, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad , Arab physician. According to a statement of the Syro-Arab physician ʿUbayd Allāh b. D̲j̲ibrīl b. Bak̲h̲tīs̲h̲ūʿ, given by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, Ibn Abi ’l-As̲h̲ʿat̲h̲ originated from Fārs. Having been originally an administrative official, he hurriedly left the country after his income had incurred muṣādara , and reached Mosul in a wretched condition. There he treated with success a son of the Ḥamdānid Nāṣir al-Dawla, who had been taken ill. Having thus risen to distinction, he stay…

, the Prophet of Islam. 1. The Prophet’s life and career. 2. The Prophet in popular Muslim piety. 3. The Prophet’s image in Europe and the West. 1. The Prophet’s life and career. Belief that Muḥammad is the Messenger of God ( Muḥammadun rasūlu ’llāh ) is second only to belief in the Oneness of God ( lā ilāha illā ’llāh ) according to the s̲h̲ahāda [ q.v.], the quintessential Islamic creed. Muḥammad has a highly exalted role at the heart of Muslim faith. At the same time the Ḳurʾān and Islamic orthodoxy insist that he was fully human with no supernatural powers. That Muḥammad was one of the greate…

( Tas̲h̲lḥiyt ), a dialect of Berber. 1. Linguistic region. Tas̲h̲elḥīt or Tas̲h̲lḥiyt is the most important Berber dialect of Morocco, both by the number of its speakers and by the extent of its area. The space within which it is used as a first language comprises an area within a line in the north connecting Essaouira (Mogador) and Tanant in the High Atlas, a line following the eastern slopes of the High Atlas towards the region of Ouarzazate, a southern line following the course of the Wadi Dra and western one represented by the Atlantic coast from the mouth of the Wadi Noun to Essaouira. From th…

(864/1459-921/1515), Ottoman statesman and man of letters, was born at Amasya (for the date see E. Blochet, Cat. des mss. turcs , ii, 1-2), where his father Tād̲j̲ī Beg was adviser to Prince (later Sultan) Bāyezīd. After rising in the theological career to müderris , he was appointed nis̲h̲ānd̲j̲i̊ by Bāyezīd II (in 903/1497-8, see Tâci-zâde Sa’dî Çelebi Münşeâtı , ed. N. Lugal & A. Erzi, Istanbul 1956, 85). Suspected of favouring Prince Aḥmad in the struggle for the succession, Ḏj̲aʿfar, with other of Aḥmad’s partisans, was dismis…

[see d̲j̲aʿfar b. abī ṭālib ; d̲j̲aʿfar al-ṣādiḳ ; al-kattānī ; al-ḳazzāz ; al-k̲h̲arāʾiṭī ; al-muntaṣir bi’llāh ; al-rāḍī ].

al-ḥusayn b. nāṣir b. al-ḥusayn , al-nāṣir li-dīn allāh , Zaydī Imām. There are some variants in the sources in regard to his own, his father’s and his grandfather’s personal names. He belonged to a Hasanid family which had been prominent in Abhar for some generations. Nothing is known about his life before he came to the Yaman after 429/1038 claiming the Zaydī imāmate. He gained some tribal support in northern Yaman and established himself in the Ẓāhir Hamdān region where he built the fortress and town of Ẓafār [ q.v.] near Dhū Bīn. In 437/1045-6 he entered and pillaged Ṣaʿda, the s…

(current orthography M’sila), a town in Algeria founded by the Fāṭimids in 315/927 on the northern edge of the depression of Ḥoḍna as an outpost of their rule in the Zāb. This remote province of their domain was in fact to play, from the foundation of their caliphate, the role of a military frontier to the west of Ifrīḳiya. As with his predecessors, the Ag̲h̲labid amīr s, the primary task of the first Fāṭimid sovereign, al-Mahdī ʿUbayd Allāh [ q.v.], in ensuring the defence of the western side of the realm consisted in raising a powerful barrier on the desert route leading…

