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ʿAbd al-Karīm , a notorious crypto-Manichean ( zindīḳ , [ q.v.]), belonging to a great family (he was the maternal uncle of Maʿn b. Zāʾida [ q.v.]). According to the most reliable information, he lived first at Baṣra, where (although even this is doubtful) he is supposed to have been a disciple of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī [ q.v.], from whom he parted on account of the latter’s doctrinal inconsistency regarding the problem of freewill and determinism. What is more certain is that he frequented a very mixed milieu, rubbing shoulders with Muʿtazilis such as ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and Wāṣil b. ʿAtāʾ [ qq.v.], with p…

, names of the two sons of Adam [ q.v.] in Muslim tradition: Heb̲el and Ḳāyin in the Hebrew Bible (for the distortion and assimilation through assonance of the two words, compare the pairs of words Ḏj̲ālūt-Ṭālūt, Hārūt-Mārūt, Yād̲j̲ūd̲j̲-Mād̲j̲ūd̲j̲; Ḳāyin is, however, attested sporadically). Although the Ḳurʾān does not give these names, it tells however (CV, 27-32/30-5, Medinan period) the story of the two sons of Adam, one of whom killed the other because his own sacrifice was refused when his brother…

, Jewish sect of the adepts of ʿĀnān b. David ( c. 760 A.D.), rather incorrectly considered to be the founder of the Karaite schismatic faction; his schism was only one of many which affected Rabbinical Judaism during the 8th-9th centuries. The Muslim authors seem to have taken most of their information about ʿĀnān and his sect from Karaite sources, especially Ḳirḳisānī, but they have only used a small part of the mass of information supplied by him. The author of the al-Badʾ wa ’l-Taʾrīk̲h̲ represents ʿĀnān as a sort of Muʿtazilite, who professes the divi…

, Abu ’l-Walīd Marwān (Hebrew name Yōnāh, Latin name Marinus [?]), Jewish physician and philologist, born at Cordova circa 380/990, died at Saragossa about fifty years later. His very important works, written in Arabic, as a grammarian and lexicographer of the Hebrew language do not concern us here. Ṣāʿid b. Aḥmad Ibn Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī (whose notice was reproduced by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa), however, praises him as a logician and the author of an epitome of pharmacology, which is mentioned also by Ibn al-Bayṭār. (G. Vajda) Bibliography The study by S. Munk (who had correctly deduced th…

, Abū ʿImrān Mūsā b. ʿUbayd allāh [Maymūn] al-Ḳurṭubī , usually called Moses Maimonides in English and German, Moїse Maїmonide in French, Jewish theologian and physician, born in Cordova in 1135, died in Fusṭāṭ in 1204. A member of a scholarly Jewish family long established in Muslim Spain, Moses Maimonides received his earliest education in his native town which, however, he was compelled to leave with his family in about 1149 on account of the Almohad invasion and the policy of hostility adopted by the new dynasty [see al-muwaḥḥidūn ] towards the religious mi…

, D̲j̲aʿd , heretic, was a native of K̲h̲urāsān but spent most of his life at Damascus; he was imprisoned and then put to death, on the orders of His̲h̲ām b. ʿAbd al-Malik [ q.v.], by K̲h̲ālid al-Ḳasrī [ q.v.] on the day of the Feast of Sacrifices as a substitute for the ritual sacrifice of a sheep; the sources vary on the place and date of his execution: Kūfa or Wāsiṭ, 124/742 or 125/743. Very few facts are known on the doctrinal position of D̲j̲aʿd b. Dirham; it is, however, clear that anti-Marwānid political propaganda and theolog…

, Abū Ayyūb Sulaymān b. Yaḥyā (in Hebrew: S̲h̲elōmōh ben Yehudāh; the Latin Avencebrol; Gabirol, or rather Gebirol, is perhaps Ḏj̲ubayr plus the Romance diminutive suffix - ol), Jewish poet and philosopher, born at Malaga circa 411/1021-2, died at Valencia 450/1058 (but this date is not absolutely certain). In addition to his works, mainly poetry, written in Hebrew, which do not concern us here, Ibn Gabirol wrote in Arabic a short treatise on morals ( Iṣlāḥ al-ak̲h̲lāḳ ), which summarizes without much originality (but adapting them to the needs of t…

