Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Ibn Shaddad, 'Izz al-Din - Ibrahim Pasha


Ibn Shaddad, ‘Izz al-Din
Ibn Shaddad, ‘Izz al-Din (‘Izz al-Din ibn Shaddad) (1217-1285). Geographer and historian from Aleppo.  He wrote a historical topography of Syria and the Jazira.
'Izz al-Din ibn Shaddad see Ibn Shaddad, ‘Izz al-Din


Ibn Shahin al-Zahiri
Ibn Shahin al-Zahiri.  High official at the court of the Mameluke sultans Barsbay and Jaqmaq of the fifteenth century.  He left a vivid  picture of Egypt under the Mamelukes and also wrote an oneirocritical (dream interpretation) treatise which was widely circulated.


Ibn Shahrashub
Ibn Shahrashub (Zayn al-Din). Imami theologian, preacher and jurist of Mazandaran in Persia.  He had the reputation of being the greatest Shi‘a scholar of his time and was highly thought of even by the Sunnis.
Zayn al-Din see Ibn Shahrashub


Ibn Shanabudh
Ibn Shanabudh (d. 939).  “Reader” of the Qur‘an.  The vizier Ibn Muqla had him flogged because he had introduced in the public prayer Qur‘anic readings which varied from the recension (the revised text) of Caliph ‘Uthman. 


Ibn Sharaf
Ibn Sharaf (d. 1068).  Arab poet.


Ibn Sina
Ibn Sina (Abu 'Ali al-Hussain ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina) (Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina) (Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā') (Abū Alī Sīnā) (Avicenna) (c. 980 - 1037). Persian polymath and the foremost physician and philosopher of his time. Known in the West as Avicenna, he was also an astronomer, chemist, geologist, logician, paleontologist, mathematician, physicist, poet, psychologist, scientist and teacher.

Ibn Sīnā studied medicine under a physician named Koushyar. Ibn Sina wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text at many medieval universities. The Canon of Medicine was used as a text-book in the universities of Montpellier and Louvain as late as 1650.

Ibn Sina was born near Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan), which was then the capital of the Persian Samanid dynasty.  The son of a government official, Ibn Sina studied medicine and philosophy in Bukhara.  Endowed with extraordinary intelligence and intellectual independence, he was largely self-taught and by the age of eighteen had mastered all the then known sciences.

At the age of 18, Ibn Sina was rewarded for his medical abilities with the post of court physician to the Samanid ruler of Bukhara.  He remained in this position until the fall of the Samanid Empire in 999. After that, Ibn Sina traveled extensively.  He spent the last fourteen years of his life as the scientific adviser and physician to the rulers of Isfahan, first with Shams al-Dawla, and later with Sama’ al-Dawla.  In these last years of his life, Ibn Sina made astronomical investigations.

Ibn Sina died at Hamadhan, where a monument was later erected to celebrate the millennium of his birth.   

Regarded by Muslims as one of the greatest Islamic philosophers, Avicenna is an important figure in the fields of medicine and philosophy.  Ibn Sina’s work The Canon of Medicine was long pre-eminent in Southwest Asia and North Africa and was used in Europe as a textbook.  It is significant as a systematic classification and summary of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge up to and including Ibn Sina’s time.  The first Latin translation of the work was made in the 12th century of the Christian calendar, the Hebrew version appeared in 1491, and the Arabic text in 1593, the second text ever printed in Arabic.

Ibn Sina’s best known philosophical work is Kitab al-Shifa (“Book of Healing”), a collection of treatises on Aristotelian logic, metaphysics, psychology, the natural sciences, and other subjects. Ibn Sina’s own philosophy was based on a combination of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism.  Contrary to orthodox Islamic thought, Ibn Sina denied personal immortality, the existence of any individual soul, that God has an interest in individuals, and that there had been any creation of the world in time.  Ibn Sina believed that there was a dualism of mind and matter, where matter was passive, and creation had been an act of instilling existence into the passive substance.  For Ibn Sina, the only place where there was no such dualism was in God.  Because of his views, Ibn Sina became the main target of an attack on philosophy by the Islamic philosopher al-Ghazzali.  Nevertheless, Ibn Sina’s philosophy remained influential throughout the Middle Ages.

Ibn Sina’s Kitab al-Najat (“Book of Salvation”) is a compendium of his work in metaphysics.  In spite of Ibn Sina’s interest in metaphysics, he remained an orthodox Muslim, and wrote a number of books on theology.  In his later years, Ibn Sina also wrote some allegorical mystical works.  These works were important in the development of Sufism.

Most scholars agree that Ibn Sina was the most renowned and influential philosopher of medieval Islam. Ibn Sina’s works united philosophy with the study of nature.  Over a hundred of Ibn Sina’s works have survived.  His texts cover such subjects as philosophy and science as well as religious, linguistic and literary matters.  Ibn Sina’s works are not the product of a man who simply lived in books, since most of his energies were taken up with the day-to-day affairs of state.

In 1954, 131 authentic and 110 doubtful works were listed in his bibliography.  Known primarily as a philosopher and physician, Ibn Sina contributed also to all the sciences that were accessible in his day: natural history, physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics and music.  He wrote on economics, politics, moral and religious questions, Qur’anic exegesis, and poetry.  Ibn Sina’s influence on medieval European philosophers such as Michael Scot, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas is undeniable.

Ibn Sina was born in August or September of 980, in Afshena, Transoxiana Province of Bukhara to Abd-Allah of Balkh (now in Afghanistan).  Abd-Allah was the well-to-do governor of Transoxiana Province under the Samanid ruler Nuh II ibn Mansur.  Ibn Sina may have descended from a Turkish family on his father’s side, but his mother, Sitara, was clearly Persian.

After his brother, Mahmud, was born five years later, the family moved to Bukhara, one of the principal cities of Transoxiana and capital of the Samanid emirs from 819 to 1005.  Exhibiting an early interest in learning, young Ibn Sina had read the entire Qur’an by age ten.  His father was attracted to Isma‘ili Shi‘ite doctrines, preached locally by Egyptian missionaries, but Ibn Sina resisted his father’s influence.  There was much discussion in his home regarding geometry, philosophy, theology, and even accounting methods.  Ibn Sina was sent to study with an Indian vegetable seller who was also a surveyor.  It was from him that Ibn Sina became acquainted with the Indian system of calculation, making use of the zero in computations.

A well-known philosopher came to live with the family for a few years and had an extraordinary influence on the young scholar.  Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Natili stimulated Ibn Sina’s love of theoretical disputation, and the youth’s earlier readings in jurisprudence enabled him to tax al-Natili’s powers of logic daily.  The tutor convinced Abd-Allah that Ibn Sina’s career should be an academic one.  Ibn Sina was studying Aristotelian logic and Euclidean geometry when the teacher decided to move to a different home.  Undaunted, Ibn Sina soon mastered texts in natural sciences and metaphysics, then medicine, which he did not consider very difficult. He taught physicians, even practicing medicine for a short time.  At the age of sixteen, he was also engaging in disputations on Muslim law.

For the next year and a half, Ibn Sina returned to the study of logic and all aspects of philosophy, keeping files of syllogisms and praying daily at the mosque for guidance in his work.  So obsessed did he become with philosophical problems and so anxious to know all that he hardly took time for sleep.  Aristotle’s Metaphysica (Metaphysics) became an intellectual stumbling block until his reading of a work by Abu Nasr al-Farabi clarified many ideas for him.  Soon all of Aristotle became understandable, and Ibn Sina gave alms to the poor in gratitude.

When Sultan Nuh ibn Mansur of Bukhara became ill, he sent for Ibn Sina, upon the advice of his team of physicians.  Because of his help in curing the ruler, Ibn Sina gained access to the palace library, thus acquainting himself with many new books.  When not studying, Ibn Sina was given to drinking wine and satisfying a large sexual appetite which he retained to the end of his life.  Ibn Sina claimed that after the age of eighteen he learned nothing new, only gained greater wisdom.  When the palace library was destroyed in a fire, critics blamed Ibn Sina, who, they said, wished to remove the sources of his ideas.  There is no proof of that charge.

Ibn Sina’s writing career began in earnest at the age of twenty-one with al-Majmu (1001), a comprehensive book on learning for Abu al-Hasan, a prosodist.  Then he wrote al-Hasil wa al-mahsul (“The Sun and Substance” -- c. 1002), a twenty-volume commentary on jurisprudence, the Qur’an, and asceticism.  There soon followed a work on ethics called al-Birr wa al-ithm (“Good Works and Evil” -- c. 1002).  However, the sponsors made no copies of them.

Ibn Sina's father died in 1002, and Ibn Sina was forced to enter government service.  He reluctantly left Bukhara for Gurganj, the capital of Khwarazm, where he met Emir 'Ali ibn Ma’mun.  From Gurganj, he moved to Fasa, Baward, Tus, Samanqan, and thence to Jajarm on the extreme end of Khurasan.  He served Emir Qabus ibn Wushmagir until a military coup forced Ibn Sina to leave for Dihistan, where he became ill.  After recovering, he moved to Jurjan.

In Jurjan, Ibn Sina met his pupil and biographer, Abu ‘Ubaid al-Juzjani, who stayed with him throughout much of the remainder of his life.  Juzjani thought him exceptionally handsome and wrote that when Ibn Sina went to the mosque on Friday to pray, people would gather to observe at first hand “his perfection and beauty.”  While in Jurjan, Ibn Sina wrote al-Mukhtasar al-awsat (The Middle Summary on Logic), al-Mabda’ wa al-ma‘ad (The Origin and the Return), and al-Arsad al-kulliya (Comprehensive Observations).  There also Ibn Sina wrote the first part of al-Qanun fi al-tibb (Canon of Medicine), Mukhtasar al-Majisti (Summary of the Almagest), and other treatises.  One modern scholar lists one hundred books attributed to Ibn Sina.  Another says that the list of Ibn Sina’s works includes several hundred in Arabic and twenty-three in Persian.

From Jurjan, Ibn Sina next moved to al-Rayy, joining the service of al-Saiyyida and her son, Majd al-Dawlah.  Civil strife forced him to flee to Qazwin.   From there he moved to Hamadhan, where he managed the affairs of Kadhabanuyah.  He was called to the court of Emir Shams al-Dawlah to treat the ruler for colic, after which Ibn Sina was made the vizier of his emirate.  Because of a mutiny in the army, however, the emir was forced to discharge him.  After matters calmed down, Ibn Sina was called back and reinstated as vizier.  During this period, public affairs occupied his daytime hours, and he spent evenings teaching and writing.  When the emir died, Ibn Sina went into hiding, finishing work on his Kitab al-shifa (Book of Healing).  He was arrested for corresponding with a rival ruler, but when Emir ‘Ala’ al-Dawlah attacked Hamadhan four months later, Ibn Sina was set free.

Ibn Sina left Hamadhan for Isfahan with his brother, two slaves, and al-Juzjani to serve Emir ‘Ala’ al-Dawlah.  The emir designated every Friday evening for learned discussions with many other masters.  However, excluded from the gatherings was a famous scholar and rival of Ibn Sina, Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni, with whom he carried on a rather bitter correspondence.  They had been clients at many of the same courts, but never at the same time.  At Isfahan, Ibn Sina completed many of his writings on arithmetic and music.  He was made an official member of the court and accompanied the emir on a military expedition to Hamadhan.

When he was rebuked by the emir’s cousin, Abu Mansur, for feigning expertise in philology, Ibn Sina was so stung by the criticism that he studied this subject frantically, compiling his discoveries in a book entitled Lisan al-‘Arab (The Arab Language).  During these years, he also continued other experiments in medicine and astronomy.  He introduced the use of medicinal herbs and devised an instrument to repair injured vertebrae.  He understood that some illnesses arose from psychosomatic causes, and he wrote extensively on the pulse, preventive medicine, and the effects of climate on health.  On May 24, 1032, he observed the rare phenomenon of Venus passing through the solar disk.

When he became ill in Isfahan, one of his slaves filled his meal with opium, hoping for his death and an opportunity to steal his money.  But Ibn Sina managed to recover under self-treatment.  Soon, however, he had a relapse.  He died in 1037.  Most authorities say that he died and was buried in Hamadhan.

Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine remained a principal source for medical research for six centuries, perhaps second only to the Christian Bible in the number of copies produced.  Between 1470 and 1500, it went through thirty editions in Latin and one in Hebrew; a celebrated edition was published on a Gutenberg press in Rome in 1593.  Ibn Sina’s principal literary contribution was the invention of the Rubaiyat form, quatrains in iambic pentameter, later made famous by Omar Khayyam.  Most important of all, Ibn Sina’s philosophical system helped to stimulate a genuine intellectual renaissance in Islam that had enormous influence not only in his own culture but in Western Europe as well.  Thomas Aquinas, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), John Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon learned much from Ibn Sina, even though they disagreed on some particulars.

Most intriguing to the medieval Scholastics were Ibn Sina’s insistence upon essences in everything, the distinction between essence and existence (a notion derived from al-Farabi), the absence of essence in God (whose existence is unique), and the immortality of the soul (which animates the body but is independent of it).

According to some scholars, Ibn Sina’s insistence upon observation and experimentation helped to turn Western thought in the direction of the modern scientific revolution.  His theories on the sources of infectious diseases, his explanation of sight, his invention of longitude, and his other scientific conclusions have a truly remarkable congruence with modern explanations.  The application of geometrical forms in Islamic art, his use of the astrolabe in astronomical experiments, and his disputations on the immortality of the soul demonstrate Ibn Sina’s universal genius.  


Abu 'Ali al-Hussain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina see Ibn Sina
Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina see Ibn Sina
Avicenna see Ibn Sina
Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā' see Ibn Sina
Abū Alī Sīnā see Ibn Sina


Ibn Sirin
Ibn Sirin (Muhammad ibn Sirin)  (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Sirin al-Ansari) (653/654-728).  Muslim interpreter of dreams.  He was also a traditionist, renowned for his piety and for the reliability of the information which he transmitted.

Muhammad ibn Sirin was born in Basra, Iraq.  He was a Muslim interpreter of dreams who lived in the 8th century. He was a contemporary of Anas ibn Malik.

Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Sirin Al-Ansari was born in Basra in the 33rd year after Muhammad's migration from Makkah to the Yathrib, now Al-Madina. His birth came two years before the end of the rule of Caliph Óthman ibn Áffan. Muhammad's father (the name Abu Bakr was seldom used) was one of the many captives taken by the great Muslim warrior Khaled ibn Al-Walid when he embarked on his campaign to conquer Al-Sham (the area comprising Syria, Lebanon and Palestine), under the caliphate (rule) of Ómar ibn Al-Khattab (583–684). He was a coppersmith from a town called Jirjaya, settled and working in a place called 'Ain Al-Tamr, where a decisive battle took place in Hijra (migration) year 12.

Muhammad worked as an ambulant cloth merchant, or peddler, in Al-Basra. The fact that he was deaf or quick-of-hearing did not prevent him from becoming one of the most fabulous storytellers of his time about Muhammad, quoting such prominent personalities as Abu Hurayrah, 'Abdullah ibn 'Omar, and Anas ibn Malek. Known as Ibn Sirin, Muhammad was one of the first ascetics of Al-Basra. He became the prime imam in religion and an erudite in the Qur'an. He was described by one of his contemporaries (Abu Ná'eem) as wise, heeding God and perspicacious, sharing food with his brethren and travelers, strongly interceding in favor of the lonely and those who were punished for one reason or another. He was alert, cautious, honest and properly maintaining whatever was entrusted to him. He used to weep at night and smile and rove around all day. And he fasted every other day. No one was as religious or as knowledgeable as him in his art. His family was so generous that they would not hesitate to offer to their visitor the last loaf of bread in their house. He used to savor and recite poetry.

He was particularly renowned for his extraordinary skill in interpreting dreams as attested by the Arabs' greatest intellectuals, such as Al-Gaheth, Ibn Qutaybah and Ibn Khaldun, who considered his work as crucial in this field.

The most notable of the books attributed to Ibn Sirin is Dreams and Interpretations.
Muhammad Ibn Sirin see Ibn Sirin
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Sirin al-Ansari see Ibn Sirin


Ibn Suda
Ibn Suda (Sawda) (c. 1550-1903).  Name of a number of Maliki scholars and judges of Fez (fl. c.1550-1903).

