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, “the lump of dough”, properly Tammām b. G̲h̲ālib (Abū Firās), famous Arab satirist and panegyrist, died at Baṣra about 110/728 or 112/730. Born in Yamāma (Eastern Arabia) on a date 1 which is uncertain (probably after 20/640), this poet was descended from the sub-tribe of Mud̲j̲ās̲h̲iʿ, of the Dārim group of the Tamīm. His father, G̲h̲ālib [ q.v.], is said to have played some part, in the Baṣra area, in the conflict between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya; to this fact must be attributed the later idea that al-Farazdaḳ entertained pro-ʿAlid sympathies which, howev…

, abū mansūr muḥammad b. aḥmad b. al-azhar , Arab lexicographer born in 282/895 at Harāt, died in the same town in 370/980. Al-Azharī was a pupil of his compatriot, the lexicographer Muḥammad b. Ḏj̲aʿfar al-Mund̲h̲irī (329/940), who was himself a disciple of T̲h̲aʿlab [ q.v.] and al-Mubarrad [ q.v.] (see Yāḳūt, Irs̲h̲ād , vi, 464 = Cairo ed., xviii, 99 ff.), and seems to have come to ʿIrāḳ whilst still fairly young. At Bag̲h̲dād he received instruction in grammar from Nifṭawayh, according to Yāḳūt, but came only slightly unde…

, “the valiant” (see LA, vi, 283, which also gives the meaning “blue-bottle”); the word is probably derived from the root ʿtr which expresses the idea of violence. Several warrior-poets of Pre-Islam bore this name; see Āmidī, 151-2. “Antara b. S̲h̲addād, warrior-poet of the 6th century A.D., belonged to the ʿAbs tribe of central Arabia (see g̲h̲aṭafān ). The short notice by al-Iṣfahānī, in the Ag̲h̲ānī , suggests that by the 4th/10th century responsible people tended to dismiss exaggerated popular accounts which had already made ʿAntara a…

, abū muʿād̲h̲ , a famous ʿIrāḳī Arabic poet of the 2nd/8th century. His family was originally from Ṭuk̲h̲āristān or eastern Iran. His grandfather had been captured and taken to ʿIrāḳ at the time of the expedition of al-Muhallab [ q.v.]; his father, who was finally freed by an ʿUḳaylī Arab lady of Baṣra, was a bricklayer of that town. Bas̲h̲s̲h̲ār was born in Baṣra, the date being uncertain but probably about 95 or 96/714-5. For a long time he attached himself to ʿUkayl as a dependent, without forgetting to glorify the memories of anc…

, “the deaf”, a soubriquet applied to several people, notably: 1. sufyān b. al-abrad al-kalbī , called al-Aṣamm, an Umayyad general famous for his eloquence, who led several campaigns against the Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ites, the most notable of which, about 78/677 or 79/678, led to the crushing defeat and death of the Azraḳī Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ite Ḳaṭari b. al-Fud̲j̲a’a [ q.v.]. (R. Blachère) Bibliography al-Ṭabari, Annales, ed. by de Goeje, ii, 1018 (Cairo ed. v, 126) Ḏj̲āhiẓ, Bayān, ed. by Hārūn, i, 61, 407 and iii, 264. 2. abu ’l-ʿabbās muḥammad b. yaʿḳūb al-nīsābūrī , called al-A…

, Aḥmad Badīʿ al-Zamān “the Prodigy of the Age”, Arabo-Persian writer and letter-writer, was born at Hamad̲h̲ān in 358/968 and died at Herāt in 398/1008. He pursued his early studies in his native town, where his master was Ibn Fāris [ q.v.]. Aided by an exceptional memory and talents, he was soon noted for his virtuosity in handling the Arabic and Persian languages. He apparently remained true to S̲h̲īʿism for the greater part of his life. At about 22 years of age, he settled at Rayy where the intellectual atmosphere appeared favourable to his ambitions; the Būyid wazīr Ibn ʿAbbād [ q.v.] gran…

, a celebrated ‘reader’ of the Ḳurʾān, regarded as the founder of the grammatical school of Baṣra, died c. 154/770. This scholar seems to have claimed a genealogy connecting him with the Arab tribe of Māzin of the confederation of Tamīm; see Ibn Ḵh̲allikān and the other biographers, including Ibn al-Ḏj̲azarī, who, however, in one isolated statement, links him with Ḥanīfa. His name, Zabbān, has never been fully confirmed, and is only given in preference to a score of others. He is believed to have been born c. 70/68…

