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  • Abbeville (Louisiana, United States)
    city, seat (1854) of Vermilion parish, southern Louisiana, U.S., on the Vermilion River, 20 miles (32 km) south-southwest of Lafayette. It was founded in 1843 by a Capuchin missionary, Père Antoine Desire Mégret, who patterned it on a French Provençal village. First called La Chapelle and settled by Acadians from Nova Scotia and Mediterran...
  • Abbeville (South Carolina, United States)
    city, seat of Abbeville county, northwestern South Carolina, U.S. French Huguenots in 1764 settled the site, which was named for Abbeville, France, by John de la Howe. The city is regarded by some as the “Cradle and the Grave of the Confederacy”; it was there that a secessionist meeting was held (November 22, 1860, on what is n...
  • Abbeville (France)
    town, Somme département, Picardy région, northern France, near the mouth of the canalized Somme, northwest of Amiens. Stone Age artifacts unearthed by Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes in 1844 attesting to early occupation of the site are displayed at the Mus...
  • Abbeville (county, South Carolina, United States)
    county, northwestern South Carolina, U.S. It lies in a hilly piedmont region bounded to the southwest by the state’s Richard B. Russell Lake border with Georgia; the Saluda River forms the county’s northeastern border. Calhoun Falls State Park is on the lake, which is formed by the Richard B. Russell Dam on the Savannah River. ...
  • Abbevillian industry (archaeology)
    prehistoric stone-tool tradition generally considered to represent the oldest occurrence in Europe of a bifacial (hand-ax) technology. The Abbevillian industry dates from an imprecisely determined part of the Middle Pleistocene, somewhat less than 700,000 years ago. It was recovered from high terrace sediments of the lower Somme valley, in a suburb of Abbeville, Fr. The distinctive stone tools in...
  • abbey (religious architecture)
    group of buildings housing a monastery or a convent, centred on an abbey church or a cathedral and under the direction of an abbot or an abbess. In this sense, an abbey consists of a complex of buildings serving the needs of a self-contained religious community. The term abbey is also used loosely to refer to priories, smaller monasteries under a prior. In En...
  • Abbey, Edward (American author)
    American writer whose works, set primarily in the Southwestern United States, reflect an uncompromising environmentalist philosophy....
  • Abbey, Edwin Austin (American painter)
    American painter and one of the foremost illustrators of his day....
  • Abbey Theatre (theatre, Dublin, Ireland)
    Dublin theatre, established in 1904. It grew out of the Irish Literary Theatre (founded in 1899 by William Butler Yeats and Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory, and devoted to fostering Irish poetic drama), which in 1902 was taken over by the Irish National Dramatic Society, led by W.G. and Frank J. Fay and formed to present Irish actors in Irish plays. In 1903 thi...
  • abbhutadhamma (Buddhism)
    8. Abbhutadhamma, or adbhutadharma (“wondrous phenomena”), stories of miracles and supernatural events....
  • Abbo of Fleury, Saint (French abbot)
    ...St. Benedict, completing the second and third books of the Miracula Sancti Benedicti in 1005 (the first book had been the work of an earlier writer). He also wrote the biography of the abbot Abbo (d. 1004), who suggested that Aimoin compose a history of the Franks. His Historia Francorum, or Libri IV de gestis Francorum, was compiled from texts from the Merovingian period.....
  • abbot (monk)
    the superior of a monastic community that follows the Benedictine Rule (Benedictines, Cistercians, Camaldolese, Trappists) and of certain other orders (Premonstratensians, canons regular of the Lateran). The word derives from the Aramaic ab (“father”), or aba (“my father”), which in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and in New Te...
  • Abbot, Charles Greeley (American astrophysicist)
    American astrophysicist who, as director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Washington, D.C., for almost four decades, engaged in a career-long campaign to demonstrate that the Sun’s energy output varies and has a measurable effect on the Earth’s weather....
