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(a.), also irtid̲j̲āʿ , the term coined in modern Arabic for reaction in the political sense (from r-d̲j̲-ʿ “to return”). Towards the same end of the political spectrum appear also the terms muḥāfiẓ “conservative” and muḥāfaẓa “conservatism”; cf. A. Ayalon, Language and change in the Arab Middle East , New York-Oxford 1987, 125. (Ed.)

(a.), a term frequently applied to mediaeval Islamic textiles, from silks to woollen materials, and denoting a pattern of lines in the cloth forming quadrangular compartments, i.e. checks (Dozy, Supplément, i, 352). Such cloths seem to have been woven almost everywhere in the Islamic lands; see R.B. Serjeant, Islamic textiles, material for a history up to the Mongol conquest, Beirut 1972, index s.v. (Ed.)

, literally “leaf”, which has become the usual term in modern Arabic for a newspaper, its adoption being attributed to Fāris al-S̲h̲idyāḳ [ q.v.]. Its synonym ṣaḥīfa is less used in the sing., but the plural ṣuḥuf is more common than d̲j̲arāʾid . Some interest in the European press was shown by the Ottomans as early as the 18th century and, it would seem, excerpts from European newspapers were translated for the information of the dīwān (Prussian despatch from Constantinople, of 1780, cited by J. W. Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches , vi, Gotha 1859, …

, the nisba of several persons originally from Majorca (Mayurḳa [ q.v.]) or residents of the island. In his Muʿd̲j̲am al-buldān , iv, 720-3, s.v. Mayurḳa, Yāḳūt mentions a certain number. In addition to al-Ḥumaydī [ q.v.], the best-known person with this last nisba, one should mention the name of Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ṭunayz, who seems to have led quite a lively existence. According to Yāḳūt, iv, 722-3, he was a good grammarian (cf. al-Suyūṭī, Bug̲h̲ya , 327) who was also concerned with the Ḳurʾān readings; he naturally collected ḥadīt̲h̲ s at…

, the ancestor of the Banū Kalb, the strongest group of the Ḳuḍāʿa [ q.v.]. His mother, Umm al-Asbuʿ, was so called because all her sons were named after wild animals (T. Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge , 75 ff.). The Kalb were, according to the genealogical system (Ibn al-Kalbī, Ḏj̲amharat al-nasab etc.), of Yemenite descent, but sometimes they claimed for political reasons to belong to the Northern Arabs or even to Ḳurays̲h̲. I.—Pre-Islamic period Their greatest chieftain was Zuhayr b. Ḏj̲anāb. who had great authority among the northern tribes; so he was sent by Abraha [ q.v.] to control the Bak…

, the capital of Mauritania [see mūrītāniyā ]. It was created ex nihilo near a site occupied by a small village and a ksar [see Ḳaṣr ]. The choice of its situation was made the object of serious studies, since it was necessary that it should be accessible, easily supplied with drinking water and distant ¶ enough from the Senegal River to escape inundations like that of 1950. Several plans of urban design were put forward even before independence was conceded to Mauritania (1960), and construction work, begun in 1958, has not ceased since that date i…

, a muzāwad̲j̲a [ q.v.] in the Arabic manner used of two aspects of the single idea of nobility. The second term denotes kinship, the relationship, particularly ancestral, i.e. the genealogy of an individual or a tribe, the record of which, in the time of the D̲j̲āhiliyya, was carefully maintained by the nassāba and which, under Islam, formed a branch of history [see nasab ]. The nasab , which was an element of honour, was based not only on consanguinity but also on maternal descent, although the relationship on the paternal side, which wa…

, ilyās (usual orthography, Elias Abou Chabakeh), Maronite poet, journalist and translator (1903-47). He was born in Providence, R.I., whilst his parents were travelling in the United States, but he spent all his life in Lebanon, dividing his time between his home in the village of Zūḳ Mīk̲h̲āʾīl (in Kisrawān), from which his family came, and the cafés and editorial offices of Beirut, to which he went each day. His father held some estates in the region of Khartoum, but in 1914, when he went there, was murdered by bandits. Hence the young orphan had soon to inter…

