ή Μαδιηνὴ χωρα) but it can hardly be used without further consideration to identify the original home of this tribe, as the town might be a later Midianite settlement and besides it is difficult to fix the real home of such wandering tribes. In the Old Testament a town of Midian is not mentioned (not even in I Kings, xi. 18 where “Maʿon” should probably be read). On the other hand Josephus ( Archaeology, ii. II, 1) know…

, al-G̲h̲ōr, “depression”, “low lying ground among hills”, is often found as an Arab geographical term. 1. The best known is G̲h̲awr in Palestine, the Αὐλών of the Greeks, i. e. the deep hollow through which the Jordan flows, the south end of which forms the Dead Sea. The Arab geographers define its boundaries as Tiberias in the north and Zug̲h̲ar in the south. The portion north of Baisān belonged to the province of al-Urdunn, the remainder to Filasṭīn (q. v., ii. 107 et seq.) It is described as a very hot, unhealthy district with bad water, but there were a number of springs, r…

(or more correctly: Maḥmil, a.), the name of the splendidly decorated empty litters, which since the xiiith century have been sent by Muḥammadan princes on the Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ to Mecca, to display their independence and claims to a place of honour at the ceremony. The camel which bears the maḥmal is not ridden but led by the bridle. It goes at the head of the caravan and is regarded as its sanctifying element. What extravagance the rivalry of princes led to is shown by the mention of a maḥmal adorned with much gold, pearls and jewels, which was ¶ sent in 721 (1321) from the ʿIrāḳ to Mecca ( Die Chroniken d…

, one of the districts attached to the province of Damascus, lying ‘between Bānyās and Tyros’. Its southern end is the Lake of Ḥūla, which the geographers also call Lake Ḳadas, formed by the Jordan and surrounded by swamps full of springs. The present inhabitants use the name Baḥret al-Ḵh̲ēṭ. According to Muḳaddasī the water was dammed back by the erection of a wall to increase the lake. The banks were covered with ḥalfāʾ plants, out of which the inhabitants wove mats and ropes. The lake is full of fish, among which Muḳaddasī mentions the bunnī, which had been introduced from Wāsiṭ. (Cf. …

, the capital of the Lak̲h̲mid kings, 3 Arab miles south of Kūfa, an hour’s ride southeast of Nad̲j̲af (Mes̲h̲hed ʿAlī), on the lake of Nad̲j̲af, now almost dry close to the edge of the desert. The name is Aramaic (corresponding to the Syr. ḥertā, and Hebr. ḥāṣēr) and means literally “camp” but was transferred as a proper name to the permanent camp of the Lak̲h̲mid chiefs under Persian suzerainty, from which the city gradually developed. The date of its origin, placed by the Arabs in the time of Nebuchadnezar, cannot be accurately fixed; bis…

, a grandson of Ḥusain the son of ʿAlī; his kunya was Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar. On account of his learning he was given the honorific name of al-Bākir (the investigator, who goes deeply into things). He was a recognised authority on Tradition and a number of pious utterances are also recorded of him; he had at the same time the characteristic fondness of his family for embroidered silk garments and colours. That he did not escape the usual fate of his family of being celebrated by a section of the S̲h̲īʿīs as an imām is shown by a poem of the ʿId̲j̲lī Abū Huraira; but he lived contentedly in Medīn…

, standing stone, especially one which is held sacred. The root is the same as in the Hebrew maṣṣēba, Phoenician nṣb and mṣbt and South Arabian nṣb, mṣb. On the explanation of the Arabic forms the philologists are not agreed. They usually regard nuṣb as a singular with the plural anṣāb, but others pronounce it nuṣub and consider it the plural of naṣb or niṣāb. In addition to these forms Arabic has also from the same root the substantives manṣab and naṣība. In answer to the much discussed question of the ideas associated with standing stones, Arabia only makes one contribution…

(a.), the term applied in the Ḳurʾān to those Medīnese upon whose fidelity and zeal Muḥammad could not absolutely rely. The Arabs (e. g. Mubarrad, Kāmil, ed. Wright, p. 153) derive the word from nāfiḳāʾ (“one of the entrances to the hole of a fieldmouse”), but it is certainly the borrowed Ethiopie manāfeḳ “heretic” from nafaḳa to “split”, nāfaḳa “to be divided, irresolute”. The meaning “waverer”, “doubter” quite fits the usual use of the word in the Ḳurʾān, while the usual translation “hypocrite” only suits a few passages. Another description of the sa…

