Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE

East Africa is today an important world region of Islam, with a history reaching back to the earliest centuries of the faith. Although data are both unreliable and disputed, the 2014 edition of the CIA World Factbook indicates that Muslims are said to constitute approximately 11.1 percent of the population of Kenya (4.9 millions); 12.1 percent of Uganda (4.2 millions); 35 percent of Tanzania (16.8 millions); 4.6 percent of Rwanda (552,000); 2.5 percent of Burundi (270,000); perhaps ten percent of…

Ebubekir Kani (Abū Bakr Kānī, also known as “Tokatlı Kani,” 1124–1206/1712–91), an Ottoman poet, prose writer, and master satirist, is a leading figure in twelfth/eighteenth-century Turkish literature. He was born in Tokat, in north-central Anatolia, where he also received his elementary education. He developed an interest in poetry at an early age and made a name for himself for his wittiness in both prose and verse. Depression in his youth compelled him to become a follower of the Mevlevi (Mevlevī) shaykh Abdülahad (ʿAbd al-Aḥad) Dede (d. 1179/1766) and affiliate himself …

Ebubekir Ratib Efendi (Abū Bakr Rātib Efendi, 1163–23 Cemaziyülahir (Jumādā II) 1214/1750–22 November 1799) was an Ottoman statesman born in Kastamonu, in the north central region of present-day Turkey. His father, Ali (ʿAlī) Efendi, was a member of the ulema (ʿulamāʾ), who liked to travel, and he took his young son with him on a visit to the Crimea. Ali Efendi’s preaching, or perhaps Ebubekir himself, appears to have made an impression on the Crimean ruler, Arslān Girāy Khān (r. 1748–56), who wrote a letter of recommendation for Ebubekir. After his return to Istanbul in 1170/1757, …

Ebüziyya Mehmed Tevfik (Ebū ’l-Deiubareiodotiyāʾ Meḥmed Tevfīq, 17 Rebiülevvel (Rabīʿ al-Awwal) 1265–18 Safer (Ṣafar) 1331/10 February 1849–27 January 1913), a Turkish journalist, printer, editor, critic, lexicographer, writer, calligrapher, bureaucrat, and politician, was born in Istanbul to a family from Konya. He wrote articles under the pseudonym Ebüziyya, which he adopted during his exile in Rhodes, in 1290/1873, when the Ottoman government prohibited him from working as a journalist.…

Bülent Ecevit (1926–2006) was a Turkish politician, poet, and journalist. His father, Fahri Ecevit (d. 1951), was a law professor and a Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, CHP) MP, and his mother, Nazlı Ecevit (d. 1985), a well-known painter. After briefly attending Ankara Erkek Lisesi (Ankara Boy’s High School), Ecevit enrolled at the American-sponsored Robert College in Istanbul, from which he graduated in 1944. He first worked as a journalist and then joined the Basın Yayın Gen…

An eclipse is a total or partial obscuration of one celestial body by another, the most dramatic being solar eclipses (kusūf) and lunar eclipses (khusūf). These were universally visible and attracted widespread attention as awe-inspiring celestial phenomena, often associated with important events and perceived as beneficent or maleficent omens. Beginning in antiquity, specialised observers noted variations in eclipse duration, changes in the apparent size of the Sun and Moon, the varying brightness of the planets, and …

Edebiyat-ı Cedide (Edebiyyāt-ı Cedīde, “New Literature”) is one of two names given to a movement in Turkish literature that flourished briefly but intensely in Istanbul in the years 1313–9/1896–1901. The name that became more widely used is that of the journal which, during the years in question, became the organ of the movement, Servet-i Fünun ( Thervet-i Fünūn, “Wealth of Sciences”). The term edebiyat-ı cedide had already been in more general use since the 1870s to designate European-inspired Ottoman literature as opposed to works written within the traditional parameters. The doz…

Edhem Paşa (1260–1327/1844–1909), an Ottoman military officer and statesmen, who bore the title of Gazi (Ghāzī, lit. “victorious soldier of Islam”; an honorific given to successful generals), was born in Istanbul on 27 Receb (Rajab) 1260/12 August 1844. He started his career in the Ottoman army as a mülazım-ı sani ( mülāzım-ı thānī, second lieutenant) in the regiments of the Imperial Guard (sixth company of the fir…

Edirne (Byzantine Adrianople; latitude N 41°40′37″, longitude E 26°33′21″) is a city in the Republic of Turkey, on the western border with Greece and Bulgaria, in the region known since ancient times as Thrace. It sits on a hill about seventy-five metres high commanding the plain that stretches eastward some 230 kilometres to Istanbul; to the north, west, and south, there are mountains some thirty to fifty kilometres distant. The Tunca River flows southward around the western edge of the city to…

Edirne is key to the history and formation of Ottoman architecture. In 763/1361–2, the Ottomans took possession of the city then called Adrianople, and it became the de facto centre of the state during the politically troubled time between the foundation of the state with its first capital, Bursa (earlier Proussa, captured by the Ottomans in 726/1326), and the conquest of what became the permanent capital, Istanbul (Constantinople; Ott., Kostantiniye, Qusṭanṭiniye), in 857/1453. Like Bursa, Edirne present…

