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Jamal al-Din al-Afghani سید جمالالدین افغانی | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Personal life | |
| Born | Sayyid Jamaluddin ibn Safdar 1839 |
| Died | 9 March 1897 (aged 58) |
| Cause of death | Oral cancer[4] |
| Resting place | Kabul,Afghanistan[3] |
| Nationality | Disputed[1][2][3] |
| Notable idea(s) | Pan-Islamismα, Sunni-Shia unity, against the British[5] |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Islam |
| Creed | Disputed[1][2][3] |
| Movement | Modernism Pan-Islamism[6][7] Neo-Sufism[8] Islamism[9][10] |
| Muslim leader | |
SayyidJamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī[12][13][14][15] (Pashto/Persian:سید جمالالدین افغانی), also known asJamāl ad-Dīn Asadābādī[16][17][18] (Persian:سید جمالالدین اسدآبادی) and commonly known asAl-Afghani (1838/1839 – 9 March 1897), was an Iranian political activist andIslamicideologist who travelled throughout theMuslim world during the late 19th century. He is one of the founders ofIslamic Modernism[15][19] as well as an advocate ofPan-Islamic unity in India against the British.[5][20]
He has been described as having been less interested in minor differences in Islamic jurisprudence than he was in organizing a united response to Western pressure.[21][22] He is also known for his involvement with his followerMirza Reza Kermani in the successful plot to assassinate ShahNaser-al-Din, whom Afghani considered to be making too many concessions to foreign powers, especially the British Empire.[23]
As indicated by hisnisba, al-Afghani claimed to be of Afghan origin. His true national and sectarian background has been a subject of controversy.[1][2] According to one theory and his own account, he was born inAsadabad, Afghanistan, near Kabul.[1][2][11][24][25][26] Another theory, championed byNikki Keddie and accepted by several modern scholars, holds that he was born and raised in a Shia family inAsadabad, Iran nearHamadan.[1][2][3][11][12][14][27][28] Supporters of the latter theory view his claim to an Afghan origin as motivated by a desire to gain influence amongSunni Muslims[3][27][29][30] or escape oppression by the Iranian emperorNaser al-Din Shah Qajar.[12][2] One of his main rivals, was ShaykhYusuf al-Nabhani and another was ShaykhAbu al-Huda al-Sayyadi, who called himMutaʾafghin ("the one who claims to be Afghan") and tried to expose hisTwelver Shi'a roots.[31] Keddie also asserts that al-Afghani practicedtaqiyya, which was more prevalent in the Twelver world.[12]
He was educated first at home and then taken by his father for further education toQazvin, toTehran, and finally, while he was still a youth, to theTwelver shrine cities inOttoman Iraq.[11] It is thought that followers of the Twelver revivalistShaykh Ahmad influenced him.[29] Other names adopted by al-Afghani wereal-Kābulī ("[the one] fromKabul")Asadābādī,Sadat-e Kunar ("Sayyids ofKunar") andHussain.[32] Especially in writings published in Afghanistan, he also used the pseudonymal-Rūmī "theAnatolian".[11]
At the age of 17 or 18 in 1856–57,[12] Al-Afghani traveled toBritish India and spent several years there studying religions. In 1859, aBritish spy reported that Al-Afghani was possibleRussianagent. The British representatives reported that he wore the traditional clothes of theNogais ofCentral Asia and spokePersian,Arabic andTurkish fluently.[33]
After this first Indian tour, he decided to perform theHajj. His first documents are dated from Fall 1865, where he mentions leaving the "revered place" (makān-i Musharraf) and arriving in Tehran around mid-December of the same year. In the spring of 1866, he left Iran for Afghanistan, passing throughMashhad andHerat.
