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(a.), “companion”, a term with various senses in Islamic usage. Formally it is an active participle of the transitive verb ṣaḥiba yaṣḥabu “to associate with”, but semantically a pure noun; it thus cannot govern an object in the accusative. The most common plural is aṣḥāb , of which the double plural ( d̲j̲amʿ al-d̲j̲amʿ ) aṣāḥīb is given in the dictionaries, while its “diminutive of the plural” ( taṣg̲h̲īr al-d̲j̲amʿ ) usayḥāb is attested (Wensinck, Concordance , s.v.). Other plurals include ṣaḥb (a collective noun), ṣiḥāb and ṣuḥbān , the verbal nouns ṣuḥba and ṣaḥāba …

In Arabic literature. The rose is easily the most sung flower in Arabic poetry. Its natural place is in flower, garden and spring poetry ( zahriyyāt , rawḍiyyāt and rabīʿiyyāt ), but the rose also figures prominently in the setting of wine poetry ( k̲h̲amriyyāt ), which is actually the place of origin for flower poems. Abū Nuwās (d. ca. 198/813 [ q.v.]) still keeps the bacchic framework of his flower descriptions, and it may have been ʿAlī b. al-Ḏj̲ahm (d. 249/863 [ q.v.]) who first wrote pure floral pieces, all of them devoted to the rose (see Schoeler 71-2, 128). Poetic desc…

, Arab poet of the 2nd-3rd centuries A.H. known for his ideological poetry in support of the Muʿtazila [ q.v.]. Al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ [ q.v.] is the only source for the few bits of information on his life and the sparse samples from his poetry that we have. The biographical snippets show him in Multān at the court of the governor of Sind, Dāwūd b. Yazīd al-Muhallabī, who held this office from 184/800-205/820 [see muhallabids , toward the end]. In all of them he is al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ’s authority on elephants, quoting poetry by the elephant expert Hārūn b. Mūsā al-Azdī mawlāhum ; describi…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Muṭahhar al-ʿAdawī, Arab philologist, minor poet and anthologist. As poetic occurrences of his nisba and the town to which it refers show (Yāḳūt, Buldān, Beirut 1376/1957, iii, 363a, 1. 4; and Irs̲h̲ād , Cairo n.d., xvii, 241, 1. 5), the name-form “al-Sumaysāṭī, given in Flügel’s ed. of the Fihrist and, as an option, by Brockelmann, GAL S I, 251, should be discarded. Sumaysāṭ and S̲h̲ims̲h̲āṭ refer to two different places (Yāḳūt, Buldān, s.w., and cf. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate , 116-17 (S̲h̲ims̲h̲āṭ), 108 (…

(a., pl. asāṭīl ), also spelled uṣṭūl (for this type of variation, see W. Heinrichs, in Studies in honor of Georg Krotkoff , Winona Lake, Ind. 1997, 175-8), the most common term for a “naval fleet”, and, secondarily, also for an individual “galley” or “man-of-war”. The word is a loan from Greek στόλος, which means inter alia “(naval) expedition” and “fleet”. Al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956 [ q.v.]) is apparently the first to recognise the Greek origin of the word; he also gives a clear definition: al-usṭūl kalima rūmiyya sima li ’l-marākib al-ḥarbiyya al-mud̲j̲tamiʿa ( Tanbīh …

(a.), “[literary] criticism”, in modern Arabic, al-naḳd al-adabī , in mediaeval times most commonly used in the construct naḳd al-s̲h̲iʿr “criticism of poetry”. The critic is nāḳid (pl. nuḳḳād or naḳada ) or, more rarely, naḳḳād ; the form VIII verbal noun intiḳād is a synonym of naḳd . The term originated in the figurative use ( mad̲j̲āz ) of naḳd in the sense of “assaying (coins) and separating the good from the bad” (for the mad̲j̲āz character, see al-Zamak̲h̲s̲h̲arī. Asās al-balāg̲h̲a , Beirut n.d., col. 469c, and for an extended analogy between assayer and critic, see al-Tawḥīdī, al-Muḳ…

