Dihqān (pl. dahāqīn) was the term for a member of a class of lesser nobles in Sāsānid and early Muslim Iran, for local lords in Iran and Transoxiana, and for a peasant in modern Persian, Tajik, and the Central Asian Turkic languages. The stratum of lesser local lords appears to have been growing from the sixth century C.E. in the Sāsānid empire. At the time of the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iraq and Iran, they held hereditary responsibility for the management of local affairs in the countryside, working for a subdistrict (rustāq, nāḥiya). Their military role is less well attested, and th…

ʿĀʾisha bt. Abī Bakr (d. 58/678), wife of the prophet Muḥammad and daughter of Abū Bakr (d. 13/634), the first caliph, is arguably the most famous woman of early Islam and also its most controversial. 1. Her life and importance She was born in Mecca around 614 C.E. to Abū Bakr b. Abī Quḥāfā, from the Banū Taym, and Umm Rūmān bt. ʿUmayr b. ʿĀmir, from the Banū Kināna. ʿĀʾisha is deemed to have been the nineteenth person to embrace Islam. ʿĀʾisha entered the prophet Muḥammad’s home as his wife about three years before the hijra (migration) to Medina, when she was around six or seven years o…

Byzantium dates from approximately 330 C.E. and evolved from the older Roman Empire. Its relations with the Arab-Islamic world commenced in the first/seventh century and continued until the fall of Constantinople in 857/1453. During this period, the interactions between the two states had many military, economic, and cultural dimensions, which have been described in a variety of Arabic sources. In the Arab-Islamic sources, the Byzantines are referred to mostly as al-Rūm. The first reference to them is in the Qurʾān (30:1–5) in conjunction with the Byzantine-Persia…

Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-ʿAbbās al-Manṣūr was the second ʿAbbāsid caliph (r. 136–58/754–75). 1. The ʿAbbāsid Revolution Surprisingly little is known about the life of Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr in the period before the ʿAbbāsid Revolution. Since he is said to have been between 63 and 68 when he died (al-Ṭabarī, 390), he could have been born as early as 90/708–9. However, the date is likely somewhat later, as he was supposedly born at the ʿAbbāsid estate of al-Ḥumayma in Jordan, and, accord…

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Zayd b. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl (d. 287/900), a Zaydī dāʿī (summoner) in Ṭabaristān (in northern Iran), was a descendant of al-Ḥasan b. Zayd b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (al-Bukhārī, 27; al-ʿUmarī, 218–9I; Ibn ʿInaba, 92–3). He fought many battles under the banner of his brother al-Ḥasan b. Zayd. The latter established a daʿwa (proselytising mission) in Ṭabaristān in 250/864–5 and ruled there under the title of al-Dāʿī ilā l-Ḥaqq (the summoner for truth). On his deathbed in Āmul, al-Ḥasan asked his son-in-law Abū l-Ḥusayn Aḥma…

Ibrāhīm b. al-Mahdī (b. 162/779, d. in 224/839 in Sāmarrāʾ, r. 201–3/817–9) was a noted poet, singer, musician, and important member of the ʿAbbāsid family. He was the son of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mahdī (r. 158–69/775–85), brother of the caliphs al-Hādī (r. 169–70/785–6) and Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170–93/786–809), and uncle of the caliphs al-Amīn (r. 193–8/ 809–13), al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33), and al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 218–27/833–42). He was a prominent fixture at court. His mother was a concubine named Shikla, and he is sometimes referred to derisively in the sources as Ibn Shikla. 1. Art…

Māhān is a small town in Kirmān province, Iran, with a population of 16,787 (as of the 2006 census). The town is approximately 20 kilometres to the southeast of Kirmān city, the provincial capital. This proximity has ensured that the history of Māhān has been intertwined with that of its conspicuous neighbour. A prominent nineteenth-century historian, Vazīrī Kirmānī, who was born and raised in Kirmān, wrote about Māhān’s pleasant climate and more than 500 gardens. He also praised the town’s prod…

Dualism is any doctrine holding that the universe originates from two independent and opposed principles. Islam recognised and fought against several forms of dualism, whose followers are called dualists, in Arabic thanawiyya. This word does not appear in the Qurʾān or in the ḥadīth, but it does occur in the title of two lost works, by, respectively, Abū l-Hudhayl (d. 227/841?) and al-Kindī (d. c. 256/870). This abstract technical term became current in the fourth/tenth century, but it seems to have been preceded by another term, which occurs in the title al-Radd ʿalā aṣḥāb al-ithnayn (“…

Abū Yaḥyā (or Abū Ghālib) ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Yaḥyā b. Saʿd (or Saʿīd) al-Kātib al-ʿĀmirī (c. 69–132/c. 688–750) was one of the earliest epistolographers in Arabic, to whom tradition attributed the foundation of Arabic literary prose. A third-generation Muslim of non-Arab, probably Persian, extraction, he was probably born in al-Anbār. He seems to have been educated in Kufa, to have worked as a teacher and an itinerant tutor, and then to have been employed as a secretary (kātib) in the central administration of the Umayyad government in Damascus, probably before the death …

Isrāʾīliyyāt (sing., isrāʾīliyya) are narrative supplements, both historical and homiletic, that provide background material for biblical characters appearing in the Qurʾān, as well for extra-Qurʾānic biblical or legendary figures, some of whom are seen as connected to events and people from the ancient Israelite period. These are not, however, always Jewish or Christian in origin and can sometimes be found in Zoroastrian or other Near Eastern cultures. Isrāʾīliyyāt accounts appear in almost every category of Islamic literature: classical mystical writings, pop…