After the Indian stay, all sources have Afghānī next take a leisurely trip to Mecca, stopping at several points along the way. Both the standard biography and Lutfallāh's account take Afghānī's word that he entered Afghan government service before 1863, but since documents from Afghanistan show that he arrived there only in 1866, we are left with several years unaccounted for. The most probable supposition seems to be that he may have spent longer in India than he later said and that after going to Mecca he traveled elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. When he arrived in Afghanistan in 1866 he claimed to be fromConstantinople, and he might not have made this claim if he had never even seen the city, and could be caught in ignorance of it.[34]
— Nikki Keddie, 1983
He was spotted in Afghanistan in 1866 and spent time inKandahar,Ghazni, and Kabul.[14]
Reports from the colonial British Indian andAfghan government stated that he was a stranger in Afghanistan and spokeIranian Persian, following a European lifestyle and not observing Muslim practices, includingRamadan.[33] He became counselor toMohammad Afzal Khan, the eldest son of the formeremir,Dost Mohammad Khan, during hiswar against his half-brotherSher Ali Khan. He encouraged Muhammad Afzal to turn away from his father's British-aligned policy and turn to theRussian Empire for support.[35] In 1868, Sher Ali Khan prevailed against Muhammad Afzal and expelled al-Afghani from the country.[12]
Al-Afghani traveled toIstanbul, passing through India[12] andCairo on his way there. He stayed in Cairo long enough to meet a young student who would become a devoted disciple of his,Muhammad Abduh.[36] Once in Istanbul, he met with Grand VizierMehmed Emin Âli Pasha and secured an appointment to the Council of Education. He spoke at the opening ofIstanbul University, giving a speech typifying the Modernist spirit animating the ongoingTanzimat.
Are we not going to take an example from the civilized nations? Let us cast a glance at the achievement of others. By effort, they have achieved the final degree of knowledge and the peak of elevation. For us too all the means are ready, and there remains no obstacle to our progress. Only laziness, stupidity, and ignorance are obstacles to [our] advance.[37]
However, conservative clerics found his views too radical. The university was closed in 1871 and al-Afghani was expelled.[38] He then moved to theKhedivate of Egypt and began preaching his ideas of political reform. The Egyptian government originally gave him a stipend, but due to his public attacks on France and England, he was exiled to India in August 1879, where he stayed inHyderabad andCalcutta.[12] He then traveled to Istanbul, London, Paris, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Munich.
While in Egypt, Afghani sought the removal of the ruling regime ofIsma'il Pasha of Egypt, which he viewed as pro-British, and usedFreemasonry as an organizational base for his political activities. During this period, Afghani had also considered assassinating Khedive Isma'il. He perceived Freemasonry as a means of advancing his anti-colonial,anti-imperialist,pan-Islamic causes. Afghani's political activities would play a decisive role in overthrowing Isma'il from the throne and bringingTewfik Pasha as khedive.[39][40][41]
However, local Masons asserted that they were not interested in politics and sought reconciliation with the British Empire.[42] When Afghani was warned that the lodge was not a political platform, he replied, "I have seen a lot of odd things in this country [Egypt], but I would never have thought that cowardice would infiltrate the ranks of masonry to such an extent."[43] Around 1875 or 1876, an incident wherein Masons lavishly praised a British imperial visitor was a major reason for Afghani's quitting of Freemasonry. After realizing the indifference of the Masons and their political subservience to theBritish Empire, Afghani eventually left Freemasonry.[44]
In 1884, he began publishing an Arabic newspaper in Paris entitledal-Urwah al-Wuthqa (Arabic:العروة الوثقى,lit. 'The Indissoluble Link'[14]) with Muhammad Abduh; the title is taken fromQuran 2:256.[45] The newspaper called for a return to the original principles and ideals of Islam, and greater unity among Islamic peoples. He argued that this would allow the Islamic community to regain its former strength against European powers.[citation needed]
