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(a.), pl. nawāḳīs , a kind of rattle once used and in some places still used by Eastern Christians to summon the community to divine service. It is a board pierced with holes which is beaten with a rod. The name, which comes from the Syriac nāḳōs̲h̲ā , is not infrequently found with the verbs ḍaraba or ṣakka in the old Arabic poets, especially when early morning is to be indicated, e.g. ʿAntara, app.; Labīd, 19, 6; ZDMG, xxxiii, 215; Mutalammis, ed. Vollers, 178, v. 6; al-Aʿs̲h̲ā, in Nöldeke’s Delectus , 26; Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī , xix, 92. According to tradition, Muḥam…

, later often pronounced Munā , a place in the hills east of Mecca on the road from it to ʿArafa [ q.v.]. The distance between the two is given by al-Muḳaddasī as one farsak̲h̲ , while Wavell calls it five miles and says the continuation to ʿArafa is nine miles. Minā lies in a narrow valley running from west to east, 1,500 paces long according to Burckhardt, surrounded by steep barren granite cliffs. On the north side rises a hill called T̲h̲abīr. Travellers from Mecca come down into the valley by a hill path with steps in it; this is the ʿAḳaba [ q.v.] which became famous in connection with Muḥam…

, daughter of the Prophet Muḥammad and his first wife Ḵh̲adīd̲j̲a [ q.v.]. Little is known of her and much of this is similar to traditions about her sister Ruḳayya [ q.v.]. Umm Kult̲h̲ūm is said to have married a son of Abū Lahab [ q.v.] but to have been divorced by him by his father’s orders before the marriage was consummated. Her ¶ brother-in-law ʿUt̲h̲mān (later the third caliph) married her after Ruḳayya’s death during the Badr campaign. She died in S̲h̲aʿbān of the year 9 without having borne a son with him. Classical Muslim scholars connected Umm Kult̲h̲ūm to traditions about mul…

is an old Arabic formula of invocation: "Allāh!", for which also Lahumma is found (cf. Nöldeke, Zur Grammatik d. class. Arab., 6). Whether, as Wellhausen supposes in his Reste arabischen Heidentums 2, 224, it was originally meant for the god Allāh, higher than and different from the old Arabian gods, is rather doubtful, because every god might be invoked as "the God" (just as "the Lord". It was used in praying, offering, concluding a treaty and blessing or cursing (see Goldziher, Abhandlungen z. arab . Philol ., i, 35 ff.; cf. also the expression Allāhuma ḥayyi =much …

b. Ismāʿīl b. al-Ḥasan b. Zayd , a descendant of the preceding, founder of an ʿAlid dynasty in Ṭabaristān [ q.v.]. The high-handed rule of the Ṭāhirids on the one hand and, on the other, the settlement of ʿAlid elements in the region led to a rising in favour of al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, al-dāʿī al-kabīr , in 250/864. Al-Ḥasan, who was living at Rayy, was proclaimed sovereign by a section of the population of Ṭabaristān and received the allegiance of Wahsūdān b. Ḏj̲ustān of Daylam [ q.v.]. He succeeded in defeating the Ṭāhirid troops and seizing the towns of Āmul and Sāriya, while D̲j̲us…

, the last wife that Muḥammad married. She stemmed from the Hawāzin tribe of ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa and was a sister-in-law of al-ʿAbbās. After she had divorced her first husband, a T̲h̲aḳafi, and her second, the Kuras̲h̲ī Abū Rukm, had died, she lived as a widow in Mecca where the Prophet wooed her, primarily no doubt for political reasons, on the ʿumra allowed to him in the year 7/629. His wish to marry her in Mecca was refused by the Meccans, in order not to prolong his stay there; the marriage therefore took place in Sarif, a village north of Mecca. Her brother-in-law al-ʿAbbās acted as her walī …

b. Rabīʿa , mother of Muʿāwiya; this Meccan woman, who belonged to the clan of the ʿAbd S̲h̲ams (see the list of her maternal ancestors in Muḥ. b. Ḥabīb, Muḥabbar , 19), had mairied as her third husband Abū Sufyān b. Ḥarb, to whom she bore other children besides the future caliph. Traditions hostile to the Umayyads draw an extremely repellant portrait, apparently something of a caricature, of this short, stout woman who quite certainly had a highly passionate temperament and who on different occasions m…

b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib was a pious man, who, following the example of his father and grandfather, abandoned all political aspirations and reconciled himself to ʿAbbāsid rule. His daughter became the wife of al-Saffāḥ while he himself lived at the Caliph’s court, and is even said to have occasionally communicated the views of his ʿAlid relatives and their dependants to al-Manṣūr. In 150/767 al-Manṣūr made him governor ¶ of Medina, but in 155/772 he aroused the Caliph’s wrath and was dismissed, imprisoned and had his property confiscated. But restitution was made to…

(a.), pl. k̲h̲itām , the technical name for the recitation of the whole of the Ḳurʾān from beginning to end, the verbal noun from k̲h̲ātama , denominative verb from k̲h̲ātam [ q.v.]. The complete recitation of the Ḳurʾān is, especially if it is done within a short time, a meritorious achievement, e.g. in eight nights, as Ubayy b. Kaʿb is said to have done (Ibn Saʿd, iii/2, 60, 23; cf. on ʿUt̲h̲mān, ibid., iii/1, 53, 3). It is related of Sulaymān al-Aʿmas̲h̲ ¶ that he accomplished the k̲h̲atma at times according to ʿUt̲h̲mān’s recension and at times according …

or Fiḥl , an ancient town in Transjordania situated 12 km. south-east of Baysān [ q.v.], was known in earliest antiquity, at the time of el-Amarna, under the name Bik̲h̲il , corresponding to a Semitic p ḥ l. Macedonian colonists settled there in about 310 B.C., giving it the name of the Macedonian town of Pella, which resembled the native name. After the Roman conquest, Pella was one of the towns of the Decapolis, and the Christians took refuge there during the disturbances which followed the destruction of Je…

(modern pronunciation of the word vocalised by the lexicographers maḥmil or miḥmal ), a type of richly decorated palanquin, perched on a camel and serving in the past to transport people, especially noble ladies, to Mecca (cf. al-Samʿānī, Kitāb al-Ansāb , under the word al-maḥāmilī ). The famous al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ b. Yūsuf is said to have been the first to use them. In a more restricted and precise sense, the word designates palanquins of this same type which became political symbols and were sent from the 7th/13th century by sovereigns with their caravan…

, in the Talmud Kefar Ḥaṭṭiye, a village to the west of and above Tiberias on a fertile plain, the southern border of which is formed by a steep limestone ridge. At both the western and eastern ends of the ridge there is a higher summit called Ḳurūn Ḥaṭṭīn. A tradition, known in the 6th/12th century, the origin of which is uncertain, places the tomb of the prophet S̲h̲uʿayb (Jethro) here; the little chapel, which has been rebuilt in modern times and is still annually visited by the Druzes, lies …

, a son of ʿAlīb. Abī Ṭālib [ q.v.] and K̲h̲awla. a woman of the tribe of the Banū Ḥanīfa, who had been brought a prisoner to Medina after the battle of ʿAḳrabāʾ [ q.v.] and came into ʿAlī’s possession (cf. al-Sayyid’s poem Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī, vii, 4: “she was a servant in the house”); he was born in 16 a.h. ¶ Although he did not, like al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, have the blood of the Prophet in his veins, he became involved not only in the political turmoils but also in the schemes which the boundless fancies of the extreme S̲h̲īʿīs built up around the family…