Yaqut ibn 'Abdullah al-Rumi al-Hamawi, Islamic Biographer and Geographer

Hamawi, Yaqut ibn 'Abdullah al-Rumi al-
Yaqut ibn 'Abdullah al-Rumi al-Hamawi (1179–1229) (Arabic: ياقوت الحموي الرومي‎) was an Islamic biographer and geographer renowned for his encyclopedic writings on the Muslim world. "al-Rumi" ("from Rum") refers to his Greek (Byzantine) descent; "al-Hamawi" is taken after Hama, Syria, and ibn-Abdullah is a reference to his father's name, Abdullah. The word yāqūt means ruby or hyacinth.

Yaqut was working as a slave to a trader, Askar ibn Abi Nasr al-Hamawi, who lived in Baghdad, Iraq.  His master taught him accounting and trading and sent him to trade on his behalf. He later freed him of his obligations and that enabled Yaqut to dedicate himself to his scholarly tasks. He was one of the last scholars who had access to the libraries east of the Caspian Sea before the Mongol invasion of Central Asia. Yaqut travelled to the peaceful scholarly city of ancient Merv in present-day Turkmenistan. There Yaqut spent two years in libraries, learning much of the knowledge he would later use in his works. Yaqut spent the last few years of his life in Aleppo and died there.

The works of al-Hamawi include the following:

• Kitab mu'jam al-buldan (معجم البلدان "Dictionary of Countries")
• Mu'jam al-udabā', (معجم الأدباء "Dictionary of Writers") written in 1226.
• al-Mushtarak wadh'ā wal-Muftaraq Sa'qā (المشترک وضعا والمفترق صعقا )

Hamdun ibn al-Hajj, Moroccan Scholar

Hamdun ibn al-Hajj or in full Abu al-Fayd Hamdun ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Hamdun ibn Abd al-Rahman Mohammed ibn al-Hajj al-Fasi al-Sulami al-Mirdasi (1760–1817) was one of the most outstanding scholars of the reign of Mulay Suleiman of Morocco.  He was a committed Tijani Sufi but also an outspoken critic of some of the practices of Sufism in that time. Hamdun ibn al-Hajj was also one of the best known poets of the period and the author of a diwan (Silsilat Dhakhair al-turath al-adabi bi-al-Maghrib). He also wrote a commentary on Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Muqaddimah, a gloss on Taftazani's treatise on the Mukhtasar and a series of Diwans including a controversial poem dedicated to Amir Sau'ud ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz.

Ibn al-Haytham, Islam's Greatest Scientist

Ibn al-Haytham
Ibn al-Haytham (Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham) (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham) (Alhazen) (Avennathan) (965 in Basra - c. 1039 in Cairo).  Arab mathematician known in the West as Alhazen or Avennathan.   He is considered to be Islam’s greatest scientist who devoted his life to physics, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine.  His treatise Optics, in which he deftly used experiments and advanced mathematics to understand the action of light, exerted a profound influence on many European natural philosophers.  In addition to his Latinized names of Alhazen and Avennathan, Ibn al-Haytham is sometimes called al-Basri.  He is also nicknamed Ptolemaeus Secundus ("Ptolemy the Second") or simply "The Physicist" in medieval Europe.

Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (commonly known as Alhazen, the Latinized form of his first name, al-Hasan) was born in Basra (Iraq) in 965.  He was given a traditional Muslim education, but at an early age he became perplexed by the variety of religious beliefs and sects, because he was convinced of the unity of truth.  When he was older, he concluded that truth could be attained only in doctrines whose matter was sensible and whose form was rational.  He found such doctrines in the writings of Aristotle and in natural philosophy and mathematics. 

By devoting himself completely to learning, Alhazen achieved fame as a scholar and was given a political post at Basra.  In an attempt to obtain a better position, he claimed that he could construct a machine to regulate the flooding of the Nile.  The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, wishing to use this sage’s expertise, persuaded him to move to Cairo.  Alhazen, to fulfill his boast, was trapped into heading an engineering mission to Egypt’s southern border.  On his way to Aswan, he began to have doubts about his plan, for he observed excellently designed and perfectly constructed buildings along the Nile, and he realized that his scheme, if it were possible, would have already been carried out by the creators of these impressive structures.  His misgivings were confirmed when he discovered that the cataracts south of Aswan made flood control impossible.  Convinced of the impracticability of his plan, and fearing the wrath of the eccentric and volatile caliph, Alhazen pretended to be mentally deranged.  Upon his return to Cairo, he was confined to his house until al-Hakim’s death in 1021. 

