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, Abu ’l-Faḍl D̲j̲aʿfar b. Maḥmūd , official in the ʿAbbāsid administration and the first vizier of al-Muʿtazz (251/866); he held this post for only a short time, but the Caliph was obliged to give in to Turkish pressure and reinstate him in 255/869. He kept the post at the beginning of al-Muhtadī’s caliphate but real power was in the hands of Ṣāʿid b. Mak̲h̲lad [ q.v.]. Though al-Ḥuṣrī ( Zahr , 873) lets it be understood that al-Iskāfī was friendly with al-Muʿ-tazz before the latter acceded to the caliphate, G̲h̲ars al-Niʿma ( Hafawāt , 273) maintains that he was i…

, Abū Yūsuf Yaʿḳūb b. Isḥāḳ , a celebrated Arabic philologian and lexicographer, came from a family who were natives of Dawraḳ, in K̲h̲ūzistān, but apparently he was born in Bag̲h̲dād in about 186/802. His father, nicknamed al-Sikkit (the Taciturn), is reputed to have been an expert in poetry and lexicography; it was he who started his son’s education, which was later continued under the direction of Abū ʿAmr al-S̲h̲aybānī, al-Farrāʾ, Ibn al-Aʿrābī and other famous teachers; like…

al-ḥalabī , Arab physician who came originally from Aleppo, and was possibly related to the family of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa [ q.v.]. The biographical details concerning him are fairly sparse, but it is known that he wrote, probably between 654 and 674/1256-75, a work on ophthalmology called al-Kāfī fi ’l-kuḥl (or fi ’l-ṭibb ). In this he gives a concise sketch of the history of ophthalmology among the Arabs and deals with the anatomy, physiology and hygiene of the eyes, citing the medicaments used for treating eye disorders, and d…

( Nefza ), the name of a Berber tribe (ethnic: Nafzī) belonging to the group which the mediaeval genealogists and historians mention under the name of Butr [ q.v.]. It had spread out over a large part of Barbary, between Ifrīḳiya [ q.v.] and Fās, passing through the region of Constantine, Oran, Tlemcen and the Rīf. In contemporary Tunisia, to the east of the massif of Kroumirie [see k̲h̲umayr ], there extends the country of the Nafzas, a fertile region fringed with woodlands abounding in game. Near the D̲j̲abal al-Abyaḍ, at ca 150 km/96 miles to the west of Tunis by road and 140 km/90…

, nubāta b. ʿabd allāh , minor poet of the ʿAbbāsid period, originally from Dīnawar. His talent was only moderate, and it was ʿAllawayh/ʿAllūya who rescued him from oblivion, since this singer, the poet’s friend, introduced him to the great men of the age and, above all, set some of his verses to music, so that they enjoyed a great success. His career seems to have been quite a lengthy one. He is found, first of all, satirising as early as 153/770 two of al-Manṣūr’s mawālī , Ṣāʿid and Maṭar (al-D̲j̲ahs̲h̲iyārī, Wuzarāʾ , 124), and then frequenting Abū Dulaf al-ʿId̲j̲lī [see al-ḳāsim b. ʿīsā …

al-Asadī (after 55-141/675-758), early Medinan scholar and historian, especially interested in the Prophet’s expeditions or mag̲h̲āzī [ q.v.]. A mawlā of al-Zubayr b. al-ʿAwwām’s and a pupil of al-Zuhrī [ q.vv.], he taught in the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, showing in his work the characteristic, increasing emphasis of the Medinan school on isnāds and also displaying a concern in giving dates for the events which he describes. His Kitāb al-Mag̲h̲āzī , transmitted by his nephew Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. ʿUḳba, has not survived as a complete work, …

, the designation given to the colleges of Sunnī instruction founded in ʿIrāḳ, al-D̲j̲azīra and Persia by the great Sald̲j̲ūḳ vizier Niẓām al-Mulk [ q-v.]. See for these, madrasa, I. 4, and niẓām al-mulk . (Ed.)

