(a.), military organisation, the system of military rule in modern Islamic lands (for a consideration of military organisation before ca. 1900, see d̲j̲ays̲h̲ ; Ḥarb ; istiʿrāḍ ). 1. In the modern Arab world 2. In modern Iran 3. In the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic 4. In Pakistan 1. In the modern Arab world. The frequent appearance of military régimes in the Arab sector of the Muslim world during the second part of the 20th century owes less to a tradition of interaction between military conquest and the diffusion of Islam than to the h…

, generally translated as the “Muhammadan Union”, was a politico-religious organization which acquired notoriety as the instigator of the insurrection in Istanbul on 13 April 1909. Its formation was announced publicly on 5 April 1909 (= 23 Mart 1325, by the Turkish “financial” calendar), though Ḥāfi̊ẓ Dervīs̲h̲ Waḥdetī, its leading spirit and editor of the daily newspaper Volkan (“Volcano”), claimed that the Muhammadan Union had in fact been founded on 6 February 1909 ( = 24 Ḳānūn II 1324) (see T. Z. Tunaya, Türkiyede Siyasi Partiler 1854-1952, Istanbul 1952, 261 ff.). It seems t…

, s̲h̲eyk̲h̲ Badīʿ al-Zamān Saʿīd (Modern Tkish. Bediuzzaman Said Riza-Nursi) ( ca. 1876-1960), religious leader, of Kurdish origin, in late Ottoman and Republican Turkey. Saʿīd Nursī, the author of the Risāle-yi Nūr “Epistle of Light” (or “Wisdom”) from which the intellectual-religious movement known as Nurculuk [ q.v.] sprang, was born in the village of Nurs in the province of Bitlis [see bidlīs ] in eastern Turkey. His father apparently belonged to a local family of notables, as indicated by his surname Mīrzā. Nursī started his education in the medrese of S…

, a Turkish journalist who achieved a brief celebrity in 1909 as editor of the newspaper Serbestī , in which he made violent attacks on the Committee of Union and Progress [see ittiḥād we teraḳḳī ]. His murder on the Galata bridge by an unknown assailant on the night of 6-7 April 1909 (n.s.) was blamed by both the liberals and the Muhammadan Union [see ittiḥād-i muḥammedī ] jon the Committee, and his funeral was made the occasion for hostile demonstrations and speeches. A period of mounting tension followed, culminating in the mutiny of troops of the First Army Corps on 31 March o.s. = 13 April n.s. (…