Sayyid Muhammad ibn Safdar Husaynī (born 1838^[1] - died March 9, 1897) (Persian: سید محمد بن صفدر حسینی), mostly known as Sayyid Jamāl-al-dīn al-Afghānī, (Persian: سید جمال الدین افغاني) or Sayyid Jamāl-al-dīn Asadābādī (Persian: سید جمال الدین اسدآبادی), was a political activist and Islamic nationalist active in Qajarid Persia, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. One of the founders of Islamic modernism,^[2] and an advocate of pan-Islamic unity,^[3] he has been described as "less interested in theology than he was in organizing a Muslim response to Western pressure."^[4]

Early life

Jamāl-al-dīn was born in the village of Asadābād, near Hamadān, Iran, into a family of local sayyeds.^[1][5] Although some older sources claim that Jamal al-Din was born in a district of Kunar Province in Afghanistan also called Asadabad,^[6][7] overwhelming documentation (especially a collection of papers left in Iran upon his expulsion in 1891) now proves he was born in 1838 in Iran. He spent his childhood there and was brought up as a Shia Muslim.^[1][5][8]

According to the best evidence, he was educated first at home, then taken by his father for further education to Qazvin, to Tehran, and finally, while he was still a youth, to the Shi'ite shrine cities in Iraq.^[5] It is thought that followers of Shia revivalist Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa'i had an influence on him.^[9] An ethnic Persian, Jamal-al-Din claimed to be an Afghan in order to present himself as a Sunni Muslim ^[9][10] and to escape oppression by the Iranian ruler Nāṣer ud-Dīn Shāh.^[5]

Political activism

In 1857, Jamal al-Din spent a year in Delhi and after performing the pilgrimage of Hajj in Mecca, he returned to Afghanistan in 1858. He became a counsellor to the King Dost Mohammad Khan and later to Mohammad Azam. At that time he encouraged the king to turn to Russians and to oppose the British. However, he did not encourage Mohammad Azam to any reformist ideologies that later were attributed to Jamal al-Din.^[5]

In 1859 a British spy reported that Jamal Al-Din was a possible Russian agent. The British representatives reported that he wore traditional cloths of Noghai Turks in Central Asia and spoke Persian, Arabic and Turkish fluently.^[11] Reports from the British Government in India and Afghani government said that he was a stranger in Afghanistan and spoke Persian with Iranian accent and followed European lifestyle more than that of Muslims, not observing Ramadan or other Muslim rites.^[5][11] In 1868, the throne of Kabul was occupied by Sher Ali Khan, and Jamal al-Din was forced to leave the country.^[5]

He travelled to Istanbul, passing through Cairo 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^[12].

In 1871, Jamal al-Din moved to Egypt and began preaching his ideas of political reform. His ideas were considered radical, and he was exiled in 1879. He then travelled to different European and non-European cities: Istanbul, London, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Munich.

In 1884, he began publishing an Arabic newspaper in Paris entitled al-Urwah al-Wuthqa ("The Indissoluble Link"^[1]) with Muhammad Abduh. The newspaper called for a return to the original principles and ideals of Islam, and for greater unity among Islamic peoples. He argued that this would allow the Islamic community to regain its former strength against European powers.^{[citation needed]}

Jamal al-Din was invited by Shah Nasser al-Din to come to Iran and advise on affairs of government, but fell from favour quite quickly and had to take sanctuary in a shrine near Tehran. After seven months of preaching to admirers from the shrine, he was arrested in 1891, transported to the border with Ottoman Mesopotamia, and evicted from Iran. Although Jamal al-Din quarrelled with most of his patrons, it is said he "reserved his strongest hatred for the Shah," whom he accused of weakening Islam by granting concessions 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 1891 protest against the granting a tobacco monopoly to a British company, and the later 1905 Constitutional Revolution.^[13]

Political and religious views

Jamal al-Din's ideology has been described as a welding of "traditional" religious antipathy toward non-Muslims "to a modern critique of Western imperialism and an appeal for the unity of Islam", urging the adoption of Western sciences and institutions that might strengthen Islam.^[10]

Although called a liberal by the contemporary English admirer, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt,^[14] Jamal al-Din did not advocate constitutional government. In the volumes of the newspaper he published in Paris, "there is no word in the paper's theoretical articles favoring political democracy or parliamentarianism," according to his biographer. Jamal al-Din simply envisioned "the overthrow of individual rulers who were lax or subservient to foreigners, and their replacement by strong and patriotic men."^[15]

According to another source Jamal al-Din was greatly disappointed by the failure of the Indian Mutiny and came to three principal conclusions from it:

• that European imperialism, having conquered India, now threatened the Middle East

• that Asia, including the Middle East, could prevent the onslaught of Western powers only by immediately adopting the modern technology of the West

• and that Islam, despite its traditionalism, was an effective creed for mobilizing the public against the imperialists.^[16]

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 a religious social morality. These beliefs had a profound effect on Muhammad Abduh, who went on to expand on the notion of using rationality in the human relations aspect of Islam (mu'amalat) ^[17].

In 1881 he published a collection of polemics titled Al-Radd 'ala al-Dahriyyi (Refutation of the Materialists), agitating for pan-Islamic unity against Western Imperialism. It included one of the earliest pieces of Islamic thought arguing against Darwin's then-recent On the Origin of Species; however, his arguments incorrectly caricatured evolution, provoking criticism that he had not read Darwin's writings.^[18] In his later work Khatirat Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (The Ideas of al-Afghani), he accepted the validity of evolution, asserting that the Islamic world had already known and used it. Although he accepted abiogenesis and the evolution of animals, he rejected the contemporary scientific fact that the human species is the product of evolution, arguing that humans have souls.^[19]

Among the reasons why Jamal al-Din is thought to have had a less than deep religious faith^[who?] was his lack of interest in finding theologically common ground between Shia and Sunni (despite the fact that he was very interested in political unity between the two groups),^[20] and his failure to marry. He is said to have "picked up female companionship when he wanted it without any show of religious scruples.", probably practising the temporary marriage (nikah al-mut'a) that only Shia communities recognize as licit (halal) ^[21].

 Death and legacy

Jamal al-Din died on March 9, 1897 in Istanbul and was buried there. In late 1944, due to the request of Afghan government, his remains were taken to Afghanistan and laid in Kabul inside the Kabul University, a mausoleum was erected for him.

 References