, daughter of the Meccan ʿOtba b. Rabīʿa, of the family of ʿAbd S̲h̲ams, which was related to the Hās̲h̲imids. She was the wife of Abū Sufyān, to whom she bore several children including Muʿāwiya, afterwards Caliph. Tradition seems to take a special delight in drawing an unusually repulsive and no doubt caricatured picture of the short, stout woman, who certainly had a very passionate temperament. Her hatred of Muḥammad was increased by the fact that Ḥamza killed her father in the battle of Badr…

or Arbad (corruption of an older Arbel, see the following article), the old town (of which the ruins only now exist) ofhrbela, on a hill on the road from Tiberias through the so-called “Dove Ravine”. Among the ruins those of a synagogue are noteworthy (see Kohl and Watzinger, ¶ Synagogenruinen in Galilea, p. 59 sqq.). The remarkable rock caves in the neigbourhood played an important role in later Jewish history. Tradition places here the tombs of the mother of Moses and of four of the sons of Jacob, Dan, Issachar, Zebulon and Gad. Another Irbid-Arbad, likewise an ancient Arbela, lies in…

, a son of Abū Bakr and one of his wives, Asmāʾ of the tribe of Ḵh̲at̲h̲ʿam. He was born in the last year of Muḥammad’s life so that his father could not have exercised any influence on him, while the memories of Abū Bakr’s great friend which were kept alive in his family must have had all the more influence on the passionate nature of the boy, which receives important confirmation from the fact that Ibn Ḳutaiba describes him as one of the “pious” ( nussāk) among the Ḳurais̲h̲ When in the reign of ʿUt̲h̲mān the bitterness at the preference of the Umaiyads in combination with a re…

, originally a pebble, is particularly used of the heaps of stones in the valley of Minā which have been formed by the stones thrown by the pilgrims returning from the festival at ʿArafat. There are three heaps which are a bowshot from one another: al-d̲j̲amra al-ūlā (or al-dunyā) to the east near the Mosque of al-Ḵh̲aif, al-d̲j̲amra al-wusṭā in the centre and d̲j̲amrat (d̲h̲āt-)al-ʿAḳaba at the western exit of the valley. The first two are bounded by thick stone pillars and the third by a wall. Al-Muḥaṣṣab is also used for al-Ḏj̲amra but it is also the name of a plain between Mec…

, al-Abras̲h̲ or al-Waḍḍāḥ (i. e. the leper), a legendary Arab king, who founded an important kingdom on the lower Euphrates, including the towns of al-Ḥīra, al-Anbār etc., before the Lak̲h̲mid dynasty appeared in this territory. Traditions vary as to his relationship to the other rulers, who are mentioned in the pre-Lak̲h̲mid period, though the North Arabian legends are agreed that he was an Azdite. Stories of him are very popular and various Arabic proverbs refer to him. So proud was he that he ¶ would only have two stars or idols ( al-Farḳadāni, or al-Ḍaizanāni, or al-Ḍarībāni) as his bo…

, a son of ʿAlī and Ḵh̲awla. a woman of the tribe of the Banū Ḥanīfa, who had been brought a prisoner to Medīna after the battle of ʿAḳrabāʾ [q, v.] and came into ʿAlī’s possession (cf. Saiyid’s poem Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī, vii. 4: “she was a servant in the house”); he was born in 16 a. h. Although he did not, like Ḥasan and Ḥusain, have the blood of the Prophet in his veins, he became involved not only in the political turmoils but also in the schemes which the boundless fancies of the extreme S̲h̲īʿīs built up around the family of ʿAlī. He was not to bl…

, Nazareth, the home of Jesus, lies in a depression sloping to the south surrounded by hills in a fertile district. While the hills to the north and northeast are not very high, in the northwest the Ḏj̲ebel al-Sīk̲h̲, rises to 1,600 feet above sea-level. The name of the town, which does not occur in the Old Testament, is found in the New and in the Greek fathers of the Church in the varying forms Ναζαρα Ναζαρετ and Nαζαρεϧ with ζ, but according to Jerome it had in Hebrew a ṣade, which is confirmed by the Syriac Nāṣrat and the Arabic Nāṣira as well as by the Taimudic derivative form , pl. while the Christ…

