Search

, an appellation [see the preceding art.] made specially famous by Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad of S̲h̲īrāz, the founder of the new religion of the Bābīs [ q.v.] and, according to the Bahāʾīs [ q.v.] the precursor of the new prophet Bahāʾ Allāh [ q.v.]. He is also called by his disciples Nuḳṭa-i ūlā (‘the first point’) or Ḥaḍrat-i aʿlā (‘the supreme presence’). Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad was born at S̲h̲īrāz, of a merchant family, on 1 Muḥarram 1235/20 October 1819 (but according to other sources, exactly a year later, 9 October 1820); becoming an orphan at an early age…

, s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ aḥmad b. zayn al-dīn b. ibrāhīm , founder of the theological school (later, after his excommunication by the S̲h̲īʿī mud̲j̲tahids , more properly speaking "sect") which, from his designation, took the name of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ī [ q.v.]. He was born in al-Aḥsāʾ (Arabia) in 1166/1753. His biographers record his great piety from his years of infancy. At the age of twenty, already learned in the religious sciences, he went on pilgrimage to the S̲h̲īʿite sanctuaries in al-ʿIrāḳ, where he had his first successes, obtaining from their mud̲j̲tahids "licences" to teach the religious …

— Founder of the new religion which took the name of Bahāʾī from his own name (literally, ‘Glory, Splendour, of God’). In Persian it is known commonly as Amr-i Bahāʾī , ‘Bahāʾī Cause’, or Amr Allāh , ‘Cause of God’; the adjective amrī is used of publications, matters and facts pertaining to the Cause, e.g., nas̲h̲riyyāt-i amrī ‘religious publications’, etc. Bahāʾ Allāh is generally called by his disciples Ḏj̲amāl-i Mubārak , ‘The Blessed Beauty’ and Ḏj̲amāl-i Ḳidam , ‘The Ancient Beauty’. His name was originally Mīrzā Ḥusayn ʿAlī Nūrī (from Nūr, in …

, Persian poet of the Tīmūrid period, born at Nīs̲h̲āpūr at an unspecified date, died in 852 or 853/1448-9. His name was in fact Muḥammad Yaḥyā b. Sībak, and the tak̲h̲alluṣ “Fattāḥī” is simply derived from the anagram of the Arabic translation of his Persian name Sībak (“little apple”, Ar. tuffāḥ “apple”). His most famous work is the mat̲h̲nawī of about 5,000 distichs in hazad̲j̲ metre (∪ ─ ─ ─ / ∪ ─ ─ ─ / ∪ ─ ─ ─), entitled Dastūr-i ʿus̲h̲s̲h̲āḳ (The rule of lovers) and known also by the title Ḥusn u-Dil (Beauty and Heart), from the names of its two allegorical protagonists. It was com…

, a Muslim sect in Bengal established at the beginning of the 19th century by Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī S̲h̲arīʿat Allāh. The setting in which the sect was born and developed was eastern Bengal in the period immediately following the British conquest. Peasant life in that State, perhaps more than in other parts of India, was influenced by Hindu customs and practices. At that time the virtual loss of political supremacy by a section of the governing Muslim class, the support which the British sometimes gave to the Hindu elements, the unbridled power of the zamīndār s [ q.v.], rich landed proprietors bot…

, adherents of the new religion which was founded by Bahāʾ Allāh [ q.v.], and of which the forerunner, according to Bahāʾī doctrine, was the Bāb [ q.v.]. The foremost authority on the Bahāʾī religion, and its disseminator in Europe and America, was ʿAbbās Efendī, the eldest son of the founder, better known among the Bahāʾīs as ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ (Servant of Bahāʾ). Born on 23 May 1844 at Tehran, he accompanied his father on his journeys and in his exile, and at his death was recognised by the great majority of the Bahāʾīs as t…

, an Urdu writer (Faḳīr is a tak̲h̲alluṣ , nom de plume). He is chiefly known as the author of a translation of the Anwār-i Suhaylī of Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kās̲h̲ifī [ q.v.], an adaptation in elaborate Persian prose of the stories from Kalīla wa-Dimna [ q.v.]. The title of the Urdu translation by Faḳīr Muḥammad K̲h̲ān, for which he appears to have been helped by the celebrated Urdu poet Mīr Ḥasan (d. 1200/1786), is Bustān-i ḥikmat (Garden of wisdom). The first edition is a lithograph, Lucknow 1845. As a lyric poet, Faḳīr belongs to the Lucknow school and to the silsila (poetic sc…

