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Muḥammed, the name of five Marīnide kings: 1. Abū Zaiyān Muḥammed, son of the Marīnide sultan Abū ʿInān Fāris. The latter, while seriously ill, had designated Abū Zaiyān for the succession to the throne, indicating him at the same time the vizier Mūsā b. ʿĪsa’l-Aṣūlī as his prime minister. The illness of the monarch was growing worse, and the vizier, in order to avoid the competition of pretenders, wanted to hasten his master’s accession to the throne. He, accordingly, spoke of it to the principal personages of the Marīnide Court, who recognized Abū Zaiyān as sovereign. But just the same p…

(Banū Saʿd), the name of the dynasty of S̲h̲arīfs in Morocco which in 1544 (951) replaced the Waṭṭāsid dynasty on the throne of Fās. From the beginning of the fifteenth century the expeditions of the Portuguese and Spanish against the Muslim lands in Spain or North Africa had raised to a great pitch the fanaticism of the Berbers and of the Arabs who reacted violently under the leadership of holy men, s̲h̲arīfs [q. v.] and marabouts [q. v.]. In a country organised according to tribes or divided into numerous little states of a feudal character, among peoples whose only lin…

, plural of hansalī, the name given to the members of the ṭarīḳa or religious brotherhood, founded by Sīdī Saʿīd b. Yūsuf al-Hansalī (known in Morocco as Sīdī Saʿīd Ahansal). The epithet Ahansal or Hansalī is said to be derived from his birthplace Hansala, a Berber village of the tribe of Benī Mṭīr (in the Moroccan Atlas). ¶ He belonged to a family of marabouts, whose most important ancestor, Sīdī Saʿīd al-Kabīr, is buried in Dades (southern Morocco), where his tomb is visited by many pilgrims. After the example of this holy man Sīdī Saʿīd b. Yūsuf spe…

Mūlāy Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad, Sulṭān of Morocco, fourteenth of the dynasty still ruling there, the Ḥasanī [q. v.] S̲h̲erīfs of Sid̲j̲ilmāsa, also called Filālī S̲h̲erīfs or ʿAlawīs. After the death of his father Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (18th Rad̲j̲ab 1290 = 12th Sept. 1873) Mūlāy al-Ḥasan was chosen Sulṭān by the most prominent members of the Moroccan court, then in Marrākes̲h̲. But disturbances at once broke out on all sides; Fās, the capital of northern Morocco, drove out his governor Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ Muḥammad al-Madanī Bennis; the…

, in classical Arabic Ḏj̲ais̲h̲ (see Fränkel, Aram. Fremdwörter, p. 258) army. The word in Northwest Africa has however two further special meanings. 1. Ḏj̲īs̲h̲, plur. Ḏj̲uyūs̲h̲ or Ḏj̲iyūs̲h̲ means in the south of Algeria and Morocco an armed band, which goes out on a g̲h̲azw (ambush for purposes of plunder or of a holy war) against a caravan or a body of troops. When the d̲j̲īsh consists of several hundred men, it is called a ḥarka. The Ḏj̲iyus̲h̲ carry on their operations from the Northern Sūdān or the Niger valley throughout fhe Sahara to the South of Algeria and Mor…

, Abū Bakr Muḥammad, an Arab poet of Spain, of obscure origin but a cultivated man, lived in the vth (xith) century and at first led a wandering life, singing the praises of any one who cared to reward him. He met the governor al-Muʿtamid, son of al-Muʿtaḍid, Emīr of Seville, in Silves. This young prince took a liking to the wandering poet and made him his favourite. The latter, as ambitious and talented as he was poor, knew how to flatter his patron’s wishes, took part in his amusements and abetted him in them. Wh…

, a town in the east of Morocco at the western end of the chalk range which ruus from Tlemcen to Debdū; it is 3528 feet above sea-level (according to De Foucauld), about 85 miles, as the crow flies, from the sea and has a temperate climate. Debdū lies in the upper valley of the Wād Debdū, a tributary to the middle Mulūya on its right bank. “Debdū” says de Foucauld “is built on a delightful site at the foot of the right wall of the valley, which rises sheer upright to a height of 250 feet above t…