, a woman of the Banū Saʿd b. Bakr, according to Tradition, Muḥammad’s nurse. In a year of famine she came to Mecca with other women of her tribe to seek foster-children and finally adopted the orphan Muḥammad, who soon brought great happiness to her household. During his stay with her, two angels came to him, opened his breast and took out a black clot of blood. Although in the later accounts of Muḥammad’s wars there are one or two illusions to his foster-kinship with the Banū Saʿd, the whole s…

, a pond or marsh formed by a spring in a wādī on the left of the road from Medīna to Mecca, three (according to others one or two) Arab miles from Ḏj̲uḥfa. The Arab geographers mention the thick trees that surround it and the mosque of the Prophet lying between it and the spring; the few inhabitants belonged in Yāḳūt’s time to the Ḵh̲uzāʿa and Kināna. Near it was al-Ḵh̲arrār, to which Saʿd b. Abī Waḳḳāṣ was sent in the year 1 A. 11. with a few followers by the Prophet. The place has become famous through a tradition which had its origin among the S̲h̲īʿīs but ¶ is also found among Sunnīs, viz., the P…

(Ḏj̲ibrīn) or, after a popular etymology: Bait Ḏj̲ibrīl (Gabriel’s house), a town in southwestern Judea. It was the successor of the neighbouring town of Mares̲h̲a, destroyed by the Parthians (again discovered in Sandahanna) and is first mentioned by Josephus ( Bell. Jud. iv. 8, 1, where ΒηταβριΣ; is undoubtedly a corruption of the name) and by Ptolemy v. 15, 5 as Βαιτογαβρει and in the Tabula Peutingeriana as Betogabri. In the Talmudic writings the name appears as ¶ Beth Gubrin. In Roman Imperial times the town received the name of Eleutheropolis, but this was soon, as …

(a contemptuous diminutive from Maṣlama, which is the form of his name given in Mubarrad, Kāmil, ed. Wright, p. 443, 5; Balād̲h̲urī, ed. de Goeje, p. 422 ult.; cf. Ṭulaiḥa [q. v.] for Ṭalḥa), a prophet of the Banū Ḥanīfa in Yamāma contemporary with Muḥammad. His genealogy is variously given but always contains the name Ḥabīb; his kunya was Abū T̲h̲umāma. According to the usual account, he appeared as a prophet soon after the death of Muḥammad, after having visited the latter in Medīna with a deputation. There is however another tradition according to …

, the title of Sūra ex., taken from its first verse. The word means “help, assistance” and is often used of God’s help in war and then with the meaning of “victory”. Sūra lxi. 13 is also associated with al-fatḥ, cf. xlviii. 13. The Sūra clearly belongs to a later period and verse 2 in particular recalls the year 9, the Year of the Embassies. It is therefore natural to refer al-fatḥ (verse 1) in keeping with the frequent use of the word to the capture of Mecca, except that it is not mentioned as a fact (as Weil, Ibn His̲h̲ām, p. 933 translates it) but is represented as an assumption, which is a…

, the ancient ʿAzza, Greek Γάζα, an important commercial town in southwestern Judaea, near the coast at the intersection of the chief route to Egypt and several caravan routes from Arabia. The town belonged to the Philistines and was not taken by the Jews till the time of Alexander Jannaeus who had it destroyed. It was rebuilt by Gabinius somewhat farther south than the ancient town the ruins of which were still visible in the fifth century. The harbour of Maiumas (cf. Mitteilungen u. Nachrichten des Deutsch. Pal. Vereins, 1901, p. 52) was 2-3 miles away. Under Roman rule it belong…

, the Arabic name of the southern half of the eastern Jordan district. In the narrative of the unfortunate Muʾta expedition, it also comprises the land south of Arnon, for both Maʾāb (Rabbat Moab) and Muʾta and the village of Mas̲h̲ārif (this however is identified with Muʾta by al-Mubarrad Kāmil 639 et seq.) were included in it. According to Wāḳidī its southern boundary was a day’s journey distant from Ḏh̲āt Aṭlāḥ. The whole eastern Jordan district is often (e. g. Ṭabarī, Annales, 1, 2646; 3, 52) designated by al-Balḳāʾ, Bat̲h̲anīya [q. v.] and Ḥawrān. The town of Arbad (Irb…

