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(dialectal pron.: Ben Badīs), ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. al-Muṣṭafā b. Makkī , founder of the orthodox reformist movement in Algeria, born at Constantine in 1889. After studying at the Islamic university of Tunis (al-Zaytūna), he devoted himself to private teaching in a mosque in his native town and ¶ led an unspectacular life until 1925, when he turned to journalism. He founded a newspaper, al-Muntaḳid (“The Critic”), which went out of circulation after a few months. Immediately afterwards he founded a new newspaper, al-S̲h̲ihāb (“The Meteor”), which soon took th…

b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Fahmī , Abu ’l Ḥārit̲h̲ , traditionist and juris-consult, belonging to the class of the great tābiʿūn . He was born and died in Egypt (Ḳarḳas̲h̲anda, S̲h̲aʿbān 94/May 713—Miṣr, 14 S̲h̲aʿbān 175/16 December 791. At the cemetery in Cairo, may be seen the tomb of “El Imam El Leis”). This “scholar of Egypt” (of Persian origin) is ranked unanimously among the leading authorities ( fuḳahāʾ al-amṣār ) on questions of religious knowledge in the early years of the Islamic empire, these being: Abū Ḥanīfa, Sufyān al-T̲h̲awrī and Ib…

, Muḥammad al-Bas̲h̲īr , Algerian reformist scholar and writer, born 13 S̲h̲awwāl 1306/12 June 1889 at Bougie. He showed at an early age signs of great intelligence and his childhood and youth were spent in concentrated study. Already at the age of fourteen he had studied, at the school run by his uncle, Muḥammad al-Makkī al-Ibrāhīmī, the Ḳurʾān and the main classical literary and philological works. In 1912, on his way to the Ḥid̲j̲āz, he stayed for three months in Cairo, whe…

( al-Ag̲h̲wāṭ ), Algerian town and oasis, administrative centre of a wilāya (district), 420 km. to the south of Algiers (long. 0° 30′ E. [Paris], lat. 33° 48′ N. Altitude: 787 m.). It was formerly the administrative centre of one of the four “Territories of the South” forming the region of Algeria administered under martial law, until the reform instituted by the law of 20 September 1947 ( Statut de l’Algérie ). On account of its geographical position, dominating the defence of the Sahara, as well as memories connected with the dramatic story …

(a.), reform, reformism. i.—The Arab world In modern Arabic, the term iṣlāḥ is used for “reform” (cf.: RALA, xxi (1386/1966), 351, no. 15) in the general sense: in contemporary Islamic litera-Jure it denotes more specifically orthodox reformism of the type that emerges in the doctrinal teachings of Muḥammad ʿAbduh, in the writings of Ras̲h̲īd Riḍā, and in the numerous Muslim authors who are influenced by these two masters and, like them, consider themselves disciples of the Salafiyya (see below). Iṣlāḥ will be examined under the foliowing general head…