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, Aflaḥ (or Marzūḳ ) b. Yasār , Arabic poet. He owes his surname of al-Sindī to the fact that his father came from Sind; he himself was born in Kūfa and lived there as a client of the Banū Asad. He fought for the declining Umayyad dynasty with pen and sword, praising them and casting scorn on their adversaries. It is true, however, that when the ʿAbbāsids obtained power, he tried to insinuate himself into the favour of the new rulers by singing their praises. But the ¶ iron character of al-Saffāḥ was but little sensible to such fawning, and under the reign of his successor, al-Manṣ…

(a.), originally: “he who stands upright”, then (with bi, ʿalā , li or the genitive alone), he who takes something upon himself, takes care of something or someone and hence also has authority over them. Thus we find the pre-Islamic poet al-Ḳuṭāmī ( Dīwān , ed. Barth, Leiden 1902, no. 26) already speaking of a “ ḳayyim of water”, i.e. apparently the man in charge of it, the supervisor, and the poet Bāʿit̲h̲ b. Ṣuraym ( Ḥamāsa of Abū Tammām, ed. Freytag, 269, verse 2) speaks of the ḳayyim of a woman, i.e. he who provides for her, her husband. The first mentioned meaning, (supervisor etc…

b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Saʿd al-Ṭāʾī , Abū Ṭarīf , Companion of the Prophet, and subsequently a follower of ʿAlī. Son of the celebrated poet Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī [ q.v.], and, like him, a Christian, he had inherited the command of his tribe from his father, but when threatened with the loss of it he became converted to Islam, in 9 or 10/630-1, and collected the taxes of Ṭayyiʾ and Asad. After the death of the Prophet he remained faithful to Islam, and prevented his tribe from apostatizing during the ridda . Later on he took part in the conquest of ʿIrāḳ, and received from ʿUt…

, a Ḵh̲azrad̲j̲ite, belonging to the most esteemed clan of the Banu ’l-Ḥārit̲h̲. At the second ʿAḳaba assembly in March 622, ʿAbd Allāh was one of the 12 trustworthy men, whom the already converted Medinians, conformably to the Prophet’s wish, had chosen. When Muḥammad had emigrated to Medīna, ʿAbd Allāh proved himself to be one of the most energetic and upright champions of his cause. Muḥammad appears to have thought a great deal of him, and often entrusted him with honorable missions. After th…

, surname of the Syrian Arabic poet ʿAbd al-Salām b. Rag̲h̲bān b. ¶ ʿAbd al-Salām b. Ḥabīb b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Rag̲h̲bān b. Yazīd b. Tamīm. This latter had embraced Islam at Muʾta [ q.v.] under the auspices of Ḥabīb b. Maslama al-Fihrī [ q.v.], whose mawlā he became. The great-grandfather of the poet, Ḥabīb, who I was head of the dīwān of salaries under al-Manṣūr, gave his name to a mosque at Bag̲h̲dād, masd̲j̲id Ibn Rag̲h̲bān (al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Buk̲h̲alāʾ , ed. Ḥād̲j̲irī 327, trans. Pellat, index; al-Ḏj̲ahs̲h̲iyārī, 102; Le Strange, Baghdad , 95). Dīk al-Ḏj̲inn, born at…

, a famous singer of Medina at the time of the first Umayyads. Tradition has it that she taught herself the elements of music and singing by listening to her neighbour Sāʾib K̲h̲āt̲h̲ir [ q.v.] (d. 63/682-3). It became unanimously recognized that her great natural talent put her in a class of her own, and she founded a school where, among numerous lesser-known singers and ḳiyān , Maʿbad [ q.v.], Ibn ʿĀʾis̲h̲a [ q.v.], Ḥabāba and Sallāma received their training. Artists as great as Ibn Surayd̲j̲ [ q.v.] would come to hear her, and would accept her critical judgments, while her salo…

Muḥammad ( b. ʿAbd Allāh ) b. Razīn al Ḵh̲uzāʿī , Arab poet, died about 200/915. Like his relative Diʿbil [ q.v.], he lived at the court of Hārūn al-Ras̲h̲īd for whom he wrote panegyrics, and afterwards dirges. He then went to al-Raḳḳa and obtained the favours of the amīr ʿUḳba b. al-As̲h̲ʿat̲h̲, remaining his boon-companion and court poet until 196/811.—To judge by the rare fragments of his work that have been preserved, Abu ’l-S̲h̲īṣ does not appear as an orginal poet in his panegyrics, hunting poe…

b. ʿAṭiyya b. al-K̲h̲aṭafa ( Hud̲h̲ayfa ) b. Badr was among the most important hid̲j̲āʾ writers of the Umayyad period (the other two were his rivals al-Ak̲h̲ṭal and al-Farazdaḳ [ qq.v.], and may be considered one of the greatest Islamic-Arabic poets of all time. He belonged to the clan of the Banū Kulayb b. Yarbūʿ an, a branch of the Muḍarī Tamīm who were widespread in the eastern part of central and northern Arabia. He was born in the middle of the 1st/7th century and began by entering into verbal disputes with second class…

(a.), Abstract noun, from balīg̲h̲ effective, eloquent (from balag̲h̲a “to attain something”), meaning therefore eloquence. It presupposes faṣāḥa , purity and euphony of language, but goes beyond it in requiring, according to some of the early definitions, the knowledge of the proper connexion and separation of the phrase, clarity, and appropriateness to the occasion. Even though those definitions are not infrequently attributed to foreign nations such as the Persians, Greeks or Indians, the demand for skill in improvisation and the recurring references to the Ḵh̲aṭīb …

1. In early Islam. The usual name in Arabic for the Roman and Byzantine emperor. The word represents the Greek Καῖσαρ and came to the Arabic through the intermediary of the Aramaic (see Fraenkel, Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen , Leiden 1886, 278 f.). The borrowing must have taken place at quite an early period, as the word in Syriac later appears almost in the form Ḳesar (see Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus , s.v.). The Arabs, centuries before Muḥammad, had relations with Roman and to a greater extent with Byzantine emperors. As earl…