or Ḏj̲urham, Γοραμα in Steph. Byz., an ancient Arabian tribe, who according to tradition once lived in Mecca, whither they had migrated from the Yaman. They must have been exterminated by some catastrophe at quite an early date, for a poet, a contemporary of the Prophet, (Ibn His̲h̲ām, p. 468, 3, cf. also Kāmil, ed. Wright, 445, 2) held them up as a warning to the Ḳurais̲h̲ites along with ʿĀd. Later genealogists therefore reckon them with the ʿAmaliḳ, ʿĀd, T̲h̲amūd etc., among the prehistoric, original Arabs (the ʿArab al-ʿĀriba), whose descent they trace from ʿĀbar (ʿEber) and who…

is an old Arabic formula of invocation: “Allāh!”, for which also Lāhumma is found (cf. Nöldeke, Zur Grammatik d. class. Arab. p. 6). Whether, as Wellhausen supposes in his Reste arabischen Heidentums (2nd ed.) p. 224, it was originally meant for the god Allāh, higher than and different from the old Arabian gods, is rather doubtful, because every god might be invoked as “the God” (just as “the Lord”). It was used in praying, offering, concluding a treaty and blessing or cursing (see Goldziher, ¶ Abhandlungen z. arab. Philol. i. 35 et seq.; cf. also the expression Allāhuma ḥaiyi = much good ma…

, an old settlement in a wellwatered oasis in northern Arabia, four days’ journey south of Dūmat al-Ḏj̲andal; according to Muḳaddasī, three from Ḥid̲j̲r and four from Wādi ’l-Ḳurā. It lies in a depression the length of which Jaussen and Savignac put at 2 miles with a breadth of 500 yards. The subterranean waters collect and burst forth into a well 40—45 feet deep and about 60 feet in diameter, according to the two travellers just named. Taimāʾ is mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions and in th…

(Bostka), at the present day also called Eski-S̲h̲ām (Old Damascus), the centre of a Nāḥiya, is a wretched village in Ḥawrān, with imposing ruins recalling its past splendour. The existence of the town can first be definitely proved in the Maccabee period (1 Mace. v. 26) but in the period following, it is much more frequently mentioned and in Roman times under the name of Nova Trajana Bostra it was expanded and fortified; after Diocletian it was the capital of the province of Arabia. It does not seem t…

, a port at the foot of Mount Carmel. The name is not found in the Old Testament and is first found as ʿΗΦα in Eusebius and as Ḥaifa in the Talmud. After the Arab conquest of Palestine Ḥaifa, which was overshadowed by ʿAkka, did not play an important part and it is not till the middle of the xith century that we have a brief description of it by Nāṣir Ḵh̲usraw, who mentions the many palm-groves and the large barques built by its inhabitants. In 1100 the town was taken by the Crusaders and attained some importance, as is clear from Idrīsī’s account of it…

b. ʿAbd al-Manāf, ancestor of the Hās̲h̲imids. The tradition that Muḥammad belonged to this family is confirmed by several ancient poems e. g. Aʿs̲h̲ā in Ibn His̲h̲ām, p. 256, 1 who calls Muḥammad Hās̲h̲im’s son, cf. also p. 633, 18; 799, 13. But whether Hās̲h̲im really was ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib’s father and Muḥammad’s grandfather, as tradition avers, is by no means so certain, as the association of the Banū Hās̲h̲im with the Banū Muṭṭalib, ibid. p. 536, 14, or the enumeration of the Meccan families in Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit ( Kāmil, p. 141, sq.) do not exactly corroborate it. In any case, all …

, a Medīna opponent of Muḥammad, according to one statement a Naḍīrī, according to another, a member of the Ṭaiyiʾī family of Nabhān but the son of a Naḍīrī woman. In any case, he was an ardent champion of Judaism (cf. the expression saiyid al-aḥbār, Ibn His̲h̲ām, p. 659, 12). Aroused by the result of the battle of Badr, he went to Mecca where he used his considerable poetic gifts (in the Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī he is called faḥl faṣīḥ) to incite the Ḳurais̲h̲ to fight against the victor. He then returned to Medīna, where he is said to have compromised the wives of the Muslims …

, a follower of Muḥammad of the Ḳurais̲h̲ family of ʿAbd al-Dār. The son of rich parents, this handsome young man had attacted attention by his elegant appearance when Muḥammad’s preaching made so deep an impression upon him that he abandoned the advantages of his social position to join the despised adherents of the Prophet. Tradition dilates on the contrast between his former luxurious life and later poverty but these, like such stories in general, are somewhat suspicious, although not impossi…

