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al-Sakkākī

(1,398 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, Abū YaʿḲūb yūsuf b. Abī Bakr b. Muḥammad al-K̲h̲wārazmī Sirād̲j̲ al-Dīn, influential rhetorician writing in Arabic. He was born in K̲h̲wārazm on 3 D̲j̲umādā I, 555/11 May 1160 according to most sources, or in the year 554, according to his contemporary Yāḳūt ( Irs̲h̲ād , ed. Rifāʿī, xx, 59). He died toward the end of Rad̲j̲ab 626/mid-June 1229 in Ḳaryat al-Kindī near Almālig̲h̲ in Farg̲h̲āna. In spite of his fame already during his lifetime, the circumstances of his life are shrouded in obscurity—a fact most likely …

Sālim

(321 words)

Author(s): Björkman, W. | Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), intact, sound, i.e. free of damage or blemish, thus "well" as opposed to "ill," and therefore a synonym of ṣaḥīḥ . The word is used as a technical term in various fields: 1. Applied to money, sālim means unclipped coins of full weight, or a sum of money free from charges and deductions. 2. In grammar, it denotes two things: in ṣarf (morphology) a "sound" root, i.e., one in which none of the radicals is a "weak" letter ( ḥarfʿilla , see ḥurūf al-hid̲j̲āʾ ), nor a hamza , nor a geminate; in naḥw (syntax) a word with a "sound" ending, no matter whether the preced…

ʿUt̲h̲mān b. Marzūḳ

(522 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
b. Ḥumayd b. Salāma al-Ḳurashī , Abū ʿAmr (d. 564/1169), Hanbalī jurist and mystic, known as Ibn marzūḳ . He studied with Ibn al-Ḥanbalī (d. 536/1141, not “Ibn al-D̲j̲īlī”, as in Ibn Rad̲j̲ab, i, 306) at Damascus, though whether he was born there is not clear; he is also said to have met ʿAbd al-Ḳādir al-D̲j̲īlānī [ q.v.] and to have held him in high esteem. He lived mainly in Egypt and died there, aged over seventy years old. Only one work of his seems to be mentioned, an abridgement of Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ , which bears the same title as Ibn al-D̲j̲awzī’s abridgement of the same work, Ṣafwa…

al-Ṭūfī

(1,657 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, Nad̲j̲m al-Dīn Abu ’l-Rabīʿ Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Ḳawī b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Ṣarṣarī al-Bag̲h̲dādī (b. 675/1276-77 [?], d. Rad̲j̲ab 716/Sept. Oct. 1316), Ḥanbalī legal scholar, especially in uṣūl , known in modern times particularly for his maṣlaḥa (public interest) theory. The vocalisation “al-Ṭawfī”, used in Brockelmann and a number of other Western sources, is incorrect (see Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Durar , ii, 249). He was born in an otherwise unattested town Ṭūfā, near Ṣarṣar, which in turn is not far from Bag̲h̲dād. He had his first education in grammar and Ḥanbalī fiḳh

Saʿīd b. Ḥumayd

(658 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
b. Saʿīd al-Kātib , Abū ʿUt̲h̲mān, ʿAbbāsid scribe, epistolographer and poet. His exact dates are unknown, but he was probably born in the last years of the 3rd century A.H. and died after 257/871 (or 260/874), the year of Faḍl al-S̲h̲āʿira’s death [ q.v. in Suppl.]. His family came from the lower Persian nobility—he himself is sometimes called al-dihḳān —and he claimed royal Persian descent. He seems to have held various lower provincial offices, before stepping into the limelight as the kātib of Aḥmad b. al-K̲h̲aṣīb, vizier to al-Muntaṣir (r. 247-8/861-2 [ q.v.]), for whom he drew up the ba…

