or permanent settlements, and is only occupied by nomad tribes, of which the principal are the Bani Hajar, Ajman and Khālid. The interior consists of low stony ridges rising gradually to the inner plateau. The oases of Hofuf and Katif, however, form a strong contrast to the barren wastes that cover the greater part of the district. Here an inexhaustible supply of underground water (to which the province owes its name Hasa) issues in strong springs, marking, according to Arab geographers, the course of a great subterranean river draining the Nejd highlands. Hofuf the capital, a town of 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants, with its neighbour Mubāriz scarcely less populous, forms the centre of a thriving district 50 m. long by 15 m. in breadth, containing numerous villages each with richly cultivated fields and gardens. The town walls enclose a space of 112 by 1 m., at the north-west angle of which is a remarkable citadel attributed to the Carmathian princes. Mubāriz is celebrated for its hot spring, known as Um Sabā or “mother of seven,” from the seven channels by which its water is distributed. Beyond the present limits of the oasis much of the country is well supplied with water, and ruined sites and half-obliterated canals show that it has only relapsed into waste in recent times. Cultivation reappears at Katif, a town situated on a small bay some 35 m. north-west of Bahrein. Date groves extend for several miles along the coast, which is low and muddy. The district is fertile but the climate is hot and unhealthy; still, owing to its convenient position, the town has a considerable trade with Bahrein and the gulf ports on one side and the interior of Nejd on the other. The fort is a strongly built enclosure attributed, like that at Hofuf, to the Carmathian prince Abu Tahir.
‘Uker or ‘Ujer is the nearest port to Hofuf, from which it is distant about 40 m.; large quantities of rice and piece goods transhipped at Bahrein are landed here and sent on by caravan to Hofuf, the great entrepôt for the trade between southern Nejd and the coast. It also shares in the valuable pearl fishery of Bahrein and the adjacent coast.
Politically El Hasa is a dependency of Turkey, and its capital Hofuf is the headquarters of the sanjak or district of Nejd. Hofuf, Katif and El Katr were occupied by Turkish garrisons in 1871, and the occupation has been continued in spite of British protest as to El Katr, which according to the agreement made in 1867, when Bahrein was taken under British protection, was tributary to the latter. Turkish claims to Kuwēt have not been admitted by Great Britain.
Authorities.—W. G. Palgrave, Central and Eastern Arabia (London, 1865); L. Pelly, Journal R.G.S. (1866); S. M. Zwemer, Geog. Journal (1902); G. F. Sadlier, Diary of a Journey across Arabia (Bombay, 1866); V. Chirol, The Middle East (London, 1904). (R. A. W.)
ḤASAN and ḤOSAIN (or Ḥusein), sons of the fourth Mahommedan caliph Ali by his wife Fatima, daughter of Mahomet. On Ali’s death Ḥasan was proclaimed caliph, but the strength of Moawiya who had rebelled against Ali was such that he resigned his claim on condition that he should have the disposal of the treasure stored at Kufa, with the revenues of Darabjird. This secret negotiation came to the ears of Ḥasan’s
supporters, a mutiny broke out and Ḥasan was wounded. He
retired to Medina where he died about 669. The story that he was poisoned at Moawiya’s instigation is generally discredited (see Caliphate, sect. B, § 1). Subsequently his brother Ḥosain was invited by partisans in Kufa to revolt against Moawiya’s successor Yazid. He was, however, defeated and killed at Kerbela on the 10th of October (Muharram) 680 (see Caliphate, sect. B, § 2 ad init.). Ḥosain is the hero of the Passion Play which is performed annually (e.g. at Kerbela) on the anniversary of his death by the Shi’ites of Persia and India, to whom from the earliest times the family of Ali are the only true descendants of Mahomet. The play lasts for several days and concludes with
the carrying out of the coffins (tabūt) of the martyrs to an open place in the neighbourhood.
See Sir Wm. Muir, The Caliphate (1883); Sir Lewis Pelly, The Miracle Play of Hasan and Hosein (1879).
