, an ancient small town in the northern Ḥid̲j̲āz, near K̲h̲aybar and, according to Yāḳūt, two or three days’ journey from Medina. This place-name having disappeared, Ḥāfiẓ Wahba in his Ḏj̲azīrat al-ʿArab (Cairo 1956, 15) identified the ancient Fadak with the modern village of al-Ḥuwayyiṭ (pron. Ḥowēyaṭ), situated on the edge of the ḥarra of K̲h̲aybar. Inhabited, like K̲h̲aybar, by a colony of Jewish agriculturists, Fadak produced dates and cereals; handicrafts also flourished, with the weaving of blankets with palm-leaf borders. Fadak owes its fame in the history of Islam to…

(p.), New (Year’s) Day. 1. In the Islamic heartlands. The word is frequently represented in Arabic works in the form Nayrūz , which appears in Arabic literature as early as the verse of al-Ak̲h̲ṭal [ q.v.] (see al-D̲j̲awālīḳī, Muʿarrab , ed. A.M. S̲h̲ākir, Tehran 1966; al-Ḳalḳas̲h̲andī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿs̲h̲ā , ii, 408). It was the first day of the Persian solar year and is not represented in the Muslim lunar year (al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , iii, 416-17 = §§ 1301-2). In Achaemenid times, the official year began with Nawrūz, when the sun entered the Zodiac…

b. ʿĀṣim (with the erroneous nisba “al-Ḍabbī” since Ibn Ḵh̲allikān [ q.v.]) al-Kūfī, Abū Ṭālib (d. after 290/903), transmitter of historical materials ( ak̲h̲bārī ) with wide interests and a philological-lexicographical background. With this approach (Yāḳūt, Udabā , vii, 170), he differed (a) from his father Salama (d. after 270/883; Ibn al-Ḏj̲azarī, i, 311), a disciple and copyist ( warrāḳ ) of al-Farrāʾ [ q.v.], the great authority of the Kūfan school of philologists, and (b) from his son Abu ’l-Tayyib Muḥammad al-Bag̲h̲dādī (d. 308/920; Kaḥḥāla, xii, 43-4…

, a town approximately 240 km/150 miles to the north of the chief town of the Yemen, Ṣanʿāʾ [ q.v.], situated on the southern edge of the Ṣaʿda plain, and the administrative capital of the province ( muḥāfaẓa ) of the same name. The town is about 1,800 m/5,904 ft. above sea level and in the 1986 census in the Yemen had a reported population of 24,245 persons. The inhabitants of the province numbered 323,110. Although al-Hamdānī, 67, informs us that the town was called Ḏj̲umāʿ in pre-Islamic times, certain Sabaic inscriptions mention hgrn ṢʿDTm , "the town Ṣaʿda", tog…

, a dynasty of Abyssinian slaves with their capital in Zabīd [ q.v.], reigned 412-553/1022-1158. ¶ The best historical source for an understanding of the dynasty is ʿUmāra (see Kay, in Bibl .), but it should be stressed that ʿUmāra’s account is sometimes confused, frequently anecdotal with interruptions of little or no relevance and lacking in dates. Other published sources which can be used as a control on ʿUmāra’s text are listed below, though many depend ultimately on him, being transmitted in the main through other writers. When the last Ziyādid [ q.v.] had been put to death during…

ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥamza b. Sulaymān b. Ḥamza , Zaydī Imām of the Yemen. Born in Rabīʿ I 561/January 1166, he became Imām in 583/1187-8 (some sources have 593/1196-7). He was not a direct descendant of al-Hādī ilā ’l-Haḳḳ Yaḥyā [see zaydids ], but of the latter’s grandfather al-Ḳāsim al-Rassī b. Ṭabāṭabā (Kay, Yaman , 184-5, 314; Van Arendonk, Débuts , 366). Between 532/1137-8 and 566/1170-1, the Imām al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh Aḥmad b. Sulaymān had tried to assure Zaydī power over al-D̲j̲awf, Nad̲j̲rān, Ṣaʿda, al-Ẓāhir and Zabīd (Kay, Yaman, 317; EI 1 s.v. al-mahdī li-dīn allāh aḥmad …

