Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

Aaron is the biblical name for the brother of Moses, who is known as Hārūn b. ʿImrān in the Qurʾān and in Muslim tradition, with the Arabic form of the Hebrew name Aharōn likely resulting from transmission through Syriac in pre-Islamic times. Mentioned by name twenty times in the Qurʾān, revelation of the furqān (“criterion”) is given to him and Moses (Q 21:48; also see 19:53, 7:122, 23:45, 37:114–20 and 20:70; also 26:48, with the phrase “We believe in the Lord of Moses and Aaron”). His name appears within lists of prophetic figures: with Jesus, …

Aaron ben Elijah of Nicomedia (d. 771/1369) was a Karaite religious philosopher, legal authority, exegete, and poet, active in Constantinople during the mid-eighth/fourteenth century. Biographical details are limited and unreliable. He or his family hailed from Nicomedia (present-day İzmit, Turkey). His teachers included an uncle and his father-in-law, both mentioned in his writings. Aaron relied exclusively on Hebrew sources—both original compositions and translations—but his thought is thoroughly …

The ʿAbābda, who live between the Nile Valley and Red Sea coast of Egypt, are the northernmost tribe of the six subgroups of the Beja (Ar. Buja), whose other members are Ummarār, Bishārīn, Hadanduwa, Banī ʿĀmir Beja, and Banī ʿĀmir Tigre. ʿAbābda territory once included all of Egypt's northern Eastern Desert but by 1850 the Maʿāza Bedouin, originally of northwestern Arabia, drove them south to the Qifṭ-Quṣayr road, which still serves as the northern border of ʿAbābda territory. In the south, ʿAbā…

Abaginskiy was the pen-name of Kudrin Arxip Georgiyeviç, a Sakha (Yakut) poet, translator, and member of the writer’s union. An active socialist, he wrote a number of poems that were celebrated because of their original style, and also translated many Russian works into Sakha. He was born in 1907 in the village of Abaga, in the Olekminsky district of Yakutia, in the Russian Empire. In his youth he was a teacher at the village’s schools, but also wrote for the Bolşevik Eder (“Young Bolshevik”) and Belem Buol (“Be Prepared”) newspapers, as well as working for the Yakutia Publicatio…

Abān b. ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (d. between 101/719 and 105/723) was the son of the third Rightly Guided Caliph, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 23–35/644–55), and an early author of maghāzī, accounts of the military campaigns of the Prophet. He is considered a member of the jīl al-tābiʿīn or Successors (of the Companions of the Prophet), the second generation of the early Muslim community. His mother, Umm ʿAmr, was not of Qurayshī origin; she was descended from the Daws, a subgroup of the Azd tribe, and sources portray her as a silly woman. When his fathe…

Abangan refers to nominal or non-practising Muslims within Javanese society. From about the middle of the nineteenth century, there emerged in Javanese society a category of people who were defined by their failure—in the eyes of the more pious—to behave as proper Muslims. These were the abangan, a term that derives from the “Low Javanese” (ngoko) word abang, meaning the colour red or brown. At the time, the usual terms were bangsa abangan (“the red/brown people”) or wong abangan (“the red/brown people”). In “High Javanese” (krama) the word for red or brown was abrit and these people we…

Abān b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Lāḥiqī al-Raqāshī (d. c.200/815) was an Arab poet of the early ʿAbbāsid period. His ancestors are said to have been Jews from Fasā in the province of Fārs. He was born in Basra and later emigrated to Baghdad, where he managed to attach himself to the Barmakids, who made him the official arbiter of poets at their court. As such, he incurred the enmity of other poets: Abū Nuwās wrote a lampoon against Abān in which he accused him of heretical views, obviously without foundation. Both his brother ʿAbdallāh and his son Ḥamdān were also poets. In addition to lampoons of his…

