Documents for "Middle Eastern History: Biographies":

• Abbas, Mahmoud 1935-, Palestinian leader, also known as Abu Mazen. He was born in Saffed, Palestine (now in Israel), but his family fled during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli conflict and lived in Syria. Educated at...

• Abbasid or Abbaside , Arab family descended from Abbas , the uncle of Muhammad. The Abbasids held the caliphate from 749 to 1258, but they were recognized neither in Spain nor (after 787) W of Egypt. Under the Umayyad caliphs the Abbasids lived quietly...

• Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud see Ibn Saud.

• Abd al-Malik c.646-705, 5th Umayyad caliph (685-705); son of Marwan I. At his accession, Islam was torn by dissension and threatened by the Byzantine Empire. With the help of his able general al-Hajjaj, Abd al-Malik overthrew the...

• Abdubakar Tafawa Balewa, Alhaji Sir see Balewa, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa.

• Abdullah I (Abdullah ibn Husayn) , 1882-1951, king of Jordan (1946-51), b. Mecca; son of Husayn ibn Ali of the Hashemite family. During World War I, Abdullah, with British support, led Arab revolts against Turkish rule. After the war he unsuccessfully fought against Ibn Saud for control of the Hejaz. In 1921, Great Britain made Abdullah the emir of Transjordan as well as placed Abdullah's brother Faisal as king of Iraq. In World War II, Abdullah strongly opposed the Axis powers. Following the partition of Palestine (May, 1948) he led the troops of his British-trained force, the Arab Legion,...

• Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz 1924-, king of Saudi Arabia (2005-), b. Riyadh. Like his predecessor, King Fahd , he is a son of Saudi Arabia's founder, Ibn Saud , but by a different wife. In 1962 he was appointed deputy defense minister and also commander of the Saudi National Guard, a post he still holds. Named second deputy prime minister in 1975, he...

• Abdullah II äbdool´lä , 1962-, king of Jordan (1999-), b. Amman, educated at Sandhurst and Oxford in England and Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C. He joined (1984) the Jordanian military, rose swiftly, became (1994)...

• Abu al-Abbas as-Saffah d. 754, 1st Abbasid caliph (749-54). Raised to the caliphate by the armed might of Abu Muslim , he took the reign name as-Saffah [shedder of blood]. Most of the Umayyad family was exterminated, and...

• Abu Bakr 573-634, 1st caliph, friend, father-in-law, and successor of Muhammad. He was probably Muhammad's first convert outside the Prophet's family and alone accompanied Muhammad on the Hegira. The...

• Ali (Ali ibn Abu Talib), 598?-661, 4th caliph (656-61). The debate over his right to the caliphate caused a major split in Islam into Sunni and Shiite branches, and he is regarded by the Shiites as...

• Allawi, Ayad 1946-, Iraqi political leader. A doctor and prominent secular Shiite, he was a Ba'ath party member but went into exile in 1971. After a 1978 assassination attempt, he began organizing Iraqi...

• Antara fl. 600, Arab warrior and poet, celebrated in his own day as a hero because he rose from slave birth to be a tribal chief. His poetry is represented by one poem in the Muallaqat. His greatness gave...

• Arafat, Yasir 1929-2004, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the coordinating body for Palestinian organizations, and head of Al Fatah, the largest group in the PLO. He was born in Cairo, but spent most of his youth in Jerusalem. After smuggling arms...

• Assad, Hafez al- 1930-2000, president of Syria (1971-2000). He graduated (1955) from the Syrian Military Academy and advanced through the army ranks to become a general. He served (1966-70) as Syria's minister of...

• Bakr, Ahmad Hasan al- 1914-82, president of Iraq (1968-79). He served as an officer in the Iraqi army but was forced to retire (1958) because of his participation in revolutionary activities. A member of the Ba'ath party , an ultranationalist left-wing group, he became prime minister after the Ba'athists seized power in 1963. He left the government later in that same year when conservative military leaders forced...

