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, Muḥyi ’l-Dīn Abu ’l-Faḍl ʿAbd Allāh b. Ras̲h̲īd al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir b. Nas̲h̲wān b. ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir b. Nad̲j̲da al-Saʿdī al-Rawḥī , born in Cairo 620/1223, died there 692/1292 (Wüstenfeld, Geschichtschreibery no. 366). He lived in Cairo under the Mamlūk sultans Baybars, Ḳalāwūn and K̲h̲alīl, most of the time as private secretary, Kātib al-Sirr or Ṣāḥib Dīwān al-Ins̲h̲āʾ [see ins̲h̲āʾ ]. Maḳrīzī describes the rôle he played when Aḥmad al-Ḥākim bi-amri ’llāh was installed as ʿAbbāsid caliph in Egypt in order to legitimize al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Bayb…

, the father of mankind (Abu’l-Bas̲h̲ar). In the Ḳurʾān it is related that when God had ¶ created what is on the earth and in the heavens he said to the angels: "I am about to place a substitute ( k̲h̲alīfa ) on earth", and they said: "Wilt thou place thereon one who will do evil therein and shed blood, whereas we celebrate thy praise and sanctify thee?" Then God taught Adam the names of all things, and as the angels did not know the names Adam taught them these (ii, 28-33 Fl.). Thereafter God ordered the angels t…

, or D̲j̲ibrīl , Hebrew Gabrīʾēl , “Man of God”, is mentioned for the first time in the Old Testament, Dan. viii, 15 ff.; ix, 21 as flying to Daniel in the shape of a Man, sent by God in order to explain the vision of Daniel about the future. In post-biblical Judaism Gabriel plays an outstanding part among thousands of angels representing nations and individuals and natural phenomena. He belongs to the archangels and is governor of Paradise and of the serpents and the cherubs (Enoch, xx, 7). He is one of “The angels of the face”, standing at the ¶ left side of the Lord, and he dominates all forces ( ibid.,…

, Ṣārim al-Dīn Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Aydamur al-ʿAlāʾī al-Miṣrī (the name is derived from the Turkish toḳmaḳ “hammer”, cf. Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa, ed. Flügel, ii, 102), b. about 750/1349, was a zealous Ḥanafī and wrote a work on the ṭabaḳāt of the Ḥanafīs, Naẓm al-d̲j̲umān , in three volumes, the first of which deals with Abū Ḥanīfa (Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī K̲h̲alīfa, iv, 136; vi, 317); on account of his depreciatory references to al-S̲h̲āfiʿī he was flogged and thrown into prison. His history of Egypt, Nuzhat al-anām , in about 12 vols, to the year 779, was of great …

, Abu ’l-Fatḥ ʿUt̲h̲mān , was born in Mosul before 300/913 (Pröbster, p. x, ca. 320), the son of a Greek slave belonging to Sulaymān b. Fahd b. Aḥmad al-Azdī. His teacher was the Baṣran Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī, with whom he was associated for forty years till the latter’s death, partly at the court of Sayf al-Dawla at Aleppo and partly at the court of ʿAḍud al-Dawla in Fārs; according to Yāḳūt, he held the post of Kātib al-ins̲h̲āʾ at the court of the latter and of Ṣamṣām al-Dawla. In both places he was on friendly terms with al-Mutanabbī, with whom he discussed grammatical questions and on whose Dīwān …

, in modern usage, the name of an institution of learning where the Islamic sciences are taught, i.e. a college for higher studies, as opposed to an elementary school of traditional type ( kuttāb ); in mediaeval usage, essentially a college of law in which the other Islamic sciences, including literary and philosophical ones, were ancillary subjects only. I. The institution in the Arabic, Persian and Turkish lands 1. Children’s schools. The subject of Islamic education in general is treated under tarbiya. Here it should merely be noted that the earliest, informal institution…

, Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Isḥāḳ b. Mūsā b. Mihrān al-S̲h̲āfiʿī , born in Iṣfahān in Rad̲j̲ab 336/Jan.-Feb. 948 (Ibn Khallikān: or 334, Yāḳūt, Buldān , i, 298, 330), d. Monday 21 Muḥarram (Ibn Khallikān: or Ṣafar; Yāḳūt: Monday 20 Muḥarram; Ḏh̲ahabī, Subkī: 20 Muḥarram) 430/23 Oct. 1038, an authority on fiḳh and taṣawwuf . His grandfather Muḥ. b. Yūsuf was a well known ascetic, the first of his kin to accept Islam (Ibn Ḵh̲allikān). Abū Nuʿaym mentions him as his forerunner in Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ (i, 4). His father who also was a scholar (Yaḳūt, Buldān, iv, 344) had him taught by important teac…

(a.) is the name of the sacrifice on the seventh day after the birth of a child. According to religious law it is recommendable ( mustaḥabb or sunna ) on that day to give a name to the new-born child, to shave off its hair and to kill a victim, for a boy two rams or two he-goats, for a girl one of these according to the S̲h̲āfiʿites, but in both cases only one according to the Mālikites. If the offering of the ʿaḳīḳa has been neglected on the seventh day, it can be done afterwards, even by the child itself when it has come of age. The greater part of the …

(a.), vow. This procedure was taken over into Islam from the pre-Islamic Arabs and underwent modification by the new religion. The idea of dedication is associated with the root n-d̲h̲-r which is also found in South Arabian, Hebrew and Aramaic and to some extent in Assyrian. An animal could be the object of dedication among the Arabs. For example, they dedicated by nad̲h̲r certain of their sheep etc., for the ʿatīra feast in Rad̲j̲ab ( Lisān al-ʿArab and al-D̲j̲awhari. s.v.); the dedication, which was expressed in solemn formulae, signified that th…

