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Article

Ibn al-Abbar  

Allen J. Fromherz

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 January 2020

was born in Valencia, Spain in Rabi II 595 (according to the Islamic calendar), or January/February 1199, and is considered one of the greatest writers of the twelfth century. His full name, Abu ʿAbd Allah Ibn al-Abbar al QudaʿI, means “Son of the Seller of Sewing Needles,” indicating that his family was probably part of the small-scale merchant class in Muslim Spain.

As a young man Ibn al-Abbar witnessed the devastating battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 which turned the tide against the Almohads in Muslim Spain Divided and defeated the Muslim west began to fracture His early master Ibn Mardanish ruler in Murcia converted to Christianity possibly as a means of forming an alliance with other Christian rulers and averting the capture of his city Although Ibn al Abbar did not follow his master in converting he had no scruples about working for an ...

Article

Qutb, Sayyid  

Ellis Goldberg

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Egyptian author, literary critic, and activist who helped shape contemporary political Islam, was born in the Upper Egyptian village of Musha in Asyut province on 9 October 1906. His father, Qutb Ibrahim, was a farmer and member of the nationalist Watani party led by Mustafa Kamil. Qutb attended a state-run primary school, but had also memorized the Qurʾan in its entirety by 1916. Qutb experienced the massive 1919 revolt against British rule as a teenage activist. He left the village in 1921 and lived in the Cairo suburb of Zaytun with his mother’s brother for four years, while attending a high school associated with the modernist educational institution Dar al-ʿUlum (founded 1871). In 1929 he entered Dar al-ʿUlum itself and graduated in 1933.

After graduation Qutb first appeared on the Egyptian intellectual scene as a poet and literary critic He was then thought of as a ...

Article

Wansharisi, Ahmad al-  

David S. Powers

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Maliki scholar, jurist, and mufti, was born in Jabal Wansharis (Ouarsenis), a mountain massif in the Central Algerian Tell, 31 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of Algiers. When Ahmad was five years old, his father moved the family to Tlemcen, where he studied the Qurʾan, Arabic language, and Maliki law and jurisprudence with distinguished scholars.

In 1469 at the age of forty al Wansharisi incurred the wrath of the Zayyanid sultan Muhammad IV who ordered that his house be ransacked and plundered Leaving everything behind al Wansharisi fled to Fez where he was welcomed by the scholarly community receiving food and shelter from the jurist Muhammad al Sughayyir He moved into a house near the Muʿallaq mosque in the Sharratin quarter of Fez al Qarawiyyin and was appointed professor of Maliki law at the Madrasa Misbahiyya His knowledge of the law was proverbial He who has not studied with al ...

Article

Zawahiri, Ayman al-  

Efraim Barak

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Muslim activist, terrorist, and leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Osama Bin Laden’s second-in-command, and a qualified surgeon. Zawahiri was born on 19 June 1951, in Cairo’s Al-Maʿadi neighborhood, to a distinguished Egyptian family. Zawahiri is also known as Abu-Muhammad, Abu-Fatima, Muhammad Ibrahim, Abu-ʿAbdallah, Abu-al-Muʾis, The Doctor, The Teacher, al-Ustadh, Nur, and Nur al-Din. Zawahiri holds French and Swiss passports under the name of Amin Osman and a Dutch passport under the name of Sami Mahmud al-Hifnawi.

His father, Muhammad Rabi ʿAl-Zawahiri, who died in 1995, was a professor of Pharmacology at the University of ʿAin-Shams. His paternal grandfather, Shaikh al Ahmadi Al-Zawahiri, served as the ʾImam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo. His maternal grandfather, Prof. ʿAbd Al-Wahab ʿAzzam (1894–1959 was a Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Cairo and served as the dean of the Faculty of Humanities Furthermore he was ...