Taʿawwud̲h̲

(345 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.) means the use of the phrase aʿūd̲h̲u bi ’llāhi min ... “I take refuge with God against...”, followed by the mention of the thing that the utterer of the phrase fears or abhors. The term istiʿād̲h̲a “seeking refuge”, is often used as a synonym. The phrase, with variants, is well attested in the Ḳurʾān, in particular in the last two sūras which each consist of one extended taʿawwud̲h̲ [see al-muʿawwid̲h̲atān 1 ]. The litany-like enumeration of evil things in the first of the two foreshadows similar strains in a number of Prophetic invocations recorded in the Ḥadīth

Ṣafī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Sarāyā al-Ḥillī

(4,310 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
al-Ṭāʾī al-Sinbisī, Abu ’l-Maḥāsin (b. 5 Rabīʿ II 677/26 August 1278 [according to al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī , xviii, 482, 6-7, and most other sources] ¶ or D̲j̲umādā II, 678/Oct.-Nov. 1279 [according to al-Birzālī (d. 739/1339; q.v.) who claims to have received this information from al-Ḥillī himself, see Ḥuwwar, 20], d. probably 749/1348), the most famous Arab poet of the 8th century A.H. In spite of his fame, information about his life is rather scarce; even the year of his death is variously given (see Bosworth, Underworld , i, 138, n. 26). Born in al-Ḥilla [ q.v.], a centre of S̲h̲īʿī learning…

ʿUrwa b. Ud̲h̲ayna

(842 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a laḳab , his father’s name being Yaḥyā), Abū ʿĀmir al-Kinānī al-Layt̲h̲ī, Arab poet from Medina (fl. later 1st/7th century into the early 2nd/8th century) famous for his love poetry ( g̲h̲azal), but also billed as a traditionist and legal scholar; Mālik [ q.v.] is said to have transmitted from him (Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Ḏj̲arḥ wa ’l-taʿdīl , Ḥaydarābād 1360, iii/1, 396; al-Buk̲h̲ārī, al-Taʾrīk̲h̲ al-kabīr , Ḥaydarābād 1941-64, iv, 33; al-D̲h̲ahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl , ed. ʿA.M. al-Bid̲j̲āwī, Cairo n.d., iii, 63 [ ṣadūḳ ], cf. also Ibn Ḳutayba, S̲h̲iʿr , 580 [ t̲h̲iḳa

Muḳābala

(2,323 words)

Author(s): Hartner, W. | Rosenthal, F. | Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), a technical term in a number of different disciplines. 1. In astronomy. Here it corresponds to Gr. διάμετρος, in the Almagest άχρόνυκτος, Lat. oppositio, the term for the opposition of a planet and the sun or of two planets with one another. In opposition, the difference in longitude between the two heavenly bodies is 180°; while the modern use is to take no note of the deviations of latitude from the ecliptic, al-Battānī expressly emphasises ( Opus astronomicum, ed. Nallino, iii, 196) that we can only have the true muḳābala when both bodies are either in …

al-Sid̲j̲ilmāsī

(296 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, Abu Muḥammad al-Ḳāsim b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Anṣārī, Arab literary theorist, known for his highly original work al-Manzaʿ al-badīʿ fī tad̲j̲nīs asālīb al-badīʿ (ed. ʿAllāl al-G̲h̲āzī, Rabat 1401/1980). In the colophon of the Tetuan ms., the author states that he finished his work on 21 Ṣafar 704/23 November 1304. No other bio-bibliographical details are known. His nisba and the provenance of the two extant mss. of his work show him to be a Mag̲h̲ribī scholar. More particularly, as the approach of his book clearly shows,…

Sabab

(2,063 words)

Author(s): Arnaldez, R. | Izzi Dien, Mawil Y. | Heinrichs, W.P. | Carter, M.G.
(a.), pl. asbāb , literally "rope" ( ḥabl ), the basic sense as given by the lexicographers (cf. LʿA ), coming to designate anything which binds or connects. It is "anything by means of which one gains an end ( maḳṣūd ; al-Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ānī) or an object sought" ( maṭlūb ; in the Baḥr al-d̲j̲awāhir ). One can mention asbāb with the sense of "bonds" in Ḳurʾān, II, 166: "When the bonds [which unite them] are broken...". Ibn ʿAbbās interpreted this as friendship ( mawadda ); Mud̲j̲āhid, "alliance" ( tawāṣul ) in this context. The sense is also found of "a means of achi…

