Bambara
Bambara (Bamana) (Banmana). Muslim people who form part of the large Mandingo language group. The Bambara are found in all the regions of Mali and the northern Ivory Coast along with parts of Guinea, Burkina Faso and Senegal. In the nineteenth century of the Christian calendar, the Bambara formed two powerful states, Segu and Kaarta. These two states were notable for their attachment to pagan traditions.
The Bambara form part of the large Manding language group and can communicate with Manding speakers as far west as Gambia. They are found in all the regions of Mali and the northern Ivory Coast. Many thousands are scattered in Guinea and Gambia. Most are concentrated along both banks of the Niger River, from the interior delta to Bamako, and from the Bani River in the east to the plains of Kaarta to the west. In Mali, they form 31 percent of the population and greatly influence the culture and politics of the nation. About seventy percent of the Bambara are Muslims.
In the course of the eighteenth century, the Bambara founded two kingdoms in the region where they presently predominate. The Segu and Kaarta kingdoms were fiercely traditionalist and, in the case of Segu, several idols formed part of the institutional apparatus of state. Although the Segu and Kaarta Bambara were pagans, they were not averse to using Islam when and where it suited them. Muslims thus came to have important roles within the administration as diplomats and councilors to the rulers and as representatives of other Muslims living in the kingdoms. Animist Bambara rulers often sought special prayers from famed Muslim clerics, and they rewarded such services with gifts of luxuries and slaves. Nonetheless, Islam existed in an uneasy balance with traditional religion until the conquest by the French in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
During the period of Bambara hegemony (c. 1710-1861), Bambara identity began to devolve into two forms, although both were clearly defined in opposition to the Muslim Maraka traders. On the one hand, slave warriors came to dominate the Bambara states. These warriors were hard drinking, hard fighting and committed to immediate gratification. All these values were antagonistic to the pious, refrained and accumulative Muslim merchants. On the other hand, Bambara identity remained deeply imbedded in the organization of farming communities using collective labor practices. Bambara farmers still dependent upon the ton consider themselves to be the authentic Bamana.
Magic was the primary means through which Islam percolated into Bambara society. The Bambara are essentially pragmatic. They are not averse to adding new rituals to their established practices, especially when the efficacy thereof is proven. Amulets containing written verses from the Qur’an or prayers, known as grisgris, were common accoutrements to Bambara wardrobes. Indeed, illustrations of fiercely animist Bambara warriors show them bedecked with these amulets. The Somono and the Soninke followed a quieter path of conversion.
Beginning in 1852, Al Hajj 'Umar participated in a wave of militant Muslim revivals which overthrew the Bambara kingdoms of Segu and Kaarta. By 1861, 'Umar had established a theocratic state, albeit on rather slender foundations, stretching throughout the areas where the Bambara had ruled. The 'Umarian experience, however, was not conducive to conversion. Although the 'Umarians (whose leadership was largely dominated by the Tukulor but included a variety of other West African Muslim peoples) introduced the Tijaniyya brotherhood into the Bambara lands, they made few converts. Indeed, the 'Umarian experience probably reinforced local animist religions longer than might otherwise have been the case. Anti-Muslim Bambara warlords led a 30 year resistance against the 'Umarians. Moreover, the 'Umarians did not fully re-establish a viable regional economy and a strong state in which Islam could have made conquering the western Sudan, their success paradoxically re-established conditions favorable for the expansion of Islam.
By 1912, only a tiny fraction (about 3 percent) of the Bambara were Muslims. French pacification eroded the slave warrior tradition, although many Bambara served in the French colonial army. French conquest increased commercial opportunities throughout the western Sudan, and Islam once again spread on the heels of this commerce radiating outward from the cities, as it had done since the eleventh century. Trade and production for the market gnawed at the traditional forms of community solidarity and weakened them. As Islam seeped into these open cracks, it provided a new sense of community for those participating in a larger economic system. Islam also hastened the erosion of these communal bonds, which had rested upon both cooperation and young bachelor’s labor. In a report written in 1909, a French administrator described how the penetration of Islam into a Bambara community had turned newly converted youth against their animist elders. The new opportunities for accumulation engendered by expanding markets stood in sharp opposition to the cooperative anti-accumulative strategy of the Bamana. Conversion also offered those of low social status an opportunity to escape from their place within Bambara society.
Islam also expanded among the Bambara as a form of opposition to colonial rule. While the rebellions during the recruitment drive of World War I were organized along traditional animist lines, resistance after World War II was often articulated in an Islamic idiom. The most numerous conversions among the Bambara occurred after 1945. Most Bambara today admit to being Muslims and participate in Muslim celebrations and in Friday prayers. The adaptation of the Muslim lunar calendar to the Bambara agricultural cycle posed no serious hardships. For example, the fasting of Ramadan meshed naturally with the local “hungry” season. Islam continued to advance among the Bambara as the established forms of social organization and their cultural and political logic disappeared.
Bamana see Bambara
Banmana see Bambara
Bambara (Bamana) (Banmana). Muslim people who form part of the large Mandingo language group. The Bambara are found in all the regions of Mali and the northern Ivory Coast along with parts of Guinea, Burkina Faso and Senegal. In the nineteenth century of the Christian calendar, the Bambara formed two powerful states, Segu and Kaarta. These two states were notable for their attachment to pagan traditions.
The Bambara form part of the large Manding language group and can communicate with Manding speakers as far west as Gambia. They are found in all the regions of Mali and the northern Ivory Coast. Many thousands are scattered in Guinea and Gambia. Most are concentrated along both banks of the Niger River, from the interior delta to Bamako, and from the Bani River in the east to the plains of Kaarta to the west. In Mali, they form 31 percent of the population and greatly influence the culture and politics of the nation. About seventy percent of the Bambara are Muslims.
