famous people

Musa Bin Nusair

Musa bin Nusair (640—716) was a Yemeni Muslim governor and general under the Umayyads. In 698 he was made the viceroy of North Africa and was responsible for putting down a large Berber rebellion. He also had to deal with constant harassment from the Byzantine navy and he built a navy that would go on to conquer the islands of Ibiza, Majorca, and Minorca. In Spain there was internal fighting among the Visigoths. Among the factions were the sons of a recently deceased king who felt that they had unfairly been stripped of power. They appealed to Musa to intervene in their civil war, and Musa agreed. He sent his deputy, Tariq bin Ziyad to Spain whose armies landed at Gibraltar on April 30 , 711, from whence they proceeded to take most of Spain. Their major victory came in September of the same year when the Muslim armies defeated Roderick at the Guadalete River. Musa joined Tariq in 712 and led armies into Southern France, where he annexed some land. Musa was planning an invasion of the rest of Europe when he was recalled to Damascus by Al-Waleed. Al-Waleed would die soon after and Musa would be jailed by his successor, Suleiman who would have Musa executed in 716. The reasoning behind this was that Suleiman saw Musa as a threat. But perhaps it was a personal vendetta.

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Imam Shamil

Imam Shamil (1797 - March 1871 was a Checheni Avar political and religious leader of the Muslims of the Northern Caucasus. He was important in the anti Russian national liberation movement of the Caucasian peoples in and was the third Imam of Daghestan and Chechnya. Imam Shamil was born in 1797 in the small village of Gimry which is in current day Daghestan. His father was a free landlord, and this position allowed Shamil to study many subjects including Arabic, logic and other areas. Shamil also joined a Sufi order, and established himself as a well respected and educated man among other Muslims of the Caucasus. He made a pilgramige or hajj to Mecca in 1828 and there he met Abdel Kadir, from whom he learned guerilla war tactics. Shamil was born at a time when the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus were at war with the armies of Russia. Since the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Russian empire had begun to expand and eventually took control of the region from the Ottoman Empire. As time progressed, the Muslims of the region began to feel that their way of life was threatened, and they were continually at war with the Russians. Some of the earlier leaders of Muslim resistance were Sheikh Mansur and Ghazi Mollah. Shamil was actually childhood friends with Mollah and would become his disciple. At the battle of Ghimri, Mollah died and Shamil took his place as the premier leader of Muslim resistance in the Caucasus. He would come to be known as al-Imam al-Azam or leader of all the Caucasus. He was effective at uniting the peoples of the mountains to fight the Russians and won many victories against the Russians from 1817 until 1859. He made effective use of guerilla warfare tactics and the resistance was only ended when the Russians deployed half a million troops and reduced the forces of Shamil down to the hundreds. On August 25, 1859 Shamil and his family were jailed in the Daghestan village (aoul ) Gunib. After being defeated by the Russians, Shamil was sent to Moscow  to meet the Tsar and then he was exiled to a town Kaluga  outside of Moscow. In 1869 he was given permission to retire to the holy city of Mecca and he travelled there through Istanbul. He died in Medina in 1871 while visiting the city and was buried the Jannatul Baqi which is also the site where many important personalities from Islamic history are buried. Shamil continues to be revered in the Caucasus for his resistance to the Russians, and is held up as a role model by those leading the current fight against Russian control of the region. The Chechen guerilla leader Shamil Basayev is named for him.

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Abu Bakar (Razi Allah o Anho: First Caliph of Islamic State

