'ABDULLAH IBN MOHAMMED IBN YUSUF NASR AL-AZDI, a historian, born at Cordova a.d. 942; was killed at the taking of his native city by Suleyman in 1013.
'ABDULLAH IBN MOSLEM IBN KOTEYBAH, a celebrated historian, born at Bagdad a.d. 828-9, where he died a.d. 889-90. He held a professorship in one of the colleges of his native city.
'ABDULLAH IBN MOSLEMAH IBN AL-AFTTAS ATTOJIBI´, founder of the dynasty of the Beni Al-Afttas. Born in 1004-5; died in 1060-63.
ABDULLAH IBN SA'D, one of Mahomet's first converts. He was employed by the Prophet in writing down his revelations. At a subsequent period the Khalif 'Othman appointed him governor of Egypt.
'ABDULLAH IBNU-L-HIJA´RI´, a celebrated historian, born at Cangera in 1105. He possessed a very large library, collected in his travels through Africa, Egypt, and Syria, which was valued at his death, in 1195, at 30,000 dinárs, or about £15,000. He wrote a valuable history of Spain.
'ABDULLAH IBN YASIN, founder of the dynasty of the Almoravides, who ruled over the greater part of Africa and Spain for nearly a century. He was sent to Africa as a teacher of religion, but soon adopted the sword as a means to force the faith of Islam on the various tribes. He exercised the functions of royalty, but preferred the title of fakib (or theologian).
'ABDU'-L-LATTIF, an Arab philosopher and physician, born at Bagdad in 1162. He studied in his native city, and practised medicine there for some time. He left it in 1185, and resided successively at Mosul, Damascus, and Jerusalem. He obtained the friendship of Bahadin, the vizier and favourite of Sultan Saladin. Through the vizier's influence he was furnished with the means of travelling in Egypt. On his return, he was appointed to a professorship at Damascus. After traversing Asia Minor, and residing some time at Aleppo, he returned to Bagdad with great renown as a physician, and died there in 1231, when on the point of proceeding on a pilgrimage to Mecca. An Arab author mentions the titles of more than a hundred treatises written by 'Abdu'-l-Lattif. The only one of these known in Europe is an abridgment of a larger work of the author's, on the history, antiquities, and geography of Egypt. This interesting production was brought from the East by Pococke, and has been translated into Latin, and also into German and French.—E. M.
ABDU'-L-MALEK I., fifth prince of Khorassan of the Samanide dynasty, began to reign in 954. Oriental historians extol his energy and wisdom.
ABDU'-L-MALEK II., Ibn Nuh, ninth and last prince of Khorassan of the Samanide dynasty, succeeded his brother Mansur II. in 988. He reigned only till 999, having been deposed and imprisoned for life by Eylek Khan, sovereign of Turkistan.
ABDU'-L-MALIK, sultan of Morocco in the sixteenth century. He usurped the throne, to the exclusion of his nephew Mahomet, the lawful heir, who afterwards obtained the aid of Don Sebastian, king of Portugal, to assert his rights. In the famous battle of Alcasar in 1578, Abdu'-l-Malik, Mahomet, and Don Sebastian were all slain.
ABDU'-L-MALEK, Ibn Merwan, fifth Ommiade caliph of Damascus surnamed "Sweat of the Stone," from his avarice, succeeded his father, Merwan I., in 685. During a reign of twenty years, he achieved extensive conquests both in Asia and Africa. Died at Damascus in 705.
ABDU'-L-MALEK, Ibn Omar, called Marsillo in the legends of western chivalry, an able and devoted general of Abdu'-R-Rahman I., and governor of Saragossa and the whole of eastern Spain, at the period of Charlemagne's invasion.