Ruʾba b. al-ʿAd̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲

(2,169 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
al-tamīmī , Abu ’l-Ḏj̲aḥḥāf (Abū Muḥammad also occurs), an Arab poet of the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid era (d. 145/762), the greatest exponent of the rad̲j̲az [ q.v.] ḳaṣīda . The name Ruʾba, by which he was called after his grandfather, is attested seven times, and its diminutive Ruʾayba eight times, in Ibn al-Kalbī’s genealogy (see Caskel-Strenziok ii, 489b). There is no clear cluster of attestations in Eastern Arabia, which makes Krenkow’s contention (see EI 1, s.n.) that the name is the Persian rōbāh “fox” less likely. Arabic phi…

al-Rādūyānī

(431 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, Muḥammad b. ʿUmar, author of the first Persian treatise on rhetoric, the Kitāb Tard̲j̲umān al-balāg̲h̲a . The little that can be inferred about the author’s life is known from the Tard̲j̲umān itself; no other source mentions him. According to the researches of A. Ateş, he seems to have lived in Transoxania, and his book was written between 481/1088, the beginning of the Karak̲h̲ānid Aḥmad K̲h̲ān’s incarceration at the hand of Malik S̲h̲āh, as mentioned in one of the poems quoted, and 507/1114, the date of the unique ms. of the Tard̲j̲umān, the mad̲j̲mūʿa

Sariḳa

(3,050 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
In literary criticism, “plagiarism”. Although the term sariḳa is used, no “theft” in the legal sense of the word is implied, as Islamic law does not recognise intellectual property. A modern booklet on intellectual theft stresses the moral turpitude involved, but does not invoke any S̲h̲arīʿa norms or punishments (ʿAbd al-Mannān, al-Sariḳāt al-ʿilmiyya ). The victim of plagiarism could only have recourse to public opinion or approach a man of power ( istiʿdāʾ ) to redress the situation. Literary theft occurred and was discussed predominantly, though not exclusively, in th…

Tak̲h̲yīl

(3,787 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), lit. “creating an image, or an illusion ( k̲h̲ayāl )” a technical term with various meanings but all broadly in the field of hermeneutics. It occurs in (a) theory of imagery, (b) philosophical poetics, (c) Ḳurʾānic exegesis, and (d) among rhetorical figures. Whether any or all of these usages have a common root remains to be seen. It should be noted that, like any maṣdar , tak̲h̲yīl can also act as a verbal noun of the passive. Since in everyday language the verb was predominantly used in the passive ( k̲h̲uyyila ilayhi “an illusion was…

Ṣadr

(2,515 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), “chest, breast, bosom” (pl. ṣudūr ), a peculiarly Arabic word, not attested in other Semitic languages, except as a borrowing from Arabic. Its semantic connection with other derivatives of the root ṣ-d-r within Arabic is unclear; it may be derived from the basic notion of the verb ṣadara , i.e. “to come up, move upward and outward, from the waterhole” (opposite: warada ). Most concretely, it refers to the chest as part of the body, and as such is dealt with in the ¶ lexicographical monographs on the human body called Ḵh̲alḳ al-insān (al-Aṣmaʿī, 214-18; T̲h̲āb…

Rad̲j̲az

(3,918 words)

Author(s): Ullmann, M. | Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.) indicates an Arab metre. The proper meaning of the word is “tremor, spasm, convulsion (as may occur in the behind of a camel when ¶ it wants to rise)”. It is not clear how this word became a technical term in prosody. The other etymological meaning of rad̲j̲az “thunder, rumble, making a noise”, may perhaps be taken into consideration. In that case, there might be an allusion to the iambic, monotonous and pounding rhythm of these poems (cf. ka-mā samiʿta rad̲j̲aza l-ṣawāʿiḳī , Abū Nuwās, ed. E. Wagner, ii, 299; for the etymology, see also T. Fahd, La divination arabe, Leiden 1966, 153-8). …

