Tamim

Before discussing customs dues proper, we should examine the meaning of the term kharàj when it is used in connection with the market of the Prophet in Medina. It will be argued that it did not mean customs but rent, and hence should be eliminated from the discussion of customs in early Islam. In a seminal though concise article which appeared twenty-five years ago, M. J. Kister drew attention to several reports that shed Hght on an important aspect of the clash between Muhammad and the Jews of Medina, namely the economic rivalry between them. ^ In ' EP, S.V. Maks; Becker, C. H., Papyri Schott-Reinhardt, I, Veroffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyms-Sammlung, IE, Papyri Schott-Reinhardt, Heidelberg, 1906, 53-54, who argues that customs dues were introduced much later than the poll-tax and land-tax, hence the opposition to them among the pious. But the evidence on the levying of customs from the time of Muhammad onwards quoted later in this study seems to be overwhelming. The opposition of the pious merely meant that certain circles never considered it a legitimate tax (see also below, n. 98), although Muslims paid smaller rates than the Ahl al-Dhimma, not to mention the Ahl al-Harb, i.e., residents of foreign countries. ^ Valuable information about customs is included in the small book of Mïkhà'îl 'Awwád, aU Ma 'àsirfi bilâd al-rüm wa-l-'arab (Land and Sea Toll Barriers in Byzantine and Moslem Empires), Baghdad, 1948. The book is a revised version of a series of articles published by 'Awwàd in nine issues of the Muqtatafioumdl in 1944 and 1945. On the term ma'sir see EP, s.v. (Bosworth, C. E.). For a recent article on the same subject see Rex-Smith, G., «Have you anything to declare? Maritime trade and conctmerce in Ayyubid Aden: Practices and taxes», in

Arabic linguists put their efforts to set up grammatical rules following the process of collecting lingustic data from the ancient Arabic tribes. While doing this, they had attached great importance to encompassing Arabic language as a whole by those grammatical rules. They had frequently referred to the linguistic usage of Arabic tribes in both determination and deduction periods within the above-mentioned boundaries. Some of the tribes that linguists had referred to were accepted as worthy of attention as a consequence of their geographical status. In this study, we examined the place of the dialect of Tamim which was considered as one of the most important tribes in terms of carrying value in induction activity for Arabic grammatical rules. From this perspective, we dealt with the term “dialects” as a phenomenon and the reason why they have arisen as well as the sources employed by the linguists in the process of pescribing linguistic norms. Besides, we addressed the effects of the dialect of Tamim among these sources, and the references made to the dialect in question which has been found in the books of Arabic linguistics. Finally, we studied the different aspects of the dialect of Tamim from written standart Arabic.