Alhazen then took up residence in a small domed shrine near the Azhar mosque.  Having been given back his previously sequestered property, he resumed his activities as a writer and teacher.  He may have earned his living by copying mathematical works, including Euclid’s Stoicheia (c. fourth century B.C.T.; Elements) and Mathematike suntaxis (c.150; Almagest), and may also have traveled and had contact with other scholars.

The scope of Alhazen’s work is impressive.  He wrote studies on mathematics, physics, astronomy, and medicine, as well as commentaries on the writings of Aristotle and Galen.  He was an exact observer, a skilled experimenter, and an insightful theoretician.  He put these abilities to excellent use in the field of optics.  He has been called the most important figure in optics between antiquity and the seventeenth century.  Within optics itself, the range of his interests was wide. He discussed theories of light and vision, the anatomy and diseases of the eye, reflection and refraction, the rainbow, lenses, spherical and parabolic mirrors, and the pinhole camera (camera obscura).

Alhazen’s most important work was Kitab al-Manazir, commonly known as Optics.  Not published until 1572, and only appearing in the West in the Latin translation Opticae thesaurus Alhazeni libri vii, it attempted to clarify the subject by inquiring into its principles.  He rejected Euclid’s and Ptolemy’s doctrine of visual rays (the extramission theory, which regarded vision as analogous to the sense of touch).  For example, Ptolemy attributed sight to the action of visual rays issuing conically from the observer’s eye and being reflected from various objects.  Alhazen also disagreed with past versions of the intromission theory, which treated the visible object as a source from which forms (simulacra) issued.  The atomists, for example, held that objects shed sets of atoms as a snake sheds its skin; when this set enters the eye, vision occurs.  In another version of the intromission theory, Aristotle treated the visible object as a modifier of the medium between the object and the eye.  Alhazen found the atomistic theory unconvincing because it could not explain how the image of a large mountain could enter the small pupil of the eye.  He did not like the Aristotelian theory because it could not explain how the eye could distinguish individual parts of the seen world, since objects altered the entire intervening medium.  Alhazen, in his version of the intromission theory, treated the visible object as a collection of small areas, each of which sends forth its own ray.  He believed that vision takes place through light rays reflected from every point on an object’s surface converging toward an apex in the eye.

According to Alhazen, light is an essential form in self-luminous bodies, such as the sun, and an accidental form in bodies that derive their luminosity from outside sources.  Accidental light, such as the moon, is weaker than essential light, but both forms are emitted by their respective sources in exactly the same way: noninstantaneously, from every point on the source, in all directions, and along straight lines.  To establish rectilinear propagation for essential, accidental, reflected, and refracted radiation, Alhazen performed many experiments with dark chambers, pinhole cameras, sighting tubes, and strings.

In the first book of Optics, Alhazen describes the anatomy of the eye.  His description is not original, being based largely on the work of Galen, but he modifies traditional ocular geometry to suit his own explanation of vision.  For example, he claims that sight occurs in the eye by means of the glacial humor (what would be called the crystalline lens), because when this humor is injured, vision is destroyed.  He also uses such observations as eye pain while gazing on intense light and afterimages from strongly illuminated objects to argue against the visual-ray theory, because these observations show that light is coming to the eye from the object.  With this picture of intromission established, Alhazen faces the problem of explaining how replicas as big as a mountain can pass through the tiny pupil into the eye.

He begins the solution of this problem by recognizing that every point in the eye receives a ray from every point in the visual field.  The difficulty with this punctiform analysis is that, if each point on the object sends light and color in every direction to each point of the eye, then all this radiation would arrive at the eye in total confusion.  For example, colors would arrive mixed.  Simply put, the problem is a superfluity of rays.  To explain vision, each point of the surface of the glacial humor needs to receive a ray from only one point in the visual field.  In short, it is necessary to establish a one-to-one correspondence between points in the visual field and points in the eye.

To fulfill this goal, Alhazen notices that only one ray from each point in the visual field falls perpendicularly on the convex surface of the eye.  He then proposes that all other rays, those falling at oblique angles to the eye’s surface, are refracted and so weakened that they are incapable of affecting visual power.  Alhazen even performed an experiment to show that perpendicular rays are strong and oblique rays weak. He shot a metal sphere against a dish both perpendicularly and obliquely.  The perpendicular shot fractured the plate, whereas the oblique shot bounced off harmlessly.  Thus, in his theory, the cone of perpendicular rays coming into the eye accounts for the perception of the visible object’s shape and the laws of perspective.