, “possessors of the Scripture” (or “people of the Book”). This term, in the Ḳurʾān and the resultant Muslim terminology, denotes the Jews and the Christians, repositories of the earlier revealed books, al-Tawrāt [ q.v.] = the Torah, al-Zabūr [ q.v.] — the Psalms, and al-Ind̲j̲īl [ q.v.] = the Gospel. The use of this term was later extended to the Sabeans ( al-Ṣābiʾa [ q.v.])—both the genuine Sabeans, mentioned in the Ḳurʾān alongside the Jews and the Christians (= Mandeans), and the spurious Sabeans (star-worshippers of Ḥarrān)—to the Zoroastrians ( Mad̲j̲iūs [ q.v.]), and, in India, e…

, name of a person whom the Ḳurʾān associates with Pharaoh ( Firʿawn [ q.v.]), because of ¶ a still unexplained confusion with the minister of Ahasuerus in the Biblical book of Esther. To the details given s.v. firʿawn , should be added the fact that, according to al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , ii, 368, Hāmān built the canal of Sardūs, but Firʿawn obliged him to repay to the peasants the money which he had extorted from them for this. (G. Vajda) Bibliography given in the art. firʿawn see also J. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 149 A. Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Qurʾān, 284.

In one of its admonitions to the unbelieving Jews of Medina, the Ḳurʾān (II, 102/96) expresses itself thus (from A. J. Arberry’s translation): “[the children of Israel] follow what the Satans recited over Solomon’s Kingdom. Solomon disbelieved not, but the Satans disbelieved, teaching the people sorcery, and that which was sent down upon Babylon’s two angels Hārūt and Mārūt; they taught not any man, without they said, “We are but a temptation; do not disbelieve …””. The Ḳurʾānic narrative, linked somewhat artificially with Solomon, whose relations with demons are well-known [see sulay…

Nūr al-Dīn or Aṣīl al-Dīn ; his dates are uncertain but almost certainly not before the end of the 7th/13th century; author of a ḳaṣīda in lām on the names of God (see al-asmāʾ al-Ḥusnā and d̲h̲ikr ); each verse of this ḳaṣīda is reputed to possess mysterious virtues, given in detail by the commentaries of which the text has several times been the object (the best-known is that by the Moroccan mystic, Aḥmad al-Burnusī Zarrūḳ, d. 899/1493). The ḳaṣīda Dimyāṭiyya holds a considerable place in the worship of the semiliterate, in particular in North Africa…

, person mentioned twice in the Ḳurʾān (second Meccan period): XIX, 57/56-58/57, “And mention in the Book Idrīs; he was a true man ( ṣiddīḳ ), a Prophet. We raised him up to a high place”, and XXI, 85-86, “And [make mention of] Ismāʿīl, Idrīs, D̲h̲u ’l-Kifl—each was of the patient, and We admitted them into Our mercy; they were of the righteous” (tr. A. J. Arberry). Among the explanations suggested for This name, obviously foreign and adapted, like the name Iblīs [ q.v.], to the pattern ifʿīl , may be mentioned that of Casanova (in JA, cciv, 358, followed by Torrey, The Jewish foundation of Islam, N…

(or ʿamāliḳa ), the Amalekites of the Bible. Not mentioned in the Ḳurʾān, this ancient people is connected by Muslim literary tradition to the genealogical table in Genesis x, either to Shem (through Lud-Lāwud̲h̲ or Arpak̲h̲s̲h̲ad), or to Ham. They take the place of the Philistines (the people of Ḏj̲ālūt-Goliath) and of the Midianites (Balaam persuaded them to incite the Israelites to debauchery), and the Pharaohs are alleged to be of their race. On the other hand, in the myt…

, a personage twice mentioned in the Ḳurʾān (XXI, 85 and XXXVIII, 48, probably second Meccan period), about whom neither Ḳurʾānic contexts nor Muslim exegesis provides any certain information. John Walker ( Who is D̲h̲u ’l-Kifl ?, in MW, xvi (1926), 399-401) would like the name to be understood in the sense of “the man with the double recompense” or rather “the man who received recompense twice over”, that is to say Job (Ayyūb [ q.v.]; cf. Job xlii, 10). Without being certain, this explanation does not lack probability; in any case, no better suggestion has been put fo…

