Abdulla, Raficq Shaik (1940–2019), scholar, broadcaster, and legal adviser, was born on 29 June 1940 in Durban, South Africa, the son of Shaik Abdulla, an Indian landowner and businessman of Hyderabadi origin, based in Durban, and his wife Mosida Ismail, née Abraham, a doctor, from a ...
Article
Khizar Humayun Ansari
Image
Raficq Abdulla (1940–2019), by unknown photographer
Courtesy of M. M. Keshavjee/Francesco Cincotta
Article
Khizar Humayun Ansari
Eaton, (Horace Charles Le) Gai [names in religion Hasan ‘Abd al-Hakim, Sidi Hasan] (1921–2010), diplomatist and Muslim scholar, was born on 1 January 1921 in Lausanne, Switzerland, the son of Francis Henry Launcelot Errington (1854–1942), barrister, and Ruth Frances Muddock (1881–1973)...
Article
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 ...
Article
Garba-Jahumpa, Ibrahima Momodou (1912–1994), schoolteacher and politician in Gambia, was born in Bathurst (Banjul), capital of the British colony of Gambia, in 1912, the son of Momodou Jahumpa, a shipwright and senior figure in the local Mohammedan Society, whose family had emigrated to ...
Article
Husain, Zakir (1897–1969), educationist and president of India, was born in Hyderabad, the third of seven sons of Fida Husain (d. 1905), lawyer, and his wife, Naznin (d. 1911). The exact date of his birth is not recorded as it is said that his mother, fearing the evil eye, did not register his birth. In his passport it was given as 24 February 1897, but in other sources it is given as 8 February. His father belonged to a well-known family of Afridi Afghans who had long settled in ...
Article
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 ...
Image
Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din (1870–1932) by unknown photographer, 1918 Woking Muslim Mission
Article
Khizar Humayun Ansari
Kamal-ud-Din, Khwaja (1870–1932), Islamic scholar and missionary, was born in Lahore, Punjab, British India, the son of Khwaja Aziz-ud-Din. He came from a Kashmiri family with a tradition of distinguished public service: his grandfather, Abdur Rashid, was at one time the qazi (chief Muslim judge) of ...
Article
Philby, Harry St John Bridger (1885–1960), explorer and Arabist, was born at St John's, Badulla, Ceylon, on 3 April 1885, the second son of Harry Montagu Philby (d. 1913), a coffee planter, and his wife, Queenie (1864–1950), known as May, daughter of ...
Image
Maker: Harry St John Bridger Philby
Harry St John Bridger Philby (1885–1960) self-portrait, 1917–18 The Royal Geographical Society, London
Article
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)...
Article
Muriel E. Chamberlain
Stanley, Henry Edward John, third Baron Stanley of Alderley and second Baron Eddisbury (1827–1903), diplomatist and orientalist, born at Alderley Park, Chelford, near Crewe, on 11 July 1827, was the eldest of the ten children of Edward John Stanley, second Baron Stanley of Alderley...
Article
David E. Skinner
Tarawali, Ibrahim (c. 1785–1880), political leader and educationist, was born in the town of Forecariah, Moriah kingdom, in Guinea, west Africa. Ibrahim Tarawali was a son of Ibrahim Konditu Fofana, a leading entrepreneur and Muslim religious leader. The Fofana trace themselves back several centuries to ...
Article
P. J. L. Frankl
Yahya Ali Omar (1924–2008), Swahili scholar, was born in June 1924 in Mombasa, Kenya protectorate, the only son, a twin, and the youngest of three children of Ali bin Omar, fisherman, and his wife, Sudi binti Athman, both Swahili from northern Swahililand. When ...
