AL-KHOEI BENEVOLENT FOUNDATION

Established in the late 1980s, the Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation has centralized religious centers and institutions for Islamic education that were acquired through pious donations managed […]

ALI IBN ABI TALIB

`ALI IBN ABI TALIB (c. 597-66o), the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, the fourth caliph of the Sunni Muslims, and the first imam […]

ALGERIA

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Algeria had been a province of the Ottoman Empirefor four centuries. Like other provinces it evolved through the […]

ALCHEMY

Viewed from the perspective of the history of science, alchemy can legitimately be considered an Islamic creation. Indeed, notwithstanding some development in ancient China, it […]

ALBANIA

The only European country with a Muslim majority. Albania emerged in 1992 from nearly half a century of communism and state-sponsored suppression of religious beliefs. […]

ALAWIYAH

A term derived from the name of the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, `Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), `Alawiyah was applied originally […]

`ALAWI, AHMAD AL

`ALAWI, AHMAD AL-, (1869-1934), more fully Abu al `Abbas Ahmad ibn Mustafa al-`Alawl, Algerian Sfifi and poet. Characterized by the French Orientalist Emile Dermenghem as […]

AKHUND

Several meanings for akhund, a Persian word meaning “religious scholar” or “leader,” have been proposed by Iranian, Turkish, and Western writers. One states that the […]

AKHBARIYAH

An emphatically traditionalist tendency in Shi’i jurisprudence, Akhbariyah first crystallized into a distinct school in the twelfth century. Its designation comes from the word akhbar […]