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and belief in monism. True to form, nearly eleven centuries after his death, al-Hallaj continues to polarize the Sufis, Islamic philosophers and theologians to this day.

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Al-Hamid I: to the throne of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). He suffered severe defeats in the second of the Russo-Turkish Wars with Catherine II, but suffered no major territorial losses when peace was made at Jassy in 1792. An ardent reformer, Selim set out to rebuild the Turkish navy on European lines, to reform the army, and to curb the Janissaries. In 1798 Selim joined the second coalition against France in the French Revolutionary Wars. Turkish forces lost Jaffa to Napoleon Bonaparte, who had invaded (1799) Syria after taking Egypt, but they held out at Acre and forced Napoleon to retreat. In 1801 the French left Egypt, which was restored to the sultan. In 1804 the Serbs under Karageorge revolted.

      In 1806 war with Russia broke out again. A revolt of the Janissaries and conservatives who opposed his reforms led to Selim’s deposition and imprisonment in 1807. Mustafa IV was placed on the throne. A loyal army marched on Constantinople to restore Selim. It entered the city in 1808, just after Selim had been strangled on Mustafa’s orders. Mustafa was executed and another of Selim’s cousins, Mahmud II, was put on the throne. During Selim’s reign Egypt became virtually independent under Muhammad Ali, as did Albania under Ali Pasha. Selim’s well-intentioned and efficient reforms came too late to arrest the decay of the Ottoman empire

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Al Husseini, Faisal (1940-2001): Born in Baghdad to Abdul Qadir, the field commander during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in Palestine during the time his family took refuge there al Hussein grew up in Cairo where he obtained a university degree. In 1979 he opened the Arab Studies Center in East Jerusalem which the Israeli authorities regarded as a front for coordinating PLO activities in the Occupied Territories. In the preliminary talks that led to the Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid in October 1991 he acted as a bridge between US secretary of State James Baker and Arafat. During his trip to Kuwait to repair the damaged relations between the emirate and the PLO al Hussein died of a heart attack.

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Al-Husseini, Hajj Muhammad Amin (1897-1974): Palestinian religious and political leader. Born into a prominent religious family in Jerusalem al Hussein received his secondary education in the city, studied for a year at al Azhar University in Cairo and then enrolled at the Ottoman school of administration in Istanbul. As the leader of an Arab nationalist group in Jerusalem, the Arab Club he considered Palestine to be part of Greater Syria and opposed Jewish immigration into Palestine. In December sir Herbert ordered the establishment of a five member Supreme Muslim Council charged with running religious endowments and courts and mosques to be elected indirectly. He insisted demand that restrictions on Jewish immigration should be coupled with the establishment of an Arab national government made him the most significant political leader of Arab Palestinians.

      In April 1936, as his behest, various Arab groups united to form the Arab Higher Committee under his leadership. Al Husseini took refuge in the Muslim shrines of Jerusalem and then managed to flee, first to Lebanon and then Syria From there he continued to direct the Arab revolt, which ended in March 1939 with a death toll of 3,232 Arabs 329 Jews and 135 Britons. soon after the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 al Husseini arrived in Baghdad as a political refugee and began rallying anti Zionist and anti British sentiments in Iraq. At the end of the war al Husseini was arrested by the French forces but soon managed to escape to Cairo. After the Palestine War his attempts to form a government of all Palestine in the Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip were cold shouldered by Cairo. He moved to Beirut in 1959.

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Al-Idrisi (1100–1166): Moroccan traveler, cartographer and geographer, educated in Cordoba, Spain, famous for an important geographical work on the Seven Climes (1154) for Roger II of Sicily. It contains one map for each clime (i.e. climatic zone); the maps of later manuscripts suggest that those in the autograph were colored. Also, he produced the first map of the world for Roger, the Norman King of Sicily. al-Idrisi also wrote the Book of Roger, a geographic study of the peoples, climates, resources and industries of all the world known at that time. In it, he incidentally relates the tale of a Moroccan ship blown west in the Atlantic and returning with tales of faraway lands.

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Al Iryani, Abdul Rahman (1908-1998): Yemeni politician; president of North Yemen, 1967-74, Born into a notable Zaidi family in Saada, Iryani received religious education and trained as an Islamic judge. Having failed to strike a deal with the royalists, Nasser freed Sallal in September 1966. On his return home Sallal purged his rivals, including Iryani, who now found himself under house arrest in Cairo. He was overthrown in a bloodless coup by Col. Ibrahim Hamdi in June 1974. He went into Exile to Lebanon and then to Syria. He was allowed to return home in October 1981.

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Al-Jazari, Badi’al-Zaman Abu al-’Izz Isma’il ibn al-Razāz (1136-1206): was an Arab or a Kurdish Muslim polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, craftsman, artist, and mathematician from Jazirat ibn Umar (current Cizre), who lived during the Islamic Golden Age (Middle Ages). He is best known for writing the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices in 1206, where he described fifty mechanical devices along with instructions on how to construct them.

       Biography:

      Little is known about al-Jazari and most of that comes from the introduction to his Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. He was named after the area in which he was born (the city of Jazirat ibn Umar). Like his father before him, he served as chief engineer at the Artuklu Palace, the residence of the Mardin branch of the Turkish Artuqid dynasty which ruled across eastern Anatolia as vassals of the Zangid rulers of Mosul and later Ayyubid general Saladin. He was born in the Kurdish city of Tor, now located in the district of Cizre in south-Eastern Turkey.

      His Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices appears to have been quite popular as it appears in a large number of manuscript copies, and as he explains repeatedly, he only describes devices he has built himself. According to Mayr, the book’s style resembles that of a modern “do-it-yourself book.

      Some of his devices were inspired by earlier devices, such as one of his monumental water clocks, which were based on that of a Pseudo-Archimedes. He also cites the influence of the Banu Musa brothers for his fountains, al-Asturlabi for the design of a candle clock, and Hibat Allah ibn al-Husayn (d. 1139) for musical automata. Al-Jazari goes on to describe the improvements he made to the work of his predecessors, and describes a number of devices, techniques and components that are original innovations which do not appear in the works by his predecessors.

       Mechanisms and methods:

      While many of al-Jazari’s inventions may now appear to be trivial, the most significant aspect of al-Jazari’s machines are the mechanisms, components, ideas, methods, and design features which they employ.

       Camshaft:

      The camshaft, a shaft to which cams are attached, was first introduced in 1206 by al-Jazari, who employed them in his automata, water clocks (such as the candle clock) and water-raising machines. The cam and camshaft later appeared in European mechanisms from the 14th century.

       Crankshaft and crank-slider mechanism:

      The eccentrically mounted handle of the rotary hand mill in 5th century BC Spain that spread across the Roman Empire constitutes a crank. The earliest evidence of a crank and connecting rod mechanism dates to the 3rd century AD Hierapolis sawmill in the Roman Empire. The crank also appears in the mid-9th century in several of the hydraulic devices described by the Banū Mūsā brothers in their Book of Ingenious Devices.

      In 1206, al-Jazari invented an early crankshaft, which he incorporated with a crank-connecting rod mechanism in his twin-cylinder pump. Like the modern crankshaft, Al-Jazari’s mechanism consisted of a wheel setting several crank pins into motion, with

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