ḤASAN UL-BAṢRĪ [Abū Sa‘ūd ul-Ḥasan ibn Abī–l-Ḥasan
Yassār ul-Baṣrī], (642–728 or 737), Arabian theologian, was born at Medina. His father was a freedman of Zaid ibn Thābit, one of the Anṣār (Helpers of the Prophet), his mother a client of Umm Salama, a wife of Mahomet. Tradition says that Umm Salama often nursed Ḥasan in his infancy. He was thus one of the Tābi‘ūn (i.e. of the generation that succeeded the Helpers). He became a teacher of Baṣra and founded a school there. Among his pupils was Wāṣil ibn ‘Atā, the founder of the
Mo‘tazilites. He himself was a great supporter of orthodoxy and the most important representative of asceticism in the time of its first development. With him fear is the basis of morality, and sadness the characteristic of his religion. Life is only a
pilgrimage, and comfort must be denied to subdue the passions. Many writers testify to the purity of his life and to his excelling in the virtues of Mahomet’s own companions. He was “as if he were in the other world.” In politics, too, he adhered to the earliest principles of Islam, being strictly opposed to the inherited
caliphate of the Omayyads and a believer in the election
of the caliph.
His life is given in Nawāwī’s Biographical Dictionary (ed. F. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen, 1842–1847). Cf. R. Dozy, Essai sur l’histoire de l’islamisme, pp. 201 sqq. (Leiden and Paris, 1879); A. von Kremer, Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge, p. 5 seq.; R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, pp. 225–227 (London, 1907). (G. W. T.)
HASBEYA, or Hasbeiya, a town of the Druses, about 36 m. W. of Damascus, situated at the foot of Mt. Hermon in Syria, overlooking a deep amphitheatre from which a brook flows to the Hasbāni. The population is about 5000 (4000 Christians). Both sides of the valley are planted in terraces with olives, vines and other fruit trees. The grapes are either dried or made into a kind of syrup. In 1846 an American Protestant mission
was established in the town. This little community suffered much persecution at first from the Greek Church, and afterwards from the Druses, by whom in 1860 nearly 1000 Christians were massacred, while others escaped to Tyre or Sidon. The castle in Hasbeya was held by the crusaders under Count Oran; but in 1171 the Druse emirs of the great Shehāb family (see Druses)
recaptured it. In 1205 this family was confirmed in the lordship of the town and district, which they held till the Turkish authorities took possession of the castle in the 19th century. Near Hasbeya are bitumen pits let by the government; and to the north, at the source of the Hasbāni, the ground is volcanic. Some travellers have attempted to identify Hasbeya with the biblical Baal-Gad or Baal-Hermon.
ḤASDAI IBN SHAPRUT, the founder of the new culture of the Jews in Moorish Spain in the 10th century. He was both physician and minister to Caliph Abd ar-Raḥman III. in Cordova. A man of wide learning and culture, he encouraged the settlement of Jewish scholars in Andalusia, and his patronage of literature, science and art promoted the Jewish renaissance in Europe. Poetry, philology, philosophy all flourished under his encouragement, and his name was handed down to posterity as the first of the many Spanish Jews who combined diplomatic skill with artistic culture. This type was the creation of the Moors in Andalusia, and the Jews ably seconded the Mahommedans in the effort to make life at once broad and deep.
(I. A.)
HASDEU, or Hăjdeu, BOGDAN PETRICEICU (1836–1907), Rumanian philologist, was born at Khotin in Bessarabia in 1836, and studied at the university of Kharkov. In 1858 he first settled in Jassy as professor of the high school and librarian. He may be considered as the pioneer in many branches of Rumanian philology and history. At Jassy he started his Archiva historica a Romaniei (1865–1867), in which a large number of old documents in Slavonic and Rumanian were published for the first time. In 1870 he inaugurated Columna lui Traian, the best philological review of the time in Rumania. In his Cuvente den Bătrăni (2 vols., 1878–1881) he was the first to contribute to the history of apocryphal literature in Rumania. His Historia critica a Romanilor (1875), though incomplete, marks the beginning of critical investigation into the history of Rumania. Hasdeu edited the ancient Psalter of Coresi of 1577 (Psaltirea lui Coresi, 1881). His Etymologicum magnum Romaniae (1886, &c.) is the beginning of an encyclopaedic dictionary of the Rumanian language, though never finished