The Treaty of Edirne (also known as the Treaty of Adrianople), which ended the Russo-Ottoman War of 1244–5/1828–9, was concluded between the Ottoman Empire and Russia on 15 Rebiülevvel (Rabīʿ I)/14 September 1829. Ottoman-Russian relations had deteriorated in the 1820s, and even the Convention of Akkerman (1242/1826), which resolved all issues of disagreement in Russia’s favour, had failed to relieve the political tension. In the aftermath of the naval disaster at Navarino (1243/1827), the friction erupted into armed conflict (Şevval (Shawwāl) …

In the early Ottoman Empire, up until the modernising reforms of the nineteenth century, and with the exception of children’s Qurʾān schools (mektep, maktab, kuttāb), formal education for Muslims was essentially male and effectively divided between two distinct vocational expectations. The empire’s system of religious colleges, medreses ( madrasas), prepared youths for religious careers. Their more secular counterparts, the schools of the imperial palaces (Enderun-i Hümayun Mektebi, Enderūn-i Humāyūn Mektebi) in Edirne and Istanbul, groomed young men for position…

In its general sense, the word “ education” denotes the act, process, and result of imparting and acquiring knowledge, values, and skills. This expression applies to both early childhood instruction and basic and higher learning that has the goal of providing individuals or groups of people with the intellectual, physical, moral, and spiritual qualities that will help them to grow, develop, and become useful members of the community and society. It also has applications in more purely spiritual or reli…

Education in Muslim Southeast Asia has long varied in content, sponsorship, and organisation. Before the nineteenth century, the dominant variety of popular Islamic culture was based on a “mystic synthesis” (Ricklefs, Islamisation, 7–10), which combined a commitment to Islamic identity and observance of Islam’s five pillars with the veneration of regional guardian spirits of the earth, water, and air. Instead of networks of madrasa-based scholars, local rulers played the pivotal role in the custodianship and transmission of religious culture. They sponsored…

Islamic education (the intellectual and cultural formation of an individual) in the Indian subcontinent has been polymorphous and fluid since its introduction a millenium ago. A major change in the millennia-old educational systems of South Asia coincided with the beginning of Islamic rule in the subcontinent during the fifth/eleventh century. North Indian Islamic dynasties in power over the next eight centuries sought hegemonic political power partly through the production and reproduction of Islamic values…

Islamic education has been an essential component of Islam in West Africa since its introduction by the fourth/tenth century. The celebrated Moroccan traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770 or 779/1368 or 1377), who visited the empire of Mali in the eighth/fourteenth century, noted with approval the Malian emphasis on memorisation of the Qurʾān. He observed children shackled in chains until they had committed to memory the passages from the Qurʾān that their teacher had assigned. Teachers since then have refrained f…

Prior to the Tanzimat (Tanẓīmāt, 1255–93/1839–76) and later Ottoman period, education was under the jurisdiction of the various religious communities whose religious and cultural autonomy was recognized by the authorities. Muslims had two main options for schooling their children: 1) sıbyan (ṣıbyān) mektebis (elementary schools), which taught reading, memorization of the Qurʾān, and basic religious knowledge, and 2) medreses ( madrasa, theological school), which trained the ulema ( ʿulamāʾ, religious scholars). Both types of school were supported by vakıfs ( waqf, pious foundatio…

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Eger (Ott. Eğri, Eğre) is a regionally important town located in the north of present-day Hungary. In 1005–99/1596–87, it was the centre of an Ottoman vilayet ( vilāyet, province), and both before and after this period, it was the seat of a bishop (after 1804 an archbishop). Eger was founded on the banks of a small river of the same name, at a point where plain and hills meet. The town was damaged during the Mongol invasion in 1241 but restored by Béla IV (r. 1235–70). Its ecclesiastical buildings were partly renovated in Renaissance style at the end of the fifteenth century. When the Ottomans m…

The Arab conquest of Egypt in 19/640 introduced to Egyptian art and architecture a new range of architectural typologies and decorative treatments. At the time of the conquest, extensive monumental remains from the Pharaonic to the late antique periods were preserved in Egypt. Although the formal influence of such buildings on the architecture of the following millennium was slight, the masonry itself provided a seemingly inexhaustible supply of raw materials for new construction. A variety of typologies, such as the courtyard mosque and the madrasa, were imported to cater to n…

Occupied by Arab forces in 19/640, Egypt emerged as a preeminent province in the Islamic empire, ruled by the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid dynasties. Attaining autonomy under the Turkish governor Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn in 254/868, Egypt became an independent power in the Middle East and North Africa over the next century. Subsequent establishment of a Shīʿī caliphate under the Fāṭimids and a Sunnī sultanate by the Ayyūbids, restructured by the Mamlūks, consistently emphasised agrarian exploitation of the Nile Valley, control over Syria, and domination of Red Sea trade routes, …