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Zand b. al-Ḏj̲awn , a black slave, client of the Banū Asad in Kūfa. He is already mentioned in the history of the last Umapyad caliph, but appears as a “poet” only under the ʿAbbāsids and plays the part of a court jester in the palace of al-Saffāḥ and especially in those of al-Manṣūr and al-Mahdī. His poem on the death of Abū Muslim (137/754-5) is said to have been the first of his works to make him a name. Examples of his poetry show him to have been a clever, witty versifica…

, name of an ancient fortress situated in the district of Nīmar in the Central Provinces of British India; it stands on a projection of the Sātpurā Range. In 1600 it was wrested by Akbar from the last king of the Muḥammadan dynasty of Ḵh̲āndēs̲h̲; this event is also mentioned in an inscription which is set down to that period. Of the buildings, some of which were erected by Akbar’s successors, a mosque of the year 992 (1584) and still in a state of preservation is noteworthy from the fact that i…

Nad̲j̲īḥ b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, a slave, probably of Indian origin, who subsequently purchased his freedom and lived in Medina. He is especially famous as the author of a Kitāb al-mag̲h̲āzī, numerous fragments of which have been preserved by Wāḳidī and Ibn Saʿd. Amongst his authorities he mentions Nāfīʿ, the Mawlā of Ibn ʿOmar, Muḥammed b. Kaʿb al-Ḳuraẓī and other scholars of Medina. In the year 160 (776-777) he left Medina and remained till his death (170 = 786-787; Ramaḍān?) in Bagdad, where he enjoyed the favor of several members of the court o…

, the original copy of the Book with Allāh in heaven, from which the revelations of the Ḳurʾān come and from which Allāh “abrogates and confirms what He pleases” (Sūra xiii. 39). This original copy, called Aṣl al-Kitāb in Ḥadīt̲h̲. (e. g. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, xxv. 26), is according to Sūra lxxxv. 21 written in a “carefully preserved table” ( fī lawḥ maḥfūẓ; cf. Enoch 93, 2; Book of Jubilees 5, 13; 16, 9; 32, 21). In the Medīna period Umm al-Kitāb is used in another sense: according to Sūra iii. 5, the book revealed by Allāh to Muḥammad, i. e. the Ḳurʾān, consists of verses “clearly expressed” ( āyāt muḥkam…

, the story of the conversion of the Indian prince Josaphat by the ascetic Barlaam, which has been recognised by Felix Liebrccht as a Christian version of an episode in the life of the Buddha. The book, which owes its popularity and influence in the first place to the tales in it, is preserved in Greek, Arabic (several versions), Hebrew, Ethiopie, Armenian and Georgian as well as in many European editions. The Greek romance of Barlaam was probably composed in Palestine at the monastery of Saint Sabas in the first half of the viith century. On this Greek original is based a Christian Ara…

, Hebr. Tōrā, is in the Ḳurʾān of the Medīna period (cf. also an alleged verse of the Jewish poet Sammāk in Ibn His̲h̲ām, p. 659) the name of a holy scripture revealed after the time of Ibrāhīm (iii. 58) and Isrāʾīl (= Jacob; iii. 87) and afterwards confirmed by ʿĪsā (iii. 44; v. 50; lxi. 6) which contains the ḥukm Allāh (v. 48). While obedience to it brings a reward in Paradise to the “people of the book” (v. 70), those who do not take upon themselves the tawrāt imposed upon them are “like asses who carry books” (lxii. 5). The Tawrāt also contains a prophecy of the coming of the Nabī al-ummī (vii. 156) i.…

b. Zaid, an Arab poet of the tribe of Asad, born in Kūfa about 60 and died in 126. Of his compositions, the most famous next to the Mud̲h̲ahhaba (see below) are the Hās̲h̲mīyāt so called because they sing the praises of the Banā Hās̲h̲im, the family of the Prophet. But not the whole of the Banū Hās̲h̲im are considered worthy of the honour and praise of the poet; besides Muḥammad we find only ʿAlī and his descendants. Verses i. 79 and ii. 105 sq. in which ʿAbbās and his sons are commemorated were perhaps only added in the ʿAbbāsid period. The Hās̲h̲imīyāt consist of four long and two short ḳaṣīda…

