Moghols
Two elements distinguish the Moghols of Afghanistan. They no longer speak their original Mongol language, and within a generation or two they will have lost their ethnic identity. Demographically unimportant -- they number no more than 10,000, dispersed in fewer than 50 villages -- they once played a major role in the history of Afghanistan. Their language fascinates linguists, who now study the development and change of a language separated by thousands of miles for over half a millennium from the main body of Mongol speakers.
The forefathers of the Afghan Moghols were once the military and political leaders of a thirteenth century multi-ethnic coalition known as Nikudari or Qarawunas. Nikudar Oghlan was a Chagatai. general of Hulagu, founder of the Mongol II Kahn dynasty, who came to Persia in 1256. Marco Polo mentioned him as “king of the Qarawunas.” Nikudar planned to defect, was imprisoned and died in Mesopotamia. Many of his troops aligned themselves with the Kurt dynasty of Herat in their successful struggles for independence from Il Khan rule. This union lasted for a century until Timur (Tamerlane) captured Herat in 1380.
The Nikudari soon disappeared from historical records, to be mentioned only once again, in 1562, by Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, who referred to them as “inhabitants of Ghor.” It was in this mountainous tract of west central Afghanistan that the Afghan Moghols lived until around 1900.
It was while they were allied with the Kurt rulers in Herat that the Nikudari or Moghols established themselves in Afghanistan. An unruly group of princes, the Kurts were often attacked by Il Khanid troops and on these occasions retreated to their castle, the “stronghold of Qaisar,” in southern Ghor. The ruins of this castle and a number of nearby Moghol villages remain to this day. In 1886, British intelligence reported 18 Moghol villages with a population of some 5,000 still living in the area. The publication of a vocabulary of their Moghol language in 1838 caused a sensation among linguists of the time. They were forgotten again until 1955, when a team of United States and Japanese linguists discovered what has been called the “Zimi Manuscript,” which prompted renewed interest. Further linguistic research has been carried out be a German team.
The Kurts disappeared from history after Timur captured Herat in 1380. Under Timurid and Arghunid rule, the Moghols of Ghor exerted political power in the mountain region of west central Afghanistan. Then, in 1650, a Pushtun immigrant from Baluchistan named Taiman shaped a coalition of peoples in southern Ghor that has become known as the Taimani tribe of the Char Aimaq. Taiman and his successors seem to have gotten along well with the Moghols until around 1900, when a quarrel about marriage contracts arose that started a blood feud. The ensuing fight caused the diaspora of the majority of the Moghols from Ghor. That case was not settled until 1930 through an exchange of wives in marriage between the Taimani chiefs of Nili and the leading family of the Moghols in neighboring Zirni. By then only eight villages with Moghol populations had survived in Ghor near Qaisar; the rest of the population had emigrated to Obeh and Herat oases on the Heri-rud River and at least five villages in northern and northeastern Afghanistan.
Mohamed 'Ali (Muhammad Ali) (Maulana Mohammad Ali Jouhar) (Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar) (10 December 1878 – 4 January 1931). Key figure in Indian politics during the first two decades of the twentieth century. He was editor of the Comrade and the Hamdard, two of northern India’s most influential newspapers; the chief spokesman of Muslim interests; and the architect of the Khilafat campaign, which dominated Indian politics from 1919 to 1923.
Born in Rampur, Mohamed Ali was educated at Aligarh and Oxford. He returned to India in 1902 and found employment first in Rampur and later at Baroda. Toward the end of 1910 he decided on a career of journalism; the Comrade, launched on January 14, 1911, was his first venture. Soon afterward, he acquired the Urdu-language Hamdard. These journalistic ventures received unprecedented popularity and provided a framework for the uneasiness and dissatisfaction of important Muslim groups, molding their attitudes toward government. Above all, the newspapers focused on the disturbing news from the Balkan front, which gave evidence of successive military reverses suffered by the Turkish armies and raised the specter of European forces advancing into the heartlands of the Islamic world.
For his views and involvement in the pan-Islamic upsurge, Mohamed Ali was sent to jail, first on May 15, 1915, later in November 1922. During his famous Karachi trial in October 1922, Mohamed Ali said, “The trial is not Mohamed Ali and six others versus the Crown, but God versus man.”