  • Abbot, George (archbishop of Canterbury)
    ...didactic worth. The first Bible in English to exclude the Apocrypha was the Geneva Bible of 1599. The King James Version of 1611 placed it between the Old and New Testaments. In 1615 Archbishop George Abbot forbade the issuance of Bibles without the Apocrypha, but editions of the King James Version from 1630 on often omitted it from the bound copies. The Geneva Bible edition of 1640 was......
  • Abbot, Henry Larcom (American engineer)
    A complicated empirical formula for the discharge of streams resulted from the studies of Andrew Atkinson Humphreys and Henry Larcom Abbot in the course of the Mississippi Delta Survey of 1851–60. Their formula contained no term for roughness of channel and on this and other grounds was later found to be inapplicable to the rapidly flowing streams of mountainous regions. In 1869......
  • Abbotsford (mansion, Scotland, United Kingdom)
    former home of the 19th-century novelist Sir Walter Scott, situated on the right bank of the River Tweed, Scottish Borders council area, historic county of Roxburghshire, Scotland. Scott purchased the original farm, then known as Carley Hole, in 1811 and transformed it (1817–25) into a Gothic-style baronial mansion now known as Abbots...
  • Abbott and Costello (American comedic duo)
    American comedic duo who performed on stage and in films, radio, and television. Bud Abbott (original name William Alexander Abbott; b. Oct. 2, 1895Asbury Park, N.J., U.S.—d. April 24, 1974Woodland Hills, Calif.) and ...
  • Abbott, Berenice (American photographer)
    photographer best known for her photographic documentation of New York City in the late 1930s and for her preservation of the works of Eugène Atget....
  • Abbott, Bud (American actor)
    Abbott was born into a circus family, and he managed burlesque houses before he met Costello. He spent much time backstage studying the top American comics of the day, including W.C. Fields, Bert Lahr, and the comedy team of Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough. In 1923 Abbott produced his own show, Broadway Flashes, in which he played a leading role in order to save the......
  • Abbott, Diane (British politician)
    British politician, the first woman of African descent elected to the House of Commons. Abbott’s parents, originally from Jamaica, immigrated to the United Kingdom in the early 1950s. She was educated at Harrow County Grammar School for Girls and received a degree in history from the University of Cambridge in 1973. Abbott worked as a civil servant in the Home Office (197...
  • Abbott, Diane Julie (British politician)
    British politician, the first woman of African descent elected to the House of Commons. Abbott’s parents, originally from Jamaica, immigrated to the United Kingdom in the early 1950s. She was educated at Harrow County Grammar School for Girls and received a degree in history from the University of Cambridge in 1973. Abbott worked as a civil servant in the Home Office (197...
  • Abbott, Edith (American social worker)
    American social worker, educator, and author who was instrumental in promoting the professional practice and academic discipline of social work in the United States....
  • Abbott, George (American director)
    American theatrical director, producer, playwright, actor, and motion-picture director who staged some of the most popular Broadway productions from the 1920s to the ’60s....
  • Abbott, George Francis (American director)
    American theatrical director, producer, playwright, actor, and motion-picture director who staged some of the most popular Broadway productions from the 1920s to the ’60s....
  • Abbott, Grace (American social worker)
    American social worker, public administrator, educator, and reformer who was important in the field of child-labour legislation. Abbott wrote articles on this subject as well as on maternity for the Encyclopædia Britannica (see the Britannica Classics: Law Relating to Children; Maternity and Infant Welfare...
  • Abbott, Jacob (American author)
    American teacher and writer, best known for his many books for young readers....
  • Abbott, Lyman (American minister)
    American Congregationalist minister and a leading exponent of the Social Gospel movement....
  • Abbott, Margaret (American socialite and golfer)
    A wealthy young socialite, Margaret (“Peggy”) Abbott spent the years 1899 to 1902 living in Paris with her mother, the novelist Mary Abbott. There the 22-year-old Margaret studied art, took in the sights, and enjoyed high-society life....
  • Abbott, Peggy (American socialite and golfer)
    A wealthy young socialite, Margaret (“Peggy”) Abbott spent the years 1899 to 1902 living in Paris with her mother, the novelist Mary Abbott. There the 22-year-old Margaret studied art, took in the sights, and enjoyed high-society life....
