Word: caliphs
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ISLAM'S SCHISM BEGAN IN A.D. 632, immediately after the Prophet Muhammad died without naming a successor as leader of the new Muslim flock. Some of his followers believed the role of Caliph, or viceroy of God, should be passed down Muhammad's bloodline, starting with his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib. But the majority backed the Prophet's friend Abu Bakr, who duly became Caliph. Ali would eventually become the fourth Caliph before being murdered in A.D. 661 by a heretic near Kufa, now in Iraq. The succession was once again disputed, and this time...
Those loyal to Mu'awiyah and his successors as Caliph would eventually be known as Sunnis, meaning followers of the Sunnah, or Way, of the Prophet. Since the Caliph was often the political head of the Islamic empire as well as its religious leader, imperial patronage helped make Sunni Islam the dominant sect. Today about 90% of Muslims worldwide are Sunnis. But Shi'ism would always attract some of those who felt oppressed by the empire. Shi'ites continued to venerate the Imams, or the descendants of the Prophet, until the 12th Imam, Mohammed al-Mahdi (the Guided...
...deadly serious the post-9/11 Heaney can be. "Anything can happen," he warns, "the tallest towers/ Be overturned, those in high places daunted,/ Those overlooked regarded." The world has changed, he is saying, and those cold, smooth, snicking scissors are creeping toward us. - D.M. 5. Tahir Shah, The Caliph's House...
...cold, wet afternoon Shah decided he'd had enough of London. The result was The Caliph's House, a lively account of how the travel writer moved his pregnant wife and young daughter to Casablanca, buying a decrepit Arabian Nights complex once owned by a real caliph. Shah encountered slothful house-renovation crews and irascible neighbors, but also had to dodge gangsters, suicide bombers, plagues of rats and - worst of all - jinns, the spirits that many Moroccans believe are hazards of daily life. He learned to deal with the jinns the Moroccan way, sprinkling drops of his blood...
...Mukarram Jah became the eighth Nizam after his grandfather's death, he was no longer a real king, but he was still dizzyingly rich-the master of numerous palaces, a fleet of Rolls-Royces and five trust funds. Muslims in Hyderabad revered Jah, whose maternal grandfather was the last Caliph of Islam in Turkey; the Indian government hoped he would become a diplomat. But the impetuous young man, still sulking over the end of his kingdom, was more interested in tinkering with cars. Then, in 1972, he discovered Australia. After his first glance of the outback, he is said...