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Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Hughes, Thomas Patrick
“Dzu Nowâs was a votary of Judaism, which he is said to have embraced on a visit to Medîna. This creed he supported with an intolerant and proselytizing adherence, which at last proved fatal to his kingdom. His bigotry was aroused by the prevalence and success of Christianity in the neighbouring province of Najrân; and he invaded it with a large army. The Christians offered a strenuous resistance, but yielded at length to the treacherous promise that no ill would be done to them. They were offered the choice of Judaism or death, and those who remained constant to the faith of Jesus were cruelly massacred. Deep trenches were dug and filled with combustible materials; the pile was lighted, and the Christian martyrs cast headlong into the flame. The number thus miserably burned, or slain by the sword, is stated at no less than twenty thousand.
“However much the account of this melancholy carnage may have been exaggerated, there can be no doubt of the cruel and bloody character of the tyrant’s administration in Najrân.
“News of the proceedings reached the Emperor Justin I., through his ambassador at Hîra, to which court Dzu Nowâs had exultingly communicated tidings of his triumph. One of the intended victims, Dous dzu Tholabân, also escaped to Constantinople, and holding up a half-burnt gospel, invoked, in the name of outraged Christendom, retribution upon the oppressor. The Emperor was moved, and indited a despatch to the Najâshi, or Prince of the Abyssinians, desiring him to take vengeance upon the barbarous Nimyarite. Immediately an armament was set on foot, and in a short time seventy thousand warriors embarked in thirteen hundred merchant ships or transports, crossed the narrow gulph which separates Yemen from Adulis. Dzu Nowâs was defeated. In despair, he urged his horse into the sea, and expiated in the waves the inhumanities of his career. The Abyssinian victory occurred in 525 A.D.” (Life of Mahomet, 1st ed., Intro., p. clxii.)
NAJSH (نجش). “Exciting; stirring up.” The practice of enhancing the price of goods, by making a tender for them without any intention of buying, but merely to incite others to offer a higher price. It is forbidden by Muḥammadan law. (Hamilton’s Hidāyah, vol. ii. p. 46.)
NAK͟Hʿ (نخع). The Banū ʾn-Nak͟hʿ, an Arabian tribe, the descendants of Qahlān, subdued by ʿAlī during the lifetime of Muḥammad, A.H. 10. Two hundred of this tribe came to tender their allegiance to the Prophet, it being the last deputation received by him. (Muir’s Life of Mahomet, new ed., p. 477.)
NAK͟HLAH (نخلة). A valley about midway between Makkah and at̤-T̤āʾif, famous as the scene of the first expedition planned by Muḥammad against Makkah in which blood was shed. (See Muir’s Life of Mahomet, new ed., p. 216 et seq.)
NĀKIḤ (ناكح). A legal term for a married man; a married woman is termed mankūḥah (منكوحة). The legal term for an unmarried person is ʾazab (عزب).
NAKĪR (نكير). One of the angels who interrogate the dead. [MUNKAR AND NAKIR.]
NAMĀZ (نماز). The Persian and Hindūstānī term for ṣalāt, the Muḥammadan liturgical prayer. [PRAYER.]
NAMES, SURNAMES. Arabic Ism (اسم), Laqab (لقب), Kunyah (كنية). The teaching of Muḥammad very greatly influenced the nomenclature of his followers, as is evident from the chapter devoted to the Traditions on the subject in the Mishkātu ʾl-Masābiḥ, entitled “Bābu ʾl-Asāmī,” book xxii. ch. viii., from which are extracted the following traditional sayings of Muḥammad:—
“The best names in the sight of God are ʿAbdu ʾllāh (the servant of God), ʿAbdu ʾr-Raḥmān (the servant of the Merciful One).”
“You must not name your slaves Yasār (abundance), Rabāḥ (gain), Najīḥ (prosperous), Aflaḥ (felicitous), because if you ask after one of these your domestic servants, and he be not present, the negative reply will express that abundance, or gain, or prosperity, or felicity, are not in your dwelling.”
“The vilest name you can give a human being is Maliku ʾl-Amlāk, or ‘King of Kings,’ because no one can be such but God Himself.”
“You must not say to your slaves, ‘My slave,’ or ‘My slave girl,’ for all your slaves are God’s, but say, ‘My boy,’ or ‘My girl,’ or ‘My youth,’ or ‘My lass.’ And a slave must not say to his master, Yā Rabbī! (i.e. My Lord!), but he may say to him Yā Saiyidī! (My Chief!).”
“Call your children after your Prophet (i.e. Muḥammad), but the names God likes best are ʿAbdu ʾllāh (servant of God), ʿAbdu ʾr-Raḥmān, and the next best names are Ḥāris̤ (husbandman), and Humām (high-minded). The worst of names is Ḥarb (enmity), or Murrah (bitterness).” [Heb. מָרָה, see Ruth i. 20.]
Shuraiḥ ibn Hāniʾ relates that his father came to the Prophet with his tribe, and the Prophet heard them calling him Abū ʾl-Ḥakam. When the Prophet said, “Why do you call him so? Ḥakam, ‘Ruler,’ is an attribute of God.” And the Prophet ordered him to call himself Abū Shuraiḥ, i.e. the father of Shuraiḥ, his eldest son.
Modified, somewhat, by these injunctions of the Prophet, Muḥammadan names have still continued to be ordered amongst learned Muslims according to the ancient custom of Arabia. Persons are often named—
(1) By a single name, as Muḥammad, Mūsā (Moses), Dāʾūd (David), Ibrāhīm (Abraham), Ḥasan, Aḥmad.
(2) As the father or mother of certain persons, e.g. Abū Dāʾūd, the father of David; or Ummu Salimah, the mother of Salimah.
