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, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. S̲h̲addād b. Tamīm b. al-Muʿizz b. Bādīs (d. after 582/1186), sometimes also called Abu ’l-G̲h̲arīb ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Ṣanhād̲j̲ī, chronicler of Zīrid descent, being the grandson of Tamīm (454-501/1062-1108) and the nephew of Yaḥyā b. Tamīm (501-9/1108-16). He lived at first in the entourage of the last Zīrid of Mahdiyya, al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī, and seems to have gone with him, at least for some time, to the Almohad ʿAbd al-Muʾmin whose support he was seeking. It …

b. Ḳabīṣa b. al-Muhallab b. Abī Ṣufra (d. 18 Ramaḍān 174/28 January 791) was the fourth governor from the Muhallabids [ q.v.] of Ifrīḳiya, where there preceded him successively a distant cousin, ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣ b. ʿUt̲h̲mān b. Ḳabīṣa (151-4/768-71), his brother Yazīd (19 D̲j̲umādā II 155-18 Ramaḍān 170/27 May 772-13 March 787) and his nephew Dāwūd b. Yazīd who, on his father’s death, took over in the interim until the arrival of his uncle Rawḥ on 1 Rad̲j̲ab 171/16 December 787. Rawḥ had first served in the army before rejoining, in 159/776, the group of governors. He is mention…

, Walī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ¶ b. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan (732-84/1332-82), one of the strongest personalities of Arabo-Muslim culture in the period of its decline. He is generally regarded as a historian, sociologist and philosopher. Thus his life and work have already formed the subject of innumerable studies and given rise to the most varied and even the most contradictory interpretations. I. Life. Ibn K̲h̲aldūn’s life may be divided into three parts, the first of which (20 years) was occupied by his childhood and education, the…

, the eastern part of the Mag̲h̲rib, whence the name adopted by some modern historians for Eastern Barbary. The term Ifrīḳiya is undoubtedly—whatever the Arab writers say—borrowed from the Latin Africa, so the origin of the Arabic word must be sought in the etymology of the Latin term, a question which, from the most ancient times to today, has continued to defeat scholars. What is certain is that the term Africa, and the other forms derived from the same radical Afer (pl. Afri ), are attested in the Latin ¶ sources well before the fall of Carthage; it is known in particular that th…

, an Umayyad general who played a decisive part in the consolidation of the conquest of Ifrīḳiya by storming Carthage and finally defeating al-Kāhina [ q.v.]. It is difficult, however, to trace the course of his actions on account of the uncertainty of the chronology and a host of discrepancies. The dates given for his arrival in Ifrīḳiya are Muḥarram 68/July-August 687, 69/688-9, 73/692-3, 74/693-4, 78/697-8; and for his fall 76/695-6, 77/696-7, 78/697-8, 79/698-9, 82/701-2, 84/703-4 and 89/707-8. The chronology given by the earliest chroniclers, i.e. by Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam and t…

or Sabratha , one of the three ancient cities (Leptis Magna = Lebda; Oea = Tripoli; and Sabratha or Sabrata = Ṣabra) which made up Tripolitania. Ṣabra Manṣūriyya [ q.v.], another town ¶ 33 km/20 miles to the west of Tlemcen in Algeria bore (Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn, ʿIbar , Beirut 1959, vii, 524), and still bears today, this same name, after having assumed that of Turenne in the colonial period. The homonomy here is fortuitous. Ṣabrāṭa—now a tourist town and the centre of an archaeological zone along the littoral some 75 km/48 miles west of Tripoli and 35 km…

or rustumids, an Ibāḍī dynasty, of Persian origin, which reigned from Tāhart (in what is now Algeria) 161-296/778-909. The birth of the Ibāḍī principality of Tāhart is bound up with the great Berber rising begun by Maysara (called, as a tribute from his enemies, al-Ḥaḳīr “The Vile”) in 122/740. As a result of this rising, the greater part of the Mag̲h̲rib fell away definitively from the control of the caliphate in the East, with the exception of the principality of Ḳayrawān (Kairouan), which only achieved virtual independence with the coming of the Ag̲h̲labids [ q.v.] in 184/800. The Ibā…

, non-Ḳurʾānic term which is used to mean on the one hand the duty of every Muslim to “promote good and forbid evil” and, on the other, the function of the person who is effectively entrusted in a town with the application of this rule in the supervision of moral behaviour and more particularly of the markets; this person entrusted with the ḥisba was called the muḥtasib . There seems to exist ¶ no text which states explicitly either the reason for the choice of this term or how the meanings mentioned above have arisen from the idea of “calculation” or “sufficiency” which is expressed by the root. i.—G…

