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Khaybar is a settlement in the Ḥijāz, approximately 150 kilometres north of Medina. According to al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956)—followed by Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī (d. 487/1094) and Yāqūt (d. 626/1229)—the distance from Medina equated to eight postal stations (al-Masʿūdī, 256; al-Bakrī, 2:521; Yāqūt, 2:503). Islamic-era sources place it within the administrative dependencies (aʿrāḍ) of Medina (Ibn Khurradādhbih, 129, 248; Ibn Rusta, 177; al-Muqaddasī, 53). Al-Hamdānī (writing in the early fourth/tenth century) adds, perhaps somewhat tentatively, that it w…

Dāghistān, Caucasus, 502 Dākī, Yūsufzāʾī District, 428 Dāman, Dīrah Ismāʿīl Khān, 355, 356, 372, 378, 379, 479 Dand District, see Banūn District Darāban, 373, 382 Darakī, 391 Dār al-Amān, Kabul, 224, 264 Dār al-Ḥabīb (formerly Dār a…

Fadak was an agricultural village in the northern Ḥijāz somewhere near Khaybar, which is about one hundred fifty kilometres from Medina. Fadak was the centre of a long-running dispute between the reigning caliphs and the family of the prophet Muḥammad, which continued through the first three Islamic centuries. After this period, Fadak recedes from view and by the ninth/fifteenth century it was possible for two experts on Ḥijāzī geography—al-Fīrūzābādī (d. 817/1415) and al-Samhūdī (d. 911/1506)—t…

Kabul, 65, 100, 101 ṣūbah of, 347, 351 Balūchīs in, 411 Ethiopians in, 410 Kashmīrīs in, 408 Qalmāqs in, 411 state of mind of people of, 117, 161, 282 Kābulistān, 347 Kabul River, 362, 364, 386, 401, 429, 458, 480-81 Kāfiristān (Nūristān), …

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-Ḥudaybiyya, a village about nine miles outside Mecca which owed its importance to the eponymous peace treaty that was signed there ( ṣulḥ al-Ḥudaybiyya) between the Prophet of Islam and the polytheists of Mecca (Yāqūt, 2/222; Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī, 3/811). The treaty has been described as ‘the turning point in Muḥammad’s political career’ (Donner, 230). Some works of history and Prophetic biography ( sīra) also refer to the events surrounding this as ‘the Campaign of al-Ḥudaybiyya’ ( ghazwat al-Ḥudaybiyya) (e.g. see Ibn Saʿd, 2/95; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 2/207; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, …

previous section /55/ The Sarbanī Tribes1 ¶ The peoples and tribes of the (1) Tarīn, (2) Shayrānī, (3) Barīch, (4) Ūrmur, and (5) Miyānah are of the lineage of Sharaf al-Dīn, better known as Sharkhbūn, son o…

In Volume 1: The Poetry of ad-Dindān | Appendix of Place Names previous section: y ¶ The names of places, mountains, wells, desert areas and other geographical features which occur in the poetry and narrative parts are listed according to the Arabic alphabet together with a reference to the narrative section or poem and verse where they occur and any relevant additional information I have been able to gain from available geographical works and other sources. The abbreviations for these sources are: Ḥm Ḥmēr, ʿAbdallah Sāyir ad-Dōsiri, Wāḥat as̲h̲-s̲h̲iʿr as̲h̲-s̲h̲aʿbī, ii, Riyadh 19…

ʿIzz al-Dīn Abū Ḥāmid ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Hibatallāh b. Muḥammad (b. Muḥammad) b. al-Ḥusayn b. Abī l-Ḥadīd al-Madāʾinī al-Baghdādī (d. 655 or 656/1257 or 1258), called Ibn Abī l-Ḥadīd, was a Sunnī-Muʿtazilī theologian with Shīʿī leanings and a poet, historian, and literary theorist, best known for his twenty-volume commentary on Nahj al-balāgha (“Path of eloquence”), a compilation of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib’s (d. 40/661) words. An official in the ʿAbbāsid state, he held various administrative posts in the capital, Baghdad, just before the Mongol sack in Muḥarram 656/January 1258. 1. Career Ibn…