, the sobriquet of the grammarian of al-Kūfa, Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā b. Ziyād, who died in 207/822; according to al-Samʿānī, Ansāb , f° 420a (quoted by Ibn K̲h̲allikān, ii, 229, l. 34), al-Farrāʾ appears to signify, not “the Furrier” but “one who skins, i.e., scrutinises language”. He was born at al-Kūfa in about 144/761, of a family that were natives of Daylam (see Yāḳūt, Udabāʾ , xx, 9), and he remained as a dependent of an Arab clan, either the Asad or the Minḳār (see Fihrist , 66 and Taʾrīk̲h̲ Bag̲h̲dād , xiv, 149); he received an education in ḥadīt̲h̲ that went back t…

, pre-Islamic sayyid and poet; through his mother he was the grandson of the sayyid and poet al-Muhalhil [ q.v.]. While still a youth he became chief of his tribe, the Ḏj̲us̲h̲am branch of the Tag̲h̲lib [ q.v.] of the Middle Euphrates. What we know of his life is confined to a few traditions ( k̲h̲abar ); one describes the circumstances of his assassination of the King of al-Ḥīra, ʿAmr b. Hind, about 568 A.D.; another serves as a commentary on some epigrams against another ruler of that town, al-Nuʿmān b. al-Mund̲h̲ir (580-602 A…

, amīr, probably a native of Ḵh̲ars̲h̲ana in Cappadocia, sometimes designated (through a factitious genealogy?) by the name of Badr b. ʿAmmār al-Asadī. Chamberlain to the caliph al Ḳāhir and in high favour under al-Rāḍī, he followed the amīr al-umarā Ibn Rāʾiḳ ([ q.v.]; Canard, Histoire de la dynastie des Hamdânides , Algiers 1951, 411-24), when the latter was charged with the government of D̲j̲azīra and Syria-Palestine. Badr became lieutenant of Ibn Rāʾiḳ, received the government of the d̲j̲und of Jordan, and resided at Tiberias (beginning of 328/en…

, ʿAbd Allāh b. Salama , Arab poet of the second half of the 1st/7th century. He belonged to the tribe of Sahm, a branch of the Hud̲h̲ayl of the Ḥid̲j̲āz, and embraced the Marwānid cause; imprisoned by the anti-caliph ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr, he regained his liberty when the latter died, and, according to his own account, took part in the capture of Mecca in 72/692. He celebrated in his verse the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, as well as his brother, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz; see Ag̲h̲anī 1, xxi, 144. Above all he praised the amīr Abū Ḵh̲ālid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz of the Asīd clan, whose brother, Umayya, h…

, "the loquacious", the sobriquet of the Arab poet g̲h̲iyāt̲h̲ b. g̲h̲awt̲h̲ b. al-ṣalt , who died probably before 92/710. He belonged to the great tribe of the Tag̲h̲lib [ q.v.] of northern Syria, which remained entirely Christian, of the Monophysite persuasion. By his mother Layla he was connected to another Christian tribe, that of Iyād. He was born either at Ḥīra (see Ag̲h̲ānī 1, vii, 170), or near Rusāfa (Sergiopolis); his date of birth is uncertain, but may have been about 20/640. He remained a Christian all his life, and was unmoved by the efforts of …

, Abu ’l-Faḍl , amatory poet of ʿIrāḳ, died, it seems, after 193/808. His family belonged to the Arab clan of Ḥanīfa, from the district of Baṣra, but had emigrated to Ḵh̲urāsān. It seems, however, that the father of al-ʿAbbās returned to Baṣra, where he is said to have died in 150/767 (al-Ḵh̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī, 133). Al-ʿAbbās ¶ was born about 133/750. He grew up in Bag̲h̲dād (this must be the meaning of the passage of Ibn Ḳutayba, 525, and of the words of al-Ṣūlī quoted by al-Ḵh̲aṭīb, 128, or of those of al-Ak̲h̲fas̲h̲ repeated in Ag̲h̲ānī 3, viii, 353). We do not know anything about his …

(Abū ʿAmr) Kult̲h̲ūm b. ʿAmr b. Ayyūb, letter-writer and poet, died at the beginning of the 3rd/9th century. A descendant of the pre-Islamic poet ʿAmr b. Kult̲h̲ūm, al-ʿAttābī belonged to a sub-group of the Arab tribe, the Tag̲h̲lib (cf. Ibn Ḥazm, 287), from the neighbourhood of Ḳinnasrīn in Northern Syria. The date of his birth and of his appearance in Bag̲h̲dād are unknown. According to an indication by Ibn Ṭayfur, Taʾrīk̲h̲ Bag̲h̲dād , ed. Kelley, X, 157-8, taken up again by A. Amīn, he stayed for a while at Marw and at Nis̲h̲āpūr, for the purpose of consulting Persian ( sic) manuscripts. I…

