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( Dōsa ), literally “trampling”, a ceremony formerly performed in Cairo by the S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ of the Saʿdī ṭarīḳa on the mawlid s [ q.v.] of the Prophet, of al-S̲h̲āfiʿī of Sulṭān Ḥanafī (a celebrated Saint of Cairo who died in 847/1443; K̲h̲iṭaṭ d̲j̲adīda , iii, 93, iv, 100), of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Das̲h̲ṭūṭī (or Ṭas̲h̲ṭūs̲h̲ī), another saint; Lane, Modern Egyptians , chap, xxiv; K̲h̲iṭaṭ d̲j̲adīda, iii, 72, 133, iv, 111), and of S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ Yūnus (see below). These took place by day; a similar ceremony was performed by the S̲h̲ayk̲h̲ al-Bakrī, the head of the ṭarīḳas in Egypt, on the mawlid of Das̲h̲ṭū…

(a.), pl. āliha , “deity”, appears in pre-Islamic poetry (see, e.g., F. Bustānī, al-Mad̲j̲ānī al-ḥadīt̲h̲a , i, index) as an impersonal divine name, although preceded by the article; for the Christians and (so far as the poetry ascribed to them is authentic) the monotheists, al-ilāh evidently means God; for the other poets it means merely “the one who is worshipped”, so that al-ilāh indicates: “the god already mentioned” (the article being used li ’l-ʿahd ) or “the god of whom the poet is thinking”, and This use has survived to the present day (ʿAbd al-Ilāh); but ilāh …

(a.) means literally “to cause to swallow or gulp down” ( Lisān , xvi, 29, especially last two lines). In the Ḳurʾān it appears only in XCI, 8—a celebrated but difficult passage— fa-alhamahā fud̲j̲ūrahā wa-taḳwāhā , “then He (Allāh) made her (a nafs ) swallow down her sins and her godly fear” (Arberry: “and inspired it to lewdness and god-fearing”; Blachère: “et lui a inspiré son libertinage et sa piété”; Paret: “und ihm (je nachdem) die ihm eigene Sündhaftigkeit oder Gottesfurcht eingegeben hat”). The oldest exegetical tradition (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr , xxx, 115 f.) …

means to take a ḳabas , a live coal or a light, from another’s fire (Ḳurʾān XX, 10; XXVII, 7; LVII, 13); hence to seek knowledge ( ʿilm ) and, as a technical term in rhetoric, to quote specific words from the Ḳurʾān or from Traditions but without indicating these as quoted. Some scholars limit the term to the use of Ḳurʾānic phrases, while others extend it to the use of terminology from fiḳh and other sciences, but all agree that iḳtibās is found both in poetry and in prose. If the source is indicated and the quotation is put into verse the figure is called ʿaḳd , binding. A related figure is talmīḥ …

, the Biblical Korah (Num. XVI), is mentioned three times in the Ḳurʾān (XXVIII, 76-82, XXIX, 39/38, and XL, 25/24). In the latter two verses, he appears with Hāmān as a minister of Firʿawn, and all three of them behave proudly towards Moses, stigmatising him as a magician and impostor. In the first passage (XXVIII, 76-82), Ḳārūn is one of Moses’ people, but treats them in an insolent fashion because of the immense riches which have been given to him, as he believes, because of the knowledge which is in him ( ʿalā ʿilmin ʿindī ). He makes a great public display of hi…

means the saying of the formula al-ḥamdu li’llāh (for the different vocalizations— du, di, da—see LA, iv, 133, 7 ff.) “Praise belongs to Allāh”; for from Him all praise-worthiness proceeds and to Him it returns. Ḥamd is the opposite of d̲h̲amm , being praise for something dependent on the will of him who is praised and it differs in this from madḥ , which is not so limited; it is thus different from, although it may be an expression of s̲h̲ukr , “gratitude”, the opposite of which is kufrān ; t̲h̲anāʾ , often rendered “praise”, more exactly “taking account of”, is…

