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al-Ḥalīmī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ḥusayn b. Ḥasan al-Bukhārī (338–402/949–1012), was a famous Shāfiʿī jurist, judge, and traditionist in Tansoxiana. He was born into a scholarly family in Gurgān (formerly Astarābād) the Iranian city close to the Caspian Sea. His father, Abū Muḥammad Ḥasan b. Muḥammad, was a well-known jurist and traditionist, and the renowned traditionist al-Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī (d. 405/1014) heard narrations from him.Al-Ḥalīmī was still a child when he relocated to Bukhārā with his father, and it was there that he began his elementary studies. His…

Dawāmī, ʿAbd Allāh (1270–1359 Sh./1891–1980), was a performer of the radīf (classical Persian repertoire), vocalist, player of the tumbak (goblet drum) and virtuoso of traditional Iranian songs ( taṣnīf ). Dawāmī was born in 1270 Sh./1891 in the village of Ṭā, near Tafrish in Markazī Province, Iran. His father, Abū al-Qāsim, was a singer in taʿziya (Shiʿi passion plays) (Safvat, 136; Mashḥūn, 646). ʿAbd Allāh spent his childhood in the village and learnt the Qurʾān and Saʿadī’s Gulistān in the village school. Blessed with a good singing voice, it was during this same tim…

  Ḥādhiq, Junayd Allāh (d. 1259/1844) was a 13th/19th century Tajik poet and physician. He was born in the village of Karkh, near Herat (Amīrqūlūf, 7). In 1216/1801 he went to Bukhārā, where he studied in the Madrasa-yi ʿĀlī (ʿAynī, 131; Maʿṣūmī, 1/43; Amīrqūlūf, 7–8). While he was studying, Ḥādhiq caught the attention of the emir of Bukhārā, Ḥaydar b. Shāh Murād (r. 1215–1242/1800–1826) and, upon the conclusion of his studies, was given the position of teacher in the same madrasa. From there he gained admission to Ḥaydar’s court (Amīrqūlūf, 8). However, because he was a …

al-Ḥātimī, Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Muẓaffar, a lexicographer, poet and man of letters from the 4th/10th century. According to al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038), al-Ḥātimī’s father was also a talented poet and scribe, who wrote the famous treatise Waqʿat al-Adham (‘The Battle of Adham’) (3/103; for those who regarded his father’s name as al-Ḥusayn, see Bonebakker, Ḥātimī and His Encounter, 6–10). However, al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363) and a number of contemporary writers attribute this work to the younger al-Ḥātimī (2/343; Sallām, 1/212).Historians have not preserved a great …

Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Hamadān ī, also known as Ḥāʾirī (d. 1216/1802), a jurist, uṣūlī scholar, philosopher, theologian, grammarian, as well as a widely respected mystic of the Niʿmat Allāhī order in the 12th/18th and early 13th/19th centuries.Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn Shīrwānī refers to him as the most learned individual of his day, who had, at the very least, reached the rank of a mujtahid, and attained a high degree of ascetism and piety (Shīrwānī, Bustān, 613). Equally, he is considered to be one of the pre-eminent Imāmī scholars of his time, and a master of both the rational ( ʿaqlī) and trad…

Arabic and Persian lexical sources provide a multiplicity of meanings for the word bundār, which has been used to denote a tax-collector, customs officer, notable or headman. The word also has extended commercial connotations such as hoarder or profiteer (Awḥadī, 30; Ānandrāj, 1/773; Burhān, 1/304–305; Nafīsī, 1/648; see also Muʿīn, 1/584 who defines this term as ‘postmaster’, ṣāḥib al-barīd, or ‘courier’). Bundār appears in works of Persian poetry with the meaning of ‘notable person’, ‘headman’, ‘leader’ or someone who monopolises goods (Nāṣir-i Khusraw,…

Ḥashwiyya, a pejorative designation for a range of political-doctrinal tendencies in Islamic history to whom opponents have attributed ignorance and a disregard for rational methods or true faith. It is therefore necessary to be cautious about statements concerning the doctrines of the Ḥashwiyya, since these are often simply the doctrines attributed to them by their opponents. Etymologically speaking, the name ‘Ḥashwiyya’ is derived from the root ḥ-sh-w, meaning ‘to fill’ or ‘to stuff’. The expressions al-ḥashw min al-nās or ḥushwat al-nās denote the popular ‘masses’ or t…