• Barmakids or Barmecides , Persian-descended religious family from Khorasan. They served as viziers to the Abbasid caliphs in the 8th cent. Khalid ibn Barmak, d. 782?, supported the revolution that brought about Abbasid rule. He was given certain ministerial powers, such as tax collecting and control over the army; later, he was appointed governor of Fars and governor of Tabaristan. Yahya, d. 805, son of Khalid, became secretary to the caliph's son, Harun al-Rashid. Yahya and Harun were imprisoned by the caliph's successor, Musa al-Hadi, who died soon afterward. Harun became caliph and made Yahya chief administrator. Yahya's sons, Jafar, d. 803, and al-Fadl, d. 808, also became administrators during the reign of Harun. Jafar headed various interior departments. Al-Fadl eventually assumed his father's central duties and was appointed governor of...

• Barmecides see Barmakids.

• Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian 1868-1926, British traveler, author, and government official, one of the builders of the modern state of Iraq , grad. Oxford, 1887. From 1899 she journeyed extensively in Persia, Anatolia, and Syria and early in 1914 reached Haïl in the Arabian Desert. In World War I she placed her unmatched knowledge of...

• bin Laden, Osama 1957?-, Saudi-born leader of Al Qaeda [Arab.,=the base], a terrorist organization devoted to uniting all Muslims and establishing a transnational, strict-fundamentalist Islamic state. The youngest...

• Buyid Shiite Islamic dynasty of N Persian descent that controlled Iraq and Persia from c.945 to 1060; founded by the sons of Buyeh. In the 930s, Buyeh's sons (Ali, Hasan, and Ahmad) seized such cities...

• Chamoun, Camille 1900-1987, Lebanese political leader. Chamoun held a variety of governmental posts before serving as president of Lebanon (1952-58). A Maronite Christian, Chamoun was opposed by Muslim leaders who...

• Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz 1923-2005, king of Saudi Arabia (1982-2005). A son of Ibn Saud , the founder of Saudi Arabia, Fahd served as education minister (1953-62) and interior minister (1962-75) and was named (1975) crown prince by his half-brother King Khalid. He was a powerful shaper of Saudi foreign and domestic policy under Khalid, on whose death (1982) he succeeded to the throne. Fahd's decision to permit U.S. and other foreign forces to based in...

• Faisal I or Faysal I , 1885-1933, king of Iraq (1921-33). The third son of Husayn ibn Ali, sherif of Mecca, he is also called Faisal ibn Husayn. Faisal was educated in Constantinople and later sat in the Ottoman...

• Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud 1905-75, king of Saudi Arabia (1964-75), son of Ibn Saud, brother of Saud. Faisal led several military campaigns in the making of Saudi Arabia. In 1958 he became premier and foreign minister in...

• Faisal II or Feisal II , 1935-58, king of Iraq (1939-58). He ascended to the throne on the death of his father, King Ghazi. After a long regency, Faisal attained his majority in 1953. Regarded as pro-Western in his...

• Feisal see Faisal.

• Gemayel Maronite Christian family active in Lebanese politics; leaders of the Phalange party (1937-82), and later the Phalange militia. Pierre Gemayel, 1905-84, founded the right-wing Phalange movement in the early 1930s. In 1937 he became leader of the official Phalange party, representing Lebanon's large Maronite community. Pierre was elected to...

• Hélou, Charles 1911-2001, Lebanese political leader. After working as a newspaper publisher, he was appointed (1947) Lebanon's representative to the Vatican. He served (1954-55) as minister of justice and health...

• Hafez, Amin al- 1911-, Syrian army officer and politician. He served (1963-65) as chief of state in Syria's Ba'athist government but had to flee to Lebanon (1965) after radical Ba'athist military officers, led by...