, Manōhargárh , a fortress on a lofty rock, some 2,500 feet/770 m. high, in lat. 16° N. and long. 74° 1′ E., in the Western Ghats range of peninsular India. Formerly in the southernmost part of the British Indian province of Bombay, it is now just within the southwestern corner of the Maharashtra state of the Indian Union. (Ed.) Bibliography Imperial gazetteer of India 2, xvii, 200.

, ‘the Arab country’, a term much in use until recently to denote the Persian province of Ḵh̲ūzistān; the latter name was revived during the reign of Riḍā S̲h̲āh Pahlawī. Fur further particulars see k̲h̲ūzistān . Following Persian usage, ʿArabistān denotes occasionally the Arabian peninsula. In Ottoman administrative documents from the 16th century it is occasionally applied to the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Empire, more especially to Syria. (Ed.)

Meḥmed Ḏj̲elāl bey (1254-1300/1838-82), Turkish writer and poet, and elder brother of Red̲j̲āʾī-zāde Maḥmūd Ekrem Bey [see ekrem bey ]. He had a moderately successful administrative career, entering the Translation Office ( Terd̲j̲üme Odasi̊ ) of the Sublime Porte in 1270/1853-4, being appointed in 1279/1862-3 chief clerk to the embassy in St. Petersburg, becoming assistant secretary ( mektūbī muʿāwini ) under Aḥmed D̲j̲ewdet Pas̲h̲a [ q.v.] in 1282-1865-6, when the latter became wālī of Aleppo, and finally chief secretary of the provinces of K…

The word d̲j̲amdār is a contraction of Pers. d̲j̲āma-dār , “clothes-keeper”, cf. Dozy, Suppl . This word is not, as stated by Sobernheim in EI 1, a “title of one of the higher ranks in the army in Hindustān …”, although d̲j̲amʿdār , popularly d̲j̲amādār , Anglo-Indian Jemadar, “leader of a number ( d̲j̲amʿ ) of men”, is applied in the Indian Army to the lowest commissioned rank, platoon commander, but may be applied also to junior officials in the police, customs, etc., or to the foreman of a group of guides, sweepers, etc. (Ed.) In Mamlūk Egypt the d̲j̲amdāriyya (sing. d̲j̲amdār), “keepers of …

(also kanbāniya , with kanfāniya once attested in the Calendrier de Cordoue ), from Spanish campaña , in general denotes in Spanish Arabic usage, the countryside, but in particular the Campiña, sc. the vast, gently-undulating plain which forms the southern part of the kūra of Cordova; al-Idrīsī, Description de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne , ed. and tr. Dozy-De Goeje, 174, 209, makes it an iḳlim whose capital was Cordova and its main towns al-Zahrāʾ, Ecija, Baena, Cabra and Lucena. After leaving the capital, the approach to it was first thr…

(a.) “water”. The present article covers the religio-magical and the Islamic legal aspects of water, together with irrigation techniques, as follows: 1. Hydromancy A a vehicle for the sacred, water has been employed for various techniques of divination, and in particular, for potamonancy (sc. divination by means of the colour of the waters of a river and their ebbing and flowing; cf. FY. Cumont, Études syriennes , Paris 1917, 250 ff., notably on the purification power of the Euphrates, consulted for divinatory reasons); for pegomancy (sc…

(a.), noun of unity ḳaṣaba , any plant with a long and hollow stem like the reed ( Arundo donax ), to which the term is especially applied (see Muk̲h̲aṣṣaṣ , xi, 46). The bamboo is called k̲h̲ayzurān , but ḳaṣab is a component of certain expressions denoting in particular the sugar cane ( ḳaṣab al-sukkar, etc.) [see following article] and the sweet flag (or fragrant rush, ḳaṣab al-d̲h̲arīra ; see H. P. J. Renaud and G. S. Colin, Tuḥfat al-aḥbāb , Paris 1934, 152; M. Levey, The medical formulary . . . of al-Kindī , Madison-London 1966, 316), or even the papyrus reed ( ḳaṣab al-bardī or just al-bardī …

