Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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Subject: Middle East and Islamic Studies
Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson.
With Roger Allen, Edith Ambros, Thomas Bauer, Johann Büssow, Ruth Davis, Ahmed El Shamsy, Maribel Fierro, Najam Haider, Konrad Hirschler, Nico Kaptein, Alexander Knysh, Corinne Lefèvre, Scott Levi, Roman Loimeier, Daniela Meneghini, Negin Nabavi, M'hamed Oualdi, D. Fairchild Ruggles, Ignacio Sánchez, and Ayman Shihadeh.
The Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam is an entirely new work, which sets out the present state of our knowledge of the Islamic World and reflects the great diversity of current scholarship. It is a unique and invaluable reference tool, an essential key to understanding the world of Islam, and the authoritative source not only for the religion, but also for the believers and the countries in which they live. The new scope includes comprehensive coverage of Islam in the twentieth century and of Muslim minorities all over the world.
Jabarti
(549 words)
The term
Jabarti (Ar. Jabartī) refers traditionally to all Muslim people living in the Horn of Africa, members of diverse communities, of different ethnic origins, and speakers of many local languages. There are several etymologies of the term: Ar.
jabbār (strong; strong warrior), Geʾez
agbert (servant of God), Tigrinya
gabari (servant, tenant), the name of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, legendary father of the Darod Somali clan, or the Arabic word
jabart (burning land), which was used to describe the territory of present-day southern Ethiopia and the home of mediaev…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
Date:
2020-12-18
Jābir b. Aflaḥ
(1,705 words)
Abū Muḥammad
Jābir b. Aflaḥ al-Ishbīlī or al-Andalusī was a mathematician and theoretical astronomer who lived most likely in Seville during the first half of the sixth/twelfth century. Virtually nothing is known about his life, but his chronology seems well established due to the fact that: 1) Maimonides (d. 601/1204;
Guide, 268–9) says that he was acquainted with Jābir’s son; 2) According to Ibn al-Qifṭī (d. 645/1248), Joseph ben Yehudah ben Shamʿūn (d. 623/1226) brought Jābir’s
Iṣlāḥ al-Majisṭī (“Revision of the
Almagest”) from Ceuta to al-Fusṭāṭ before 583/1187, where he…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jābir b. Ḥayyān
(3,396 words)
Jābir b. Ḥayyān (b. first half of the second/eighth century, d. c.200/815?) is the alleged author of a vast corpus of mainly alchemical writings. Scholars, however, dispute his very existence and his authorship of that corpus. 1. Biography The earliest biography (with extensive bibliography) is in Ibn al-Nadīm’s
Fihrist (c.380/990, ed. Flügel, 354–8, ed. Sayyid, 2/1:450–8, trans. Fück, 95–104). From this and other biographic accounts—e.g., Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī, 61, trans. Blachère, 111; Ibn al-Qifṭī, 160–1; Ibn Khallikān, 1:291 n. 128 (on Jaʿfar…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jābir b. Zayd
(899 words)
Abū l-Shaʿthāʾ
Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī al-ʿUmānī al-Yaḥmidī al-Jawfī al-Baṣrī was a prominent jurist and traditionist and the founding father of the Ibāḍī movement in Basra. He was born in 18/639 or 21/642 in Nizwā (or Firq, near Nizwā) in Oman. He assumed the leadership of the Ibāḍī community of Basra upon the death of ʿAbdallāh b. Ibāḍ (d. 89/708), the eponym of the movement. Like the latter, Jābir b. Zayd maintained good relations with the Umayyad rulers, but, towards the end of the first/seventh century, he was exiled,…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
al-Jābirī, Muḥammad ʿĀbid
(2,222 words)
Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī (1935–2010) was one of the most influential Arab philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, his major work comprising the four volumes of
Naqd al-ʿaql al-ʿArabī (“The critique of Arab reason”). Al-Jābirī played a significant role in shaping the 1980s and 1990s debate on
aṣāla (authenticity),
muʿāṣara (contemporaneity), and
ḥadātha (modernity) by demanding an “epistemological break” (
qaṭīʿa ībistīmūlūjiyya) with unscientific thought systems and pleading for rationality, realism, and the separation of religion and science. His own pref…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
al-Jābirī, Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ
(747 words)
Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-Jābirī (1940–2009), one of Tunisia’s most prominent writers and critics in the post-independence era, was born in Tozeur, Tunisia, where he received his early education. As a teenager, he moved to Tunis, where he obtained his high school diploma before leaving for Iraq to pursue higher studies. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Arabic literature from the University of Baghdad in 1971, he returned to Tunisia and taught at the high school level before joining the Ministry of…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jabrā, Jabrā Ibrāhīm