Book 2 of Optics contains Alhazen’s theory of cognition based on visual perception, and book 3 deals with binocular vision and visual errors.  Catoptrics (the theory of reflected light) is the subject of book 4.  Alhazen here formulates the laws of reflection. Incident and reflected rays are in the same plane, and incident and reflected angles are equal.  The equality of the angles of incidence and reflection allows Alhazen to explain the formation of an image in a plane mirror.  As throughout Optics,  Alhazen uses experiments to help establish his contentions.  For example, by throwing an iron sphere against a metal mirror at an oblique angle, he found that the incident and reflected movements of the sphere were symmetrical.  The reflected movement of the iron sphere, because of its heaviness, did not continue in a straight line, as the light ray does, but Alhazen did not contend that the iron sphere is an exact duplicate of the light ray.

Alhazen’s investigation of reflection continues in books 5 and 6 of Optics.  Book 5 contains the famous “Problem of Alhazen”: For any two points opposite a spherical reflecting surface, either convex or concave, find the point or points on the surface at which the light from one of the two points will be reflected to the other.  Today it is known that the algebraic solution of this problem leads to an equation of the fourth degree, but Alhazen solved it geometrically by the intersection of a circle and a hyperbola.

Book 7, which concludes Optics, is devoted to dioptrics (the theory of refraction).  Although Alhazen did not discover the mathematical relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, his treatment of the phenomenon was the most extensive and enlightening before that of Rene Descartes.  As with reflection, Alhazen explores refraction through a mechanical analogy.  Light, he says, moves with great speed in a transparent medium such as air and with slower speed in a dense body such as glass or water.  The slower speed of the light ray in the denser medium is the result of the greater resistance it encounters, but this resistance is not strong enough to hinder its movement completely.  Since the refracted light ray is not strong enough to maintain its original direction in the denser medium, it moves in another direction along which its passage will be easier (that is, it turns toward the normal).  This idea of the easier and quicker path was the basis of Alhazen’s explanation of refraction, and it is a forerunner of the principle of least time associated with the name of Pierre de Fermat.

Optics was Alhazen’s most significant work and by far his best known, but he also wrote more modest treatises in which he discussed the rainbow, shadows, camera obscura, and Ptolemy’s optics as well as spheroidal and paraboloidal burning mirrors.  The ancient Greeks had a good understanding of plane mirrors, but Alhazen developed an exhaustive geometrical analysis of the more difficult problem of the formation of images in spheroidal and paraboloidal mirrors.

Although Alhazen’s achievements in astronomy do not equal those in optics, his extant works reveal his mastery of the techniques of Ptolemaic astronomy.  These works are mostly short tracts on minor problems, for example, sundials, moonlight, eclipses, parallax, and determining the gibla (the direction to be faced in prayer).  In another treatise, he was able to explain the apparent increase in size of heavenly bodies near the horizon, and he also estimated the thickness of the atmosphere.

His best astronomical work, and the only one known to the medieval West, was Hay’at al-‘alan (tenth or eleventh century; on the configuration of the world).  This treatise grew out of Alhazen’s desire that the astronomical system correspond to the true movements of actual heavenly bodies.  He therefore attacked Ptolemy’s system, in which the motions of heavenly bodies were explained in terms of imaginary points moving on imaginary circles.  In his work, Alhazen tried to discover the physical reality underlying Ptolemy’s abstract astronomical system.  He accomplished this task by viewing the heavens as a series of concentric spherical shells whose rotations were interconnected.  Alhazen’s system accounted for the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies in a clear and untechnical way, which accounts for the book’s popularity in the Middle Ages.

Alhazen’s fame as a mathematician has largely depended on his geometrical solutions of various optical problems, but more than twenty strictly mathematical treatises have survived.  Some of these deal with geometrical problems arising from his studies of Euclid’s Elements, whereas others deal with quadrature problems, that is, constructing squares equal in area to various plane figures.  He also wrote a work on lunes (figures contained between the arcs of two circles) and on the properties of conic sections.  Although he was not successful with every problem, his performance, which exhibited his masterful command of higher mathematics, has rightly won for him the admiration of later mathematicians.

For most scientific historians, Alhazen was the greatest Muslim scientist, and Optics was the most important work in the field from Ptolemy’s time to Johannes Kepler’s.  Alhazen extricated himself from the limitations of such earlier theories as the atomistic, Aristotelian, and Ptolemaic and integrated what he knew about medicine, physics, and mathematics into a single comprehensive theory of light and vision.  Although his theory contained ideas from older theories, he combined these ideas with his new insights into a fresh creation, which became the source of a new optical tradition.