• Hariri, Rafik 1944-2005, Lebanese tycoon and political leader, b. Sidon. The son of a poor Sunni Muslim farmer, he moved to Saudi Arabia in 1965. After teaching mathematics there, he formed (1969) his own...

• Harun al-Rashid [Arab.,=Aaron the Upright], c.764-809, 5th and most famous Abbasid caliph (786-809). He succeeded his brother Musa al-Hadi, fourth caliph, a year after the death of his father, Mahdi, the third caliph. In his youth he had been very successful as a general in...

• Husayn ibn Ali 1856-1931, Arab political and religious leader. In 1908 he succeeded as grand sherif of Mecca and thus became ruler of the Hejaz under the Ottoman Empire. In World War I, after receiving British assurances that all Arab lands not under French control would be liberated, he began (1916) a successful revolt against the Turks...

• Hussein I 1935-99, king of Jordan; educated in England at Harrow and Sandhurst. He ascended the throne (1953) after his grandfather Abdullah I had been killed (1951) by a Palestinian extremist and after his father was declared (1952) mentally unfit to serve as king. The target of more than a dozen assassination attempts, Hussein generally...

• Hussein, Saddam 1937-, Iraqi political leader. A member of the Ba'ath party , he fled Iraq after participating (1959) in an assassination attempt on the country's prime minister; in Egypt he attended law school. Returning to Iraq in 1963 after the Ba'athists briefly came to...

• Husseini, Amin al- 1896?-1974, Arab political and religious leader. He was inveterately opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, and, suspected of complicity in anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem (1920),...

• Ibn Batuta 1304?-1378?, Muslim traveler, b. Tangier. No other medieval traveler is known to have journeyed so extensively. In 30 years (from c.1325) he made a series of journeys recorded in a dictated...

• Ibn Saud (Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud) , c.1880-1953, founder of Saudi Arabia and its first king. His family, with its regular seat at Riyadh in the Nejd , were the traditional leaders of the ultraorthodox Wahhabi movement in Islam. During Ibn Saud's youth the Saud family was in exile in Kuwait. In 1902 he and a small party of relatives and servants recaptured Riyadh. By 1912 he had completed the conquest of...

• Ibrahim Pasha 1789-1848, Egyptian general. He was the eldest son of Muhammad Ali , governor of Egypt under the Ottoman Empire. Ibrahim conducted (1816-19) largely successful campaigns against the Wahhabis in Arabia. He fought (1825-28) against the insurgent Greeks, but the landing of French troops forced him to withdraw from the country. After Muhammad Ali turned against the Ottoman sultan, Ibrahim...

• Jaafari, Ibrahim al- 1947-, Iraqi political leader, b. Karbala as Ibrahim al-Ashaiqer. A Shiite, a physician, and the leader of the Dawa religious party, he fled Iraq in 1980 when Saddam Hussein began exterminating Dawa party members. In exile in Iran he forged close ties with Iranian leaders, and later in England he was Dawa's head and spokesman. Returning home shortly after the U.S...

• Kassem, Abdul Karim 1914-63, Iraqi general and politician. A graduate (1934) of the Iraqi military academy, he attended the army staff college. His outstanding bravery, shown in campaigns against the Kurds and in the...

• Khalid ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Saud 1913-82, king of Saudi Arabia (1975-82). He became king after the assassination of his half-brother Faisal. The son of Ibn Saud , the founder of Saudi Arabia, he was the third of Ibn Saud's sons...

• Lawrence of Arabia see Lawrence, T. E.

• Lawrence, T. E. (Thomas Edward Lawrence), 1888-1935, British adventurer, soldier, and scholar, known as Lawrence of Arabia. While a student at Oxford he went on a walking tour of Syria and in 1911 joined a British...

• Malik, Charles Habib 1906-87, Lebanese statesman and educator, grad. American Univ. of Beirut, 1927, Ph.D. Harvard, 1937. After teaching philosophy at the American Univ. of Beirut (1937-45), Malik served as minister...