(3) As the son of a certain one, e.g. Ibn ʿUmar, the son of ʿUmar; Ibn ʿAbbās, the son of ʿAbbās, &c.
(4) By a combination of words, e.g. Nūru ʾd-dīn, “Light of Religion”; ʿAbdu ʾllāh, “Servant of God.”
(5) By a nickname of harmless signification, e.g. Abū Hurairah, “the kitten’s father.”
(6) By the trade or profession, e.g. al-Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj, Manṣūr the dresser of cotton.
(7) By the name of his birth-place, e.g. al-Buk͟hārī, the native of Buk͟hārah.
These rules, guiding the nomenclature of the Arabians, give a strange sound to western ears in the names of celebrated authors. For instance, the celebrated compiler of the chief book of authentic traditions is known as “Abū ʿAbdi ʾllāh, Muḥammad, ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Mug͟hīrah al-Juʿfī, al-Buk͟hārī,” which means that his name is Muḥammad and that he is the father of a son named ʿAbdu ʾllāh, and that his own father’s name was Ismāʿīl, the son of Ibrāhīm, the son of Mug͟hīrah, of the tribe of Juʿfī, and that he himself was born in Buk͟hārā.
Arabic names have undergone strange modifications when brought in contact with western languages, e.g. Averroës, the philosopher, is a corruption of Ibn Rashīd; Avicenna, of Ibn Sīnā; Achmet, the Sultan, of Aḥmad; Amurath, of al-Murād; Saladin, the celebrated warrior of the twelfth century, of the Arabic Ṣalāḥu ʾd-dīn, “the peace of religion.”
AN-NAML (النمل). “The Ants.” The title of the XXVIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the 18th verse of which the word occurs: “They came upon the valley of the ants.”
NĀMŪS (ناموس). The angel, spirit, or being, which Waraqah is related to have said appeared to Moses. See Ṣaḥīḥu ʾl-Buk͟hārī, p. 3, where it is said, when Muḥammad told Waraqah, the Jew, what he had seen on Mount Ḥirāʾ, Waraqah exclaimed, “It is the Nāmūs who appeared from God to Moses.”
ʿAbdu ʾl-Ḥaqq says Nāmūs means one who can take knowledge of the secret thoughts of a man, and is used in contradistinction to the word Jāsūs, “a spy,” who seeks to know the evil deeds of another.
According to the Kitābu ʾt-Taʿrifāt, it is the law of God.
Mr. Emanuel Deutsch says: “The nāmūs is a hermaphrodite in words. It is Arabic and also Greek. It is Talmudic. It is, in the first instance, νόμος, ‘law,’ that which by ‘custom and common consent’ has become so. In Talmudic phraseology it stands for the Thorah or Revealed Law. In Arabic it further means one who communicates a secret message. And all these different significations were conveyed by Waraqah to Muhammad.” (Literary Remains, p. 78.)
The word nāmūs occurs in the ethical work known as the Ak͟hlāq-i-Jalālī, in the following passage:—
“The maintenance of equity, then, is realised by three things: (1) The holy institute of God, (2) The equitable Prince, (3) Money, or, as the old philosophers laid it down, the foremost νόμος is the institute, the second νόμος is the Prince who conforms to the institute (for religion and government are twins); and the third νόμος is money (νόμος in their language meaning discipline and correction). Thus the institute or greatest arbitrator is obeyed of all; to this even the Prince or secondary arbitrator is bound to conform. While the third arbitrator, which is money, should be invariably under the authority of the second, which is the Prince. An intimation of this principle we have in the Qurʾān, Sūrah lvii. 25: “We have sent down the book, and the balance along with it, that man might stand by the right, and we have sent down steel (ḥadīd), wherein is mighty power and advantages to man.” The book in this passage alludes to the institute; the balance to that which tests the quantities of things, in fact any instrument for ascertaining the value of heterogeneous objects (money being such an one), and steel to the sword, which is grasped by the might of the wrath-exerting doom-pronouncing Prince.” (Ak͟hlāq-i-Jalālī, Thompson’s ed., p. 127.)
NAQL ṢAḤĪḤ (نقل صحيح). “Correct relation.” A term used for a Ḥadīs̤, or tradition, related by a person of authority. [TRADITIONS.]
AN-NAQSHBANDĪYAH (النقشبندية). An ascetic order of Faqīrs, the followers of K͟hwājah Pīr Muḥammad Naqshband. They are a very numerous sect, and perform the Ẕikr-i-K͟hafī, or silent religious devotion described in the article on ZIKR.
NĀQŪS (ناقوس). A thin oblong piece of wood, which is beaten with a flexible rod called wabīl (وبيل), used by the Christians of Muḥammad’s time to summon the people to worship. At first “the Companions” suggested either a lighted fire or the nāqūs as the call to prayer, but Muḥammad decided upon the aẕān. (Mishkāt, book iv. ch. v. pt. i.) This method of calling Christian people to prayer still exists in some Greek monasteries, and was seen and illustrated by the Hon. R. Curzon in 1833 (Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant). It is called the simandro (σιμανδρο) and is generally beaten by one of the monks. [AZAN.]
THE NAQUS AS USED IN A MONASTERY
AN-NĀR (النار), “the fire,” occurs in the Qurʾān very frequently for hell, e.g. Sūrah ii. 22: “Fear the fire whose fuel is men and stones.”
All Sunnī commentators understand the fire of hell in its literal sense. (See al-Baiẓāwī on the above verse.) But Ṣūfī writers understand it to be merely figurative.
NĀRAWĀ (ناروا). “Unlawful.” A Persian word for those things which are expressly forbidden by the Qurʾān and Ḥadīs̤. It corresponds with the Arabic Ḥarām. [LAW.]