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( 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…

is a town in Egypt. ʿAyn S̲h̲ams is the Arabic name of the ancient Egyptian town of Ōn, which the Greeks called Heliopolis because of its famous sun-temple. A recollection of this cult is contained in the Arabic name (“the spring, or the eye, of the sun”), which must be a popular arabicised form of an old name. In the first centuries of Islam ʿAyn S̲h̲ams was still, according to some authorities, an important town, and the capital of a district ( kūra ), but according to others, a collection of ruins used as a public quarry. The Fāṭimid al-ʿAzīz built cas…

Yaḥyā b. Tamīm b. Muʿizz b. Bādīs al-Ṣinhād̲j̲ī , al-Afḍal Rukn al-Dīn Abu ’l-Faḍl , Fāṭimid vizier, a descendant of the Zīrids [ q.v.] of North Africa. He seems to have been born shortly before 509/1115, for in that year he was still a nursling. His father was then in prison and was banished in 509 to Alexandria, whither his wife Bullāra and the little ʿAbbās accompanied him. After Abu ’l-Futuḥ’s death his widow married Ibn Sallār [see al-ʿĀdil ibn Sallār ], commandant of Alexandria and al-Buḥayra, one of the most powerful generals of the Fāṭimid empir…

, town in Upper Egypt. Asyūṭ, the largest and busiest town of Upper Egypt, is situated Lat. 27º 11′ N. on the wast bank of the Nile. Owing to its situation in one of the most fertile and sheltered districts of the cultivable Nile valley, and also to its being the natural terminus of great desert highways it was in antiquity an important town (Syowt, Greek: Lykopolis) and the chief town of a Nomos. Under Islām Asyūṭ remained the chief town of a kūra (modern markaz , "district"), and on the inauguration of the division into provinces became the capital of a province ( ʿamal , now mudīriyya ). Asyūṭ is th…

, Muslim statesman and general. Abū Yaḥyā ʿAbd Allāh b. Saʿd b. Abī Sarḥ al-ʿĀmirī belonged to the clan of ʿĀmīr b. Luʾayy of Ḳurays̲h̲ and was as foster brother of the subsequent caliph ʿUt̲h̲mān a chief partisan of the Umayyads. He was less a soldier than a financier. The judgements of historians on his character vary greatly. His name is connected in many ways with the beginnings of Islam. First he is mentioned as one of Muḥammad’s scribes: he is supposed to have arbitrarily altered the revel…

, formerly much the commonest Arabic name for the Red Sea, from Ḳulzum [ q.v.], the ancient Clysma, near Suez; the article is usually omitted when the name of the town is written alone, but retained when the sea is mentioned. It was also called Baḥr al-Ḥid̲j̲āz, a common name which survived to modern times, al-Ḵh̲alīd̲j̲ al-ʿArabī, and, in Turkish, S̲h̲āb deñizi (Ṣap denizi), “the Coral Sea’. The names Ḵh̲alīd̲j̲ Ayla, strictly the Gulf of ʿAḳaba, and Baḥr al-Yaman, properly applicable to the southern part of…

(Babylon), a town in Egypt. The name Babylon, denoting the mediaeval Egyptian town in the neighbourhood of the modern Cairo, is, according to Casanova, the Graëcised form of an ancient Egyptian Pi-Hapi-n-On through assimilation to the Asiatic βαβυλών which was familiar to the Greeks. This etymology is not quite free from objections but there is no doubt that some ancient Egyptian place-name underlies it. By the name is meant the ancient town and fortification of the Greeks which — situated on th…

(ar.) “broker”, “agent”. Dallāl , literally “guide”; is the popular Arabic word for simsār , sensal . In the Tād̲j̲ al-ʿArūs we find, on the word simsār: “This is the man known as a dallāl ; he shows the purchaser where to find the goods he requires, and the seller how to exact his price”. Very little is known from the Arabic sources about the origins of these brokers, who have been of such great importance in economic affairs. The dallāl corresponded to the Byzantine μεδίτης. In the absence of any systematic earlier studies, only certain items of information collected at r…

, Egypt A. The eponym of Egypt B. The early Islamic settlements developing out of the armed camps and the metropolises of the conquered provinces C. The land of Egypt: the name in early Islamic times 1. Miṣr as the capital of Egypt: the name in early Islamic times 2. The historical development of the capital of Egypt i. The first three centuries, [see al-fusṭāṭ ] ii. The Nile banks, the island of Rawḍa and the adjacent settlement of D̲j̲īza (Gīza) iii. The Fāṭimid city, Miṣr al-Ḳāhira, and the development of Cairo till the end of the 18t…

