Ian Richard Netton - A Popular Dictionary of Islam

First published
By RoutledgeCurzon
15 The Quadrant, Richmond
Surrey, TW9 1BP

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006

Copyright 1992 by lan R. Netton

Revised edition 1997
Cover photograph by Sharon Hoogstraten
Cover design by Kim Bartko

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7007 1046 9

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Islam is one of the worlds great religions. It has become a truism to acknowledge, also, that it is much more than merely a religion to be practised on a Friday in the Mosque. Islam embraces - or should embrace - the entirety of mans life. This may help to explain to the reader coming fresh to the subject why this Dictionary covers so many diverse topics ranging from famous battles to details of ritual purity. Not surprisingly, Islam has been surveyed by a huge number of books. A few, which may be of further use to the interested reader, are listed at the back of this Dictionary in the Guide to Further Reading. The quality of the books which deal with Islam, in both the West and the East, is also various, embracing the good and the bad, the profoundly bigoted and the devoutly sympathetic.

This Popular Dictionary of Islam aims to be an inexpensive, yet profusely cross-referenced, literary tool and source book which may be of use to layman, student and scholar alike, both Muslim and non-Muslim, surveying and introducing as it does diverse aspects of Islams religion, ritual, theology, philosophy, law, history, art and architecture plus many others. Of course, the author is very much aware that the compilation of any dictionary, particularly of one which claims to be popular, is a highly subjective affair. Everyone has his or her own ideas about what is crucially important and the compiler is thus a hostage to his readers interests, preferences and scholarly emphases. I hope that I have not omitted anything vital. I have tried to present the bare minimum of what is an immensely rich and vitally important subject. The approach has been, in so far as it is humanly possibly, objective and phenomenological which does not, however, preclude immense respect for all the subjects here treated. I am, of course, responsible for all errors of commission, omission, misinterpretations and misprints which may unwittingly have crept into the text. If readers will kindly notify me of these, I will do my best to rectify them in any future edition.

For the sake of completeness, and because of their Islamic origins, entries are included for subjects like Bbism, the Bahs and the Druze. I am aware that some will dispute the right of such entries to appear in a Dictionary dealing with Islam.

It is a particular, and unusual if not unique, feature of this Dictionary that it contains an individual entry for each one of the 114 chapters (s ras ) of the Qur'n, listed under its Arabic title. These entries, however, while they do claim to give a brief flavour of the content of each Qur'nic Chapter, do not in any way claim to provide an exhaustive summary or paraphrase of what is contained in that Chapter. Qur'nic verses and Chapter numbers referred to in this Dictionary follow those of the Royal Cairo Edition of the Arabic text of the Qur'n printed in The Bounteous Koran, ed. M. M. Khatib, (see Guide to Further Reading at the back of this volume for full bibliographical details). This bilingual Arabic-English edition of the Qur'n was approved by Al-Azhar in 1984.

Finally, it is a pleasure to acknowledge some of the debts of gratitude which I have incurred in the writing and compilation of this Dictionary. My thanks and love go firstly to my wife and family for their patience and tolerance. I am grateful to Mrs Sheila Westcott for her exemplary typing of parts of this work; and to Miss Heather Eva, Director of the Inter-Library Loans Department of the University of Exeter Library for superb service: she never panicked even when I did! David Firth, a former student, kindly sent materials on Islamic banking, and al-Hajj Ismail Abd al-Halim generously supplied me with information on the Islamic Conference Organisation. Dr Fadia Faqir, Dr Talib al-Saraf and the Cultural Section of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London all gave freely and generously of their time to answer questions about Middle Eastern place names and the topography of various areas which I had not myself visited. I am also very grateful to my colleagues, Mr Brian Pridham, Director of the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies in the University of Exeter, and Dr Charles Davies, Research Fellow in that Centre, for much valuable information and help. It has been a pleasure every year to invite Dr Richard Hitchcock, Head of the Department of Spanish and Reader in Hispano-Arabic Studies in the University of Exeter, to lecture to my first year undergraduate students on Islamic Spain: a few of the ideas gleaned from these lectures are incorporated in this Dictionary. My final thanks go to Dr Lynn Williams, also of the Department of Spanish at Exeter University, for his encouragement and provision of useful and fascinating information which I have incorporated in this Dictionary.

Ian Richard Netton
University of Exeter
June 1991

ABBREVIATIONS