(usual Ar. form, Bud̲j̲a), nomadic tribes, living between the Nile and Red Sea, from the Ḳina-Ḳuṣayr route to the angle formed by the ʿAṭbarā and the hills of the Eritrean-Sudanese frontier. The principal modern tribes are the ʿAbābda [ q.v.], Bis̲h̲ārīn [ q.v.], Ummarār, Hadanduwa and Banī ʿĀmir. The ʿAbābda now speak Arabic; the others (except the Tigre-speaking sections of B. ʿĀmir) speak tu-Beḍawiye, a Hamitic language. The Bed̲j̲a subsist mainly on their herds of camels, cattle, sheep and goats. Since grazing is sparse, they move u…

, Muḥammad b. al-Hud̲h̲ayl b. ʿUbayd Allāh b. Makḥūl , with the nisba of al-ʿAbdī (being a mawlā of ʿAbd al-Ḳays), the first speculative theologian of the Muʿtazila. He was born in Baṣra, where he lived in the quarter of the ʿallāfūn , or foragers. (whence his surname); the date of his birth is uncertain: 135/752-3 or 134/751-2 or even 131/748-9. In 203/818-9 he settled in Bag̲h̲dād and died, at a great age, in 226/840-1, or according to another tradition, in the reign of al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ (227-32/842-7), or, on the auth…

, a town of the eastern part of the Nile Delta of Egypt, in Antiquity called Tenessos. The medieval town of Tinnīs was situated in the fourth climate of the Muslim geographers, occupying almost all of a small island in the Lake Manzala or the Lake of Tinnīs, at the confluence of the waters of the Tanaitic branch of the Nile with the Mediterranean ones, some 30 miles behind the chain of lagoons. At the time of the Muslim expansion, Tinnīs was governed for the Byzantines by a Christian Arab, one Abū T̲h̲awr, but in 20/641, just after the fall of Damietta, it was conquered by force ( ʿanwatan …

(a.), verbal noun or maṣdar of Form V of wakala “to entrust [to someone], have confidence [in someone]”, a concept in Islamic religious terminology, and especially that of Ṣūfism, with the sense of dependence upon God. Tor Andrae pointed out that the verb tawakkala meant “to trust someone in the same way as I would trust my wakīl ”, i.e. the person whom I have chosen to be my procurator or homme d’affaires, to look after my business and to govern and dispose on my behalf. Here he was drawing largely on al-G̲h̲azālī’s etymological analysis of tawakkul in his Iḥyāʾ , Cairo …

, a small town in North Syria (lat. 36° 01′ N., long. 36° 40′ E.). It is 40 km. to the north of Maʿarrat al-Nuʿmān [ q.v.], 50 km. south-west of Aleppo or Ḥalab [ q.v.] and 12 km. north-west of Sarmīn. It owes its importance to its position between the districts of the Rūd̲j̲, the D̲j̲azr and the D̲j̲abal al-Summāḳ and formerly served as the market for this region which the road from Ḥalab to Armanāz traverses, a route used in the Middle Ages by the Turkomans. Its role has devolved today on Idlib. The land, although poorly watere…

, the form found in Islamic sources for the capital of Georgia, Tiflis or modern Tbilisi. The city is situated on hilly ground in the Kura river valley [see kur ] (lat. 41° 43′ N., long. 44° 49′ E.), and has a strategic position controlling the routes between eastern and western Transcaucasia which has ensured it a lively history. The city is an ancient one, being founded in A.D. 455 or 458 when the capital of Georgia was transferred thither from nearby Mtsk̲h̲eta. For the subsequent history of the city, from Byzantine and Sāsānid times through the long…

(popular pronunciation Tikrīt , cf. Yāḳūt), a town of ʿIrāḳ on the right bank of the Tigris to the north of Sāmarrāʾ 100 miles from Bag̲h̲dād divertly, and 143 by river, and at the foot of the range of the D̲j̲abal Ḥamrīn (lat. 34° 36′ N., long. 43° 41′ E., altitude 110 m/375 feet). Geographically, this is the northern frontier district of ʿIrāḳ. The land is still somewhat undulating; the old town was built on a group of hills, on on…