(1,190 words)
Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā (1920–94) was a Palestinian novelist, short-story writer, literary and art critic, free-verse poet, essayist, prolific translator, and amateur painter. Born in 1920 in Bethlehem to a family whose original name was Chelico (as spelled by the family) and who belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Church, he went to school and church in Bethlehem until the age of twelve. He then moved with his family to Jerusalem, where he continued his education and graduated in 1937 from the Arab Colle…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jacob
(1,572 words)
Jacob was a prophet mentioned in several Qurʾānic verses. He is mentioned along with Abraham, for what they recommended to his sons (Q 2:132). His name appears after the names of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac (Q 2:136, 140, 3:84, 4:163) and, in some passages, before the names of other prophets, as representing the revelation given to Abraham and his progeny or in relation to prophecy. He is usually mentioned after Isaac: Isaac and his son Jacob and with their progeny were given to Abraham (Q 19:49…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jacob bar Shakkō
(709 words)
Jacob bar Shakkō (d. 638–9/1240–1), known also as Severus, was a Syrian Orthodox Christian monk and scholar. Born in the village of Barṭelli, east of Mosul, he entered the nearby monastery of Mār Mattay, and later became its abbot and bishop. The way in which his name is recorded in the sources suggests that Jacob was his episcopal name, while the more episcopal-sounding Severus was the name by which he was known before becoming bishop. Barhebraeus (d. 685/1286,
Chronicon ecclesiasticum, Louvain 1872–7, 2:409–11) tells us that Bar Shakkō studied “grammar and the first book…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jacob of Edessa
(547 words)
Jacob of Edessa (d. 89/708) was a renowned polymath Syriac scholar and the Miaphysite (i.e., Syriac Orthodox or monophysite) bishop of Edessa. His extant writings include many of the most important Christian observations concerning the first century of Islam. According to later mediaeval historians, Jacob was born in about 11/632 in the province of Antioch. Ordained as bishop of Edessa (present-day Urfa, Turkey) in about 64/684, Jacob gained a reputation for strict adherence to church regulations.…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jaʿd b. Dirham
(619 words)
Jaʿd b. Dirham was an Umayyad-era heretic who was executed by Khālid al-Qasrī sometime during the latter’s reign as governor of Iraq (105–120/724–738), either in Kufa or in the provincial capital Wāsiṭ. Details about his activities, origins, and beliefs are both limited and tainted by later exaggerations and revisions. None of his writings or doctrinal statements survive. Jaʿd reportedly lived for a time in Damascus, but originated in either Khurāsān or Ḥarrān, in the Jazīra. He eventually fled fr…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jadidism
(1,516 words)
Jadidism (from Ar.
uṣūl jadīda, new sources) was a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century project to transform Turco-Islamic cultures within or indirectly influenced by the Russian Empire. Jadidism emerged between the 1840s and 1870s amongst Muslim intellectuals as a fragmented but spirited call for educational reform and wider dissemination of practical knowledge through the modern press. It became, by the early twentieth century, an all-encompassing social movement committed to modernity that…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jaʿfar b. Abī Yaḥyā
(1,548 words)
Shams al-Dīn Abū l-Faḍl
Jaʿfar b. Abī Yaḥyā Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Buhlūlī (d. 573/1177–8) was a Yemeni Zaydī Shīʿī theologian and judge, hence his common name al-Qāḍī Jaʿfar. His life and intellectual career reflect the country’s complex sectarian landscape and are linked to developments that occurred first during the sixth/twelfth century. He occupies a central role in the Zaydī narrative of an important endeavour of cultural exchange between the members of the community based in the northern highlands of Yemen and their co-religionists in the Caspian region of northern Iran. In …
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jafr
(2,340 words)
Jafr is a political-eschatological divinatory discourse originally associated with the Shīʿī Imāms that, over time, came to refer to a range of divinatory practices and millenarian discourses and became nearly synonymous with the science of letters
(ʿilm al-ḥurūf). 1.
