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(a.), pl. nawāḳīs , a kind of rattle once used and in some places still used by Eastern Christians to summon the community to divine service. It is a board pierced with holes which is beaten with a rod. The name, which comes from the Syriac nāḳōs̲h̲ā , is not infrequently found with the verbs ḍaraba or ṣakka in the old Arabic poets, especially when early morning is to be indicated, e.g. ʿAntara, app.; Labīd, 19, 6; ZDMG, xxxiii, 215; Mutalammis, ed. Vollers, 178, v. 6; al-Aʿs̲h̲ā, in Nöldeke’s Delectus , 26; Kitāb al-Ag̲h̲ānī , xix, 92. According to tradition, Muḥam…

, later often pronounced Munā , a place in the hills east of Mecca on the road from it to ʿArafa [ q.v.]. The distance between the two is given by al-Muḳaddasī as one farsak̲h̲ , while Wavell calls it five miles and says the continuation to ʿArafa is nine miles. Minā lies in a narrow valley running from west to east, 1,500 paces long according to Burckhardt, surrounded by steep barren granite cliffs. On the north side rises a hill called T̲h̲abīr. Travellers from Mecca come down into the valley by a hill path with steps in it; this is the ʿAḳaba [ q.v.] which became famous in connection with Muḥam…

, daughter of the Prophet Muḥammad and his first wife Ḵh̲adīd̲j̲a [ q.v.]. Little is known of her and much of this is similar to traditions about her sister Ruḳayya [ q.v.]. Umm Kult̲h̲ūm is said to have married a son of Abū Lahab [ q.v.] but to have been divorced by him by his father’s orders before the marriage was consummated. Her ¶ brother-in-law ʿUt̲h̲mān (later the third caliph) married her after Ruḳayya’s death during the Badr campaign. She died in S̲h̲aʿbān of the year 9 without having borne a son with him. Classical Muslim scholars connected Umm Kult̲h̲ūm to traditions about mul…

is an old Arabic formula of invocation: "Allāh!", for which also Lahumma is found (cf. Nöldeke, Zur Grammatik d. class. Arab., 6). Whether, as Wellhausen supposes in his Reste arabischen Heidentums 2, 224, it was originally meant for the god Allāh, higher than and different from the old Arabian gods, is rather doubtful, because every god might be invoked as "the God" (just as "the Lord". It was used in praying, offering, concluding a treaty and blessing or cursing (see Goldziher, Abhandlungen z. arab . Philol ., i, 35 ff.; cf. also the expression Allāhuma ḥayyi =much …

b. Ismāʿīl b. al-Ḥasan b. Zayd , a descendant of the preceding, founder of an ʿAlid dynasty in Ṭabaristān [ q.v.]. The high-handed rule of the Ṭāhirids on the one hand and, on the other, the settlement of ʿAlid elements in the region led to a rising in favour of al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, al-dāʿī al-kabīr , in 250/864. Al-Ḥasan, who was living at Rayy, was proclaimed sovereign by a section of the population of Ṭabaristān and received the allegiance of Wahsūdān b. Ḏj̲ustān of Daylam [ q.v.]. He succeeded in defeating the Ṭāhirid troops and seizing the towns of Āmul and Sāriya, while D̲j̲us…

, the last wife that Muḥammad married. She stemmed from the Hawāzin tribe of ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa and was a sister-in-law of al-ʿAbbās. After she had divorced her first husband, a T̲h̲aḳafi, and her second, the Kuras̲h̲ī Abū Rukm, had died, she lived as a widow in Mecca where the Prophet wooed her, primarily no doubt for political reasons, on the ʿumra allowed to him in the year 7/629. His wish to marry her in Mecca was refused by the Meccans, in order not to prolong his stay there; the marriage therefore took place in Sarif, a village north of Mecca. Her brother-in-law al-ʿAbbās acted as her walī …