Čīn Ḳilič K̲h̲ān , Ḳamar al-dīn , founder of the Indian Muslim state of Ḥaydarābād in the early 12th/18th century and a dominant figure in the military affairs of the decaying Mug̲h̲al empire from his appointment as governor of the Deccan by the Emperor Farruk̲h̲-siyar [ q.v.] till his death in 1161/1748. In the early years of his governorship he was the deadly foe of his rivals for influence in the empire, the Bārha Sayyids [ q.v. in Suppl.], and after his victory over them at S̲h̲akarkheldā in 1137/1724, virtually independent ruler in Ḥaydarābād with the additional ti…

, Sandān , a port on the western coast of peninsular India, mentioned by the early Islamic geographers (Ibn K̲h̲urradād̲h̲bih, Ibn Ḥawḳal, the Ḥudūd al-ʿālam ) as a flourishing mercantile town with a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims. It has been identified with the Sanjam of Portuguese maps and the St. John of English ones and as lying south of Daman and north of Thāna, hence in the modern Bombay state of the Indian Union. (Ed.) Bibliography Ḥudūd al-ʿālam, tr. Minorsky, 57, comm. 244-5 S. Maqbul Ahmad, India and the neighbouring territories in the Kitāb Nuzḥat al-Mus̲h̲tāq ... of al-S̲…

b. alp arslān , the Sald̲j̲ūḳ, was sent by Barkiyārūk against Arslan Arg̲h̲ūn, another son of Alp Arslan, who was trying to make himself independent in Ḵh̲urāsān. In the struggle between the two brothers, Būrī-Bars was at first successful, but in the second encounter, in 488/1095, his troops were scattered and he himself was taken prisoner and strangled by his brother’s orders. (Ed.) Bibliography Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, x, 179 Houtsma, Recueil, ii, 257. ¶

(Ar.), lake, is probably the diminmunitive, not of baḥr “sea”, as one would expect, but of baḥra , which is applied to a depression in which water can collect. Thus, in North Africa, bḥẹ̄ra , pl. bḥāyr denotes a low-lying plain, in eastern Algeria, northern Tunisia and part of southern Morocco; its most common meaning, however, is that of “vegetable garden, field for market gardening” or “field for the cultivation of cucurbitaceous plants (melons in particular)” (see W. Marçais, Textes arabes de Tanger , Paris 1911, 227). (Ed.) The word buḥayra (lake) underlies a t…

, Mīrzā ʿAlī Akbar (b. 1862 in S̲h̲emākha, d. 1911 in Bākū), Azerbaijani satirical poet and journalist. After the First Russian Revolution of 1905, a humorous and satirical literature grew up in Russian Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān, seen especially in the weekly journal Mollā Naṣreddīn founded at Tiflis in 1906 by Ḏj̲elāl Meḥmed Ḳulī-zāde [see d̲j̲arīda. iv], which attacked the old literary forms, backwardness in education and religious fanaticism, achieving a circulation also in Turkey and Persian Ād̲h̲arbayd̲j̲ān. One of the writers in it was Ṣābir (who als…

(a.), Muruwwa , a term used especially in pre-Islamic and early Islamic usage. In the Arabic language there are a number of terms the meaning of which is imprecise (cf. Ibn Fāris, al-Ṣāḥibī , Cairo 1910, 34-8). The word murūʾa is one of these. Indeed, we are assailed on all sides by a host of differing post-Islamic definitions and contradictory pronouncements ( aḳwāl ) regarding it. These definitions and pronouncements will be found in the various dictionaries and in Abū Manṣūr al-T̲h̲aʿālibī, Mirʾāt al-murūʾāt , Cairo 1898, 32 pp.; al-D̲j̲āḥiẓ, al-Bayān wa ’l-tabyīn …