Key Figures of Islamic Tradition, According to Marshall Hodgson (10)

Only cultural-related figures listed, up till only ~1900.

 

The Safavi Empire and ITs Successors to 1779

1558, Zaynuddin al-Amili, Shii tehologian

1583, Vahshi of Bafq, romantic and Sufi poet

1620/1, Bahai (Bahauddin Muhammed Amili), anecdotal and entertaining Sufi poet, Shii theologian, mathematician

1630, Mir Damad, Shii theologian, in the Ishraqi, Isfahani school or metaphysics (note: Mulla Sadr is his student) 

1700, Muhammed Baqir Majlisi, Shii scholar and theologian

 

The Indian Timuri Empire to 1763

1530, Babur, most famous Turkic writer of his time as a memoirist

1590/1, Muhammed Urfi, Persian poet of ornate yet obscure, metaphorical style that became Indian style, influences the Ottoman poet Nafi and others

1595, Fayzi, poet in Indian style

1602, Abulfazl Allami (brother of Fayzi), scholar, courtier, historian of Akbar, casting him as both philosopher king and "perfect man"

1625, Ahmad Sirhindi, anti-Akbarist (anti-universalist) reformer, working within a classically defined Sufi orientation

1762, Shah Vali-ullah, Sufi reformer who attempted to harmonize variant Muslim traditions on basis of Sharism and support from many of Sirhindi's ideas

 

The Ottoman Empire to 1789

1556, Fuzuli, masnavi poet in Persian divan style

1600, Baqi, master of subsequent poets 

1635, Nafi, poet of new Indo-Persian style

1658, Katib Chelebi (Haci Halife), encyclopedist, bookseller

1679, Evliya Chelebi, soldier, traveller, prose writer

 

Islamic Heritage in the Modern World, 1800-1950

Egypt

1871-9, al-Afghani in Egypt

1849-1905, Muhammad Abduh, abandons al-Afghani's revolutionism for collaboration with British and gradualism; attempts educational and legal reforms as rector of al-Azhar and grand mufti; articulates Islamic Modernism

1865-1953 Rashid Rida, leads salafiyya movement to revive and reinterpret orthodox Islam

1940's Hasan al-Banna's fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood

Iran

1844-52 The Bab leads townsmen's protest against Qajar landlord rule; attempted assassination of shah triggers mass persecution, which won European sympathy for the Babis' successors, the Bahai's

India

1830s, Sayyid Ahmad of Rase Bareli popularizes Wahhabism in India, opposing Sufism of Shah Waliullah and Hindu inroads into Islam, declares jihad against British and Sikhs

1817-98 Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, in post-Mutiny wave of anti-Muslim discrimination by British, argues for collaboration, adoption of British culture, and conformity of Islam to natural law; establishes Aligarh College (1875); attacked by anti-imperialist al-Afghani and by orthodox ulama who found rival school at Deoband

1889, Ahmadi sect mixes messianic heritages of the Mahdi, Krishna, and Jesus

1891, Amir Ali, launches defensive Muslim apologetic, claiming that original Islam is source of all European progress

1914, deaths of Hali, poet and major reviver of Urdu literary culture, and of Shibli Numani, reinterpreter of classcial kalam having contacts with Egyptian salafiyya movement

1876-1938 Muhammad Iqbal, nationalist and Islamic poet, combines Sufism and Western philosophy of vitalism and evolution; first theoretician of Pakistan

Fertile crescent and the Arabian peninsula

1803-13, Wahhabis occupy Hijaz (Mecca, 1806)

1866, Foundation of American University of Beirut by Protestant missionaries, fosters Arabic literary revival among Syrian Chrsitians led by Butros Bustani and Nasif al-Yaziji (d. 1871)

1896, Theodor Herzl publishes Der Judenstaat, first Zionist Congress (1897)

1930, Sati al-Husri emerges as chief ideologue of Arab Nationalism, attempts to create Arab consciousness among Egyptians