While many works are attributed to him by sources contemporary with or later than Abū Yūsuf al-Nīshāpūrī, and in particular that of his friend, the writer and belletrist al-Bākharzī (980/2; see also al-Qifṭī, 51/4; al-Yamānī, 384), none of them mentions the Kitāb al-Bulgha and ʿImād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī (519–597/1125–1201) is the first person to name him as its author (84/2). Ibn Shākir al-Kutubī (686–764/1288–1363), following in al-Iṣfahānī’s footsteps, also attributes this work to him (334/4), and then this attribution found it…

Ḥakīm Muʾmin, Muḥammad Muʾmin b. Mīr Muḥammad Zamān Ḥusaynī Daylamī Tunkābunī, was a physician and pharmacologist at the court of the Ṣafawid Shāh Sulaymān I (r. 1077–1105/1666–1694) and the author of the well-known Persian medical treatise Tuḥfat al-muʾminīn.In spite of Tuḥfat al-muʾminīn’s popularity as a medical text and the relatively wide circulation it enjoyed, comparatively little information is available about the life of its author. Most of what is known to scholars about Ḥakīm Muʾmin has been gleaned from the brief autobi…

Ḥārith al-Hamdānī, Abū Zuhayr Ḥārith b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Kūfī (d. 65/685) was a follower ( tābiʿī) and a companion of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (q.v.). He was also identified by the epithet ‘al-Aʿwar’, meaning he was blind in one eye (Ibn Qutayba, 586–587; Ibn Rusta, 224), a title by which he became known (al-Samʿānī, 1/192). Some sources record his father’s name as ʿUbayd Allāh instead of ʿAbd Allāh (Ibn Abī Ḥātim, 3/78). He belonged to the Banī Ḥawth (or Ḥūth) clan of the Hamdān tribe (Ibn al-Kalbī, 2/251; Ib…

Ḥabīb al-ʿAjamī (d. in the early to mid 2nd/8th century), also known as Ḥabīb al-Farsī, was a Persian Sufi. While his epithet ‘al-ʿAjamī’ (‘one who is illiterate in Arabic’) appears to signify Persian origins, some biographical sources state that he was given this epithet because he was unable, at least initially, to recite the Qurʾān properly (see ʿAṭṭār, 60; Field, 81, 85).His full name is Abū Muḥammad Ḥabīb b. Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā. Regarded as one of the earliest Sufi masters, Ḥabīb was a well-known ascetic in Baṣra towards the end of the 1st/7th centur…

Historiography, in its technical sense may be defined to cover the description and recording of various aspects of human life in the fields of politics and society. The definition of historiography in this article is the study of the motives, goals, uses, methods, schools, and genres of history writing, the views of historians of the Islamic world in describing the conditions of its inhabitants, and the methods they used in compiling and organising history. This article concentrates on h…

Ḥāfiẓa in Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism. In Islamic philosophy, ḥāfiẓa (‘memory’) refers to the faculty of the soul which is a repository for the meanings/intentions ( maʿānī) which the inner senses ( ḥawāss) receive from the faculty of estimation ( wahm) in both humans and animals (Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifāʾ, 148–149).In the Islamic intellectual tradition, the words dhākira (‘recollection’, see idem, al-Najāh, 2/100), mudhakkira and mutadhakkira (both ‘recollection’), mustarjiʿa (‘recall’) (Ibn Sīnā, al-Qānūn, 1/72; Jurjānī, 142), and taḥaffuẓ (‘retention’, see Naṣīr al…

Ḥamd Allāh Mustawfī, a Persian geographer, historian and official in the service of the Īlkhānate in the 8th/14th century. Other than the autobiographical details found in his own writings, little independent information survives about him. His family were of Arab extraction and traced their lineage back to al-Ḥurr b. Yazīd al-Riyāḥī (d. 61/680). Their ancestors were apparently among the first Arabs to settle in the city of Qazwīn. Fakhr al-Dawla Abū Manṣūr, a forebear of the Mustawfī fam…

