A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

NICKNAME. Arabic nabaz (نبز), pl. anbāz. The calling of nicknames is forbidden in the Qurʾān, Sūrah xlix. 11: “O Believers, let not men laugh men to scorn who haply may be better than themselves. Neither let women laugh women to scorn, who haply may be better than themselves. Neither defame one another, nor call one another by nicknames.”

This verse is said to have been given when Ṣafīyah, one of the Prophet’s wives, complained that she had been taunted by the other women with her Jewish origin. Muḥammad answered her, “Canst thou not say, ‘Aaron is my father, Moses is my uncle, and Muḥammad is my husband.’ ” (See al-Baiẓāwī, in loco.)

NIFĀS (نفاس). The condition of a woman after the birth of a child, during which period she is unclean and is not permitted to perform the usual prayers. According to the Sunnīs, it is a period of forty days, but according to the Shīʿahs, only ten.

NIGHT PRAYERS. Arabic ṣalātu ʾl-layl (صلوة الليل), or ṣalātu ʾt-tahajjud (صلوة التهجد). From eight to twelve rakʿah prayers recited during the night, in addition to the witr prayers, which consist of an odd number of rakʿahs. These prayers are Sunnah, i.e. established according to the custom of the Prophet, but they are voluntary acts of devotion. (Mishkāt, book iv. ch. xxxii.)

Sūrah ii. 260: “Hast thou not thought on him who disputed with Abraham about his Lord, because God had given him the kingdom? When Abraham said, ‘My Lord is He who maketh alive and causeth to die:’ He said, ‘It is I who make alive and cause to die!’ Abraham said, ‘Since God bringeth the sun from the East, do thou, then bring it from the West.’ The infidel was confounded; for God guideth not the evil doers.”

The Rabbins make Nimrod to have been the persecutor of Abraham (comp. Targ. Jon. on Gen. xv. 7; Tr. Bava Bathra, fol. 91a.; Maimon. More Nevochim, iii. 29; Weil, Legenden, p. 74), and the Muḥammadan commentators say, that by Nimrod’s order a large space was inclosed at Kūs̤ā, and filled with a vast quantity of wood, which being set on fire, burned so fiercely that none dared to venture near it; then they bound Abraham, and putting him into an engine (which some suppose to have been of the Devil’s invention), shot him into the midst of the fire, from which he was preserved by the angel Gabriel, who was sent to his assistance, the fire burning only the cords with which he was bound. They add that the fire, having miraculously lost its heat in respect to Abraham, became an odoriferous air, and that the pile changed to a pleasant meadow, though it raged so furiously otherwise, that, according to some writers, about two thousand of the idolaters were consumed by it.

This story seems to have had no other foundation than that passage of Moses, where God is said to have brought Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, misunderstood; which word the Jews, the most trifling interpreters of scripture, and some moderns who have followed them, have translated out of the fire of the Chaldees; taking the word Ur, not for the proper name of a city, as it really is, but for an appellative signifying “fire.” However, it is a fable of some antiquity, and credited not only by the Jews, but by several of the eastern Christians; the twenty-fifth of the second Kānūn, or January, being set apart in the Syrian calendar for the commemoration of Abraham’s being cast into the fire.

The Jews also mention some other persecutions which Abraham underwent on account of his religion, particularly a ten years’ imprisonment, some saying he was imprisoned by Nimrod, and others by his father Terah. Some tell us that Nimrod, on seeing this miraculous deliverance from his palace, cried out that he would make an offering to the God of Abraham; and that he accordingly sacrificed four thousand kine. But if he ever relented, he soon relapsed into his former infidelity, for he built a tower that he might ascend to heaven to see Abraham’s God, which being overthrown, still persisting in his design, he would be carried to heaven in a chest borne by four monstrous birds; but after wandering for some time through the air, he fell down on a mountain with such force that he made it shake, whereto (as some fancy) a passage in the Qurʾān alludes (Sūrah xiv. 47), which may be translated, “Although their contrivances be such as to make the mountains tremble.”