Jafr in early Shīʿī sources In early Shīʿī sources, a
jafr is a text or collection of texts that forms an important basis of the esoteric knowledge possessed by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), cousin and son-in-law of Muḥammad, and the later Imāms, particularly regarding political…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
al-Jaghmīnī
(2,267 words)
Sharaf al-Dīn Abū ʿAlī Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar
al-Jaghmīnī (al-Chaghmīnī) al-Khwārazmī (d. c.618/1221–2) composed multiple scientific works (in astronomy, arithmetic, astrology, and medicine) in Arabic in the late sixth/twelfth and early seventh/thirteenth centuries under the auspices of the Khwārazmshāhs in Central Asia. Two of his compositions in particular became popular textbooks: an introduction to Ptolemaic theoretical astronomy,
al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī ʿilm al-hayʾa al-basīṭa; and a medical treatise,
al-Qānūnča (“The ‘little
Qānūn’”), an abridgement of Ibn Sīn…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jahāngīr
(4,204 words)
Salīm Muḥammad Nūr al-Dīn
Jahāngīr (b. 17 Rabīʿ I 977/30 August 1569, d. 27 Ṣafar 1037/29 October 1627), posthumously known, according to the Mughal dynastic tradition, as
Janāt Makānī (whose place is in heaven), was the fourth emperor in the Tīmūrid-Mughal line, established in India in 932/1526 by the Tīmūrid-Chaghatay prince Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur (r. 932–7/1526–30). Although Jahāngīr’s reign began and ended in princely rebellion, the period of his rule was one of relative peace and stability. Unlike the reign of hi…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jahān Sūz
(864 words)
Abū ʿAlī ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Ḥusayn Ikhtiyār Amīr al-Muʾminīn (r. 544–56/1149–61), known to posterity as
Jahān Sūz (lit., world-burner) for his vengeful sacking of the city of Ghazna, in present-day Afghanistan, is the Ghūrid ruler who first made the dynasty a major regional power. He was one of the seven sons of the chieftain ʿIzz al-Dīn Ḥusayn (r. c.493–540/1100–46) and, upon his father’s death, governed Wujīristān, the district west of Ghazna, as an appanage under his brother Sayf al-Dīn Sūrī (r. c.540–4/1146–9). …
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jāhīn, Ṣalāḥ
(1,038 words)
Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥilmī
Jāhīn (1930–86), an Egyptian intellectual, made important contributions to Egyptian colloquial poetry, the art of the cartoon, theatre, television, and cinema. He was also an influential editor for two of the most widely circulated Egyptian cultural journals of the second half of the twentieth century,
Rūz al-yūsuf and
Ṣabāḥ al-khayr. Jāhīn was born on 25 December 1930 in the Shubrā quarter of Cairo. When he was four years old, his father was appointed as a prosecuting attorney for the Egyptian government. During Jāhīn’s…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jainism and Jains
(3,669 words)
Jainism is a religion that originated in eastern India. Its most recent founder, Mahāvīra (lit., great hero, traditionally dated 599–27 or 582–10 B.C.E. but dated c.497–25 B.C.E. by scholars), was an elder contemporary of the Buddha. Mahāvīra is regarded as the last of twenty-four figures in our age known as
tīrthāṅkaras (lit., ford makers, that is, those who show the way to liberation from the predicament of death and rebirth, which is thought of as crossing over a vast ocean) or
jinas (victors) (unless otherwise indicated, all Indo-Aryan words in this entry are in Sanskrit…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18
Jaipur
(2,390 words)
Jaipur (Hindi Jayapura) is the capital of the state of Rajasthan in northwestern India (latitude N 26°55′, longitude E 75°49′) and has a population of more than three million six hundred thousand (estimate for 2018). 1. Early history Its walled city, on which this article focuses, was built by King Sawāī Jayasiṃha (Jaisingh, r. 1112–56/1700–43) as the new residence of the Rājpūt Kachhavāhā dynasty. The former residence, Āmer (also Āmber), now part of Jaipur, retained its ritual function for the dynasty (Horstmann,
Jaipur 1778). With construction work under way, the city’s offi…
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Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
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2020-12-18