Browse Resources: Reference Article

The name “Andalusia,” for Muslim Spain, is derived from “al-Andalus,” the name used in Arabic sources to indicate those parts of the Iberian peninsula under Muslim control between the initial invasion of 711 C.E. and the fall…

The religious movement known as the Wahhābīyah, sometimes anglicized as “Wahhabism,” is founded on the teachings of Muḥammad Ibn ῾Abd al‐Wahhāb (1703–1791), who wrote on a variety of Islamic subjects such as theology,…

From the 1970s onward, a number of Sunnī groups emerged, claiming to adhere to Salafī doctrines and to be engaged in purifying Muslim society in accordance with these. The designation Salafī is prestigious among Muslims, because it denotes an…

A prevalent institution of the Islamic world throughout its history,slavery (ʿubūdīyah, riqq) had a crucial influence on societies and cultures of Islam. Slavery was common in pre-Islamic and contemporary societies in the Mediterranean basin,…

This entry contains three subentries: ROLE AND STATUS OF WOMEN WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES WOMEN LIVING UNDER MUSLIM LAWS Role and Status of Women The Qurʿān, Islam's holy book, changed women's status considerably from that of the…

Libya is an oil-rich country that shares borders with Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan, Chad, and Niger. Its population of more than 5 million is of mixed Arab-Berber ancestry, and an overwhelming majority of Libyans are Sunni Muslims. Historically,…

A holy site since the beginning of Arab memory of the place,Mecca (Makkah) is the goal of the annual pilgrimage that the Qurʿān (2:196–198) requires every Muslim to perform once in a lifetime. Whatever the surmises regarding the origin of its…

The name for the Islamic revealed scripture, al‐Qur'ān, means “the recitation,” in both informative and performative senses. With respect to the first, the Qur'ān is a “message” (risālah) that has been communicated to…

From Islam's inception, it has had a varied and profound relationship with Judaism. In scripture and thought, in society and politics, in culture and intellectual life, the two religious civilizations have exemplified their relations. In modern…

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the perception of Islam by Christians and non-Christians alike has been profoundly influenced by a number of terrorist events that have marked the beginning of the new millennium. There were, within a few…

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 1273), known as Rūmī, was born in the city of Balkh in the greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorāsān, under the rule of Khwārizm shahs, in what is now Tajikistan. A year prior to the Mongol invasion, in…

This entry contains four subentries: SūFī THOUGHT AND PRACTICE SūFī ORDERS SūFī SHRINE CULTURE SUFISM AND POLITICS ṢūfĪ Thought and Practice Sufism can be described broadly as the intensification of Islamic faith and practice, or…

In Islam ḥadīth is the term applied to specific reports of the prophet Muḥammad's words and deeds as well as those of many of the early Muslims; the word is used both in a collective and in a singular sense. After the Prophet 's death,…

One of the successor states created from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey became the first secular state in the Muslim world. The new state was declared a republic in October 1923 after the defeat of the Greek army and of…

A North African country about the size of California, Morocco has existed as an Islamic region since the 700s. Its local name, al-Maghrib, means “sunset,” after the ancient Arabic name for North Africa, Bilad al-Maghrib (Lands of Sunset).…

Persian Literature until 1990 Persian literature is a body of poetic and other literary works created principally in Iran. Afghanistan, the Indian Subcontinent, Central Asia, and Turkey also have been home to a rich literature written in…

Overview From pre-Islamic poems to the contemporary novel, literature written in Arabic spans over fourteen centuries, several continents, and myriad local cultures and contexts. Although Arabic literature began during the Jāhilīyah (pre-Islamic…

Bilād al-Sūdān means “lands of the Blacks” in Arabic. It is a generic term for sub-Saharan Islamic Africa (also known as the Sahel) and has been the name of the modern nation since 1898. Islam entered Sudan in the sixteenth century…

This article is about the feminism, or feminisms, which Muslim women have created around the world from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. Muslim and non-Muslim women in the East and West were among the originators of feminism.…

Muslims participate in many types of travel that combine spiritual and mundane goals. For pious Muslims, nearly every journey has a religious dimension. Historically and currently, the most popular forms of religiously inspired travel include the…

One of the greatest astronomers of Islam, al-Battānī (Albatenius, Albategni, or Albategnius of the Latin West, d. ca. 929 C.E.), declares that astronomy is the most noble of the sciences, elevated in dignity, and second only to the science of…

The dynastic building traditions for communal structures that serve the Muslim population are richly varied, but domestic architecture is even more richly textured, varying by region, time, and communal group. Regardless of the specific shape, scale,…

From the perspective of the history of science, alchemy can legitimately be considered an Islamic creation. Notwithstanding some developments in ancient China, it was in the Islamic world that alchemy developed from a dark craft with its mysterious…

Religion has played a central role in the lives of the inhabitants of the Nile Valley from the time of the pharaohs. The priests of ancient Egypt presided over the cults that defined each province, and made up a central part of the ruling class. The…

The capital of Egypt, Cairo was founded in 969 C.E. by the Shīʿī Ismāʿīlī dynasty, the Fāṭimids. Its name in Arabic is al-Qāhirah, “the victorious,” in commemoration of the conquest of Egypt by the Fāṭimids. The Medieval…

Situated in the heart of premodern Cairo, al-Azhar is the greatest mosque-university in the world today. Reluctantly adjusting to modern times over the last century, the millennium-old Azhar remains a focal point of Islamic religious and cultural…

With anywhere from two to six million followers in the United States in the early twenty-first century, and with numerous Islamic mosques, centers, and schools across the continent, Islam has clearly become an American religion. The U.S. census does…

The word ḥijāb is used in the contemporary Islamic world both in reference to a head-covering and to a particular style of dress considered modest and Islamic. This style of dress can be distinguished from various rural dress traditions, and it…

Since the days of Muhammad, followers of Islam have supported many educational, religious, and social welfare causes. Governments and individuals regularly contribute to charitable activities. In the Islamic world, giving serves both social and…

Abraham, one of the many Old Testament figures that appear in the Qurʿān as a prophet of the Biblical tradition, assumes an outstanding role in Islam because of his association with (proto-)Islam, an uncorrupted form of Biblical monotheism that…