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, the name of four ʿAbdalwādide or Zaiyānide kings: 1. Abū Zaiyān I Muḥammed b. Abī Saʿīd ʿOt̲h̲mān b. Yag̲h̲murāsan b. Zaiyān, the third sovereign of the Zaiyānide dynasty, was proclaimed king at Tlemcen, on the death of his father, the 2d Ḏh̲u’l-Ḳaʿda 703 (6th June 1304), during the long siege of that town by the Marīnide sultan Abū Yaʿḳūb al-Manṣūr. The siege was kept on since the 3d S̲h̲aʿbān 698 (6th May 1299), and was not to be finished before the 7th Ḏh̲u’l-Ḳaʿda 706 (10th May 1307) when Abū Yaʿḳūb was assassinated by one of his eunuchs. The Marīnide sultan had founded, with the objec…

(plural of the ethnic Derḳāwī) a name collectively applied to the members of the Ṭarīḳa or Muḥammadan religious brotherhood, composed of the followers of Mūlāy ’l-ʿArbī al-Derḳāwī, the area of whose influence extends over Northwest Africa, particularly Morocco and Algeria. An individual member is called Derḳāwī while the plural is Derḳāwā. They are also called S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilīya-Derḳāwā, their brotherhood being an offshoot of the much older Ṭarīḳa of the S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilīya, founded by the Mag̲h̲ribī Ṣūfī Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilī. Origin of the Derḳāwā; The doctrine of th…

— This title given to the founder of a religious brotherhood is also borne by his successors at the head of the hierarchy of the order and also by the heads of the various branches. The s̲h̲aik̲h̲ al-ṭarīḳa, at once the spiritual and the temporal director of his group, must possess all moral qualities: he ought to be high-souled, austere, endowed with all the virtues, he must also possess all knowledge. Favoured by God who has endowed him with baraka (grace), he is the intermediary between the divinity and man. He has a perfect knowledge of the divine law or s̲h̲arīʿa [q. v.]; he knows the wic…

(Couscous), a dish prepared with semolina. Throughout northwest Africa (Tripolitania, Sahara,Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) it is the basis of the food of the people. It is sometimes called ṭaʿām i. e. food par excellence. The Beduins of Eastern Algeria also call it naʿama, which has the same meaning; those of Western Algeria, maʿās̲h̲; those of the South and of the Sahara, ʿais̲h̲, also with the same sense. In Tunisia, the name ṭaʿām has even become applied to feasts at which this dish is particularly used, feasts known elsewhere as zarda (Eastern Algeria), waʿada (Western Algeria) and mu…

, plur. Ḥusainīyūn, a name borne by those s̲h̲erīfs of Morocco who trace their descent from al-Ḥusain, son of ʿAlī and Fāṭima, the daughter of the Prophet. Unlike the Ḥasanī [q. v.] the Ḥusainī came at a relatively late date to Morocco, where they in numbers at any rate never attained the importance of their cousins. They form two main groups, the Ṣaḳalīyūn and the ʿIrāḳīyūn. The Ṣaḳalīyūn (i.e. these who came from Sicily) were driven from their original home by the Norman conquest. They fled first to Spain and thence to Morocco in the reign of the Marīnid Sulṭ…