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Amīn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd, the sixth ʿAbbāsid caliph (r. 193–8/809–13), was born in the al-Ruṣāfa quarter of Baghdad in 170/787 to Hārūn al-Rashīd, the fifth caliph (r. 170–93/786–809), and Zubayda bt. Jaʿfar bt. Abī Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr, also known in the sources as Umm Jaʿfar, a granddaughter of the second caliph. His full-blooded Hāshimī descent reportedly gave him precedence over his half-brother ʿAbdallāh al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33), who though six months older had been b…

Cain and Abel (Ar. Qābīl wa-Hābīl) are the two sons of Adam and Eve hinted at in a Qurʾānic passage exhorting the Prophet to recite the story of two sons of Adam (Q 5:27). Each brother offered a sacrifice, but the offering of only one of them was accepted, because the other was not God-fearing. The latter promised to kill the former (Q 5:28–9) and did so (Q 5:30). Then God sent a raven that dug up the earth to show him how to bury the corpse of his brother, and the murderer cried “Woe is me! Am I …

Immolation, in the sense of punitive burning either as a form of, or following upon, capital punishment, was discussed controversially from as early as the second/eighth century but continued to be applied throughout Islamic history. 1. Formative period The early caliphs and their representatives are reported to have committed their enemies to the flames, thus continuing the persistent use of the punishment in Judeo-Christian and Roman late antiquity (cf. Marsham, 114–8). The Companions of the Prophet Muʿādh b. Jabal and Abū Mūsā al…

ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ b. Wāʾil b. Hāshim b. Saʿīd al-Sahmī, Abū ʿAbdallāh (d. 42 or 43/662 or 664), is ranked among the Companions of the Prophet and is credited with the transmission of a number of ḥadīth s (al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 3:54–77). He was known for his eloquence, his shrewdness in politics, and his strategic insight in war. The sources emphasise the shrewdness over the other two attributes, especially in the context of the First Civil War. He converted to Islam together with Khālid b. al-Walīd (d. 21/642) and ʿUthmān b. Ṭalḥa. The sou…

Laqīṭ b. Yaʿmur (or b. Yaʿmar, Maʿbad, Maʿmar, or Bakr) b. Khārija was a pre-Islamic Arab poet who lived in the sixth century C.E. He was a member of the Iyād, a tribe who were once settled in the Tihāma region, south of Mecca. Due to the barrenness of the soil they were forced to leave their territory and went to Iraq, where they settled in the Sawād, the region between Kufa and Basra, mainly in the city of al-Ḥīra. Here Laqīṭ came into contact with urban Arab culture as well as the Persian langu…

Qiwām al-Dīn al-Fatḥ b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Bundārī al-Iṣfahānī (d. after 639/1241–2) was an Iranian littérateur, the translator of the Shāh-nāma into Arabic. Nothing is known of his life but for the information contained in his works. He was born and raised in Isfahan, probably in a well established family (in fifth-sixth/eleventh-twelfth century Iran, the bundār was an important official in the fiscal administration; see Nājī, and Anwārī, 177–8). As al-Bundārī was in Damascus in 620/1223, he may have left Isfahan after the internal strife of 618/1…

Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī l-Hādī b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-ʿAskarī (d. 254/868) was the tenth Imām of the Imāmī Shīʿīs. Known also as al-Naqī (the pure one) or Abū l-Ḥasan al-Thālith (the third), he was born in Ṣurayyā, a village three miles from Medina founded by his great-grandfather, the seventh Imām of the Imāmiyya, Mūsā l-Kāẓim. The sources give birthdates ranging from Dhū l-Ḥijja 212/March 828 to Rajab–Dhū l-Ḥijja 214/September–February 830. His mother is named as Umm al-Faḍl, the daughter of the caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 198–218/813–33), or as an umm walad (concubine) called Samāna or S…

ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (d. 132/749–50) was a son of the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 65–86/685–705) and of an umm walad (a slave bearing her master’s child). As he was reportedly twenty-seven years old in 86/705, he was probably born in about 60/680. He first appears in the sources as a general in charge of a military campaign against the Byzantines that led to the capture of Qālīqalā (Erzurum) in 81/700–1. The following year, he was sent with his uncle Muḥammad b. Marwān (d. 101/719–20) to assist a…

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl b. Qāsim b. Shāh Budh ʿAbbāsī ʿAlavī Chishtī (d. 1094/1683) was a Chishtī Ṣābirī Ṣūfī master of Mughal India. His works include Persian translations of Hindu religious texts and a tadhkira (hagiographical memoir) Mirʾāt al-asrār (“The mirror of secrets”) that shaped the silsila (master-disciple lineage) of the Ṣābirī subbranch of the Chishtī brotherhood (the Chishtiyya probably originated in Chisht, near Herat, towards the end of the sixth/twelfth century and was introduced into India by Muʿīn al-Dīn Sijzī, d.…

Al-Jārūdiyya were one of two discrete groups (the other being al-Batriyya/Butriyya) that reportedly came together in Kufa around the rebellion of ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 122/740) that gave rise to the Zaydī Shīʿa. The Zaydīs hold that the Imāmate (the leadership of the Muslim community) is the common property of all the descendants of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661) through his two sons by his wife Fāṭima (the Prophet’s daughter, d. 11–2/632–3?), al-Ḥasan (d. 49/669–70) and al-Ḥusayn (d. 61/680). Any of these descendants may claim the Imāmate by “summoning” (daʿwa) public…