Sām

(4,613 words)

Author(s): Rippin, A. | Heinrichs, W.P. | Huehnergard, J.
, a term originally referring to the Biblical personage, in modern times used also with linguistic reference. 1. The Biblical personage. Here, Sām denotes in Arabic lore and tradition Shem, the son of Noah [see nuḥ ]. The Ḳurʾān does not mention any of the sons of Noah by name but alludes to them in VII, 64, X, 73, XI, 40, XXIII, 27 and XXVI, 119. The Islamic tradition develops many details regarding Shem. His mother was ʿAmzūrah (cf. Jubilees, iv, 33) and he was born 98 years before the flood. He and his wife Ṣalīb were saved from the Deluge by entering the a…

T̲h̲āʾ

(1,194 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, the fourth letter in the Arabic alphabet. In the abd̲j̲ad order [ q.v.] it has a numerical value of 500. The phoneme represented by this letter may be defined as the voiceless member of the apico-interdental triad of fricatives, as opposed to the voiced /d̲h̲/ [see d̲h̲āl ] and the “emphatic”, i.e. velarised, /ẓ/ [see ẓāʾ ]. Sībawayh (ed. Hārūn, Cairo 1395/1975, iv, 433) describes the point of articulation for the triad as “between the tip of the tongue and the tips of the incisors” and he is followed herein by— inter alios—Ibn D̲j̲innī ( Sirr ṣināʿat al-iʿrāb , ed. Ḥ.…

al-Tihāmī

(595 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad (d. 416/1025), Arab poet. His nisba points to the Tihāma [ q.v.], the coastal plain on the Red Sea coast of Arabia, or to Mecca, which is sometimes synecdochically called “Tihāma”. Ibn K̲h̲allikān (iii, 381) admits his ignorance as to which of these two locations is intended. He is said to have come from the lower classes ( min al-sūḳa , al-Bāk̲h̲arzī, i, 188-9). The poet spent most of his life in Syria, where he attached himself in particular to the D̲j̲arrāḥids [ q.v.], who tried, with limited success, to consolidate their little principality in Pal…

Ṣāḥib

(1,034 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), “companion”, a term with various senses in Islamic usage. Formally it is an active participle of the transitive verb ṣaḥiba yaṣḥabu “to associate with”, but semantically a pure noun; it thus cannot govern an object in the accusative. The most common plural is aṣḥāb , of which the double plural ( d̲j̲amʿ al-d̲j̲amʿ ) aṣāḥīb is given in the dictionaries, while its “diminutive of the plural” ( taṣg̲h̲īr al-d̲j̲amʿ ) usayḥāb is attested (Wensinck, Concordance , s.v.). Other plurals include ṣaḥb (a collective noun), ṣiḥāb and ṣuḥbān , the verbal nouns ṣuḥba and ṣaḥāba

Ward

(2,716 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
In Arabic literature. The rose is easily the most sung flower in Arabic poetry. Its natural place is in flower, garden and spring poetry ( zahriyyāt , rawḍiyyāt and rabīʿiyyāt ), but the rose also figures prominently in the setting of wine poetry ( k̲h̲amriyyāt ), which is actually the place of origin for flower poems. Abū Nuwās (d. ca. 198/813 [ q.v.]) still keeps the bacchic framework of his flower descriptions, and it may have been ʿAlī b. al-Ḏj̲ahm (d. 249/863 [ q.v.]) who first wrote pure floral pieces, all of them devoted to the rose (see Schoeler 71-2, 128). Poetic desc…

