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, the traditional name for the site of a battle fought in Ḏj̲umādā I or II, 13/July-August 634, between the Muslim Arab invaders and the Greek defenders of Palestine. Although located by the literary sources between Ramla and Bayt Ḏj̲ibrīn, no place of this name is attested by the geographers. On topographical grounds, the site of the battle was located by Miednikoff on the Wādī al-Ṣamt in the vicinity of the two villages of al-Ḏj̲annāba (G̲h̲arbiyya and S̲h̲arḳiyya), 34° 5…

(plural of k̲h̲uluḳ , "innate disposition"), ethics. (i) survey of ethics in islam. 1. Islamic ethics took shape only gradually and the tradition of the different elements of which it is composed was not finally established before the 5th/11th century. Unlike the Greek world, in which popular ethics were refined and reshaped by philosophical reasoning without any breach between them, and with no perceptible influence of any foreign doctrine, so that eventually philosophy came to express the moral values by w…

al-Rāsibī , Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ite leader, a tābiʿī of the Bad̲j̲īla tribe, noted for his bravery and piety and surnamed d̲h̲u ’l-t̲h̲afināt , "the man with the callosities", on account of the callosities on his forehead etc. resulting from his many prostrations. He fought under Ṣaʿd b. Abī Waḳḳāṣ in ʿIrāḳ and under ʿAlī at Ṣiffīn, but broke with him over the decision to arbitrate and joined the dissidents at Ḥarūraʾ. Shortly before their final departure from Kūfa in S̲h̲awwāl 37/March 658, the Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲ites elected ʿAbd Allāh as their commander ( amīr , not k̲h̲alīfa , as…

, Abu ’l-Kāsim Aḥmad b. al-Mustanṣir , ninth Fāṭimid caliph, born 20 Muḥarram 467/16 September 1074 (so in all the best sources and in al-Mustanṣir’s letter to Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Ṣulayḥī, quoted in Idrīs, vii, 152), the youngest son of his father. At this time it was generally assumed in the Ismāʿīlī organisation that the eldest son, Nizār (born 437/1045-6), would, in accordance with custom, succeed his father in the imāmate, although no formal investiture with the wilāyat al-ʿahd appears to have been made. The influence of the all-powerful wazīr …

b. ṣalāḥ al-dīn , in full al-malik al-afḍal abu ’l-ḥasan ʿalī nūr al-dīn , the eldest son of Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, [ q.v.]), b. 565/1169-70, d. at Sumaysāṭ 622/1225. On Saladin’s death he was recognized as ruler of Damascus and head of the Ayyūbid family, but owing to his incapacity and self-indulgence he lost successively Damascus, Egypt, and all his Syrian fiefs, and ended as a dependent of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ sultan of Rūm. See ayyūbids . (H.A.R. Gibb) Bibliography Ibn Ḵh̲allikān, no. 459 Abū S̲h̲āma, Ḏh̲ayl al-Rawḍatayn, 145 Ibn Tag̲h̲rībīrdī, Nud̲j̲ūm, vi, index Maḳrīzī, Sulūk, i, index.

, “White Falcon”, the name of many Turkish officers, of whom the following are the most important: 1. āḳ sunḳur b. ʿabd allāh ḳasīm al-dawla , known as al-ḥād̲j̲ib , mamlūk of Malik-s̲h̲āh [ q.v.], who appointed him to the government of Aleppo in 480/1087. He at first supported the efforts of the Sald̲j̲ūḳ prince Tutus̲h̲ [ q.v.] to establish himself in Syria, but after Malik-s̲h̲āh’s death he, with the other governors in northern Syria and the Ḏj̲azīra, declared for Barkiyāruḳ, and was defeated and executed by Tutus̲h̲ near Aleppo in Ḏj̲umādā I, 487/May 1094. He was the father of Zankī [ q.v.],…

, Ismāʿīl b. ( al-Afḍal ) ʿAlī b. ( al-Muẓaffar ) Maḥmūd b. ( al-Manṣūr ) Muḥammad b. Taḳī al-Dīn ʿUmar b. S̲h̲āhans̲h̲āh b. Ayyūb , al-Malik al-Muʾayyad ʿImād al-Dīn , Syrian prince, historian, and geographer, of the family of the Ayyūbids [ q.v.], born in Damascus, Ḏj̲um. i, 672/Nov. 1273. At the age of 12, in the company of his father and his cousin al-Muẓaffar Maḥmūd II, prince of Ḥamāh, he was present at the siege and capture of Marḳab (Margat) (684/1285). He took part also in the later campaigns against the Crusaders. On the suppre…

, family of Egyptian scholars of Palestinian origin, whose ancestor Ṣāliḥ settled at Bulḳīna in al-G̲h̲arbiyya. (1) ʿumar b. raslān b. naṣīr b. ṣāliḥ , sirād̲j̲ al-dīn abū ḥafṣ al-kinānī , born 12 S̲h̲aʿbān 724/4 August 1324, died 10 D̲h̲u ’l-Ḳaʿda 805/1 June 1403. He studied at Cairo under the most farnous scholars of the day, including Ibn ʿAḳīl [ q.v.], whose daughter he married, and served as nāʾib during Ibn ʿAḳīl’s brief tenure as Grand Ḳāḍī in 759/1358. Appointed Muftī in the Dar al-ʿAdl in 765/1363, he became the most celebrated jurist of his age (cf. Ibn Ḵh̲aldūn, Muḳaddima …

b. al-Walīd al-mak̲h̲zūmī , the only surviving son of the famous Arab general. At the age of eighteen he commanded a squadron at the battle of the Yarmūk. Muʿāwiya subsequently appointed him governor of Ḥimṣ and he commanded several of the later Syrian expeditions ¶ into Anatolia. During the civil war, after successfully opposing an ʿIrāḳī expedition into the Ḏj̲azīra. he joined Muʿāwiya at Ṣiffīn and was made standard-bearer. According to the received tradition, Muʿāwiya, fearing that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān might be a rival of Yazīd for the succ…