  • Abbott, Robert (American computer programmer and author)
    card game invented by Robert Abbott and first described in Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American (July 1959). A more-refined version appeared in Abbott’s New Card Games (1967), with a further extension privately published in 1977....
  • Abbott, Robert S. (American publisher)
    Founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott, the Chicago Defender originally was a four-page weekly newspaper. Like the white-owned Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers, the Defender, under Abbott, used sensationalism to boost circulation. Editorials attacking white oppression and the lynching of African Americans helped increase the paper’s......
  • Abbott, Sir John (prime minister of Canada)
    lawyer, statesman, and prime minister of Canada from 1891 to 1892....
  • Abbott, Sir John Joseph Caldwell (prime minister of Canada)
    lawyer, statesman, and prime minister of Canada from 1891 to 1892....
  • Abbott, William Alexander (American actor)
    Abbott was born into a circus family, and he managed burlesque houses before he met Costello. He spent much time backstage studying the top American comics of the day, including W.C. Fields, Bert Lahr, and the comedy team of Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough. In 1923 Abbott produced his own show, Broadway Flashes, in which he played a leading role in order to save the......
  • Abbottābād (Pakistan)
    city, east-central North-West Frontier Province, northern Pakistan. It is situated 38 miles (61 km) northeast of Rāwalpindi. A hill station (4,120 feet [1,256 metres]), it lies on a plateau at the southern corner of the Rāsh (Orāsh) Plain and is the gateway to the picturesque Kāgān Valley. It is connected by road with the Ind...
  • abbreviation
    in communications (especially written), the process or result of representing a word or group of words by a shorter form of the word or phrase. Abbreviations take many forms and can be found in ancient Greek inscriptions, in medieval manuscripts (e.g., “DN” for “Dominus Noster”), and in the Qurʾān. Cicero’s secretary, Marcus Tullius ...
  • ʿAbbūd, Ibrāhīm (Sudanese general)
    On the night of November 16–17, 1958, the commander in chief of the Sudanese army, General Ibrāhīm ʿAbbūd, carried out a bloodless coup d’état, dissolving all political parties, prohibiting assemblies, and temporarily suspending newspapers. A Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, consisting of 12 senior officers, was set up, and army rule brought rap...
  • Abby Smith and Her Cows, with a Report of the Law Case Decided Contrary to Law (work by J.E. Smith)
    ...Abby’s speeches, along with witty and effective letters by both sisters to various newspapers, brought them considerable prominence. In 1877 Julia edited and published an account of the events, Abby Smith and Her Cows, with a Report of the Law Case Decided Contrary to Law....
  • ABC (political party, Lesotho)
    ...seats, and Mosisili was named to a second term as prime minister. In 2006, dissension within the LCD resulted in one of the party’s prominent ministers, Thomas Thabane, leaving to form the All Basotho Convention (ABC); many other LCD ministers followed Thabane to the ABC. Nevertheless, the LCD managed to maintain control of the parliament after early elections were called in February......
  • ABC (American sports organization)
    Disagreement over rules continued, principally as an alignment of New York bowlers against everyone else. On Sept. 9, 1895, the American Bowling Congress (ABC) was organized in New York City. Rules and equipment standards were developed, and the game as it finally was organized remained basically unchanged as the sport grew steadily. An early technological development that helped the sport’...
  • ABC (Spanish newspaper)
    tabloid daily newspaper published in Madrid and long regarded as one of Spain’s leading papers. It was founded as a weekly in 1903 by journalist Torcuato Luca de Tena y Alvarez-Ossorio, who later (1929) was made the marqués de Luca de Tena by King Alfonso XIII in recognition of his accomplishments with ABC. The paper...
  • ABC (American corporation)
    major American television network that is a division of the Walt Disney Company. Its headquarters are in New York City....
  • ABC
    an early digital computer. It was generally believed that the first electronic digital computers were the Colossus, built in England in 1943, and the ENIAC, built in the United States in 1945. However, the first special-purpose electronic computer may actually have been invented by John Vincent Atanasoff, a physicist and mathematician at Iow...