In the course of the eighteenth century, the Bambara founded two kingdoms in the region where they presently predominate. The Segu and Kaarta kingdoms were fiercely traditionalist and, in the case of Segu, several idols formed part of the institutional apparatus of state. Although the Segu and Kaarta Bambara were pagans, they were not averse to using Islam when and where it suited them. Muslims thus came to have important roles within the administration as diplomats and councilors to the rulers and as representatives of other Muslims living in the kingdoms. Animist Bambara rulers often sought special prayers from famed Muslim clerics, and they rewarded such services with gifts of luxuries and slaves. Nonetheless, Islam existed in an uneasy balance with traditional religion until the conquest by the French in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
During the period of Bambara hegemony (c. 1710-1861), Bambara identity began to devolve into two forms, although both were clearly defined in opposition to the Muslim Maraka traders. On the one hand, slave warriors came to dominate the Bambara states. These warriors were hard drinking, hard fighting and committed to immediate gratification. All these values were antagonistic to the pious, refrained and accumulative Muslim merchants. On the other hand, Bambara identity remained deeply imbedded in the organization of farming communities using collective labor practices. Bambara farmers still dependent upon the ton consider themselves to be the authentic Bamana.
Magic was the primary means through which Islam percolated into Bambara society. The Bambara are essentially pragmatic. They are not averse to adding new rituals to their established practices, especially when the efficacy thereof is proven. Amulets containing written verses from the Qur’an or prayers, known as grisgris, were common accoutrements to Bambara wardrobes. Indeed, illustrations of fiercely animist Bambara warriors show them bedecked with these amulets. The Somono and the Soninke followed a quieter path of conversion.
Beginning in 1852, Al Hajj 'Umar participated in a wave of militant Muslim revivals which overthrew the Bambara kingdoms of Segu and Kaarta. By 1861, 'Umar had established a theocratic state, albeit on rather slender foundations, stretching throughout the areas where the Bambara had ruled. The 'Umarian experience, however, was not conducive to conversion. Although the 'Umarians (whose leadership was largely dominated by the Tukulor but included a variety of other West African Muslim peoples) introduced the Tijaniyya brotherhood into the Bambara lands, they made few converts. Indeed, the 'Umarian experience probably reinforced local animist religions longer than might otherwise have been the case. Anti-Muslim Bambara warlords led a 30 year resistance against the 'Umarians. Moreover, the 'Umarians did not fully re-establish a viable regional economy and a strong state in which Islam could have made conquering the western Sudan, their success paradoxically re-established conditions favorable for the expansion of Islam.
By 1912, only a tiny fraction (about 3 percent) of the Bambara were Muslims. French pacification eroded the slave warrior tradition, although many Bambara served in the French colonial army. French conquest increased commercial opportunities throughout the western Sudan, and Islam once again spread on the heels of this commerce radiating outward from the cities, as it had done since the eleventh century. Trade and production for the market gnawed at the traditional forms of community solidarity and weakened them. As Islam seeped into these open cracks, it provided a new sense of community for those participating in a larger economic system. Islam also hastened the erosion of these communal bonds, which had rested upon both cooperation and young bachelor’s labor. In a report written in 1909, a French administrator described how the penetration of Islam into a Bambara community had turned newly converted youth against their animist elders. The new opportunities for accumulation engendered by expanding markets stood in sharp opposition to the cooperative anti-accumulative strategy of the Bamana. Conversion also offered those of low social status an opportunity to escape from their place within Bambara society.
Islam also expanded among the Bambara as a form of opposition to colonial rule. While the rebellions during the recruitment drive of World War I were organized along traditional animist lines, resistance after World War II was often articulated in an Islamic idiom. The most numerous conversions among the Bambara occurred after 1945. Most Bambara today admit to being Muslims and participate in Muslim celebrations and in Friday prayers. The adaptation of the Muslim lunar calendar to the Bambara agricultural cycle posed no serious hardships. For example, the fasting of Ramadan meshed naturally with the local “hungry” season. Islam continued to advance among the Bambara as the established forms of social organization and their cultural and political logic disappeared.
Bamana see Bambara
Banmana see Bambara
Bangladesh Nationalist Party
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) (Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Dol). A political grouping created as a vehicle for the associates of President Ziaur Rahman in 1978. Ziaur had been elected president in June 1978 as the candidate of JANODAL (an acronym for the Bengali equivalent of “People’s Party”). JANODAL and portions of the conservative Muslim League, the leftist National Awami Party (formerly led by Maulana 'Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani), and several other smaller parties joined together to support Ziaur’s nineteen point development program. Justice 'Abdus Sattar, who succeeded Ziaur as president of the nation in 1981, was the titular leader of the party. It won 207 of the 300 directly elected seats in the parliamentary poll in February 1979. After Ziaur’s assassination in May 1981 and the coup that ousted Sattar in March 1982, the party was led by Ziaur’s widow, Begum Khalida Ziaur.
Founded in 1978 by General Ziaur Rahman, the 6th President of Bangladesh, the BNP evolved into one of the most powerful political entities in South Asia. The BNP was established by President Zia to provide a political platform for him after his assumption of power during Bangladesh's volatile period of Martial Law from 1975 till 1979. The BNP also accommodated not just his supporters, but also those tradiionally opposed to its principal rival, the Awami League, which had a virtual monopoly domination in Bangladeshi politics prior to the Martial Law period. Idealogically, the party has professed Bangladeshi nationalism, described as a more inclusive and Islamic conscieousness of the people of Muslim majority Bangladesh, in order to counter the Awami League's secular Bengali nationalism. The BNP has since its inception, been opposed to communism and socialism and freedom of religion and advocates vigorous free market policies.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has held power in Bangladesh for five separate terms. Amongst its leaders, four have become President of Bangladesh and two have become Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Within the party, power has remained exclusively in the hands of the Zia family, with Begum Khaleda Zia leading the party since the assassination of Ziaur Rahman, her husband and the party's founder.
Around 2006, the BNP became embroiled in a huge controversy with accusations of unbridled corruption from the press. Hundreds of its leaders, including Begum Zia, her sons as well as dozens of its former ministers and lawmakers were arrested on corruption charges by the military backed interim administration in Bangladesh during the 2006–2008 Bangladeshi political crisis. The party has also been accused of paying a blind eye to the growth of Islamic extremism in the country and for allying with Islamic fundamentalist parties, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, which had also opposed the independence of Bangladesh.
BNP see Bangladesh Nationalist Party
Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Dol see Bangladesh Nationalist Party
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) (Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Dol). A political grouping created as a vehicle for the associates of President Ziaur Rahman in 1978. Ziaur had been elected president in June 1978 as the candidate of JANODAL (an acronym for the Bengali equivalent of “People’s Party”). JANODAL and portions of the conservative Muslim League, the leftist National Awami Party (formerly led by Maulana 'Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani), and several other smaller parties joined together to support Ziaur’s nineteen point development program. Justice 'Abdus Sattar, who succeeded Ziaur as president of the nation in 1981, was the titular leader of the party. It won 207 of the 300 directly elected seats in the parliamentary poll in February 1979. After Ziaur’s assassination in May 1981 and the coup that ousted Sattar in March 1982, the party was led by Ziaur’s widow, Begum Khalida Ziaur.
