Interpreting the Self "d0e10968"

GLOSSARY

‘Abbāsids: Dynasty that ruled 750 to 1258 [C.E.]; their claim to the caliphate was challenged by a number of other regimes such as the Spanish Umayyads in the ninth century and the North African Fatimids in the tenth.
aḥwāl (sing. ḥāl): Lit. “states” or “conditions”; used along with aṭwār (stages) to refer to the stages in a person's life history.
akhbār (see khabar): Lit. “reports” or “news”; an account of an event often accompanied by an isnād (sequence of transmitters) and sometimes by a poem composed about the event.
akhbārī: Adj., refers to the narration of history through a series of individual reports of events (akhbār) rather than the assimilation of these accounts into a single synthesized narrative created by the historian; as a noun it can refer to any of a number of early historians who compiled verses, genealogies, and historical reports.
al-Azhar: Mosque and later university established by the Shi‘ite Fatimid dynasty in Cairo in 972; after the fall of the Fatimids and reinstatement of Sunnī Islam in Egypt with the ascension of Saladin, it came to be recognized as the preeminent academic institution of Sunnī Islam.
aṭwār (sing ṭawr): Lit. “stages”; used along with aḥwāl (states) to refer to a person's life history.
barnāmaj (pl. barāmij): Originally Persian; in Islamic Spain and North Africa the term in Arabic indicated among other meanings a biography or an autobiography, particularly among religious scholars and Sufi mystics.
bey: Turkish title of nobility also used in Arab countries during the Ottoman and modern periods.
Būyids: Persian dynasty of the tenth and early eleventh century that seized political power from the ‘Abbāsids while retaining nominal allegiance to the authority of the caliph.
caliph: Lit. “successor”; the head of the Islamic community following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 C.E.; in the early centuries the caliph was both the political and the spiritual head of the community, but each of these two functions became diluted with the passage of time, and in some periods the caliph was nothing more than a figurehead, while other social groups and figures wielded temporal and/ or religious power.
dā‘ī (pl. du‘āt): Missionary of Ismā‘īlī Shi‘ism during the Middle Ages.
dīwān: Among other meanings, the collected poetry of an author published as a single anthology.
fahrasa/fihrist (pl. fahāris): Originally Persian, used to mean an index, a bibliography, and, in Islamic Spain and North Africa, a biography or an autobiography, particularly of a religious scholar or Sufi figure.
Fatimids: Ismā‘īlī Shi‘ite dynasty that ruled parts of North Africa and later Egypt from the late ninth century to 1171 [C.E.]
ḥadīth: Account of a statement or action of the Prophet Muhammad passed down with an isnād (sequence of transmitters).
ḥāl: See aḥwāl
ijāza: Certificate of authorization passing on to a second party the right to teach, lecture on, or claim mastery of a specific work or body of work.
ikhwāniyyāt: Lit. “fraternal correspondence”; writings among members of a Sufi brotherhood, for example; within a tarjama or sīra, a section of the text including sample letters written by the subject of the biography or autobiography.
Īlkhānids: Mongol dynasty that ruled in Persia from the thirteenth through the fifteenth century [C.E.]
Imāmīs (also known as "Twelvers"): Main branch of Shi‘ite Islam that recognizes the spiritual authority of a chain of twelve Imāms (leaders) from among the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through ‘Alī, his cousin and son-in-law. ‘Alī is recognized as the fourth caliph by Sunnī Muslims, but Shi‘ites recognize him as the immediate spiritual successor to Muhammad himself and the first of the Imāms.
Ismā‘īlīs (also known as "Seveners"): Branch of Shi‘ite Islam that, with the Imāmīs, recognizes a series of Imāms beginning with ‘Alī but, unlike the Imāmīs, recognizes only seven such figures, rather than twelve. The split occurred over whether the sixth Imām's elder son, Ismā‘īl, or younger son, Mūsā, would become the seventh Imām; the Imāmīs recognized the latter and the Ismā‘īlīs the former, hence their name.
isnād: Sequence of transmitters for a khabar or a ḥadīth (e.g., “I heard this from so-and-so who heard it from so-and-so who heard it from his father who was with the Prophet—Upon him be Peace and God's Blessings—when he said the following . . .”).
karamāt (sing. karāma): Miracles or wonders performed by God in response to the prayers of a particularly pious believer.
khabar (pl. akhbār): Account or report; see akhbār.
khaṭīb: Person appointed by mosque or state authorities to deliver the official Friday oration (“sermon”) during congregational prayer services.
khedive: Title used for the ruler of Egypt in the nineteenth century.
maghāzī: Lit. “raids”; originally, the historical accounts of the campaigns of the early Islamic community during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad; later, often used as a synonym for the sīra, or biography, of the Prophet.