, in the plural Ḥasanīyūn, a kind of patronymic, or nisba given to the ʿAlid [q. v.] S̲h̲erīfs, descendants of al-Ḥasan son of ʿAlī and Fāṭima, the daughter of the Prophet Muḥammad. Hasanī is used in opposition to Ḥusainī, the surname of the S̲h̲erīfs, who trace their descent from al-Ḥusain the second son of ʿAlī and Fāṭima. In Morocco, however, the surname Ḥasanī is particularly applied to the S̲h̲erīfs descended from Muḥammad al-Nafs al-Zakīya, to distinguish them ¶ from their cousins the Idrīsīds [q. v.]. These S̲h̲erīfs, formerly located particularly in the south of …

(Dawāʾir) plural of Dāʾira “circle”, a confederacy of families whose duty it is to give personal attendance on a native chief. Before the French conquest of Algeria, the name Dwāʾir was borne more particularly by four groups of families or tribes, encamped in the southwest of Oran, attached to the service of this town and its Bey. They were organised as a militia on a sort of feudal basis, and lived on the produce of lands granted them by the Turkish government, and on the booty won in expeditions against unsubjected tribes…

, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Muḥammad b. Aiyūb b. ʿAmr Abū ʿUbaid, the oldest Hispano-Arab geographer, whose works have survived to us, flourished in the second ¶ half of the vth = xith century. His family, belonging to the great tribe of Bakr, took a prominent place among the Arab families of the West of Muslim Spain. Muḥammad b. Aiyūb, Ḳāḍī of Niebla, the grandfather of our al-Bakrī, was governor of Saltes and Huelva in the Caliphate of the Omaiyad His̲h̲ām al-Muʾaiyid. On the fall of this dynasty and during the socalled Ṭawāʾif period of anarchy which followed, he tried like so ma…

(G̲h̲aʾiṭa, G̲h̲ēṭa), an Arab musical instrument, very popular in North Africa and some districts of Southern Europe, a kind of cylindrical bagpipe with a movable wooden mouthpiece ( ḳaṣba) and rather wide bell-mouth. The cylindrical portion has seven holes on the upper side. The first hole below the mouthpiece is called yka sāʿida, the second s̲h̲as̲h̲ka, the third band̲j̲ka, the fourth d̲j̲ahārka, the fifth sīka, the sixth dūka and the seventh yka. On the lower side about midway between the yka sāʿida and the s̲h̲as̲h̲ka is an eighth hole called heftakā. The names of these holes ar…

, an Arab tribe of Northwestern Morocco. Its name in literary Arabic Ḵh̲ulṭ has become Ḵh̲loṭ in the vulgar dialect by regular metathesis, but the primitive form of the word is found in the adjective Ḵh̲ulṭī fem. Ḵh̲ulṭīya. The Ḵh̲loṭ who came into North Africa with the Hilālī invasion in the fifth (eleventh) century formed a part of the group of mixed Arab elements, known as Ḏj̲us̲h̲am from the name of the ancestor of one of them. According to Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn and other Muslim historians, the Ḵh̲loṭ were the Banu ’l-Muntafiḳ. In Little…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Ḏj̲abbār al-S̲h̲arīf al-Zarwīlī, a celebrated mystic, founder of the Muslim religious brotherhood or ṭarīḳa [q. v.] known as the S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilīya [q. v.], which has itself given rise to some fifteen other brotherhoods like the Wafāʾrīya, the ʿArūsīya, the Ḏj̲azūlīya, the Hafnawīya etc. etc. He was born, according to some, at G̲h̲emāra near Ceuta about 593 (1196/1197); others say he was born at S̲h̲ād̲h̲ila, a place near the Ḏj̲abal Ẓafrān in Tunisia from which he would take his nisba of al-S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilī. In any case the ethnic al-Zarwīlī …