When al-Afgani was visitingBushehr in southern Iran in the spring of 1886, planning to pick up books he had shipped there and carry on to Russia, he fell ill. He was invited byNaser al-Din Shah Qajar's Minister of Press and Publications to come to Tehran, but fell from favor quite quickly. The Emperor ordered him to be taken to Russia, where al-Afghani spent 1887 to 1889.[12]
From Russia, he traveled to Munich, returning to Iran in late 1889.[12] Due to his political activities, the Shah planned to expel him from Iran, but al-Afghani found out and took sanctuary in theShah Abdol-Azim Shrine near Tehran.[12] After seven months of preaching to admirers from the shrine, he was arrested in 1891, transported to the border with Ottoman Iraq and expelled from Iran. Although Al-Afghani quarreled with most of his patrons, it is said he "reserved his strongest hatred for the Shah," whom he accused of weakening Islam by grantingconcessions to Europeans and squandering the money earned thereby. His agitation against the Shah is thought to have been one of the "fountain-heads" of the successful 1891Tobacco Protest against the grant of a tobacco monopoly to a British company, and the later 1905Constitutional Revolution.[46]
After Iraq, he went to England in 1891 and 1892.[12] He was later invited by a member ofSultan Abdul Hamid II's court in 1892 to Istanbul. He traveled there with diplomatic immunity from the British Embassy, which raised many eyebrows, but was granted a house and salary by the Sultan. Abdul Hamid II aimed to use al-Afghani for Pan-Islamist propagation.
While in Istanbul in 1895, al-Afghani was visited by a Persian ex-prisoner,Mirza Reza Kermani, who had been his servant and disciple,[12] and together they planned the assassination of Emperor Naser al-Din of Iran.[23] They both collaborated withMirza Malkam Khan, the former Qajar envoy to London, in his London-based paperQanun to attack Qajar rule.[47] Kermani later returned to Iran and shot and killed Emperor Naser al-Din on 1 May 1896 while the Emperor was visiting the same shrine al-Afghani had once taken refuge in. Kermani was executed by public hanging in August 1897, but the Iranian government was not successful in extraditing al-Afghani from Turkey.[12] Al-Afghani himself died of cancer the same year a few months before Kermani's hanging.[23]
Al-Afghani's ideology has been described as a welding of "traditional" religious antipathy toward non-Muslims "to a modern critique of Westernimperialism and an appeal for the unity of Islam", urging the adoption of Western sciences and institutions that might strengthen Islam.[30] According to Muhammad Abduh, Al-Afghani's main struggle in life was to decrease British domination of eastern nations and to minimize its power over Muslims.[48]
Al-Afghani's friend, the British poet, and ArabophileWilfrid Scawen Blunt,[49] considered him a liberal, and in some of his writings he equates the parliamentary system to theshura (consultation) system mentioned in the Qur'an. However, his attitude to the constitutional government was ambiguous because he doubted that it was viable in the Islamic world.[50] According to his biographer, he envisioned instead "the overthrow of individual rulers who were lax or subservient to foreigners and their replacement by strong and patriotic men."[51]
Blunt,Jane Digby andRichard Francis Burton, were close withEmir Abdelkader (1808–1883), an Algerian Islamic scholar, Sufi, and military leader. In 1864, the Lodge "Henry IV" extended an invitation to him to join Freemasonry, which he accepted, being initiated at the Lodge of the Pyramids in Alexandria, Egypt.[52][53] Blunt had supposedly become aconvert to Islam under the influence of al-Afghani and shared his hopes of establishing an Arab Caliphate based in Mecca to replace the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul. When Blunt visited Abdelkader in 1881, he decided that he was the most promising candidate for caliph, an opinion shared by Afghani and his disciple, Muhammad Abduh.[54]
According to another source Al-Afghani was greatly disappointed by the failure of theIndian Rebellion of 1857 and came to three principal conclusions from it:
Al-Afghani held thatHindus and Muslims should work together to overthrow British rule in India, a view rehashed byHussain Ahmad Madani inComposite Nationalism and Islam five decades later.[56]
