Mr. Stanley Lane Poole says (Selections from the Ḳur-án):—

“There was one place where, above all others, the Ḳaṣeedehs (Qaṣīdahs) of the ancient Arabs were recited: this was ʾOkádh (ʿUkāz̤), the Olympia of Arabia, where there was held a great annual Fair, to which not merely the merchants of Mekka and the south, but the poet-heroes of all the land resorted. The Fair of ʾOkádh was held during the sacred months,—a sort of ‘God’s Truce,’ when blood could not be shed without a violation of the ancient customs and faiths of the Bedawees. Thither went the poets of rival clans, who had as often locked spears as hurled rhythmical curses. There was little fear of a bloody ending to the poetic contest, for those heroes who might meet there with enemies or blood-avengers are said to have worn masks or veils, and their poems were recited by a public orator at their dictation. That these precautions and the sacredness of the time could not always prevent the ill-feeling evoked by the pointed personalities of rival singers leading to a fray and bloodshed is proved by recorded instances; but such results were uncommon, and as a rule the customs of the time and place were respected. In spite of occasional broils on the spot, and the lasting feuds which these poetic contests must have excited, the Fair of ʾOkádh was a grand institution. It served as a focus for the literature of all Arabia: everyone with any pretensions to poetic power came, and if he could not himself gain the applause of the assembled people, at least he could form one of the critical audience on whose verdict rested the fame or the shame of every poet. The Fair of ʾOkádh was a literary congress, without formal judges, but with unbounded influence. It was here that the polished heroes of the desert determined points of grammar and prosody; here the seven Golden Songs were recited, although (alas for the charming legend!) they were not afterwards ‘suspended’ on the Kaabeh; and here ‘a magical language, the language of the Ḥijáz,’ was built out of the dialects of Arabia, and was made ready to the skilful hand of Moḥammad, that he might conquer the world with his Ḳur-án.

“The Fair of ʾOkádh was not merely a centre of emulation for Arab poets: it was also an annual review of Bedawee virtues. It was there that the Arab nation once-a-year inspected itself, so to say, and brought forth and criticised its ideals of the noble and the beautiful in life and in poetry. For it was in poetry that the Arab—and for that matter each man all the world over—expressed his highest thoughts, and it was at ʾOkádh that these thoughts were measured by the standard of the Bedawee ideal. The Fair not only maintained the highest standard of poetry that the Arabic language has ever reached: it also upheld the noblest idea of life and duty that the Arab nation has yet set forth and obeyed. ʾOkádh was the press, the stage, the pulpit, the Parliament, and the Académie Française of the Arab people; and when, in his fear of the infidel poets (whom Imra-el-Keys was to usher to hell), Moḥammad abolished the Fair, he destroyed the Arab nation, even whilst he created his own new nation of Muslims; and the Muslims cannot sit in the places of the old pagan Arabs.”

ʿUKŪF (عكوف‎). Lit. “Remaining behind.” A term used to express a life of prayer of one who remains constantly in the mosque.

ʿULAMĀʾ (علماء‎), pl. of ʿālim. “One who knows; learned; a scholar.” In this plural form the word is used as the title of those bodies of learned doctors in Muḥammadan divinity and law, who, headed by their Shaik͟hu ʾl-Islām, form the theocratic element of the government in Muslim countries, and who by their fatwās or decisions in questions touching private and public matters of importance, regulate the life of the Muḥammadan community. Foremost in influence and authority are naturally reckoned the ʿUlamāʾ of Constantinople, the seat of the K͟halīfah, and of Makkah, the Holy City of Islām. Like the Aṣḥāb or Companions of the Prophet under his immediate successors, they correspond in a certain measure to what we would call the representative system of our modern constitutions, in partially limiting and checking the autocratism of an otherwise absolute Oriental ruler.

ULŪHĪYAH (الوهية‎). “Divinity; godhead.”

ULŪ ʾL-ʿAZM (اولو العزم‎). “The Possessors of Constancy.” A title given to certain prophets in the Qurʾān, said by the commentators to have been Noah, Abraham, David, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad. (Vide G͟hiyās̤u ʾl-Lug͟hāt.) See [Sūrah xlvi. 34]: “Then be thou constant, as the Apostles endowed with a purpose were constant, and hasten not on.”

UMANĀʾ (امناء‎), pl. of amīn. “Faithful Ones.” A title given by the Ṣūfīs to those pious persons who do not make their religious experiences known. They are known also as the Malāmatīyah, or those who are willing to undergo misrepresentation rather than boast of their piety.

ʿUMAR (عمر‎) IBN AL-K͟HAT̤T̤ĀB. (Omar) the second K͟halīfah, who succeeded Abū Bakr, A.H. 13 (A.D. 634), and was assassinated by Fīroz, a Persian slave, A.H. 23 (A.D. 644), after a prosperous reign of ten years. His conversion to Islām took place in the sixth year of Muḥammad’s mission, and the Prophet took ʿUmar’s daughter Ḥafṣah as his third wife.

ʿUmar is eminent amongst the early K͟halīfahs for having chiefly contributed to the spread of Islām. Under him the great generals, Abū ʿUbaidah, K͟hālid ibn al-Walīd, Yazīd, drove the Greeks out of Syria and Phœnicia; Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ, Qaqāʾah, Nuʿmān, completed the conquest of the two ʿIrāqs and the overthrow of the Persian Empire; ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (commonly called Amru) subdued Egypt and part of the Libyan coast, after having, as commander in Palestine, prepared by his victories and a severe siege, the surrender of Jerusalem [[JERUSALEM]] into the K͟halīfah’s own hands. ʿUmar’s name is, moreover, intimately connected with the history of Islām, by the initiatory and important share which he took in the first collection of the Qurʾān, under Abū Bakr, by the official introduction of the Muḥammadan era of the Hijrah, and by the first organisation of the dīwān, or civil list of the Muḥammadans. The two former subjects have been treated of in this Dictionary in their proper places; the third institution, which laid the foundation to the marvellous successes of the Muslim arms under this and the succeeding Governments, is ably explained in the following extract from Sir W. Muir’s Annals of the Early Caliphate:—