A Turcoman line ruling in Iran from 1736 to 1796 was known as the Afsharid dynasty. The empire established by the dynasty’s founder, Nadir Shah Afshar (r. 1736-1747), stretched from Iraq to northern India; Nadir’s successors reigned only in northeastern Iran(Khurasan province). Nadir Shah began his career as commander-in-chief for Tahmasp II, claimant to the
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[This entry articulates the themes and values in the languages and literatures of Muslims in sub-SaharanAfrica. Reflecting major linguistic divisions, it comprises two articles: East Africa andWest Africa. For discussion of the literatures of North Africa, see Arabic Literature. See also Islam, article on Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa.] East Africa Islam was brought to the
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ABDEL RAHMAN, OMAR (b. 1938), more properly spelled `Umar `Abd al-Rahman, Egyptian religious scholar and Islamic fundamentalist leader. Born to a poor rural family in the village of al-Jamaliyah in Lower Egypt, Omar Ahmed Ali Abdel Rahman was accidentally blinded at ten months of age. He received a traditional religious education in regional urban centers,
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In the nineteenth century Afghanistan emerged as a buffer state between the contending British Indian and tsarist Russian colonial empires. This overwhelmingly Muslim (more than 99 percent), landlocked nation covers an area of 647,500 square kilometers consisting primarily of rugged mountains, deep valleys, deserts, and arid plateaus. Situated in the heart ofAsia, it has been
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AFGHANI, JAMALAL-DIN AL-(1838/391897), writer and Pan-Islamist political activist. Controversial during his lifetime, al-Afghani has become since his death one of the most influential figures in the Muslim world, even though his written output was rather small. His influence, especially in the twentieth century,may be seen as owing primarily to three factors: he reflected ideas that
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The absence of a body of written aesthetic theory in Islam before the nineteenth century may be attributed in part to the traditional Islamic disapproval of visual arts and music, but primarily to the lack in Islam of a parallel to the artist’s role as it emerged in Europe at the time of the Renaissance.
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One of the most important structural elements of Islamic society in Southeast Asia is adat (Ar., `adat), which denotes refined culture and more specifically local custom and indigenous law, established through practice and repeated precedent. In the Malay world adat should first of all be viewed as a cultural concept that can be understood only
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ABU DHARR AL-GHIFARI (d. 652), companion of the prophet Muhammad and focus of modern ideological debate. As in the case of many other companions of the Prophet, we have a few reports about Abfi Dharr’s life and his relation to the early Islamic community. Most of these reports, however, reflect the early schisms of Islamic
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