  • ABC art (art movement)
    chiefly American movement in the visual arts and music originating in New York City in the late 1960s and characterized by extreme simplicity of form and a literal, objective approach....
  • ABC of Chess, The (work by Cooke)
    ...separately from men by the middle of the century. The first chess clubs specifically for women were organized in The Netherlands in 1847. The first chess book written by a woman, The ABC of Chess, by “A Lady” (H.I. Cooke), appeared in England in 1860 and went into 10 editions. The first women’s tournament was sponsored in 1884 by the Sussex Chess......
  • abcoulomb (unit of measurement)
    ...1.60217733 × 10-19 coulomb. In the centimetre–gram–second system there are two units of electric charge: the electrostatic unit of charge, esu, or statcoulomb; and the electromagnetic unit of charge, emu, or abcoulomb. One coulomb of electric charge equals about 3,000,000,000 esu, or one-tenth emu....
  • ʿAbd al- Ṣamad Khan (Sikh leader)
    ...activities served as a damper on the attempts by the Mughal governors of Lahore subah to set up an independent power base for themselves in the region. First ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Khan and then his son Ẓakariyyā Khan attempted the twin tracks of conciliation and coercion, but all to little avail. After the latter’s demise in 174...
  • ʿAbd al-ʿĀl (Muslim leader)
    After al-Badawī’s death, the Aḥmadīyah was headed by ʿAbd al-ʿĀl, a close disciple who kept the order under strict rule until his death in 1332. ʿAbd al-ʿĀl inherited the order’s symbols: a red cowl, a veil, and a red banner that belonged to al-Badawī. Before his death, ʿAbd al-ʿĀl ordered a ch...
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (amīr of Crete)
    ...whom was Athanasius, his spiritual director and founder of the Greek Orthodox monastery on Mt. Athos, Nicephorus achieved the reconsolidation of Christianity. He then returned to Constantinople with ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the last amīr of Crete, as his captive. This exploit, sung by the poet Theodosius the Deacon, realized the Byzantine dream (after dozens had failed ...
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Umayyad governor of Egypt)
    His father, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, was a governor of Egypt, and through his mother he was a descendant of ʿUmar I (second caliph, 634–644). He received a traditional education in Medina and won fame for his piety and learning. In February or March 706, ʿUmar was appointed governor of the Hejaz. During his tenure of office, he initiated policies that later characte...
  • Abd al-Aziz (sultan of Morocco)
    sultan of Morocco from 1894 to 1908, whose reign was marked by an unsuccessful attempt to introduce European administrative methods in an atmosphere of increasing foreign influence....
  • ʿAbd al-Aziz al-Mansūr (ruler of Valencia)
    When Umayyad power in Moorish Spain disintegrated in the reign of Hisham II (1010), Valencia eventually came to be ruled by ʿAbd al-Aziz al-Mansūr (reigned 1021–61), grandson of the famous Cordoban caliph of that name. Stabilized by the protection of the caliphs of Córdoba and by friendship with Christian princes, his reign marked a period of peace and prosperity.......
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Thaʿalibī (Tunisian political leader)
    ...violent riots and killings; boycotts and labour strikes were called against Italian-owned companies in Tunis. The French responded by exiling the leaders of the party, including Ali Bash Hamba and Abd al-Aziz ath-Thaalibi (1912), and driving the Young Tunisians underground. At the end of World War I they emerged again as activists in the Tunisian nationalist movement and, led by ath-Thaalibi,.....
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz I (Arab leader)
    Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd’s son and successor, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz I (reigned 1765–1803), who had been largely responsible for this extension of his father’s realm through his exploits as commander in chief of the Wahhābī forces, continued to work in complete harmony with Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. It was the la...
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Fayṣal ibn Turkī ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad Āl Saʿūd (king of Saudi Arabia)
    tribal and Muslim religious leader who formed the modern state of Saudi Arabia and initiated the exploitation of its oil....
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Mitʿab (Arab leader)
    ...Saʿūd), the son of the exiled ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, took advantage of his new location to acquire useful knowledge of world affairs, while the new Rashīdī prince, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Mitʿab, alienated the population of Najd. In 1901 the young Ibn Saʿūd (he was about 22 to 26 years old) sallied out of ...