Founded in 1978 by General Ziaur Rahman, the 6th President of Bangladesh, the BNP evolved into one of the most powerful political entities in South Asia. The BNP was established by President Zia to provide a political platform for him after his assumption of power during Bangladesh's volatile period of Martial Law from 1975 till 1979. The BNP also accommodated not just his supporters, but also those tradiionally opposed to its principal rival, the Awami League, which had a virtual monopoly domination in Bangladeshi politics prior to the Martial Law period. Idealogically, the party has professed Bangladeshi nationalism, described as a more inclusive and Islamic conscieousness of the people of Muslim majority Bangladesh, in order to counter the Awami League's secular Bengali nationalism. The BNP has since its inception, been opposed to communism and socialism and freedom of religion and advocates vigorous free market policies.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has held power in Bangladesh for five separate terms. Amongst its leaders, four have become President of Bangladesh and two have become Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Within the party, power has remained exclusively in the hands of the Zia family, with Begum Khaleda Zia leading the party since the assassination of Ziaur Rahman, her husband and the party's founder.
Around 2006, the BNP became embroiled in a huge controversy with accusations of unbridled corruption from the press. Hundreds of its leaders, including Begum Zia, her sons as well as dozens of its former ministers and lawmakers were arrested on corruption charges by the military backed interim administration in Bangladesh during the 2006–2008 Bangladeshi political crisis. The party has also been accused of paying a blind eye to the growth of Islamic extremism in the country and for allying with Islamic fundamentalist parties, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, which had also opposed the independence of Bangladesh.
BNP see Bangladesh Nationalist Party
Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Dol see Bangladesh Nationalist Party
Banisadr
Banisadr (Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr) (Abolhasan Banisadr) (Abu al-Hasan Bani Sadr) (b. 1933). First president of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1980-1981). Banisadr was born in the western Iranian city of Hamadan to Ayatollah Hajj Sayyid Nasrollah Banisadr, a religious scholar of some standing. Banisadr formed his political ambitions early, predicting at the age of seventeen that he would be the first president of post-shah Iran. He began studies of theology and economics at Tehran University and was at the head of a student delegation that met Prime Minister Amini in 1962. The following year, however, he was imprisoned for four months after participating in demonstrations. On his release, he left for France to continue his studies. He concentrated on economics and sociology, studying these under the guidance of the Marxist scholar Paul Vieille. He also helped in organizing Iranian students in Paris hostile to the shah’s regime. In early 1972, Banisadr had his first contact with Ayatollah Khomeini when he traveled to Najaf, Khomeini’s place of exile, in order to attend the funeral of his father (the elder Banisadr had died in Beirut, and the body was brought to Najaf for burial). Thereafter, Banisadr intensified his political activity, and he began to write a number of works on Islamic politics and economics.
In November 1978, Khomeini himself arrived in Paris, and Banisadr became a highly visible member of his entourage. Returning to Iran with Khomeini in February 1979, Banisadr was appointed to the Council of the Islamic Revolution. In July, he was given the post of acting minister of economy and finance, and on November 5, 1979, after the occupation of the United States embassy by Islamic militants and the resignation of the Bazargan government, he was appointed acting minister of foreign affairs. He soon extricated himself from the latter post and concentrated on preparations for the presidential elections due the following January. As a result of his intensive campaigning -- as well as to the disarray in the Islamic Republican Party -- he received 10.7 million out of the 14.3 million votes cast on January 25, 1980, and was sworn in as first president of the Islamic Republic on February 4, 1980.
The size of Banisadr’s victory was deceptive, however, and in the Majlis, elected in two stages, that first met in May 1980, Banisadr had no organized support. Friction soon arose between him and a majority of its members, especially those associated with the Islamic Republican Party. Three persons he proposed to the Majlis as candidates for prime minister were successively turned down, and in August, he was obliged to accept the premiership of Mohammed Ali Rejai.
One month later, Iraq attacked Iran, but the war served only to widen the gap between Banisadr and his opponents. In November, by denouncing the Islamic Republican Party in a series of speeches, he defied the orders of Khomeini that all parties should observe a political truce. In March 1981, when Banisadr ordered his personal guards to arrest hecklers at a meeting at Tehran University, he had reached a point of no return. The efforts of a conciliation committee were fruitless, and events moved swiftly. On June 10, 1981, Khomeini dismissed Banisadr from his post of commander in chief, and ten days later the Majlis proclaimed him “politically incompetent,” thus removing him from the presidency. Banisadr then went into hiding, and on July 28, 1981, he fled to Paris in the company of Mas’ud Rajavi, leader of the Mujahidin-i Khalq, to set up a “National Council of Resistance” and a government-in-exile. But these were ineffectual charades, for the Islamic Republic was able to surmount the crisis that occurred after many of its leading figures were assassinated by Rajavi’s men. By contrast, the “National Council of Resistance” foundered when Rajavi had a friendly meeting in Paris with Iraqi officials and Banisadr found it politic, in April 1984, to distance himself from him.
Banisadr may be characterized as a man of acute ambition who fundamentally misread the climate of his homeland. His following was never firm and he was unequipped to compete with the charisma of the religious leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr see Banisadr
Abolhasan Banisadr see Banisadr
Abu al-Hasan Bani Sadr see Banisadr
Sadr, Abol-Hasan Bani see Banisadr
Sadr, Abu al-Hasan Bani Sadr see Banisadr
Banisadr (Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr) (Abolhasan Banisadr) (Abu al-Hasan Bani Sadr) (b. 1933). First president of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1980-1981). Banisadr was born in the western Iranian city of Hamadan to Ayatollah Hajj Sayyid Nasrollah Banisadr, a religious scholar of some standing. Banisadr formed his political ambitions early, predicting at the age of seventeen that he would be the first president of post-shah Iran. He began studies of theology and economics at Tehran University and was at the head of a student delegation that met Prime Minister Amini in 1962. The following year, however, he was imprisoned for four months after participating in demonstrations. On his release, he left for France to continue his studies. He concentrated on economics and sociology, studying these under the guidance of the Marxist scholar Paul Vieille. He also helped in organizing Iranian students in Paris hostile to the shah’s regime. In early 1972, Banisadr had his first contact with Ayatollah Khomeini when he traveled to Najaf, Khomeini’s place of exile, in order to attend the funeral of his father (the elder Banisadr had died in Beirut, and the body was brought to Najaf for burial). Thereafter, Banisadr intensified his political activity, and he began to write a number of works on Islamic politics and economics.