He believed that Islam and its revealed law were compatible with rationality and, thus, Muslims could become politically unified while still maintaining their faith based on religious social morality. These beliefs had a profound effect on Muhammad Abduh, who went on to expand on the notion ofMu'amalat, using rationality in the human relations aspect of Islam.[57]
In 1881 he published a collection of polemics titledAl-Radd ʻalā al-dahrīyīn "Refutation of the Materialists", agitating for pan-Islamic unity against Western imperialism. It included one of the earliest pieces of Islamic thought arguing againstCharles Darwin's then-recentOn the Origin of Species; however, his arguments allegedly incorrectly caricaturedevolutionary biology, provoking criticism that he had not read Darwin's writings.[58] In his later workKhatirat Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani "The memoir of Al-Afghani", he accepted the validity of evolution, asserting that the Islamic world had already known and used it. Although he acceptedabiogenesis and the evolution of animals, he rejected the theory that the human species is the product of evolution, arguing that humans havesouls.[58]
Among the reasons why Al-Afghani was thought to have had a less than deep religious faith[59] was his lack of interest in finding theological common ground between the Shia and the Sunni despite his interest in political unity between the two groups.[60] For example, when he moved to Istanbul he disguised his Twelver Shi'i background by labeling himself "the Afghan".[61]
Al-Afghani died of cancer of the jaw[12] on 9 March 1897 in Istanbul and was buried there. In late 1944, at the request of the Afghan government, his remains were taken to Afghanistan via British India. His funeral was offered inPeshawar'sQissa Khwani Bazaar in front of the Afghan Consulate building. Thereafter, his remains were laid in Kabul inside theKabul University; a mausoleum was also erected there in his memory. In October 2002, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan,Robert Finn, pledged a donation of $25,000 to restore the mausoleum from damage sustained during the civil war.[62] The repairs were completed in 2010.
In Afghanistan, a university is named after him (Syed Jamaluddin Afghan University) in Kabul. There is also a street in the center of Kabul which is called by the name Afghani. In other parts of Afghanistan, there are many places like hospitals, schools, Madrasas, Parks, and roads named after Jamaluddin Afghan.
InPeshawar,Pakistan there is a road named after him as well.
In Tehran, the capital of Iran, there is a square and a street named after him (Asad Abadi Square and "Asad Abadi Avenue" inYusef Abad)
According toK. Paul Johnson, inThe Masters Revealed,H.P. Blavatsky's masters were real people, and "Serapis Bey" was Jamal Afghani, as a purported leader of an order named the "Brotherhood of Luxor".[63] Afghani was introduced to the Star of the East Lodge, of which he became the leader, by its founder Raphael Borg, the British consul in Cairo, who was in communication with Blavatsky. Afghani's friend, a Jewish-Italian actor from Cairo namedJames Sanua, who with his girlfriend Lydia Pashkov and their friendLady Jane Digby were travel companions of Blavatsky.[63] As concluded byJoscelyn Godwin inThe Theosophical Enlightenment, "If we interpret the 'Brotherhood of Luxor' to refer to the coterie of esotericists and magicians that Blavatsky knew and worked with in Egypt, then we should probably count Sanua and Jamal ad-Din as members."[64]
In the early 1860s, he was inCentral Asia and theCaucasus[citation needed] when Blavatsky was inTbilisi. In the late 1860s, he was in Afghanistan until he was expelled and returned to India. He went to Istanbul and was again expelled in 1871 when he proceeded to Cairo, where his circle of disciples was similar to Blavatsky's Brotherhood of Luxor. Afghani was forced to leave Egypt and settled in Hyderabad, India, in 1879, the year the Theosophical Society's founders arrived in Bombay. He then left India and spent a short time in Egypt before arriving in Paris in 1884. The following year he proceeded to London, and then on to Russia where he collaborated with Blavatsky's publisher,Mikhail Katkov.[65]
A photo published byJoscelyn Godwin inThe Kingdom of Agarttha, shows Afghani posing in the persona of Haji Sharif, who inspiredSaint-Yves d'Alveydre in the legend ofAgarttha andsynarchy.[66]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Afghani was born in Iran
