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Abu Muslim (728-755): Persian leader of the Abbasid revolution. By political and religious agitation he raised (747) the black banners of the Abbasids against the ruling Umayyad family. In 749 he established Abu al-Abbas as-Saffah, the head of the Abbasid family, as caliph of Islam. Abu Muslim became governor of Khorasan, but the caliph al-Mansur feared his power and treacherously murdered him.
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Abu Nakr: Father of Aisha, acclaimed first Caliph after the Prophet’s death. Arguably the first adult male convert to Islam, and a close colleague and devout disciple of the Prophet Muhammad. The only man to accompany Muhammad when he escaped from Mecca. He was chosen to head the prayers by the Prophet in the last week of his life, which gave him a critical edge to become his acknowledged successor.
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Abu Sufyan: A Meccan tribal leader who raised an army and attacked Medina. nobleman of Mecca who for ten years commanded the pagan opposition to early Islam after Muhammad’s migration to Medina. After his acceptance of Islam, prepared for by the marriage of his daughter Umm Habiba to Muhammad, he would become a loyal ally of the Prophet. He would serve as a provincial governor in the Yemen for the first two Caliphs and is traditionally considered to have fought at Yarmuk. Legitimate father of Yazid and Muawiya and possibly to others such as Amr and Zayyad. Meccan leader who opposed Muhammad; fought in battles. A Quraysh leader who surrendered Mecca to Muhammad in 629.
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Abu-Simbel: Abu-Simbel or Ipsambul, village, S Egypt, on the Nile River. Its two temples were hewn (1250 BC) our of rock cliffs during the reign of Ramses II. To avoid the rising waters caused by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, the colossal statues of Ramses II and the temples were cut into 950 blocks and reassembled farther inland. The project, sponsored by UNESCO and funded by more than 50 nations, was completed in 1966.
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Abul A’la Mawdudi (1903-1979): If the nineteenth century was the age of European domination of the Muslim world, then the twentieth century must be considered the period when the Muslims finally woke from sleep and began to liberate their lands from foreign occupation. But following the departure of the British, French, Italians and the other European colonial powers from the Muslim world, a powerful and pertinent debate took place in all the Muslim countries concerning their political and constitutional futures. One Islamic scholar and activist contributed more to this debate than probably any other Muslim thinker or reformer of his generation; he was Abul A’la Mawdudi of Pakistan.
Sayyid Abul A’la Mawdudi, better known as Mawlana Mawdudi, was born in the town of Aurangabad in the Indian state of Hyderabad (located in present-day Andhra Pradesh). Born and brought up in a family where learning, personal piety and devotion to Sufism was valued and respected, young Mawdudi received his early education at home from his father. His further education was interrupted at the age of seventeen when his father suddenly died in 1920. Mawdudi was forced to abandon his studies and work to earn a living.
Mawdudi then became editor of the prominent al-Jam’iyat, the official publication of Jam’iat-i Ulama-i Hind, a national Islamic umbrella organization which represented the Indian Muslims at the time.
Following his resignation as editor of al-Jam’iyat in 1928, Mawdudi left Delhi and moved to Hyderabad. As a journalist and editor of al-Jam’iyat, he was clean-shaven and wore Western clothes, but now he grew a beard and adopted a revivalist approach to Islam. He took charge of Tarjuman al-Qur’an (Interpretation of the Qur’an) in 1932. This was a monthly Islamic journal which was originally founded and published by an independent Muslim scholar in Hyderabad. This convinced Mawdudi that his intellectual efforts were having the desired effect and thus he continued to champion the cause of the Indian Muslims and write prolifically.
Mawdudi continued to publish the Tarjuman from Hyderabad until 1937, when Sir Muhammad Iqbal invited him to move to Pathankot (located in East Punjab, India) and help him to establish an Islamic research center there. After his move to Pathankot in 1938, he continued to edit and publish the Tarjuman and also began work on the proposed research center. With the active support of a number of leading Indian Islamic scholars, in 1941 he formally launched the Jama’at-i-Islami (The Islamic Organization), an Islamic political party, in order to reform Indian politics, culture and society in the light of Islam. This situation changed radically following the formation of Pakistan as an independent country in 1947. Along with his close friends and supporters, Mawdudi left India in favor of Pakistan and tried to establish an Islamic political, economic and cultural order there.
It was the formation of Jama’at-i-Islami in 1941 – and his subsequent migration to Pakistan in 1947 – which provided the ideal opportunity for Mawdudi to engage in politics on a full-time basis for the first time. He actively campaigned for an Islamic constitution, as well as the need to implement the Shari’ah (Islamic law) in that country. Mawdudi did not believe in the pursuit of intellectual activity minus socio-political activism. And although his political activism landed him in prison on more than one occasion, he remained as firm and steadfast as ever. He believed there was no room for the depoliticisation of Islam. Accordingly, Mawdudi and his Jama’at-i-Islami fully embraced socio-political activism.
As an Islamic ideologue and author, Mawdudi wrote more than one hundred books and treatises on all aspects of Islam. However, it is his Tafhim al-Qur’an (Towards Understanding the Qur’an), a voluminous Urdu translation and commentary on the Qur’an, which is today considered to be his most influential work. His critics have argued that his books read more like manuals for socio-political action, rather than works of Islamic wisdom and spirituality, but the Jama’at-i-Islami party which he founded and led for more than three decades continues to operate in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to this day.
Mawdudi is today considered to be one of the most widely-read Muslim authors of modern times. He died in a hospital in Buffalo (New York) at the age of seventy-five and was buried in front of his house in Lahore. Prior to his death, Mawdudi received the prestigious King Faisal International Award for his services to Islam.
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Abul Hasan al-Ash’ari (873-941): After the death of Caliph Uthman, huge controversy ensued within the Islamic State regarding the question of leadership and political legitimacy. During this period, a number of political factions emerged including the Shi’at Ali, khawarij, Murji’ah and the Mu’tazilah. Of these factions, the most politically neutral were the Mu’tazilah who later acquired a largely philosophical and theological contour under the influence of Wasil ibn Ata. Famous Abbasid rulers like Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Ma’mun became ardent champions of Mu’tazilism. Abul Hasan al-Ash’ari, one of the Muslim world’s most influential theologians (Mutakallimun), emerged to turn the tables on Mu’tazilism.
Abul Hasan Ali ibn Ismail al-Ash’ari was born in Basrah (in modern Iraq) into a distinguished Muslim family which traced its lineage back to Abu Musa al-Ash’ari, who was a prominent companion of the Prophet. Al-Ash’ari mastered Arabic grammar, literature, Islamic sciences and the philosophical and theological doctrines of Mu’tazilism from an early age.
Al-Ash’ari was considered to be far superior to all of them on account of his mastery of the finer points of Mu’tazilite philosophy and theology. According to al-Ash’ari, the Prophet Muhammad appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to champion the cause of Islamic orthodoxy, rather than that of Mu’tazilism. Suddenly, it was as if al-Ash’ari woke up from a deep sleep, only to discover that he had already spent four decades of his life studying and championing the cause of an un-Islamic creed. He went straight to the central mosque in Basrah, which at the time was packed to its maximum capacity. He stepped onto the minbar (pulpit) and delivered a historic announcement. This announcement was to mark the beginning of the end for philosophical rationalism and the resurgence of Islamic traditionalism. ‘Lo! I repent that I have been a Mu’tazilite.’ The Mu’tazilite