Mohammed ibn al-Talib al-Tawudi ibn Suda (1700-95) was one of the most influential scholars of the 18th century in Morocco, both politically and intellectually. He is described by the Egytian historian, Al-Jabarti, as the "crescent of the Maghrib". He went on the hajj in 1767-8 and studied in Medina with Mohammed ibn Abdel Karim al-Samman (1718-1775), founder of the Sammaniyya branch of the Khalwatiyya and in Cairo with the Indian scholar Mohammed Murtada al-Zabidi (d. 1791). In Cairo he also taught the Muwatta of Malik ibn Anas at the Al-Azhar. Ibn Suda was appointed by the sultan in 1788 to reform the curriculum at the Qarawiyin University of Fez, where he was installed as mufti and shaykh al-jamaa. Ibn Suda is also well known as the author of a commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari and as the teacher of Ahmed ibn Idris.

Sawda see Ibn Suda


Ibn Sulaym al-Aswani
Ibn Sulaym al-Aswani.  Fatimid propagandist of the tenth century.  His work on Nubia is one of the principal medieval sources on the eastern Sudan. 


Ibn Taymiyya
Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn TaymiyyaTaqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Taymiyyah) (1263, in Harran, Mesopotamia - September 26, 1328, in Cairo).  Hanbalite theologian and jurist.  Ibn Taymiyya was born in Harran to a family of Hanbali scholars (including his paternal grandfather, uncle, and father).  Ibn Taymiyya was himself a Hanbali in many, though not all, juridical and theological matters, and a Salafi on a wider plane.  He has had a strong influence on conservative Sunni circles and, in the modern period, on both liberals and conservatives.

Ibn Taymiyyah was one of Islam’s most forceful theologians who, as a member of the Pietist school founded by Ibn Ḥanbal, sought the return of the Islamic religion to its sources: the Qurʾān and the sunnah, revealed writing and the prophetic tradition. He is also the source of the Wahhābīyah, a mid-18th-century traditionalist movement of Islam.

Ibn Taymiyyah was born in Harran, Mesopotamia. Educated in Damascus, where he had been taken in 1268 as a refugee from the Mongol invasion, he later steeped himself in the teachings of the Pietist school. Though he remained faithful throughout his life to that school, of whose doctrines he had an unrivalled mastery, he also acquired an extensive knowledge of contemporary Islamic sources and disciplines: the Qurʾān (Islamic scripture), the Ḥadīth (sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), jurisprudence (fiqh), dogmatic theology (kalām), philosophy, and Ṣūfī (Islamic mystical) theology.

The life of Ibn Taymiyyah was marked by persecutions. As early as 1293 Ibn Taymiyyah came into conflict with local authorities for protesting a sentence, pronounced under religious law, against a Christian accused of having insulted the Prophet. In 1298 he was accused of anthropomorphism (ascribing human characteristics to God) and for having criticized, contemptuously, the legitimacy of dogmatic theology.

During the great Mongol crisis of the years 1299 to 1303, and especially during the occupation of Damascus, he led the resistance party and denounced the suspect faith of the invaders and their accomplices. During the ensuing years, Ibn Taymiyyah was engaged in intensive polemic activity: either against the Kasrawān Shīʿah in Lebanon; the Rifāʿīyah, a Ṣūfī religious brotherhood; or the ittiḥādīyah school, which taught that the Creator and the created become one, a school that grew out of the teaching of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240), whose monism he denounced.

In 1306, Ibn Taymiyyah was summoned to explain his beliefs to the governor’s council, which, although it did not condemn him, sent him to Cairo. There he appeared before a new council on the charge of anthropomorphism and was imprisoned in the citadel for 18 months. Soon after gaining his freedom, he was confined again in 1308 for several months in the prison of the qāḍīs (Muslim judges who exercise both civil and religious functions) for having denounced the worship of saints as being against religious law (Sharīʿah).

He was sent to Alexandria under house arrest in 1309, the day after the abdication of the sultan Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn and the advent of Baybars II al-Jāshnikīr, whom he regarded as a usurper and whose imminent end he predicted. Seven months later, on Ibn Qalāwūn’s return, he was able to return to Cairo. But in 1313 he left Cairo once more with the Sultan, on a campaign to recover Damascus, which was again being threatened by the Mongols.

Ibn Taymiyyah spent his last 15 years in Damascus. Promoted to the rank of schoolmaster, he gathered around him a circle of disciples from every social class. The most famous of these, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah (died 1350), was to share in Ibn Taymiyyah’s renewed persecutions. Accused of supporting a doctrine that would curtail the ease with which a Muslim could traditionally repudiate a wife and thus ease the ill effects of the practice, Ibn Taymiyyah was incarcerated on orders from Cairo in the citadel of Damascus from August 1320 to February 1321.

In July 1326, Cairo again ordered him confined to the citadel for having continued his condemnation of saint worship, in spite of the prohibition forbidding him to do so. He died in prison, deprived of his books and writing materials, and was buried in the Ṣūfī cemetery amid a great public gathering. His tomb still exists and is widely venerated.

Ibn Taymiyyah left a considerable body of work—often republished in Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and India—that extended and justified his religious and political involvements and was characterized by its rich documentation, sober style, and brilliant polemic. In addition to innumerable fatwās (legal opinions based on religious law) and several professions of faith, the most beautiful of which is the Wāsitīyah, two works merit particular attention. One is his As-Siyā-sat ash-sharʿīyah (“Treatise on Juridical Politics”), available in French and English translations. The other, Minhāj as-sunnah (“The Way of Tradition”), is the richest work of comparative theology surviving from medieval Islam.

Ibn Taymiyyah desired a return to the sources of the Muslim religion, which he felt had been altered too often, to one extent or another, by the different religious sects or schools. The sources were the Qurʾān and the sunnah: revealed writing and the prophetic tradition. The ijmāʿ, or community consensus, had no value in itself, he insisted, unless it rested on those two sources. His traditionalism, however, did not prevent Ibn Taymiyyah from allowing analogical reasoning (qiyās) and the argument of utility (maṣlaḥah) a large place in his thought, on the condition that both rested on the objective givens of revelation and tradition. Only such a return to sources, he felt, would permit the divided and disunited Muslim community to refind its unity.

In theodicy (the justification of God as good when evil is observable in the world), Ibn Taymiyyah wished to describe God as he is described in the Qurʾān and as the Prophet did in the sunnah, which led him to side with theological schools in disagreement with contemporary opinion. This position was the point of departure for a critique, often conducted with very subtle argument, of the ideas of such dogmatic theologians as al-Ashʿarī or Fakhr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī, such philosophers as Avicenna and Averroës, or such mystics as Ibn al-ʿArabī.

Concerning praxes (practices), Ibn Taymiyyah believed that one could only require, in worship, those practices inaugurated by God and his Prophet and that one could only forbid, in social relations, those things forbidden by the Qurʾān and the sunnah. Thus, on the one hand, he favored a revision of the system of religious obligations and a brushing aside of condemnable innovations (bidʿah), and, on the other, he constructed an economic ethic that was more flexible on many points than that espoused by the contemporary schools.

In politics, Ibn Taymiyyah recognized the legitimacy of the first four caliphs, but he rejected the necessity of having a single caliphate and allowed for the existence of many emirates. Within each emirate he demanded that the prince apply the religious law strictly and rely on it for his legal opinion, and Ibn Taymiyyah demanded from those under the prince’s jurisdiction that they obey the established authority except where it required disobedience to God, every Muslim being required to “will the good and forbid the bad” for the benefit of the common welfare.

Though Ibn Taymiyyah had numerous religious and political adversaries in his own time, he has strongly influenced modern Islam for the last two centuries. He is the source of the Wahhābīyah, a strictly traditionist movement founded by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792), who took his ideas from Ibn Taymiyyah’s writings. Ibn Taymiyyah also influenced various reform movements that have posed the problem of reformulating traditional ideologies by a return to sources.

Ibn Taymiyyah left a considerable body of work (350 works listed by his student Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya and 500 by another student al-Dhahabi). His work extended and justified his religious and political involvements and was characterized by its rich content, sobriety, and skillful polemical style.

Extant books and essays written by Ibn Taymiyyah include:

    * A Great Compilation of Fatwa — (Majmu al-Fatwa al-Kubra) This was collected centuries after his death, and contains several of the works mentioned below
    * Minhaj as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah — (The Pathway of as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah) — Volumes 1–4
    * Majmoo' al-Fatawa — (Compilation of Fatawa) Volumes 1–36
    * al-Aqeedah Al-Hamawiyyah — (The Creed to the People of Hamawiyyah)
    * al-Aqeedah Al-Waasittiyah — (The Creed to the People of Waasittiyah)
    * al-Asma wa's-Sifaat — (Allah's Names and Attributes) Volumes 1–2
    * 'al-Iman — (Faith)
    * al-Jawab as Sahih li man Baddala Din al-Masih (Literally, "The Correct Response to those who have Corrupted the Deen (Religion) of the Messiah"; A Muslim theologian's response to Christianity)—seven volumes, over a thousand pages.
    * as-Sarim al-Maslul ‘ala Shatim ar-Rasul—The Drawn Sword against those who insult the Messenger. Written in response to an incident in which Ibn Taymiyyah heard a Christian insulting Muhammad. The book is well-known because he wrote it entirely by memory, while in jail, and quoting more than hundreds of references.
    * Fatawa al-Kubra
    * Fatawa al-Misriyyah
    * ar-Radd 'ala al-Mantiqiyyin (Refutation of Greek Logicians)
    * Naqd at-Ta'sis
    * al-Uboodiyyah — (Subjection to Allah)
    * Iqtida' as-Sirat al-Mustaqim' — (Following The Straight Path)
    * al-Siyasa al-shar'iyya
    * at-Tawassul wal-Waseela
    * Sharh Futuh al-Ghayb — (Commentary on Revelations of the Unseen by Abdul-Qadir Gilani)

Some of his other works have been translated to English. They include:

    * The Friends of Allah and the Friends of Shaytan
    * Kitab al Iman: The Book of Faith
    * Diseases of the Hearts and their Cures
    * The Relief from Distress
    * Fundamentals of Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil
    * The Concise Legacy
    * The Goodly Word
    * The Madinan Way
    * Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek logicians




Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya see Ibn Taymiyya
Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Taymiyyah   see Ibn Taymiyya


Ibn Tilmidh
Ibn Tilmidh (Amin al-Dawla) (1073-1165).  Christian Arab physician from Baghdad.  He was gifted for languages, skilled in poetry and music, and was also an excellent calligrapher.  Although a priest, he enjoyed the favor of the caliphs.
Amin al-Dawla see Ibn Tilmidh

Ibn Tufayl
Ibn Tufayl (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl) (Abubacer) (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusia) (Abubacer Aben Tofail) (Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail) (Ibn Tufail) (c. 1105, Guadix, Spain – 1185). Known in the West as Abubacer.  He was a noted Andalusian-Arab Muslim polymath: an Arabic writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, theologian, physician, vizier, and court official.  

As a philosopher and novelist, Ibn Tufayl is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, also known as Philosophus Autodidactus in the Western world.  As a physician, he was an early supporter of dissection and autopsy, which was expressed in his novel.

He was born in Wadi Ash (today Guadix), near Granada, in Spain, he was educated by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace).  He served as a secretary for the ruler of Granada, and later as vizier and physician for Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad ruler of Al Andalus, to whom he recommended Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as his own future successor in 1169.  

Ibn Rushd became Ibn Tufayl's successor after he retired in 1182.  He died several years later in Morocco in 1185.  The astronomer Nur Ed-Din al-Betrugi was also a disciple of Ibn Tufayl.

Ibn Tufayl’s mystical philosophy was presented in his novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Hayya ibn yaqzhan) (Walk on, you bright boy) where a boy (called Hayy {walk on!}) was brought up in isolation on an island.   All by himself, the boy investigates the universe, and he passes through several stages, each lasting seven years.  At the highest level the boy came to understand the ultimate nature of the universe; the emanations coming from the One that goes from level to level, how spirit takes material form, and how the spirit strives to reach up to the One.  The boy finally meets another human being, and when returning to the world of people, he understands that his ultimate understanding is the same as the revealed religion, but that not all can reach this highest form of understanding.   Moreover, Man is divided into three groups: (1) Those who can understand the highest truth by reason alone (very few); (2) those who can understand by the help of symbols of the religious revelation; and (3) those who accept the laws coming from the symbols of the religious revelation.  Hayy tries to enlighten people, but fails, and returns to his island.  The moral seems to be that each of these groups of people should accept their standing, and not strive for more.

Ibn Tufayl drew the name of the book and most of its characters from an earlier work by Ibn Sina (Avicenna).  Ibn Tufayl's book was neither a commentary on nor a mere retelling of Ibn Sina's work, but rather a new and innovative work in its own right.  It reflects one of the main concerns of Muslim philosophers (later also of Christian thinkers), that of reconciling philosophy with revelation.  At the same time, the narrative anticipates in some ways both Robinson Crusoe and Rousseau's Emile.  It tells of a child who is nurtured by a gazelle and grows up in total isolation from humans.  In seven phases of seven years each, solely by the exercise of his faculties, Hayy goes through all the gradations of knowledge.  The story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan is similar to the later story of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book in that a baby is abandoned on a deserted tropical island where he is taken care of and fed by a mother wolf.

Iby Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Philosophus Autodidactus) was written as a response to al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers.  In the 13th century, Ibn al-Nafis later wrote the Al-Risalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah (known as Theologus Autodidactus in the West) as a response to Ibn Tufayl's Philosophus Autodidactus.

Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Philosophus Autodidactus) had a significant influence on both Arabic literature and European literature, and it went on to become an influential best-seller throughout Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The work also had a "profound influence" on both classical Islamic philosophy and modern Western philosophy.  It became "one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution" and European Enlightenment, and the thoughts expressed in the novel can be found

in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant.

A Latin translation of the work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger.  The first English translation (by Simon Ockley) was published in 1708.  These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, which also featured a desert island narrative and was the first novel in English.  Ibn Tufayl's novel also inspired the concept of "tabula rasa" developed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) by John Locke, who was a student of Pococke.  

Ibn Tufayl's work went on to become one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern Western philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley.  Hayy's ideas on materialism in the novel also have some similarities to Karl Marx's historical materialism.  Other European writers influenced by Ibn Tufayl include William Molyneaux, Gottfried Liebniz, Melchisedech Thevenot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers, Samuel Hartlib, and Voltaire.




Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl  see Ibn Tufayl
Abubacer see Ibn Tufayl
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusia see Ibn Tufayl
Abubacer Aben Tofail see Ibn Tufayl
Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail see Ibn Tufayl
Ibn Tufail see Ibn Tufayl


Ibn Tulun, Shams al-Din
Ibn Tulun, Shams al-Din (Shams al-Din ibn Tulun) (1473-1546).  Scholar and prolific writer from Damascus.  His historical writings, among them an autobiography, deal with the end of the Mameluke rule and the beginning of Ottoman domination of Syria.
Shams al-Din ibn Tulun see Ibn Tulun, Shams al-Din


Ibn Tumart
Ibn Tumart (Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Tumart) (Ibnu Tuwmart) (Amghār ibn Tumrt) (c. 1078 - c. 1130).  Berber religious scholar, teacher and later a political leader from the Masmuda tribe who spiritually founded the Berber Almohad dynasty. He is also known as El-Mahdi in reference to his prophesied redeeming. In 1125 he began open revolt against Almoravid rule.

Ibn Tumart was a Muslim reformer of Morocco who was called the Mahdi of the Almohads.  Ibn Tumart was born In Ijili-n-Warghan in Morocco.  Having visited Cordoba, Alexandria, Mecca and Baghdad, he returned in 1116 to the Maghrib.  His uncompromising insistence on the punctilious observance of religious obligations, his piety and learning won him many followers.  In 1121, he openly revolted against the Almoravid ‘Ali ibn Yusuf ibn Tashfin and had himself proclaimed as the Mahdi or restorer of religion and justice.  The siege of Marrakesh by the Almohads in 1130 failed, but did not in fact much hinder the progress of the movement.

The name Ibn Tumart is Berber and means “son of little Umar.” Ibn Tumart was a man with strong conviction who possessed a conservative view of Islam.  His persistence resulted in success, and he was the man behind the group that later came to be known as the Almohads, which became the successors of the Almoravids.

