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Sayyid Muḥsin al-Amīn (1867–1952) was a renowned Imāmī Shīʿī scholar and reformer. Born in Shaqrāʾ in the Jabal ʿĀmil region of present-day south Lebanon, he went to study in Najaf in 1891. In 1901 he became the spiritual leader of the Shīʿī community in Damascus, where he died some fifty years later. From his very beginnings as an author and religious teacher, al-Amīn distinguished himself as a staunch apologist for the basic tenets of Shīʿism, while at the same time calling for a rapprochement between Sunnī and Shīʿī Islam. Some of his works ha…

The modern history of Medina, the second, after Mecca, of the holiest cities of Islam, is marked by the end of Ottoman rule, in 1919, a few years of Hashemite control, and the seizure of power by the Āl Suʿūd dynasty in December 1925. Following the Arab Revolt staged by the Hashemite amīrs of Mecca in June 1916, the Ottoman government made considerable efforts to maintain its rule over Medina. Under the command of general Fahreddin (Fakhr al-Dīn) Paşa, the Ottomans successfully defended Medina until the armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) and, …

Anwar al-Jundī (1917–2002) was an Egyptian journalist and literary critic known for his bio-bibliographical reference works and monographs on individual Arab Muslim writers as well as his polemical works against Western cultural influence in the Arab World in general and secularism in particular. Born in the town of Dayrūṭ, al-Jundī first worked as a bank clerk, but managed to develop a keen interest in literary studies outside of work. His early articles appeared in the Egyptian journal Apollo, a short-lived (1932–4) but influential avant-guard literary magazine (Kocarev, Pisatel…

Muḥammad Jawād al-Balāghī (d. 1933) was an Iraqi Imāmī Shīʿī scholar, religious writer, polemicist, and poet. Born in Najaf in 1865–6 to a prominent family of scholars and littérateurs, he was educated first in his hometown, then, from 1888–9 until 1894–5, in al-Kāẓimiyya, afterwards again in Najaf, and then (1908–18) in Sāmarrāʾ. Soon after a second stay in al-Kāẓimiyya, during which he participated in the revolt of 1920, he returned to Najaf, where he led an ascetic life, devoting his time to te…

Baqīʿ al-Gharqad is the principal cemetery of Medina, the oldest and historically most important Islamic graveyard. The word baqīʿ originally denoted a area covered with trees and scrub, and gharqad is the box-thorn (genus Lycium). Though there are, in the cemetery of al-Maʿlā, in Mecca, tombs (such as that of Khadīja) ascribed to Muslims who died before the hijra, the cemetery of Medina is the first exclusively Muslim burial-ground. According to Islamic tradition, the prophet Muḥammad himself selected its location. His reported words and deeds in conn…

[German Version] is the widespread designation in the Islamic world for a person with (mainly religious) education. The term seems to be derived from the Arabic Maulā (“lord, master” etc.). Especially in the areas of Turkish and Iranian language and culture, and on the Indian subcontinent, the term has taken on very diverse colorings in the course of history. It can still be used as an honorific title for distinguished scholars, Sufi masters or religio-political leaders; but also, to some degree pejoratively, for members…

[German Version] I. Origin and Spread – II. Doctrine – III. Islamic Philosophy – IV. Islamic Art (Architecture and Book Art) – V. Islamic Studies – VI. Christianity and Islam – VII. Judaism and Islam – VIII. Islam in Europe – IX. Islam in North America – X. Political Islamism I. Origin and Spread 1. Muḥammad and his message In 569 ce, Muḥammad was born in Mecca, a city with the shrine of the Kaʿba at its center. Mecca enjoyed good relations with the Sasanian Empire and its Arab vassal princes in Ḥīra, but considered itself politically independen…