The original meaning of the root ḥḳḳ has become obscured in Arabic but can be recovered by reference to the corresponding root in Hebrew with its meanings of (a) “to cut in, engrave” in wood, stone or metal, (b) “to inscribe, write, portray” (this also in a Canaanite inscription of the 8th cent. B.C.; S. A. Cooke, North-Semitic inscriptions, Oxford 1903, 171, 185), (c) “to prescribe, fix by decree”, therefore “prescribed, decree, law, ordinance, custom”, (d) “due to God or man, right, privilege” (cf. Brown-Driver-Briggs, Hebrew and English lexicon, Oxford 1952; L. Koehler and A. W.…

according to the Muslim conception bodies ( ad̲j̲sām ) composed of vapour or flame, ¶ intelligent, imperceptible to our senses, capable of appearing under different forms and of carrying out heavy labours (al-Bayḍāwī, Comm. to Ḳurʾān, LXXII, 1; al-Damīrī, Ḥayawān , s.v. d̲j̲inn ). They were created of smokeless flame (Ḳurʾān, LV, 14) while mankind and the angels, the other two classes of intelligent beings, were created of clay and light. They are capable of salvation; Muḥammad was sent to them as well as to mankind…

pl. d̲j̲adāwil , primarily “brook, watercourse”, means further “Ṭable, plan”. Graefe suggested that in this meaning it might derive from schedula ; but perhaps one should rather think of d̲j̲-d-l “to twist”, cf. S. Fraenkel, Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen , 224, and the similar development of the meaning of zīd̲j̲ , as stated by E. Honigmann, Die sieben Klimata , 1929, 117 ff. In this second sense the word becomes a special term in sorcery, synonymous with k̲h̲ātim here it means quadrangular or other geometrical figures, into which names a…

(a.). The two connotations of the root are g̲h̲āba ʿan , to be absent, and g̲h̲āba fī , to be hidden. In current usage, g̲h̲ayb (and especially g̲h̲ayba ) may signify “absence” (and g̲h̲ayba, correlated with s̲h̲uhūd , “presence”, may be a technical term of Ṣūfism); but more frequently g̲h̲ayb may indicate what is hidden, inaccessible to the senses and to reason—thus, at the same time absent from human knowledge and hidden in divine wisdom. It is to this second meaning that al-g̲h̲ayb refers, as a technical term of the religious vocabulary. It may then b…

(or Kās̲h̲ānī or Ḳās̲h̲ī or Kāsānī ), celebrated Ṣūfī author, died according to Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa (ed. Flügel, iv, 427), in 730/1329. Hād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Ḵh̲alīfa, however, confusing him with the historian of the same name, the author of the Maṭlaʿal-Saʿdain , says in another place (ii, 175) that he died in 887/1482 and, besides, gives his name as Kamāl al-Dīn Abu ’l-G̲h̲anāʾim ʿAbd al-Razzāḳ b. Ḏj̲amāl al-Dīn al-Kās̲h̲ī al-Samarḳanḍī. Little is known of ʿAbd al-Razzāḳ’s life; according to Ḏj̲āmī ( Nafaḥāt al-Uns , quoted by St. Guyard), he was a pupil of N…

(a., pl. aḥzāb ) means primarily “a group, faction, a group of supporters of a man who share his ideas and are ready to defend him”, and this is why the term has been adopted in modern Arabic to mean a political party (see below); it means also “part, portion” and it is from this meaning that it has come to indicate a portion of the Ḳurʾān as well as a group of liturgical formulae. In this meaning the term is probably a borrowing from Ethiopie (see Th. Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge zur sem. Sprachw. , 59, n. 8) for, in Arabic, the verb ḥazaba means “to happen (speaking of a misfort…

(A., pl. g̲h̲īlān or ag̲h̲wāl ), fabulous being believed by the ancient Arabs to inhabit desert places and, assuming different forms, to lead travellers astray (sometimes, like the Bedouins, lighting fires on the hills the more easily to attract them), to fall upon them unawares and devour them; certain isolated sources (cf. al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , iii, 315) affirm however that it fled as soon as it was challenged; according to al-Ḏj̲āḥiẓ ( Ḥayawān , i, 309), it rode on hares, dogs and ostriches; men could kill it, but only by giving it one singl…

( maṣdar of g̲h̲āba ) means “absence”, often “absence of mind”. The latter sense was developed by the Ṣūfīs as the obverse of ḥaḍra [ q.v.], absence from the creation and presence with God. The word is also used for the condition of anyone who has been withdrawn by God from the eyes of men and whose life during that period (called his g̲h̲ayba) may have been miraculously prolonged. It is so used of al-Ḵh̲aḍir [ q.v.]. A number of S̲h̲īʿī groups have recognized the g̲h̲ayba, in the latter sense, of one or another imām, with the implication that no further imām was to succeed him and he was to re…

