, the term used by Arabic historians and geographers writing about the Mag̲h̲rib and Muslim Spain with the sense of Northmen, Vikings, denoting the participants in the great Viking raids on Spain. These raids were manned from Scandinavia, sc. from Norway, Denmark and to a certain extent ¶ also from Sweden, the raiders leaving Denmark, Norway and Ireland, where Norwegian Vikings from the end of the 830s had gained a firm footing and had founded some minor tributary states towards the beginning of the second millennium A.D. In western Latin and Spanish sources they are called, inter alia, Norm…

bi ’llāh , Abū Tamīm Maʿadd b. ʿAlī al-Ẓāhir , eighth Fāṭimid caliph, born on 16 D̲j̲umada II 420/2 July 1029 (according to Idrīs, on 16 Ramaḍān/29 September), succeeded his father al-Ẓāhir [ q.v.] on 15 S̲h̲aʿbān 427/13 June 1036 and died on 18 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 487/10 January 1094, after the longest recorded reign of any Muslim ruler and one which, besides being marked by the most violent fluctuations of fortune, was of critical importance in the history of the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī movement. Internal history. During the childhood of al-Mustanṣir, the authority remained at fir…

, a legal school ( mad̲h̲hab ) of Sunnī Islam whose members claim to follow the teachings of the Imām al-S̲h̲āfiʿr (d. 204/820 [ q.v.]). Origins ( first half of the 3rd/ 9th century). The issue of the institution of the Snāfiʿī mad̲h̲hab remains poorly understood, and it poses a series of problems, fundamental as well as chronological, which are not confined to this school alone, applying in an identical manner to the emergence of other legal schools within the Islamic legal system. In reference to the S̲h̲āfiʿī school, the fundamental problem is essentially the following: the…

, a group of Arab tribes of obscure origin. The opinions of the genealogists about their origin are contradictory. Some of them assert that they were descendants of Maʿadd, others say that they were from Ḥimyar. Both parties had recourse to traditions and utterances attributed to the Prophet, in which he is said either to have declared that Maʿadd’s kunya was Abu Ḳuḍāʿa, or to have stated explicitly that Ḳuḍāʿa is a descendant of Ḥimyar. Harmonising traditions reported that the mother of Ḳuḍāʿa was the wife of Mālik b. ʿAmr b. Murr…

, dynasty which reigned in North Africa, and later in Egypt, from 297/909 until 567/1171. ʿUbayd Allāh (al-Mahdī), 297-322/909-34. Al-Ḳāʾim, 322-34/934-46. Al-Manṣūr, 334-41/946-53. Al-Muʿizz, 341-65/953-75. Al-ʿAzīz, 365-86/975-96. Al-Ḥākim, 386-411/996-1021. Al-Ẓāhir, 411-27/1021-36. Al-Mustanṣir, 427-87/1036-94. Al-Mustaʿlī, 487-95/1094-1101. Al-Āmir, 495-525/1101-30. Al-Ḥāfiz, 525-44/1130-49. Al-Ẓāfir, 544-9/1149-54. Al-Fāʾiz, 549-55/1154-60. Al-ʿĀḍid, 555-67/1160-71. The dynasty takes its name from Fāṭima, for the Fāṭimid caliphs trac…

(a., pl. masāll ), lit. “large needle”, obelisk. The mediaeval Arab authors speak with awe of the wondrous two obelisksof ʿAyn S̲h̲ams [ q.v.], Heliopolis, the old Egyptian Ōn. Al-Maḳrīzī ( K̲h̲iṭaṭ , ed. G. Wiet, vol. iv, ch. lxvi, § 1, p. 89) gives the biblical name Raʿamsās, and Abū D̲j̲aʿfar al-Idrīsī ( Anwar ʿulwī al-ad̲j̲rām fi ’l-kas̲h̲f ʿan asrār al-ahrām , ed. U. Haarmann, Beirut 1990, 80, 1. 5) the variant Raʿamsīs, for the ancient city which is occasionally (Ibn Duḳmāḳ, Intiṣār , v, 43 ult.) identified with the village al-Maṭariyya. The two obel…

