Page 135 - Arabian Studies (V)

The Yemeni Poet Al-Zuhayri 125
of canonical law, can be drawn from the doctors of Islamic law, provided
the following five fundamentals (usul) are observed: 1. al-'adl wa-’l-tawhid
2. al-wa'd wa-’l-wa'id 3. al-amr bi-’l-ma’ruf wa-’l-nahy 'an al-munkar
4. al-khuruj *ala ’l-ma^alim 5. hasr al-khilafah fi awlad al-batnayn. The
last of these fundamentals—the restriction of the Caliphate to the descen­
dants of ‘All’s two sons by the Prophet’s daughter Fatimah is the stipula­
tion most pertinent to this essay.
85. Cf. fn.81.
86. AY.ashya'.
87. The text should read qad ‘ana, not wa-qad.
88. Al-Mutawakkil al-Qasim b. al-Husayn, 1128-39/1716-27, Al-
Mansur al-Husayn b. al-Qasim, 1139-61/1727-48, Al-Mahdi ‘Abbas b. al-
Husayn, 1161-89/1748-75.
89. Muh. b. IsmaTl's biography, including this incident, is related by al-
Shawkani, al-Badr al-tali\ Cairo, 1348 H., ii, 133-9; Subul al-salam, op.
cit., i, 6; Nashr al-‘arf, op. cit., ii, 505, i, 217-9, ii, 77; Siddiq b. Husayn al-
Qanawji, al-Taj al-mukallal, Bombay, 1963, A\Aseq.\ Brockelmann, Gal.,
Sup., ii, 556, 74, 552. The editor of his Diwan quotes other, mainly MS.,
sources of his biography, Nafahat al-'anbar, Tib al-samr, Sulafat al-‘asrt
all known to Brockelmann.
90. There is a Bayt al-‘Ajami, a house of merchants (tujjar) in San‘a’ at
the present time, Persian by origin.
91. The technical term for this is nasb, a hostile person being known as
nasibi (pi., nawasib) = alladhJyunasib ahl al-bayt al-‘ida’. Cf. Sirat al-
Hadi, 152, 172, and the verse of al-Mutanabbi (al-'Urf al-tayyib Jisharh
Diwan ... ed. Nasif al-Yaziji, Beirut, 1955, ii, 10, on a well ‘Alawl in his
day, ‘When an ‘Alawl is not the example of Tahir, he is naught but an
argument for the anti-‘Alaw!s (li-’l-nawasibiY. This is adapted by a Zaydi
poet, with the substitution of ‘like Muhammad’ for ‘Tahir’ (Nashr al-'arf,
ii, 165.
The Aden paper al-Yaq$ah, 1957, no. 153, also defines nasb as hostility
to the Ahl al-Bayt and adds that nasibi is an injurious sobriquet (nabz) ‘for
anyone who opposes the despotic rulers (al-hukkam al-mustabiddinY. The
article in question also calls Sayyid Muh. b. Ibrahim al-Wazir (d.
840/1436 in San‘a’) ‘one of the propagandists (du'at) for liberation from
sectarianism (madhhabiyyah) and submission to unjust rulers’. This
scholar (cf. al-Shawkani, op. cit., ii, 89, 93) is famous for his al-’Awasim
wa-'l-qawasim and composed an anti-Zaydi tract (Radd *ala ’l-Zaydiyyah)
but I do not know how far al-Yaq%ah’s description of his political attitude
is to be trusted.
On this epithet nawasib cf. Muh. Ah. Nu‘man, al-Atraf al-ma‘niyyah,
24, 37.
As early as the "Corpus iuris” di Zaid ibn *Ali, ed. E. Griffini, Milano,
1919, 74, no. 321, we find the injunction, *Ld tusalli... ‘aid man nasab li-
Al Muhammad harb-an \ i.e., one should not bless anyone who raises war
against the Family of Muhammad.
92. Al-madhhab al-sa’ir, which might mean ‘current school’.
93. The ShafiTs, I am informed, clasp the chest (yadummun), at the