(a.), probably a loanword from the South, but already used by pre-Islāmic poets in the sense of “writ”; in this sense it is still found in al-Farazdaḳ, Naḳāʾiḍ, lxxv. 1. From the second Makkan period onwards, Muḥammad uses the plural zubur in order to denote the revealed books (Sūra xxvi. 196; iii. 181; xvi. 46; xxxv. 23) as well as the heavenly writings, in which human deeds are recorded (Sūra liv. 43, 52). The singular zabūr, on the other hand, occurs in the Ḳurʾān exclusively in connection with Dāwūd. In the early Sūra xvii. 57 Muḥ…

, a saint whose story is said to have been related by the Prophet himself and has therefore found a place in the ḥadīt̲h̲ . The various versions differ in details one from another, but one motif is common to them all, that the saint is accused by a woman, who had had a child by another man, of being its father; but the child itself, on being asked by the saint, declares the real father’s name and thus clears the saint from suspicion. “D̲j̲urayd̲j̲” is the Arabic reproduction of Gregorius, and one version rightly states that he lived in the prophetless period ( fatra [ q.v.]) between Jesus and Muḥamm…

, a word used in Sūra cviii. 1 after which this Sūra is called Sūrat al-Kawt̲h̲ar. Kawt̲h̲ar is a fawʿal form from kat̲h̲ara, of which other examples occur in Arabic (e. g. nawfal; further examples in Brockelmann, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik, i. 344). The word, which also occurs in the old poetry (e.g. the examples in Ibn His̲h̲ām, ed. Wüstenfeld, p. 261, and Nöldeke-Schwally, Geschichte des Qorans, i. 92), means “abundance” and a whole series of Muslim authorities therefore explain al-Kawt̲h̲ar in Sūra cviii. I as al-k̲h̲air al-kat̲h̲īr (see Ibn His̲h̲ām, op. cit.; al-Ṭabar…

, Muḥammad b. Muslim b. ʿUbaid Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh b. S̲h̲ihāb, known as Abū S̲h̲ihāb, a celebrated traditionist, was born probably in 50 (670) or 51 — according to others, 56, 57, 58 — and received his nisba as a member of the Meccan clan of Zuhra. His grandfather had fought at Badr on the side of the Ḳurais̲h̲ against Muḥammad and inflicted a wound on the Prophet at Uḥud; his father had been a partisan of ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubair but the son made his peace with the Umaiyads. When still quite a youth, he had paid his respects to Marwān ¶ (d. 65 = 684) (Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Tahd̲h̲īb, ix. 445), and later went t…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿUmar, an Arab historian born in 130 in Medīna; according to Ag̲h̲ānī, vii. 189, his mother was a great-grand-daughter of Ṣāʾib who introduced music into Medīna. Al-Wāḳidī was so called after his grandfather al-Wāḳid, al-Aslamī as a mawlā of ʿAbd Allāh b. Buraida who belonged to the Medīnese family of Aslam. On the occasion of Hārūn’s pilgrimage in 170 (see Ṭabarī, iii. 605) he was recommended to him as the best authority on the holy places of his native town and acted as guide to th…

(a.), prophet, borrowed from Hebr. nābi or Aram. nebīʾā, is found in the Ḳurʾān from the second Meccan period in the singular and plural nabīyūn; in the Medīna period we find also the broken plural anbiyāʾ. Lists of the nabīyūn are given in Sūra vi. 83 sqq.; iii. 34; iv. 161 sqq.; further information about them is given in several passages of Sūra xix. and in xvii. 57. The list consists exclusively of names from the Old and New Testaments (if we leave out Idrīs in Sūra xix. 57, whose name Muḥammad had however also learned from a Christian source; see above ii., p. 442-450; Horovitz, Koran. Unters., p…