Ibn Tumart began his career in a period which, it is said, was characterized by moral decay and declining intellectual achievement.  The studies that were performed were confined to the books called furu‘, and not the Qur‘an or the hadith. Ibn Tumart met the teachings of Ibn Hazm during a longer stay in Spain.  Later in his life, he became influenced by the teachings of al-Ghazzali, but he never met him, even though it was rumored that he did.  Ibn Tumart went off to Mecca to perform the hajj.  Later he studied in Baghdad and in Damascus.  As he returned to Tunisia by ship, Ibn Tumart started preaching to the sailors and passengers, who responded by reciting the Qur‘an and by offering prayers.  While preaching around Tunisia, Ibn Tumart soon came to formulate the core of his reform program, which included the central tenet: "The one who sees anything wrong, should act to change it by his hand.  If he cannot do it with his hand, he shall do it with his tongue.  If he cannot do it with his tongue, he shall do it in his own heart.  This is what the religion demands you to do."

Ibn Tumart did not win many converts with this doctrine.  Indeed, the local rulers felt their authority threatened, and Ibn Tumart had to seek refuge with a Berber tribe of the region.  While hiding, Ibn Tumart met the man who came to be his foremost disciple, Abdu al-Mu‘min.  After Tunisia, Ibn Tumart traveled back to Morocco overland, and he managed to be banished by the governor of Tlemcen along up in Marrakech, where he lifted his voice against the moral standards of the women.

Ibn Tumart was called upon to meet with the learned men of Marrakech, who belonged to the court of the Almoravid emir.  The learned wanted him executed, but his life was spared by the emir.

Away from Marrakech, and finding a new audience, Ibn Tumart soon began both preaching Koranic doctrines as well as his own ideas.  At the time, the ideas of Ibn Tumart were a mixture of Ash‘ari theology and Shi‘a Islam.  Ibn Tumart attacked the dynasty for living according to untrue doctrines.  He went so far in his teaching that he declared jihad on all who disagreed with him, and he proclaimed himself Mahdi, and had constructed a genealogy originating in Ali.

Ibn Tumart’s power was extended through military actions, like when defeating the people of Tin Mal in the High Atlas Mountains, where 15,000 were massacred.  In 1123, he sent an army under the leadership of Abdu al-Mu‘min against the Almoravids, but they lost, and Ibn Tumart had to seek refuge in Tin Mal.  The number of his followers continued to grow, and this coincided with a weakening position for the Almoravids.  But it was not until after his death, that the Almohads (as his followers were to be known) could really defeat the Almoravids.

Ibn Tumart published a number of works in the Berber language.  His Tawhid survives but only in Arabic translation.

Mahdi of the Almohads see Ibn Tumart
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn Tumart see Ibn Tumart
Ibnu Tuwmart see Ibn Tumart
Amghār ibn Tumrt see Ibn Tumart


Ibn Tumlus, Abu‘l-Hajjaj
Ibn Tumlus, Abu‘l-Hajjaj (Abu‘l-Hajjaj ibn Tumlus) (Abu-l-Hayyay ibn Tumlus) (Abén Tomlús)  (Abem Tomlús) (1164 - 1223) .  Muslim physician of Spain, known in the West as Alhagiag bin Thalmus.


Abu'l-Hajjaj ibn Tumlus see Ibn Tumlus, Abu‘l-Hajjaj
Alhagiag bin Thalmus see Ibn Tumlus, Abu‘l-Hajjaj
Abu-l-Hayyay ibn Tumlus see Ibn Tumlus, Abu‘l-Hajjaj
Abén Tomlús see Ibn Tumlus, Abu‘l-Hajjaj
Abem Tomlús see Ibn Tumlus, Abu‘l-Hajjaj


Ibn Umayl, al-Hakim al-Sadiq
Ibn Umayl, al-Hakim al-Sadiq (al-Hakim al-Sadiq ibn Umayl).  One of the exponents of the allegorical and mystagogical (inerpretation of religious mysteries) type of alchemy during the tenth century.  He had a special interest in the old Egyptian temples and their wall paintings and actually visited an ancient temple at Busir al-Sidr in the province of al-Jiza, where he saw a statue of Imhotep.
Hakim al-Sadiq ibn Umayl, al- see Ibn Umayl, al-Hakim al-Sadiq


Ibn Wafid, Abu‘l-Mutarrif
Ibn Wafid, Abu‘l-Mutarrif (Abu'l-Mutarrif ibn Wafid) (Ali Ibn al-Husain Ibn al-Wafid) (997-ca.1074).  Andalusian author, known in the West as Abenguefith.

Ali Ibn al-Husain Ibn al-Wafid, known in Latin Europe as Abenguefith, was a pharmacologist and physician from Toledo. He was the vizier of Al-Mamun of Toledo. His main work is Kitab al-adwiya al-mufrada (translated into Latin as De medicamentis simplicibus).
Abenguefith see Ibn Wafid, Abu‘l-Mutarrif
Abu'l-Mutarrif ibn Wafid see Ibn Wafid, Abu‘l-Mutarrif
Ali Ibn al-Husain Ibn al-Wafid see Ibn Wafid, Abu‘l-Mutarrif


Ibn Wahshiyya
Ibn Wahshiyya (Ibn Wahshiyah) (Abu Bakr Ahmed ibn 'Ali ibn Qays al-Wahshiyah al-Kasdani al-Qusayni al-Nabati al-Sufi‎) (Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahishih) (fl. 9th century/10th century).   Nabataean and Assyrian writer, alchemist, agriculturalist, Egyptologist and historian. Among the many works attributed to him is the Book of the Nabataean Agriculture, which is the subject of vigorous debate among Asian scholars.

Ibn Wahshiyah was a Nabataean and Assyrian writer, alchemist, agriculturalist, Egyptologist and historian born at Qusayn near Kufa in Iraq. He was known in early modern Europe as Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahishih.

Ibn al-Nadim (in Kitab al-Fihrist) lists a large number of books on magic, statues, offerings, agriculture, alchemy, physics and medicine, that were either written, or translated from older books, by Ibn Wahshiyah.

In agriculture, the Filahât al-Nabâtiyyah (Nabataean Agriculture) of Ibn Wahshîyya is the most influental of all Muslim works on the subject, even though Wahshiyya was not a Muslim. Written in the ninth century of the Christian calendar and drawn mostly from Chaldean and Babylonian sources, the book deals not only with agriculture but also with the esoteric sciences, especially magic and sorcery, and has always been considered to be one of the important books in Arabic on the occult sciences.

Ibn Wahshiyya translated a book called Nabataean Agriculture (Kitab al-falaha al-nabatiya) (c. 904), a major treatise on the subject, which was said to be based on ancient Babylonian sources. The book extols Babylonian-Aramean-Syrian civilization against that of the conquering Arabs. It contains valuable information on agriculture and superstitions, and in particular discusses beliefs attributed to the Sabeans that there were people before Adam, that Adam had parents and that he came from India. These ideas were discussed by the Jewish philosophers Judah ben Samuel Halevi and Maimonides, through which they became an influence on the seventeenth century French Millenarian Isaac La Peyrère.

Ibn Wahshiyya was one of the first historians to be able to at least partly decipher what was written in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, by relating them to the contemporary Coptic language used by Coptic priests in his time. An Arabic manuscript of Ibn Wahshiyya's book Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham, a work that discusses a number of ancient alphabets, in which he deciphered a number of Egyptian hieroglyphs, was later read by Athanasius Kircher in the 17th century, and then translated and published in English by Joseph Hammer in 1806 as Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained; with an Account of the Egyptian Priests, their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices in the Arabic Language by Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahishih, sixteen years before Jean-François Champollion's complete decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This book was known to Silvestre de Sacy, a colleague of Jean-François Champollion. Dr Okasha El Daly, at University College London's Institute of Archaeology, claims that some hieroglyphs had been decoded by Ibn Wahshiyah, eight centuries earlier than Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone.

A reference to Ibn Wahshiyah is made in the archaeological mystery Labyrinth by Kate Mosse.

Ibn Wahshiyah see Ibn Wahshiyya
Abu Bakr Ahmed ibn 'Ali ibn Qays al-Wahshiyah al-Kasdani al-Qusayni al-Nabati al-Sufi‎ see Ibn Wahshiyya
Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahishih see Ibn Wahshiyya


Ibn Wasil
Ibn Wasil (Ibn Wasil Gamal ad-Din) (1207/1208, in Hama - 1298, in Hama).  Historian, judge and man of letters of Hamat.  One of his works, which reaches the year 1263, is a valuable source for the history of the Ayyubids.

Ibn Wasil Gamal ad-Din was an Arab politician, diplomat and historian. He held, under the Ayyubid dynasty (dynasty of Saladin), and among the Mamelukes, various offices. Großquadi his hometown. He also worked on various farms in Syria and Egypt.

In 1261, he traveled with Baybars as ambassadors of the Sultan to the South of Italy to negotiate with the Emperor Manfred. He stayed on there, especially in the Apulian town of Barletta. During his stay in Italy, he became acquainted with the political situation in Europe. In particular, he presented the Hohenstaufen dynasty in a very positive light.

Ibn Wasil's reputation as a historian owes much to his work "The diffusers of the fears about the history of the Ayyubid dynasty" (Mufarrij kurub fi al-Ahbar Bani Ayyub). This work is a history of the dynasty of Saladin, which constitutes an important source of the Fifth Crusade, the journey of Frederick II and the Crusade of St. Louis.
Ibn Wasil Gamal ad-Din see Ibn Wasil


Ibn Yunus
Ibn Yunus (Yunus) (Abu al-Hasan 'Ali abi Sa'id 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ahmad ibn Yunus al-Sadafi al-Misri) (c. 950-1009).  One of the most prominent Muslim astronomers.  His sets of astronomical tables have been relied on by modern scholars.

Ibn Yunus was an important Egyptian Muslim astronomer and mathematician, whose works are noted for being ahead of their time, having been based on almost modern-like meticulous calculations and attention to detail.

Information regarding his early life and education is uncertain. He was born in Egypt between 950 and 952 and came from a respected family in Fustat. His father was a historian, biographer and scholar of hadith, who wrote two volumes about the history of Egypt—one about the Egyptians and one based on traveler commentary on Egypt. A prolific writer, Ibn Yunus' father has been described as "Egypt's most celebrated early historian and first known compiler of a biographical dictionary devoted exclusively to Egyptians". His great grandfather had been an associate of the noted legal scholar al-Shafi.

Early in the life of Ibn Yunus, the Fatimid dynasty came to power and the new city of Cairo was founded. In Cairo, he worked as an astronomer for the Fatimid dynasty for twenty-six years, first for the Caliph al-Aziz and then for al-Hakim. Ibn Yunus dedicated his most famous astronomical work, al-Zij al-Kabir al-Hakimi, to the latter.

In astrology, noted for making predictions and having written the Kitab bulugh al-umniyya ("On the Attainment of Desire"), a work concerning the heliacal risings of Sirius, and on predictions concerning what day of the week the Coptic year will start on.

Ibn Yunus' most famous work in Islamic astronomy, al-Zij al-Kabir al-Hakimi (c. 1000), was a handbook of astronomical tables which contained very accurate observations, many of which may have been obtained with very large astronomical instruments.

Ibn Yunus described 40 planetary conjunctions and 30 lunar eclipses. In the 19th century, Simon Newcomb found Ibn Yunus' observations on conjunctions and eclipses reliable enough to use them in his lunar theory to determine the secular acceleration of the moon. Ibn Yunus also observed more than 10,000 entries for the sun's position for many years using a large monumental astrolabe with a diameter of nearly 1.4 meters.

The crater Ibn Yunus on the Moon is named after him.


Yunus see Ibn Yunus
Abu al-Hasan 'Ali abi Sa'id 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ahmad ibn Yunus al-Sadafi al-Misri see Ibn Yunus


Ibn Zafar
Ibn Zafar (1104-1170).  Arab scholar and polygraph from Sicily.  His biography of illustrious individuals was translated into Italian, English and Turkish. 


Ibn Zamrak
Ibn Zamrak (Ibn Zumruk) (Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Surayhi) (1333-1393).  Poet and statesman from Granada.  In his panegyrics (his writings of praise), he celebrates the beauty of Granada’s gardens and palaces.  

Ibn Zamrak was a poet and statesman from Granada, Al-Andalus. Some his poems still decorate the fountains and palaces of Alhambra in Granada.

Ibn Zamrak was of humble origin but thanks to his teacher Ibn al-Khatib he was introduced at the court of the Nasrids. He accompanied Sultan Abu Abd Allah Mohammed V to Morocco and when Mohammed was reinstated on the throne in Granada in 1361 he was appointed as his private secretary and a court poet. When Ibn al-Khatib was dismissed as vizier in 1371, Ibn Zamrak succeeded him and hired a group of assassins to kill Ibn al-Khatib in prison after his arrest in Fez. Later, Ibn Zamrak himself was imprisoned for nearly two years by Yusuf II and was assassinated on the orders of Sultan Muhammad VII while he was reading the Qur'an at home in 1393.
Ibn Zumruk see Ibn Zamrak
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Surayhi see Ibn Zamrak


Ibn Zaydan
Ibn Zaydan (Abd al-Rahman ibn Zaydan) (1873/1878-1946).  Moroccan official and historian of Meknes.  His works may be considered as a good source for the history of Meknes and of the Sharifs of Morocco.

Abd al-Rahman ibn Zaydan was a Moroccan historian and literary author. He was a great-grandson of sultan Moulay Ismael and is considered one of the best sources on the history of his native city Meknes, but also on the Alaouite dynasty. After the installation of the French protectorate he accepted the function of vice-director of the military school of Dâr al-Bayda in Meknes, today's military academy of the city. The Ithaf, his main work of 8 volumes contains hundreds of biographies, like those of the sultans Abderrahman and Hassan I.


Ibn Zaydun
Ibn Zaydun (Abu al-Waleed Ahmad Ibn Zaydún al-Makhzumi) (1003-1071).  Poet of Cordoba.  His romantic and literary life was dominated by his stormy relations with the poetess Wallada, the daughter of the Spanish Umayyad Muhammad al-Mustakfi (r.1024-1025).

Ibn Zaydún was a famous Arab poet of Cordoba and Seville. His romantic and literary life was dominated by his relations with the poetess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, the daughter of the Ummayad Caliph Muhammad III of Cordoba.

Ibn Zaydun was born in Cordoba to an aristocratic Arab family of the tribe of Makhzum. He grew up during the decline of the Umayyad caliphate and was involved in the political life of his age. He joined the court of the Jahwarid Abu al-Hazm of Cordoba and was imprisoned by him after he was accused of conspiring against him and his patrons.

His relationship with the Umayyad princess Wallada was quickly terminated by Wallada herself. Some attributed this change of heart to Ibn Zaydun's early anti-Umayyad activities, while others mention his rivalry with the rich minister Ibn Abdus, a former friend of Ibn Zaydun, who supposedly gained Wallada's favor and supported her. It is suggested that Ibn Abdus himself was the one who instigated Abu al-Hazm ibn Jahwar against Ibn Zaydun.

Ibn Zaydun sought refuge with Abbad II of Seville and his son al-Mu'tamid. He was able to return home for a period after the ruler of Seville conquered Cordoba. Much of his life was spent in exile and the themes of lost youth and nostalgia for his city are present in many of his poems.
Abu al-Waleed Ahmad Ibn Zaydún al-Makhzumi see Ibn Zaydun


Ibn Zayla
Ibn Zayla (d. 1048).  Pupil of Ibn Sina.  He was a mathematician and an excellent musician.


Ibn Ziba‘ra
Ibn Ziba‘ra.  Seventh century poet of the Quraysh who satirized the Prophet and his followers.


Ibn Zuhr
Ibn Zuhr. Patronymic of a family of scholars in Spain from the eleventh through twelfth centuries.  The physician Abu‘l-‘Ala‘ ibn Zuhr (d. 1130) was known to medieval western scholars as Abulelizor or Albuleizor and was a famous physician of Seville.  Some nine works of his are known, but he owed his reputation to his skill as a practising physician.  Another physician of this family, Abu Marwan ibn Zuhr (1092-1161), was known as Abhomer or Avenzoar.
Abu'l-'Ala' ibn Zuhr see Ibn Zuhr.
Abulelizor see Ibn Zuhr.
Abuleizor see Ibn Zuhr.
Abu Marwan ibn Zuhr see Ibn Zuhr.
Abhomer see Ibn Zuhr.
Avenzoar see Ibn Zuhr.


Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr
Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr (Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr) (Avenzoar) (Abū Merwān ’Abdal-Malik ibn Zuhr) (Abumeron) (Ibn-Zohr) (1091–1161).  One of the greatest physicians, clinicians and parasitologists of the Middle Ages.  Some historians of science have declared Ibn Zuhr to be the greatest among the Muslim physicians after Ar-Razi (Rhazes) of Baghdad.  Some of his contemporaries called Ibn Zuhr the greatest physician since Galen.

Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr was born at Seville, Spain in 1091.  He graduated from Cordova (in Arabic, Qurtuba) Medical University.  After a brief stay in Baghdad and Cairo, he returned to Spain and worked as a physician.  Later, Ibn Zuhr worked for ‘Abd al-Mu‘min, the first Muwahid ruler, both as physician and a minister.  He worked his entire career in Seville and died in 1161.

Ibn Zuhr confined his work to medicine, contrary to the prevailing practice of his contemporary Muslim scientists who typically worked in several fields.  By focusing on one field, Ibn Zuhr made many original and long-lasting contributions.  He emphasized observation and experiment in his work.  Ibn Zuhr was proficient in the art of dissecting dead human bodies and knew anatomy in detail.  His operative technique was superb.

Ibn Zuhr made several breakthroughs as a physician.  He was the first to test different medicines on animals before administering them to humans.  Also, he was the first to describe in detail scabies, the itch mite, and is thus regarded as the first parasitologist.  He was also the first to give a full description of the operation of tracheotomy and practiced feeding through the gullet in those cases where normal feeding was not possible.  As a clinician, Ibn Zuhr provided clinical descriptions of intestinal phthisis (a progressive wasting disease), inflammation of the middle ear, pericarditis (inflammation of the membranous sac enclosing the heart), and mediastinal tumors (tumors between the two lungs) among others.

Ibn Zuhr wrote many monumental books for the medical specialist and for the common people.  Several of his books were translated into Latin and Hebrew and were in great demand in Europe until the late eighteenth century.  Only three of his great books have survived.  Ibn Zuhr wrote Kitab al-Taisir fi al-Mudawat wa al-Tadbir at the request of Ibn Rushd (Averroes).  In English, it is entitled The Book of Simplification Concerning Therapeutics and Diet.  It contains many of his original contributions.  This book discusses pathological conditions and therapy in detail.  The second book Kitab al-Iqtisad fi Islah al-Anfus wa al-Ajsad (Book of the Middle Course Concerning the Reformation of Souls and Bodies) summarizes different diseases, therapeutics and the hygiene.  It also discusses the role of psychology in treatment.  The third book Kitab al- Aghziya (Book on Foodstuffs) discusses numerous drugs and the importance of food and nutrition.  

Ibn Zuhr’s influence on the development of medical science was pronounced for several centuries throughout the world.


Abhomer see Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr
Avenzoar see Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr
Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr see Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr
Abumeron see Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr
Ibn Zohr see Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr
Abū Merwān ’Abdal-Malik ibn Zuhr see Ibn Zuhr, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik ibn Zuhr


Ibn Zur‘a
Ibn Zur‘a (943-1008).  Jacobite Christian philosopher, apologist and translator of Baghdad.  Among other works of Aristotle, he translated the Historia Animalium.

Ibn Zur'a was born in 943 in Baghdad in a family of Christian Jacobites. He studied science, medicine and philosophy under the tutelage of his master, Yahya ibn Adi. Ibn Zur'a was also a merchant, but was accused of trafficking with Byzantium, he was arrested and tried. His property was seized and he died in Baghdad in 1008.


Ibrahim
Ibrahim.  Arabic version of the name Abraham.  Ibrahim is one of the most central figures to Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  Ibrahim is believed to have lived between 2200 and 1700 B.C.T., and, according to the Bible and derivative Muslim sources, died at the age of 175.   However, aside from the Bible, there are no independent sources confirming the existence of Ibrahim or of his abnormally long lifespan.  

Ibrahim is of great importance to Judaism because he is the forefather of the Jews, through the line of his son, Isaac.   Ibrahim is important to Muslims because, from the Muslim perspective, (1) Ibrahim is a prophet of the same message from God as Muhammad; (2) Ibrahim was responsible for erecting the Ka‘ba, the most holy place in earthly Islam; and (3) Ibrahim was the father of Isma‘il, the individual who is deemed to be the progeniture of the Arabs.

For Christians, the importance of the Jewish genealogy is less important than in Judaism, even though there are two unsuccessful attempts to construct kinship between Jesus and Ibrahim in the gospels. {See Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38 where it actually is the stepfather of Jesus, Joseph, who is in familial line of Ibrahim, and not Mary, Jesus' only human parent.}   

In Judaism, Abraham (his name was at first Abram) is the first of the Hebrew patriarchs.  A central theme in Judaism is Abraham’s exodus from Ur in Mesopotamia to Canaan.  In Canaan, Abram and his tribe settle, and from this stems the Jewish claim to all of the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates (covering today’s Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and eastern Egypt) being the promised land. {See Genesis 15:18.}

The second story about Abram, is when he has to take refuge in Egypt because of drought in Canaan.  In this story, Abram gives away his wife Sarai to Pharaoh saying she is his sister.  But when Pharaoh finds out that Abram has lied, Abram has to return to Canaan.  Next we learn that Abram and his nephew Lot divide the land of Canaan between them, Lot in the east and Abram in the west.

Abram is worried that he has no children, so his wife Sarai gives him her maidservant Hajar (Hagar).  Hajar becomes pregnant, and gives birth to Isma‘il (Ishmael or Ishmail) when Abram is 86 years old.  God promises Hajar that his descendants will reach uncountable numbers.

When Abram was 99 years old, God gave him a new name, Abraham, and told him also to change the name of his wife to Sarah.  According to Jewish tradition, the reason given for the name change was God's promise to make Abram the father of a large people, through a son which would be named Isaac (Ishaq).  Kings would come from his kin, and there would be a pact between God and Abraham’s people.  The symbol of that pact would be circumcision of all boys at the age of 8 days.  Abraham then had himself and all of his fellow men circumcised.

However, between the time of the promise, and the birth of Isaac, Abraham for a second time is deceptive and says that Sarah is his sister.  King Abimelek sends his men to bring the 89 year old Sarah to him to become his wife, but is warned by God in a dream, saying what Abraham had not said, that Sarah was the wife of someone else.

As promised, Isaac is born to 90 year old Sarah and 100 year old Abraham.  

Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son to God.  No reason for this demand was given, but Abraham went ahead, without telling his son anything else than that they were going to perform a sacrifice.  At the point where Abraham was about to kill his son, God intervened, and gave Abraham a lamb instead, while stating that he now knew that Abraham feared Him.  Abraham then moved to Beer Sheba.  

At some point, Sarah makes Abraham send Hajar and Isma‘il away.  In the desert, near Beer Sheba the two cannot find water, but are saved by God, who creates a water source for them.  (This story also appears in Islam, except for the geography.  According to Islamic tradition, this event occurred in Mecca.)  

Sarah died at the age of 127, and Abraham bought the Machpelah cave in Hebron from the local Hittites.

Abraham sent out his servant to bring home a wife from a foreign people to his son Isaac.  He found Rebecca in Mesopotamia.  Later, Abraham remarried.  He married Keturah, with whom he had six sons, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.  Abraham died at the age of 175 from natural causes, and was buried in the Machpelah cave with Sarah.  

With this ends the story of Abraham, and the story of the Jews begins.

In Islam, the Qur‘an clearly states that Ibrahim was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but rather a “God-seeker” (Sura 3:60).  He has the status of being one of the earlier messengers of God, together with Adam, Moses, Jesus and others.  According to Muslim theology, the message of Ibrahim was the very same as Muhammad‘s, but it was corrupted by the Jews.

Central in the Qur‘an is the conflict between Ibrahim and his father, Azar.  Azar was an idolater, and Ibrahim turned away from him, when he could not make his father follow the message of God (Sura 19:42-49).

Ibrahim’s mission has many parallels to Muhammad‘s, and throughout the Qur‘an, the reader reads about the scepticism and hostility that Ibrahim faced when bringing the message of a new rite of one God only to his contemporaries.

In the Qur'an, relatively little is told about Ibrahim’s journeys. However, it is noted that Abraham settled by God’s command in the place of what would become the Ka‘ba (Sura 22:27).  Most of the stories about Ibrahim in the Islamic tradition (hadith) come from other sources than the Qur‘an, and there are many parallels to the life of Moses.  Around the time of the birth of Ibrahim, king Namrud had a dream about a threat to his kingdom.  He introduced laws to have all pregnant women watched and their newborn sons killed.  But when the mother of Ibrahim was examined, the child in her stomach hid from the slayers hands, so he was spared.

As a grown man, Ibrahim and his men defeat Namrud (Nimrod), after which they set out for Palestine.  Other important parts from these stories tell that Ibrahim circumcised himself at the age of 120, and that he died at the age of 175.  On the day of resurrection, Ibrahim will sit on the left side of God, and lead the pious into Paradise.

In the Christianity, the Judaic stories concerning Abraham are maintained but with a different emphasis.  In Christianity, Abraham plays a different role than with the Jews.  For Christians, Abraham belongs to the old religion, both before Moses got the covenant, and Judaism was transformed into Christianity by Jesus.

Although Abraham gives a certain legitimacy to the traditions of Christianity, there are no Christian celebrations of any sort in his remembrance.  Theologically, there are many details regarding the story of Abraham that are frowned upon in Christianity.  Stories concerning Abraham’s being married to his half-sister Sarah; Lot having children with his own daughters; and Abraham’s deceptions concerning his marriage to Sarah, all appear to be foreign to the theology of Christianity.  However, Abraham's total obedience to the one God is an element that lives on as the purest virtue in Christianity.


Abraham see Ibrahim.
Abram see Ibrahim.
Forefather of the Jews see Ibrahim.
Forefather of the Muslims see Ibrahim.
Forefather of the Christians see Ibrahim.


Ibrahim
Ibrahim (Ibrahim I) (Ibrahim the Mad) (Deli Ibrahim)  (November 5, 1615 - August 12/18, 1648).  Ottoman sultan (r.1640-1648).  

Ibrahim I was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1640 until 1648. He was born in Istanbul the son of Ahmed I by Valide Sultan Kadinefendi Kösem Sultan, an ethnic Greek originally named Anastasia. He was unofficially called Ibrahim the Mad (Turkish: Deli İbrahim) due to his mental condition.

One of the most famous Ottoman Sultans, he was released from the Kafes and succeeded his brother Murad IV (1623–40) in 1640, though against the wishes of Murad IV, who had ordered him killed upon his own death. Murad IV had himself succeeded their older brother Osman II in 1622, and had ordered his three other brothers executed. Ibrahim I was allowed to live because he was too mad to be a threat. Ibrahim brought the empire almost to collapse in a very short space of time — paralleled only perhaps, by the rule of Phocas (602–610) in the Byzantine Empire. Probably mentally unstable, he is claimed to have suffered from neurasthenia, and was also depressed after the death of his brother. His reign was essentially that of his Greek mother, Kösem Sultan, who was no longer hindered in controlling the empire as she willed.

Ibrahim is known to have had an obsession with obese women, urging his agents to find the fattest woman possible. A candidate was tracked down in Georgia or Armenia who weighed over 330 pounds and was given the pet name Sheker Pare (literally, "piece of sugar"). Ibrahim was so pleased with her that he gave her a government pension and the title of Governor General of Damascus. When he heard a rumor his concubines were compromised by another man, he had 280 members of his harem drowned in the Bosporus Sea. He was seen feeding coins to fish living in the palace's pool. These feats earned him the nickname "mad".

Ibrahim at first stayed away from politics, but eventually he took to raising and executing a number of viziers. A war with Venice was fought, and in spite of the decline of La Serenissima, Venetian ships won victories throughout the Aegean, capturing Tenedos (1646), the gateway to the Dardanelles. Ibrahim's rule grew ever more unpredictable. Eventually, he was deposed in a coup led by the Grand Mufti. There is an apocryphal story to the effect that the Grand Mufti acted in response to Ibrahim's decision to drown all 280 members of his harem, but there is other evidence to suggest that at least two of Ibrahim's concubines survived him (particularly Turhan Hatice, who was responsible for the death three years later of Kösem, then serving as regent for Ibrahim's son by Hatice, Mehmed IV. Chances are this story was circulated after the coup to silence those who for whatever reason preferred a mad sultan. Ibrahim was strangled in Istanbul.

Ibrahim was married to Valide Sultan Turhan Hatice, a Ukrainian (the mother of Mehmed IV), to Valide Sultan Saliha Dilaşub (the mother of Suleiman II), and to Valide Sultan Khadija Muazzez (the mother of Ahmed II).

Until about 1644, Ibrahim concerned himself with his empire, establishing peaceful relations with Persia and Austria.  Afterwards, however, he came increasingly under the influence of concubines and court favorites.  In 1645, he embarked on a war with Venice, which was to last for 24 years.  

Ibrahim was born on November 4, 1615, in Istanbul.  In 1640, he became sultan.  In 1642, peace treaties were signed with Austria and Persia.  The Sea of Azov (north of the Black Sea) was taken back from the Cossacks.

In 1644, Ibrahim had his grand vizier, Kemankes Kara Mustafa, executed.  Later that year, an expedition was dispatched towards Crete.  

In 1645, provoked by the Ottoman aggression towards Crete, Venice entered into war against the Ottomans.  This war would last for twenty-four years.  

On August 8, 1648, Ibrahim was deposed by an uprising of the Janissaries and the ulama.  

Ibrahim was a relatively weak leader.  He was interested in governing the empire and extending and securing its borders, but he had an unstable character and he led a life of excess.  He was also strongly influenced by the women of his harem and his viziers.  

In order to pay for his luxurious life style, Ibrahim imposed heavy taxes, which led to discontent among both the average person and the elite in the society.  This was the main reason why an unusual union between the Janissaries and the ulama had Ibrahim removed from power, and executed.


Ibrahim I see Ibrahim
Ibrahim the Mad see Ibrahim
Deli Ibrahim see Ibrahim


Ibrahim
Ibrahim (Ibrahim Pasha) (1789, Kavalla, Rumelia [now Kaval, Greece] – November 10, 1848, Cairo, Egypt).  Conqueror and governor of Syria (1832-1840).  Ibrahim was the son of Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt.  

Ibrahim Pasha was a 19th century general of Egypt. He is better known as the son of Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Ibrahim served as Regent for his father from July to November 10, 1848.

A son, or adopted son, of the famous vali Muḥammad ʿAlī, in 1805 Ibrahim joined his father in Egypt, where he was made governor of Cairo. During 1816–18, he successfully commanded an army against the Wahhabite rebels in Arabia. Muḥammad ʿAlī sent him on a mission to the Sudan in 1821–22, and on his return he helped train the new Egyptian army along European lines. When the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II asked for Egyptian assistance to crush the Greek revolt, an expedition commanded by Ibrahim landed in Greece in 1824 and subdued the Morea (Peloponnese), but a combined British, French, and Russian squadron eventually compelled the Egyptian force to withdraw.

It was in Syria that Ibrahim and his French chief of staff, O.J.A. Sève (Suleiman Pasha al-Faransawi), won military fame. In 1831–32, after a disagreement between Muḥammad ʿAlī and the Ottoman sultan, Ibrahim led an Egyptian army through Palestine and defeated an Ottoman army at Homs. He then forced the Bailan Pass and crossed the Taurus, gaining a final victory at Konya on December 21, 1832. By the Convention of Kütahya, signed on May 4, 1833, Syria and Adana were ceded to Egypt, and Ibrahim became governor-general of the two provinces.

Ibrahim’s administration was relatively enlightened. At Damascus, he created a consultative council of notables and suppressed the feudal regime. But his measures were harshly applied and roused sectarian opposition. Sultan Mahmud resented the Egyptian occupation, and in 1839 an Ottoman army invaded Syria. At Nizip on June 24 Ibrahim won his last and greatest victory; the Ottoman fleet deserted to Egypt. Fearing the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the European powers negotiated the Treaty of London in July 1840, by which Muḥammad ʿAlī forfeited Syria and Adana in return for the hereditary rule of Egypt. British naval forces threatened the Egyptians, who evacuated the occupied territories in the winter of 1840–41. By 1848 Muḥammad ʿAlī had become senile, and Ibrahim was appointed viceroy but ruled for only 40 days before his death on November 10, 1848.