(and also babg̲h̲āʾ ) «parakeet(s)» «parrot(s)». The form is the same for both the male and the female, and represents the singular or the collective. Etymologically, according to D̲j̲āḥiẓ, the name is derived from the bird’s cry. It occurs in languages of Romance origin, for example the Provençal papagaï , Spanish papagayo and Old French papegai (and the papagan of the Roman de la Rose ). In the 3rd/9th century, ʿIrāḳ only knew those varieties of psittacids which were native to the Indian Archipelago; al-Danūrī mentions in addition to g…

, lit. ‘he who wears a piece of cord’, nickname given to the famous Arab poet G̲h̲aylān b. ʿUḳba, who died in 117/735-36. He earned the name on account of a small charm which he hung around his neck by a piece of string. He was from the Saʿb b. Milkān clan, an offshoot of the ʿAdī tribe which originated from the ʿAbd Manāt peoples of Central Arabia. On his mother’s side he was related to the Asad tribe. If we accept that he died at the age of forty, his date of birth would be 77/696. This information is however open t…

, “thick-set”, sobriquet of the poet ʿalī b. ḏjabala . Born at Bag̲h̲dād in 160/776, of a family of Ḵh̲urāsānī mawālī , al-ʿAkawwak seems to have spent most of his life in ʿIrāḳ, where he was the panegyrist of Abū Dulaf al-ʿId̲j̲lī [ q.v.], Ḥumayd ¶ b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Ṭūsī, and the vizier al-Ḥasan b. Sahl [ q.v.]. The exaggerated and almost sacrilegious eulogies addressed to the two first-named excited, it is said, the hostility of the Caliph al-Maʾmūn, who had the poet’s tongue torn out. Al-ʿAkawwak died as a result of this mutilation in 213/828. His dīwān , a work of…

“the Parrot”, the soubriquet under which is celebrated the Arab poet and letterwriter Abū ’l-Farad̲j̲ ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Naṣr, born 313/925, died 397/1007. The ethnie appellation al-Mak̲h̲zūmī which was given to him implies fictitious Arabian descent. A native of Naṣībīn, al-Babbag̲h̲āʾ seems to have attached himself to the entourage of the Ḥamdānid amīr Sayf al-Dawla, when the latter was established at Aleppo, and therefore after 333/ 944. He sang the praises of this amīr, and achieved prominence in the literary milieu which existed in this town. A fervent admirer of al-Mutanabbī [ q.v.…

, a liberated slave of the Banū Riyāḥ, belonging to the first generation of tābiʿūn residing in Baṣra; d. 90/708-9 or 96/714. A commentary on the Ḳurʾān is attributed to him (Hād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa (Flügel), ii, 352), but he is mainly known as a traditionist and a transmitter of the Ḳurʾan. Having collected in al-Baṣra and in Medina ḥadīt̲h̲ transmitted particularly by ʿUmar and Ubayy b. Kaʿb, he was considered thrustworthy ( t̲h̲iḳa ) and contributed to the training of Ḳatāda, Dāʾūd b. Abū Hind, ʿAṣim al-Aḥwal and other traditionists of renown. …

, “song, elegy of love”, often also “the erotico-elegiac genre ”. The term is Arabic, but passed into Persian, Turkish and Urdu and acquired a special sense in these languages. The semantic development of the word from the root g̲h̲ z l , “to spin”, “spinning”, is not in doubt, but presupposes intermediary meanings for which we have no evidence; the g̲h̲azal was not in fact a song of women spinning, like that of which Tibullus speaks (ed. Rat, Paris 1931, Book II, no. 1, line 60), but a man’s song addressed to a girl; contamination by the noun g̲h̲azāl …

"instrument", "utensil" (synonym of adāt plural adawāt ). i. In grammatical terminology, āla and adāt are found in expressions like ālat al-taʿrīf "instrument of determination" (= the article al), ālat al-tas̲h̲bīh "instrument of comparison" (= the particle ka) etc. The term āla (like adāt) does not seem to have been used by the Arab grammarians of the 3rd/9th century; in works such as that of Ibn Fāris, the word adāt is only met with once. Towards the end of the 4th/10th century the term ḥarf ("particle") may be regarded as signifying also the grammatical "instruments" later called āla and a…

, “he who professes to be a prophet”, the surname by which the Arab poet Abu ’l-Ṭayyib Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-D̲j̲uʿfī is usually known (cf. in Ibn K̲h̲allikān, Wafayāt , Cairo 1310, i, 36, two genealogies, which do not agree, going back to his great-grandfather). Abu ’l-Ṭayyib was born in Kūfa in 303/915 in the Kinda quarter, whence the ethnic al-Kindī sometimes given him. His family, although in very humble circumstances, claimed descent from the Yamanī clan of the D̲j̲uʿfī, and he himself all his lif…