Alhazen's optical theories had some influence on Islamic scientists, but their main impact was on the West.  Optics was translated from Arabic into Latin at the end of the twelfth century.  It was widely studied, and in the thirteenth century, Witelo (also known as Vitellio) made liberal use of Alhazen’s text in writing his comprehensive book on optics.  Roger Bacon, John Peckham, and Giambattista della Porta are only some of the many thinkers who were influenced by Alhazen’s work.  Indeed, it was not until Kepler, six centuries later, that work on optics progressed beyond the point to which Alhazen’s ideas had taken the subject matter.  Indeed, it would not be going too far to say that Alhazen’s optical theories defined the scope and goals of the field from his day to ours.

Al-Haitham was one of the most eminent physicists, whose contributions to optics and the scientific methods are outstanding.  Ibn al-Haitham was born in 965 in Basra (in present day Iraq), and received his education in Basra and Baghdad.  He traveled to Egypt and Spain.  He spent most of his life in Spain, where he conducted research in optics, mathematics, physics, medicine and development of scientific methods.

Al-Haitham conducted experiments on the propagation

of light and colors, optic illusions and reflections.  He examined the refraction of light rays through transparent medium (air, water) and discovered the laws of refraction.  He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colors.  In detailing his experiment with spherical segments (glass vessels filled with water) , he came very close to discovering the theory of magnifying lenses which was developed in Italy three centuries later.  It took another three centuries before the law of sines was proposed by Snell and Descartes.

Al-Haitham’s book Kitab al-Manazir was translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, as was also his book dealing with the colors of sunset.  He dealt at length with the theory of various physical phenomena such as the rainbow, shadows, eclipses, and speculated on the physical nature of light.  Virtually all of the medieval Western writers on optics based their optical work on al-Haitham’s Opticae Thesaurus.  His work also influenced Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Kepler.  His approach to optics generated fresh ideas and resulted in great progress in experimental methods.

Al-Haitham was the first to describe accurately the various parts of the eye and gave a scientific explanation of the process of vision.  He contradicted Ptolemy’s and Euclid’s theory of vision that the eye sends out visual rays to the object of the vision.  According to al-Haitham, the rays originate in the object of vision and not the eye. 

Al-Haitham also attempted to explain binocular vision, and gave a correct explanation of the apparent increase in size of the sun and the moon when near the horizon.  He is known for the earliest use of the camera obscura.  Through these extensive researches on optics, al-Haitham came to be considered the Father of Modern Optics.

In al-Haitham’s writings, one finds a clear explanation of the development of scientific methods as developed and applied by the Muslims, the systematic observation of physical phenomena and their relationship to a scientific theory.  This was a major breakthrough in scientific methodology, as distinct from guess work, and placed scientific study on a sound foundation comprising systematic relationship between observation, hypothesis and verification.

His research in catoptrics focused on spherical and parabolic mirrors and spherical aberration.  He made the important observation that the ratio between the angle of incidence and refraction does not remain constant and investigated the magnifying power of a lens.  His catoptrics contains the important problem known as Alhazen’s problem.  It comprises drawing lines from two points in the plane of a circle meeting at a point on the circumference and making equal angles with the normal at that point.  This leads to an equation of the fourth degree.   Al-Hazen also solved the shape of an aplantic surface of reflection.

In his book Mizan al-Hikmah, al-Haitham discussed the density of the atmosphere and developed a relation between it and the height.  He also studied atmospheric refraction.  Al-Haitham discovered that the twilight only ceases or begins when the sun is nineteen degrees below the horizon and attempted to measure the height of the atmosphere on that basis.  He deduced the height of homogeneous atmosphere to be fifty-five miles.

Al-Haitham’s contribution to mathematics and physics is extensive.  In mathematics, he developed analytical geometry by establishing linkage between algebra and geometry.  In physics, he studied the mechanics of motion of a body and was the first to propose that a body move perpetually unless an external force stops it or changes its direction of motion.  This is strikingly similar to the first law of motion.  He has also discussed the theories of attraction between masses, and it appears that he was aware of the magnitude of acceleration due to gravity.

Alhazen wrote more than two hundred books, very few of which have survived.  His monumental treatise on optics has survived through its Latin translation.  During the Middle Ages, his books on cosmology were translated into Latin, Hebrew and other European languages.  Also, he wrote a book on the subject of evolution. 