, followers of Abū Ḥulmān al-Fārisī a native of Persia, educated in Ḥalab and later living in Damascus where he disseminated his ideas. He is recorded as a ṣūfī , e.g., in Sarrād̲j̲ (d. 378/988), Kitāb al-Lumaʿ fi’l-taṣawwuf (ed. Nicholson 1914), 289, where it is related that Abū Ḥulmān al-Ṣūfī once swooned on hearing the streetcry of a herbseller, the author seeing in this a testimony to the effect of samāʿ being dependent on the spiritual state of the hearer. But his ṣūfism is not generally acknowledged, and by ʿAbd al-Ḳāhir al-Bag̲h̲dādī (d. 729/1037), Ḥud̲j̲wīrī (d. 465/1072) et al. he a…

(a.), plur. k̲h̲uṭabāʾ , was, among the ancient Arabs, the name for the spokesman of the tribe. The k̲h̲aṭīb is therefore often mentioned along with the s̲h̲āʿir , the poet (Ibn His̲h̲ām, Sīra , ed. Wüstenfeld, 934, 938; Yāḳūt, Buldān , iv, 484), and, like the kāhin and the sayyid , was one of the leaders of the tribe. The character and significance of his office is clearly explained by D̲j̲āḥiẓ, Kitāb al-Bayān wa ’l-tabyīn , Cairo 1332, i. The distinction between k̲h̲aṭīb and s̲h̲āʿir is not absolutely definite, but essentially is that the s̲h̲āʿir uses the poetic form while the k̲h̲aṭīb expre…

, Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Ibrāhīm S̲h̲ihāb al-Dīn Abu ’l-ʿAbbās al-Dimas̲h̲ḳī al-Ḥanafī al-ʿAd̲j̲amī , born in 791/1392 in Damascus, was taken with his family to Samarḳand in 803/1400-1, when Tīmūr conquered Damascus and carried off many of its inhabitants (cf. Vita Timuri , ed. Manger, Leeuwaarden 1767-72, ii, 143 ff.); there he studied with al-Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ānī, al-D̲j̲azarī and others, and learned Persian, Turkish and Mongol. In 811/1408-9 he went to K̲h̲aṭā in Mongolia where he studied ḥadīt̲h̲ with al-S̲h̲irāmī, later to K̲h̲wārazm and Das̲h̲t (at Serāy and Ḥād̲j̲d̲…

(a.), the raised structure or pulpit from which solemn announcements to the Muslim community were made and from which sermons were preached. 1. Early historical evolution and place in the Islamic cult. In contrast to the miḥrāb [ q.v.], the minbar was introduced in the time of the Prophet himself. The word, often pronounced mimbar (cf. Brockelmann, Grundriss , i, 161), comes from the root n-b-r “high”; it could be derived from the Arabic quite easily with the meaning “elevation, stand”, but is more probably a loanword from the Ethiopie (Schwally, in ZDMG, lii [1898], 146-8; Nöldeke, Neue Be…

, ʿUmar b. ʿAlī ( S̲h̲araf al-Dīn ) Abu ’l-Ḳāsim al-Miṣrī al-Saʿdī , a celebrated Ṣūfī poet. The name al-Fāriḍ (allocator of shares in an inheritance) refers to the profession of his father (see Dīwān , Cairo 1319, 3), who belonged to Ḥamāt but migrated to Cairo, where ʿUmar was born in 576/1181. In early youth he studied S̲h̲āfiʿī law and ḥadīt̲h̲ ; then came his conversion to Ṣūfism, and for many years he led the life of a solitary devotee, on the hills (al-Muḳaṭṭam) to the east of Cairo, in deserts among wild beasts, and afterwards…

(a.), from the verb aḳsama , designates the oath in general. The word has two other synonyms, yamīn , and ḥalf . Ibn Rus̲h̲d ( Bidāyat al-Mud̲j̲tahid , i, 394), wishing to emphasize their equivalence from the point of view of terminology, uses the three words without differentiation in the first paragraph of the kitāb al-aymān of his Bidāya . In fact, when he deals with the judiciary oath, custom has imposed the word yamīn [ q.v.] and the verb ḥalafa almost exclusively. But even in that which concerns the extrajudiciary oath, with which the discussion that follows is concerned, the word yamīn ha…

, "safe", "secure"; in this and the more frequent form āmīn (rarely āmmīn , rejected by grammarians) it is used like āmēn and (Syriac) amīn with Jews and Christians as a confirmation or corroboration of prayers, in the meaning "answer Thou" or "so be it", see examples in al-Mubarrad, al-Kāmil , 577 note 6; Ibn al-Ḏj̲azarī, al-Nas̲h̲r ii, Cairo 1345, 442 f., 447. Its efficacy is enhanced at especially pious prayers, e.g. those said at the Kaʿba or those said for the welfare of other Muslims, when also the angels are said to say amīn. Especially it is said after sūra i, without being part of the sūra. …

(a.), mosque, the noun of place from sad̲j̲ada “to prostrate oneself, hence “place where one prostrates oneself [in worship]”. The modern Western European words (Eng. mosque , Fr. mosquée , Ger. Moschee , Ital. moschea ) come ultimately from the Arabic via Spanish mezquita . I. In the central Islamic lands A. The origins of the mosque up to the Prophet’s death. The word msgdʾ is found in Aramaic as early as the Jewish Elephantine Papyri (5th century B.C.), and appears likewise in Nabataean inscriptions with the meaning “place of worship…