, one of the common Arabic terms (with d̲j̲und and ʿaskar ) for the army. ¶ i. — Classical . Except possibly in the Yaman, pre-Islamic Arabia, although living under permanent conditions of minor warfare, knew no armies in the proper meaning of the term apart from those of foreign occupation. Conflicts between tribes brought into action virtually all able-bodied men, but without any military organization, and combats were very often settled by individual feats of arms. The embryo of an army may be said to have appeared with Islam in the expeditions led or prepared by the Prophet, although the d̲…

, name of a family of high-officials and revenue officers, originating from ʿIrāḳ, who held important positions in Egypt and Syria between 266/879 and 335/946. The nisba is derived from a village Mād̲h̲arāya, in the neighbourhood of Wāsiṭ (see al-Samʿānī, Kitāb al-Ansāb , fol. 499a; Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am , iv, 381). Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Ibrāhīm al-Mād̲h̲arāʾī with the nickname al-Aṭras̲h̲ ("the partially deaf one", see Lane, Lexicon , s.v.), was given the control of finances of Egypt and Syria in 266/879 by Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn, and so became the founde…

, name of a Cordovan family, of which five members are, for various reasons, worthy of mention. The genealogy of the family is given in Ibn al-Abbār, no. 1517. I. Abu ’l-Aṣbag̲h̲ ʿĪsā b. ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḳuzmān , poet and man of letters of the 4th/10th century. The chamberlain al-Manṣūr Ibn Abī ʿĀmir chose him as one of the tutors of the young caliph His̲h̲ām II al-Muʾayyad, who succeeded to the throne at the age of eleven in 366/976. Thus, in spite of the opinion of E. Lévi-Provençal ( Du nouveau . . . 13), it is impossible that he should have been the father of the famous writer of zad̲j̲als …

(a.), pls. aswār , sīrān , the wall of a town or other enclosed urban or built-up space. The present article treats of town walls and fortifications in the central Islamic lands. The development of urban fortification may be divided into two main traditions: (1) the Mediterranean region, descended from Hellenistic and Roman fortifications, characterised by stone and fired brick fortifications with regular projecting towers, a type first seen in the 4th century B.C., and itself probably derived from Mesopotamian city fortificat…

(K̲h̲adīd̲j̲ in the D̲j̲amhara of Ibn al-Kalbī, Tab. 240) b. D̲j̲afna al-Sakūnī al-Tud̲j̲ībī , Abū Nuʿaym or Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Companion of the Prophet who took part in the conquest of Egypt and remained in the country with the Muslim occupying forces. He was an ʿUt̲h̲mānī, much attached to the memory of ʿUt̲h̲mān b. ʿAffān and hostile to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib; also, when Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr [ q.v.], who had been involved in the murder of ʿUt̲h̲mān, arrived at Fusṭāṭ in mid-Ramaḍān 37/24 February 658, in order to govern Egypt in the name of ʿAlī, Ibn Ḥudayd̲j̲ sho…

( Hōl ), "father of terror", the Arabic name for the sphinx of Ḏj̲īza (Gizeh). Some authors simply call it al-ṣanam , "the idol", but the name Abu ’l-Hawl is already attested for the Fāṭimid ¶ period. At that time the Coptic name Belhīt ( Belhīb ), or as al-Kuḍāʿī (quoted by al-Maḳrīzī) has it: Belhūba ( Belhawba ), was also still known. The Arabic Abu ’l-Hawl is most probably a popular etymology based on the Coptic designation; the initial B probably represents the Coptic article, which has been transformed in Arabic, as often happened, into Abū. In the old tradition the n…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan (or Abū Hās̲h̲im) ʿAlī b. al-Ḥākim bi-amr Allāh, seventh Fāṭimid caliph and the fourth to reign at Cairo in Egypt. After the death of al-Ḥākim on 27 S̲h̲awwāl 411/14 February 1021, Sitt al-Mulk [ q.v.], the latter’s half-sister, refused to recognise the rights of the heir presumptive, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (or ʿAbd al-Raḥmān) b. Ilyās, al-Ḥākim’s cousin, designated walī al-ʿahd by the latter in 404/1014-5 and at the time governor of Damascus (A.F. Sayyid, al-Dawla al-fāṭimiyya , tafsīr d̲j̲adīd , Cairo 1413/1992, 108-9, 117-18). Recall…

