The Kamālān say he is perhaps the same as Ẕū ʾl-Kifl. [[ZU ʾL-KIFL].]

EZRA. Arabic ʿUzair. The son of Sharaḥyāʾ, the scribe. Mentioned only once by name in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah ix. 30]:—

“The Jews say ʿUzair (Ezra) is a son of God.”

Al-Baiẓāwī says that during the Babylonish captivity the taurāt (the law) was lost, and that as there was no one who remembered the law when the Jews returned from captivity, God raised up Ezra from the dead, although he had been buried a hundred years. And that when the Jews saw him thus raised from the dead, they said he must be the son of God.

This story is supposed to have been revealed in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah ii. 261]:—

“[Hast thou not considered] him who passed by a city (which was Jerusalem), riding upon an ass, and having with him a basket of figs and a vessel of the juice of grapes and he was ʿUzair, and it was falling down upon its roofs, Nebuchadnezzar having ruined it? He said, wondering at the power of God, How will God quicken this after its death?—And God caused him to die for a hundred years. Then He raised him to life: and He said unto him, How long hast thou tarried here?—He answered I have tarried a day, or part of a day.—For he slept in the first part of the day, and was deprived of his life, and was reanimated at sunset. He said Nay, thou hast tarried a hundred years: but look at thy food and thy drink: they have not become changed by time: and look at thine ass.—And he beheld it dead, and its bones white and shining.—We have done this that thou mayest know, and that We may make thee a sign of the resurrection unto men. And look at the bones of thine ass, how We will raise them; then We will clothe them with flesh. So he looked at them, and they had become put together, and were clothed with flesh, and life was breathed into it, and it brayed. Therefore when it had been made manifest to him he said, I know that God is able to accomplish everything.”

F.

FAIʾ (فى‎). Booty obtained from infidels. According to Muḥammad ibn T̤āhir, faiʾ is booty taken from a country which submits to Islām without resistance, as distinguished from g͟hanīmah, or plunder. The K͟halīfah ʿUmar said it was the special privilege of the Prophet to take booty as well as plunder, a privilege not permitted to any other prophet.

ʿAuf ibn Mālik says the Prophet used to divide booty on the same day he took it, and would give two shares to a man with a wife, and only one share to a man without one. (Mishkāt, book xvii. c. xii.)

FAITH. [[IMAN].]