, The Goliath of the Bible appears as D̲j̲ālūt in the Ḳurʾān (II, 248/247-252/251) (the line of al-Samawʾal where the name occurs is inauthentic), in assonance with Ṭālūt [ q.v.] and perhaps also under the influence of the Hebrew word gālūt , “exile, Diaspora”, which must have been frequently on the lips of the Jews in Arabia as elsewhere. The passage of the Ḳurʾān where he is referred to by name (his introduction in the exegesis of V, 25 seems to be sporadic and secondary) combines the biblical account of the war…

(the carpenter), legendary character who gave his name to the sanctuary below mount Silpius at Antāḳiya [ q.v.] where his tomb is reputed to be. He is not mentioned in the Ḳurʾān; nevertheless Muslim tradition finds him there, in sūra XXXVI, 12 ff., under the description of the man who was put to death in a city ( ḳarya ) not otherwise specified, having urged its inhabitants not to reject the three apostles who had come to proclaim the divine message to them. According to Muslim tradition the “city” was Antioch and the anonymous be…

, traditionist born in 613/1217 on the island of Tūnā between Tinnīs and Damietta; at the end of his career he was professor at the Manṣūriyya and at the Ẓāhiriyya in Cairo, where he died in 705/1306. Apart from the works listed by Brockelmann, to be supplemented by the recent study of A. Dietrich, ʿAbdalmuʾmin b. Xalaf ad-Dimyāṭī’nin bir muhācirūn listesi , in Şarkiyat Mecmuasi , iii (1959), 125-55) he has left a dictionary of authorities, often cited and used by subsequent historians and biographers, called Muʿd̲j̲am S̲h̲uyūk̲h̲ ; it only survives at the pre…

b. baʿūr (ā), Bilʿam b. Beʿor of the Hebrew Bible. The Ḳurʾān does not mention him, unless perhaps in an allusion in vii, 175 [174] 176 [175]. The commentators and historians keep the main elements of the Biblical story in their accounts of him (Numbers xxii-xxiv, xxxi, 8) and following the Jewish Aggada which likewise has given other features of his portrait, make him responsible for the fornication of the Israelites with the daughters of Moab and Midian (Numbers xxv); note that he tends to absor…

Muslim tradition has retained only a weak and rather confused record of the two biblical characters bearing the name Daniel, the sage of ancient times mentioned by Ezekiel (xiv, 14, 20 and xxviii, 3) and the visionary who lived at the time of the captivity in Babylon, who himself sometimes appears as two different people. Furthermore, the faint trace of a figure from the antiquity of fable combining with the apocalyptic tone of the book handed down in the Bible under the name Daniel, makes Dāniy…

, the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible. The Ḳurʾān does not mention him. He is a very complex figure in Muslim tradition and here we can record only the outstanding points. It retains in the first place the main Biblical features, using to an unusual degree the texts of the prophets Jeremiah and even Isaiah, and establishing a connexion between Buk̲h̲t-Naṣar and Sennacherib, whom it makes the great-grandfather of the former. It also confuses him sometimes with later rulers such as Cyrus and Ahasuerus…

(the name is also written Armiyā and Urmiyā, with or without madd ), the prophet Jeremiah (Yirmĕyāhū) of the Old Testament, is not mentioned in the Ḳurʾān although the legends concerning him are connected by traditional exegesis with sura II, 261/259, a “récit édifiant” (R. Blachère), inspired by the apocryphal book “the Paralipomena of Jeremiah” or III Baruch (ed. R. Harris, The Rest of the Words of Baruch , London 1889; G. tr. P. Riessler, Altjüdisches Schrifttum ausserhalb der Bibel , Augsburg 1928, 903-19; reconstruction (in Hebrew) by J. Licht Séfer maʿasey Yirmeyāhū , in Shenaton Ba…