(a.), verbal noun of the form III verb bālag̲h̲a ( fī ), with the two related meanings of “to do the utmost [in s.th.]” and “to overdo [s.th.]”), technical term in (a) grammar (“intensiveness”) and (b) literary theory (“emphasis” and, more particularly, “hyperbole”). (a) In grammar. Already in Sībawayh, the term mubālag̲h̲a is used to denote the intensive meaning of a number of morphemes and syntagmas (see G. Troupeau, Lexique-index du Kitāb de Sībawayhi , Paris 1976, 41). Most consistently it is henceforth applied to the intensive participles of the forms faʿūl , faʿʿāl …

1. In metrical speech. Literally meaning “stringing (pearls, beads, etc.)”, in early ʿAbbāsid times naẓm acquired the meaning of “versifying”, “versification”, and became almost synonymous with “poetry”, s̲h̲iʿr [ q.v.], especially when contrasted with prose, nat̲h̲r , literally “scattering”. The comparison of a poem to a necklace, or verses to pearls, is apt in view of the relative independence of the individual verses, held together on the string of the uniform metre and rhyme. The image has pre-ʿAbbāsid origins, and although the noun naẓm was not used in the sense of “verse…

(a.), a rhetorical figure mostly translated “antithesis” and consisting in the inclusion, in a verse or colon, of words of opposite meaning, as in ḥulamāʾu fi ’l-nādī id̲h̲ā mā d̲j̲iʾtahum — d̲j̲uhalāʾu yawma ʿad̲j̲ād̲j̲at in wa-liḳāʾi “restrained in the tribal council, when you come to them,—unrestrained on the day of a dust-cloud and battle” (Zuhayr). Synonymous terms are muṭābaḳa and, especially in earlier theorists, muṭābaḳ (from ṭābaḳtu bayna ’l-s̲h̲ayʾayn “I made the two things congruent” [see Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Badīʿ, 36]). From the same root one also finds taṭbīḳ …

al-Kindī al-Mawṣilī, Abu ’l-Ḥasan (d. 362/972-3 according to Yāḳūt, Irs̲h̲ād, iv, 185, and Ibn al-ʿAdīm, Bug̲h̲ya , ix, 435; other dates are also given), Arab poet and anthologist, particularly famous for his descriptive poetry ( awṣāf ). He was born in Mawṣil, where his father apprenticed him to the clothes-menders/jobbing tailors ( raffāʾūn ), hence his nickname, which is, however, not yet used by the contemporary source Ibn al-Nadīm ( Fihrist , 169). In spite of his lowly occupation he tried his hand at poetry, and al-Bāk̲h̲arzī lists him a…

(a.), lit. “one who rides behind”, “pillion rider”, is used metaphorically in several technical senses (for a poetical figurative use in Turkish, cf. ordū-yi ẓafer-redīf “the victorious army [one which has victory on its croup]” in Tārīk̲h̲-i D̲j̲ewdet , Istanbul 1270/1853-4, i, 22): In astronomy it has two meanings, which seem, however, not very amply attested: (a) al-Radīf , and also, better attested, al-Ridf , is the ancient Arabic name for D̲h̲anab al-Dad̲j̲ād̲j̲a , i.e. the star Deneb (α Cygni), called thus because it “rides pillion” to the “Horsemen” ( al-Fawāris …

, the seventeenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, numerical value: 900 The transliteration /ẓ/ reflects an urban/sedentary pronunciation as “emphatic” (pharyngealised) /z/. Sībawayh (d. 177/793 [ q.v.]), however, describes the sound as an “emphatic” voiced interdental, thus /ḏ̣/ (iv, 436), and this is the way it is pronounced in those dialects, mainly Bedouin, that have preserved the interdentals. There is, however, an additional complication: with ¶ very few exceptions (in Northern Yemen, see Behnstedt, 5), all modern dialects of Arabic have coalesced the sou…

1. In older Arab society. Tattooing was a custom among women in pre-Islamic times. The parts of the body mentioned as recipients are the hand ([ ẓāhir al-] yad ), the wrist ( miʿṣam ), the arm ( d̲h̲irāʿ ), the posterior ( ist ) and the gums ( lit̲h̲a ). The motifs used are not mentioned; going by modern-day tattooing in Islamic countries they were probably abstract designs. The tattoo was created by pricking ( g̲h̲araza ) the skin with a needle ( ibra , misalla ) or—more specifically—with a tattooing needle ( mīs̲h̲am , pl. mawās̲h̲im , see Lewin, Vocabulay , 471), so that a trace ( at̲h̲ar …