Nimrod, disappointed in his design of making war with God, turns his arms against Abraham, who being a great prince, raised forces to defend himself; but God, dividing Nimrod’s subjects, and confounding their language, deprived him of the greater part of his people, and plagued those who adhered to him by swarms of gnats, which destroyed almost all of them; and one of those gnats having entered into the nostril, or ear, of Nimrod, penetrated to one of the membranes of his brain, where growing bigger every day, it gave him such intolerable pain that he was obliged to cause his head to be beaten with a mallet, in order to procure some ease, which torture he suffered four hundred years; God being willing to punish by one of the smallest of his creatures him who insolently boasted himself to be lord of all. A Syrian calendar places the death of Nimrod, as if the time were well known, on the 8th of Tamūz, or July. (See Sale’s Koran; D’Herbelot’s Bibl. Orient.; al-Baiẓāwī’s Com.)

NĪYAH (نية). A vow; intention; purpose. A term used for the vow or declaration of the intention to perform prayers. ‘I have purposed to offer up to God only with a sincere heart this morning (or, as the case may be), with my face Qiblah-wards two (or, as the case may be) rakʿah prayers farẓ (sunnah, nafl, or witr).’ It is also used by a Muslim about to perform the pilgrimage or the month’s fast. The formula is necessary to render an act of devotion acceptable. [PRAYER.]

“We formerly sent Noah unto his people, saying, Verily I am unto you a plain admonisher that ye worship not [any] but God. Verily I fear for you, if ye worship any other, the punishment of an afflictive day in this world and the world to come.—But the chiefs who disbelieved among his people replied, We see thee not to be other than a man, like unto us; and we see not any to have followed thee except the meanest of us, as the weavers and the cobblers, at first thought (or rashly), nor do we see you to have any excellence above us: nay, we imagine you to be liars in your claim to the apostolic commission. He said, O my people, tell me, if I have an evident proof from my Lord and He hath bestowed on me mercy (the gift of prophecy) from Himself which is hidden from you, shall we compel you to receive it when ye are averse thereto? We cannot do so. And, O my people, I ask not of you any riches for it; namely, for delivering my message. My reward is not due from any but God; and I will not drive away those who have believed as ye have commanded me [because they are poor people]. Verily they shall meet their Lord at the resurrection, and He will recompense them, and will exact for them [reparation] from those who have treated them with injustice, and driven them away. But I see you [to be] a people who are ignorant of the end of your case. And, O my people, who will defend me against God if I drive them away? Will ye not then consider?

And I do not say unto you, I have the treasures of God; nor [do I say], I know the things unseen; nor do I say, Verily I am an angel; nor do I say, of those whom your eyes contemn, God will by no means bestow on them good: (God best knoweth what is in their minds:) verily I should in that case be [one] of the offenders.—They replied, O Noah, thou hast disputed with us and multiplied disputes with us: now bring upon us that punishment wherewith thou threatenest us, if thou be of those that speak truth. He said, Only God will bring it upon you, if He please to hasten it unto you; for it is His affair, not mine; and ye shall not escape God: nor will my counsel profit you, if I desire to counsel you, if God desire to lead you into error. He is your Lord; and unto Him shall ye be brought back.” (Sūrah xi. 27–36.)

“And he uttered an imprecation upon them, saying, O my Lord, leave not upon the earth any one of the unbelievers; for if Thou leave them, they will lead Thy servants into error, and will not beget [any] but a wicked, ungrateful [offspring]. O my Lord, forgive me and my parents (for they were believers), and whomsoever entereth my house (my abode, or my place of worship), being a believer, and the believing men, and the believing women, (to the day of resurrection,) and add not to the offenders [aught] save destruction.” (Sūrah lxxi. 27–29.)