b. Rabīʿa , mother of Muʿāwiya; this Meccan woman, who belonged to the clan of the ʿAbd S̲h̲ams (see the list of her maternal ancestors in Muḥ. b. Ḥabīb, Muḥabbar , 19), had mairied as her third husband Abū Sufyān b. Ḥarb, to whom she bore other children besides the future caliph. Traditions hostile to the Umayyads draw an extremely repellant portrait, apparently something of a caricature, of this short, stout woman who quite certainly had a highly passionate temperament and who on different occasions m…

b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib was a pious man, who, following the example of his father and grandfather, abandoned all political aspirations and reconciled himself to ʿAbbāsid rule. His daughter became the wife of al-Saffāḥ while he himself lived at the Caliph’s court, and is even said to have occasionally communicated the views of his ʿAlid relatives and their dependants to al-Manṣūr. In 150/767 al-Manṣūr made him governor ¶ of Medina, but in 155/772 he aroused the Caliph’s wrath and was dismissed, imprisoned and had his property confiscated. But restitution was made to…

, poor, a loanword which has shown remarkable vitality. It goes back to the Assyrian muskénu, “poor” (in the Laws of Hammurabi it is a name for a class between those enjoying full citizenship and slaves; according to L. W. King: freemen who do not belong to the ruling race). In the meaning “poor” it has passed into Aramaic ( meskīn), Hebrew ( miskēn), North Arabic ( miskīn or, against analogy, maskīn), into Southern Arabic and Ethiopie ( meskīn). It has passed from Arabic into Italian as meschino and into French as mesquin. In Arabic, on the analogy of the form mifʿīl, it is usually of common g…

or Aṭrābulus, the Greek Tripolis, a town in Syria near the coast of the Mediterranean, north of Ḏj̲ubail. It lies partly on and partly beside a hill at the exit of a deep ravine through which flows a river, the Nahr Ḳadīs̲h̲a (Arabic Abū ʿAlī). West of it stretches a very fertile plain covered with woods, which terminate in a peninsula on which lies the port of al-Minā. The harbour is protected by a series of rocky islets lying in front of it and by the remains of an old wall. The old Phoenician …

(pl. ḥunafāʾ) appears repeatedly in the Ḳorʾān as the name of those who possess the real and true religion; e.g. in Sūra, x. 105; xxii. 32; xxx. 29; xcviii. 4 etc. It is used particularly of Abraham as the representative of the pure worship of God. As a rule it contrasts him with the idolaters as in iii. 89; vi. 79, 162; x. 105; xvi. 121, 124; xxii. 32; but in one or two passages it at the’ same time describes him as one who was neither a Jew nor a Christian; e. g. ii. 129: they (the Ahl al-Kitāb) say, become Jews or Christians that ye may be rightly guided! But thou shalt say: the religion of Abraham as a ḥanīf; …

b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, surnamed Abu ’l-Faḍl, uncle of Muḥammed. He was only three or, according to Ibn Ḥad̲j̲ar, two years older than the latter. He was a merchant and, differing in this very much from his brothers Abū Ṭālib and ʿAbd Allāh, he made a large fortune; he lent money at interest and possessed a garden at Ṭāʾif; according to Ibn His̲h̲ām (p. 953) and ¶ Ṭabarī (i. 1739), he took in his commerce travels the style of a descendant of the ancient kings. It may therefore well be, as it is reported, that the right of supplying drink to pilgrims was conferre…

, the ancient Gerasa, at the foot of the southeastern part of the ʿAd̲j̲lūn range, in a little valley whose waters flow into the Wādi ’l-Zarḳā, the Wādi ’l-Dēr or Wādī Ḏj̲aras̲h̲, the Chrysorroas of the Greeks. The town is first mentioned in the Maccabee period and appears to have been one of the Hellenistic towns which arose after Alexander the Great. After being incorporated in the Jewish kingdom by Alexander Jannaeus, it again won its freedom probably through Pompey’s efforts and was reckoned as…