, Egyptian scholar and writer, b. in Cairo 2 Muḥarram 1304/1 Oct. 1886, d. 30 Ramaḍān 1373/30 May 1954. After studying in al-Azhar and the School of S̲h̲arʿī Law, he served as a magistrate in the Native Courts, and in 1926 was appointed to the staff of the Egyptian University (U. of Cairo), where from 1936-1946 he was professor of Arabic Literature. In 1947 he became Director of the Cultural Section of the Arab League. Aḥmad Amīn was one of the founders and most active members of the Lad̲j̲nat al-taʾlīf wa’l-tard̲j̲ama wa’l-nas̲h̲r (see U. Rizzitano, in OM, 1940, 31-8), for which he edited…

b. Ḥabīb b. ʿAbd S̲h̲ams b. ʿAbd Manāf b. Ḳuṣayy , Arab general. The name ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was given him by Muḥammad on his conversion in place of his former name ʿAbd al-Kaʿba. His first command was in Sid̲j̲istān in succession to al-Rabīʿ b. Ziyād in the latter years of the caliphate of ʿUt̲h̲mān, when he conquered Zarand̲j̲ and Zamīn-i Dāwar and made a treaty with the ruler of Kirmān. He withdrew after the death of ʿUt̲h̲mān; according to Chinese sources, Pēroz, the son of Yazdigird III, then attempted to establish himself in Sid̲j̲istān (Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-kiue …

, Fāṭimid claimant, born on 10 Rabīʿ I 437/26 September 1045. On the death of his father, having been displaced by his youngest brother al-Mustaʿlī [ q.v.], Nizār fled to Alexandria, took the title of al-Muṣṭafā li-Dīn Allāh, and rose in revolt early in 488/1095 with the assistance of the governor, Naṣr al-Dawla Aftakīn, who was jealous of al-Afḍal, and the population of the city. He was at first successful in driving back al-Afḍal and advanced as far as the outskirts of Cairo, supported by Arab auxiliaries. Al-Afḍal aga…

, “Commander of the Believers” (the translation “Prince of the Believers” is neither philologically nor historically correct), title adopted by ʿUmar b. al-Ḵh̲aṭṭāb on his election as caliph. Amīr , as a term designating a person invested with command ( amr ), and more especially military command, is in this general sense compounded with al-muʾminīn to designate the leaders of various Muslim expeditions both in the lifetime of the Prophet and after, e.g. Saʿd b. Abī Waḳḳāṣ [ q.v.], the commander of the Muslim army against the Persians at Ḳādisiyya. Its adoption as a title…

, harbour on the African coast of the Red Sea, the ruins of which still exist on a flat and waterless mound 12 miles N. of Ḥalayb, at 22° 20′ N., 36° 29′ 32″ E. It is mentioned already in the 3rd/9th century as a port used by pilgrims to Mecca and merchants from al-Yaman (Yaʿḳūbī 335; cf. BGA iii, 78), and was linked to the Nile valley by caravan roads from Aswān (15 days) and Ḳūṣ (17 days). Originally a small village of huts, it grew in importance from the 5th/11th century in consequence of increasing Egyptian commerce with al-Yaman, and was especiall…

, small fishing port on the coast of Palestine, 10 miles north of Jaffa. The Arabic name probably preserves its original dedication to the Semitic god Reseph. Under the Seleucids it was renamed Apollonia. In the early centuries of the Caliphate it was one of the principal fortified cities of the province of Filasṭīn. It was occupied by the Crusaders under Baldwin I in 494/1101 and called by them Azotus; recaptured by Saladin in 583/1187; scene of an engagement between Saladin and Richard I, 14 S…

pre-Islamic title borne by the native princes of Us̲h̲rūsana. the mountainous district between Samarḳand and Ḵh̲ud̲j̲anda, including the upper course of the Zarafs̲h̲ān river (Barthold, Turkestan 2, 165-9). The province was subjected to the Arab governors of Ḵh̲urāsān by an expedition commanded by al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī in 178/794-5, but it was only after an internal conflict and a second expedition under Aḥmad b. Abī Ḵh̲ālid in 207/822 that the ruling afs̲h̲īn Kāwūs accepted Islām. Kāwūs was succeeded by his son Ḵh̲…

b. Yaḥyā b. Saʿd , the founder of Arabic epistolary style, mawlā of the Ḳuras̲h̲ī clan of ʿĀmir b. Luʾayy. He was probably a native of al-Anbār, and is said to have been a travelling pedagogue before he was employed in the Umayyad secretariat under His̲h̲ām’s chief secretary, the mawlā Sālim; he was then attached to Marwān b. Muḥammad, whom he continued to serve as chief secretary after Marwān’s accession to the Caliphate. He refused to desert his master in misfortune and is generally said to have shared his fate at Būṣīr…

, title of two Ayyūbid princes: 1. al-Malik al-ʿĀdil Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Ayyūb , with the honorific title of Sayf al-Dīn ("Sword of the Faith", called by the Crusaders Saphadin ), the brother, assistant, and spiritual heir of Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, [ q.v.]). He was born in Muḥarram 540/June-July 1145, or according to other accounts in 538/1143-4, in Damascus or in Baalbek, thus being six or eight years younger than his celebrated brother. Al-ʿĀdil accompanied Saladin to Egypt in the third and final expedition of S̲h̲īrkūh (564/1169). His first important appointment w…