, a station on the Kūfa to Mecca Pilgrimage route, the so-called Darb ¶ Zubayda [ q.v. in Suppl.]. It lay in Nad̲j̲d in what is now the northeastern corner of Saudi Arabia, towards the ʿIrāḳī border, in approx. lat. 28° 50′ N., long. 43° 20′ E. some 180 km/112 miles north-north-east of Fayd [ q.v. in Suppl.]. It is mentioned by such geographers as Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih, Ibn Rusta, Ḳudāma and al-Muḳaddasī, and such pilgrims as Ibn D̲j̲ubayr and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa passed through it. It was the birthplace of the 2nd/8th century poet Ibn Mutayr [ q.v.]. Today, the site of al-T̲h̲aʿlabiyya is in the s…

, Muḥammad al-Rūmī , early Ottoman Ḥanafī scholar and father of Ḳuṭb al-Dīn-zāde Muḥammad [ q.v.]. He was born at Iznīḳ [ q.v.] and died there on 8 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḳaʿda 821/7 December 1418. Popular story puts him in contact with the conqueror Tīmūr when the latter occupied Anatolia, and he was the author of commentaries on the work of the great Spanish mystic Ibn al-Arabī [ q.v.]. (Ed.) Bibliography Ṭās̲h̲köprüzāde, al-S̲h̲aḳāʾiḳ al-nuʿmāniyya, Beirut 1395/1975, 24, German tr. O. Rescher, Constantinople-Galata 1927, 18-19.

(Berb.), argan-tree ( argania spinosa or argania sideroxylon), a tree of the family Sapotaceae which grows on the southern coast of Morocco. A shrub with hard, tough wood, it produces a stone whose kernel, when ground, yields a much-valued oil; the oil-cakes are given to cattle. The word is also known to some of the Arabic-speakers of Morocco, but they look upon it as a loan-word. (Ed.) Bibliography Ibn al-Bayṭār, no. 1248 L. Brunot, Textes arabes de Rabat, ii, Glossary, Paris 1952, 6-7 V. Monteil, Contribution ŕ l’étude de la flore du Sahara occidental, ii, Paris 1953, no. 409 (with a bibl.) A.…

(a.), pl. ḳanawāt , ḳanā , ḳunī , aḳniya , “canal, irrigation system, water-pipe”. Used also for a baton, a lance, etc., the term originally meant “reed” [see ḳaṣab ] and it is with this meaning and that of “rush” that the word ḳanū is known in Akkadian (cf. Zimmern, Akkad. Fremdwörter , Leipzig 1915, 56); becoming ḳanä in Hebrew and ḳanyā in Aramaic, it passed into Arabic and was also borrowed in Greek and Latin in the forms χάννα χάννη (χάνη), canna ; by an evolution parallel to that of ḳanāt , the Latin word canalis “in the shape of a reed”, acquired the meaning of “pipe, canal”. In Persian ḳanāt is u…

, conventionally Dhafarah, the interior region of the shaykhdom of Abū Ẓaby [ q.v.], now a constituent of the United Arab Emirates [see al-imārāt al-ʿarabiyya al-muttaḥida , in Suppl.], the undefined southern frontier of which marches with the easternmost part of Saudi Arabia. Al-Ẓafra forms the traditional territory of the Banū Yās [ q.v.] and the Banu ’l-Manāṣīr [ q.v.]. (Ed.) Bibliography J.G. Lorimer, Gazeteer of the Persian Gulf, ʾ Oman and Central Arabia, Calcutta 1908-15, ii.A, 412-26.