Abu Bakr (Razi Allah O Anhoo) was born in Mecca, a Quraishi of the Banu Taim clan. According to early Muslim historians, he was a merchant, and highly esteemed as a judge, as an interpreter of dreams, and as one learned in in Meccan traditions. He was one of the last people anyone would have expected to convert to the faith preached by his kinsman Muhammad peace be upon him. Yet he was one of the first converts to Islam (see below) and instrumental in converting many of the Quraish and the residents of Mecca. Originally called Abd-ul-Ka'ba ("servant of the house of God"), on his conversion he assumed the name of Abd-Allah (servant of God). However, he is usually styled Abu Bakr (from the Arabic word bakr , meaning a young camel) due to his interest in raising camels. Sunni Muslims also honor him as Al-Siddiq ("the truthful", or "upright"). His full name was Abd-Allah ibn Abi Quhaafah. He was one of Messenger Muhammad's constant companions. When Muhammad fled from Mecca in the hijra of 622 , Abu Bakr alone accompanied him. Abu Bakr was also linked to Muhammad by marriage: Abu Bakr's daughter Hazarat Aisha (Razi Allah o Anha) married Muhammad peace be upon hm soon after the migration to Medina. Once a wealthy man, he was known to have impoverished himself by purchasing the freedom of several Muslim slaves from polytheist masters.Abubakar , Abi Bakr , Abu Bakar ; 573– August 23, 634 ruled as the first of the Muslim caliphs  (632 – 634).

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Mughal Empire: Indian Sub Continent

The Mughal Empire, (Mughal Baadshah, alternative spelling Mogul) was an empire that at its greatest territorial extent ruled parts of Afghanistan, Balochistan and most of the Indian Subcontinent between 1526 and 1857. The empire was founded by the Mongol leader Babur in 1526, when he defeated Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Delhi Sultans at the First Battle of Panipat. The word "Mughal" is the Indo-Aryan version of "Mongol." The religion of Mughals was Islam. The empire was largely conquered by Sher Shah during the time of Humayun, but under Akbar, it grew considerably, and continued to grow until the end of Aurangzeb's rule. Jahangir, the son of Akbar, ruled the empire between (1605-1627). In October 1627, Shah Jahan, son of Jahangir, "succeeded to the throne", where he "inherited a vast and rich empire" in India; and "at mid-century this was perhaps the greatest empire in the world". The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, commissioned between (1630 - 1653), the Taj Mahal, in Agra, India. After Aurangzeb died in 1707, the empire started a slow and steady decline in actual power, although it maintained all the trappings of power in the Indian subcontinent for another 150 years. In 1739 it was defeated by an army from Persia led by Nadir Shah. In 1756 an army of Ahmad Shah looted Delhi again. The British Empire finally dissolved it in 1857, immediately prior to which it existed only at the sufferance of the British East India Company.

Famous Mughal Emperors Babur 1526 1530 Humayun 1530 1556 Akbar 1556 1605 Jahangir 1605 1627 Shah Jahan 1627 1658 Aurangzeb 1658 1707

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Abu Rehan Biruni: Al Biruni

Abu Raihan Biruni (September, 973 | December, 1048) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, physicist, scholar, encyclopedist, philosopher, astrologer, traveler, historian, pharmacist, and teacher, who contributed greatly to the fields of mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and science. He was born in Khwarazm, presently in Uzbekistan. He studied mathematics and astronomy under Abu Nasr Mansur. He was a colleague of the Central Asian philosopher and physician Ibn Sina, the historian, philosopher and ethicist Ibn Miskawayh in a university and science center established by prince Abu Al Abbas Mamun Khawarazmshah. He also traveled to Pakistan and India with Mahmud of Ghazni, who also became his patron and accompanied him on his campaigns there learning the language and studying the religion and philosophy and wrote Tarikh al Hind "Chronicles of India". He also knew the Greek Language, Sanskrit, possibly Syriac and Berber. He wrote his books in Persian and Arabic, but his native language was Khwarezmian. Some of his notable achievements included: * At the age of 17, he calculated the latitude of Kath, Khwarazm using the maximum altitude of the sun. * By th age of 22, he had written several short works including a study of map projections, Cartography which included a methodology for projecting a hemisphere on a plane * By the age of 27, he had written a book called Chronology which referred to other work he had completed (now lost) that included one book about the astrolabe, one about the decimal system, four about astrology and two about history. * He calculated the radius of the Earth to be 6,339.6 kilometres (this result was replicated in the Western world in the 16th century). Biruni's works number more than 120.His contributions to mathematics include: » Theoretical and practical arithmetic » Summation of series » Combinatorial analysis » The rule of three » Irrational numbers » Ratio theory » Algebraic definitions » Method of solving algebraic equations » Geometry » Archimedes' theorems » Trisection of the angle