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b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, Muḥammed’s father. Tradition has handed down but little concerning him, and this little consists of worthless legends. Al-Kalbī gives the 24th year of Anūshirwān’s reign as the year of his birth. That he was the finest of Ḳorais̲h̲ites is self evident. The well-known story of his father’s vow to sacrifice one son if he had ten, and of the rescue of ʿAbd Allāh on whon the lot had fallen, makes ʿAbd Allāh the youngest son notwithstanding the fact that his brother ʿ Abbās was but little older than Mu…

is the present name of the ancient ʿAkko, called Ptolemais by the Greeks, a port on the west coast of Palestine. ʿAkkā was captured by the Arabs under S̲h̲uraḥbīl b. Ḥasana. Muʿāwiya had the town rebuilt, as it had suffered a great deal in the wars with the Byzantines. He also caused dockyards to be built in ʿAkkā, which afterwards were removed to Tyre by Caliph His̲h̲ām. At a later period Ibn Ṭūlūn had the harbour surrounded by large stone embankments; Muḳaddasī, whose grandfather was the arch…

(a.), religion, rite. However obvious it may be to connect this word with the Hebrew and Jewish-and Christian-Aramaic milla, mella, “utterance, word”, it has not been satisfactorily proved how and where it received the meaning which is taken for granted in the Ḳurʾān: religion or rite. Nor is it known whether it is a purely Arabic word or a loanword adopted by Muḥammad or others before him (Nöldeke, Z. D. M. G., lvii. 413 seems to hold that it is Arabic for he refers to the 4th form amalla or amlā “to dictate”). In the Ḳurʾān it always means (even in ¶ the somewhat obscure passage, Sūra xxxviii…

ʿAbd Allāh, with the surname of ʿAtīḳ, variously interpreted by tradition, the first caliph. It is not related why he was given the surname of Abū Bekr (i. e. „father of the camel’s foal“), which his enemies mockingly twisted into Abū Faṣīl („father of the weaned young of a camel“). His father ʿOt̲h̲mān, also called Abū Ḳuḥāfa, and his mother Umm al-Ḵh̲air Salmā bint Ṣak̲h̲r both belonged to the Meccan family of Kaʿb b. Saʿd b. Taim b. Murra. According to the current account, Abū Bekr was three years …

, a town in Palestine, S.E. of Yāfā, is mentioned in the Old Testament (only in the later books: Chr. ii. 33; Neh. vii. 37, xi. 35; I Chr. viii. 12) under the name of Lod, in the Greek period as Lydda; the Greek name of Diospolis given in the Roman period did not drive out the old name, the preservation of which was helped by Acts, ix. 32 for example. It was an important place in the early centuries of the Christian era; the capital of a toparchy; it had a rabbinical school and was the see of a …

(or ʿamawās), the ancient Emmaus mentioned several times in the time of the Maccabees and in Josephus; situated in the plain of Judaea, right at the foot of the mountains, and called Nikopolis since the iii. century A.D. The town was taken by ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣī; formerly the chief place of a toparchy it remained a provincial capital under the Arab dominion, until the seat of administration was transferred to al-Ramla [q.v.]. The modern ʿAmwās is a miserable village with few old remains. The Castellu…

(Moses’ spring) is situated east of Petra in Edom. Islamic tradition connects it with Sūra 2, 57; cp. Brünnow and Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia i. 431; Musil, Arabia Petraea ii. ( Edom, 1907)a 42, and the article wādī mūsā.— Other Moses’ springs are: 1. Those at the foot of the Nebo mountain in Moab (cp. Survey of Eastern Palestine p. 89); 2. the spring near al-Kafr on the western side of the Ḥawrān mountains (see the map of the Ḏj̲ebel Ḥawrān in the Zeitschr. des Deutsch. Pal.-Vereins xii, D 5); 3. those on the east coast of the bay of Suez, south-east of Suez. The socalled …