• Malikshah 1055-92, third sultan of the Seljuks (see Turks ). In 1072 he succeeded his father to head an empire that controlled parts of Arabia, Mesopotamia, and areas near the Persian Gulf. His rule was aided...

• Mamun, al- (Abu al-Abbas Abd Allah al-Mamun) , 786-833, 7th Abbasid caliph (813-33); son of Harun al-Rashid. He succeeded his brother al-Amin after a bitter civil war, but was unable to enter Baghdad until 819. He was himself one of the Mutazilites, holding that the Qur'an was created in time, i.e., that...

• Mansur, al- [Arab.,=the victorious], d. 775, 2d Abbasid caliph (754-75) and founder of the city of Baghdad. His name was in full Abu Jafar abd-Allah al-Mansur. He was brother and successor of Abu al-Abbas. A vigorous and dominating caliph, he successfully consolidated his empire even though it was threatened by internal strife and foreign wars. He could not prevent the secession of Muslim Spain,...

• Marwan II 684-750, last of the Umayyad caliphs. He served as governor of Armenia before his short-lived rule as caliph (744-50). Marwan reorganized his army, taking Syria by 746. Soon afterward, the Umayyad...

• Moawiyah see Muawiya.

• Muawiya d. 680, 1st Umayyad caliph (661-80), one of the greatest Muslim statesmen; son of Abu Sufyan, a Koreish tribesman of Mecca. He submitted to Islam the year of the surrender of Mecca and became Muhammad's secretary...

• Nur ad-Din 1118-74, ruler of Syria. He was the son of the conqueror Zangi, and he succeeded to power in 1145. He defeated the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor and fought with Baldwin III of Jerusalem. His lieutenant Shirkuh barely forestalled the forces of Baldwin's successor,...

• Omar see Umar , caliph.

• Osama bin Laden see bin Laden, Osama.

• Osman caliph: see Uthman.

• Osman I or Othman I , 1259-1326, leader of the Ottoman Turks and founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire. The Osmanli or Ottoman Turks derive their name from Osman. He proclaimed (1290) his independence from his overlord, the Seljuk Turks, upon the collapse of their empire. Aided by an influx of...

• Philby, Harry St. John Bridger 1885-1960, British explorer, official, and author. He joined (1917) the British foreign service, was sent on a special mission to Arabia, and became the first European to visit the southern...

• Sarkis, Elias 1924-85, president of Lebanon (1976-82). He was governor (1967-76) of Lebanon's central bank and was elected president by parliament during the bitter Lebanese civil war (1975-76). Despite his...

• Saud (Ibn Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud) , 1902-69, king of Saudi Arabia (1953-64), son of Ibn Saud, brother of Faisal. Saud, who had distinguished himself in several of his father's early campaigns, became viceroy of Nejd in 1926 and heir...

• Saud, Ibn see Ibn Saud.

• Stanhope, Lady Hester Lucy 1776-1839, English traveler. Leaving England in 1810, she traveled in the Levant, adopting Eastern male dress and a religion that was a composite of Christianity and Islam. She finally settled...

• Timurids dynasty founded by Timur (or Tamerlane). After the death of Timur (1405) there was a struggle for power over his empire, which then extended from the Euphrates River to the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) and Indus rivers. The...

• Umar or Omar , c.581-644, 2d caliph (see caliphate ). At first hostile to Islam, he was converted by 618, becoming an adviser to Muhammad. He succeeded Abu Bakr as caliph without opposition in 634. In his reign Islam became an imperial power. The Muslim generals pushed conquests far and wide—into Syria, Egypt, and the Persian Empire. Umar also laid the...

• Umayyad the first Islamic dynasty (661-750). Their reign witnessed the return to leadership roles of the pre-Islamic Arab elite, and the rejuvenation of tribal loyalties. The Banu Ummaya constituted the...

• Usama bin Laden see bin Laden, Osama.