The names of the Abbaside K͟halīfahs are:—Abū ʾl-ʿAbbās as-Saffāḥ (A.D. 749), al-Manṣūr (A.D. 754), al-Mahdī (A.D. 775), al-Hādī (A.D. 785), Hārūn ar-Rashīd (A.D. 786), al-Amīn (A.D. 809), al-Maʾmūn (A.D. 813), al-Muʿtaṣim (A.D. 833), al-Wās̤iq (A.D. 842), al-Mutawakkil (A.D. 847), al-Muntaṣir (A.D. 861), al-Mustaʿīn (A.D. 862), al-Muʿtazz (A.D. 866), al-Muhtadī (A.D. 869), al-Muʿtamid (A.D. 870), al-Muʿtaẓid (A.D. 892), al-Muktafī (A.D. 902), al-Muqtadir (A.D. 908), al-Qāhir (A.D. 932), ar-Rāẓī (A.D. 934), al-Muttaqī (A.D. 940), al-Mustaqfī (A.D. 944), al-Mut̤īʿ (A.D. 945), at̤-T̤āiʿ (A.D. 974), al-Qādir (A.D. 994), al-Qāim (A.D. 1031), al-Muqtadī (A.D. 1075), al-Mustaz̤hir (A.D. 1094), al-Mustarshid (A.D. 1118), ar-Rāshid (A.D. 1135), al-Muqtafī (A.D. 1136), al-Mustanjid (A.D. 1160), al-Mustaẓī (A.D. 1170), an-Nāṣir (A.D. 1180), az̤-Z̤āhir (A.D. 1225), al-Mustanṣir (A.D. 1226), al-Mustaʿṣim (A.D. 1242 to A.D. 1258).
In the reign of al-Mustaʿṣim Hūlākū, grandson of Jingīz K͟hān, entered Persia and became Sultan A.D. 1256. In 1258 he took Bag͟hdād and put the K͟halīfah al-Mustaʿṣim to death. [[KHALIFAH].]
ABDĀL (ابدال). “Substitutes,” pl. of Badal. Certain persons by whom, it is said, God continues the world in existence. Their number is seventy, of whom forty reside in Syria, and thirty elsewhere. When one dies another takes his place, being so appointed by God. It is one of the signs of the last day that the Abdāl will come from Syria. (Mishkāt, xxiii. c. 3.) No one pretends to be able to identify these eminent persons in the world. God alone knows who they are, and where they are.
ʿABDU ʾLLĀH (عبدالله). The father of Muḥammad. He was the youngest son of ʿAbdu ʾl-Mut̤t̤alib. During the pregnancy of his wife Āminah, he set out on a mercantile expedition to Gaza in the south of Palestine, and on his way back he sickened and died at al-Madīnah, before the birth of his son Muḥammad. (Kātibu ʾl-Wāqidī, p. 18; Muir’s Life of Mahomet, vol. i. p. 11.)
ʿABDU ʾLLĀH IBN SAʿD (عبدالله بن سعد). One of Muḥammad’s secretaries. It is related that, when Muḥammad instructed ʿAbdu ʾllāh to write down the words ([Sūrah xxiii. 12–14]), “We (God) have created man from an extract of clay … then we produced it another creation,” ʿAbdu ʾllāh exclaimed, “And blessed be God, the best of creators”; and Muḥammad told him to write that down also. Whereupon ʿAbdu ʾllāh boasted that he had been inspired with a sentence which the Prophet had acknowledged to be part of the Qurʾān. It is of him that it is written in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah vi. 93], “Who is more unjust than he who devises against God a lie, or says, ‘I am inspired,’ when he is not inspired at all.”
ʿABDU ʾL-MUT̤T̤ALIB (عبدالمطلب). Muḥammad’s grandfather and his guardian for two years. He died, aged 82, A.D. 578. His sons were ʿAbdu ʾllāh (Muḥammad’s father), al-Ḥāris̤, az-Zuhair, Abū T̤ālib, Abū Lahab, al-ʿAbbās, and Ḥamza.
ʿABDU ʾL-QĀDIR AL-JĪLĀNĪ (عبدالقادر الجيلانى). The celebrated founder of the Qādirīyah order of darweshes, surnamed Pīr-Dastagīr. He died and was buried at Bag͟hdād, A.H. 561.
ʿABDU ʾR-RAḤMĀN IBN ʿAUF (عبدالرحمن بن عوف). One of the Companions who embraced Islām at a very early period, and was one of those who fled to Ethiopia. He also accompanied Muḥammad in all his battles, and received twenty wounds at Uḥud. He died A.H. 32, aged 72 or 75, and was buried at Baqīʿu ʾl-Gharqad, the graveyard of al-Madīnah.
ABEL. Arabic Hābīl (هابيل), Heb. הֶבֶל Hebel. In the Qurʾān “the two sons of Adam” are called Hābīl wa Qābīl, and the following is the account given of them in that book ([Sūrah v. 30–35]), together with the remarks of the commentators in italics (as rendered in Mr. Lane’s Selections, 2nd ed., p. 53), “Recite unto them the history of the two sons of Adam, namely, Abel and Cain, with truth. When they offered [their] offering to God (Abel’s being a ram, and Cain’s being produce of the earth), and it was accepted from one of them (that is, from Abel; for fire descended from heaven, and devoured his offering), and it was not accepted from the other, Cain was enraged; but he concealed his envy until Adam performed a pilgrimage, when he said unto his brother, I will assuredly slay thee. Abel said, Wherefore? Cain answered, Because of the acceptance of thine offering to the exclusion of mine. Abel replied, God only accepteth from the pious. If thou stretch forth to me thy hand to slay me, I will not stretch forth to thee my hand to slay thee; for I fear God, the Lord of the worlds. I desire that thou shouldst bear the sin [which thou intendest to commit] against me, by slaying me, and thy sin which thou hast committed before, and thou wilt be of the companions of the fire.—And that is the recompense of the offenders.—But his soul suffered him to slay his brother: so he slew him; and he became of [the number of] those who suffer loss. And he knew not what to do with him; for he was the first dead person upon the face of the earth of the sons of Adam. So he carried him upon his back. And God sent a raven, which scratched up the earth with its bill and its talons and raised it over a dead raven that was with it until it hid it, to show him how he should hide the corpse of his brother. He said, O my disgrace! Am I unable to be like this raven, and to hide the corpse of my brother?—And he became of [the number of] the repentant. And he digged for him and hid him.—On account of this which Cain did We commanded the children of Israel that he who should slay a soul (not for the latter’s having slain a soul or committed wickedness in the earth, such as infidelity, or adultery, or intercepting the way, and the like) [should be regarded] as though he had slain all mankind; and he who saveth it alive, by abstaining from slaying it, as though he had saved alive all mankind.”
“The occasion of their making this offering is thus related, according to the common tradition in the East. Each of them being born with a twin-sister, when they were grown up, Adam, by God’s direction, ordered Cain to marry Abel’s twin-sister, and Abel to marry Cain’s; (for it being the common opinion that marriages ought not to be had in the nearest degrees of consanguinity, since they must necessarily marry their sisters, it seemed reasonable to suppose they ought to take those of the remoter degree;) but this Cain refusing to agree to, because his own sister was the handsomest, Adam ordered them to make their offerings to God, thereby referring the dispute to His determination. The commentators say Cain’s offering was a sheaf of the very worst of his corn, but Abel’s a fat lamb of the best of his flock.”—Sale’s Koran, I., p. 122.