Ibrahim Pasha see Ibrahim


Ibrahim
Ibrahim (d. 1846).  Titular ruler of the Kanuri state of Bornu (r.1820-1846).  He and his son were the last kings of the ancient Sefawa dynasty.  Ibrahim’s older brother, Dunama, had allied with al-Kanemi to protect Bornu against the invading Fula armies of ‘Uthman dan Fodio.  However, al-Kanemi gradually usurped power and Dunama was killed trying to eliminate him.  Ibrahim immediately tried to reassert Sefawa authority, but failed.  Nine years later, Ibrahim persuaded the sultan of neighboring Wadai to invade Bornu when the Bornu army was away from Kakawa, the capital (in 1846).  The invasion forced ‘Umar to flee, but he had uncovered the plot and killed Ibrahim first.  The sultan of Wadai installed Ibrahim’s son, ‘Ali Minargema, as the new ruler, but fled when ‘Umar’s armies advanced to recapture the capital.  ‘Ali’s supporters were quickly defeated, while Ibrahim himself was killed and his family dispersed ending the thousand year history of the Sefawa dynasty.

Ibrahim IV was a titled Mai of the Kanuri state of Bornu from 1820-1846. He was one of the last rulers from the Sefawa ruling dynasty. Ibrahim's father, and previous ruler of Bornu, had called on El-Kanemi, an Islamic Scholar and Warrior, to help him fight against the Fulani's and their leader Goni Mukhtar. The two were able to push back the Fulani from much of Bornu. In the process, El-Kanemi grew powerful and was a threat to the Sefawa ruling house which had produced Ibrahim and his father, Dunama. Dunama was later killed in a failed putsch to murder El-Kanemi. His son, Ibrahim succeeded him. When El Kanemi died in 1837, he was succeeded by his son, Umar. The two figures became enmeshed in a battle of supremacy and they renewed hostilities between the Kanemis and the Sefawas. Ibrahim hatched a plan to kill Umar by inviting an external army from Wadai under the command of the Sultan of Wadai. However, Umar knew about the plan and had Ibrahim killed before fleeing Bornu, further continuing the assault on the Sefawa ruling dynasty.

Ibrahim IV see Ibrahim

Ibrahim
Ibrahim (Ibrahim Iskandar Al-Masyhur ibni Abu Bakar) (September 17, 1873 - May 8, 1959).  Sultan of Johor.  He became sultan in 1895 on the death of his father, Sultan Abu Bakar.  He ruled the state through the turbulent period in which it passed from nominal independence to British colonial rule to Japanese rule (from 1942 to 1945) and finally to independence within the Federation of Malaya.  Educated in England, Ibrahim traveled widely after becoming a sultan, making frequent visits to Europe and Britain.  

Although a general adviser from Britain was accepted in 1910 and Johor became an “unfederated” state, the Malay administrators of Johor continued to exercise significant control over the state’s day-to-day affairs.  Ibrahim’s administration oversaw the beginnings of modernization in Johor, including the opening of a railroad linking the west to Singapore and to the Malay states to the north and the expansion of rubber planting.  In the postwar period, he played an important role in opposing the Malayan Union plan.

Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar Al-Masyhur ibni Abu Bakar was the 22nd Sultan of Johor, in Malaysia. He was known as one of the richest men in the world during his reign.

An Anglophile, Sultan Ibrahim continued the policy of friendly relations with the crown of the United Kingdom, often manipulating his friendship with the reigning kings of Britain to thwart the expansionist ambitions of the British Colonial Office.

He became highly unpopular later due to him being known as an Anglophile and opposed to Malayan independence. This led him to spend most of his time away from his state, travelling to Europe, particularly Britain.

Wan Ibrahim was born September 17, 1873 in Istana Bidadari, Singapore, and received his education at a boarding school in England during his formative years. He was appointed a Second Lieutenant of the Johor Military Forces during his teenage years and was formally installed as the first Tunku Mahkota of Johor on May 23, 1891 and was brought to Europe by his father where he was being introduced to the European royal families. During his term as the Tunku Mahkota, Tunku Ibrahim occasionally acted as the state's regent and was delegated a few state duties whenever the Sultan was travelling overseas. In his free time, Tunku Ibrahim spent most of his time in hunting and horseracing.

Tunku Ibrahim acted as one of the three signatories when Sultan Abu Bakar promogated the Johor state constitution in April 1895. The following month, Tunku Ibrahim accompanied Abu Bakar to London. Abu Bakar had the intent of seeking further negotiations with the Colonial Office on state affairs. Abu Bakar was by then a very sick man when he reached England, and Tunku Ibrahim spent much of his time by his father's bedside before Abu Bakar died the following month.

Tunku Ibrahim was proclaimed as the Sultan of Johor on the day of Abu Bakar's burial on September 7, 1895, while his one-year old son, Tunku Ismail was proclaimed as his heir-apparent. A formal coronation ceremony took place on November 2, 1895. He took over the state government the following year, and one of his first reports was the financial difficulties which the state was facing. Many of his employees complained of delays in receiving their salaries; which was often paid in installments. Sultan Ibrahim then took charge of closely supervising the state treasury, and personally witnessed the payment of the state's employees during payment day. In the same year, he also took on the task of appointing the committee members of the Johor Gambier and Pepper Society (also known as Kongkek in Malay). Sultan Ibrahim was inexperienced in public administration skills and heavily relied on his private secretary, Abdul Rahman bin Andak on advice and assistance in running the affairs of the state.

The Resident General of the Federated Malay States, Frank Swettenham proposed to Sultan Ibrahim in November 1899 for the construction of a railway line into Johor, in conjunction with his plan for the North-South Main Trunk Railway line in the Malay Peninsula. Sultan Ibrahim welcomed Swettenham but was weary of political British influence in Johor and insisted on financing the construction of the railway line himself. Swettenham was comfortable with Sultan Ibrahim's prospect of financing the railway line using the state's revenues, and submitted his proposals to the Colonial Office in England. The proposals drew skepticism from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, who was aware of Johor's financial difficulties and withheld decision. Sultan Ibrahim then sent his Abdul Rahman the following May to London to negotiate with the Colonial Office, and in April 1901, Sultan Ibrahim made a year-long trip to London to seek private English financiers to fund the construction of the railway line and negotiated with the Colonial Office for a railway loan. The Sultan did, however, manage to obtain a loan for the construction of the railway and the Johor Railway Convention was signed in July 1904 by his adviser, Abdul Rahman, that gave provisions for an extension of the Malayan railway line to be extended into Johor.

Sultan Ibrahim returned to Johor the following year, and expanded the state's military forces. He instituted the Johor Volunteer Forces (JVF), which consisted of young Malay boys and served as the state's reservist soldiers. In 1906, he granted land concessions to English capitalists and financiers for development purposes. This drew the concern of the Straits Governor, Sir John Anderson, who was not very favorable with Sultan Ibrahim's intents to detach Johor's economic dependence from Singapore. He successfully pressured Sultan Ibrahim to dispense with the services of Abdul Rahman as well as ceding the administrative powers of the railway line to the colonial government the following year after reports of the state's troubled finances were revealed.

Sultan Ibrahim was also facing political challenges from the British colonial government, who were ostensibly unhappy his negligence in his state affairs and were seeking to extend greater political influence into the state. The Colonial Secretary of the Straits Settlements, Victor Bruce, Lord Elgin had met Sultan Ibrahim in 1906 and advised him to administer the state in favor of British interests and to cut down on his overseas travels to Europe. Sultan Ibrahim was adamant against Elgin's advice, was indignant to accept British advice, and was later warned by Lord Elgin two years later on the British possibility of enacting constitutional changes in the state administration. In 1910, Sultan Ibrahim accepted a British adviser for Johor after immense pressure from the colonial government. The British were extremely unhappy with the condition of Johor's finances, which were depleted as a result of Sultan Ibrahim's extensive overseas travels. The British-Resident of Negeri Sembilan, Douglas Graham Campbell was appointed the first adviser of Johor.

Relations between Sultan Ibrahim and Campbell were excellent within Campbell's first year as an adviser, and Sultan Ibrahim gave him support to improve the state administrative system. However, a tenacious relationship was developed as Campbell proposed numerous administrative reforms which were disapproved by the Sultan. A political scandal erupted in 1912 after Campbell publicly revealed malpractices of the Johor Bahru Prison. Campbell was particularly unhappy with the way the prisoners were incarcerated and lobbied to the British authorities to take charge of the administrative affairs of the prison, thereby igniting protest from the Sultan. Grievances between the Sultan's administration and the colonial government over the administrative control of the state railway remained unabated during this period, and the Menteri Besar of Johor, Dato' Abdullah bin Jaafar was delegated to handle these matters.

Shortly after his fallout with Campbell, Sultan Ibrahim implemented a state executive council (Malay: Masyurat Kerja) to oversee the administration of state agricultural and mining activities. The Sultan distanced himself from Campbell and the state's legal adviser, Michael Henry Whitley, and took administrative matters into his own hands. This incited worry and unhappiness in Campbell and Whitley, and they submitted a memorandum to the Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Arthur Henderson Young, to appeal for greater British administrative control over the state. Young gave provisions to Campbell with the power similar to a British Resident-General from other states, but kept the title of "General Adviser" to show protocol deference to the Sultan. Sultan Ibrahim was unhappy with the new proposals as the British adviser would have more direct control over the state affairs, but Young assured the Sultan that he would be available for consultation in the event opinion differences may arise between Campbell and Sultan Ibrahim. A treaty was signed on May 12, 1914, which formalized the powers of the state's General Adviser.

The state economy experienced a budget surplus as a result of an increase in rubber prices for the rest of the 1910s. Campbell served as the state's General Adviser until his death in June 1918, and between June 1918 until December 1920, five General Advisers were appointed in succession, each of whom only took office for a few months. As the colonial government lacked a decisiveness in the state administration, Sultan Ibrahim attempted to extend his influence in the state administration. Hayes Marriot was appointed as the state's new General Adviser in December 1920 and reorganized the state administration.

Sultan Ibrahim took on the role of a ceremonial monarch from the 1920s onwards, and his duties were largely limited to gracing various opening ceremonies around the state. He occasionally expressed his views on the state administration and economic developments whenever he had grievances, which the British colonial government often took into account as a result of

his political influence in the state. He began to take time off to travel abroad from 1928, after he began to suffer from chronic gout and myocardial degeneration. London was one destination which he often visited, and frequented the Colonial Office whenever he had grievances with the state administration. As a result of his frequent complaints of maladministration of state affairs by the local British government, Sultan Ibrahim's relations with each General Adviser became strained.

Sir Cecil Clementi, who served as the Governor of the Straits Settlements as well as the High Commissioner of the Malay States from 1930 to 1934, remarked in December 1932 that Sultan Ibrahim was too independent in state affairs and proposed to the Sultan that he should approach Clementi in the future under the capacity of the High Commissioner instead of the Straits Governor. Clementi's proposals apparently angered the Sultan, who boycotted the Durbar in February 1934.

Sultan Ibrahim was a close friend of Frank Buck and often assisted Buck in his animal collecting endeavors.

Early Malay nationalism took root in Johor during the 1920s as a Malay aristocrat, Onn Jaafar, whom the Sultan had treated as an adopted son, became a journalist and wrote articles on the welfare of the Malays. Some of Onn's articles were critical of Sultan Ibrahim's policies, which led to strained personal relations with the Sultan. In particular, Sultan Ibrahim expelled Onn from Johor after he published an article in the Sunday Mirror, a Singapore-based English tabloid and criticized the Sultan's poor treatment of the Johor Military Forces personnel and the welfare of the Orang Asli. Onn became very popular after he continued to cover issues on Malay grievances, and Sultan Ibrahim invited Onn to return to Johor in 1936.

Sultan Ibrahim became an active patron of the state's forestry department around 1930, and encouraged the state forestry department to designate some of the remaining virgin forests in the state as nature reserves, as Johor witnessed a reduction in timber supplies due to extensive logging in the past. Nature reserves covered about 15 per cent of the state's land area by 1934, mainly in the northern regions of the state.

Sultan Ibrahim's relations with Clementi's successor, Sir Shenton Thomas did not fare well as Thomas attempted to form a centralized Malayan Union by bringing Johore and other Unfederated Malay States under the direct charge of the Straits Governor. As the Second World War broke out in 1939, Thomas introduced the Pan-Malayan war tax scheme to fund Britain's war efforts. Sultan Ibrahim's rejected these proposals, but made a £250,000 cash gift to George VI of the United Kingdom on his 44th birthday in 1939 during his trip to Europe in 1939.

Sultan Ibrahim became a personal friend of Tokugawa Yoshichika during the 1920s. Tokugawa was a scion of the Tokugawa clan, and his ancestors were military leaders (Shogun in Japanese) which ruled Japan from the 16th to the 19th centuries. When the Japanese invaded Malaya, Tokugawa accompanied General Yamashita Tomoyuki's troops and was warmly received by Sultan Ibrahim when they reached Johor Bahru at the end of January 1942. Yamashita and his officers then stationed themselves at the Sultan's residence, Istana Bukit Serene and the state secretariat building, Sultan Ibrahim Building, to plan for the invasion of Singapore.

The Japanese established a military government in February, shortly after they settled down in Malaya. Tokugawa was appointed as the Japanese political adviser at the recommendation of Sultan Ibrahim. Relations between the military government and the monarchy were initially cordial throughout the Japanese occupation years, and Tokugawa briefly envisioned a plan for a united Malay Sultanate over the Malay Peninsula (including Pattani) with Sultan Ibrahim as its figurehead. However, as the Japanese began to experience economic difficulties and military defeats in the Pacific War from 1943 onwards, these plans were dropped and the military government channeled its efforts towards state agriculture. The Japanese continued the British policy of appointing a state adviser in Johor, and Sultan Ibrahim spent most of his time in his leisure activities.

Sultan Ibrahim on his part, became resentful of the Japanese military government during the later part of the occupation years. The Japanese gave orders to the Malay Sultans to contribute an annual stipend of $10,000 to support the Japanese war efforts, and public speeches which the rulers made were drafted by the propaganda department. In particular, Sultan Ibrahim was once publicly rebuked for leaning on his walking stick before Japanese officers thereby humiliating him in the process. Shortly before the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Sultan Ibrahim was expelled from his residence at Istana Bukit Serene and was forced to reside at Istana Pasir Pelangi, the crown prince's palace.

The British Military Administration set about the task of reviving pre-war plans for centralized control over the Malay states within days after British Allied forces landed in Singapore on September 5, 1945. A former Malayan Civil Service legal officer, H.C. Willan, was ordered to interview the Malay rulers and Willan approached Sultan Ibrahim on September 8. Sultan Ibrahim was living at Istana Pasir Pelangi with his Romanian wife, and reportedly warmed up to Willan when he first saw him. During the interview with Willan, Sultan Ibrahim spoke bitterly of his experiences during the Japanese occupation years, and offered to serve under the British Military Administration. The Sultan asked Willan's permission to fly the Union Jack on his car to attend the surrender ceremony on September 12, and the British military government granted his requests.

Willan made further interviews with other Malay rulers over the next few days, and made assessments of the political situation in each state. His studies were forwarded to the military administration, and Sir Harold MacMichael, the former high commissioner of Palestine was empowered to sign official treaties with the Malay rulers over the Malayan Union proposal scheme. MacMichael made several visits to the Malay rulers, beginning with Sultan Ibrahim in October 1945. The Sultan quickly consented to MacMichael's proposal scheme, which was motivated by his strong desire to visit England at the end of the year. MacMichael paid further visits to other Malay rulers over the proposal, and sought their consent over the proposal scheme. Many Malay rulers expressed strong reluctance in signing the treaties with MacMichael, partly because they feared losing their royal status and the prospect of their states falling into Thai political influence.

The treaties provided that the United Kingdom had full administrative powers over the Malay states except in areas pertaining to Islamic customs. The Malays strongly protested against the treaties, as the treaties had the effect of circumscribing the spiritual and moral authority of the Malay rulers. Communal tensions between the Malays and Chinese were high, and the prospect of granting citizenship to non-Malays was deemed unacceptable to the Malays. In particular, politicians in Johor were extremely unhappy with the willingness of Sultan Ibrahim to sign the treaties with MacMichael, and voiced that Sultan Ibrahim had violated the terms in the Johor state constitution which explicitly forbade any foreign powers to assume legitimate control over the state. In early February 1946, seven political dissidents led by Awang bin Hassan organized a rally to protest against the Sultan's decision for signing the treaties, and Onn Jaafar, who was then serving as a district officer in Batu Pahat, was invited to attend the rally.

