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ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Jazāʾirī (1807–1883), was the emir of Algeria (1830–1847), Sufi shaykh and esoteric exegete. ʿAbd al-Qādir led one of the most successful wars of resistance to European colonialism in the lands of Islam, and is to be placed alongside such Muslim heroes as ʿUthmān Dan Fodio (d. 1817) of Nigeria, Imam Shamīl (d. 1871) of Dagestan, and ʿUmar Mukhtār (d. 1931) of Libya. Although defeated finally by the overwhelmingly superior forces of the French army, he was soon regarde…

ʿAbd al-Quddūs Gangūhī, ʿAbd al-Quddūs b. Ismāʿīl b. Ṣafī al-Dīn b. Naṣīr al-Dīn Ḥanafī Rūdawlī Gangūhī (860–944/1456–1537), was an eminent master of the Chishtiyya–Ṣābiriyya Sufi order ( ṭarīqa) in India. He was considered a descendant of Abū Ḥanīfa, and was also a follower of the Ḥanafī school, whence his Ḥanafī title (Ghawthī Shaṭṭārī, 216; Ba-dakhshī, 1078). ʿAbd al-Quddūs hailed from a family of religious scholars (Quddūsī, 6, 9) who appear to have migrated from Ghaznīn to Jawnpūr. His forebear, Naṣīr al-Dīn, took up residence in Rūdawlī (Digby, 2–3). He spent his youth and ad…

The title dahriyya is derived from the word dahr (q.v.), used in Q 45:24, which states: ‘And they say: “There is naught but our life of the world; we die and we live, and naught destroyeth us save time”; when they have no knowledge whatsoever of (all) that; they do but guess’. The word dahr also appears at Q 76:1, which asks the rhetorical question: ‘Hath there come upon man any period of time in which he was a thing unremembered?’. This chapter is known either as al-Dahr or as al-Insān, both words appearing in this first verse. But it is from the usage at Q 45:24, often seen in conj…

al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, son of Imam ʿAlī and Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ, and grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad. Al-Ḥusayn (3 Shaʿbān 4–10 Muḥarram 61/8 January 625–10 October 680) was the third Shiʿi imam and the most notable martyr of the battle of Karbalāʾ, whose killing is considered one of the foundational events in the early history of Islam. It plays an important part in the collective memory of the Shiʿa to this day, and has become part of a rich religious and cultural heritage. He is one of the members of the Prophet’s family, known as ahl al-kisāʾ, meaning ‘people of the cloak’, these…

ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, first cousin of the Prophet Muḥammad; first of the Imams for all Shiʿi Muslims—the very term Shīʿa being derived from the designation Shīʿat ʿAlī, ‘the supporters of ʿAlī’; fourth and last of the ‘rightly-guided caliphs’ ( al-khulafāʾ al-rāshidūn); son-in-law of the Prophet through marriage to Fāṭima; father of the Prophet’s only surviving grandsons, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, and thus forebear of all the descendants of the Prophet, referred to as the spiritual ‘nobility’ (the shurafāʾ, sing. sharīf; or sādāt, sing. sayyid, lit. ‘lord’) of the Muslim community.…