AMEER ALI, SYED

Amir ‘Ali, Sayyid; 1849-1928), Indian jurist and author of Islamic modernist apologia. Syed Ameer Ali was born in Chinsura,Bengal into a Shi’i family with a […]

ALL-INDIA MUSLIM LEAGUE

ALL-INDIA MUSLIM LEAGUE. Established in I9o6, the All-India Muslim League had a somewhat limited role until it came under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah […]

ALIGARH

This large town in western Uttar Pradesh,India, in the district of the same name, has been associated with major Muslim educational, political, and ideological movements […]

ALAWID DYNASTY

`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 […]

AGA KHAN FOUNDATION

A private, nondenominational, philanthropic institution established by the Aga Khan, the Isma’ili imam, in 1967 to translate “the Muslim ethic of care and compassion for […]

AGA KHAN

The Nizari Isma’ili imams since the time of Hasan ‘Ali Shah (d. 1881) have borne the title Aga Khan. The present imam, Prince Karim alHusayni, […]

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 […]