Alhazen's influence on physical sciences in general, and optics in particular, has been held in high esteem and his ideas heralded in a new era in both theoretical and experimental optical research.  He wrote commentaries on Aristotle, Galen, Euclid and Ptolemy.  Beer and Medler, in their famous work Der Mond, named one of the surface features of the Moon after Alhazen.  It is the name of a ring shaped plain to the West of the hypothetical Mare Crisium.  Additionally, on February 7, 1999, an asteroid was discovered by S. Sposetti at Gnosca, Italy.  The asteroid was named 59239 Alhazen.

Alhazen, the great Muslim scientist, died in 1039 in Cairo, Egypt. 

Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham see Ibn al-Haytham
Haithem, al- see Ibn al-Haytham
Alhazen see Ibn al-Haytham
Avennathan see Ibn al-Haytham
The First Scientist see Ibn al-Haytham
Father of Modern Optics see Ibn al-Haytham

Nazim al-Haqqani, Sufi Spiritual Leader

Sheikh Nazim, Spiritual Leader to Sufis, Dies at 92

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSMAY 9, 2014

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Sheikh Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Qubrusi al-Haqqani in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 2010.CreditPetros Karadjias/Associated Press

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Sheikh Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Qubrusi al-Haqqani, a leading figure of Sufism, the mystical branch of the Islamic faith, died on Wednesday in Nicosia, Cyprus. He was 92.

Imam Shakir Alemdar, the vice grand mufti of Cyprus, confirmed the death.

He called Sheikh Nazim one of the world’s great Islamic scholars and a spiritual leader to followers of Sufism, which traces its origins to the roots of Islam itself about 1,500 years ago.

Sheikh Nazim was leader of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi order. He was born on April 23, 1922, in Larnaca, Cyprus, in the east Mediterranean. He received his first religious instruction from his grandfather, an Islamic scholar, before studying chemical engineering in 1940 at Istanbul University. In 1944, he visited Lebanon, where he received further religious instruction.

He traveled within Europe in the 1970s and in the 1990s to the United States, where he gained many followers. He opened a study center in Fenton, Mo.

Later in life, Sheikh Nazim received guests at his home in Lefka, Cyprus. He met Pope Benedict XVI during the pontiff’s 2010 visit. The encounter came as the pope was walking in a procession to a Mass at a Nicosia church near the United Nations-controlled buffer zone that divides the island into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south.

Sheikh Nazim married in 1941 and had four children.

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Nazim Al-Haqqani

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nazim Al-Haqqani
Born	Mehmet Nazım Adil 21 April 1922 Larnaca, Cyprus
Died	7 May 2014 (aged 92) Lefkosa, Turkish-Cyprus
Occupation	Leader of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order
Religion	Sunni, Sufi Islam
Website
www.Saltanat.org

Sufism and Tariqa
Ideas[show]
Practices[show]
Sufi orders[show]
Notable early Sufis[show]
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Mehmet Nâzım Adil (Arabic: محمد ناظم الحقاني ‎, April 21, 1922 CE / Sha'ban 23, 1340 AH – May 7, 2014), formally referred to as Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Qubrusi al-Haqqani (Turkish: Nazım Kıbrısi), often called Shaykh Nazim, was aTurkish Cypriot Sufi Sheikh and leader of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order.^[1]

Born in Larnaca, Cyprus, Haqqani is claimed by followers to descent from a lineage including the 11th-century Sufi SaintAbdul Qadir Jilani and 13th-century mystical poet Jalaluddin Rumi.^[2] He was fluent in Turkish (native) and Arabic and could also speak English.

Contents

  [hide] 

• 1 Early life
• 2 Living abroad
• 3 Mission
• 4 Political opinions
• 5 Predictions
• 6 Death
• 7 References
• 8 External links

Early life[edit]

Courtyard of Sheikh Nazim's Dergah,Lefke, Northern Cyprus.

