SUAVI, ALI (1839-1878), a popular reformist figure of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Suavi exemplifies the ideas of conservative Ottomans who were drawn into a struggle for the expression of the popular will. Although trained in the modern educational system of the rusdiye, the secular postprimary schools established during the Tanzimat reforms, he assumed the role
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Afghan Mujahidin The Afghan Mujahidin are guerrilla fighters who formed their groups in opposition to the communist government after the April 1978 coup. The Mujahidin movement is divided into an array of political parties, each following a different set of ideological, ethnic, clientelist, and sectarian loyalties. The first cleavage among the parties is based on
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Shāh ‘Abbās the Great (or Shāh ‘Abbās I) (Persian: شاه عَباس بُزُرگ) (27 January 1571 – 19 January 1629) was the 5th Safavid Shah (king) of Iran, and generally considered the greatest ruler of the Safavid dynasty. He was the third son of Shah Mohammad. Shah Abbas I, the fifth ruler of the Safavid dynasty,
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IBRAHIM, ANWAR (born 10 August 1947), Malaysian Muslim activist, thinker, and politician. Anwar was born at Cerok Tok Kun, Bukit Mertajam, Penang; both his parents were active in the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). He received a secular education and also, like most Malay children of the time, studied religion in the afternoon. While at
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Abdumalik Bahori (March 22.1927-Dec.3 ,2010)was children poet and the first Tajik fiction writer. He was born in the middle-class family who worked in the field of silk producing industry. He graduated Leninabad Pedagogical Institute known Khujand State University in 1946 Bahori was a writer who predicted cell phones and possible cloning of human. Dili beqaror
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AL-AZHAR. Situated in the heart of premodern Cairo, al-Azhar is the greatest mosque-university in the world today. Reluctantly adjusting to modern times over the last century, the millennium-old Azhar remains a focal point of Islamic religious and cultural life for Egypt and the entire Islamic world. The First Nine Centuries (to 1872). Jawhar al-Sidilli conquered
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AZERBAIJAN. Northern or Caucasian Azerbaijan is situated on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. Conquered by the Russian Empire early in the nineteenth century, it remained under Russian rule until the collapse of that empire in 1918. The first Republic of Azerbaijan existed from 28 May 1918 until 28 April 1920, when it was
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AZAD, ABU AL-KALAM (1888-1958), Urdu journalist and stylist, Islamic thinker, and religious universalist symbolizing the Muslim option for composite Indian nationalism. Mawlana Azad was born in Mecca, where his father Khairuddin Dihlawi (1831-19o8) had migrated in 1858 and later married the daughter of a mufti of Medina. The ancestors of Azad had intellectual and spiritual
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AYATOLLAH. Derived from the terms dyat (sign, testimony, miracle, verses of the Qur’an) and Allah (God), ayatollah (“sign of God”), is an honorific title with hierarchical value in Twelver Imamite Shiism, bestowed by popular usage on outstanding mujtahids, with reference to Qur’an 41.53. The sense of this title can be traced to the need for
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