In November 1978, Khomeini himself arrived in Paris, and Banisadr became a highly visible member of his entourage. Returning to Iran with Khomeini in February 1979, Banisadr was appointed to the Council of the Islamic Revolution. In July, he was given the post of acting minister of economy and finance, and on November 5, 1979, after the occupation of the United States embassy by Islamic militants and the resignation of the Bazargan government, he was appointed acting minister of foreign affairs. He soon extricated himself from the latter post and concentrated on preparations for the presidential elections due the following January. As a result of his intensive campaigning -- as well as to the disarray in the Islamic Republican Party -- he received 10.7 million out of the 14.3 million votes cast on January 25, 1980, and was sworn in as first president of the Islamic Republic on February 4, 1980.
The size of Banisadr’s victory was deceptive, however, and in the Majlis, elected in two stages, that first met in May 1980, Banisadr had no organized support. Friction soon arose between him and a majority of its members, especially those associated with the Islamic Republican Party. Three persons he proposed to the Majlis as candidates for prime minister were successively turned down, and in August, he was obliged to accept the premiership of Mohammed Ali Rejai.
One month later, Iraq attacked Iran, but the war served only to widen the gap between Banisadr and his opponents. In November, by denouncing the Islamic Republican Party in a series of speeches, he defied the orders of Khomeini that all parties should observe a political truce. In March 1981, when Banisadr ordered his personal guards to arrest hecklers at a meeting at Tehran University, he had reached a point of no return. The efforts of a conciliation committee were fruitless, and events moved swiftly. On June 10, 1981, Khomeini dismissed Banisadr from his post of commander in chief, and ten days later the Majlis proclaimed him “politically incompetent,” thus removing him from the presidency. Banisadr then went into hiding, and on July 28, 1981, he fled to Paris in the company of Mas’ud Rajavi, leader of the Mujahidin-i Khalq, to set up a “National Council of Resistance” and a government-in-exile. But these were ineffectual charades, for the Islamic Republic was able to surmount the crisis that occurred after many of its leading figures were assassinated by Rajavi’s men. By contrast, the “National Council of Resistance” foundered when Rajavi had a friendly meeting in Paris with Iraqi officials and Banisadr found it politic, in April 1984, to distance himself from him.
Banisadr may be characterized as a man of acute ambition who fundamentally misread the climate of his homeland. His following was never firm and he was unequipped to compete with the charisma of the religious leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr see Banisadr
Abolhasan Banisadr see Banisadr
Abu al-Hasan Bani Sadr see Banisadr
Sadr, Abol-Hasan Bani see Banisadr
Sadr, Abu al-Hasan Bani Sadr see Banisadr
Banna’, Hasan al-
Banna’, Hasan al- (Hasan al-Banna’) (Hassan al-Banna) (October 14, 1906 – February 12, 1949). Arabic: حسن البنا) was an Egyptian social and political reformer, best known for founding the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest and most influential 20th century Muslim revivalist organizations. Al-Banna's leadership was critical to the growth of the brotherhood during the 1930s and 1940s. Convinced that Islamic society should return to the Qur’an and the hadith, Hasan al-Banna’ founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. He was arrested several times and was assassinated in 1949 after the Brotherhood had been suppressed.
Hasan al-Banna’ was born on October 14, 1906 in Mohammediya in northern Egypt as the oldest son of a watch repairman. Banna’s family was very religious. In 1923, Banna went to Cairo Teachers College and finished his education as a teacher at the top of his class. He was then admitted to the famous al-Azhar University.
In 1927, Banna' began working as a teacher in a state school in the city of Ismailiyya near the Suez Canal. In March 1928, he established the al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Ikhwanu al-Muslimin) -- the Muslim Brothers -- together with his brother and five others.
The main inspiration for his religious involvement was from the magazine Al Manar which published the writings of Muhammad Rashid Rida. The organization he started when he was 22 was initially a moderate one in its instruments, but changes in the political climate and reorientations in its ideology, made the Brotherhood active in violent operations from the late 1940s.
The first Brotherhood was a youth club stressing moral and social reform, promoting this through education and propaganda.
In 1933, Banna' moved the headquarters to the capital Cairo, and, in 1942 to 1945, he travelled many times to Jordan, where he set up Brotherhood branches in many towns over the entire country.
In 1948, Banna' declared that the Egyptian government was responsible for the Arab weakness in the First Palestinian War against newly formed Israel.
On February 12, 1949, Banna' was shot dead in Cairo by secret service agents.
Banna' was a prolific writer. He wrote memoirs, as well as numerous articles and speeches. Among his most important books is his “Letter to a Muslim Student,” a book in which Banna' explains the principles of his movement.
Banna’s legacy is still active, and his movement has spread to many other Muslim countries.
Hasan al-Banna’ see Banna’, Hasan al-
Hassan al-Banna see Banna’, Hasan al-
Banna’, Hasan al- (Hasan al-Banna’) (Hassan al-Banna) (October 14, 1906 – February 12, 1949). Arabic: حسن البنا) was an Egyptian social and political reformer, best known for founding the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest and most influential 20th century Muslim revivalist organizations. Al-Banna's leadership was critical to the growth of the brotherhood during the 1930s and 1940s. Convinced that Islamic society should return to the Qur’an and the hadith, Hasan al-Banna’ founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. He was arrested several times and was assassinated in 1949 after the Brotherhood had been suppressed.
Hasan al-Banna’ was born on October 14, 1906 in Mohammediya in northern Egypt as the oldest son of a watch repairman. Banna’s family was very religious. In 1923, Banna went to Cairo Teachers College and finished his education as a teacher at the top of his class. He was then admitted to the famous al-Azhar University.
In 1927, Banna' began working as a teacher in a state school in the city of Ismailiyya near the Suez Canal. In March 1928, he established the al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun (Ikhwanu al-Muslimin) -- the Muslim Brothers -- together with his brother and five others.
