South Asian Islam

Abadi Bano Begum (1852-1924), known affectionately as Bi Amma, was the mother of the Ali Brothers and one of the first Muslim women to enter Indian nationalist politics, mobilizing women for the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements while observing purdah.

A journalist, Qur'anic commentator and political thinker who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941. His six-volume Urdu commentary Tafhim al-Qur'an and his writings on the Islamic state were among the most widely circulated Muslim political works of the twentieth century.

Ahmad Shah Durrani (c. 1722-1772) founded the Durrani Empire at Kandahar in 1747 and is generally regarded as the founder of the modern Afghan state. He invaded India repeatedly and broke Maratha power at Panipat in 1761, but established no lasting rule there.

Ahmed Raza Khan of Bareilly (1856-1921) was an Indian Hanafi jurist, Sufi of the Qadiri order and prolific writer whose defence of the veneration due to the Prophet and the saints gave rise to the movement known as Barelvi, whose adherents call themselves the ulama of the Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jamaat.

Alauddin Khalji (r. 1296–1316 CE) was the most powerful ruler of the Delhi Sultanate. His reign saw the repulsion of Mongol invasions, the conquest of much of peninsular India, sweeping economic reforms including price controls, and a highly centralized administration.

Ali Musliyar (c. 1861-1922) was an Islamic religious leader in Malabar, imam of the Tirurangadi mosque from 1907 and the principal religious authority of the Malabar Rebellion of 1921-22. His role in the uprising remains contested in Indian historiography. He was executed in February 1922.

Aligarh Muslim University grew out of the school founded by Syed Ahmad Khan in 1875, which became the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1877 and a university by Act of the Indian legislature in 1920. It was the central institution of the Aligarh Movement.

A Kashmiri scholar of hadith who led Darul Uloom Deoband as its principal and chief teacher of hadith from 1915 to 1927. His major works, including the four-volume Fayd al-Bari on Sahih al-Bukhari, were transcribed from his lectures by his students.

Aruna Asaf Ali (1909-1996), born Aruna Ganguly, hoisted the Indian flag at Gowalia Tank Maidan on 9 August 1942, marking the start of the Quit India Movement. She spent four years underground, became Delhi's first mayor in 1958, and was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1997.

Asaf Ali (1888-1953) was an Indian barrister and Congress leader who defended Bhagat Singh and the INA officers at the Red Fort trial. He served in the Interim Government of 1946, became independent India's first Ambassador to the United States in 1947, and was Governor of Odisha to 1952.

Ashfaqulla Khan (1900-1927) was an Indian Muslim revolutionary and poet who co-organized the 1925 Kakori train robbery with Ram Prasad Bismil to fund the anti-colonial Hindustan Republican Association, and was executed by the British for his role in it.

Aurangzeb Alamgir (1618–1707 CE) was the sixth and last major Mughal emperor, ruling nearly fifty years over one of the largest empires in Indian history. A complex figure of deep piety and military ambition, his reign saw the empire reach its greatest extent yet begin its decline.

Begum Hazrat Mahal (c. 1820-1879) was a consort of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh who, after the British annexation of 1856, became regent for her son Birjis Qadr and led the resistance at Lucknow during the Revolt of 1857. She refused all terms and died in exile in Nepal.

Company Quartermaster Havildar Abdul Hamid (1933-1965) of 4 Grenadiers destroyed several Pakistani Patton tanks with a jeep-mounted recoilless gun at the Battle of Asal Uttar in 1965. Killed in action, he was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest gallantry award.

Darul Uloom Deoband is an Islamic seminary founded in northern India in 1866 or 1867 and the origin of the Deobandi school of thought. Its innovation was institutional: it carried the traditional religious sciences in the form of a modern school funded by public subscription.

Hakim Ajmal Khan (1863-1927) was an Indian physician and nationalist who founded the Ayurvedic and Unani Tibbia College in Delhi, was the first Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, and presided over the Indian National Congress in 1921. A Unani practitioner from a family of court physicians.