The rally was held on February 1, 1946 at the Sultan Abu Bakar State Mosque, and protesters shouted nationalistic slogans and called for the dethronement of Sultan Ibrahim. Malay nationalistic slogans were raised during the rally, many of whom were directed against the Sultan himself, whom they accused of committing treason against the Malay race by signing the treaties. News of the rally reached Sultan Ibrahim on 22 February, who was then residing at Grosvenor House in London. Sultan Ibrahim approached the colonial office and expressed his withdrawal of support for the proposal scheme, but this did not appease the political dissidents and Onn continued to organize more rallies in the other Malay states to muster further support for his calls against the Malayan Union, and formed United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in May.

Sultan Ibrahim returned to Johor in early September 1947 and attended UMNO's second general meeting at Istana Besar, which was led by its youth chief, Hussein Onn. Although many Johor politicians still held a critical opinion of Sultan Ibrahim over the treaties with MacMichael, the UMNO delegates gave him a rousing welcome when he arrived at the palace. Critical opinions against the Sultan waned after the Federation of Malaya was established the following January, which restored the rulers' powers. Shortly before Sultan Ibrahim left for England in May, he personally donated a lump sum of $5,000 to UMNO, hoping to improve relations with UMNO leaders and Onn himself, who was appointed the Menteri Besar of Johor in 1946.

The establishment of the Federation did not go down well with the Chinese, whereby favorable conditions for obtaining citizenship for the Chinese and other non-Malays were withdrawn. The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was formed in 1949 under the leadership of a Straits Chinese businessman, Tan Cheng Lock who frequently raised grievances over the citizenship terms that were set when the Federation was established. As a result, communal tensions between the Malays and Chinese surfaced, and Onn kept his distance from Tan. Tan encountered initial difficulties with meeting the Sultan, who was not accustomed to working with Chinese businessmen. Sultan Ibrahim also became increasingly disappointed in Onn's work commitment, which he saw as neglecting state affairs as a result of his commitments towards UMNO. In early 1950, Sultan Ibrahim approached Onn, who was asked to choose between committing his efforts for UMNO and the state. Onn chose to the latter, and resigned as the Menteri Besar of Johor in May.

Sultan Ibrahim became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of Johor as a state within the Federation of Malaya, particularly when the prospect of an independent Federation free from British interference became increasingly clearer under Tunku Abdul Rahman's leadership. In a letter which he wrote to The Straits Times in 1953, "Straits Settlement Forever", Sultan Ibrahim expressed a skeptical opinion of Johor's future as part of an independent Malaya, and voiced support for the continuation of British Adviser system in Johor. At his diamond jubilee celebrations in September 1955, Sultan Ibrahim publicly called for Johor's secession from the Federation. Sultan Ibrahim's calls for secession inspired the formation of Persatuan Kebangsaan Melayu Johor (PKMJ) the following month, a secessionist movement led by Ungku Abdullah bin Omar, a relative of Sultan Ibrahim who was serving as one of Johor's state executive councillors. The Sultan voiced public support for PKMJ during a public gathering in mid-December 1955, and PKMJ courted considerable support from the grassroots within the first half of 1956.

The Alliance party reacted strongly to the events which motivated the formation of the PKMJ, and called for the Alliance-dominated Johor state executive council to vet all future state-policy speeches that will be made by the Sultan or members of the royal family. In particular, the Alliance reacted with great hostility to the existence of the PKMJ, and actively attempted to suppress and discredit the party. PKMJ rapidly lost most of its members to UMNO, and by mid-1957 Ungku Abdullah only had ten members left within the party. Meanwhile, at the Conference of Rulers in March 1957, Tunku Abdul Rahman expressed his desire to elect Sultan Ibrahim as the first Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia, but Sultan Ibrahim declined on grounds of his old age and desire to lead his final years in retirement.

Four months later in July 1957, Ungku Abdullah made one last call to urge Sultan Ibrahim not to sign the Malayan Federal Constitution. The Sultan, who was now residing in London, replied to Ungku Abdullah that he had empowered the Tunku Mahkota, Tunku Ismail (later Sultan Ismail) to decide on the matter. Ungku Abdullah then called upon Tunku Ismail not to sign the constitution, but his calls were ignored and Tunku Ismail proceeded to sign the constitution at the ruler's meeting. Following the ordeal, Ungku Abdullah formally disbanded the party a few days before Malaya's Independence day.

During his reign, the Sultan was known as one of the richest men in the world. He also had a reputation as a wild international playboy. His exploits ranged from changing the color of his racing horse to present it as an unknown – with better odds of course – to less savory behavior in the red-light area of Vienna. To be fair, he spread his wealth around, giving a magnificent pair of Malayan tigers to Edinburgh Zoo on the one hand and, on the other, sending a huge cash present to King George V on his Jubilee.

The Sultan was an Anglophile and spent much of his life away from Johor, preferring the more liberal delights of Europe. He sent his sons, by his Malay wives, to be educated in Britain.

The Sultan was reported to have given Sultanah Helen Ibrahim a spectacular jewel collection, reputedly giving her an emerald on her birthday and a diamond on their wedding anniversary, even after the divorce. It is little wonder that her jewellery collection was held to be the finest in the world.

Sultan Ibrahim spent the last two years of his life at his apartment at Grosvenor House in London. He spent most of his time watching television and visiting theaters and enjoyed the company of his sixth wife, Marcella Mendl and their beloved daughter, Tunku Meriam. The Sultan died on May 8, 1959 at his apartment, with his wife reportedly at his bedside during his last hours. Tunku Ismail was appointed as the Sultan of Johor in place of his father, and many Malay and British leaders who had worked with him publicly expressed their condolences to the late Sultan within the first two weeks of his death. The Sultan's body was shipped back to Johor Bahru and arrived the following month, whereby he was given a state funeral and his body laid in state between June 4-6 at Istana Besar.

At the time of his death, Sultan Ibrahim was probably the longest reigning Malay sultan in Malayan history after having ruled for 64 years.

Sultan Ibrahim was the only son of Che Wan Abu Bakar, Temenggung of Johor by Che Puan Besar Zubaidah (née Cecilia Catharina Lange, 1848-1939). Zubaidah was the daughter of Mads Johansen Lange; a Balinese-based Danish businessman and his Chinese wife, Nonna Sang Nio (born Ong Sang Nio). Nonna, who was born in Southern China, lived in East Java for a time prior to her marriage to Lange. He had one sister, Meriam (born 1871).

Sultan Ibrahim married at least four official wives who became sultanahs of Johor. They were:

    * Ungku Maimunah binti Ungku Abdul Majid (d 1909); married 1892, they had one son, Sultan Ismail (1894-1981)

    * Che Rogayah (d 1926); married in 1920, they had one son, Tunku Abu Bakar (1898-1956)

    * Helen Bartholomew Wilson (1889-1977), former wife of William Brockie Wilson; married 15 October 1930, divorced 30 March 1938

    * Marcella Mendl (1915-1982), daughter of Edgar Mendl and cousin of British diplomat Sir Charles Mendl. Upon converting to Islam, she took the name Fawzia binti ‘Abdu’llah and was known as Lady Marcella Ibrahim (1940-1955) and Her Highness Sultana Fawzia binti 'Abdu'llah (1955-1982). Married in 1940, they had one daughter, Tunku Miriam binti al-Marhum Sultan Sir Ibrahim (born September 18, 1950) (married 1978-1980, Barry Sapherson, aka Barry Ryan)

He also had a son by Hasnah bte Jaffar: Tunku Ahmad, 1898-1983.

Efforts were made by the sultan's heirs to rehabilitate his image and paint him as a benevolent ruler. However, Sultan Ibrahim is largely remembered as an anti-independence figure, a wastrel and a close (almost deferential) ally of the British. The posthumous title of "the Great" (in Malay, mil Masyhur) conferred on him by his grandson Sultan Iskandar, never caught on.

The honors bestowed upon Sultan Ibrahim include:

    * Grand Commander of the Family Order of Johor (DK)-1891
    * Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Crown of Johor (SPMJ)-1891
    * Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Medal-1897
    * Imperial Order of the Osmans (Nishan-i-Osmanieh), 1st Class-1898
    * King Edward VII Coronation Medal-1902
    * King George V Coronation Medal-1911
    * Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG)-1916 (KCMG-1897)
    * Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Romania-1920
    * Grand Cordon of the Order of the White Elephant of Siam-1924
    * Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Cambodia-1933
    * Grand Cross of the Order of the Dragon of Annam-1933
    * Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun-1934
    * Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE)-1935 (KBE-1918)
    * King George V Silver Jubilee Medal-1935
    * King George VI Coronation Medal-1937
    * Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy-1938
    * Grand Cordon of the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar
    * Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal-1953
    * Order of the Crown of State of Malaysia (DMN)-1958





Ibrahim Iskandar Al-Masyhur ibni Abu Bakar see Ibrahim


Ibrahim I
Ibrahim I (Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab) (756-812).  Founder of the Ifriqiyan dynasty of the Aghlabids and first Emir (r.800-812) of the Aghlabids in Ifriqiya.  In 801, he received the envoys of Charlemagne at Qasr al-Qadim (al-‘Abbasiyya near Qayrawan).

He was the son of al-Aghlab, who successfully quelled the revolt of the Kharijites in Ifriqiya at the end of the 8th century. In 800, Ibrahim became Emir of Ifriqiya and founded the Aghlabid dynasty, and was recognised as the hereditary ruler by the Caliph Harun ar-Rashid.

After the pacification of the country, he established a residence at al-Abbasiya to keep his distance from the restless jurists of Kairuan, who were always ready to incite the people into revolt. A guard of 5000 black African slaves was set up to avoid total dependence on Arab troops, the necessity of this measure was proven by the revolts of Arab soldiers in 802, 805 and 810. Ibrahim built up a strong administrative framework for the state which lay the foundations for the prosperity of Ifriqiya in the following century.

He was succeeded by his son Abdallah I (812-817).
Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab see Ibrahim I


Ibrahim II
Ibrahim II (Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibrahim II) (Abu Is`haq Ibrahim II) (850-October 23, 902).  After Ibrahim I (Ibrahim I ibn al-Aghlab), Ibrahim II was the most outstanding personality of the Aghlabid dynasty.  He ruled from 875 to 902.  He is distinguished for his exceptional qualities but, affected by a mental illness, he ultimately built up a system of complete despotism and thus prepared the way for the triumph of the Fatimids.  During his reign the conquest of Sicily was completed in 901.  He abdicated in 902, became an ascetic and died in the same year..

Ibrahim II was the ninth Emir of the Aghlabids in Ifriqiya.  He ruled from 875 to 902. He succeeded to the Emirate on the death of his brother Muhammad II (864-875). Although he inherited a kingdom depopulated by the plague of 874, his reign was economically prosperous. In 876 he built a new palace, Ar-Raqqada, near Kairuan and sought to develop agriculture by building up the irrigation system.

Nevertheless, the start of the decline of the dynasty can be dated to his reign. Although the conquest of Sicily was completed in 878, the Byzantines drove the Muslims out of Bari and Taranto in Apulia after a naval victory. Also, in 882 an attack by the Tulunids of Egypt had to be fought off and several Berber revolts against the tyrannical rule of Ibrahim had to be put down. From 893 there began the missionary work of the Ismaili under Abu 'Abdullah al-Shi'i amongst the Kutama Berbers in Algeria - this would eventually lead to the downfall of the Aghlabids and the rise of the Fatimids.

As unrest amongst the population against his tyrannical rule deepened, he was forced to abdicate by his son Abu'l-Abbas Abdallah. Ibrahim went to Sicily to carry on the campaign against the Byzantines, and died of dysentery during an invasion of Calabria.
Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibrahim II see Ibrahim II
Abu Is`haq Ibrahim II see Ibrahim II


Ibrahim al-Mawsili
Ibrahim al-Mawsili (Ibrahim al-Mausili)  (742-804).  One of the greatest musicians and composers of the early ‘Abbasid period.  Having learned the Persian style of singing at Rayy, he reached the summit of his career under the Caliph Harun al-Rashid.  With his colleagues Ibn Jami‘ and Fulayh ibn Abi‘l-‘Awra‘ he made a selection of 100 songs which form the framework of the Book of Songs of Abu‘l-Faraj al-Isfahani.

Ibrahim al-Mausili was born of Persian parents who settled in Kufa. In his early years, his parents died and he was trained by an uncle. Singing, not study, attracted him, and at the age of twenty-three he fled to Mosul, where he joined a band of wild youths.

After a year he went to Rai (Rei, Rhagae), where he met an ambassador of the caliph Al-Mansur, who enabled him to come to Basra and take singing lessons. His fame as a singer spread, and the caliph Mahdi brought him to the court. There he remained a favorite under Hadi, while Harun al-Rashid kept him always with him until his death, when he ordered his son Al-Ma'mun to say the prayer over his corpse.

Ibrahim, as might be expected, was not a strict Muslim. Two or three times he was imprisoned for excess in wine-drinking, but was always taken into favor again. His powers of song were far beyond anything else known at the time. Two of his pupils, his sons Isiaq and Muariq, attained celebrity after him.

Mawsili, Ibrahim al- see Ibrahim al-Mawsili
Ibrahim al-Mausili see Ibrahim al-Mawsili
Mausili, Ibrahim al- see Ibrahim al-Mawsili


Ibrahima Musa
Ibrahima Musa (Karamoko Alfa) (d. c. 1770).  Originator of the Fula Islamic revolution in Futa Jalon.  He belonged to a group of Muslim Fula who settled among the non-Muslim Fula and Jalonke (Yalunka) in the 17th century.  Clashes between the two groups over land and religion were frequent.  In 1727-1728, Ibrahima Musa united the Muslim Fula and declared a jihad. Ibrahima Musa was a religious leader, and did not direct the military campaigns himself.  Around 1776, Ibrahima went insane, and was replaced by a cousin, Ibrahima Sori, who successfully concluded the jihad in 1778.
Karamoko Alfa see Ibrahima Musa
Alfa, Karamoko see Ibrahima Musa
Musa, Ibrahima see Ibrahima Musa

Ibrahim, Anwar
Ibrahim, Anwar (Dato' Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim) (b. August 10, 1947).  Malaysian Muslim activist, thinker, and politician.  Anwar was born at Cerok Tok Kun, Bukit Mertajam, Penang; both his parents were active in the United Malays National Organization (UMNO).  He received a secular education and also, like most Malay children of the time, studied religion in the afternoon.  While at the prestigious Malay College in Kuala Kangsar, Perak (1960-1966), Anwar became noted as an interscholastic debater and a school captain.  He was also active in religious functions and read widely on Islam and society.

As a student of Malay studies at the University of Malaya (1967-1970), he presided over the two major student organizations, the Persatuan Kebangsaan Pelajar-pelajar Islam Malaysia (PKPIM, National Union of Malaysian Students) and Persatuan Bahasa Melayu Universiti Malaya (PBMUM, Malay Language Society of the University of Malaya).  Following the communal

riots of 1969, Anwar and Dr. Mahathir Mohamed formed an alliance against Premier Tunku Abdul Rahman and pushed for Malay educational and economic rights.  However, anti-poverty demonstrations in Baling, Kedah in 1974 set them politically apart for some time.

The establishment of Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) in 1971 made Anwar the most influential young leader of Malaysia.  While earnestly calling for the islamization of Malaysian life and an integrated form of development, he also argued for justice, including safeguards for the rights of the non-Muslim population. Through ABIM Anwar had extensive contacts with most Malaysian leaders, Muslim intellectuals, and activists at home and abroad.  However, neither UMNO nor its Malay Muslim opponent PAS (Partai Islam Se-Malaysia) was able to enlist Anwar, even though he shared some of the Islamic ideals of the PAS leadership.  Meanwhile, Anwar concentrated on his school, Yayasan Anda, and on youth activities.  His career was interrupted when he was detained for two years (1974-1976) without trial under the Internal Security Act following the Baling demonstrations.  Nonetheless, on his release his popularity increased tremendously at home and abroad, so that the government could not simply ignore his stand on Islam and other issues.  Hence joint programs on da‘wah (missionary activity) and related issues were held with the cooperation of various government religious agencies.  In 1980, Anwar married Dr. Wan Azizah, a graduate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.