Abāqā (d. 681/1282) was the eldest son of Hülegü Khān and succeeded him in 663/1265, being the second ruler of the Mongol Īlkhānid dynasty in Iran and the surrounding countries. His name is derived from the Mongol abaγa (“paternal uncle”) and is usually rendered “Abaghā” or “Abāqā” in Arabic and Persian. In his long reign, Abāqā was responsible for the ongoing institutionalisation of the Īlkhānate, its relative internal stability and prosperity, and an active, even aggressive policy vis-à-vis other Mongol states and the Mamlūks to …

Abarqubādh was a ṭassūj (sub-district) in lower Iraq, located east of the Tigris between Wāsiṭ and Baṣra. Its main city was Fasī (Yaʿqūbī, 101). Its name is said to be derived from the Middle Persian Abar-kawad, meaning “Superior is Qubād,” referring to the Sāsānian king Kawādh I (Ar. Kubādh or Pers. Kavād, r. 488–96/499–531), who made administrative reforms in the area (Gyselen, 76). According to Yāqūt (d. 626/1229), Abarqubādh was one of the four ṭassūj of Maysān (Middle Pers. Mēshān, al-Madhār) (Morony, 35), along with Bahman Ardashīr (al-Furāt), Dasht-ī Maysān, an…

Abarqūh is a town first mentioned in the 4th H./10th Century C.E., in the northeastern province of Fārs, belonging to the khurra (district) of Iṣṭakhr (al-Iṣṭakhrī, 96). The road from Isfahan to Shiraz, in the south, went through Abarqūh, both north to Isfahan and east to Yazd. The town was located by hills of ash, which were believed to have been the location of the “Fire of Nimrod,” associated with the story of the burning of Abraham (Ibn Ḥawqal, 291; al-Iṣṭakhrī, 131–2). The town is described as having fair weath…

Abarshahr was the northeastern province (Middle Persian shahr) of Sāsānid and early Islamic Iran. Its principal city was Nīshāpūr (Middle Persian Nēw-Shābuhr, “Brave is Shāpūr”; Arabic Naysābūr), established by Shāpūr I (d. 272 C.E.) (Daryaee, 39). In the Islamic period “Nīshāpūr” replaced “Abarshahr” as the name of the main city. Two etymologies have been advanced for the name of the province. The first derives the name from * Aparn-xšahr (Parthian ’prhštr), “land of the Aparnak or Aparni,” the leading tribe of the Dahae confederation, who established the Parthia…

Muḥammad Ḥasan ʿAbāṭa (d. 1941) was an Egyptian Ṣūfī and patron saint of Bayt ʿAbāṭa, an Egyptian branch of the Rifāʿiyya, a Ṣūfī order founded in lower Iraq by Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Rifāʿī (d. 578/1182). ʿAbāṭa is recognised as a majdhūb (lit. “attracted”, a term referring to an eccentric, ecstatic, and love-maddened mystic). ʿAbāṭa (“stupidity”) is a nickname attributed to Muḥammad Ḥasan because of his foolishness during his years of jadhba (“attraction”), a mental derangement resulting from the shock of mystical revelation. He wore his hair long and in braids and so…

Abay Qunanbayuli (Russified as Abaĭ Qūnanbaev) (1845–1904) is considered the first and greatest Kazakh writer and the founder of modern Kazakh literature. He was born in 1845 in the district of Semey (Semipalatinsk) in northeastern Kazakhstan, where he also passed away in 1904. Son of a Kazakh local leader at a time when Russian influence in the internal affairs of Muslim Kazakh cattle breeders steadily increased, Abay Qunanbayuli was educated both in medreses and Russian schools. While serving in the local administration, he became acquainted with Russian dissident…

ʿAbbādān (modern-day Ābādān) is an island and city in the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab, in the province of Khūzistān, in southwestern Iran. Located thirty-three miles (fifty-three kilometres) from the head of the Persian Gulf, it constitutes part of the combined delta of the Kārūn, Tigris, and Euphrates rivers, along with their numerous tributaries. The island is forty-two miles long (sixty-eight kilometres) and ranges from two to twelve miles wide (three to nineteen kilometres), although it must have been much…