(Abū Fāris) b. Aḥmed al-Manṣūr b. Muḥammed S̲h̲aik̲h̲ al-Mahdī, surnamed al-Wāt̲h̲iḳ bi-’llāh, governor of Marrākus̲h̲ (Morocco), was proclaimed sultan in this town on Friday, 28 Rabīʿ I 1012 (5 Sept. 1603), a few days after the death of his father and the proclamation of his brother Zaidān by the inhabitants of Fez. ¶ Immediately after he was proclaimed, the new sultan of Morocco was forced to fight against his brother, who contested the supreme authority. The ʿulamāʾ of Fez, having been won over to the party of Mawlā Zaidān, decided by a fetwā (judicial decision) that Abū Fāris ʿAbd …

b. S̲h̲arīf, Mūlāy, Sulṭān of Morocco, second of the dynasty of ʿAlawī or Filālī S̲h̲arīfs, also called Ḥasanī [q; v. for the genealogy of these S̲h̲arīfs]. On the death of Sulṭān Mūlāy al-Ras̲h̲īd, the empire of Morocco was divided. Mūlāy Ismāʿīl, governor of Mekines and brother of the deceased sulṭān, was proclaimed sulṭān in this town. He advanced at once on the capital Fās, which had declared against him and seized it. He was proclaimed there on 11 Ḏh̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 1082 (Apr. 14, 1672), being then 26 years of age. But three rivals, his brother Mūlāy al-Ḥarrānī in Tāfilālt, his…

(in written Arabic Ḳawm), the form and pronunciation usual in the Arab lands of North Africa of the name given to the body of armed horsemen or of fighting men of a tribe. Its derivative gouma means “a levy of goum or troops” or “a bold raid, rebellion, or revolt”. The written Arabic form ḳawm is also found in the dialects of North Africa with the meaning of “people, nation, tribe” etc. (Beaussier, Diet, pract. arabe-français des dialectes parlés en Algérie et en Tunisie). It should, however, be noted that ḳawm in written Arabic may also mean “enemies” or a “body of men going out to plunder” (Dozy, Su…

(Aīssaoua), a collective name from the singular ʿĪsāwī (cf. Marçais, Textes Arabes de Tanger, p. 397 sq.): a name given to the k̲h̲wān [q. v.] or members of the Moroccan religious brotherhood founded by Sīdī Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā and derived from this last name. In spite of the fame of this brotherhood, the life of Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Fihrī and his origin are little known. The ethnic al-Fihrī suggests a Spanish Arab origin. He travelled a great deal in his youth and was initiated in the east into the ecstatic exercises of the religious orders of the ¶ Ḥaidarīya and the Saʿdīya. Returning to the …

This word means one who bears the marks of old age, who is over fifty (cf. Lisān, iii. 509). It is applied to aged relatives; the S̲h̲aik̲h̲ is the patriarch of the tribe or family. In pre-Islāmic antiquity the title Saiyid, the chief of the tribe, was frequently given the epithet S̲h̲aik̲h̲ meaning full maturity in years and therefore of mental powers. The moral influence of the S̲h̲aik̲h̲s over the Beduins was considerable and the term came to mean chiefs having a long career behind them, the glorious veterans. In the history of the Muslim period, it has ¶ frequently the sense of supreme c…

Abū Muḥammed b. Abī Ḵh̲ālid Maḥyu’l-Marīnī, chief of the Zanāta-Marīnides and founder of the dynasty of the Marīnides. His father, Abū Ḵh̲ālid Maḥyū, the chief of his tribe, having died in 592 (1197), ʿAbd al-Ḥaḳḳ was chosen as his successor. At that time the Marīnides overran the high table-lands of the Central Mag̲h̲rib (Algeria), to the south of the Tāhert and Tlemcen mountains from the Zāb to Sid̲j̲ilmāsa in a nomadic state. They had their summer camps in the valleys of the Wādī Zā and of the Upper Mulūya, between Aḳersif and al-W…

, Abu ’l-Walīd Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. G̲h̲ālib b. Zaidūn, one of the most celebrated poets of Muslim Spain and minister to the Arab Emīrs of Seville. He belonged to a famous family of the Arab ¶ tribe of Mak̲h̲zūm and was born at Cordóva in 394 = 1003. Left early an orphan, he was given the best teachers by his guardians and soon distinguished himself among his fellow pupils. At the age of twenty he already composed poems which made him famous. Our. poet became involved in the politics of his country through the civil wars of the Omayyad pretenders and the attempts of th…