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…

Ḥabs, a legal term that is generally synonymous with waqf except in Twelver Shiʿi jurisprudence. It has widest use in the sense of waqf among Mālikī jurists. Ḥabs is a verbal noun with the literal meaning of ‘to withhold, restrict, detain’, and is the opposite of takhliya (‘granting unrestricted access’) (al-Jawharī, 3/915; Ibn Manẓūr, 6/44). In modern usage, the term ḥubs or ḥubus (especially in North Africa, and Fr. habous) is used to signify a pious endowment, while ḥabs tends to refer to the act of sequestration or detaining, but in the early period of Islam such a d…

one of the most eminent Iranian scholars of the early Abbasid era, author of a celebrated commentary on the Qorʾān as well as the most important of the classical Arabic historical texts still extant. ṬABARI, ABU JAʿFAR MOḤAMMAD B. Jarir (224-310/839-923), one of the most eminent Iranian scholars of the early Abbasid era, author of a celebrated commentary on the Qorʾān as well as the most important of the classical Arabic historical texts still extant.BIOGRAPHY Sources. Despite Ṭabari’s intellectual fame and enduring significance, there are numerous problems involved in…

previous section /65/ Afghan Clans and Tribes ¶ Afghans name their children and [in general] refer to descendants by the name of the founding father [eponym] with the addition of –zāʾī or khayl. For example, they call the progeny of…

al-Ḥijāz , a toponym for the territory lying parallel to the Red Sea coast on the western side of the Arabian peninsula. From the root ḥ-j-z meaning ‘to prevent’, the word Ḥijāz means a barrier that, according to Ibn Manẓūr, demarcates the geographical area bordered to the north by the Ghawr (the Jordan Rift Valley) and al-Shām and reaching southwards into the greater Arabian desert and steppe (al-Bādiya); it may also refer to the land between the eastern uplands of Najd and the Sarāh (the Sarawāt mountain range)…

previous section 7 An Account of the Tribes and Clans of Afghanistan1 ¶ In 1340 Hijrī [in this case January–May 1922] when I journeyed to Afghanistan my only purpose for this long trip was first to pay my respects…

Introduction Humor is one of the most difficult words to define and to study, based on the extensive literature on humor that all repeatedly emphasize the difficulty in defining the concept and its implications. Despite the abundance of literary proof of the existence of an Arab or Muslim sense of humor and wit, the western perception of Muslim humor remains stereotypical and simplistic. Humor is an intelligent way of looking at life. Humor starts from the brain, tickling it and creating a laugh.…

Fāṭima, the daughter of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, the Prophet of Islam, by his first wife, Khadīja b. Khuwaylid. Her presence in Islam’s turbulent early years meant that she not only played an important role at certain points in Islam’s early history but, especially for Shiʿa Muslims, was of central importance for the future of Islam owing to her role in linking the two institutions of prophethood and imamate. She was also the wife of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (q.v.), the Prophet’s cousin and one of the f…

In volume S1 | book 2, Islamic Literature in the Arabic Language | Section 1, The Classical Period from ca. 750 until ca. 1000 previous chapter | German edition While the Arabs of southern Arabia lacked any sense of history (see Rhodokanakis, Altsab. Texte I, Vienna 1927, 36, n.4), the same was not true for those of the north. The interest that the Bedouins took in their genealogy, their pride in the deeds of the ancients, even if void of any historical value in the elevated sense of the term, at least had the merit of keeping the past al…

In Volume 4 | Part C, The Unification of Islamic Thought and the Flowering of Theology | Chapter 8, The Crisis | 8.2, The Self-Destruction of the Dialectical Method previous chapter As Masʿūdī transmits a similarly early date of th…