During the Khilafat movement Mohamed Ali was a close ally of Gandhi and a staunch supporter of the Indian National Congress. But when Hindu-Muslim relations deteriorated in the aftermath of the Khilafat and non-cooperation movements, Mohamed Ali became disillusioned with the Congress as well as with Gandhi.
The gulf that separated Gandhi and Mohamed Ali was confirmed by Mohamed Ali’s open condemnation in April 1930 of the civil disobedience movement launched by the Mahatma. Mohamed Ali urged Muslims not to join it because its goal was the establishment of a Hindu raj.
Mohammad Ali opposed the Nehru Report's rejection of separate electorates for Muslims, and supported the Fourteen Points of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the League. He became a critic of Gandhi, breaking with fellow Muslim leaders like Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan and Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, who continued to support Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. Mohammad Ali said: "Even the most degraded Muhammadan was better than Mahatma Gandhi."
Ali attended the Round Table Conference to show that only the Muslim League spoke for India's Muslims. He died soon after the conference in London, on January 4, 1931 and was buried in Jerusalem according to his own wish.
Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar is remembered as a fiery leader of many of India's Muslims. He is celebrated as a hero by the Muslims of Pakistan, who claim he inspired the Pakistan movement. But in India, he is remembered for his leadership during Khilafat Movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement (1919-1922) and his leadership in Muslim education.
The famous Muhammad Ali Road in south Bombay, India's largest city, is named after him. The Gulistan-e-Jauhar neighborhood of Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan's largest city, is also named for him. Additionally, the Mohammad Ali Co-operative Housing Society (M.A.C.H.S.) in Karachi is named in honor of Maulana Mohammad Ali Johar. Johar Town, Lahore, Punjab is also named after him.
'Alli Mohamed see Mohamed 'Ali
Muhammad Ali see Mohamed 'Ali
Maulana Muhammad Ali Jouhar see Mohamed 'Ali
Jouhar, Maulana Muhammad Ali see Mohamed 'Ali
Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar see Mohamed 'Ali
Maulana Mohammad Ali Johar see Mohamed 'Ali
Mohammadi, Narges
Narges Mohammadi (b. April 21, 1972, Zanjan, Iran). An Iranian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She was the vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), headed by fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. She was a vocal proponent of mass feminist civil disobedience against hijab in Iran and a vocal critic of the hijab and chastity program of 2023. In May 2016, she was sentenced in Tehran to 16 years' imprisonment for establishing and running a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty." She was released in 2020 but sent back to prison in 2021, where she has since given reports of the abuse and solitary confinement of detained women.
In October 2023, while in prison, she was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all." The Foreign Ministry of Iran condemned the decision to award Mohammadi.
Mohammadi was born on April 21, 1972, in Zanjan, Iran, and grew up in Qorveh, Karaj, and Oshnaviyeh. She attended Qazvin International University receiving a degree in physics and became a professional engineer. During her university career, she wrote articles supporting women's rights in the student newspaper and was arrested at two meetings of the political student group Tashakkol Daaneshjuyi Roshangaraan ("Enlightened Student Group"). She was also active in a mountain climbing group but was later banned from joining climbs due to her political activities.
Mohammadi went on to work as a journalist for several reformist newspapers and published a book of political essays titled The reforms, the Strategy and the Tactics. In 2003, she joined the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. She later became the organization's vice president.
In 1999, Mohammadi married fellow pro-reform journalist Taghi Rahmani, who was soon arrested for the first time. Rahmani moved to France in 2012 after serving 14 years of prison sentences, while Mohammadi remained to continue her human rights work. Mohammadi and Rahmani have twin children.
Mohammadi was first arrested in 1998 for her criticisms of the Iranian government and spent a year in prison. In April 2010, she was summoned to the Islamic Revolutionary Court for her membership in the DHRC. She was briefly released on a US$50,000 bail but re-arrested several days later and detained at Evin Prison. Mohammadi's health declined while in custody, and she developed an epilepsy-like disease, causing her to periodically lose muscle control. After a month, she was released and allowed to seek medical treatment.
In July 2011, Mohammadi was prosecuted again and found guilty of acting against the national security, membership of the DHRC and propaganda against the regime. In September 2011, she was sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment. Mohammadi stated that she had learned of the verdict only through her lawyers and had been given an unprecedented 23-page judgment issued by the court in which they repeatedly likened my human rights activities to attempts to topple the regime. In March 2012, the sentence was upheld by an appeals court, though it was reduced to six years. On April 26, she was arrested to begin her sentence.