, an ancient town and seaport on the Red Sea (A. Baḥr al-Ḳulzum [ q.v.], Baḥr al-Hind or Baḥr al-Ḥabas̲h̲a ), now administratively in the province ( muḥāfaẓa ) of al-Suways. It appears to have been a fort as well as a town, and was, ¶ perhaps, the spot where the troops destined to guard the sluices of the canal were stationed. It was called Castrum by Hierocles and Epiphanius ; and κλύσμα (Clysma), or κλεῖσμα is first mentioned by Lucian. Ḳulzum is a corruption of the Greek name κλύσμα (in both Arabic and Greek almost always without the ar…

, the most important mediator of ancient Greek science to the Arabs. It was mainly due to his reliable and clearly written translations of Hippocrates [see buḳrāṭ , in Suppl.] and Galen [see d̲j̲ālīnūs ], that the Arab physicians of the Middle Ages became worthy successors of the Greek. Life: Ḥunayn was born in 192/808 in al-Ḥīra [ q.v.], where his father was a pharmacist. The nisba indicates that he was a descendant of the so-called ʿibād , i.e. Arab tribesmen who had once embraced Christianity and who after the rise of Islam remained faithful to the Syrian Nestorian chu…

, the regnal title of five Mamlūk sultans: 1. al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Ḳalāwūn, regn . 693/1293-4, 698-708/1299-1309, 709-41/1310-41. 2. al-Nāṣir Aḥmad b. al-Nāṣir Muḥammad, regn. 742-3/1342. 3. al-Nāṣir Ḥasan b. al-Nāṣir Muḥammad, regn. 748-52/1347-51, 755-62/1354-61. 4. al-Nāṣir Farad̲j̲ b. Barḳūḳ, regn. 801-8/1399-1405, 808-15/1405-12. See farad̲j̲ . 5. al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Ḳāʾitbāy, regn. 901-4/1496-8. 1. al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Ḳalāwūn (684-741/1285-1341). His mother, As̲h̲lūn K̲h̲ātūn, was the daughter of a Mongol notable, S̲h̲aktāy, who migrated from …

, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim al-Dīnawarī (some add al-Kūfī , which refers to his place of birth, and al-Marwazī , which is probably the ethnic name of his father), one of the great Sunnī polygraphs of the 3rd/9th century, being both a theologian and a writer of adab . He seems to have been descended, in the second or third generation, from an Arabicized Iranian family from K̲h̲urāsān which was connected on the female side with the Bāhilīs of Baṣra and may have come to ʿIrāḳ in the wake of the ʿAbbāsid armies during the second half of the 2nd/8th century. He was born at Kūfa in 213/828, but…

, Abu ’l-Nad̲j̲m , commander-in-chief of the armies of the caliph al-Muʿtaḍid (279-89/892-902). He was the son of one of al-Mutawakkil’s mawālī , whose name cannot be established with certainty (Ḵh̲urr or Ḵh̲ayr?), and was first in service as an equerry to al-Muwaffaḳ, gaining from that time the favour of the future caliph al-Muʿtaḍid, who, whilst still regent after al-Muwaffaḳ’s death (Ṣafar 278/June 891), made him chief of police in Bag̲h̲dād and then, after his accession, com-mander of all th…

, Hārūn b. ʿAbd Allāh , judge in Egypt, considered the greatest Mālikī scholar there, d. 232/846. A native of Mecca, he came to Bag̲h̲dād, but nothing is known of his activities there until al-Maʾmūn nominated him ḳāḍī of Egypt on 14 Ramaḍān 217/13 October 832 (al-Kindī) or a few days later (Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam), where he remained in post till 13 Ṣafar 226/12 December 840. As a judge, his career was marked by innovations. He moved his seat as judge, and sat in front of the mosque in winter and in the middle of i…

( Banu ’l-ʿAbbās ), the dynasty of the Caliphs from 132/750 to 656/1258. The dynasty takes its name from its ancestor, al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib b. Hās̲h̲im, the uncle of the Prophet. The story of the origins and nature of the movement that overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate and established the ʿAbbāsid dynasty in its place was for long known only in the much-revised version put about when the dynasty had already attained power, and, with it, respectability. A more critical version was proposed by G. van Vloten ( De opkomst der Abbasiden in Chorasan , Leiden 1890, and Recherches …