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, Abū YaʿḲūb yūsuf b. Abī Bakr b. Muḥammad al-K̲h̲wārazmī Sirād̲j̲ al-Dīn, influential rhetorician writing in Arabic. He was born in K̲h̲wārazm on 3 D̲j̲umādā I, 555/11 May 1160 according to most sources, or in the year 554, according to his contemporary Yāḳūt ( Irs̲h̲ād , ed. Rifāʿī, xx, 59). He died toward the end of Rad̲j̲ab 626/mid-June 1229 in Ḳaryat al-Kindī near Almālig̲h̲ in Farg̲h̲āna. In spite of his fame already during his lifetime, the circumstances of his life are shrouded in obscurity—a fact most likely …

b. Ḥumayd b. Salāma al-Ḳurashī , Abū ʿAmr (d. 564/1169), Hanbalī jurist and mystic, known as Ibn marzūḳ . He studied with Ibn al-Ḥanbalī (d. 536/1141, not “Ibn al-D̲j̲īlī”, as in Ibn Rad̲j̲ab, i, 306) at Damascus, though whether he was born there is not clear; he is also said to have met ʿAbd al-Ḳādir al-D̲j̲īlānī [ q.v.] and to have held him in high esteem. He lived mainly in Egypt and died there, aged over seventy years old. Only one work of his seems to be mentioned, an abridgement of Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ , which bears the same title as Ibn al-D̲j̲awzī’s abridgement of the same work, Ṣafwa…

, Nad̲j̲m al-Dīn Abu ’l-Rabīʿ Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Ḳawī b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Ṣarṣarī al-Bag̲h̲dādī (b. 675/1276-77 [?], d. Rad̲j̲ab 716/Sept. Oct. 1316), Ḥanbalī legal scholar, especially in uṣūl , known in modern times particularly for his maṣlaḥa (public interest) theory. The vocalisation “al-Ṭawfī”, used in Brockelmann and a number of other Western sources, is incorrect (see Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, Durar , ii, 249). He was born in an otherwise unattested town Ṭūfā, near Ṣarṣar, which in turn is not far from Bag̲h̲dād. He had his first education in grammar and Ḥanbalī fiḳh …

b. Saʿīd al-Kātib , Abū ʿUt̲h̲mān, ʿAbbāsid scribe, epistolographer and poet. His exact dates are unknown, but he was probably born in the last years of the 3rd century A.H. and died after 257/871 (or 260/874), the year of Faḍl al-S̲h̲āʿira’s death [ q.v. in Suppl.]. His family came from the lower Persian nobility—he himself is sometimes called al-dihḳān —and he claimed royal Persian descent. He seems to have held various lower provincial offices, before stepping into the limelight as the kātib of Aḥmad b. al-K̲h̲aṣīb, vizier to al-Muntaṣir (r. 247-8/861-2 [ q.v.]), for whom he drew up the ba…

(a.) means the use of the phrase aʿūd̲h̲u bi ’llāhi min ... “I take refuge with God against...”, followed by the mention of the thing that the utterer of the phrase fears or abhors. The term istiʿād̲h̲a “seeking refuge”, is often used as a synonym. The phrase, with variants, is well attested in the Ḳurʾān, in particular in the last two sūras which each consist of one extended taʿawwud̲h̲ [see al-muʿawwid̲h̲atān 1 ]. The litany-like enumeration of evil things in the first of the two foreshadows similar strains in a number of Prophetic invocations recorded in the Ḥadīth …

al-Ṭāʾī al-Sinbisī, Abu ’l-Maḥāsin (b. 5 Rabīʿ II 677/26 August 1278 [according to al-Ṣafadī, Wāfī , xviii, 482, 6-7, and most other sources] ¶ or D̲j̲umādā II, 678/Oct.-Nov. 1279 [according to al-Birzālī (d. 739/1339; q.v.) who claims to have received this information from al-Ḥillī himself, see Ḥuwwar, 20], d. probably 749/1348), the most famous Arab poet of the 8th century A.H. In spite of his fame, information about his life is rather scarce; even the year of his death is variously given (see Bosworth, Underworld , i, 138, n. 26). Born in al-Ḥilla [ q.v.], a centre of S̲h̲īʿī learning…

(a laḳab , his father’s name being Yaḥyā), Abū ʿĀmir al-Kinānī al-Layt̲h̲ī, Arab poet from Medina (fl. later 1st/7th century into the early 2nd/8th century) famous for his love poetry ( g̲h̲azal), but also billed as a traditionist and legal scholar; Mālik [ q.v.] is said to have transmitted from him (Ibn Abī Ḥātim, al-Ḏj̲arḥ wa ’l-taʿdīl , Ḥaydarābād 1360, iii/1, 396; al-Buk̲h̲ārī, al-Taʾrīk̲h̲ al-kabīr , Ḥaydarābād 1941-64, iv, 33; al-D̲h̲ahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl , ed. ʿA.M. al-Bid̲j̲āwī, Cairo n.d., iii, 63 [ ṣadūḳ ], cf. also Ibn Ḳutayba, S̲h̲iʿr , 580 [ t̲h̲iḳa …