, an Arabic term covering three kinds of narratives, which are found in the commentators on the Ḳurʾān, the mystics, the compilers of edifying histories and writers on various levels. 1. Narratives regarded as historical, which served to complement the often summary information provided by the revealed Book in respect of the personages in the Bible ( Tawrāt and Ind̲j̲īl ), particularly the prophets ( Ḳiṣāṣ al-anbiyāʾ ). 2. Edifying narratives placed within the chronological (but entirely undefined) framework of “the period of the (ancient) Israelites” ( ʿahd Banī Isrāʾīl ). 3. Fables …

, fallen angel or Ḏj̲inn in the legendary tradition of Islam (does not occur in the Ḳurʾān). He gets his name from the biblical ʿAzāzēl (Leviticus xvi, 8, 10, 26), perhaps demon of the desert (see L. Koehler, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros , ¶ 693). In point of fact the Muslim tradition extends and develops that of some of the Apocrypha (Enoch and the Apocalypse of Abraham) and of Jewish texts, in which ʿAzāzēl is more or less connected with the fallen angels ʿUzza and ʿAzāʾēl (in Muslim tradition, Hārūt and Mārūt, [ q.v.]); the ḥadīt̲h̲ , however, would appear t…

(Eve), wife of Ādam [ q.v.]. This name does not appear in the Ḳurʾān, which speaks only (VII, 18/19-22/23 and XX, 120 f.) of the “spouse” guilty jointly with her husband of the disobedience which cost them expulsion from Paradise. The only ¶ mention of this name in Arabia in pre-Islamic (?) times was in a verse of ʿAdī b. Zayd, if its authenticity is reliable. The Muslim writers after the revelation of the Ḳurʾān all give the name of Ḥawwā to the spouse of the First Man. The biblical etymology of Ḥawwā (Genesis, III, 20: “mother of all living”) is cited in the name of Ibn ʿAbbās (Ibn Saʿd, Tabaḳāt …

(Hebrew ʿAmrām, modified to an authentically Arabic name, cf. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen , 128), name given in “Israelite” history as related by Muslim authors to two persons: the first appears in the Bible but not in the Ḳurʾān; the second vice versa. The first is the father of Mūsā, Hārūn and Maryam [ qq.v.], the son of Ḳāhit̲h̲ (Kohath), the son of Lāwī (Levi) according to the Biblical genealogy (Exodus, VI, 20) followed by al-Yaʿḳūbī, ed. Houtsma, 31 (tr. G. Smit, Bijbel en Legende , 39) and al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , i, 92, tr. Pellat, i, § 85; others…

, the biblical prophet Ezekiel. His name does not occur in the Ḳurʾān, but traditional exegesis regards him as that prophet of the people concerning whom the Ḳurʾān speaks in these words (II, 243/244): “Hast thou not regarded those who went forth from their habitations in their thousands fearful of death? God said to them “Die!”, then He gave them life” (tr. A. J. Arberry). According to exegetic tradition, this took place in the time of the prophet Ḥizḳīl b. Būd̲h̲ī (or Būzī, corrupted into Būrī; in the Bible Buzi—Ezekiel, I, 3); the ¶ immediate cause of this mortality was an outbreak of plague ( ṭ…

(or alyasaʿ ) b. uk̲h̲ṭūb (or yak̲h̲tūb ), the biblical prophet Elisha. The Ḳurʾān mentions him twice (vi, 86 and xxxviii, 46, second Meccan period) together with other apostles of Allāh, without special comment. The Arabs have considered the first syllable as the article (discussion of variant ¶ readings in al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr , vii, 156 ff.). Muslim tradition identifies Alīsaʿ with the son of the widow who sustained Elijah during the famine (I Kings xvii, 9 ff.). This son, a paralytic, was cured by Ilyās (Elijah) and became …

, Abu ’l-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b. Isḥāḳ , Muʿtazilī and heretic, born at the beginning of the 3rd/9th century. The unsolved problem of the date of his death (the middle or the end of the 4th/10th century) should probably be decided, in spite of certain indications to the contrary, in favour of the earlier date, given that his work on the supposed criticism of prophecy by the Brahmans (see al-barāhima but the article omits to mention This point) is already mentioned in an unpublished fragment by the Jewish mutakallim Dāwūd b. Marwān al-Raḳḳ…