Abū Sahl ʿ Abbād b. Salmān (or Sulaymān) b. ʿAlī al-Ṣaymarī was a Muʿtazilī theologian who flourished in Basra in the third/ninth century. His nisba, al-Ṣaymarī, refers to his original home-town of Ṣaymara, near Khūzistān in the Jibāl region. ʿAbbād studied with Hishām al-Fuwaṭī (d. before 218/833), and his theology was part of a trend, started by his teacher, that was later marginalised in Muʿtazilī thought, especially that of Basra. His views can be reconstructed only on the basis of refutations of them in Sunnī and even some Muʿtazilī sources. ʿAbbād categorically rejected anthrop…

ʿAbbād b. Ziyād b. Abī Sufyān (d. 100/718; sometimes designated by the sources as Ibn Sumayya and other times, but more rarely, as Ibn Abī Sufyān) was one of four sons of Ziyād b. Abīhi (d. 53/673), ʿUbaydallāh (d. 67/686), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Salm (d. 73/692) being the others. All four brothers served as generals or governors under the Sufyānids. It is not certain how old ʿAbbād was at the time of his death in 100/718 (Ibn ʿAsākir, 26:234; al-Dhahabī, 398), but from the following accounts it can be assumed he was at least in his early seventies. In 41/6…

Abū ʿĀṣim Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbbād al-ʿAbbādī (375–458/985–1066), often called al-Qāḍī l-Harawī, was a Shāfiʿī jurisconsult and judge and a celebrated scholar of his school of law (madhhab) in the first half of the fifth/eleventh century. Born in Herat (hence his nisba al-Harawī), he studied jurisprudence in his hometown, under the judge (qāḍī) Abū Manṣūr al-Azdī, and in Nīshāpūr, under the local judge. In common with other contemporary seekers of religious knowledge, he journeyed far to meet many scholars, studied under th…

The ʿAbbādids (Banū ʿAbbād) were a dynasty (of Lakhmid stock), which reigned over southwestern al-Andalus—with Seville as its capital—from 417/1027 to 484/1091–2, during the period of the mulūk al-ṭawāʾif (party kings; the singular noun ṭāʾifa, which means literally “party, faction,” refers by extension to each of the small, independent kingdoms that arose in Muslim Spain after the fall of the caliphate of Córdoba in 1031, and “Taifa” is used in English to refer to the era and the dynasties of those kingdoms). The ʿAbbādids desc…

ʿAbbāsa bt. al-Mahdī was the half-sister of Hārūn al-Rashīd (Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif, ed. Tharwat ʿUkāsha, Cairo 1960, 380; Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi, al-ʿIqd al-farīd, ed. Aḥmad Amīn, Aḥmad al-Zayn, and Ibrāhīm al-Ibyārī, Cairo 1965, 5:115). Beginning with the history of al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), her name is linked in chronicles and adab to that of the minister Jaʿfar al-Barmakī, in a story told to explain his and his family’s ruin. Hārūn, it is said, loved the company of both ʿAbbāsa and Jaʿfar, and in order that Jaʿfar might join her at the caliphal plea…

Al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. c. 32/653) was an uncle of the prophet Muḥammad and the eponym of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty. al-ʿAbbās was a half-brother of the Prophet's father ʿAbdallāh. His mother was Nutayla bt. Janāb from al-Namir, a tribe of the Rabīʿa confederation. al-ʿAbbās was the youngest son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and was born two or three years prior to his nephew Muḥammad, i.e., around 567 C.E. He died during the caliphate of ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 23–35/644–56), aged about 88 (lunar) years. The ʿAbbāsids were descendants of al-ʿAbbās through his son ʿAbdallāh. It is particularly …