'ABDU'-L-MUMEN, Ibn 'Ali, surnamed Abu Mohammed, second sultan of Africa of the dynasty of the Almohades, born in Africa in 1101. At the age of eighteen he became the adherent and adviser of Mohammed Ibn Tiumarta, surnamed Al-Mahdi, a native of Cordova, who had studied at Bagdad, under the famous Arab philosopher, Abu Hamid Al-ghazzali. Availing themselves of a popular impression that the Mahdi or Forerunner of the expected Moslem Messiah was about to appear, the two associates devised a stupendous scheme of imposture, which, mainly through the genius and intrepidity of 'Abdu'-l-Mumen, was ultimately crowned with success. 'Abdu'-l-Mumen boldly proclaimed his friend the longed-for Mahdi, and was appointed his prime minister. So rapidly did the crowd of fervid followers increase, as soon to constitute a large and formidable army. The new sect, assuming the name of Almohades, or Unitarians, commenced a sanguinary war with the Almoravide emperor of Africa and Moslem Spain, and continued it with almost uninterrupted success, till they accomplished the extinction of the Almoravide dynasty. Mohammed dying at an early period of the movement, declared 'Abdu'-l-Mumen his successor, who, after a brilliant reign of thirty-three years, died in 1163 when on the point of starting at the head of an immense army he had raised in Africa, to achieve in one campaign the entire conquest of the Iberian peninsula. Though unceasingly occupied with warlike enterprises, he devoted a share of his attention to the social improvement of his subjects, by the encouragement of science and literature, and the promotion of public instruction.—E. M.
ABDU'-L-WAHAB, founder of the sect of the Wahabees or Wahabites, born about the year 1691 at Al-'aynah, a village in the district of Arabia called Nejd, on the banks of the Euphrates, and died in 1787. Being of poor parentage, he was adopted by Ibrahim, a rich Arab, studied at Ispahan, travelled through Khorassan, and afterwards resided at Bagdad and Bussora. Here he taught religious doctrines resembling those of the celebrated Abu Hanifah. Several sheiks of the Nejd adopted his creed, and ranged themselves under the banner of the new prophet. Discord being thus introduced among the Arab chiefs, recourse was had to the sword, and the two parties, accusing each other of heresy, engaged in sanguinary conflicts. The principles of the new sectaries may be regarded as theistic in a more elementary form than Moslemism. Wahab denied that the Koran was inspired or written by the angel Gabriel; he rejected the doctrine of saints or holy persons, and taught that prayers ought to be addressed to God alone. His followers also permitted a person attacked to slay the aggressor without waiting for the sentence of law, and they regarded as wicked, vows undertaken in time of danger. Niebuhr (Travels in Arabia) has given valuable details respecting Wahab and his sect.—P. E. D.
'ABDUN or ABDU-L-MEJID, IBN 'ABDILLAH IBN 'ABDUN, an Arabian poet, lived in Spain about the end of the eleventh century. He was vizier to the last king of Badajoz, of the dynasty of the Al-Afttas, assassinated in 1094. Besides his commentary upon a poem entitled Ab-besamah, he has left an elegy on the rise and fall of the dynasty of the Al-Afttas.—S.
ABDU'-R-RAHMAN. Three potentates of the Ommiade dynasty, in Spain, bore this name:—
Abdu'-R-Rahman I. (Ibn Mu'a´wiyah Ibn Hisham), surnamed Abu-l-Modhaffer and Abu Suleyman, the founder of the Ommiade power in Spain, born near Damascus a.d. 728-9, and died in September, 788. When the Saracen dynasty of Ommia was overthrown in 753, Abdu'-R-Rahman narrowly escaped, and passed into Mauritania, finding shelter with the Zenites, to which tribe his mother belonged. He there, as the last scion of the Ommiades, received the offer of the crown of Spain made to him by a deputation of the Saracen chiefs resident in that country. In 755 he landed at Almunecar, where twenty thousand men awaited him. At Seville he was hailed as the legitimate monarch, and in a short time received the submission of the neighbouring towns and cities. After the battle of Musarah, in which his opponents were defeated, he entered Cordova as a conqueror, and took possession of the Saracen kingdom. Notwithstanding his successes in Spain, the loss of Narbonne effectually excluded the hope of retaining the Saracen dominions on the French side of the Pyrenees, and he therefore consolidated the Saracen kingdom of Cordova—a course strenuously opposed for a time by the Saracens of Egypt, by whom he was proscribed as a rebel. Various expeditions were undertaken from Africa to destroy his power. Abdu'-R-Rahman having captured the leader of one of these expeditions, cut off his head, and caused it to be fixed to a column at Kairwan with this inscription—"Thus Abdu'-R-Rahman, successor of the Ommiades, treats the rash and the presumptuous." When Charlemagne advanced into Spain, it would appear that the kingdom of Cordova was in the enjoyment of tranquility, and at a later period (a.d. 778) the kingdom of Saragossa was annexed to that of Cordova. The Saracen prince now applied his utmost energies to the internal improvement of the kingdom, building mosques—among others the splendid mosque of Cordova, at which he wrought with his own hands for an hour each day—designing and constructing gardens,