The main inspiration for his religious involvement was from the magazine Al Manar which published the writings of Muhammad Rashid Rida. The organization he started when he was 22 was initially a moderate one in its instruments, but changes in the political climate and reorientations in its ideology, made the Brotherhood active in violent operations from the late 1940s.
The first Brotherhood was a youth club stressing moral and social reform, promoting this through education and propaganda.
In 1933, Banna' moved the headquarters to the capital Cairo, and, in 1942 to 1945, he travelled many times to Jordan, where he set up Brotherhood branches in many towns over the entire country.
In 1948, Banna' declared that the Egyptian government was responsible for the Arab weakness in the First Palestinian War against newly formed Israel.
On February 12, 1949, Banna' was shot dead in Cairo by secret service agents.
Banna' was a prolific writer. He wrote memoirs, as well as numerous articles and speeches. Among his most important books is his “Letter to a Muslim Student,” a book in which Banna' explains the principles of his movement.
Banna’s legacy is still active, and his movement has spread to many other Muslim countries.
Hasan al-Banna’ see Banna’, Hasan al-
Hassan al-Banna see Banna’, Hasan al-
Banna’, Sabri al-
Banna’, Sabri al-. See Abu Nidal.
Banna’, Sabri al-. See Abu Nidal.
Bantu
Bantu. General label for over 400 ethnic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa, from Cameroon across Central Africa and Eastern Africa to Southern Africa. These peoples share a common language family sub-group, the Bantu languages, and broad ancestral culture, but Bantu languages as a whole are as diverse as Indo-European languages.
"Bantu" means "people" in many Bantu languages, along with similar sounding cognates. Dr. Wilhelm Bleek first used the term "Bantu" in its current sense in his 1862 book A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, in which he hypothesized that a vast number of languages located across central, southern, eastern, and western Africa shared so many characteristics that they must be part of a single language group. Bleek's basic thesis of linguistic affinity has been confirmed by numerous researchers using the comparative method.
If one were to draw a line from Cameroon in West Africa to Kenya in East Africa, all peoples south of this line would be Bantu speakers except for a few thousand people speaking Nilotic, Cushitic or Khoisan (Click) languages. They comprise an enormous number of ethnic groups, frequently called tribes. In the country of Tanzania alone there are approximately 120 different groups. Most Bantu peoples have retained their own traditional animistic religions steeped in the sacredness of ancestors and a multiplicity of gods and spirits related to forces and things of nature. Many millions have become Christians of various sects. In eastern Africa, a significant number are Muslims, the result of centuries of contact with Arabs and early converts along the coast, the most influential of these being the Swahili peoples. Among the major Bantu-speaking subgroups who have been most influenced by Islam are the Northeast Bantu, Interlacustrine Bantu and Central Bantu.
The Bantu-speaking peoples probably originated in what today is eastern Nigeria. The migrations that led to their present wide distribution seem to have begun about 2,000 years ago. It is thought that they moved south through the rain forest, possibly using canoes, then settled in what is today the Luba area of Katanga in Zaire. From here they seem to have fanned out in a series of migrations until today they are found as far north as southern Somali (the Northeast Bantu) and as far south as South Africa, a distance of more than 2,000 miles. Almost everywhere, the Bantu absorbed the pre-Bantu sedentary peoples they found before them. And almost everywhere they settled, their language developed distinctive characteristics of its own.
Current scholarly understanding places the ancestral proto-Bantu homeland near the southwestern modern boundary of Nigeria and Cameroon ca. 5,000 years ago (3000 B.C.T.), and regards the Bantu languages as a branch of the Niger-Congo language family.
Before the expansion of farming and herding peoples, including those speaking Bantu languages, Africa south of the equator was populated by neolithic hunting and foraging peoples. Some of them were ancestral to modern Central African forest peoples (so-called Pygmies) who now speak Bantu languages. Others were proto-Khoisan-speaking peoples, whose few modern hunter-forager and linguistic descendants today occupy the arid regions around the Kalahari desert. Many more Khoikhoi (Khoekhoe) and San descendants have a Coloured identity in South Africa and Namibia, speaking Afrikaans and English. The small Hadza and Sandawe-speaking populations in Tanzania, whose languages are proposed by many to have a distant relationship to Khoikhoi and San languages (although the hypothesis that the Khoisan languages are a single family is disputed by many, and the name is simply used for convenience), comprise the other modern hunter-forager remnant in Africa. Over a period of many centuries, most hunting-foraging peoples were displaced and absorbed by incoming Bantu-speaking communities, as well as by Ubangian, Nilotic and Central Sudanic language-speakers in North Central and Eastern Africa. While earliest archaeological evidence of farming and herding in today's Bantu language areas often is presumed to reflect spread of Bantu-speaking communities, it need not always do so.
The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of physical migrations, a diffusion of language and knowledge out into and in from neighboring populations, and a creation of new societal groups involving inter-marriage among communities and small groups moving to communities and small groups moving to new areas. Bantu-speakers developed novel methods of agriculture and metalworking which allowed people to colonize new areas with widely varying ecologies in greater densities than hunting and foraging permitted. Meanwhile in Eastern and Southern Africa Bantu-speakers adopted livestock husbandry from other peoples they encountered, and in turn passed it to hunter-foragers, so that herding reached the far south several centuries before Bantu-speaking migrants did. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence all support the idea that the Bantu expansion was one of the most significant human migrations and cultural transformations within the past few thousand years.
It is unclear when exactly the spread of Bantu-speakers began from their core area as hypothesized ca. 5,000 years ago. By 3,500 years ago (1500 B.C.T.) in the west, Bantu-speaking communities had reached the great Central African rainforest, and by 2,500 years ago (500 B.C.T.) pioneering groups had emerged into the savannahs to the south, in what are now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Zambia. Another stream of migration, moving east, by 3,000 years ago (1000 B.C.T.) was creating a major new population center near the Great Lakes of East Africa, where a rich environment supported a dense population. Movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region were more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, due to comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas further from water. Pioneering groups had reached modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa by 300 C.C. along the coast, and the modern Northern Province (encompassed within the former province of the Transvaal) by 500 C.C.
