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 expre 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 la . ’ 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 (bitterne ).” [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), Ḥas an, 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 , . (4) By a combination of words, e.g . Nūru ʾd-dīn , “Light of Religion”; ʿAbdu ʾllāh , “Servant of God.” (5) By a nickname of harmle signification, e.g . Abū Hurairah , “the kitten’s father.” (6) By the trade or profe ion, e.g . al-Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj , Manṣūr the dre er 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 ; Salad in, 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 XXVII th 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 me age. 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 pa age:— “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 pa age 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 .] IMG:3048615538088815629_p430.png:THE NAQUS AS USED IN A MONASTERY 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 expre ly forbidden by the Qurʾān and Ḥadīs̤. It corresponds with the Arabic Ḥarām . [ LAW .] AN -NĀS ( الناس‎ ). “Mankind.” The title of the last Sūrah of the Qurʾān. The word occurs in this Sūrah, and is the last word in the Qurʾān, “from genii and men .” NASAʾ ( نساء ‎ ). “To omit.” A term used in the Qurʾān for the system of intercalation of the year practised by the ancient Arabs, and which was abolished in the Qurʾān. ( Sūrah ix. 37 .) [ INTERCALATION OF THE YEAR .] NASAB ( نسب‎ ). Family, race, lineage. The term, in its legal sense, is generally restricted to the descent of a child from his father, but it is sometimes applied to descent from the mother, and is generally employed in a larger sense to embrace other relationships. (Baillie’s Dig. Muh. Law , p. 389.) AN -NASĀʾĪ ( النسائى‎ ). “Sunanu ʾn-Nasāʾī,” or al-Mujtaba (the selected), a name given to the collection of traditions by Abū ʿAbdi ʾr-Raḥmān Aḥmad an-Nasāʾī. Born A.H . 215, died A.H . 303. He first compiled a large collection of traditions called the Sunanu ʾl-Kubrā , but he afterwards revised the whole and admitted only those traditions which were of authority. This collection ( Sunanu ʾṣ-Ṣug͟hrā ) is one of the Kutubu ʾs-Sittah , or “six (correct) books.” [ TRADITIONS .] NAṢĀRĀ ( نصارى‎ ), pl. of Naṣrān , Nazarenes. The name given to profe ors of the Christian faith, both in the Qurʾān and the Traditions, and also in the theological works of the Muḥammadans. Christians are never called either ʿIsawī or Masīḥī , in Muḥammadan books written before the existence of modern mi ions; these titles having been applied to Christians by our own mi ionaries. [ CHRISTIANITY .] NĀSIK͟H ( ناسخ‎ ). “One who cancels.” A term used for a verse or sentence of the Qurʾān or Ḥadīs̤, which abrogates a previous one. The one abrogated being called mansūk͟h . [ QURʾAN .] NASR ( نسر‎ ). One of the idols of ancient Arabia, mentioned in the Qurʾān, Sūrah lxxi. 23 . It was an idol which, as its name implies, was worshipped under the form of an eagle . AN -NAṢR ( النصر‎ ). “Help.” The title of the CX th Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the first verse of which the word occurs: “When there comes God’s help and victory.” NAṢṢ ( نص‎ ). “A demonstration.” A legal term used for the expre law of the Qurʾān or Ḥadīs̤ . NAṢṢ-I-KARĪM ( نص كريم‎ ). “Gracious revelation.” A title given to the Qurʾān. NAṢŪḤ ( نصوح‎ ). “Sincere in friendship or repentance.” In the latter sense the word occurs once in the Qurʾān, Sūrah lxvi. 8 : “O Believers! turn to God with the turning of true repentance .” NĀSŪT ( ناسوت‎ ). “Human nature.” A term used by the Ṣūfīs to expre the natural state of every man before he enters upon the mystic journey. They say the law has been specially revealed for the guidance of people in this condition, but that the law is not nece ary for the higher states. [ SUFI .] NAUḤAH ( نوحة‎ ). “Lamentations for the dead.” The employment of paid mourners is forbidden by the Sunnī law, for Abū Saʿīdu ʾl-K͟hudrī says, “The Prophet cursed both the paid mourner and him that listened to her lamentations.” ( Mishkāt , book v. ch . viii. pt. 2.) NAU ROZ ( نو روز‎ ). “New Year’s Day.” Chiefly observed amongst the Persians. In Persia it is a day of great festivity. It is observed the first day after the sun has cro ed the vernal equinox, and the festivities last for a week or more. NAWAʾIB ( نوائب‎ ), pl. of nāʾibah . “Adversities.” A legal term used for any special tax levied by the sovereign of a country. The ruling of the Sunnī law regarding it is as follows:— “If it extend only to what is just (such as exactions for digging a canal, for the wages of safe guards, for the equipment of an army to fight against the infidels, for the release of Muslim captives, or for the digging of a ditch, the mending of a fort, or the construction of a bridge), the tax is lawful in the opinion of the whole of our doctors. But if it extend to exactions wrongfully imposed, that is, to such as tyrants extort from their subjects, in that case, concerning the validity of security for it, there is a difference of opinion amongst our modern doctors.” (Hamilton’s Hidāyah , vol. ii. p. 594.)