The sentence was protested by the British Foreign Office, which called it another sad example of the Iranian authorities' attempts to silence brave human rights defenders. Amnesty International designated Mohammadi a prisoner of conscience and called for her immediate release. Reporters Without Borders issued an appeal on Mohammadi's behalf on the ninth anniversary of photographer Zahra Kazemi's death in Evin Prison, stating that Mohammadi was a prisoner whose life was "in particular danger." In July 2012, an international group of lawmakers called for her release. On July 31, 2012, Mohammadi was released from prison.
On October 31, 2014, Mohammadi made a speech at the gravesite of Sattar Beheshti, stating, "How is it that the Parliament Members are suggesting a Plan for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, but nobody spoke up two years ago when an innocent human being by the name of Sattar Beheshti died under torture in the hands of his interrogator?" The video of her speech quickly went viral on social media networks, resulting in Evin Prison court summoning her.
On May 5, 2015, Mohammadi was once again arrested on the basis of new charges. Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced her to ten years' imprisonment on the charge of "founding an illegal group" in reference to Legam -- (the Campaign for Step by Step Abolition of the Death Penalty), five years for "assembly and collusion against national security," a year for "propaganda against the system" for her interviews with international media and her March 2014 meeting with the European Union's then High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton. In January 2019, Mohammadi began a hunger strike with the detained British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Evin Prison to protest being denied access to medical care. In July 2020, Mohammadi showed symptoms of a COVID-19 infection, from which she appeared to have recovered by August. On October 8, 2020, Mohammadi was released from prison.
In March 2021, Mohammadi penned the following foreword to the Iran Human Rights Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran:
"The execution of people like Navid Afkari and Ruhollah Zam in the past year, have been the most ambiguous executions in Iran. Issuing the death penalty for Ahmadreza Djalali is one of the most erroneous sentences and the reasons for the issuance of these death sentences need to be carefully examined. These people have been sentenced to death after being held in solitary confinement and subjected to horrific psychological and mental torture, that is why I do not consider the judicial process to be fair or just; I see keeping defendants in solitary confinement, forcing them to make untrue and false confessions that are used as the key evidence in issuing these sentences. That’s why I am particularly worried about the recent arrests in Sistan and Baluchistan and Kurdistan, and I hope that anti-death penalty organizations will pay special attention to the detainees because I fear that we will be facing another wave of executions over the coming year."
"Narges Mohammadi: Violence of Death Penalty is Worse Than War", Iran Human Rights, March 30, 2021.
In May 2021, Branch 1188 of Criminal Court Two in Tehran sentenced Mohammadi to two-and-a-half years in prison, 80 lashes, and two separate fines for charges including "spreading propaganda against the system". Four months later, she received a summons to begin serving this sentence, which she did not respond to as she considered the conviction unjust.
On November 16, 2021, Mohammadi was arrested in Karaj, Alborz, while attending a memorial for Ebrahim Ketabar, who was killed by Iranian security forces during nationwide protests in November 2019. Her arrest was condemned as arbitrary by Amnesty International and the International Federation of Human Rights.
In December 2022, during the Mahsa Amini protests, the BBC published a report by Mohammadi detailing the sexual and physical abuse of detained women. In January 2023, she gave a report from prison detailing the condition of women in Evin Prison, including a list of 58 prisoners and the interrogation process and tortures they have gone through.
Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. See Pahlavi, Mohammed Reza.
Mohmand (Momand). Name of a Pathan or Afghan tribe on the boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Mohmand are a clan of Sarban Pashtuns, living primarily in northeastern Afghanistan and in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
In Pakistan, the Mohmands live in the Mohmand Agency and down to the plains of Peshawar, Charsadda, and Mardan. Mohmands are also scattered throughout Pakistan in urban areas including Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta.
In Afghanistan, they are mainly found in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces.
Momand see Mohmand
Molbog (Molebugan) (Molebuganon). One of the minor Muslim groups of the Philippines, the Molbog are the aboriginal population of Balabac Island, located between Palawan and Borneo. The Molbog constitute the majority of the overall local population. In the outer islands of the Balabac archipelago, the Molbog are intermixed with other Muslim groups, mainly the Sama. Molbog can also be found in the southernmost tip of Palawanon, and in Banggi, a big island south of Balabac that is in Malaysian territory.