  • ʿAbd al-Aziz ibn Abdallah ibn Baz (Saudi Arabian cleric)
    Saudi Muslim cleric who as the grand mufti (from 1993) and traditionalist head of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars (from the early 1960s) was revered by millions and exerted a powerful influence on the legal system in Saudi Arabia; the blind cleric’s religious edicts, or fatwas, included prohibitions on fortune tellers, women driving cars, and the import of short veils that fail to co...
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥasanī al-ʿAlawī (sultan of Morocco)
    sultan of Morocco from 1894 to 1908, whose reign was marked by an unsuccessful attempt to introduce European administrative methods in an atmosphere of increasing foreign influence....
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Musāʿid (Arab general)
    ...son of one of Ibn Saʿūd’s governors, and commandeered the road between Ibn Saʿūd’s capital, Riyadh, and the Persian Gulf. The rebels suffered a setback in August at the hands of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Musāʿid; their leader, ʿUzayyiz, ad-Dawīsh’s son, and hundreds of his soldiers were either killed in ba...
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz II (king of Saudi Arabia)
    tribal and Muslim religious leader who formed the modern state of Saudi Arabia and initiated the exploitation of its oil....
  • Abd al-Aziz IV (sultan of Morocco)
    sultan of Morocco from 1894 to 1908, whose reign was marked by an unsuccessful attempt to introduce European administrative methods in an atmosphere of increasing foreign influence....
  • ʿAbd al-Ghanī (Syrian author)
    Syrian mystic prose and verse writer on the cultural and religious thought of his time....
  • ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Ismāʿīl an-Nābulusī (Syrian author)
    Syrian mystic prose and verse writer on the cultural and religious thought of his time....
  • Abd al-Hafid (sultan of Morocco)
    sultan of Morocco (1908–12), the brother of Sultan Abd al-Aziz, against whom he revolted beginning in 1907....
  • ʿAbd al-Ḥafīd (sultan of Morocco)
    sultan of Morocco (1908–12), the brother of Sultan Abd al-Aziz, against whom he revolted beginning in 1907....
  • ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ (sultan of Morocco)
    sultan of Morocco (1908–12), the brother of Sultan Abd al-Aziz, against whom he revolted beginning in 1907....
  • ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (Turkish rebel)
    In 1598 a sekban leader, Karayazici Abdülhalim (ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm), united the dissatisfied groups in Anatolia, forcing the towns to pay tribute and dominating the Sivas and Dulkadir provinces in central Anatolia. When Ottoman forces were sent against them the Jelālīs withdrew to Urfa in southeastern Anatolia, making it the centre of resistance. Karayaz...
  • ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd (Muslim writer)
    ...the products of which were stored in the great Baghdad library Bayt al-Ḥikmah (“House of Wisdom”). The beginnings of a tradition of epistle composition are associated with ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, known as al-Kātib (“The Secretary”), who in the 8th century composed a work for the son of one of the Umayyad caliphs on the proper conduct of......
  • ʿAbd al-Ilāh (Iraqi prince)
    regent of Iraq (1939–53) and crown prince to 1958....
  • ʿAbd al-Jalīl (governor of Mosul)
    prominent Iraqi family that ruled the Ottoman pașalik (province) of Mosul (in modern Iraq) in the period 1726–1834. Although the founder of the Jalīlī line, ʿAbd al-Jalīl, was a Christian slave, his son Ismāʿīl distinguished himself as a Muslim public official and became wālī (governor) of Mosul in 1726.......
  • ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qaysī (Islamic poet)
    ...Arab poet of the romance Abenamar, Abenamar, moro de la morería, do little to illuminate the history of this period. More illustrative, however, are the verses of ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qaysī (c. 1485), an esteemed member of Granada’s middle class, who eschewed classic themes and wrote of such mundane phenomena as the increase in t...
  • ʿAbd al-Karīm Quṭb al-Dīn ibn Ibrāhīm al-Jīlī (Islamic mystic)
    mystic whose doctrines of the “perfect man” became popular throughout the Islāmic world....
