AFTERLIFE

The reality of the afterlife is integral to an understanding of the Islamic views of both the individual life cycle and the flow of human […]

AFSHARID DYNASTY

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 […]

AFRICAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

[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 […]

ABDEL RAHMAN, OMAR

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 […]

AFGHANISTAN

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 […]

AFGHANI, JAMAL AL-DIN

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 […]

AESTHETIC THEORY

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 […]

ADAT

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 […]