Ṣafwān b. Ṣafwān al-Anṣārī

(750 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, Arab poet of the 2nd-3rd centuries A.H. known for his ideological poetry in support of the Muʿtazila [ q.v.]. Al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ [ q.v.] is the only source for the few bits of information on his life and the sparse samples from his poetry that we have. The biographical snippets show him in Multān at the court of the governor of Sind, Dāwūd b. Yazīd al-Muhallabī, who held this office from 184/800-205/820 [see muhallabids , toward the end]. In all of them he is al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ’s authority on elephants, quoting poetry by the elephant expert Hārūn b. Mūsā al-Azdī mawlāhum ; describi…

al-S̲h̲ims̲h̲āṭī

(451 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Muṭahhar al-ʿAdawī, Arab philologist, minor poet and anthologist. As poetic occurrences of his nisba and the town to which it refers show (Yāḳūt, Buldān, Beirut 1376/1957, iii, 363a, 1. 4; and Irs̲h̲ād , Cairo n.d., xvii, 241, 1. 5), the name-form “al-Sumaysāṭī, given in Flügel’s ed. of the Fihrist and, as an option, by Brockelmann, GAL S I, 251, should be discarded. Sumaysāṭ and S̲h̲ims̲h̲āṭ refer to two different places (Yāḳūt, Buldān, s.w., and cf. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 116-17 (S̲h̲ims̲h̲āṭ), 108 (…

Usṭūl

(403 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a., pl. asāṭīl ), also spelled uṣṭūl (for this type of variation, see W. Heinrichs, in Studies in honor of Georg Krotkoff , Winona Lake, Ind. 1997, 175-8), the most common term for a “naval fleet”, and, secondarily, also for an individual “galley” or “man-of-war”. The word is a loan from Greek στόλος, which means inter alia “(naval) expedition” and “fleet”. Al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956 [ q.v.]) is apparently the first to recognise the Greek origin of the word; he also gives a clear definition: al-usṭūl kalima rūmiyya sima li ’l-marākib al-ḥarbiyya al-mud̲j̲tamiʿa ( Tanbīh

Naḳd

(14,242 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), “[literary] criticism”, in modern Arabic, al-naḳd al-adabī , in mediaeval times most commonly used in the construct naḳd al-s̲h̲iʿr “criticism of poetry”. The critic is nāḳid (pl. nuḳḳād or naḳada ) or, more rarely, naḳḳād ; the form VIII verbal noun intiḳād is a synonym of naḳd . The term originated in the figurative use ( mad̲j̲āz ) of naḳd in the sense of “assaying (coins) and separating the good from the bad” (for the mad̲j̲āz character, see al-Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī. Asās al-balāg̲h̲a , Beirut n.d., col. 469c, and for an extended analogy between assayer and critic, see al-Tawḥīdī, al-Muḳ…

Mubālag̲h̲a

(1,527 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), verbal noun of the form III verb bālag̲h̲a ( ), with the two related meanings of “to do the utmost [in s.th.]” and “to overdo [s.th.]”), technical term in (a) grammar (“intensiveness”) and (b) literary theory (“emphasis” and, more particularly, “hyperbole”). (a) In grammar. Already in Sībawayh, the term mubālag̲h̲a is used to denote the intensive meaning of a number of morphemes and syntagmas (see G. Troupeau, Lexique-index du Kitāb de Sībawayhi , Paris 1976, 41). Most consistently it is henceforth applied to the intensive participles of the forms faʿūl , faʿʿāl

Naẓm

(2,010 words)

Author(s): van Gelder, G.J.H. | Heinrichs, W.P.
1. In metrical speech. Literally meaning “stringing (pearls, beads, etc.)”, in early ʿAbbāsid times naẓm acquired the meaning of “versifying”, “versification”, and became almost synonymous with “poetry”, s̲h̲iʿr [ q.v.], especially when contrasted with prose, nat̲h̲r , literally “scattering”. The comparison of a poem to a necklace, or verses to pearls, is apt in view of the relative independence of the individual verses, held together on the string of the uniform metre and rhyme. The image has pre-ʿAbbāsid origins, and although the noun naẓm was not used in the sense of “verse…