, followers of the religion founded by the Bāb [ q.v.]. The history of the Bābīs has been and still is, at least in the East, one of persecution. It can be divided into two phases: the first, from the foundation of the new faith (1260/1844) up to the persecutions following the attempt on Nāṣir al-Dīn S̲h̲āh (1268-9/1852-3), which seemed as though they would crush the new movement for ever, a period characterised by a frequently violent attitude on the part of the Bābīs themselves; the second, which might …

Mīrzā Asad Allāh Ḵh̲ān , one of the greatest Muslim poets of the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. He was born in 1797 at Āgra in an aristocratic Muslim family; his childhood and early boyhood were passed at Āgra where he received the classical Mug̲h̲al education (Persian being one of its chief subjects). He moved to Delhi when he was about 15 years of age and lived in the Mug̲h̲al capital till his death on 15 February 1869, except for a brief sojourn in Lucknow and Benares on his w…

, unorthodox Muslim sect of gnostic-cabalistic tendencies founded by Faḍl Allāh of Astarābād in Iran at the end of the 8th/14th century. Its founder was born at Astarābād in 740/1340, and, according to some sources, was named ʿAbd al-Raḥmān; he began his career as a Ṣūfī famed particularly for the care he took to avoid eating any unlawful food, so much so that he was known as ḥalāl-k̲h̲or . He was a sayyid (descendent of ʿAlī) and the son of a chief justice ( ḳāḍī al-ḳuḍāt ) who died while he was still an infant. From childhood he showed a great inclination …

, term generally used in Persian literature—with rather depreciative implications—to indicate Zoroastrians. Philologists have not yet reached agreement on its etymology. Several suggestions have been made, e.g., (a) from Hebrew ḥab̲h̲er (“companion”) in the sense of Ḳiddūs̲h̲īn 72a; (b) from Aramaeo-Pahlavi gabrā (read mart ), especially in the compounds mōġ-martān (“the Magi”) (written mōġ-gabrā-ān ); (c) from a Persian corruption of Arabic kāfir (“unbeliever”). The first two etymologies are very improbable, so that the derivation from A. kāfir seems the most acceptable…

, “song, elegy of love”, often also “the erotico-elegiac genre ”. The term is Arabic, but passed into Persian, Turkish and Urdu and acquired a special sense in these languages. The semantic development of the word from the root g̲h̲ z l , “to spin”, “spinning”, is not in doubt, but presupposes intermediary meanings for which we have no evidence; the g̲h̲azal was not in fact a song of women spinning, like that of which Tibullus speaks (ed. Rat, Paris 1931, Book II, no. 1, line 60), but a man’s song addressed to a girl; contamination by the noun g̲h̲azāl …

b. Bahāʾ al-Dīn Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ Walad b. Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad K̲h̲aṭībī , known by the sobriquet Mawlānā (Mevlânâ), Persian poet and founder of the Mawlawiyya order of dervishes, which was named after him, was born on Rabīʿ I 604/30 September 1207 in Balk̲h̲, and died on 5 D̲j̲umāda II 672/1273 in Ḳonya. The reasons put forward against the above-mentioned date of birth (Abdülbaki Gölpinarli, Mevlânâ Celâleddîn 3, 44; idem, Mevlânâ Şams-i Tabrîzî ile altmiṣ iki yaşinda buluştu , in Şarkiyat Mecmuasi , iii, 153-61; and Bir yazi üzerine , in Tarih Coǧrafya Dünyasi , ii/1…

, Arabic term often translated by “satire”, but more precisely denoting a curse, an invective diatribe or insult in verse, an insulting poem, then an epigram, and finally a satire in prose or verse. The etymological sense of the Arabic root h.d̲j̲.w may perhaps be deduced from the Hebrew root the basic sense of which is “to utter a sound in a low voice, to murmur” and hence “to meditate” (so too in Syriac), but also “to pronounce incantations in a low voice” (see L. Koehler, Lexicon in Vet . Test . libros , 1949, 224; König, Hebräisches Wörterbuch , 75; Genesius, Lexicon, Leipzig 1833, 266; Jast…

(a.), verbal noun of ḥakā , originally meaning “to imitate”, but which, in consequence of a readily explained semantic evolution, came to acquire the meaning of “to tell, to narrate”; similarly the noun ḥikāya , starting from the meaning of “imitation”, has come to mean more specifically “mimicry”, and finally “tale, narrative, story, legend”. In classical Arabic the intensive form ḥākiya meant a “mimic” and modern Arabic has adopted the active participle ḥāk in to translate “gramophone”. The radical ḥ . k. y./ w. is not represented in the Ḳuʾrān but it is found in ḥadīt̲h̲ …