  • ʿAbd al-Laṭīf (shah of Iran)
    ...unable to consolidate his power, though he was Shāh Rokh’s sole surviving son. Other Timurid princes profited from his lack of action, and he was put to death at the instigation of his son, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf....
  • ʿAbd al-Malik (Umayyad caliph)
    fifth caliph (685–705) of the Umayyad Arab dynasty centred in Damascus. He reorganized and strengthened governmental administration and, throughout the empire, adopted Arabic as the language of administration....
  • ʿAbd al-Malik (ruler of Valencia)
    ...that name. Stabilized by the protection of the caliphs of Córdoba and by friendship with Christian princes, his reign marked a period of peace and prosperity. However, his successor, a minor, ʿAbd al-Malik (reigned 1061–65), was attacked by Ferdinand I of Castile and Leon, who missed capturing Valencia but inflicted such a defeat on its defenders that they sought protection...
  • ʿAbd al-Malik (Jahwarid ruler)
    ...managed through political chicanery to keep the ʿAbbādids of Sevilla (Seville) out of Córdoba but eventually resigned his authority to his own vizier, Ibn al-Raqā. When ʿAbd al-Malik, al-Rashīd’s jealous son, assassinated the vizier in 1058, his father rewarded him with virtually caliphal standing and authority in the state. Extremely unpopular, ...
  • ʿAbd al-Malik (sultan of Morocco)
    (Aug. 4, 1578), defeat dealt the invading Portuguese armies of King Sebastian by the Saʿdī sultan of Morocco, ʿAbd al-Malik....
  • ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (Umayyad caliph)
    fifth caliph (685–705) of the Umayyad Arab dynasty centred in Damascus. He reorganized and strengthened governmental administration and, throughout the empire, adopted Arabic as the language of administration....
  • ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (Almohad caliph)
    Berber caliph of the Almohad dynasty (reigned 1130–63), who conquered the North African Maghrib from the Almoravids andbrought all the Berbers under one rule....
  • ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn ʿAli (Almohad caliph)
    Berber caliph of the Almohad dynasty (reigned 1130–63), who conquered the North African Maghrib from the Almoravids andbrought all the Berbers under one rule....
  • ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (grandfather of Muḥammad)
    ...Because ʿAbd Allāh died before Muhammad’s birth, Āminah placed all her hopes in the newborn child. Without a father, Muhammad experienced many hardships even though his grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib was a leader in the Meccan community. The emphasis in Islamic society on generosity to orphans is related to the childhood experiences of Muhammad as ...
  • ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (Muslim mystic)
    traditional founder of the Qādirīyah order of the mystical Ṣūfī branch of Islām....
  • ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn Musṭafā al-Ḥasanī al-Jazāʾirī (Algerian leader)
    amīr of Mascara (from 1832), the military and religious leader who founded the Algerian state and led the Algerians in their 19th-century struggle against French domination (1840–46)....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Afghani emir)
    ...agriculturists (growing cereals and fruits and raising livestock) living in the valleys. They speak various Kafir languages. The region did not become part of Afghanistan until the 1890s, when ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān, the Afghan emir, conquered it and forcibly converted the inhabitants to Islām. He subsequently changed its name from Kāfiristān (“Land of t...
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Saudi leader)
    ...to Riyadh and even was named governor of the city in 1889. ʿAbd Allāh did not live to enjoy his restoration for long, however; he died in the same year, leaving to his youngest brother, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the almost hopeless task of reviving the dynasty....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghafiqi (emir of Córdoba)
    ʿAbd-ar-Raḥmān, the Muslim governor of Córdoba, had invaded Aquitaine (present southwestern France) and defeated its duke, Eudes. Eudes appealed for help to Charles, who stationed his forces to defend the city of Tours from the northward progress of the Muslims. According to tradition, the Muslim cavalry attacks broke upon Charles’s massed infantry, and after......