Between the 14th and 15th centuries powerful Bantu-speaking states began to emerge, in the Great Lakes region, in the savannah south of the Central African rainforest, and on the Zambezi river where the Monomatapa kings built the famous Great Zimbabwe complex. Such processes of state-formation occurred with increasing frequency from the 16th century onward. They were probably due to denser population, which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power, while making emigration more difficult, to increased trade among African communities and with European, Swahili and Arab traders on the coasts, to technological developments in economic activity, and to new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualization of royalty as the source of national strength and health.
In the 1920s, relatively liberal white South Africans, missionaries and the small black intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native" and more derogatory terms (such as "Kaffir") to refer collectively to Bantu-speaking South Africans. After World War II, the racialist National Party governments adopted that usage officially, while the growing African nationalist movement and its liberal white allies turned to the term "African" instead, so that "Bantu" became identified with the policies of apartheid. By the 1970s this so discredited "Bantu" as an ethno-racial designation that the apartheid government switched to the term "Black" in its official racial categorizations, restricting it to Bantu-speaking Africans, at about the same time that the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko and others were defining "Black" to mean all racially oppressed South Africans (Africans, Coloureds and Indians).
Bantu. General label for over 400 ethnic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa, from Cameroon across Central Africa and Eastern Africa to Southern Africa. These peoples share a common language family sub-group, the Bantu languages, and broad ancestral culture, but Bantu languages as a whole are as diverse as Indo-European languages.
"Bantu" means "people" in many Bantu languages, along with similar sounding cognates. Dr. Wilhelm Bleek first used the term "Bantu" in its current sense in his 1862 book A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, in which he hypothesized that a vast number of languages located across central, southern, eastern, and western Africa shared so many characteristics that they must be part of a single language group. Bleek's basic thesis of linguistic affinity has been confirmed by numerous researchers using the comparative method.
If one were to draw a line from Cameroon in West Africa to Kenya in East Africa, all peoples south of this line would be Bantu speakers except for a few thousand people speaking Nilotic, Cushitic or Khoisan (Click) languages. They comprise an enormous number of ethnic groups, frequently called tribes. In the country of Tanzania alone there are approximately 120 different groups. Most Bantu peoples have retained their own traditional animistic religions steeped in the sacredness of ancestors and a multiplicity of gods and spirits related to forces and things of nature. Many millions have become Christians of various sects. In eastern Africa, a significant number are Muslims, the result of centuries of contact with Arabs and early converts along the coast, the most influential of these being the Swahili peoples. Among the major Bantu-speaking subgroups who have been most influenced by Islam are the Northeast Bantu, Interlacustrine Bantu and Central Bantu.
The Bantu-speaking peoples probably originated in what today is eastern Nigeria. The migrations that led to their present wide distribution seem to have begun about 2,000 years ago. It is thought that they moved south through the rain forest, possibly using canoes, then settled in what is today the Luba area of Katanga in Zaire. From here they seem to have fanned out in a series of migrations until today they are found as far north as southern Somali (the Northeast Bantu) and as far south as South Africa, a distance of more than 2,000 miles. Almost everywhere, the Bantu absorbed the pre-Bantu sedentary peoples they found before them. And almost everywhere they settled, their language developed distinctive characteristics of its own.
Current scholarly understanding places the ancestral proto-Bantu homeland near the southwestern modern boundary of Nigeria and Cameroon ca. 5,000 years ago (3000 B.C.T.), and regards the Bantu languages as a branch of the Niger-Congo language family.
Before the expansion of farming and herding peoples, including those speaking Bantu languages, Africa south of the equator was populated by neolithic hunting and foraging peoples. Some of them were ancestral to modern Central African forest peoples (so-called Pygmies) who now speak Bantu languages. Others were proto-Khoisan-speaking peoples, whose few modern hunter-forager and linguistic descendants today occupy the arid regions around the Kalahari desert. Many more Khoikhoi (Khoekhoe) and San descendants have a Coloured identity in South Africa and Namibia, speaking Afrikaans and English. The small Hadza and Sandawe-speaking populations in Tanzania, whose languages are proposed by many to have a distant relationship to Khoikhoi and San languages (although the hypothesis that the Khoisan languages are a single family is disputed by many, and the name is simply used for convenience), comprise the other modern hunter-forager remnant in Africa. Over a period of many centuries, most hunting-foraging peoples were displaced and absorbed by incoming Bantu-speaking communities, as well as by Ubangian, Nilotic and Central Sudanic language-speakers in North Central and Eastern Africa. While earliest archaeological evidence of farming and herding in today's Bantu language areas often is presumed to reflect spread of Bantu-speaking communities, it need not always do so.
The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of physical migrations, a diffusion of language and knowledge out into and in from neighboring populations, and a creation of new societal groups involving inter-marriage among communities and small groups moving to communities and small groups moving to new areas. Bantu-speakers developed novel methods of agriculture and metalworking which allowed people to colonize new areas with widely varying ecologies in greater densities than hunting and foraging permitted. Meanwhile in Eastern and Southern Africa Bantu-speakers adopted livestock husbandry from other peoples they encountered, and in turn passed it to hunter-foragers, so that herding reached the far south several centuries before Bantu-speaking migrants did. Archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence all support the idea that the Bantu expansion was one of the most significant human migrations and cultural transformations within the past few thousand years.
It is unclear when exactly the spread of Bantu-speakers began from their core area as hypothesized ca. 5,000 years ago. By 3,500 years ago (1500 B.C.T.) in the west, Bantu-speaking communities had reached the great Central African rainforest, and by 2,500 years ago (500 B.C.T.) pioneering groups had emerged into the savannahs to the south, in what are now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Zambia. Another stream of migration, moving east, by 3,000 years ago (1000 B.C.T.) was creating a major new population center near the Great Lakes of East Africa, where a rich environment supported a dense population. Movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region were more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, due to comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas further from water. Pioneering groups had reached modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa by 300 C.C. along the coast, and the modern Northern Province (encompassed within the former province of the Transvaal) by 500 C.C.
Between the 14th and 15th centuries powerful Bantu-speaking states began to emerge, in the Great Lakes region, in the savannah south of the Central African rainforest, and on the Zambezi river where the Monomatapa kings built the famous Great Zimbabwe complex. Such processes of state-formation occurred with increasing frequency from the 16th century onward. They were probably due to denser population, which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power, while making emigration more difficult, to increased trade among African communities and with European, Swahili and Arab traders on the coasts, to technological developments in economic activity, and to new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualization of royalty as the source of national strength and health.