(a.), “unit, unity”. 1. As a term in grammar. Here the genitive construct ism al-waḥda is variously rendered in Western grammars as nomen unitatis “noun of unity”, “unit noun”, “noun of individuality”, and “singulative” (but on the last of these, see below). The ism al-waḥda forms the counterpart to the ism al-d̲j̲ins or nomen generis “generic noun” and is derived ¶ from it by adding the feminine ending –atun . If the generic noun refers to something which exists in units, the ism al-waḥda denotes such a unit; if the referent is homogeneous, the unit noun denotes a separate piece. Thus namlun …

(a.), a verbal noun with the original meaning of “winking”, “signalling with your eyes and eyebrows, or by forming words with your mouth without a sound” (see also section 3. below, first para.). This developed into a concrete noun, with the pl. rumūz , denoting a variety of indirect methods of expression, ¶ such as “allusion”, “symbol”, “cypher”. 1. In rhetoric. Here the term is used sparingly. It does have its place in the scholastic discipline based on al-Sakkākī’s (d. 626/1229 [ q.v.]) Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm , where it denotes a specific subcategory of kināya [ q.v.], here used in the sense …

(a.), an adjective meaning “wild, desolate, uninhabited” ( al-dār al-waḥs̲h̲ ( a) “the desolate abode”, both with and without gender agreement), but more frequently a collective noun meaning “wild animals”. The relative adjective (and the singulative) is waḥs̲h̲ī the “wild ass” ( recte “onager”) is thus either ḥimār al-waḥs̲h̲ or al-ḥimār al-waḥs̲h̲ī . The most common plural is wuḥūs̲h̲ “kinds of wild animals”, as one typically finds it in the title of the kutub al-wuḥūs̲h̲ , lexicographical studies dealing with wild animals (name of the male and …

(d. ca. 150/767, according to Sezgin, GAS, viii, 115; ca. 155/772, according to al-Ziriklī, Aʿlām 3, ix, 139), transmitter of ancient Arabic poetry and ak̲h̲bār , quoted also for lexicographical, genealogical, geographical, and historical data. There is some fluctuation in the sources between al-S̲h̲arḳī and S̲h̲arḳī as well as between al-Ḳuṭāmī ¶ and Ḳuṭāmī; in addition, there is some discussion whether Ḳaṭāmī is the correct reading. The form given here has the best authority. Both names are laḳabs , his real name being al-Walīd b. al-Ḥusayn, with the kunya …

(a.), synonymous terms in literary criticism denoting words that are uncouth and jarring to the ear due to their being archaic and/or Bedouinic (often including the criterium of cacophony). It is thus mostly used in the context of “modern” poetry [see muḥdat̲h̲ūn , in Suppl.]; and it mostly refers to single words rather than to any contextual obscurity (ʿAbd al-Ḳāhir al-D̲j̲urd̲j̲ānī says this explicitly: Dalāʾil , ed. M.M. S̲h̲ākir, Cairo 1404/1984, 44, 1. 4). It is not, however, an exclusively poetic phenomenon. Al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ speaks of s…

(a.), “memorandum” or “aidemémoire”. The word is considered a verbal noun of the form II verb d̲h̲akkara “to-remind”, but already in its nine occurrences in the Ḳurʾan it tends to mean a concrete “reminder” rather than a verbal “reminding”. 1. In Arabic literature. Tad̲h̲kira occurs not infrequentiy in the tides of books. From a closer scrutiny of these tides, two clusters of books emerge that represent two different “genres” of text presentation: (1) handbooks and (2) notebooks. It should be noted that, in most cas…

(a.), legal principles, legal maxims, general legal rules (sing. ḳāʿida fiḳhiyya ). These are mad̲h̲hab internal legal guidelines that are applicable to a number of particular cases in various fields of the law, whereby the legal determinations ( aḥkām ) of these cases can be derived from these principles. They reflect the logic of a school’s legal reasoning and thus impart a “scaffolding” to the “case-law” ( furūʿ ). Historically, general rules can be found already strewn throughout early furūʿ works. They were first collected by Ḥanafīs like Abu ’l-Ḥasan al-Kark̲h̲ī (d. …