manāmāt: Lit. “dreams”; in a biography or an autobiography, a discrete section recounting the dreams of the subject of the text and dreams that others had relating to him or her; interchangeable with manāẓir.
manāqib: Term of unclear origin that came to mean “virtues”; often used in the title of biographies of spiritual figures.
manāẓir: Lit. “visions”; in a biography or an autobiography, a discrete section recounting the visions of the subject of the text and visions that others had relating to him or her; interchangeable with manāmāt.
mashyakha: List of teachers; sometimes an independent work, otherwise the section listing the subject's teachers and what he or she studied with them in a biography or an autobiography (see also mu‘jam and thabat).
mu‘jam: Lit. “collection”; in the context of a biography or autobiography, a list of teachers (see mashyakha).
mujtahid: Jurist with the authority to make broad rulings on difficult questions in religious law.
Mu‘tazilite: N.; any of a number of theologians who advocated free will, divine justice, and allegorical interpretations of the Qur’ān; most prominent during the eighth through twelfth centuries.
pasha: Turkish title of nobility used in some Arab countries in Ottoman and modern times.
qudwa: Example for emulation; righteous figure after whose words and actions one should pattern one's own life; most commonly used in reference to the Prophet Muhammad.
Qur’ān: Divine scripture of Islam, believed by Muslims to have been revealed in inimitable Arabic to the Prophet Muhammad between 610 and 632 C.E. and regarded as God's final revelation to humankind.
rasā’il (sing. risāla): Letters or correspondence; in a biography or an autobiography, a discrete section containing samples of the subject's correspondence.
riḥla: Lit. “travel” or “journey”; a popular literary genre of first-person travel accounts; in a biography or an autobiography, a discrete section detailing the subject's travels.
Safavids: Shi‘ite dynasty that extended its control over all of Persia during the reign of its founder, Ismā‘īl (d. 1524), and ruled there until 1737.
Shi‘ite: Member of one of two main branches of Islam [cf. Sunnī] that recognize the spiritual authority of a chain of Imāms from among the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter, Fāṭima, and ‘Alī, his cousin and son-in-law; ‘Alī is recognized as the fourth caliph by Sunnī Muslims, but Shi‘ites recognize him as the immediate spiritual successor to Muhammad himself and the first of the Imāms; the term comes from the phrase shī‘at ‘Alī, the “party of ‘Alī” or “supporters of ‘Alī.”
sīra (pl. siyar): From the Arabic verb sāra, “to go,” meaning, inter alia, (1) behavior or conduct; (2) path or travel; (3) an independent work consisting of a biography or an autobiography; (4) a polemical or ideological stance; and (5) a legal work addressing the conduct of war and international relations.
sīra dhātiyya: Lit. “self-sīra”; twentieth-century neologism used to translate the western concept “autobiography” in modern Arabic literary writings (see also tarjama shakhṣiyya).
Sufism: Mystical tradition of Islamic piety and thought that gave rise in the Middle Ages to organized orders emphasizing varying degrees of asceticism, group ritual, ecstatic experience, and esoteric teachings.
Sunnī: Member of one of the two main branches of Islam (cf. Shi‘ite) that recognizes the authority of the historical caliphs, including the Umayyads and ‘Abbāsids, as heads of the Islamic community, in contrast to Shi‘ite recognition of a line of spiritual leaders known as Imāms; the term comes from the idea of the sunna (words and deeds) of the Prophet Muhammad that is accorded a spiritual authority second only to that of the Qur’ān.
ṭabaqāt: Lit. “classes” or “generations” (sing. ṭabaqa); a work providing biographical information organized into “notices” or “entries” (tarājim, sing. tarjama) about a specific social group.
tafsīr: Exegetical commentary on the Qur’ān.
tarjama (pl. tarājim): Originally Aramaic with multiple meanings in Arabic: (1) to translate from one language to another; (2) to give a text a title; (3) to subdivide a text into sections with subheadings; (4) to interpret or analyze a text; and (5) a biographical or an autobiographical notice included in a larger work.
tarjama shakhṣiyya: Lit. “personal biographical notice”; a twentieth-century neologism used to translate the western concept “autobiography” in modern Arabic literary writings (see also sīra dhātiyya).
thabat: List of teachers (see mashyakha and mu‘jam) and later, in some regions, a biographical entry similar to a tarjama, definition 5.
ṭawr: See aṭwār.
Umayyads: Arab dynasty of caliphs that ruled in the eastern Mediterranean from 661 to 750 C.E.; an extension of this family who later ruled in Spain from 756 to 1031.
Ya‘ruba (also Ya‘riba): Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dynasty of Oman.