(“the Sorceress”) was the guiding spirit of Berber resistance to the Arab invaders led by Ḥassān b. al-Nuʿmān [ q.v.] after the collapse of Byzantine power marked by the fall of Carthage (73/692-3). ¶ Her true personality—which must have been highly complex—is very difficult to discern, for only the distorted reflections of her real features can be detected behind the legend. There is no agreement even on her real name, for al-Kāhina is only a nickname given to her by the Arabs. It is said that she was named Dihya—Ibn K̲h̲aldūn (tr. de Slane, Berbères , i, 172) mentions a Berber tribe know…

(Gabès), a town in Tunisia on the gulf of the same name (the Little Syrte of antiquity), 404 km. to the south of Tunis and 150 km. from Gafsa [see ḳafsa ]; it has 40,000 inhabitants, of whom 1,200 are Europeans, and is the chief town of a governorate with a population of 204,000 (1966 census). The town of Gabès, divided since 1957 into four districts, includes the old townships of Manzil, situated higher up the Oued-Gabès, and D̲j̲āra, situated downstream, localities which have always been divided by fie…

, patronymic of a family of Idrīsid descent and Moroccan origin which settled in Muslim, Spain. It is said that ʿĀs̲h̲ūr, fleeing from religious persecution, came to settle in Morocco. His son Muḥammad was born at Salé in about 1030/1621 and it was with him that the family’s importance in the history of Tunisia began, at first in the field of “mysticism”, then in those of fiḳh , of teaching and of religious offices. Muḥammad b. ʿĀs̲h̲ūr, who was initiated into mysticism in Morocco by the s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Muḥammad al-Kud̲j̲ayrī, distinguished himself at Tunis as the leader of a religiou…

(gafsa), a town in Tunisia 360 km. south-west of Tunis, 200 km from Ḳayrawān, and 100 km from Gabès [see ḳābis ], population 30,000; the chief town of an administrative region with a population of 300,000 whose principal mineral resources ¶ consist of the phosphate deposits of M’Dilla, Metlaoui, Redeyef, and Moularès, which were discovered in 1885. The oasis of Ḳafsa contains about 100,000 palm trees producing dates of second-rate quality, to which must be added orchards of orange trees, lemon trees, apricots and figs, vineyards and, …

, Abū tamīm S̲h̲araf al-Dawla (407-54/1016-62), fourth ruler of the Zīrid dynasty who governed Ifrīḳiya [ q.v.] from 362/972 to 543/1148. His reign was not, as H.R. Idris thought, that of an apogee. If there was an apogee, it would have to be placed early on, before the plague and the terrible famine of 395/1004-5 which severely reduced the population. From this date, and throughout the reign of al-Muʿizz, calamities succeeded one another in a sustained rhythm, revealing the deficiencies of a disorganised and r…

, Abū Yaḥyā and Abū Ṭāhir al-Ṣanhād̲j̲ī , the fifth Zīrid ruler in Ifrīḳiya, b. Ṣabra 422/1031, d. after an exceptionally long reign covering 454-501/1062-1108. ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, in his K̲h̲arīdat al-ḳaṣr , Tunis 1966, i, 141-2, makes him a Ḳaḥṭānī Arab, with a genealogy back to Noah and Adam, see also Ibn Tag̲h̲rībirdī, Nud̲j̲ūm , Cairo n.d., v, 198. He inherited a kingdom dislocated by the invasions of the Banū Hilāl [ q.v.], and after almost half-a-century of effort, did not succeed in “restoring Ṣanhād̲j̲ī power in its state of disarray” (H.R. Idris, Zīrīdes …

, or also Madīnat ʿIzz al-Islām , a royal city founded between 334 and 336/945-8, at half-a-mile to the southeast of Ḳayrawān, by the Fāṭimid caliph al-Manṣūr— whence its name—in order to commemorate his victory over the rebel Abū Yazīd [ q.v.], on the very spot, so we are told, of a decisive battle. The name. Ṣabra means "a very hard stone" ( LʿA , Beirut 1955, iv, 441, 442). Like ṣak̲h̲r "rock", the term is attested as a personal name (al-Ṭabarī, index; al-Mālikī, Riyāḍ , Beirut 1983, i, 250) or as that of a clan (Kaḥḥāla, Muʿd̲j̲am ḳabāʾil al-ʿArab , Beirut 1968, ii, 6…

(d. after 418/1027-8), or al-Raḳīḳ Abu Isḥāḳ Ibrāhīm b. al-Ḳāsim al-Kātib al-Ḳayrawānī , who had been secretary of the Zīrids for about a quarter of a century at the time when Ibn Ras̲h̲īḳ wrote his ʿUmda , was a talented man of letters and chronicler. Ibn Ras̲h̲īḳ acknowledges that he had a certain poetic gift, although his style was rather that of a secretary, and Yāḳūt ( Muʿd̲j̲am , i, 217-26) has preserved some long fragments from his poems. There also survives his Ḳuṭb al-surūr (MS Paris B.N. nos. 4829, 4830 and 4831; for the other MSS, see Brockelman…