Fadak, the name of a village in the vicinity of Medina, at a distance of two days travel. Half of the agricultural land of Fadak was the personal property of the Prophet Muḥammad. It draws its later significance and fame from a dispute that erupted between two major groups of Muslims regarding its status after the Prophet’s demise. The crux of this disagreement was whether, when the Prophet passed away, the land of Fadak became the property of his daughter Fāṭima (q.v.), or the collective property of the Muslims to be administered by the caliph.The raids and military campaigns directed b…

al-Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī (also Nīshāpūrī, Nīshābūrī), Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḍabbī al-Ṭahmānī (Rabīʿ I 321–Ṣafar 405/March 933–August 1014), compiler of the ḥadīth collection al-Mustadrak ʿalā al-Ṣaḥīḥayn, who acquired fame for authoring Taʾrīkh Nīsābūr. This is the earliest history of Nīsābūr and was written in Arabic.His laqab (sobriquet) al-Ḥākim refers to his official position as a judge ( qāḍī), while the nisbas al-Ḍabbī and al-Ṭahmānī refer to his kinship through the maternal line to one ʿĪsā b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Sulaymān al-Ḍabbī an…

al-Ḥasan b. Nūḥ al-Hindī or al-Bharūchī (d. 11 Dhū al-Qaʿda 939/4 June 1533), a Ṭayyibī Ismaili scholar from Gujarat in the west of India.Aside from some brief remarks that he provides in his Kitāb al-azhār (Ivanow, 83; Tritton, 38), there are no sources for the details of his life. He says that he was born in Khambhāt/Cambay (a region in what is today Gujarat State, India) (Poonawala, 178). Regarding the laqab ‘al-Bharūchī’ that al-Majdūʿ (p. 77) gives him, it appears likely that this originated from the many years that he spent in Bharūch/Broach (a region ne…

Ḥafṣa bint ʿUmar (d. 45/665), daughter of the second caliph, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, who became one of the Prophet Muḥammad’s wives.According to the sources, Ḥafṣa was born in 604 CE, five years before the beginning of the Prophet’s mission (Ibn Saʿd, 8/81; al-Dhahabī, 2/227, 230). Her mother was Zaynab bint Maẓʿūn of the Banū Jumaḥ clan, one of the branches of the Quraysh tribe, and the sister of a prominent Companion of the Prophet, ʿUthmān b. Maẓʿūn. Zaynab was also the mother of Ḥafṣa’s brothers ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar (q.v.) and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿUmar (Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, Ṭabaqāt, 334; Ibn Ḥ…

al-Ḥāʾirī, Abū al-Fatḥ Naṣr Allāh b. Ḥusayn al-Mūsawī al-Fāʾizī, who was given the honorific ( laqab) ʿIzz al-Dīn, an Imāmī belletrist, poet, preacher, traditionist and historian of the 12th/18th century.Abū al-Fatḥ al-Ḥāʾirī was born in Karbalāʾ in 1109/1697. Even though he was quite well known during his lifetime, the precise date of his death is the subject of some uncertainty, with different sources offering a range of years between 1156/1743 and 1168/1755. However, based on the date of the Najaf Conference ( muʾtamar) and his mission on behalf of Nādir Shāh (q.v. Afshār…

al-Ḥurr b. Yazīd al-Riyāḥī (d. 10 Muḥarram 61/10 October 680), one of the commanders of the Kūfan forces who, on the day of ʿĀshūrāʾ, defected to the camp of al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī (q.v.). Al-Ḥurr belonged to the tribe of Banū Riyāḥ b. Yarbūʿ, a branch of the Banū Tamīm (see al-Kalbī, 213, 216; al-Balādhurī, 12/159). For this reason he is identified variously by the nisbas al-Riyāḥī, al-Yarbūʿī and al-Tamīmī; his name is given by al-Ṭabarī as al-Ḥurr b. Yazīd al-Yarbūʿī al-Ḥanẓali al-Riyāḥī al-Tamīmī (Ṭabarī/Howard, Yazīd b. Muʿāwiyah, passim). Al-Ḥurr’s forefathers and ancestors enj…