Ṭibāḳ

(1,946 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), a rhetorical figure mostly translated “antithesis” and consisting in the inclusion, in a verse or colon, of words of opposite meaning, as in ḥulamāʾu fi ’l-nādī id̲h̲ā mā d̲j̲iʾtahumd̲j̲uhalāʾu yawma ʿad̲j̲ād̲j̲at in wa-liḳāʾi “restrained in the tribal council, when you come to them,—unrestrained on the day of a dust-cloud and battle” (Zuhayr). Synonymous terms are muṭābaḳa and, especially in earlier theorists, muṭābaḳ (from ṭābaḳtu bayna ’l-s̲h̲ayʾayn “I made the two things congruent” [see Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Badīʿ, 36]). From the same root one also finds taṭbīḳ

al-Sarī b. Aḥmad b. al-Sarī al-Raffāʾ

(1,703 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
al-Kindī al-Mawṣilī, Abu ’l-Ḥasan (d. 362/972-3 according to Yāḳūt, Irs̲h̲ād, iv, 185, and Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bug̲h̲ya , ix, 435; other dates are also given), Arab poet and anthologist, particularly famous for his descriptive poetry ( awṣāf ). He was born in Mawṣil, where his father apprenticed him to the clothes-menders/jobbing tailors ( raffāʾūn ), hence his nickname, which is, however, not yet used by the contemporary source Ibn al-Nadīm ( Fihrist , 169). In spite of his lowly occupation he tried his hand at poetry, and al-Bāk̲h̲arzī lists him a…

Radīf

(3,373 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P. | Deny, J. | Schimmel, 149. | W.P. Heinrichs | J. Deny
(a.), lit. “one who rides behind”, “pillion rider”, is used metaphorically in several technical senses (for a poetical figurative use in Turkish, cf. ordū-yi ẓafer-redīf “the victorious army [one which has victory on its croup]” in Tārīk̲h̲-i D̲j̲ewdet , Istanbul 1270/1853-4, i, 22): In astronomy it has two meanings, which seem, however, not very amply attested: (a) al-Radīf , and also, better attested, al-Ridf , is the ancient Arabic name for D̲h̲anab al-Dad̲j̲ād̲j̲a , i.e. the star Deneb (α Cygni), called thus because it “rides pillion” to the “Horsemen” ( al-Fawāris

Ẓāʾ

(709 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, the seventeenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, numerical value: 900 The transliteration /ẓ/ reflects an urban/sedentary pronunciation as “emphatic” (pharyngealised) /z/. Sībawayh (d. 177/793 [ q.v.]), however, describes the sound as an “emphatic” voiced interdental, thus /ḏ̣/ (iv, 436), and this is the way it is pronounced in those dialects, mainly Bedouin, that have preserved the interdentals. There is, however, an additional complication: with ¶ very few exceptions (in Northern Yemen, see Behnstedt, 5), all modern dialects of Arabic have coalesced the sou…

al-Was̲h̲m

(488 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
1. In older Arab society. Tattooing was a custom among women in pre-Islamic times. The parts of the body mentioned as recipients are the hand ([ ẓāhir al-] yad ), the wrist ( miʿṣam ), the arm ( d̲h̲irāʿ ), the posterior ( ist ) and the gums ( lit̲h̲a ). The motifs used are not mentioned; going by modern-day tattooing in Islamic countries they were probably abstract designs. The tattoo was created by pricking ( g̲h̲araza ) the skin with a needle ( ibra , misalla ) or—more specifically—with a tattooing needle ( mīs̲h̲am , pl. mawās̲h̲im , see Lewin, Vocabulay , 471), so that a trace ( at̲h̲ar