, (a., plur. ag̲h̲d̲h̲iya ) indicates strictly in Arabic “that which ensures the growth and the good health of the body” ( Ḳāmūs , s.v.), in other words feeding and food. We shall deal here only with the factors which determined the diet of the principal Muslim peoples in the classical period (though sometimes making modern comparisons), in particular with the laws of the Muslim religion concerning food. The descriptive section will be limited to the pre-Islamic period. The more particularly culinary aspects, i.e., those concerning the preparation of special dishes, will be de…

(“piece of land marked out for building upon”), a term used of the lands allotted to tribal groups and individuals in the garrison cities founded by the Arabs at the time of the conquests. The lay-out of these cities everywhere followed the kinship organisation of the conquerors, who were distributed in tribal quarters around a centre housing the Friday mosque and the dār al-imāra . The smallest unit of the k̲h̲iṭaṭ was the dār , in the case of prominent individuals often a sizable estate (usually known as ḳaṭīʿa ), otherwise a modest plot of land occupied by o…

(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…

, Maʿadd, fourth and last caliph of the Fāṭimid dynasty of Ifrīḳiya. He acceded to the throne of his ancestors at an early age on 29 S̲h̲awwāl 341/19 March 953; having been born on 11 Ramaḍān 319/26 September 931, he had barely come of age. According to his biographer, the famous ḳāḍī al-Nuʿmān [ q.v.], the designation of the young Maʿadd to the imāmate does not seem to have ¶ been surrounded by the traditional secrecy of the period of satr [ q.v.], his father al-Manṣūr bi ’llāh [ q.v.] having for long hesitated as to the choice of his successor from among his five sons. It was only…

a large tribal group, now inhabiting in the main the areas of Ḏh̲amār and Radāʿ in the modern Yemen Arab Republic. The traditional genealogy, given by e.g. Ibn Durayd, Is̲h̲tiḳāḳ , ed. ¶ Wüstenfeld, 237 ff., and by Yāḳūt, Beirut 1374-6/1955-7, v, 89, is from Mālik b. Udad b. Zayd b. Yas̲h̲d̲j̲ub b. ʿArïb b. Zayd b. Kahlān b. Sabaʾ b. Yas̲h̲d̲j̲ub b. Yaʿrub b. Ḳaḥtān. The numerous component ḳabāʾil of Mad̲h̲ḥid̲j̲ are listed in full by al-Malik al-As̲h̲raf ʿUmar, Ṭurfat al-aṣḥāb fī maʿrifat al-ansāb , ed. K. V. Zetterstéen, Damascus 1949, 9; those most frequ…

(a.) “guarantee”, a juridical term used mainly in connection with fiscal practice, in a manner which is still very difficult to define precisely. The particular field with which this discussion is concerned is a double one—that of the levying of the land-tax, k̲h̲arād̲j̲ [ q.v.], and that of special taxes, mukūs . As was already the case before the Arab conquest both in the Byzantine Empire and under the Sasanids, local communities were held jointly responsible by the Treasury for the payment at the required time of the ful…

, the first city to be founded in Egypt by the Muslim conquerors and the first place of residence of the Arab governors. It was built on the east bank of the Nile, alongside the Greco-Coptic township of Babylon or Bābalyūn [ q.v.], traces of which are still preserved in the ramparts of the Ḳaṣr al-S̲h̲amʿ. A bridge of boats, interrupted by the island of al-Rawḍa [ q.v.], linked the Ḳaṣr with the city of Giza (al-D̲j̲īza) on the other bank of the Nile. Al-Fusṭāṭ was partly built beside the river, which at that time followed a more easterly course, and partly on …