(a.), plur. fuḳahāʾ , in its non-technical meaning [denotes anyone possessing knowledge ( fiḳh ) of a thing (syn. ʿālim , plur. ʿulamāʾ [ q.v.]). Then, as fiḳh passed from denoting any branch of knowledge and became a technical term for the science of religious law ( sharīʿa [ q.v.]) and in particular for the science of its derivative details ( furūʿ ), faḳīh became the technical term for a specialist in religious law and in particular its furūʿ. This development is parallel to that of the term ( iuris ) prudens in Roman law. In older terminology, however, faḳīh as opposed to ʿālim denotes the sp…

( Darwēs̲h̲ ) is commonly explained as derived from Persian and meaning “seeking doors”, i.e., a mendicant (Vullers, Lexicon , i, 839a, 845b; Gr. I. Ph., i/1, 260; ii, 43, 45); but the variant form daryōs̲h̲ is against this, and the real etymology appears to be unknown. Broadly through Islam it is used in the sense of a member of a religious fraternity, but in Persian and Turkish more narrowly for a mendicant religious called in Arabic a faḳīr . In Morocco and Algeria for dervishes, in the broadest sense, the word most used is Ik̲h̲wān , “brethren”, pronounced k̲h̲uān . These fraternities ( ṭuruḳ …

(a.), the spoken word, utterance; can be extended to mean “discourse” and “poem”. The falāsifa prefer to limit their discussion to the problems of grammar and logic: thus in the preamble to the Nad̲j̲āt (Cairo 2.1357/1938, 11) Ibn Sīnā defines kalima as “a single word ( lafẓa ) which refers to an idea and the length of time that this idea is applied to any indeterminate subject whatsoever; for example, when we say ‘he walked’.” Cf. also Manṭiḳ al-mas̲h̲riḳiyyīn , Cairo 1328/1910, 57-8, and p. 66 where kalima is given as a synonym for “that which grammarians call fiʿl ”. But according to the Is̲h̲ā…

, in form like kibriyāʾ , belongs to old Arabic ¶ beside sīmā , sīmāʾ (Ḳurʾān, XLVIII, 29 etc.; al-Bayḍāwī, ed. Fleischer, i, 326, 14, 15), in the sense “mark, sign, badge” (Lane 1476a; Ṣaḥāḥ , s.v., ed. Būlāḳ, 1282, ii, 200; Ḥamāsa , ed. Freytag, 696; LʿA , xv, 205). But the word, as a name for certain genres of magic, had a quite different derivation; in that sense it is from σημει̂α, through the Syriac sīmya (pl), and means “signs, letters of the alphabet” (Dozy, Suppl., i, 708b, and references there; Payne Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus , ii, col. 2614). In Bocthor, Dictionnaire français-arabe …

(A.), literally “exerting oneself, is the technical term in Islamic law, first, for the use of individual reasoning in general and later, in a restricted meaning, for the use of the method of reasoning by analogy ( ḳiyās [ q.v.]). The lawyer who is qualified to use it is called mud̲j̲tahid . Individual reasoning, both in its arbitrary and its systematically disciplined form, was freely used by the ancient schools of law, and it is often simply called raʾy [ q.v.], “opinion, considered opinion”. An older, narrower technical meaning of the term id̲j̲tihād , which has…

(a.) means “companion” in the largest sense (synonym of muṣāḥib in LA and the Ṣaḥāḥ , and of k̲h̲idn in al-Bayḍāwī on Ḳurʾān, XLI, 24/25). However, for people in pre-Islamic Arabia and for Muḥammad, the word also suggested a man’s spirit-companion or familiar, and this is the commonest usage in the Ḳurʾān, where ḳarīn is used eight times. If a human companion is meant in XXXVII, 49/51, S̲h̲ayṭān is a ḳarīn in IV, 42/38, and the use of the plural ḳuranāʾ in XLI, 24/25, together with the context, shows that tempting spirits are meant here. In this verse and in XLIII, 35/36, 37/38, a s̲h̲ayṭān …