, a town in central Palestine, the name of which is derived from that of Flavia Neapolis built in honour of Vespanian. Its Old Testament predecessor was S h e c h e m, which however lay more to the east, on the site of the present village of Balāṭa (the name is explained by S. Klein, in Z. D. P. V., xxxv. 38 sq.; cf. R. Hartmann, ibid., xxxiii. 175 sq., as “platanus”, from the evidence of the pilgrim of Bordeaux and the Midras̲h̲ Gen. rb., c. 81, § 3). According to Eusebius, the place where the old town stood was pointed out in a suburb of Neapolis. The correctness of this identi…

, i. e. Palestine, is the name given ¶ by the Arabs to the Roman Province of Palestina Prima, practically Judaea and Samaria with Caesarea ad Mare as capital. De Goeje, Wellhausen and Caetani have brought order into the confused accounts of the conquest of this district by the Muslims, notably by disputing and correcting Saif’s account, although various details still remain uncertain; for example, the date of the outbreak of hostilities. While the Arab historians do not make Abū Bakr send an army to Western Palestine via Aila under ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣī till the year 13 (began 7th March 634), acco…

, a fortress east of the Dead Sea in the ancient Moab. The name goes back to the Aramaic kark̲h̲ā, “town”, which the Targum gives for ḳīr in the Moabite place-names Ḳīr Mōʾāb (Is., xv. 1) and Ḳīr Ḥäräs (Ḥaräsät; Is., xvi. 7, 11; Jer., xlviii. 31, 36). It is found as Χαραχμωβα in Ptolemy (v. 16, 4) on the mosaic map of Mādaba, in Stephanus Byzantinus, etc. Its situation on a steeply sloping spur only connected by an (artificially deepened) saddleback with the main ridge makes al-Kerak an unusually strong fortress. It is remarkable tha…

, an old Arabian goddess. Her character can only be deduced from her name, which may safely be connected as a plural (for manawāt) with the Aramaic m e nātā, plur. m e nāwātā, portion, lot, Hebrew mānā, plur. mānōt and also with the god of fate m e ni, Is. lxv. 11 (cf. lxx.). In Arabic we have corresponding to it, manīya, plur. manāya, “the allotted, fate, especially of death”. She was therefore a goddess of fate, especially of death. Her main sanctuary was a black stone among the Hud̲h̲ailīs in Ḳudaid, not far from Mecca on the road to Medīna near a hill ca…

(a.), pl. k̲h̲itām , the technical name for the recitation of the whole of the Ḳurʾān from beginning to end, the verbal noun from k̲h̲ātama , denominative verb from k̲h̲ātam [ q.v.]. The complete recitation of the Ḳurʾān is, especially if it is done within a short time, a meritorious achievement, e.g. in eight nights, as Ubayy b. Kaʿb is said to have done (Ibn Saʿd, iii/2, 60, 23; cf. on ʿUt̲h̲mān, ibid., iii/1, 53, 3). It is related of Sulaymān al-Aʿmas̲h̲ ¶ that he accomplished the k̲h̲atma at times according to ʿUt̲h̲mān’s recension and at times according …

, a son of ʿAlīb. Abī Ṭālib [ q.v.] and K̲h̲awla. a woman of the tribe of the Banū Ḥanīfa, who had been brought a prisoner to Medina after the battle of ʿAḳrabāʾ [ q.v.] and came into ʿAlī’s possession (cf. al-Sayyid’s poem Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī, vii, 4: “she was a servant in the house”); he was born in 16 a.h. ¶ Although he did not, like al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, have the blood of the Prophet in his veins, he became involved not only in the political turmoils but also in the schemes which the boundless fancies of the extreme S̲h̲īʿīs built up around the family…

b. Ismāʿīl b. al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, desdendant du précédent et fondateur d’une dynastie ʿalide au Ṭabaristān [ q.v.]. La dureté du régime des Ṭāhirides d’une part, l’installation dans la région d’éléments ʿalides, d’autre part, favorisèrent un soulèvement qui profita à al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, al-dāʿī al-kabīr, en 250/864. Ce dernier, qui vivait à Rayy, fut proclamé souverain par une partie de la population du Ṭabaristān et reçut l’allégeance de Wahsūdān b. Ḏj̲ustān du Daylam [ q.v.]. Al-Ḥasan réussit à battre les troupes ṭāhirides et à s’emparer des villes d’Āmul et de Sāriya, …