, the Aaron of the Bible. The Arabic form of the name derives from the Syro-Palestinian. The Ḳurʾān, which mentions him from the second Meccan period onwards, places him in its lines of prophets, associating him, as does the book of Exodus, with Moses at the time of the flight from Egypt [see firʿawn ] and accords him a rôle in the making of the Golden Calf, in which, however, the initiative is attributed to the “Sāmirī” [ q.v.]. Ibn Ḥazm, on the other hand, severely criticized the Biblical account, which he regarded as falsified. Hārūn is also the brother of Maryam [ q.v.], but this name is give…

the Biblical Lot [ Genesis , xiii, 5-13, xvii-xix). The Ḳurʾān, where his story is told in passages belonging to the second and third Meccan periods, places Lūṭ among the “envoys” whose career prefigures that of Muḥammad as a man in conflict with his compatriots, those at whom his message is directly aimed; the crimes of the “people of Lūṭ” were, besides the refusal to believe, their persistence in vices such as lack of hospitality and homosexual practices, a misconduct punished, in spite of intercession by Ibrāhīm [ q.v.], by the dispatch of angels of destruction who utterly devas…

(Cham), son of Noah [see nūḥ ]; he is not explicitly mentioned in the Ḳuʾrān, but is perhaps alluded to as the unbelieving son of the Patriarch who refused to follow his father at the time of the Flood (XI, 44[42]-49[47]). Later tradition is acquainted with the Biblical story in Genesis , IX, 18-27 (according to which it is not Ḥām but his son Canaan who was cursed for a sin committed by his father) and with the legendary amplifications elaborated by Jews and Christians; as the story in the Ḳurʾān in conjunction with these …

is the name given in the Ḳurʾān (VI, 85 and XXXVII, 123, with a variant Ilyāsīn, perhaps prompted by the rhyme, in verse 130), to the Biblical prophet Elijah; the form Ilyās derives from ’Ελιας, a Hellenized adjustment, but attested also in Syrian and Ethiopic, of the Hebrew name Eliyāh (ū): cf. Jos. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen , 81, 99, 101. In the Ḳurʾān, the figure of Ilyās scarcely shows any outstanding features, except for one allusion (in XXXVII, 125) to the worship of Baal. In the Muslim legend related by later au…

, the usual name for the spoken—or in some cases the written—language of the Jews in the Arabic-speaking countries. i. judaeo-arabic dialects. The traditional term “Judaeo-Arabic” has certainly less justification when used in connection with the spoken usage than with the written usage defined above. It suggests the erroneous idea of a form of speech common to all Arabic-speaking Jews, and offering characteristics linked in some way to religious or ethnic facts. Now though it cannot be denied that the religious facto…

, the Benjamin of the Bible. In its nairation of the history of Joseph (Yūsuf, [ q.v.]), the Ḳurʾān gives a place to the latter’s uterine brother (xii, 8, 59-79), without ever mentioning him by name. Tradition embellishes without any great variation the biblical story concerning him (it is aware notably that his birth cost his mother her life) and receives also Aggadic additions (summarised notably in the Encyclopaedia Judaica , iv, 112-14), such as the etymological connexion of the names of his sons with the lost elder brother. In Muslim mys…

(pl. Farāʿina ), Pharaoh. The Arabic form of the name may derive from the Syriac or the Ethiopie. Commentators on the Ḳurʾān (II, 46-49) explain the word as the permanent title ( laḳab ) of the Amalekite kings [see ʿamālīk ], on the analogy of Kisrā, title of the sovereigns of Persia, and Ḳayṣar of the emperors of Byzantium. As the designation of the typical haughty and insolent tyrant, the name Firʿawn gave rise to a verb tafarʿana “to behave like a hardened tyrant”.—If one disregards certain verses of Umayya which are probabl…

(a.) authorization, licence. When used in its technical meaning, this word means, in the strict sense, the third of the eight methods of receiving the transmission of a ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.] (the various ways are set out precisely in W. Marçais, Taqrîb , 115-26). It means in short the fact that an authorized guarantor of a text or of a whole book (his own work or a work received through a chain of transmitters going back to the first transmitter or to the author) gives a person the authorization to transmit it in his tu…