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Burton, Sir Richard Francis

(Encyclopedia)Burton, Sir Richard Francis, 1821–90, English explorer, writer, and linguist. He joined (1842) the service of the East India Company and, while stationed in India, acquired a thorough knowledge of t...

Banu Musa

(Encyclopedia)Banu Musa bäno͞oˈ mo͞osäˈ [key], family of Arab mathematicians and astronomers of the 9th cent. a.d. The name means “sons of Musa” and refers to the three brothers, Muhammad, Ahmad, and al-H...

Muallaqat

(Encyclopedia)Muallaqat mo͞oälˌäkätˈ [key], Pre-Islamic Arabic anthology compiled by the scholar Hammad al Rawiya (d. c.775). comprised of poems that were written in gold letters and hung on the walls of the ...

Berbers

(Encyclopedia)Berbers, aboriginal Caucasoid peoples of N Africa, called Imazighen in the Tamazight language. They inhabit the lands lying between the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea and between Egypt and the Atlan...

Adelard of Bath

(Encyclopedia)Adelard of Bath ădˈəlärd [key], fl. 12th cent., English scholastic philosopher, celebrated for his study of Arabic learning. He translated Euclid from Arabic into Latin. His major works were Perdi...

Indo-European Family of Languages, The (table)

(Encyclopedia)The Indo-European Family of Languages * Asterisk indicates a dead language. ...

Abd al-Malik

(Encyclopedia)Abd al-Malik äbˌdo͝ol-mälĭkˈ [key], c.646–705, 5th Umayyad caliph (685–705); son of Marwan I. At his accession, Islam was torn by dissension and threatened by the Byzantine Empire. With the ...

Bacon, Roger

(Encyclopedia)Bacon, Roger, c.1214–1294?, English scholastic philosopher and scientist, a Franciscan. He studied at Oxford as well as at the Univ. of Paris and became one of the most celebrated and zealous teache...

Hamasa

(Encyclopedia)Hamasa hämäˈsä, həmäˈsə [key] [Arab.,=valor], one of the great anthologies of Arabic literature. It was gathered together in the 9th cent. by Abu Tammam when he was snowbound in Hamadan, where...

Mufaddaliyat

(Encyclopedia)Mufaddaliyat mō– [key], great Arabic anthology compiled by the celebrated philologist Al Mufaddal ad-Dabbi (d. c.775). It contains 126 poems, some complete odes, others fragmentary. They are all of...