As a thinker, Anwar has consistently stressed justice, an integrated form of development, and excellence in education and economic production.  He is influenced by such intellectuals as Syed Naguib al-Attas, Isma‘il al-Faruqi, Yusuf al-Qardhawi, Hasan al-Turabi, Malik Bennabi, and Mohammad Natsir.  He also shows familiarity with such varied writers as Ibn Khaldun, al-Ghazali, R. G. Collingwood, Malcolm X, Edward Said, and Francis Fukiyama.

Among his many activities, he served as the leader of Malaysian Youth Council (1972), as a member of United Nations Advisory Group on Youth (1973-1974), as a representative of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) for Southeast Asia (1976-1982), and as a co-founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Washington, D. C.  He was chancellor of the International Islamic University (IIU) at Kuala Lumpur. His 1982 entry into UMNO on Mahathir’s invitation caused displeasure, especially among those who aspired to the party’s top posts.  Nevertheless, with charisma and determination, he rose to lead UMNO’s youth wing and later to serve as one of its three vice presidents.  Within the government, he rose rapidly to positions including deputy minister in the prime minister’s department; minister of youth, culture, and sports; agricultural minister; and education minister.  In 1993, he was minister of finance.  His efforts led to the establishment of such institutions as the Islamic Bank, IIU, the Curriculum for Islamic Civilization, and other Islamically oriented programs.  

Anwar served as Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister from 1993 to 1998. Early in his career, he became a protégé of the Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, but subsequently emerged as the most prominent critic of Mahathir's administration.

In 1999, he was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption, and in 2000, to another nine years for sodomy. In 2004, the Federal Court reversed the second conviction and he was released. In July 2008, he was arrested over allegations he sodomized a male aide, and faced new sodomy charges in the Malaysian courts.

On August 26, 2008, Anwar won the Permatang Pauh by-election with a majority of 15,671, returning to Parliament as leader of the Malaysian opposition. He has stated the need for liberalization, including an independent judiciary and free media, to combat the endemic corruption that he considers pushed Malaysia close to failed state status.


Dato' Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim see Ibrahim, Anwar


Ibrahima Sori
Ibrahima Sori (Ibrahima Yoro Pate) (d. c. 1792).  Leader of the Fula Islamic revolution in Futa Jalon.  He became leader of the jihad against the Jalonke (Yalunka) and non-Muslim Fula in 1776 after the movement’s founder Ibrahima Musa went insane.  His final military victory came in 1778 when he defeated the combined forces of the Jalonke and Konde Birama, a powerful military leader from Sankaran who had previously scored a number of costly victories against the jihadists.  Ibrahima established his capital at Timbo, and divided Futa into nine provinces.  He was succeeded in 1791/92 by his son, Sadou, who was murdered by five years later by relatives of Ibrahima Musa.  In the 19th century, the descendants of Ibrahima Sori and those of Ibrahima Musa devised a plan of alternating rule at two year intervals.
Sori, Ibrahima see Ibrahima Sori
Ibrahima Yoro Pate see Ibrahima Sori
Pate, Ibrahima Yoro see Ibrahima Sori


Ibrahim Bey al-Kabir
Ibrahim Bey al-Kabir  (d. 1816).  With Murad Bey, Ibrahim Bey occupied the beylicate of Egypt in a duumvirate between 1768 and 1798.
Kabir, Ibrahim Bey al- see Ibrahim Bey al-Kabir


Ibrahim Edhem Pasha
Ibrahim Edhem Pasha (1818/1819-1893).  Ottoman Grand Vizier.  He is held responsible for the disastrous Turco-Russian war of 1877, but he also contributed to the modernization of Turkey.

İbrahim Edhem Pasha was an Ottoman statesman who held the office of Grand Vizier in the beginning of Abdulhamid II's reign between February 5, 1877 and January 11, 1878. He was born of Greek ancestry.  As a young boy of 4 years old in 1822 he was orphaned following a revolt during the massacre of the Greek population of Chios. He was sold into slavery, brought to Constantinople and adopted by the (later) grand vizier Koca Mehmed Hüsrev Pasha. Hüsrev Pasha was well-known for his love of children and had adopted up to ten children as such, many of them ascending to important positions in society.

The child, now named İbrahim Edhem, quickly distinguished himself with his intelligence and after having attended schools in Turkey, he was dispatched along with a number of his peers, and under the supervision of his father, then grand vizier, and of the sultan Mahmud II himself, to Paris to pursue his studies under state scholarship. There, he was a classmate and a friend of Louis Pasteur. He became Turkey's first mining engineer in the modern sense, and he started his career in this field.

İbrahim Edhem Pasha was the father of Osman Hamdi Bey, a well-known archaeologist and painter, as well the founder of the İstanbul Archaeology Museum and of the İstanbul Academy of Fine Arts. Another son, Halil Edhem Eldem took up the archaeology museum after Osman Hamdi Bey's death and was a deputy for ten years under the newly founded Turkish Republic. Yet another son, İsmail Galib Bey, is considered as the founder of numismatics as a scientific discipline in Turkey.
Edhem, Ibrahim see Ibrahim Edhem Pasha


Ibrahim Haqqi Pasha
Ibrahim Haqqi Pasha (Ibrahim Hakki Pasha) (1862-1918).  Ottoman statesman, diplomat and Grand Vizier.  He was a moderate influence in the conflict between the Committee of Union and Progress and the opposition.

Haqqi, Ibrahim see Ibrahim Haqqi Pasha
Ibrahim Hakki Pasha see Ibrahim Haqqi Pasha
Hakki, Ibrahim see Ibrahim Haqqi Pasha


Ibrahimi, al-
Ibrahimi, al-.  Algerian reformist scholar and writer.  He propagated the separation of the Muslim religion from the state, the independence of the Muslim judicial system, and the official recognition of the Arabic language.


Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd Allah
Ibrahim ibn ‘Abd Allah (716-763).  Rebel against the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur.  He was a full brother of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Nafs al-Zakiyya.

Ibrahim ibn Adham
Ibrahim ibn Adham (Abu Ben Adhem) (Abou Ben Adhem) (730-777).  Sufi of Balkh in Khurasan.  Legends about his life spread to Persia, India and Indonesia.

Ibrahim ibn Adham, also known as Abu Ben Adhem or Abou Ben Adhem, was an Arab Muslim saint and Sufi mystic. His full name was Sultan Ibrahim ibn Adham, Bin Mansur al-Balkhi al-Ijli, Abu Ishaq.

Mewlana Rumi has extensively described the legend of Sultan Ibrahim ibn Adham in his famous Masnavi. Ibrahim ibn Adham was born in Balkh on the east of Khurasan. His family was from Kufa, the Capital of the Caliphate of Imam 'Ali ibn Abi Talib and a major Shi'a center to this day. While some writers traced his lineage back to Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph, the family tree of his most prominent Sufi descendant according to a more reliable source, Nasab o-Nisbat Farid traces the lineage of Abu Ishaq Ibrahim bin Adham bin Mansur back to 'Abdullah, the brother of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, and son of Imam Muhammad al-Baqir, the grandson of Imam Abu Abd Allah Husayn ibn Ali. From a historical point of view, it is understandable that the descendents of 'Ali ibn Abi Talib would conceal their identity, as they were regarded as rebels and heretics by the Ummayyad rulers and later even the Abbasid rulers, who not only murdered each of the Twelve Imams, except for the Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi the son of Imam Hasan al-Askari, but also murdered countless Sayyids for the sake of their throne and securing the Caliphate (succession) of Prophet Muhammad to themselves. As such, in his book 'Mashaikh e-Chisht', while writing about Sultan Ibrahim ibn Adham ibn Mansur al-Balkhi; the famous Indian Hadith scholar Shaykh al-Hadith Muhammad Zakariya al-Kandahlawi wrote,

"His ancestry through the medium of five predecessors, links up with Hadhrat Umar (radhiyallahu anhu). Some people claim that he was a Sayyid of the line of Hadhrat Husain (radhiyallahu anhu). He was born in the city of Balkh. His nickname was Abu Ishaq. Khwajah Fudhail Bin Iyadh (radhiyallahu anhu) had conferred the mantle of Khilaafate to him. Besides being the Khalifah of Hadhrat Fudhail, he was also the Khalifah of Khwajah Imran Ibn Musa, Khwajah Imam Baqir, Khwajah Shaikh Mansur Salmi and Khwajah Uwais Qarni (rahmatullah alayhim)".

Ibrahim was the King of Balkh but abandoned the throne to become a "zahid" (ascetic worshiper). According to Arabic and Persian sources like al-Bukhari and others, Ibrahim ibn Adham received a warning from God, through al-Khidr who appeared to him twice, and as such, Ibrahim abdicated his throne to take up the ascetic life in Syria. Again, since Ibrahim abandoned the throne, it is understandable that he would be forced to conceal his true identity, and accordingly his true genealogy. It is also clear then, that since Ibrahim ibn Adham migrated to Syria, the capital of the Ummayyads, which was under turmoil, as the Abbasids were

planning their successful revolt, which resulted in the Battle of the Zab which spelled the end of the Ummayyad rule, that Ibrahim ibn Adham would conceal his lineage for his own safety. Ibrahim bin Adham died in 777 and is believed to be buried in Syrian town of Jabala.[1] His mentor was Fudhail Bin Iyadh, whose mentor was Abdul Waahid Bin Zaid. His successor was Huzaifah Al-Mar’ashi.

His legend enlarged gradually from al-Bukhari to Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani and after its full formation around the eleventh century, expanded to central Asia under the Mongols, Anatolia under Ottoman rule, North India in the age of the Tughluqids, and Malaysia during the seventeenth century as revealed in the works by R. Jones.

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) made him famous in the Western world with the poem Abou Ben Adhem, which was published for a general audience in 1838. Hunt had written it out, and perhaps had composed it expressly, for Mrs Samuel Carter Hall's drawing-room album; it was first published by her husband in a gift book, The Amulet, in 1834.[2] Leigh Hunt had read in Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville's Bibliothèque Orientale (1781) of the Islamic belief that on the night of Shab-i-Barat, "The Night of Records’ in the month of "Sha'ban" Allah takes the golden book of mankind and crosses off the names of those whom he is calling to him in the coming year, those whom he loves." The poem is by far the most famous that Hunt wrote.

As an interesting side note, he was quoted during the opening of the Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1901 as follows: "Abou Ben Adhem awakened from a dream, found an angel, writing in a book of gold the name of those whom love of God has blessed. "And is mine there?" he asked. But the angel answered, "Nay." "I pray thee, then," he said, "write me as one who loves his fellow men." The angel wrote and vanished. The next night it came again, with a great awakening light, and showed the names whom love of God had blessed. And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." "[3]
[edit] See also
Abu Ben Adhem see Ibrahim ibn Adham
Abou Ben Adhem see Ibrahim ibn Adham


Ibrahim ibn ‘Ali ibn Hasan al-Saqqa‘
Ibrahim ibn ‘Ali ibn Hasan al-Saqqa‘ (1797-1881).  Teacher and preacher from Cairo.  He gave an oration at the ceremony of the opening of the  Suez Canal.


Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi
Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi (779-839).  ‘Abbasid prince.  He was a son of the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdi and was proclaimed caliph in 817 against the reigning al-Ma‘mun, but had to resign in 819.  Afterwards he led the life of a poet-musician.


Ibrahim ibn al-Walid I ibn ‘Abd al-Malik
Ibrahim ibn al-Walid I ibn ‘Abd al-Malik.  Umayyad Caliph in 744.  After the death of his brother Caliph Yazid II, who reigned for a couple of months in 744, Ibrahim was recognized as a caliph in the southern part of Syria but he soon submitted to the new Caliph Marwan II and became a member of the latter’s coterie of advisers.

Ibrahim ibn Al-Walid (Arabic: ابراهيم ابن الوليد بن عبد الملك‎) was an Umayyad caliph. He only ruled for a short time in 744 before he abdicated, and went into hiding out of fear of his political opponents. The shortness of this time and his incomplete acceptance led Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari to state that he did not succeed in becoming caliph (v. 26, p. 247). However, at Tabari (p. 13) does record that Ibrahim as caliph did confirm the appointment of Abdallah ibn Umar as governor of Iraq. (v. 27, p. 13)

Ibrahim was named heir apparent by his brother Yazid III. Marwan II decided to oppose Yazid III, and even though he later gave allegiance to Yazid, on the early death of that caliph, Marwan continued his own ambitions. Ibrahim requested and was granted Marwan's assurance of personal safety. He travelled with Marwan to former Caliph Hisham's residence at Rusafah in Syria.
[edit] Bibliography


Ibrahim ibn Muhammad
Ibrahim ibn Muhammad (Ibrahim al-Imam) (701-749).  Leader of the ‘Abbasid propaganda against the Umayyads.

Ibrahim ibn Muhammad (Arabic script إبرهيم بن محمد) was the male child of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and Maria al-Qibtiyya. He was born in the last month of the year 8 AH[1]. The child was named after Abraham, the common ancestor of both Muslims and Jews. The child was placed in the care of a wet nurse called Umm Sayf, wife of Abu Sayf, the blacksmith, in the tradition of the Arabs of the time, to whom Muhammad gave some goats to complement her milk supply[2].
Contents
[hide]

    * 1 Illness and Death
    * 2 Burial
    * 3 The Eclipse
    * 4 References

[edit] Illness and Death

Ibrahim fell seriously ill sometime after the Battle of Tabuk at which time he was reported as being either sixteen or eighteen months old. He was moved to a date orchard near the residence of his mother, under her care and her sister Sirin. When it was clear that he would not likely survive Muhammad was informed[2].

His reaction to the news is reported as:
  He was so shocked at the news that he felt his knees could no more carry him, and asked `Abd al Rahman ibn `Awf to give him his hand to lean upon. He proceeded immediately to the orchard and arrived in time to bid farewell to an infant dying in his mother's lap. Muhammad took the child and laid him in his own lap with shaking hand. His heart was torn apart by the new tragedy, and his face mirrored his inner pain. Choking with sorrow, he said to his son, "O Ibrahim, against the judgement of God, we cannot avail you a thing," and then fell silent. Tears flowed from his eyes. The child lapsed gradually, and his mother and aunt watched and cried loudly and incessantly, but the Prophet never ordered them to stop. As Ibrahim surrendered to death, Muhammad's hope which had consoled him for a brief while completely crumbled. With tears in his eyes he talked once more to the dead child: "O Ibrahim, were the truth not certain that the last of us will join the first, we would have mourned you even more than we do now." A moment later he said: "The eyes send their tears and the heart is saddened, but we do not say anything except that which pleases our Lord. Indeed, O Ibrahim, we are bereaved by your departure from us."[2]  
[edit] Burial

Muhammad is also reported as having informed Mariyah and Sirin that Ibrahim would have his own nurse in Paradise. Different accounts relate that the ghusl for Ibrahim was performed by either Umm Burdah, or al-Fadl ibn `Abbas, in preparation for burial. Thereafter, he was carried to the cemetery upon a little bed among others by the Prophet, his uncle al-`Abbas. Here, after a funeral prayer led by the Prophet, he was interred. Muhammad then filled the grave with sand, sprinkled some water upon it, and placed a landmark on it, whereupon he is reported as saying that "Tombstones do neither good nor ill, but they help appease the living. Anything that man does, God wishes him to do well."[2]

Abbas, the uncle of Muhammad has reported the following narration which is recorded by Ibn Maja[3]
[edit] The Eclipse

The occasion of the death of Ibrahim also coincided with an eclipse of the sun (probably the annular eclipse which occurred in the early morning of 27 January 632, equivalent with the last or the penultimate day of Shawwal, 10 AH),[4] a phenomenon the Muslims began to circulate by rumor as a miracle. The word went out saying that the sun was eclipsed in sadness over the death of Ibrahim. Upon hearing this Muhammad is reported as saying "The sun and the moon are signs of God. They are eclipsed neither for the death nor birth of any man. On beholding an eclipse, therefore, remember God and turn to Him in prayer."[2].
[edit] References

Ibrahim ibn Muhammad (Arabic script إبرهيم بن محمد) was the male child of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and Maria al-Qibtiyya. He was born in the last month of the year 8 AH[1]. The child was named after Abraham, the common ancestor of both Muslims and Jews. The child was placed in the care of a wet nurse called Umm Sayf, wife of Abu Sayf, the blacksmith, in the tradition of the Arabs of the time, to whom Muhammad gave some goats to complement her milk supply[2].
Contents
[hide]

    * 1 Illness and Death
    * 2 Burial
    * 3 The Eclipse
    * 4 References

[edit] Illness and Death

Ibrahim fell seriously ill sometime after the Battle of Tabuk at which time he was reported as being either sixteen or eighteen months old. He was moved to a date orchard near the residence of his mother, under her care and her sister Sirin. When it was clear that he would not likely survive Muhammad was informed[2].