, a Fātimid commanderin-chief and vizier. The formerly brilliant Fāṭimid empire was on the verge of downfall under the incapable Caliph Mustanṣir (427-487/1036-1094). The Sald̲j̲ūḳs were pressing forward into Syria, in Egypt ¶ the Turkish slave-guards were fighting with the negro-corps, a seven years’ famine was exhausting the resources of the country; all state authority had disappeared in the general struggle; hunger and disease were carrying off the people, licence and violence were destroying all prosperity and it appeared…

(Beni Suef, Beni Souef) a town in Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile, 75 m. (120 km.) south of Cairo. According to al-Sak̲h̲āwī (902/1497) the old name of the town was Binumsuwayh, from which popular etymology derived the form Banī Suwayf (the of Ibn Ḏj̲īʿān, al-Tuḥfa al-Saniyya , 172, and the of Ibn Duḳmāḳ, Intiṣār , v, 10, ought probably to be read ). In still more ancient times the capital of this district was Heracleopolis Magna, 10 m. (16 km.) west of Banī Suēf, which only attained importance under Muḥammad ʿAlī. From the time of the division of Egypt into provinces ( mudīriyya …

, a group of oases in the Lybian desert. The Baḥriyya is the most northerly of the Lybian desert. The Wāḥāt Baḥriyya (also singular), i.e., the northern oases, are distinguished from the Wāḥāt Ḳibliyya, the southern oases, i.e., the Dāk̲h̲la [ q.v.] and Ḵh̲ārga [ q.v.]. Between these two groups lie the little oases of Farafra (included in the Dāk̲h̲la by some), or al-Farāfira, called al-Farfarūn by al-Bakrī and al-Yaʿḳūbī. The three large oases are also distinguished as inner, middle and outer; the inner is the Baḥrīyya which is also calle…

, aḥmad b. yaḥyā b. ḏj̲ābir b. dāwūd , one of the greatest Arabic historians of the 3rd/9th century. Little is known of his life. Neither the year of his birth nor that of his death is directly attested. From the dates of his teachers, it is evident that he cannot have been born later than the beginning of the second decade of the 9th century A.D.; for the date of his death, Muslim authors suggest, as the latest and most likely date, ca. 892 A.D. As he is said to have been a transl…

, town in Middle Egypt. Aṭfīḥ (also written with t instead of ṭ ) is a small town of 4,300 inhabitants on the east bank of the Nile at the latitude of Fayyūm. The name of the town in old Egyptian was Tep-yeh or Per Hathor nebt Tepyeh, i.e., "house of Hathor, lady of Tepyeh". The Copts changed this name to Petpeh, the Arabs to Aṭfīḥ. The Greeks, identifying Hathor with Aphrodite, called the town Aphroditopolis, abbreviated to Aphrodito. The town must still have possessed importance in th…

b. saʿīd b. sulṭān , sultan of Zanzibar, succeeded his brother Mad̲j̲īd, 7 Oct. 1870, and reigned till his death, 27 March 1888. He tried to seize power on his father’s death in 1856, and again in 1859 when he was defeated by British intervention and sent to Bombay for two years. The British supported his accession but he at once resisted their efforts to suppress the Slave Trade, for he relied partly on the Ibāḍī Mlawa faction which was hostile to all European intervention in …

b. Marwān , son of the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān [ q.v.], was born about the year 60/680-1, perhaps somewhat earlier, as he is said to have been 27 years old in the year 85/704. He grew up in Damascus and accompanied his father in several campaigns. We first meet him as an independent general in the year 81/700-1, in one of the usual razzias against the Eastern Romans. Then in the year 82/701-2, he was sent with Muḥammad b. Marwān to help ¶ al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ against al-As̲h̲ʿat̲h̲ and played a part in the negotiations of Dayr al-Ḏj̲amād̲j̲im. Thereup…

By the Baḥr al-Zand̲j̲ the Arabs mean the W. part of the Indian Ocean, Baḥr al-Hind [ q.v.] which washes the E. coast of Africa from the Gulf of Aden i.e., the Ḵh̲alīd̲j̲ al-Barbarī to Sufāla and Madagascar, which was as far as the scanty knowledge of the Arabs extended. The name is derived from the adjoining coast, which is called the Bilād al-Zand̲j̲ or Zanguebar, ‘land of the Zand̲j̲’. The name Zand̲j̲ is applied by the Arabs to the black Bantu negroes, who are sharply distinguished from the Berbers and Abyssinians. The n…