The name Molbog derives from malubog, which means “unclear/turbid water.” Tradition says that the name was given by early sailors and merchants and referred to the island as well as its inhabitants.
The Molbog are one of the groups last Islamized. According to tradition, the first Islamic missionaries arrived in Balabac from Borneo seven pangkat (generations) ago, more or less during the last half of the eighteenth century.
The story of the conversion is painted with the shades of legend. Many figures common to Sulu Muslims such as alims walking on the water from Mecca, hajjis gifted with powerful amulets and mighty sultans are credited for almost instantaneous conversion, while proselytization was undoubtedly long and uneven. Spanish sources report the existence of “pagans” at the end of the nineteenth century.
Contact between Molbog and Muslim developed in three stages. At first it was occasional. Balabac was visited by Muslim merchants, provided a refuge for Sama pirates and was sometimes subjected to slave raids. No stable and continuous relationship was established.
As a result of the expansion of Sulu at the expense of Brunei, the second stage began. Around the beginning of the nineteenth century, some Tausug and Jama Mapun settled in Balabac. These individuals, possibly former slave traders or merchants, were able to obtain the subjection of some groups of Molbog in exchange for protection from other foreign intruders. Using the title Datu, they imposed taxation and ruled the local population. In this period, new Islamic elements penetrated deeped into Molbog culture. The newcomers generally merged with the local population. They married Molbog women and introduced part of their former cultural heritage.
A third stage is characterized by the successful spread of Islam throughout the island as well as by a more direct control of Balabac by the Sulu sultanate. The local kalibugan (mestizo) rulers in Balaback were the offspring of marriages between the first Tausug settlers and the Molbog. They used the title panglima (official representative of the sultan) and collected taxes to send once a year to Batarasa, in the mainland Palawan, where part of the Sulu royal family transferred during the nineteenth century.
The control by the sultan was strict. He had ultimate word in questions of succession, and his emissaries directly and frequently interfered with local problems. After American rule was established at the beginning of this century, the process of Islamization was still in progress. In different periods, imams and Islamic teachers came to Balabac for short visits, and it was only after the first years of the century that all the Molbog came to profess the Islamic faith.
The Molbog (are concentrated in Balabak Island and are also found in other islands of the coast of Palawan as far north as Panakan. The word Malubog means "murky or turbid water".
The Molbog are probably a migrant people from nearby North Borneo. Judging from their dialect and some socio-cultural practices, they seem to be related to the Orang Tidung or Tirum (Camucone in Spanish), an Islamized indigenous group native to the northeast coast of Sabah. However, some Sama words (of the Jama Mapun variant) and Tausug words are found in the Malbog dialect. This plus a few characteristics of their socio-cultural life style distinguish them from the Orang Tidung.
Molbog livelihood includes subsistence farming fishing and occasional barter trading with the Sulu Bangsa Moro and nearby Sabah market centers.
In the past, both the Molbog and the Palawanon Muslims were ruled by Sulu datus, thus forming the outer political periphery of the Sulu Sultanate. Inter-marriage between Tausug and the Molbog hastened the Islamization of the Molbog. The offspring of these inter-marriages are known as kolibugan or "half-breed".
Molebugan see Molbog
Molebuganon see Molbog
Mole-Dagbane Speaking Peoples. The many societies of the Mole-Dagbane-speaking peoples of northern Ghana and the adjacent parts of neighboring countries are built upon a common linguistic and historical base. The societies range from small isolates of a couple of thousand to the several million Mossi, most of whom live in Upper Volta. Most of the other 30 or so societies number in the tens of thousands, the largest being the Grusi and Dogamba. Muslims account for no more that thirty-five percent of the entire Mole-Dagbane-speaking peoples, with the largest concentration among the Mossi.
The Mole-Dagbane-speaking peoples are not so much “Muslim” as they are “influenced by Muslims.” They affect the economy and society of the entire region without being politically or numerically dominant. Indeed, so ethnically pluralist is the region that the leading historian of Islam in the region has distinguished the “dispersion of Muslims” from “the spread of Islam.”