, daughter of the caliph al-Mahdī, sister of the caliphs Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd and al-Hādī; it is to her that the locality Suwaiḳat al-ʿAbbāsa owes its name. She had three husbands in succession, who all predeceased her; that inspired Abū Nuwās to write some satirical verses, in which he recommended the caliph, should he want to have a traitor killed, to marry him to ʿAbbāsa. Her name is connected with the fall of the Barmakides through the amorous intrigue with Ḏj̲aʿfar b. Yaḥya ’l-Barmakī, with wh…

, Abū ʿAbd Allāh, a South Arabian story-teller ( ḳāṣṣ ak̲h̲bārī: Ḏh̲ahabī, in Z. D. M. G., xliv. 483) of Persian descent who was born in Ḏh̲imār, two days’ journey from Ṣanʿāʾ in 34 a. h. (no credence need be given to statements that he adopted Islām in 10 a. h.). Wahb is celebrated as an authority on the traditions of the Ahl al-Kitāb and like his brothers Hammām, G̲h̲ailān and Maʿḳil is classed among the tābiʿūn. The earliest sources know nothing of the story that before his conversion to Islām he belonged to the Ahl al-Kitāb (Fihrist, p. 22) or more precisely was a Jew (Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn, ed.…

, name of a district in British India, which since 1905 has formed with 15 districts of northern and eastern Bengal the new province of “Eastern Bengal and Assam”. The district of Assam covers 61, 682 Eng. sq. mls., and lies between 22° 19′ and 28° 16′ N. Lat. and 89° 42′ and 97° 12′ E. Long. The population in 1901 amounted to 6, 126, 343 persons, of whom 1, 581, 317 were Muḥammadans, and of these 2724 called themselves S̲h̲īʿites. Almost three-fourths of the Muḥammadan population belong to the …

(a.), originally ladder, later “ascent”, especially Muḥammad’s ascension to heaven. In the Ḳurʾān, Sūra lxxxi. 19—25 and liii. I—12, a vision is described in which a heavenly messenger appears to Muḥammad and Sūra liii. 12-18 deals with a second message of a similar kind. In both cases the Prophet sees a heavenly figure approach him from the distance but there is no suggestion that he himself was carried off. It is otherwise with the experience alluded to in Sūra xvii. 1: “Praise him, who travel…

, a name of ʿAmīd S̲h̲āh Dāʾūd (a descendant of S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn G̲h̲ōrī), who was appointed governor of Mālwa by Muḥammad S̲h̲āh IV. of Dihlī (792—795 a. h.). In 801 he received his suzerain Maḥmūd II. of Dihlī, who had fled before Tīmūr, with due honour in Dhār, but in 804 he made himself independent of Dihlī. He thus became the founder of the first independent Muḥammadan dynasty of Mālwa, which became extinct with his grandson in 839. He reigned as king in Dhār from 804—808, but does not seem to have struck coins in his…

, also known as the History of the Ten Viziers, a Muḥammadan imitation of the originally Indian story of Sindbad or the Seven Viziers. Like its prototype it consists of a single narrative which forms a framework into which a number of other stories, which in this case are closely connected with the main story, are inserted. The story may be briefly told: the son of king Azādbak̲h̲t is abandoned by his parents on their flight, soon after his birth, found and brought up by robbers and with them ultimately taken prisoner by the king. ¶ The latter, being pleased with him, takes him, under the…

Zand b. al-Ḏj̲awn, a black slave, client of the Banū Asad in Kūfa. He is already mentioned in the history of the last Umaiyad caliph, but appears as a ,,poet" only under the ʿAbbāsides and plays the part of a court jester in the palace of al-Saffāḥ and especially in those of al-Manṣūr and al-Mahdī. His poem on the death of Abū Muslim (137 == 754-755) is said to have been the first of his works which made his name. Examples of his poetry show him to us as a clever, witty versificator, who readily seizes upon low expressions …