“And God answered his prayer, and said, Construct the ark in our sight and according to our revelation, and speak not unto Me concerning those who have offended, to beg Me not to destroy them; for they [shall be] drowned. And he constructed the ark; and whenever a company of his people passed by him, they derided him. He said, If ye deride us, we will deride you, like as ye deride, when we are saved and ye are drowned, and ye shall know on whom shall come a punishment which shall render him vile, and whom shall befall a lasting punishment. [Thus he was employed] until when Our decree for their destruction came to pass, and the baker’s oven overflowed with water (for this was a signal unto Noah), We said, Carry into it (that is, into the ark) of every pair, male and female, of each of these descriptions, two (and it is related that God assembled for Noah the wild beasts and the birds and other creatures, and he proceeded to put his hands upon each kind, and his right hand fell always upon the male, and his left upon the female, and he carried them into the ark), and thy family (excepting him upon whom the sentence of destruction hath already been pronounced, namely, Noah’s wife, and his son Canaan: but Shem and Ham and Japheth and their three wives he took), and those who have believed; but there believed not with him save a few: they were six men and their wives: and it is said that all who were in the ark were eighty, half of whom were men and half women. And Noah said, Embark ye therein. In the name of God [be] its course and its mooring.

Verily my Lord is very forgiving [and] merciful.—And it moved along with them amid waves like mountains; and Noah called unto his son, Canaan, who was apart from the ark, O my child, embark with us, and be not with the unbelievers! He replied, I will betake me to a mountain which will secure me from the water. [Noah] said, There is nought that will secure to-day from the decree of God [any] but him on whom He hath mercy. And the waves intervened between them; so he became [one] of the drowned. And it was said, O earth, swallow up thy water (whereupon it drank it up, except what had descended from heaven, which became rivers and seas), and, O heaven, cease from raining;—and the water abated, and the decree was fulfilled, and it (namely, the ark), rested on El-Joodee (a mountain of El-Jezeereh, near El-Mósil); and it was said, Perdition to the offending people!” (Sūrah xi. 39–46.)

“And Noah called upon his Lord, and said, O my Lord, verily my son is of my family, and Thou hast promised me to save them, and verily Thy promise is true, and Thou art the most just of those who exercise judgment. God replied, O Noah, verily he is not of thy family who should be saved, or of the people of thy religion. Verily it (namely, thine asking Me to save him) is not a righteous act; for he was an unbeliever, and there is no safety for the unbelievers; therefore ask not of Me that wherein thou hast no knowledge. I admonish thee, lest thou become [one] of the ignorant.—Noah said, O my Lord, I beg Thee to preserve me from asking Thee that wherein I have no knowledge; and if Thou do not forgive me and have mercy upon me, I shall be of those who suffer loss.—It was said, O Noah, descend from the ark, with peace from Us, and blessings, upon thee and upon peoples [that shall proceed] from those who are with thee in the ark (that is, their believing posterity); but peoples [that shall proceed] from those who are with thee We will permit to enjoy the provisions of this world; then a painful punishment shall befall them from Us, in the world to come; they being unbelievers.” (Sūrah xi. 47–50.)

The commentator, al-Baiẓāwī, says that Noah went into the ark on the tenth of Rajab, and came out of it on the tenth of Muḥarram; which therefore became a fast; so that the whole time of Noah’s being in the ark, according to him, was six months; and that Noah was two years in building the ark, which was framed of Indian plane-tree; that it was divided into three stories, of which the lower was designed for the beasts, the middle one for the men and women, and the upper for the birds; and the men were separated from the women by the body of Adam, which Noah had taken into the ark.

NUʿMĀN (نعمان). The name of several of the Kings of Ḥirāʾ. Nuʿmān V. is celebrated in the annals of the history of Arabia, because his reign approached close upon the rise of Islām, and he was the patron of several poets of renown, who have celebrated his name. (See Muir’s Life of Mahomet, 1st ed., Intro. p. clxxxi.)