Waḥda

(1,421 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P. | Netton, I.R.
(a.), “unit, unity”. 1. As a term in grammar. Here the genitive construct ism al-waḥda is variously rendered in Western grammars as nomen unitatis “noun of unity”, “unit noun”, “noun of individuality”, and “singulative” (but on the last of these, see below). The ism al-waḥda forms the counterpart to the ism al-d̲j̲ins or nomen generis “generic noun” and is derived ¶ from it by adding the feminine ending –atun . If the generic noun refers to something which exists in units, the ism al-waḥda denotes such a unit; if the referent is homogeneous, the unit noun denotes a separate piece. Thus namlun

Ramz

(4,463 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P. | Knysh, A.
(a.), a verbal noun with the original meaning of “winking”, “signalling with your eyes and eyebrows, or by forming words with your mouth without a sound” (see also section 3. below, first para.). This developed into a concrete noun, with the pl. rumūz , denoting a variety of indirect methods of expression, ¶ such as “allusion”, “symbol”, “cypher”. 1. In rhetoric. Here the term is used sparingly. It does have its place in the scholastic discipline based on al-Sakkākī’s (d. 626/1229 [ q.v.]) Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm , where it denotes a specific subcategory of kināya [ q.v.], here used in the sense …

Waḥs̲h̲

(655 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), an adjective meaning “wild, desolate, uninhabited” ( al-dār al-waḥs̲h̲ ( a) “the desolate abode”, both with and without gender agreement), but more frequently a collective noun meaning “wild animals”. The relative adjective (and the singulative) is waḥs̲h̲ī the “wild ass” ( recte “onager”) is thus either ḥimār al-waḥs̲h̲ or al-ḥimār al-waḥs̲h̲ī . The most common plural is wuḥūs̲h̲ “kinds of wild animals”, as one typically finds it in the title of the kutub al-wuḥūs̲h̲ , lexicographical studies dealing with wild animals (name of the male and …

al-S̲h̲arḳī b. al-Ḳuṭāmī

(669 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(d. ca. 150/767, according to Sezgin, GAS, viii, 115; ca. 155/772, according to al-Ziriklī, Aʿlām 3, ix, 139), transmitter of ancient Arabic poetry and ak̲h̲bār , quoted also for lexicographical, genealogical, geographical, and historical data. There is some fluctuation in the sources between al-S̲h̲arḳī and S̲h̲arḳī as well as between al-Ḳuṭāmī ¶ and Ḳuṭāmī; in addition, there is some discussion whether Ḳaṭāmī is the correct reading. The form given here has the best authority. Both names are laḳabs , his real name being al-Walīd b. al-Ḥusayn, with the kunya

Waḥs̲h̲ī (a.) and Ḥūs̲h̲ī

(671 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), synonymous terms in literary criticism denoting words that are uncouth and jarring to the ear due to their being archaic and/or Bedouinic (often including the criterium of cacophony). It is thus mostly used in the context of “modern” poetry [see muḥdat̲h̲ūn , in Suppl.]; and it mostly refers to single words rather than to any contextual obscurity (ʿAbd al-Ḳāhir al-D̲j̲urd̲j̲ānī says this explicitly: Dalāʾil , ed. M.M. S̲h̲ākir, Cairo 1404/1984, 44, 1. 4). It is not, however, an exclusively poetic phenomenon. Al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ speaks of s…

Tad̲h̲kira

(2,139 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P. | Bruijn, J.T.P. de | Stewart Robinson, J.
(a.), “memorandum” or “aidemémoire”. The word is considered a verbal noun of the form II verb d̲h̲akkara “to-remind”, but already in its nine occurrences in the Ḳurʾan it tends to mean a concrete “reminder” rather than a verbal “reminding”. 1. In Arabic literature. Tad̲h̲kira occurs not infrequentiy in the tides of books. From a closer scrutiny of these tides, two clusters of books emerge that represent two different “genres” of text presentation: (1) handbooks and (2) notebooks. It should be noted that, in most cas…