, or ḳaṣṭīliya , or ḳasṭīla . 2. A place name of Tunisia which in the Middle Ages sometimes designated a town (Tawzar or Tūzar), but more often the district of which this town was the chief centre. It is the modern region of the D̲j̲arīd, which now forms part of the governorate of Ḳafṣa [ q.v.] (population 321,000, density of pop. 17.45 per km2, according to the 1966 census), and forms the region of the Shotts. As in the past, the region’s main resource is the date palm: one million trees, of which 31% are of the highly-esteemed “degla” variety (1962 enquiry…

, written by Yāḳūt, Buldān , Beirut, ii, 13, as Tabissa , the Theveste of classical times, a town of eastern Algeria, situated 235 km/146 miles south of ʿAnnāba or Bône and 19 km/13 miles west of the modern Tunisian frontier (lat. 35° 21′ N., long. 8° 06′ E., altitude 850 m/2,790 feet). The site of the town, on an elevated plain, has been inhabited since prehistoric times, as the dolmens at Gastel, petrographs on the rocks of Saf-Saf, inter alia, show, and legend attributed the foundation of the town to Hercules. It was a dependency of Carthage from the 7th century B.C. and…

or ḳūsira , Italian island, now called Pantelleria, situated 64 miles/100 km. from Sicily and 55 miles/76 km. from the Tunisian town of Kelibia (Clypea); it is volcanic in structure, lacking any fresh water and culminating in a height of 2,600 ft./836 m. The area is 83 km2., and the population 10,000. The name Ḳawṣara (vocalised thus by Yāḳūt —who suggests an Arabic etymology, “date basket” —and in most of the sources) is actually of Greek origin, being a deformation of Cossyra, more easily discerned in the form attested and favoured by Bakr…

(pronounced locally K̲h̲mīr, in French Kroumir), an element of the population which has given its name to a mountainous massif extending along the north-west littoral of Tunisia. The Ḏj̲ebel K̲h̲mīr, or Kroumirie, forms part of the administrative district of Djenouba, which covers an area of 3,000 square km. and has a population of 255,000, of whom 225,000 are peasants (census of May 1966). The massif of the K̲h̲umayr, a Tunisian extension of the Atlas range, consists of a series of contrasting sandstone flexures running along a south-west-northeast axis. T…

, Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Salām b. Saʿīd b. Ḥabīb b. Ḥassān b. Hilāl b. Bakkār b. Rabīʿa al-Tanūk̲h̲ī (160-Rad̲j̲ab 240/777-December 855) (nicknamed Saḥnūn, it is said, on account of his shrewdness, or from the name of a bird), a Kairouan faḳīh who played a decisive role in the conversion to the Mālikiyya [ q.v.] of Muslim Spain and of the entire Mag̲h̲rib where, even today, there exist only a few Ibāḍī pockets (the island of D̲j̲erba and Mzab), and a small number of Ḥanafīs. The question as to whether Saḥnūn was an Arab by ¶ pedigree or by virtue of clientship was sometimes asked, and was res…

b. al-Ag̲h̲lab b. Sālim b. ʿIḳāl (184-96/800-12), founder of the Ifrīḳiyan dynasty of the Ag̲h̲labids, was a Tamīmī of the clan of the Saʿd b. Zayd Manāt. This clan, as a result of the Muslim conquests, had settled at a very early date in K̲h̲urāsān, where they were enemies especially of the Muhallabids, whom Ibrāhīm was later to encounter again in Egypt and then in Ifrīḳiya. It was thus that al-Ag̲h̲lab, the eponymous ancestor of the Ag̲h̲labids, was born at Marw al-Rūd̲h̲. He …

(a.), the Arabs and Arabised peoples of the East ( Mas̲h̲riḳ ) in contrast to those of the West ( Mag̲h̲rib ) called Mag̲h̲āriba [ q.v.]. The history of the Mas̲h̲āriḳa in the East, a history which is inseparable from the region itself, will not be treated here. The concern here is rather with the Mas̲h̲āriḳa who were perceived as such in the West by the Mag̲h̲āriba. The distinction between the two great groups, with a certain specificness proper to Muslim Spain, becomes perceptible less than half-a-century after the expansion of the Arabs in the West, i.e. around 122/740 [see mag̲h̲āriba ]. It …

b. Lamzam, or Kasīla was, in the tradition of the Massinissa and of Jugurtha, one of the most eminent figures in the struggle of the Berbers to preserve their independence. In 55/674, at the time when the mawlā Abu ’l-Muhād̲j̲ir Dīnār came from Egypt to replace ʿUḳba b. Nāfiʿ as governor of the recently-conquered province of the Mag̲h̲rib, Kusayla was certainly “king” of the Awraba, a broad alliance of tribes of the Barānis group, for the most part sedentary. The territory of the Awraba w…

