Ali, Dusé Mohamed [known as Dusé Mohamed] (1866–1945), journalist and playwright, was born Mohamed Ali on 21 November 1866, in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of Abdul Salem Ali, otherwise Abbas Mohamed (d. 1882), an Egyptian army officer, and his Sudanese wife. In 1876 his father sent him to study in ...
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Gail Minault
Ali, Sayyid Mumtaz (1860–1935), author and publisher, was born in 1860 near Deoband, Saharanpur district, United Provinces, India, the son of Sayyid Zulfiqar Ali, a landholder with ties to the ulama who founded the Deoband madrasa (or Islamic school) in 1866. His education began at an Arabic ...
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Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004) by Howard Coster, 1930s © National Portrait Gallery, London
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Alastair Niven
Anand, Mulk Raj (1905–2004), author, was born in the city of Peshawar, North-West Frontier Province, India, on 12 December 1905, a kshatriya (warrior) by caste. His immediate ancestors were coppersmiths and silversmiths, though his father, Lal Chand, had broken away to become a clerk in the ...
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Bilal Ahmad
Faiz, Faiz Ahmed (1911–1984), poet in Pakistan, was born on 13 February 1911 at Kala Qadir, Narowal district, Punjab, the son of Khan Bahadur Sultan Muhammad Khan (d. 1913), landowner and lawyer, and his wife, Sultana Fatima. He started learning the Koran...
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G. J. Roper
Faris, Ahmad [Aḣmad Fāris; formerly Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq] (1805/6–1887), author and translator, was born in al-Hadath, Lebanon, the youngest of five sons of Abu Husayn Yusuf ibn Mansur al-Shidyaq (1762–1821), secretary and tutor of Lebanese chieftains, and his wife, the daughter of ...
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Iqbal, Sir Muhammad (1877–1938), philosopher and poet, was born at Sialkot in the Punjab on 9 November 1877. He was the younger son of Sheikh Nuruddin Muhammad, whose forebears were Hindu converts to Islam originally from Kashmir, and Imam Bibi, a devout woman of working-class background. He was educated at the ...
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Manto, Saadat Hasan (1912–1955), author in Pakistan, was born on 11 May 1912 in Sumaira, in the Ludhiana district of the Punjab, British India, the son of Ghulam Hasan Manto (1855–1930), judge, and his second (concurrent) wife, Sardar. He had a sister, Nasira Iqbal...
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Norcott, William (1770
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Mohammad Shaheen
Pickthall, Marmaduke William (1875–1936), writer and translator, was born on 7 April 1875 in Cambridge Terrace, London, the eldest of the two sons of the Revd Charles Grayson Pickthall (1822–1881), rector of Chillesford in Suffolk, and his second wife, Mary Hale, née O'Brien (1836–1904)...
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Selim Aga (c. 1826–1875), freed slave, autobiographer, and explorer, was born in the Muslim kingdom of Taquali, in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, about 1826. The son of a prosperous farmer, he was destined to inherit the family property, but about the age of nine or ten, while tending his father's sheep, he was captured by raiding Arab slavers. After much ill-treatment and being sold to various masters he was transported over ...
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Kalim Siddiqui (1933–1996) by Michael Powell © News International Newspapers Ltd
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Jørgen S. Nielsen
Siddiqui, Kalim (1933–1996), journalist and Muslim activist, was born on 2 July 1933 near Hyderabad, Deccan, India, one of a family of ten children. While he was still a small child the family moved to Sultanpur, a town between Allahabad and Fyzabad in ...