Ḳawāʿid Fiḳhiyya

(1,584 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), legal principles, legal maxims, general legal rules (sing. ḳāʿida fiḳhiyya ). These are mad̲h̲hab internal legal guidelines that are applicable to a number of particular cases in various fields of the law, whereby the legal determinations ( aḥkām ) of these cases can be derived from these principles. They reflect the logic of a school’s legal reasoning and thus impart a “scaffolding” to the “case-law” ( furūʿ ). Historically, general rules can be found already strewn throughout early furūʿ works. They were first collected by Ḥanafīs like Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Kark̲h̲ī (d. …

Mutawātir

(717 words)

Author(s): Wensinck, A.J. | Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), active participle of Form VI of w-t-r, “that which comes successively”. It is used as a technical term in two senses: (a) In the methodologies of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v., and for the term see Vol. III, 25b] and of law, the term is the counterpart of k̲h̲abar al-wāḥid [ q.v.] and denotes a Prophetic tradition (or, in general, any report) with multiple chains of transmission [see isnād ]. Concerning the requisite number of concurrent chains that would make a report mutawātir , there is no unanimity; it is supposed to be a sufficient number to preclude the po…

Zāy, also, more rarely, Zāʾ

(789 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, the eleventh letter of the Arabic alphabet, numerical value 8. The former variant of the letter name retains the /y/ of the original letter name (as in Hebrew zayin ), while the latter has the innovative ending –āʾ , which occurred legitimately with fāʾ (Hebr. ) and hāʾ (Hebr. ) and then spread to bāʾ (Hebr. bēt̲ ), tāʾ / t̲h̲āʾ (Hebr. tāw ), ḥāʾ / k̲h̲āʾ (Hebr. ḥēt̲ ), rāʾ (Hebr. rēs̲h̲ ), ṭā / ẓāʾ (Hebr. ṭēt̲ ), ¶ and yāʾ (Hebr. yō٤̲ ), with loss of the final consonant of the original letter name. The letter is transliterated /z/ and represents a voiced sibilant ( ḥarf al-ṣafīr

Tad̲j̲nīs

(3,554 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
(a.), a technical term for a rhetorical figure (alternative names, all from the same root, are d̲j̲inās [very common], mud̲j̲ānasa , mud̲j̲ānas , and tad̲j̲ānus ), variously translated as paronomasia, pun, homonymy, and alliteration. The last two terms, however, do not cover all the types that have traditionally been subsumed under this heading, while “pun” has also been used to render tawriya [ q.v.], the difference being that tawriya is a one-term pun ( double entendre). A general definition of tad̲j̲nīs would be: a pair of utterances (mostly, but no…

Ṭasm

(666 words)

Author(s): Heinrichs, W.P.
, name of one of the legendary extinct tribes of the Arabs, al-ʿarab al-bāʾida . These tribes are genealogically directly linked up to Biblical genealogies and thus precede the split into Northern and Southern Arabs, symbolised by the eponyms “Adnān ¶ and Ḳaḥṭān. According to one of our earliest sources, Ibn al-Kalbī [ q.v.], Ṭasm’s relationship to the other tribes (in small capitals) is as follows: (see W. Caskel, Ǧamharat an-nasab , Leiden 1966, i, 40, which see also for the vocalisation of “Immīm”; and cf. Ibn Ḥabīb, Muḥabbar , ed. I. Lichtenstädter, Ḥaydarābād 1361/1942, 384; Ibn Ḥazm, Ḏ…

Sad̲j̲ʿ

(6,970 words)

Author(s): Fahd, T. | Heinrichs, W.P. | Ben Abdesselem, A.
(a.), originally, the formal expression of the oracular pronouncement. 1. As magical utterances in pre-Islamic Arabian usage. Here, sad̲j̲ʿ was the rhythmical style practised by the Arab kāhin s [ q.v.] and kāhina s [see al-kāhina ], a style intermediate between that of the versified oracular utterances of the Sibylls and Pythians and that of the prose utterances of Apollo (see P. Amandry, La mantique apollinienne à Delphes . Essai sur le fonctionnement de l’oracle, diss. Paris 1950, 15). These utterances are "formulated in short, rhymed phrases, with rhythmical caden…
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