, an Arab tribe belonging to the group of tribes called ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa [ q.v.], The territories and pre-Islamic history of the tribe are described in that article. Kilāb was considered to have ten main divisions, of which the chief for a time was D̲j̲aʿfar b. Kilāb, from which came leaders of the whole of ʿĀmir. The most serious war of the Fid̲j̲ār [ q.v.] resulted from the killing of ʿUrwa al-Raḥḥāl of Kilāb by al-Barrāḍ b. Ḳays al-Kinānī. Divisions within the tribe are reflected in hostility to the Muslims and friendship with them. Two men of Kilāb joined…

, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad, traditionist, Ḥanafī jurist and As̲h̲ʿ arī theologian, born at a place called Simnān in ʿIrāḳ (and not at the better-known one in Ḳūmis) in 361/971-2, died at Mawṣil in Rabīʿ I 444/July 1052. He lived mainly in Bag̲h̲dād, and then in Mawṣil, where he acted as ḳāḍī . In ḥadīt̲h̲ , his masters included al-Dāraḳuṭnī [ q.v.] and Naṣr b. Aḥmad al-Mawṣilī, and amongst his own disciples was al-K̲h̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī [ q.v.]. In fiḳh , he is said to have composed several works, whose titles are not specified. But it…

b. Abī D̲j̲aʿfar al-Manṣūr [ q.v.], Umm D̲j̲aʿfar (d. 216/831-2), wife of the caliph Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd [ q.v.], mother of his successor Muḥammad al-Amīn [ q.v.]. Her name was Amat al-ʿAzīz (“handmaid of the Almighty”), but she is known by her pet name Zubayda (“little butter ball”), given to her by her grandfather al-Manṣūr on account of her plumpness and radiant looks. Her beauty, intelligence, extravagance and generosity made her one of the most admired women in her time. She set the fashion at the caliphal court and …

, son of the caliph ʿUmar II. In the year 126/744 ʿAbd Allāh was appointed governor of ʿIrāḳ by Yazīd III, but in a short time aroused the discontent of the Syrian chiefs in that place, who felt that they were unfavorably treated by the new governor compared with the inhabitants of ʿIrāḳ. After the accession of Marwān II, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muʿāwiya [ q.v.], a descendant of ʿAlī’s brother Ḏj̲aʿfar, rebelled in Kūfa in Muḥarram 127/Oct. 744, but was expelled by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar, whereupon he transferred his propaganda to other parts. When Marwān transferred to …

b. al-Ward, Abū Bisṭām al-ʿAtakī, a mawlā from Baṣra with the honorific s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-islām , was an eminent scholar and collector of ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.]. Born during the years 82-6/702-7, his death from the plague is generally taken to have occurred in 160/776. Originally from Wāsiṭ, he came to live in Baṣra, where he sought out al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī [ q.v.]. S̲h̲uʿba is recorded to have studied masāʾil (= juridical problems) with him, so if that is historical he may be assumed to have arrived there in or before 110/728, the year in which Ḥasan…

(a.), a generic term in Arabic literature applied in mediaeval sources to love poetry. In its modern understanding it denotes the amatory prologue of the ḳaṣīda [ q.v.], the polythematic ode, as distinguished from g̲h̲azal [ q.v.], the independent love-poem. According to Arabic lexicography, the term is derived from the root n-s-b in its special meaning nasaba bi ’l-nisāʾi “to make amatory verses about women” ( s̲h̲abbaba bi-hinna fi ’l-s̲h̲iʿr wa-tag̲h̲azzala; LA , i, 756a). Another derivation is suggested by R. Blachère, who considers a connection with the term nasb …

