At the beginning of the nineteenth century Algeria had been a province of the Ottoman Empirefor four centuries. Like other provinces it evolved through the cycles of Turkish imperial conquest, increasing administrative autonomy from Istanbul, and integration of the Turkish ruling class with the local Arab and Berber leadership. During the first two periods the
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Viewed from the perspective of the history of science, alchemy can legitimately be considered an Islamic creation. Indeed, notwithstanding some development in ancient China, it was in the Islamic world that alchemy developed from a dark craft with its mysterious recipes into a systematic discipline founded on well-defined cosmological and metaphysical principles; and it was
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The only European country with a Muslim majority. Albania emerged in 1992 from nearly half a century of communism and state-sponsored suppression of religious beliefs. The Balkan nation, which borders Serbia,Macedonia, and Greece, is the poorest and most isolated country in Europe. The rugged Albanian countryside is dotted with hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers-a
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A term derived from the name of the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, `Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), `Alawiyah was applied originally to those who supported `Ali’s exclusive right to lead the Muslim community after the death of the Prophet in 632. The tenth-century Shi`i writer al-Nawbakht-1 called them al-Shi’ah al-`Alawiyah in
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`ALAWID DYNASTY. A family of religious notables, the `Alawis gained political dominion and the status of a royal house in Morocco during the seventeenth century and have ruled there continuously since that time, playing a significant, formative role in its development as a modern nation-state. The dynasty is also known as the Filalis or Filalians
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`ALAWI, AHMAD AL-, (1869-1934), more fully Abu al `Abbas Ahmad ibn Mustafa al-`Alawl, Algerian Sfifi and poet. Characterized by the French Orientalist Emile Dermenghem as “one of the most celebrated mystic shaikhs of our times,” al-`Alawi overcame humble origins and lack of formal education to create a substantial religious clientele with disciples and affiliated zdwiyahs
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Several meanings for akhund, a Persian word meaning “religious scholar” or “leader,” have been proposed by Iranian, Turkish, and Western writers. One states that the prefix a is actually a corrupted form of agha, meaning “lord” or “master.” Focusing on the khund, another source states that this is derived from the Persian khdndan, meaning “to
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