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Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Jawād al-Iṣfahānī (d. 559/1164), also known by the honorific name of Jāmal al-Dīn, was a vizier of the Zangids who became one of the most intimate friends of ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī (r. 521–41/1127–46). As a close confidant of Zangī he became governor of Naṣībīn and al-Raqqa and was eventually entrusted with general supervision of the entire Zangid empire. As a child al-Jawād al-Iṣfahānī had been carefully educated by his father and at a very early age was given an official appointment in the dīwān al-ʿarḍ (department of the army, a subdivision of the dīwān al-jaysh …

Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ b. al-Ashʿath was the leader of the Qarmatian movement in the sawād (rural district) of Kufa. Al-Ṭabarī (3:2125) has Karmītah, which is supposed to mean “red-eyed.” The diminutive form Qarmāṭūya is used by al-Nawbakhtī and Niẓām al-Mulk. Originally a carrier (who transported goods on oxen) from the village of al-Dūr in the ṭassūj (subdistrict) of Furāt Bādaqlā (east of Kufa), he was converted to the early Ismāʿīlī movement by the dāʿī (propagandist) al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī. The date 264/878 given for his conversion by a much later report may be approximate…

al-Aʿrāf (pl. of ʿurf, “elevated place”, “crest”), appears in an eschatological judgement scene in Qurʾān 7:46, where a dividing wall is spoken of, which separates the dwellers of Paradise from the dwellers of Hell, and men “who are on the al-aʿrāf and recognise each by his marks” (Q 7:48, “those of the al-aʿrāf”). The interpretation of this passage is disputed. Richard Bell makes a doubtful conjecture that the word is al-iʿrāf and translates: “(Presiding) over the recognition are men, who recognise… .” According to Tor Andrae the “men on the elevated places” are …

Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, amīr (known in Western sources as Grand Sharif) of Mecca from 1908 to 1916, and king of the Ḥijāz from 1916 to 1924, proclaimed the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and sought the title of caliph, but lost his kingdom to the Saudi dynasty. Ḥusayn was a member of the ʿAwn branch of the Meccan Hāshimite sharīfs who, as descendants of the prophet Muḥammad, shared rule in Mecca and parts of the Ḥijāz with the Ottoman governors of that province. Born in Istanbul in 1853 or 1854, Ḥusayn passed his youth partly in the Ḥijāz and partly in Istanbul, where after 18…

The Hāshimīs (Hashemites) were a dynasty of Ḥasanī descendants of the prophet Muḥammad (sharīfs) who ruled Mecca as amīrs almost without interruption from the fourth/tenth century until 1924. After the First World War, the dynasty provided kings for Syria and Iraq, which later became republics, and gave its name to the territory that became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The dynasty was named after Hāshim b. ʿAbd Manāf, the paternal great-grandfather of the prophet Muḥammad. The majority of the Shīʿa recognised as their Imāms descendants of ʿAlī’s younger son al-Ḥusa…

Nāʾīn (Nāyin) is a small town (lat. N 32°52′ long. E 53°05′, elev. 1,408 metres) on the southwestern edge of the Great Desert of central Iran, on the road connecting Yazd with Isfahan and Qum. The town, known for its large citadel and its congregational mosque, seems to have had a pre-Islamic history, but nothing is known of it. The mediaeval Islamic geographers place it in the sardsīr (cooler upland regions) and describe it as located administratively within Fārs but as dependent on either Yazd or Isfahan. According to Mustawfī (69, trans. 77), its citadel, wh…