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghushtulī (Muslim mystic)
    ...Turkish branches active against the Ottomans early in the 16th century. The Algerian Raḥmānīyah grew out of the Khalwatīyah in the second half of the 18th century, when ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān al-Ghushtulī, the founder, made himself the centre of Khalwatī devotion....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rashed (sultan of Darfur)
    ...serves as an agricultural marketing centre for the cereals and fruits grown in the surrounding area. It is linked by road with Al-Junaynah and Umm Kaddādah. In the late 18th century Sultan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rashed of the Fur Sultanate of Dārfūr established his capital at Al-Fāshir, and the town grew up around the sultan’s palace. Pop. (200...
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I (Spanish Umayyad ruler)
    member of the Umayyad ruling family of Syria who founded an Umayyad dynasty in Spain....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Dhū an-Nūn (Dhū an-Nūnid ruler)
    ...name was later Arabicized—had settled northeast of Toledo, where they became an influential family. In the civil war that broke up the Spanish Umayyad state (1008–31), ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn Dhū an-Nūn, who had been invited by the Toledans to rule their city, and his son Ismāʿīl aẓ-Ẓāfir were the first......
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Fayṣal (Wahhābī leader)
    (1891), decisive victory for Ibn Rashīd, the ruler of the Rashīdī kingdom at Ḥāʾil, near Jabal Shammar in Najd, northern Arabia, who defeated allies of ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān, the head of the Wahhābī (fundamentalist Islāmic) state in Najd. The battle marked the end of the second Wahhābī empire....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (Umayyad caliph)
    first caliph and greatest ruler of the Umayyad Arab Muslim dynasty of Spain. He reigned as hereditary emir (“prince”) of Córdoba from October 912 and took the title of caliph in 929....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥakam al-Rabḍī ibn Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dākhil (Umayyad caliph)
    first caliph and greatest ruler of the Umayyad Arab Muslim dynasty of Spain. He reigned as hereditary emir (“prince”) of Córdoba from October 912 and took the title of caliph in 929....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ashʿath (Arab general)
    Umayyad general who became celebrated as leader of a revolt (ad 699–701) against the governor of Iraq, al-Ḥajjāj....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustam (North African ruler)
    ...its Eastern orientation. The Khārijites preached a puritanical, democratic, and egalitarian theocracy that found support among the Berber tribes. The state was governed by imams descended from ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn Rustam, the austere Persian who founded the state. These imams were themselves under the supervision of the religious leaders and the chief judge. The kingdo...
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṭāhir (ruler of Murcia)
    ...disintegration of the Spanish Umayyad caliphate; and again in the 12th century, as part of the Spanish Muslim reaction against the rule of the North African Almoravids. The kingdom’s first ruler, ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān ibn Ṭāhir, declared himself independent in 1063, though to preserve the fiction of the unity of the Umayyad caliphate he took the title not of k...
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar aṣ-Ṣūfī (Islamic astronomer)
    ...planisphere to illustrate the Phainomena of Aratus, without, however, indicating individual stars. The oldest illuminated Islāmic astronomical manuscript, an ad 1009–10 copy of aṣ-Ṣūfī’s book on the fixed stars, shows individual constellations, including stars....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (Umayyad caliph)
    first caliph and greatest ruler of the Umayyad Arab Muslim dynasty of Spain. He reigned as hereditary emir (“prince”) of Córdoba from October 912 and took the title of caliph in 929....
  • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Sanchuelo (Spanish Umayyad caliph)
    Al-Muẓaffar (1002–08) continued his father’s policies, hemming in Hishām II and fighting against the Christians. After Al-Muẓaffar’s premature death, his brother ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Sanchuelo took the reins of power, but he lacked the fortitude to maintain the structure built by his father. An uprising that sought to vindicate the political...
  • ʿAbd al-Raʾūf (Malaysian author and scholar)
    ...Medinan, Ibrahim al-Kurani, who in 1640 wrote a response. The same kind of naturalization and indigenization of Islām that was taking place in Africa was also taking place here; for example, ʿAbd ar-Raʾūf of Singkel, after studying in Arabia from about 1640 to 1661, returned home, where he made the first “translation” of the Qurʾān into Ma...
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