The Volta Basin location is important to the Mole-Dagbane peoples, both in terms of their general history and specifically with respect to Islam. Since ancient times long-distance trade routes have crisscrossed the West African savanna, linking its peoples with each other and with the culturally distinct populations of the coastal rain forests to the south and with the Mediterranean world across the Sahara. Three major routes converge in Mole-Dagbane territory. One starts in the land of the Akan peoples, the most well-known and powerful of whom are the Asante. A second begins in the northwest part of the Middle Volta, where a succession of Manding empires and their cities of Jenne, Mopti and Timbuktu have been centers of Islamic learning as well as trade. A third connects with the great Hausa cities and states of northern Nigeria: Sokoto, Kano, Zaria and Katsina, all major Islamic and economic centers.
In the past, the Akan peoples traded gold and kola nuts (a caffeine-rich stimulant much sought throughout the savanna, especially by Muslims denied alcohol by their faith). In return, the savanna states traded for salt (from the Saharan mines) and slaves. The latter were in great demand once the Trans-Atlantic slave trade developed. Except for some gold and slaves (often Mole-Dagbane), the Middle Volta peoples controlled trade routes rather than resources. But those routes and their trade were very important. The Akan “Gold Coast” was the main source of gold for Europe and the Arab world through the Middle Ages until the Spanish conquest of Peru and Mexico. It was the trade through the Middle Volta which brought the cavalry and traders from elsewhere who introduced state government and Islam to the Mole-Dagbane farming peoples.
Sometime around the thirteenth century, cavalry, possibly from Nigeria, entered the Middle Volta Basin. Militarily superior, they were able to conquer local people and establish states. Defining dates and sequences is still difficult, not least because the traditionally “senior” state of Mamprusi was in recent centuries weak in power and in oral tradition. Also, “Mossi” cavalry were in the region some two centuries before the earliest known state. (“Mossi” in a historical context is frequently applied to all these immigrant state-founding cavalry.) By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, datable references to wars with Mossi appear in records of Mali and Songhay. Nevertheless, none of the currently existing states can be reliably dated earlier than about 1480, the approximate date for foundation of Mamprusi and Dagomba. The northern (modern) Mossi states were founded a generation or so later. In each case, “founding” means establishing a state over pre-existing farming groups, whose Mole-Dagbane languages became the languages of the “Mossi” cavalry elite as well.
The various Manding-speaking peoples moved outwards from their Upper Niger River homeland at different times. The rise of the Mali Empire and its successors added greater importance to Manding movements. They were the source for the diffusion of Islam into the western Sudan savanna, including the Hausa, and their traders, the Dyula, known also as Wangara, who figure heavily in early accounts of the West African interior.
Dates for these developments are not firmly established, but it has been argued that the Dyula from Mali brought Islam into the Volta Basin beginning in the late fourteenth century, with the pace accelerating in the next century. The late fifteenth century saw the founding of the Mole-Dagbane “Mossi” states out of the somewhat earlier cavalry influx. Gonja, a state with a Mande elite south of Dagomba, rose in the late 1500s. The first Akan state, to the south, arose roughly contemporaneously with the Mole-Dagbane states. Hausa histories from Kano first mention kola nuts, which come only from the Akan forests, in the early fifteenth century. The period 1350-1600, then, saw the rise of trade between the Akan forest peoples and and the Mali Mandinka to their northwest and the Hausa to the northeast. The traders were Muslim.
Mole-Dagbani is spoken by about fifteen percent (15%) of the nation's population, the name of which is a portmaneau of two closely related languages: Moore language (Mole), spoken by the Mossi, and Dagbani language (Dagbane) spoken by the Dagomba, two related peoples. The majority of the Mossi live in Burkina Faso, which the Dagomba mainly reside in Northern Ghana. Its speakers are culturally the most varied. For centuries, the area inhabited by Mole-Dagbane peoples has been the scene of movements of people engaged in conquest, expansion, and north-south and east-west trade. Hence, Hausas, Gurunsi, Fulanis, Zabaremas, Dyulas and Bassaris are all integrated into the Dagbani areas, and many speak the language. For these reasons, a considerable degree of heterogeneity, particularly of political structure, developed here. Many terms from Arabic, Hausa and Dyula are seen in the language, due to the importance of trans-Saharan and West African trade and the historic importance that the Islamic religion has had in the area.
Molla. See Mullah.
Mollah. See Mullah.
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