, a town in Tunisia which owes its name to its founder ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī (297-322/909-34 [ q.v.]); situated on the coast 200 km. to the south of Tunis, it is the regional capital of a province of which the population, 218,000 inhabitants at the time of the 1975 census, is estimated in 1980 at 247,000. The population of the town, numbering 12,000 inhabitants in 1905, has grown steadily to 14,937 (1946 census), 18,494 (1956) and 21,788 (1966). Foundation . The creation of al-Mahdiyya by the Fāṭimids responded to a need which had already made itself felt since the end of t…

Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī al-Usaydī , b. 605/1208-9, d. 699/1300, was, according to the eyewitness and probably interested testimony of al-ʿAbdarī, the unique true scholar in al-Ḳayrawān of his time. If one can believe an anecdote which states that he owed his cognomen of al-Dabbag̲h̲ to the fact that his great-grandfather disguised himself as a tanner in order to avoid the office of ḳāḍī , he must have stemmed from an ancient family of Ḳayrawānī faḳīhs . Al-ʿAbdarī, who visited him in 688/1289 and received from him a general id̲j̲āza for the transm…

b. ʿIyād b. ʿAmrūn al-Yaḥṣubī al-Sabtī al-Ḳāḍī (476/1088-544/1149) was one of the most celebrated figures of Mālikism in the Muslim West. His existence coincided almost exactly with that of the Almoravid dynasty to whom throughout his life he remained inflexibly attached. His family, of Yemeni origin through the Yaḥṣub, emigrated to the West very early and finally settled at Ceuta, after residing in Basta [ q.v.], in Muslim Spain, in Fez, and also in Ḳayrawān at some indeterminate date. His great grandfather ʿAmrūn was the first of the family to win fame, by …

, (El-Kef), a town in Tunisia (pop. 18,000), capital of an administrative district with a population of 306,000 (census of 3 May 1966), situated in the region of Haut-Tell about 30 km. from the Algerian border; the altitude varies from 700 to 850 m. Since 1962, an effort has been made to replace the traditional cereal cultivation with a greater agricultural diversification, although the attempt at co-operative collectivization of the land was abandoned in September 1969. The town has also benefit…

, a town in central Tunisia, 156 km. from Tunis and 57 km. from Sousse. It is situated at an altitude of 60 m. and is the chief town of a governorate of 336,000 inhabitants which stretches over an area of 680,000 hectares. Its population of 34,000 inhabitants in 1956 had become ¶ 47,000 during the census of 3rd May 1966, and then 56,000 in 1972. Temperatures vary considerably, ranging from a few degrees below zero in winter to 40° C and over in summer. The sirocco blows there for an average of 21 days per annum. The rainfall varies from an average of 250 mm. or 300 mm. in the town and its …

, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Ag̲h̲lab b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Ag̲h̲lab , born 10 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḥid̲j̲d̲j̲a 235/27 June 850, was, after Ibrāhīm I, the most outstanding personality of the Ag̲h̲labid dynasty, being distinguished as much for his exceptional qualities as for his barely credible crimes. Raised to power by the enthusiasm of the people, in place of the legitimate successor who was still a minor and of whom he was to have been the regent, he began his reign (261/875) with just measures and …

(a., pl. noun), denotes the Arabic-speakers of the Muslim West (Mag̲h̲rib, pl. Mag̲h̲ārib), as opposed to those of the East (Mas̲h̲riḳ, pl. Mas̲h̲āriḳ), known as Mas̲h̲āriḳa , This division of Arabic-speakers into Mas̲h̲āriḳa and Mag̲h̲āriba —which is a continuing process, discernible in the contemporary dialects, variously categorised as Oriental and Mag̲h̲ribī—may be traced from its origins. The frontier between the two major groupings—Muslim Spain included, in spite of its special circumstances and its se…

( Sīduh ), Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl , or Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl, Andalusian philologist and lexicographer, born in Murcia, died at the age of about 60 on Sunday 25 Rabīʿ II 458/26 March 1066. He compiled two important dictionaries: al-Muk̲h̲aṣṣaṣ and al-Muḥkam . Ibn Sida was blind, as was his father, so that his life was not very active. It was entirely devoted to philology and lexicography, disciplines which had probably been traditionally cultivated in his family. It was in fact from his father that …