, the name given to the chapters of the Ḳurʾān. In the Ḳurʾān itself, the word means, in the Meccan as well as the Medinese parts, the separate revelations which were revealed to Muḥammad from time to time. Thus he challenges his opponents to produce a sūra like his own (ii. 21; x. 39) or to bring ten sūras like his of their own devising (xi. 16). As a superscription we have in xxiv. 1: “(this is) a sūra which we have sent down and sanctioned and in it we have revealed clear signs ( āyāt)”. The Munāfiḳūn, we are told (ix. 65), fear that a sūra may be sent down that will tell them what is …

, the usual Arabic name for Jerusalem in later times. The older writers call it commonly Bait al-Maḳdis (according to some: Muḳaddas, cf. Gildemeister, Z. D. M. G., xxxvi. 387 sq,; Fischer, ibid., lx. 404 sqq.) which really meant the Temple (of Solomon), a translation of the Hebrew Bēt-hammiḳdas̲h̲ (e.g. Ibn His̲h̲ām, ed. Wüstenfeld, p. 263, 2) but it became applied to the whole town. They also frequently use the name Īliyāʾ, from Aelia (see below). They likewise knew the old name Jerusalem, which they reproduce as Uris̲h̲alim (o…

b. Hās̲h̲im, the Prophet’s grandfather. The only tradition concerning him, which is perhaps of historical value, is that which relates how he looked after his grandson after the death of his son ʿAbd Allāh [q. v.]. All other stories about him are Meccan or Medinian fictions. His real name is said to have been S̲h̲aiba. It is told of his mother Salma, who belonged to the Banū Nad̲j̲d̲j̲ār in Medina, that she had stipulated with his father Hās̲h̲im, that she should give birth to her child in Medina. Hās̲h̲im died shortly after while…

, or ‘the ʿArīs̲h̲ of Egypt’, the Rhinokorura of the ancients, town on the Mediterranean coast situated in a fertile oasis surrounded by sand, on the frontier between Palestine and Egypt. The name is found as early as the first centuries of our era in the form of Laris. According to the ordinary view which is presupposed e.g. in the well-known anecdote about ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣī’s expedition to Egypt, the town belonged to Egypt. The inhabitants, according to Yaʿḳūbī, ¶ belonged to the Ḏj̲ud̲h̲ām. Ibn Ḥawḳal speaks of two principal mosques in the town and refers to its wealth of…

, the Arabic name for the ancient Antipatris, which is to be sought for in the Wādi ’l-ʿAwd̲j̲āʿ, perhaps in Ḳalʿat Raʾs al-ʿAin. The shorter form ,,Fuṭrus" is also met with for the town. Usually, however, Nahr Abī Fuṭrus (also Nahr Fuṭrus, by Abū Nuwās) is meant, which properly designates the Wādī (Nahr al-ʿAwd̲j̲āʾ) that flows by the town. Here Marwān II rested on his flight to Egypt from Damascus in the year 132 (750), and shortly afterwards the town was the scene of the butchering of 72 or 80 Umaiyads (comp. Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. de Boor, i. 427, who certainly has the same …

b. al-ʿAbbās, surnamed Abu ’l-ʿAbbās, cousin of the Prophet. His birth is said to have taken place when the Has̲h̲imides were blocked in al-S̲h̲iʿb, a couple of years before Muḥammed’s emigration to Medina. According to al-Buk̲h̲ārī, he and his mother had already been converted before his father al-ʿAbbās [see al-ʿabbās b. ʿabd al-muṭṭalir] accepted the Islamic faith. But this is doubtlessly a pleasant fiction invented either by himself or by others. He began to come into prominence under ʿOt̲h̲mān. The caliph, to whom, according to his own state…