, Abu Muḥammad al-Ḳāsim b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Anṣārī, Arab literary theorist, known for his highly original work al-Manzaʿ al-badīʿ fī tad̲j̲nīs asālīb al-badīʿ (ed. ʿAllāl al-G̲h̲āzī, Rabat 1401/1980). In the colophon of the Tetuan ms., the author states that he finished his work on 21 Ṣafar 704/23 November 1304. No other bio-bibliographical details are known. His nisba and the provenance of the two extant mss. of his work show him to be a Mag̲h̲ribī scholar. More particularly, as the approach of his book clearly shows,…

al-tamīmī , Abu ’l-Ḏj̲aḥḥāf (Abū Muḥammad also occurs), an Arab poet of the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid era (d. 145/762), the greatest exponent of the rad̲j̲az [ q.v.] ḳaṣīda . The name Ruʾba, by which he was called after his grandfather, is attested seven times, and its diminutive Ruʾayba eight times, in Ibn al-Kalbī’s genealogy (see Caskel-Strenziok ii, 489b). There is no clear cluster of attestations in Eastern Arabia, which makes Krenkow’s contention (see EI 1, s.n.) that the name is the Persian rōbāh “fox” less likely. Arabic phi…

, Muḥammad b. ʿUmar, author of the first Persian treatise on rhetoric, the Kitāb Tard̲j̲umān al-balāg̲h̲a . The little that can be inferred about the author’s life is known from the Tard̲j̲umān itself; no other source mentions him. According to the researches of A. Ateş, he seems to have lived in Transoxania, and his book was written between 481/1088, the beginning of the Karak̲h̲ānid Aḥmad K̲h̲ān’s incarceration at the hand of Malik S̲h̲āh, as mentioned in one of the poems quoted, and 507/1114, the date of the unique ms. of the Tard̲j̲umān, the mad̲j̲mūʿa …

In literary criticism, “plagiarism”. Although the term sariḳa is used, no “theft” in the legal sense of the word is implied, as Islamic law does not recognise intellectual property. A modern booklet on intellectual theft stresses the moral turpitude involved, but does not invoke any S̲h̲arīʿa norms or punishments (ʿAbd al-Mannān, al-Sariḳāt al-ʿilmiyya ). The victim of plagiarism could only have recourse to public opinion or approach a man of power ( istiʿdāʾ ) to redress the situation. Literary theft occurred and was discussed predominantly, though not exclusively, in th…

(a.), lit. “creating an image, or an illusion ( k̲h̲ayāl )” a technical term with various meanings but all broadly in the field of hermeneutics. It occurs in (a) theory of imagery, (b) philosophical poetics, (c) Ḳurʾānic exegesis, and (d) among rhetorical figures. Whether any or all of these usages have a common root remains to be seen. It should be noted that, like any maṣdar , tak̲h̲yīl can also act as a verbal noun of the passive. Since in everyday language the verb was predominantly used in the passive ( k̲h̲uyyila ilayhi “an illusion was…

(a.), “chest, breast, bosom” (pl. ṣudūr ), a peculiarly Arabic word, not attested in other Semitic languages, except as a borrowing from Arabic. Its semantic connection with other derivatives of the root ṣ-d-r within Arabic is unclear; it may be derived from the basic notion of the verb ṣadara , i.e. “to come up, move upward and outward, from the waterhole” (opposite: warada ). Most concretely, it refers to the chest as part of the body, and as such is dealt with in the ¶ lexicographical monographs on the human body called Ḵh̲alḳ al-insān (al-Aṣmaʿī, 214-18; T̲h̲āb…

, the fourth letter in the Arabic alphabet. In the abd̲j̲ad order [ q.v.] it has a numerical value of 500. The phoneme represented by this letter may be defined as the voiceless member of the apico-interdental triad of fricatives, as opposed to the voiced /d̲h̲/ [see d̲h̲āl ] and the “emphatic”, i.e. velarised, /ẓ/ [see ẓāʾ ]. Sībawayh (ed. Hārūn, Cairo 1395/1975, iv, 433) describes the point of articulation for the triad as “between the tip of the tongue and the tips of the incisors” and he is followed herein by— inter alios—Ibn D̲j̲innī ( Sirr ṣināʿat al-iʿrāb , ed. Ḥ.…

, Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad (d. 416/1025), Arab poet. His nisba points to the Tihāma [ q.v.], the coastal plain on the Red Sea coast of Arabia, or to Mecca, which is sometimes synecdochically called “Tihāma”. Ibn K̲h̲allikān (iii, 381) admits his ignorance as to which of these two locations is intended. He is said to have come from the lower classes ( min al-sūḳa , al-Bāk̲h̲arzī, i, 188-9). The poet spent most of his life in Syria, where he attached himself in particular to the D̲j̲arrāḥids [ q.v.], who tried, with limited success, to consolidate their little principality in Pal…

(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 …