, a term referring to an extremist S̲h̲īʿī group which originated within the ʿAbbāsid movement in K̲h̲urāsān. The term was subsequently expanded to include at times the entire ʿAbbāsid s̲h̲īʿa , but unless otherwise stated it will be used in this article in its original sense. It is said in some sources to derive from al-Ḳāsim b. Rāwand or from Abu ’l-ʿAbbās al-Rāwandī, both of whom are otherwise unknown; other sources more plausibly derive it from ʿAbd Allāh al-Rāwandī, who appears in a list of propagandists ( duʿāt ) of Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAbbās [ q.v.] (see Ak̲h̲bār al-dawl…

, term in rhetoric commonly used in the sense of metaphor. This term is among those most frequently discussed by authors of all periods and it is impossible to give a complete account of all definitions, Systems of classification, and technical terms, many of which are found in texts that do not specifically deal with rhetoric. The following is an attempt to outline the views of some representative authors. In the early period the term istiʿāra is used occasionally in the sense of “borrowing of a theme by one author from another” (see, for instance, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIḳd al-fārid …

, “the Island of the Arabs”, the name given by the Arabs to the Arabian Peninsula. ¶ (i) preliminary remarks Although the Peninsula may not be the original cradle of the Arab people,, they have lived there for thousands of years and regard it in a very special sense as their homeland. For students of Islam, Western Arabia occupies a unique position as the land in which the Prophet Muḥammad was born, lived, and died. It was there that the inspiration of Allāh descended upon the Prophet, and to this Holy Land come ma…

ʿAbd al-Karīm , a notorious crypto-Manichean ( zindīḳ , [ q.v.]), belonging to a great family (he was the maternal uncle of Maʿn b. Zāʾida [ q.v.]). According to the most reliable information, he lived first at Baṣra, where (although even this is doubtful) he is supposed to have been a disciple of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī [ q.v.], from whom he parted on account of the latter’s doctrinal inconsistency regarding the problem of freewill and determinism. What is more certain is that he frequented a very mixed milieu, rubbing shoulders with Muʿtazilis such as ʿAmr b. ʿUbayd and Wāṣil b. ʿAtāʾ [ qq.v.], with p…

, Misʿar b. Muhalhil al-Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲ī al-Yanbuʿī , an Arab poet, traveller and mineralogist. The earliest date in his biography is his appearance in Buk̲h̲ārā towards the end of the reign of. Naṣr b. Aḥmad (d. in 331/943). His travels in Persia hint at the years 331-341/943-952. Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, whom Abū Dulaf mentions as his patron in Sīstān (read: *Aḥmad b. Muḥammad), ruled 331-52/942-63. The author of the Fihrist (completed in 377/987) refers to him as d̲j̲awwāla “globe-trotter” and as his personal acquaintance. Al-T̲h̲aʿālibī in his Yatīmat al-Dahr …

, Granada , the capital of the province and ancient kingdom of that name, does not come into prominence in Spanish history until the early 5th/11th century when a collateral branch of the Ṣanhād̲j̲a Zīrids (ruling in the Ḳalʿa of the Banū Ḥammād, and later in Bougie) realized that its power was waning and offered its services to the first minister of His̲h̲ām II, ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muẓaffar, son and successor of al-Manṣūr Ibn Abī ʿĀmīr. The reply was satisfactory, so they embar…

, Sayyid Muḥammad al-Kāẓimī al-Ḥusaynī b. Sayyid K̲h̲ān alias Bad́d́h Uwaysī (cf. Āʾīn-i Akbarī , Bibl. Ind., ii, 241) and Bībī Āḳā Malik , the pseudo-Mahdī [ q.v.], was born at D̲j̲awnpur [ q.v.] on Monday, 14 D̲j̲umādā I 847/10 September 1443. None of the contemporary sources mentions the names of his parents as ʿAbd Allāh and Āmina, as claimed by the Mahdawī sources ( e.g., Sirād̲j̲ al-Abṣār , see Bibliography), in an obvious attempt to identify them with the names of the Prophet’s parents so that the prediction made in the aḥādīt̲h̲ al-Mahdī (cf. Ibn Taymiyya, Minhād̲j̲ al-Sunna …