Having completed secondary education in 1940 at the age of 18, Haqqani moved to Istanbul, where two brothers and a sister were living. He studied chemical engineering at Istanbul University. While advancing his non-religious studies, he continued his education in Islamic theology and the Arabic language under the tutelage of Cemalettin Elassonli. Mawlana Shaykh Nazim studied chemical engineering, yet he would later state, "I felt no attraction to modern science; my heart was always drawn to the spiritual sciences."^[2]

At some point during his first year of life in Istanbul, Haqqani met his first spiritual guide, Suleyman Erzurumi, who was a spiritual leader in the NaqshbandiSufi order.^[2] Shortly after obtaining his degree, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim received inspiration to go to Damascus in order to find the Naqshbandi leader ShaykhAbdullah Fa'izi ad-Daghestani. He left Istanbul and arrived in Syria in 1944, but the unrest caused by the Vichy French government prevented his entry into Damascus until 1945.^[2]

While in Cyprus, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim came into conflict with pro-Atatürkgoverning body of the Turkish community of the island. However, all these were dropped shortly thereafter, with the coming to power of Adnan Menderes in Turkey, whose government chose a more tolerant approach to Islamic traditions.^[2]

Mawlana Shaykh Nazim moved back to Damascus in 1952, though every year he visited Cyprus for at least three months.^[2]

Living abroad[edit]

In the year following the death of Shaykh Abdullah Fa'izi ad-Daghestani in 1973, Haqqani began visiting Western Europe, travelling every year from the Middle East to London. While in the United Kingdom, Haqqani was a teacher and associate ofesoteric Christian George Gurdjieff and spiritualist John G. Bennett.^[3][4] Among Mawlana Shaykh Nazim's students and devotees are Hisham Kabbani, Gibril Haddad and Stephen Suleyman Schwartz.

In 1997, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim visited Daghestan, the homeland of one of his spiritual leaders, Shaykh Abdullah Fa'izi ad-Daghestani. He also made repeated visits to Uzbekistan where he made the pilgrimage to the tomb of the eponymous founder of the Naqshbandi Order, Baha-ud-Din Naqshband Bukhari.^[2]

In 1991, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim visited the United States for the first time, at the invitation of his son-in-law and representative Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. At that time Haqqani made the first of four nationwide tours.

In 1998, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim was the chief guest of honor at the Second International Islamic Unity Conference, held in Washington, D.C. Later in the same year, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim traveled to South Africa and visited Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.

Mission[edit]

Naqshbandi Seal

The mission of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi Order of America is to spread the Sufi teachings of the brotherhood of mankind, and the Unity of belief in God that is present in all religions and spiritual paths. Its efforts are directed at bringing the diverse spectrum of religions and spiritual paths into harmony and concord, in recognition of mankind’s responsibility as caretaker of this fragile planet and of one another.

The directorship of the Haqqani Foundation is a position assigned by the grandshaykh of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi Order, Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani. He had appointed his representative (calipha), Shaykh Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi shaykh who has been authorized and given permission to guide followers to the Love of God and to their spiritual stations. Shaykh Kabbani’s arduous religious and spiritual training has endowed him with the qualities necessary for a guide on the Path. He meets many Westerners, advising and teaching them on a daily basis, aided by his own lengthy education in Western institutions, his excellent command of English, French, Turkish and Arabic, and his deep knowledge of psychology and spiritual discipline.^[5]

Political opinions[edit]

Haqqani had been involved in the political realm as well. In the 2000s, he declared that former President of the United States George W. Bush and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair had achieved sainthood in Islam due to their efforts in "fighting tyrants and evil and devils."^[6] Having been born just before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Haqqani was an admirer of the Empire's history and civilization, as opposed to the modern-day Republic of Turkey to which Haqqani's feelings were lukewarm.^[7]

Predictions[edit]

Starting in the 1980s, Haqqani has made a number of Doomsday predictions. In 1978, he predicted that the Mahdi would appear in 1980 and rid the world of evil; when this didn't occur, Haqqani predicted in 1986 that the Mahdi would appear in 1988.^[8] When the second prediction also failed, Haqqani again predicted in the 1990s that the Last Judgment would occur before the year 2000. Haqqani has claimed that the source of these predictions is the Muslim prophet Muhammad.^[9]Haqqani also predicted that the regimes in the Middle East would be replaced by one ruling sultanate before the end of 2011 and that Prince Charles would forcibly dissolve the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Death[edit]

Nazim al-Haqqani passed away at the age of 92 in Northern Cyprus.^[10] [11] Al-Haqqani had been receiving intense care since April 17 when he rushed from his home in Lefka to the Near East University Hospital in Nicosia after suffering from respiratory problems.

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Nazim al-Haqqani

Nazim al-Haqqani or Mehmet Nâzım Adil (Arabic: محمد ناظم الحقاني ‎, April 21, 1922  / Sha'ban  23, 1340 AH – May 7, 2014), formally referred to as Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Qubrusi al-Haqqani (Turkish: Nazım Kıbrısi), often called Shaykh (or Sheikh) Nazim, was a Turkish Cypriot Sufi Sheikh and leader of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order.