Hamdard Laboratories (India) is a Unani pharmaceutical company and welfare institution founded in Old Delhi in 1906 by Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed. Converted into a waqf in 1948 under his son Hakeem Abdul Hameed, it produces Rooh Afza and established Jamia Hamdard university in Delhi.

Hasrat Mohani (1875-1951) was an Indian Muslim poet, journalist, and freedom fighter who coined the slogan 'Inquilab Zindabad' and was the first to demand complete independence for India, combining Urdu literary mastery with radical anti-colonial politics.

Hyder Ali (1720-1782), the self-made military genius who rose from a minor officer to become the effective ruler of Mysore, transforming it into the most powerful state in southern India and mounting the first serious indigenous military challenge to British colonial expansion.

Shams al-Din Iltutmish (r. 1211–1236 CE) was the third sultan of Delhi and the ruler who consolidated the Delhi Sultanate into a stable, independent state. A former slave who rose by merit, he won Abbasid recognition, repelled Mongol threats, and built lasting institutions of Muslim rule in India.

Jamia Millia Islamia was founded at Aligarh on 29 October 1920 by nationalist Muslim leaders and students who left the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College during the Non-Cooperation movement. It moved to Delhi in 1925, to Okhla in 1935, and became a central university by Act of Parliament in 1988.

The first student of Darul Uloom Deoband, who taught there for forty years and led it from 1890. Known as Shaykh al-Hind, he organised the Silk Letter Movement, was imprisoned in Malta, and laid the foundation stone of Jamia Millia Islamia.

Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030 CE) was the most powerful Ghaznavid ruler, leading seventeen campaigns into the Indian subcontinent while making Ghazni a major center of Persian culture and Islamic learning. A patron of al-Biruni and Ferdowsi, his legacy joins conquest and culture.

Major General Shah Nawaz Khan (1914-1983) joined the Indian National Army after his capture at Singapore in 1942 and led its forces into north-eastern India. Tried for treason at the Red Fort in 1945 and reprieved, he later served four terms as a Congress Member of Parliament.

Mohammad Ali Jauhar (1878-1931) was an Indian Muslim leader, journalist, and orator who co-led the Khilafat Movement with his brother Shaukat Ali, forged a Hindu-Muslim alliance with Gandhi, and spent his final years advocating for Muslim political rights at the Round Table Conference in London.

An Indian Hanafi jurist widely titled Mufti-e-Azam, or Grand Mufti of India. He led Madrasa Aminia in Delhi, presided over the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind from 1921 to 1940, helped found Jamia Millia Islamia, and left a large body of legal rulings.

A Hanafi jurist who served as head mufti of Darul Uloom Deoband and founded Darul Uloom Karachi in 1951. His Urdu commentary Ma'arif al-Qur'an, which began as a radio programme, became one of the most widely read Qur'anic commentaries in South Asia.

Muhammad ibn al-Qasim (695-715 CE) was the teenage Umayyad general who conquered Sindh in 711 CE, establishing the first permanent Muslim political presence in the Indian subcontinent. His conquest opened the gateway through which Islam would eventually spread across South Asia.

A scholar of hadith and Qur'anic commentary who taught at Darul Uloom Deoband, Hyderabad State, Bahawalpur and Lahore. He wrote an eight-volume Urdu tafsir, an Arabic commentary on the Mishkat al-Masabih, and a four-volume Urdu life of the Prophet.

The Indian scholar who founded the Tablighi Jamaat in the Mewat region during the 1920s. Trained at Darul Uloom Deoband under Mahmud Hasan, he built a movement of lay religious preaching that later spread across the Muslim world.

Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad ibn Sam (1149–1206 CE), known as Muhammad of Ghor, was the Ghurid sultan whose conquests in northern India laid the foundations of the Delhi Sultanate. His victory at the Second Battle of Tarain (1192) established a permanent Muslim presence in the subcontinent.

The second leader of the Tablighi Jamaat, who directed it from 1944 to 1965 and oversaw its spread beyond South Asia. A graduate of Mazahir Uloom Saharanpur, he compiled Hayat al-Sahaba, a three-volume Arabic collection on the lives of the Prophet's Companions.