, according to a much discussed but very doubtful passage in Herodotus, is the name of an Arabian goddess. As deities of Arabia in iii. ch. 8 he mentions Dionysos, called Opatal by the Arabs, and Urania (i. e. Aphrodite Urania), whom they name “Alilat”. On the other hand he says (i. ch. 131), that Aphrodite Urania is called Mylitta by the Assyrians, and “Alitta” by the Arabs. Hence the question arises, which form is the correct one. Blochet proposes to change Alilat to Alidat; but it is just as …

, the, ( al-Ḳurʾān), the sacred book of the Muḥammadans contains the collected revelations of Muḥammad in a form fixed by committal to writing. 1. Even among Muslims there is no unanimity regarding the pronunciation, derivation and meaning of the word. Some pronounced it Ḳurān without hamza and saw in it a proper noun not occurring elsewhere, like tawrāt and ind̲j̲īl or they derived it from ḳarana, to tie together. Others rightly began with ḳorʾān with hamza and explained it either as an infinitive in the sense of a past participle or as an adjective from ḳaraʾa, to collect. It is really v…

(Ethiopic form for Abraham) with the surname al-As̲h̲ram, an Ethiopian governor of Yemen about the middle of the 6th century C. E. According to Procopius, who makes him out to have originally been the slave of a Roman in ¶ Adulis, he put himself at the head of an uprising against the Ethiopian king (Ela Aṣbeḥa) and took prisoner the then governor of Yemen, Esimiphaeus, the Sumaifaʿ of the inscription of Ḥiṣn al-G̲h̲urāb. He repeatedly defeated the army sent out against him; but after the death of the king he submitted to the payment …

is the name of two localities: 1. A place on the frontier of Yamāma, famous for the bloody battle in which Musailima and the Banū Ḥanīfa were defeated by Ḵh̲ālid. In its neighbourhood was a grove ( ḥadīḳa), surrounded by a wall and, before this battle, known by the name of “Raḥmān’s garden”; later on it was called “garden of death”. Bibliography Ṭabarī i. 1937—1940 Belād̲h̲orī (ed. de Goeje) p. 88 Yāḳūt, Muʿd̲j̲am ii. 226 iii. 694. 2. A place of residence of the G̲h̲assānide princes in Ḏj̲awlān; it is probably identical with the present ʿAḳrabāʾ in the province of Ḏj̲ēdūr. Bibliography Yāḳūt, Muʿ…

, properly Abu ’l-Ḥakam ʿAmr b. His̲h̲ām b. al-Mug̲h̲īra, also named Ibn al-Ḥanẓalīya after his mother, an influential Meccan of the illustrious ḳorais̲h̲ite family of Mak̲h̲zūm. According to one anecdote he was of about the same age as the Prophet. The traditions concerning him possess but little historical value; in any case it is evident from them that he was one of Muhammed’s most embittered opponents amongst the aristocrats of Mecca. He eagerly took part in all conferences against the Proph…

(a.), pl. masākīn , miskīnūn , “poor, destitute”. The word is an ancient Semitic one. In Akkadian, muškēnu/maškēnu apparently in the first place designated a social class between the full citizens and the slaves, and thence acquired the sense of “poor, destitute” (see E.A. Speiser, The muškēnum , in Orientalia , N.S. xxvii [1958], 19-28; Chicago Akkadian dictionary, Letter M , Part ii, 272-6; Von Soden, Akkadisches Wörterbuch , ii, 8641; idem, Muškenum und die Mawālī des frühen Islam , in ZA, N.F. xxii [1964], 133-41). In the latter sense, it appears in Aramaic as meskīnā and in OT Hebrew as mi…

, the Edrei of the Bible, to-day Derʿa, chief town of Ḥawrān, 106 km. south of Damascus. Situated on the borderline between a basaltic region and the desert, the town, formerly renowned for its wine and oil, was always a great market for cereals and an important centre of trade routes. Before the Assyrian conquest (732 B.C.) the kingdoms of Damascus and Israel contended for it; some scholars have identified it with the Aduri of the Amarna tablets. The capital of Batanea, Adraa was taken by Antio…