PAWNING. [[RAHN].]
PEN, The, of Fate. [[QALAM].]
PENTATEUCH. [[TAURAT].]
PESTILENCE. Arabic t̤āʿūn (طاعون), wabāʾ (وباء). According to the teaching of Muḥammad in the traditions, a pestilence is a punishment sent by God, it is also an occasion of martyrdom, and that Muslim who abides in the place where he is at the time of a pestilence, and dies of it, is admitted to the rank of a martyr. It is also enjoined that Musalmāns shall not enter a place where there is a pestilence raging, but remain where they are until it is passed. (Mishkāt, book v. ch. 1.)
PHARAOH. Arabic Firʿaun (فرعون). Heb. פַּרְעֹה. The King of Egypt in the time of Moses. Considered by all Muḥammadans to be the very personification of wickedness.
Al-Baiẓāwī says Firʿaun was the common title of the kings of Egypt, just as Cæsar was that of the Roman Emperors, and that the name of Pharaoh, according to some, was al-Walīd ibn Muṣʿab, and according to others Muṣʿab ibn Raiyām, and according to others Qābūs, and that he lived 620 years. Abū ʾl-Fidāʾ says that Muṣʿab being 170 years old, and having no child, whilst he kept his herds, he saw a cow calf, and heard her say at the same time, “O Muṣʿab, be not grieved, thou shalt have a son, a wicked son, who shall be cast into hell,” and that this son was the wicked Firʿaun of the time of Moses.
In the Qurʾān, [Sūrah xxxviii. 11], he is surnamed Firʿaun Ẕū ʾl-Autād, or “Pharaoh the master of the Stakes, who called the Apostles liars.” Some say the stakes refer to the strength of his kingdom, others that they were instruments of torture and death which he used.
Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea, and the commentators say that Gabriel would not let his body sink, but that it floated as a sign and a warning to the children of Israel. (See Qurʾān, [Sūrah x. 90–92].)
A further account of Pharaoh, as given in the Qurʾān, will be found in the article on Moses. The Pharaoh of Joseph’s time is said to be Raiyān ibn al-Walīd al-ʿAmlīqī, the ancestor of the renowned Pharaoh in the time of Moses. [[MOSES].]
PHILOSOPHY, MUSLIM. Arabic falsafah (فلسفة), or ʿilmu ʾl-ḥikmah (علم الحكمة). The following account of Arabian philosophy is taken with permission from Professor Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy, translated by G. S. Morris, M.A. (Hodder and Stoughton), vol. i. p. 405:—