, a former slave of Yemenī origin (on the D̲j̲uras̲h̲, see Ibn al-Kalbī-Caskel, Tab. 278), who was freed, and then was married to al-Mahdī, to whom she bore three children, Mūsā (al-Hādī), Hārūn (al-Ras̲h̲īd) and a daughter called al-Bānūḳa (Ibn Ḳutayba, Maʿārif , 380). According to a tradition given in particular by al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī ( Wuzarāʾ , 136), she suckled al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā b. K̲h̲ālid al-Barmakī, whilst al-Faḍl’s mother provided milk for Hārūn; this kind of alliance through co-lactation would accordingly explain the de…

(Ar.), a term applied to a wild animal or bird which passes from right to left before a traveller or hunter; although opinions differ on this point, this is generally interpreted as a bad omen, because, it is said, it presents its left side to the hunter who does not have time to take aim at it; an animal which passes from left to right ( sāniḥ ) is on the contrary of good omen. The nāṭiḥ approaches from the front, and the ḳaʿīd from the rear. (Ed.) Bibliography Freytag, Einleitung, 163 Wellhausen, Reste 2, 202 Doutté, Magic at religion, 359 Ḏj̲āḥiẓ. Tarbīʿ, ed. Pellat, index L.A. s.v. Maydānī, under ma…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan, poet, man of letters and S̲h̲āfiʿī faḳīh of the 5th/11th century, known as Ibn Abi ’l-Ṣaḳr al-Wāsiṭī. Born in D̲h̲u’l-Ḳaʿda 409/March-April 1019, he died on 14 D̲j̲umādā I 498/1 February 1105. A disciple, at the Niẓāmiyya [ q.v.] in Bag̲h̲dād, of al-S̲h̲īrāzī (393-476/1003-83 [ q.v.]) whose funeral elegy he wrote, he is noted for his ardent attachment to S̲h̲āfiʿī doctrine, and he composed on this topic some poems called s̲h̲āfiʿiyya . He himself collected his verses in a Dīwān in one volume which may have allowed him to exercise his gif…

the Isagoge of Porphyry [see furfūriyūs ]. According to Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī ( Ṭabaḳāt al-umam , ed. Cheikho, Beirut 1912, 49, tr. Blachère, Paris, 1935, 101), it seems that Ibn al-Muḳaffaʿ [ q.v.] was the first person to translate this introduction to logic into Arabic. The Fihrist (i, 244), on the other hand, maintains that it was Ayyūb b. al-Raḳḳī, whc based himself on a Syriac translation. Among the Arabic adaptations of the Isagoge we possess that of Abu ’l-Ḥasan Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar al-Biḳāʿī al-S̲h̲afiʿī (see Brockelmann, S II, 177). with a commentary by al-Sanūsī (…

(a.). 1. As a term applied to the ancient South Arabian script. In the first couple of centuries AD, Sabaean and ¶ Ḳatabanian inscriptions used the term ms 3 nd for an inscribed bronze plaque affixed ( musnad ) to the wall of a temple; by the 5th-6th centuries AD it came to be applied to inscriptions engraved directly on a rock face. In early Islamic times, musnad designated any inscription in the pre-Islamic South Arabian alphabet, the earliest examples of which date back to the first half of the first millenium BC. This has close affinities both with the scri…

(p.), literally “the person who draws the curtain”, a term used among the dynasties of the eastern Islamic world from the Sald̲j̲ūḳ period onwards as the equivalent of Arabic ḥād̲j̲ib , i.e. for the court official, the chamberlain, who controlled access to the ruler, the latter being normally veiled from public gaze.. For this function, see Ḥād̲j̲ib . (Ed.)

, a valley some 30 miles/50 km northnorth-east of Mawṣil in ʿIrāḳ, in the ḳaḍāʾ of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲an and in a largely Kurdish mountain area, famed as the principal pilgrimage centre of the Yazīdī sect [see yazīdīs ]. The d̲j̲amāʿiyya of the Yazīdīs is held from the 23th to the 30th September O.S. (6th to the 13th October N.S.) each year, and revolves round the shrine of the founder, S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ ʿAdī b. Musāfir [ q.v.] and the tombs of other early saints of the sect. The first European to attend and ¶ describe the festival seems to have been Sir Henry Layard in 1846 and 1849; a valuable des…