His reaction to the news is reported as:
  He was so shocked at the news that he felt his knees could no more carry him, and asked `Abd al Rahman ibn `Awf to give him his hand to lean upon. He proceeded immediately to the orchard and arrived in time to bid farewell to an infant dying in his mother's lap. Muhammad took the child and laid him in his own lap with shaking hand. His heart was torn apart by the new tragedy, and his face mirrored his inner pain. Choking with sorrow, he said to his son, "O Ibrahim, against the judgement of God, we cannot avail you a thing," and then fell silent. Tears flowed from his eyes. The child lapsed gradually, and his mother and aunt watched and cried loudly and incessantly, but the Prophet never ordered them to stop. As Ibrahim surrendered to death, Muhammad's hope which had consoled him for a brief while completely crumbled. With tears in his eyes he talked once more to the dead child: "O Ibrahim, were the truth not certain that the last of us will join the first, we would have mourned you even more than we do now." A moment later he said: "The eyes send their tears and the heart is saddened, but we do not say anything except that which pleases our Lord. Indeed, O Ibrahim, we are bereaved by your departure from us."[2]  
[edit] Burial

Muhammad is also reported as having informed Mariyah and Sirin that Ibrahim would have his own nurse in Paradise. Different accounts relate that the ghusl for Ibrahim was performed by either Umm Burdah, or al-Fadl ibn `Abbas, in preparation for burial. Thereafter, he was carried to the cemetery upon a little bed among others by the Prophet, his uncle al-`Abbas. Here, after a funeral prayer led by the Prophet, he was interred. Muhammad then filled the grave with sand, sprinkled some water upon it, and placed a landmark on it, whereupon he is reported as saying that "Tombstones do neither good nor ill, but they help appease the living. Anything that man does, God wishes him to do well."[2]

Abbas, the uncle of Muhammad has reported the following narration which is recorded by Ibn Maja[3]
[edit] The Eclipse

The occasion of the death of Ibrahim also coincided with an eclipse of the sun (probably the annular eclipse which occurred in the early morning of 27 January 632, equivalent with the last or the penultimate day of Shawwal, 10 AH),[4] a phenomenon the Muslims began to circulate by rumor as a miracle. The word went out saying that the sun was eclipsed in sadness over the death of Ibrahim. Upon hearing this Muhammad is reported as saying "The sun and the moon are signs of God. They are eclipsed neither for the death nor birth of any man. On beholding an eclipse, therefore, remember God and turn to Him in prayer."[2].
[edit] References
Ibrahim al-Imam see Ibrahim ibn Muhammad
Imam, Ibrahim al- see Ibrahim ibn Muhammad


Ibrahim ibn Shirkuh
Ibrahim ibn Shirkuh.  Ayyubid prince of Aleppo and Damascus and cousin of Saladin (r.1240-1246).  He several times defeated the Khwarazmians.


Ibrahim Lodi
Ibrahim Lodi (d. April 21, 1526). Last of the Lodi Sultans of Delhi.  He indulged in acts of capricious tyranny.  The Punjab rose in rebellion under Dawlat Khan Lodi, who invited the Chagatay Turk Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, to attack India.  The battle of Panipat of 1526, in which Ibrahim was killed, marked the beginning of Mughal rule in India.

Ibrahim Lodi was the last ruler of the Delhi Sultanate. He was an Afghan (specifically of the Ghilzai tribe of Pashtuns) who ruled over much of India from 1517-1526, when he was defeated by the Mughals, who established a new dynasty that would last some three centuries.

Lodi attained the throne upon the death of his father, Sikandar Lodi, but was not blessed with the same ruling capability. He faced a number of rebellions. The Mewar ruler Rana Sanga extended his empire right up to western Uttar Pradesh and threatened to attack Agra. There was rebellion in the East also. Lodi also displeased the nobility when he replaced old and senior commanders with younger ones who were loyal to him. He was feared and loathed by his subjects. His Afghan nobility eventually invited Babur of Kabul to invade India.

Ibrahim died in the Battle of Panipat, where Babur's superior fighters and the desertion of many of Lodi's soldiers led to his downfall, despite superior troop numbers.

Lodi, Ibrahim see Ibrahim Lodi


Ibrahim Muteferriqa
Ibrahim Muteferriqa (1670/1674-1745).  Ottoman statesman, diplomat, and founder of the first Turkish printing press.  He wrote a passionate condemnation of Catholicism and of the temporal power of the Papacy.  The work seems to have been written to prove the link between the author’s early Unitarianism and his passage to Islam.  His printing press began operation in 1727 to promote Islamic learning.  

Ibrahim Müteferrika was a Transylvanian-born Ottoman polymath: a publisher, printer, courtier, diplomat, man of letters, astronomer, historian, historiographer, Islamic scholar and theologian, sociologist, and the first Muslim to run a printing press with movable Arabic type. His volumes, printed in Istanbul and using custom-made fonts, are occasionally referred to as "Turkish incunabula". Muteferrika, whose last name is derived from his employment as a müteferrika, head of the household, under Sultan Ahmed III and during the Tulip Era, was also a geographer, astronomer, and philosopher.

Born in Kolozsvár (present-day Cluj-Napoca, Romania), he was an ethnic Hungarian Unitarian who converted to Islam. His original Hungarian language name is unknown.

Following a 1726 report on the efficiency of the new system, which he drafted and presented simultaneously to Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha, the Grand Mufti, and the clergy, and a later request submitted to Sultan Ahmed, he received permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders). Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729, and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes (each having between 500 and 1,000 copies).

Among the works published by Müteferrika were historical and generically scientific works, as well as Katip Çelebi's world atlas Cihannüma (loosely translated as The Mirror of the World or the World Seer). In the appendices that he added to his printing, Müteferrika discussed the Copernican view of astronomy in detail, with references to relatively up-to-date scientific arguments for and against it. In this regard, he is considered one of the first people to properly introduce heliocentrism to Ottoman readers.

A statue of Müteferrika can be found just outside the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.
Muteferriqa, Ibrahim see Ibrahim Muteferriqa


Ibrahim Pasha
Ibrahim Pasha  (1789, Kavalla, Rumelia [now Kaval, Greece] – November 10, 1848, Cairo, Egypt).  Conqueror and governor of Syria (1832-1840).  Ibrahim was the son of Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt.  

Ibrahim Pasha was a 19th century general of Egypt. He is better known as the son of Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Ibrahim served as Regent for his father from July to November 10, 1848.

A son, or adopted son, of the famous vali Muḥammad ʿAlī, in 1805 Ibrahim joined his father in Egypt, where he was made governor of Cairo. During 1816–18, he successfully commanded an army against the Wahhabite rebels in Arabia. Muḥammad ʿAlī sent him on a mission to the Sudan in 1821–22, and on his return he helped train the new Egyptian army along European lines. When the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II asked for Egyptian assistance to crush the Greek revolt, an expedition commanded by Ibrahim landed in Greece in 1824 and subdued the Morea (Peloponnese), but a combined British, French, and Russian squadron eventually compelled the Egyptian force to withdraw.

It was in Syria that Ibrahim and his French chief of staff, O.J.A. Sève (Suleiman Pasha al-Faransawi), won military fame. In 1831–32, after a disagreement between Muḥammad ʿAlī and the Ottoman sultan, Ibrahim led an Egyptian army through Palestine and defeated an Ottoman army at Homs. He then forced the Bailan Pass and crossed the Taurus, gaining a final victory at Konya on December 21, 1832. By the Convention of Kütahya, signed on May 4, 1833, Syria and Adana were ceded to Egypt, and Ibrahim became governor-general of the two provinces.

Ibrahim’s administration was relatively enlightened. At Damascus, he created a consultative council of notables and suppressed the feudal regime. But his measures were harshly applied and roused sectarian opposition. Sultan Mahmud resented the Egyptian occupation, and in 1839 an Ottoman army invaded Syria. At Nizip on June 24 Ibrahim won his last and greatest victory; the Ottoman fleet deserted to Egypt. Fearing the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the European powers negotiated the Treaty of London in July 1840, by which Muḥammad ʿAlī forfeited Syria and Adana in return for the hereditary rule of Egypt. British naval forces threatened the Egyptians, who evacuated the occupied territories in the winter of 1840–41. By 1848 Muḥammad ʿAlī had become senile, and Ibrahim was appointed viceroy but ruled for only 40 days before his death on November 10, 1848.


Ibrahim Pasha
Ibrahim Pasha (Pargalı İbrahim Pasha) (Frenk İbrahim Pasha)  (Maqbul – “the favorite”; Maqtul – “the executed”) (1493-1536) was the Ottoman Grand Vizier.  Having been appointed Grand Vizier and beylerbey of Rumeli by Sultan Sulayman II at the very early age of thirty, he reached the zenith of his power after having occupied Tabriz and Baghdad in 1534.  In 1536, he quite unexpectedly was strangled.  

Pargalı İbrahim Pasha, also called Frenk İbrahim Pasha, was an Albanian and was the first Grand Vizier appointed by Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520 to 1566). In 1523, he replaced Piri Mehmed Pasha, who had been appointed in 1518 by Süleyman I's father, the preceding sultan Selim I, and remained in office for 13 years. He attained a level of authority and influence rivalled by only a handful of other Grand Viziers of the Empire, but in 1536 he was executed by the Sultan and his property was confiscated by the State.

Albanian by birth, born in the town of Parga, he was sold as a slave at the age of six to the Ottoman palace for future sultans situated in Manisa in Western Anatolia. There he was befriended by Suleiman who was of the same age, and later, upon Suleiman's accession, was awarded various posts, the first being falconer to the Sultan. He was so rapidly promoted that at one point he begged Suleiman to not promote him too rapidly for fear of arousing jealousy. Pleased with this display of modesty, Suleiman purportedly swore that he would never be put to death during his reign. Later, after being appointed Grand Vizier, he continued to receive many gifts from the sultan, and his power in the Ottoman Empire was absolute, just as his master's.

Although he married Süleyman's sister and was as such a bridegroom to the Ottoman dynasty (Damat), this title is not frequently used in association with him, possibly in order not to confuse him with other grand viziers who were namesakes (Damat İbrahim Pasha (a Bosniak) and Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha (Turkish). He is usually referred to as "Pargalı İbrahim Pasha" or "Frenk (the European) İbrahim Pasha" due to his tastes and manners. Yet another name given by his contemporaries was "Makbul Maktul (loved and killed) İbrahim Pasha".

His magnificent palace still standing in İstanbul is called Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum. Built according to a design which is unmistakably defensive in concept (he had fearsome rivals), his palace is the only residence built by someone outside the Ottoman dynasty that is deemed worthy enough to be designated as a palace.

On the diplomatic front, İbrahim's work with Western Christendom was a complete success. Portraying himself as "the real power behind the Ottoman Empire", İbrahim used a variety of tactics to negotiate favorable deals with the leaders of the Catholic powers. The Venetian diplomats even referred to him as "İbrahim the Magnificent", a play on Suleiman's usual sobriquet. In 1533, he convinced Charles V to turn Hungary into an Ottoman vassal state. In 1535, he completed a monumental agreement with Francis I that gave France favorable trade rights within the Ottoman empire in exchange for joint action against the Habsburgs. This agreement would set the stage for joint Franco-Ottoman naval maneuvers, including the basing of the entire Ottoman fleet in southern France (in Nice) during the winter of 1543.

A skilled commander of Suleiman's army, he eventually fell from grace after an imprudence committed during a campaign against the Persian Safavid empire, when he awarded himself a title including the word Sultan. This incident launched a series of events which culminated in his execution in 1536, thirteen years after having been promoted as Grand Vizier. It has also been suggested by a number of sources that Ibrahim Pasha had been a victim of Hürrem Sultan's (Roxelana, the sultan's wife) rising influence on the sovereign, especially in view of his past support for the cause of Sehzade Mustafa, Suleiman I's first son and heir to the throne, who was later strangled to death by his father on October 6, 1553, through a series of plots put in motion by Roxelana.

Since Suleiman had sworn not to take Ibrahim's life during his reign, he acquired a fetva, which permitted him to take back the oath by building a mosque in İstanbul. He announced the fetva one week before İbrahim's execution and dined alone with him seven times before the final move, so to give his life-long friend a chance to flee the country or to take the sultan's own life. It was later discovered in İbrahim's letters that he was perfectly aware of the situation but nevertheless decided to stay true to Suleiman.

Suleiman later greatly regretted İbrahim's execution and his character changed dramatically, to the point where he became completely secluded from the daily work of governing. His regrets are reflected in his poems, in which even after twenty years he continually stresses topics of friendship and of love and trust between friends and often hints on character traits similar to Ibrahim's.

Maqbul see Ibrahim Pasha
The Favorite see Ibrahim Pasha
Maqtul see Ibrahim Pasha
The Executed see Ibrahim Pasha
Pargalı İbrahim Pasha see Ibrahim Pasha
Frenk İbrahim Pasha see Ibrahim Pasha


Ibrahim Pasha, Damad
Ibrahim Pasha, Damad (Damad Ibrahim) (Damat Ibrahim Pasha) (1550-1601).  Ottoman vizier under Ahmed II.  Of Bosnian origin, he took command of the Ottoman armies engaged in the Hungarian war.

Damat İbrahim Pasha was an Ottoman statesman who held the office of Grand Vizier three times (the first time from April 4 to October 27, 1596; the second time from December 5, 1596 to November 3, 1597; and for the third and last time, from January 6, 1599 to July 10, 1601. He is known as the conqueror of Kanije.

Ibrahim is also called with the title "Damat", because he was a bridegroom to the ruling Ottoman monarch. He is not to be confused with either Pargalı İbrahim Pasha, illustrious grand vizier of Süleyman the Magnificent with Greek origins, also a "Damat", or with Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Pasha, who held office in early 18th century during the Tulip Era in the Ottoman Empire.

Damat İbrahim Pasha was of Serbian extraction. He rose in the ranks during the period when virtual authority and influence was held by Mehmed-paša Sokolović. In 1581, shortly after Mehmet Pasha's death, İbrahim Pasha married Ayşe Sultan, daughter of the reigning Murad III and became the Governor of Egypt. But due to his absence from the capital and with Sokollu Mehmet Pasha dead, his influence waned for the rest of the reign of Murad III.

He made a comeback under the reign of Mehmed III, becoming grand vizier in 1596 for the first time. His recall was particularly due to the loss of territories in the border regions between the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy in Hungary. Rather than dashing toward immediate action, he distinguished himself as an orderly, methodical and prudent statesman who preferred to start by conducting a review of the entire Ottoman administrative system based on the focal point of the prepared campaign against Austria. The campaign as such proved a success and İbrahim Pasha acquired the title of "the conqueror of Eger" (north-east of Budapest) for his sultan, although he was the one who held the effective command. Since he favored solidifying the state structure and the gains acquired rather than pursuing Austrians, for which he had been dismissed from the post of grand vizier, at first for a short interval of forty-five days at the end of 1596, and then for a second time at the end of the following year.

Damat Ibrahim Pasha was called back to the post in 1599 on the condition that he was to launch a campaign against Austria. He started his campaign by feigning to menace Vienna directly by heading toward Esztergom (conquered by Süleyman the Magnificent in 1543 and lost back in 1595) but finally spent the winter in Belgrade. Then he began to put pressure on Austria through a more southern route by besieging the castle of Kanije. The Turkish slaves in the castle exploded the powder magazines and very badly damaged the walls. But the castle still did not surrender and an army of 20,000 soldiers commanded by Philippe Emanuel arrived to the assistance of the besieged. However, the Ottoman Army finally defeated both of the armies and the castle surrendered. Tiryaki Hasan Pasha was appointed as the governor of the newly conquered city.

Kanije was transformed into the center of new Ottoman attacks in Central Europe. In September 1601, an attempt by a huge Austrian army to take back the castle was thwarted by the governor Tiryaki Hasan Pasha. Damat İbrahim Pasha died the same year. Esztergom was retaken by the Ottoman Empire in 1605.

Damad Ibrahim Pasha see Ibrahim Pasha, Damad
Damad Ibrahim see Ibrahim Pasha, Damad
Damat Ibrahim Pasha see Ibrahim Pasha, Damad
"The Conqueror of Eger" see Ibrahim Pasha, Damad

No comments:

Post a Comment