In the 1920s, relatively liberal white South Africans, missionaries and the small black intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native" and more derogatory terms (such as "Kaffir") to refer collectively to Bantu-speaking South Africans. After World War II, the racialist National Party governments adopted that usage officially, while the growing African nationalist movement and its liberal white allies turned to the term "African" instead, so that "Bantu" became identified with the policies of apartheid. By the 1970s this so discredited "Bantu" as an ethno-racial designation that the apartheid government switched to the term "Black" in its official racial categorizations, restricting it to Bantu-speaking Africans, at about the same time that the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko and others were defining "Black" to mean all racially oppressed South Africans (Africans, Coloureds and Indians).
Bantu, Central Tanzanian
Bantu, Central Tanzanian. Central Tanzania, a region of poor soils, low rainfall and frequent famine, is the home of a Bantu speaking people who have in common variants of the basic language family of the Central Bantu of the Niger Congo. Perhaps half the people are Muslims, divided unequally among the major ethnic groups of the Rangi, Turu and Iramba. Islam entered the area of central Tanzania in the nineteenth century through the slave trade, for which the town of Kondoa was a center. It subsequently became a center for Swahili culture, which is Islamic, and continues to hold this position today. All of the central Tanzanian Bantu Muslims are Sunni of the Shafi school.
The earliest concrete evidence of Muslim presence in East Africa is the foundation of a mosque in Shanga on Pate Island where gold, silver and copper coins dated from 830 were found during an excavation in the 1980s. The oldest intact building in East Africa is the Kizimkazi Mosque in southern Zanzibar dated from 1107. It appears that Islam was widespread in the Indian Ocean area by the 14th century. When Ibn Battuta visited the East African littoral in 1332 he reported that he felt at home because of Islam in the area. The coastal population was largely Muslim, and Arabic was the language of literature and trade. The whole of the Indian Ocean seemed to be a "Muslim sea". Muslims controlled the trade and established coastal settlements in Southeast Asia, India and East Africa.
Islam was spread mainly through trade activities along the East African coast, not through conquest and territorial expansion as was partly the case in North Africa, but remained an urban littoral phenomenon for a long time. When the violent Portuguese intrusions in the coastal areas occurred in the 16th century, Islam was already well established there and almost all the ruling families had ties of kinship with Arabia, Persia, India and even Southeast Asia owing to their maritime contacts and political connections with the northern and eastern parts of the Indian Ocean. At the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century the coastal Muslims managed to oust the Portuguese with the help of Oman. The Omanis gradually increased their political influence until the end of the 19th century when Europeans arrived at the coast of East Africa.
During the time when Oman dominated the coast politically, the spread of Islam intensified also in the interior of East Africa. Trade contacts with peoples in the interior, especially the Nyamwezi, gained importance and places like Tabora in Nyamwezi territory and Ujiji at Lake Tanganyika became important centers in the ever-increasing trade in slaves and ivory. Many chiefs, even in parts of Uganda, converted to Islam and cooperated with the coastal Muslims. Trade served to spread not only Islam, but also the Swahili language and culture. Before the establishment of German East Africa in the 1880s the influence of the Swahilis was mainly limited to the areas along the caravan routes and around their destinations.
Bantu, Central Tanzanian. Central Tanzania, a region of poor soils, low rainfall and frequent famine, is the home of a Bantu speaking people who have in common variants of the basic language family of the Central Bantu of the Niger Congo. Perhaps half the people are Muslims, divided unequally among the major ethnic groups of the Rangi, Turu and Iramba. Islam entered the area of central Tanzania in the nineteenth century through the slave trade, for which the town of Kondoa was a center. It subsequently became a center for Swahili culture, which is Islamic, and continues to hold this position today. All of the central Tanzanian Bantu Muslims are Sunni of the Shafi school.
The earliest concrete evidence of Muslim presence in East Africa is the foundation of a mosque in Shanga on Pate Island where gold, silver and copper coins dated from 830 were found during an excavation in the 1980s. The oldest intact building in East Africa is the Kizimkazi Mosque in southern Zanzibar dated from 1107. It appears that Islam was widespread in the Indian Ocean area by the 14th century. When Ibn Battuta visited the East African littoral in 1332 he reported that he felt at home because of Islam in the area. The coastal population was largely Muslim, and Arabic was the language of literature and trade. The whole of the Indian Ocean seemed to be a "Muslim sea". Muslims controlled the trade and established coastal settlements in Southeast Asia, India and East Africa.
Islam was spread mainly through trade activities along the East African coast, not through conquest and territorial expansion as was partly the case in North Africa, but remained an urban littoral phenomenon for a long time. When the violent Portuguese intrusions in the coastal areas occurred in the 16th century, Islam was already well established there and almost all the ruling families had ties of kinship with Arabia, Persia, India and even Southeast Asia owing to their maritime contacts and political connections with the northern and eastern parts of the Indian Ocean. At the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century the coastal Muslims managed to oust the Portuguese with the help of Oman. The Omanis gradually increased their political influence until the end of the 19th century when Europeans arrived at the coast of East Africa.
During the time when Oman dominated the coast politically, the spread of Islam intensified also in the interior of East Africa. Trade contacts with peoples in the interior, especially the Nyamwezi, gained importance and places like Tabora in Nyamwezi territory and Ujiji at Lake Tanganyika became important centers in the ever-increasing trade in slaves and ivory. Many chiefs, even in parts of Uganda, converted to Islam and cooperated with the coastal Muslims. Trade served to spread not only Islam, but also the Swahili language and culture. Before the establishment of German East Africa in the 1880s the influence of the Swahilis was mainly limited to the areas along the caravan routes and around their destinations.
Bantu, Northeast
Bantu, Northeast. The Northeast Bantu of East Africa are about 38 percent Muslim and include a variety of people with enough cultural and linguistic similarities to be grouped together. The term “Northeast Bantu” is mainly a linguistic one, indicating a degree of similarity greater than that which links them to other Bantu speakers.
Bantu, Northeast. The Northeast Bantu of East Africa are about 38 percent Muslim and include a variety of people with enough cultural and linguistic similarities to be grouped together. The term “Northeast Bantu” is mainly a linguistic one, indicating a degree of similarity greater than that which links them to other Bantu speakers.