A hadith scholar of Mazahir Uloom Saharanpur who taught for over fifty years and wrote a six-volume Arabic commentary on Malik's Muwatta. His Urdu devotional tracts, collected as the Faza'il series, became the standard reading of the Tablighi Jamaat.

Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari (1880-1936) was an Indian physician and nationalist who presided over both the All India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress. Trained in Edinburgh and London, he led the Indian Medical Mission to Turkey in 1912 and was Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia.

A scholar of hadith and Qur'anic commentary who taught at Darul Uloom Deoband and Dabhel, completed Tafsir-e-Usmani, and began the Arabic commentary Fath al-Mulhim. He led the Deobandi scholars who supported the creation of Pakistan and sat in its first Constituent Assembly.

A Bangladeshi scholar of hadith who led the seminary at Hathazari in Chittagong for more than three decades and chaired the country's Qawmi madrasa education board. Trained at Hathazari and Darul Uloom Deoband, he wrote a commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari.

Shaukat Ali (1873-1938) was an Indian Muslim leader who co-led the Khilafat Movement with his brother Mohammad Ali Jauhar. Known as the organizational force behind the movement, he was instrumental in forging the Hindu-Muslim alliance with Gandhi and spent years imprisoned for his activism.

Husain Ahmad Madani (1879-1957) was an Indian scholar of hadith who taught in Medina, was interned by the British on Malta, and led Darul Uloom Deoband as Shaykh al-Hadith. His 1938 work Muttahida Qaumiyat aur Islam made him the foremost scholar opposing the demand for Pakistan.

Sher Shah Suri (c. 1486-1545) drove the Mughal emperor Humayun out of India and ruled the north from 1540 to 1545. In five years he built a revenue system based on land measurement, minted the silver rupiya behind the rupee, and restored the Grand Trunk Road.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898) was an Indian Muslim reformer and educator who founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1875, which became Aligarh Muslim University. His Aligarh Movement sought to reconcile Islamic faith with Western scientific education.

Surayya Tyabji (1919-1978) was an Indian artist from Hyderabad who, with her husband Badruddin Tyabji, worked on the final design of the Indian national flag in July 1947, replacing the Congress charkha with the Ashoka Chakra. She also drew the graphic version of the National Emblem.

Syed Mahmud (1889-1971) was an Indian barrister and Congress leader from Bihar, a member of the Foundation Committee of Jamia Millia Islamia in 1920, General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee, Education Minister of Bihar, and Union Minister of State for External Affairs.

A nineteenth-century Indian Sunni movement that set aside the authority of the historic schools of law in favour of direct recourse to the Qur'an and hadith. Led by scholars at Delhi and Bhopal, it was marked by its manner of prayer and an austere standard of interpretation.

A school of Sunni thought and practice that grew from the seminary founded at Deoband in northern India in 1866 or 1867. Its scholars combined the roles of jurist and Sufi guide, built a madrasa funded by public subscription, and made hadith the centre of religious education.

An organisation founded by Abul A'la Maududi in 1941 to form a disciplined body of Muslims trained to lead society according to Islamic norms. After the partition of India it developed into separate organisations in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Four Sufi orders shaped religious life in the Indian subcontinent: the Chishti, Naqshbandi, Qadiri and Suhrawardi. This article traces how they functioned there in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and how initiation into several orders at once weakened the identity of each.

A movement of lay religious preaching founded by Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi in the Mewat region of northern India in the 1920s. Built on short preaching tours undertaken by ordinary Muslims, it grew from one rural district into a presence across much of the Muslim world.

Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), the Tiger of Mysore, was a military innovator, administrative reformer, and one of the most formidable opponents of British colonial expansion in India, whose resistance and death at Srirangapatna made him an enduring symbol of defiance.

Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji (c. 1875-1922) was the military leader of the Malabar Rebellion of 1921-22, establishing a short-lived parallel government in the Ernad and Valluvanad taluks. He was captured and executed in January 1922. His characterisation remains contested.

An Indian scholar, educator and writer associated with the founding of Darul Uloom Deoband and with its first consultative council for nearly four decades. He taught at Bareilly College, served in the colonial education department, and wrote Urdu commentaries on the Arabic literary classics.