, a town in Arabia, the residence of Muḥammad after the Hid̲j̲ra, and capital of the Arab empire under the first caliphs. The real Arabic name of the town was Yat̲h̲rib, Jathrippa (this is the correct reading) in Ptolemy and Stephan Byzantinus, Jt̲h̲rb in Minaean inscriptions (M. Hartmann, Die arabische Frage, p. 253 sq.). Al-Madīna on the other hand is a descriptive word “the town” and is taken from the Aramaic, in which Medīnta means strictly, “area of jurisdiction” and hence town (of some size). In the Meccan sections of the Ḳurʾān it is found as an appellative with the plural al-Madāʾin, wh…

, in Theophanes, Chronographia, 347: Sapphin, in a Syriac inscription of the beginning of the ninth century ṣfʾ (Chabot in J. A., 1900, p. 285), a place not far from the right bank of the Euphrates, west of Raḳḳa, between it and Balis, separated from the river by a strip of marshland an arrowshot broad (according to B.G.A., vii. 22, 15: 500 ells) and two parasangs long, overgrown with dense willows and Euphrates palms, full of waterholes, through which a single paved road led to the Euphrates. The place was made famous by the great battle fought there in…

, the old capital of the Ammonites, in the Old Testament Rabbat Benē ʿAmmōn or Rabba, later Rabbatamana, Amman, Ammana or called by the hellenistie name Philadelphia. This city, which at the time of the Romans was of great importance, was taken by Yazīd b. Abī ¶ Sufyān after the capture of Damascus (14 = 635). It became the capital of the fruitful region of al-Balḳāʾ with a trade in corn, sheep and honey. The inhabitants were, at the time of al-Muḳaddasī, principally S̲h̲īʿas. The magnificent ruins date back to Roman times, with the excepti…

, Muḥammad’s first wife, was a daughter of Ḵh̲uwailid of the Ḳurais̲h̲ family of ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā. The authorities are unanimous in saying that when she made Muḥammad’s acquaintance and took him into her service she was a well-to-do merchant’s widow who was carrying on business independently. She had been twice married previously and had children of both marriages. The one husband was a Mak̲h̲zūmī, the other a Tamīmī, Abū Hāla, whose real name is variously given; but this Abū Hāla is also mentioned…

, a prophet mentioned in the Ḳurʾān who, according to Sūra xi. 91, came later than Hūd, Ṣālih and Lot; according to Sūra xxvi. 176—189 which belongs to the middle Meccan period he was sent to the “people of the thicket” ( al-Aika) who are again mentioned in 1. 13; xv. 78; xxxviii. 12. In the later Meccan Sūras, xi. 85—98; xxix. 35 sq.; vii. 83—91, he appears ¶ among the inhabitants of Madyan [q. v.] as their brother Only later commentators identify him with the unnamed father-in-law of Moses the Old Testament Jethro who lived in Madyan mentioned in xxviii. 21 sqq. (cf. v. 45), but there is no fo…

(a.), corruption of a document, whereby the original sense is altered. It may happen in various ways, by direct alteration of the written text, by arbitrary alterations in reading aloud the text which is itself correct, by omitting parts of it or by interpolations or by a wrong exposition of the true sense. The Muslims found occasion to deal with this conception in connection with those passages in the Ḳurʾān where Muḥammad accused the Jews of falsifying the books of revelation given them, i. e. the Thora, ḥarrafū [cf. ḳorʾān, vol. ii. 1066a]. This accusation was really the only way of…

, a town on the pilgrim road and on the railway from Damascus to Medīna (according to Yāḳūt four days’ journey from al-Ḥid̲j̲r and 12 from Medīna). It lies on a slight undulation of the sandy plain and has a very good well, probably the one mentioned in Arab legend. ¶ The most important building is the pilgrim’s fort built according to the inscription in 1064 (1654), the oldest parts of which can easily be distinguished from the later restorations. Beside it is a modern mosque built of beautifully hewn stones. Euting found the place empty excep…