Banu Hillal
Banu Hillal (Banu Hilal). Bedouins who immigrated from Egypt to the Maghrib (mainly Algeria and Tunisia) in the eleventh century. About 250,000 of the Banu Hillal are believed to have migrated, which represent the largest influx of Arabic settlers in the Maghrib. The entering of the Banu Hillal is considered to have had dramatic and devastating effects on the old social and governmental structures. However, historians note that local structures were in decline, and it is well possible that the success of the Banu Hillal was principally shaped by weakened communities, more than the strength of the Banu Hillal themselves. The Banu Hillal were, in reality, on good terms with the local rulers. Their influx changed the use of land from agriculture to pastoralism, even though the Banu Hillal were not hostile to settled life. The influx also had its effect in that the local population was Arabized in large areas. This is evident in Tunisia, which received the largest immigration and where a Berber identity is almost extinct.
The Banu Hillal were a confederation of bedouin tribes that migrated from Upper Egypt into North Africa in the 11th century, having ostensibly been sent by the Fatimids to punish the Zirids for abandoning Shiism. Other scholarss suggest that the tribes left the grasslands on the upper Nile because of environmental degradation accompanying the Medieval Warm Period. Whatever the reason behind their migration, the Banu Hillal quickly defeated the Zirids and deeply weakened the neighboring Hammadids. Their influx was a major factor in the linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghrib (Maghreb), and in the spread of nomadism in areas where agriculture had previously been dominant. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.
The Banu Hillal were led by Abu Zayd al-Hilali. Their story is recounted in fictionalized form in Taghribat Bani Hilal. The Banu Hillal "saga" is still recounted in the form of poetry in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt: Djezia and Dhieb bin Ghanim opposed to the Zenati Khalifa.
Banu Hilal see Banu Hillal
Banu Hillal (Banu Hilal). Bedouins who immigrated from Egypt to the Maghrib (mainly Algeria and Tunisia) in the eleventh century. About 250,000 of the Banu Hillal are believed to have migrated, which represent the largest influx of Arabic settlers in the Maghrib. The entering of the Banu Hillal is considered to have had dramatic and devastating effects on the old social and governmental structures. However, historians note that local structures were in decline, and it is well possible that the success of the Banu Hillal was principally shaped by weakened communities, more than the strength of the Banu Hillal themselves. The Banu Hillal were, in reality, on good terms with the local rulers. Their influx changed the use of land from agriculture to pastoralism, even though the Banu Hillal were not hostile to settled life. The influx also had its effect in that the local population was Arabized in large areas. This is evident in Tunisia, which received the largest immigration and where a Berber identity is almost extinct.
The Banu Hillal were a confederation of bedouin tribes that migrated from Upper Egypt into North Africa in the 11th century, having ostensibly been sent by the Fatimids to punish the Zirids for abandoning Shiism. Other scholarss suggest that the tribes left the grasslands on the upper Nile because of environmental degradation accompanying the Medieval Warm Period. Whatever the reason behind their migration, the Banu Hillal quickly defeated the Zirids and deeply weakened the neighboring Hammadids. Their influx was a major factor in the linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghrib (Maghreb), and in the spread of nomadism in areas where agriculture had previously been dominant. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.
The Banu Hillal were led by Abu Zayd al-Hilali. Their story is recounted in fictionalized form in Taghribat Bani Hilal. The Banu Hillal "saga" is still recounted in the form of poetry in Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt: Djezia and Dhieb bin Ghanim opposed to the Zenati Khalifa.
Banu Hilal see Banu Hillal
Baqillani
Baqillani (Ibn al-Baqillani) (Abu Bakr al-Baqilani)(c.950- June 5, 1013). An Ash‘arite theologian and Malikite jurisprudent (lawyer). He is said to have been a major factor in the systematizing and popularizing of Ash‘arism.
Born in Basra c. 950, he spent most of his life in Baghdad, and studied under disciples of al-Ash'ari. He held the office of chief Qadi outside the capital of the Caliphate. He died on 5 June 1013 (402AH).
Al-Baqillani's fifty-two volumous books are regarded as classical works on expounding the Qur'an and its textual integrity, defending orthodoxy and Islam, elaborating on the miracles of the prophethood, providing summaries of the Sunni creed, posing a defense of the Sunni position regarding the Imamate (Caliphate), and rebutting Brahmanism, Dualism, Trinitarianism, etc.
Ibn Taymiyya called al-Baqillani 'the best of the Ash'ari mutakallimun, unrivalled by any predecessor or successor'.
Ibn al-Baqillani see Baqillani
Abu Bakr al-Baqilani see Baqillani
Baqillani (Ibn al-Baqillani) (Abu Bakr al-Baqilani)(c.950- June 5, 1013). An Ash‘arite theologian and Malikite jurisprudent (lawyer). He is said to have been a major factor in the systematizing and popularizing of Ash‘arism.
Born in Basra c. 950, he spent most of his life in Baghdad, and studied under disciples of al-Ash'ari. He held the office of chief Qadi outside the capital of the Caliphate. He died on 5 June 1013 (402AH).
Al-Baqillani's fifty-two volumous books are regarded as classical works on expounding the Qur'an and its textual integrity, defending orthodoxy and Islam, elaborating on the miracles of the prophethood, providing summaries of the Sunni creed, posing a defense of the Sunni position regarding the Imamate (Caliphate), and rebutting Brahmanism, Dualism, Trinitarianism, etc.
Ibn Taymiyya called al-Baqillani 'the best of the Ash'ari mutakallimun, unrivalled by any predecessor or successor'.
Ibn al-Baqillani see Baqillani
Abu Bakr al-Baqilani see Baqillani
Baqi, Mahmud ‘Abd al-
Baqi, Mahmud ‘Abd al- (Mahmud ‘Abd al-Baqi) (1526-1600). A Turkish poet. He was a court poet of the Ottoman Sultans Suleyman II, Selim II, Murad III and Muhammad III and is recognized as the greatest ghazal poet in Turkish literature.
Mahmud 'Abu al-Baqi see Baqi, Mahmud ‘Abd al-
Baqi, Mahmud ‘Abd al- (Mahmud ‘Abd al-Baqi) (1526-1600). A Turkish poet. He was a court poet of the Ottoman Sultans Suleyman II, Selim II, Murad III and Muhammad III and is recognized as the greatest ghazal poet in Turkish literature.
Mahmud 'Abu al-Baqi see Baqi, Mahmud ‘Abd al-
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