Monday, June 23, 2014

A00029 - Fouad Ajami, Commentator and Expert in Arab History


Fouad Ajami, Commentator and Expert in Arab History, Dies at 68

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    Fouad Ajami in 1998.Anne Mandelbaum/Pantheon Books



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    Fouad Ajami, an academic, author and broadcast commentator on Middle East affairs who helped rally support for the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 — partly by personally advising top policy makers — died on Sunday. He was 68.
    The cause was cancer, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where Mr. Ajami was a senior fellow, said in a statement
    An Arab, Mr. Ajami despaired of autocratic Arab governments finding their own way to democracy, and believed that the United States must confront what he called a “culture of terrorism” after the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He likened the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to Hitler.
    Mr. Ajami strove to put Arab history into a larger perspective. He often referred to Muslim rage over losing power to the West in 1683, when aTurkish siege of Vienna failed. He said this memory had led to Arab self-pity and self-delusion as they blamed the rest of the world for their troubles. Terrorism, he said, was one result.
    It was a view that had been propounded by Bernard Lewis, the eminent Middle East historian at Princeton and public intellectual, who also urged the United States to invade Iraq and advised President George W. Bush.
    Most Americans became familiar with Mr. Ajami’s views on CBS News, CNN and the PBS programs “Charlie Rose” and “NewsHour,” where his distinctive beard and polished manner lent force to his authoritative-sounding opinions. He wrote more than 400 articles for magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, as well as a half-dozen books on the Middle East, some of which included his own experiences as a Shiite Muslim in majority Sunni societies.
    Condoleezza Rice summoned him to the Bush White House when she was national security adviser, and he advised Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense. In a speech in 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney invoked Mr. Ajami as predicting that Iraqis would greet liberation by the American military with joy.
    In the years following the Iraqi invasion, Mr. Ajami continued to support the action as stabilizing. But he said this month that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had squandered an opportunity to unify the country after American intervention and become a dictator. More recently, he favored more aggressive policies toward Iran and Syria. Mr. Ajami’s harshest criticism was leveled at Arab autocrats, who by definition lacked popular support. But his use of words like “tribal,” “atavistic” and “clannish” to describe Arab peoples rankled some. So did his belief that Western nations should intervene in the region to correct wrongs. Edward Said, thePalestinian cultural critic who died in 2003, accused him of having “unmistakably racist prescriptions.”
    Others praised him for balance. Daniel Pipes, a scholar who specializes in the Middle East, said in Commentary magazine in 2006 that Mr. Ajami had avoided “the common Arab fixation on the perfidy of Israel.”
    Fouad Ajami was born on Sept. 19, 1945, at the foot of a castle built by Crusaders in Arnoun, a dusty village in southern Lebanon. His family came from Iran (the name Ajami means “Persian” in Arabic) and were prosperous tobacco farmers. When he was 4, the family moved to Beirut.
    As a boy he was taunted by Sunni Muslim children for being Shiite and short, he wrote in “The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey”(1998), an examination of Arab intellectuals of the last two generations. As a teenager, he was enthusiastic about Arab nationalism, a cause he would later criticize. He also fell in love with American culture, particularly Hollywood movies, and especially Westerns. In 1963, a day or two before his 18th birthday, his family moved to the United States.
    He attended Eastern Oregon College (now University), then earned a Ph.D. at the University of Washington after writing a thesis on international relations and world government. He next taught political science at Princeton. In 1980, the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University named him director of Middle East studies. He joined the Hoover Institution in 2011.
    Mr. Ajami’s first book, “The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967” (1981), explored the panic and sense of vulnerability in the Arab world after Israel’s victory in the 1967 war. His next book, “The Vanishing Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon” (1986), profiled an Iranian cleric who helped transform Lebanese Shia from “a despised minority” to effective successful political actors. For the 1988 book “Beirut: City of Regrets,” Mr. Ajami provided a long introduction and some text to accompany a photographic essay by Eli Reed.
    “The Dream Palace of the Arabs” told of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to renew their homelands’ culture through the forces of modernism and secularism. The Christian Science Monitor called it “a cleareyed look at the lost hopes of the Arabs.”
    Partly because of that tone, some condemned the book as too negative. The scholar Andrew N. Rubin, writing in The Nation, said it “echoes the kind of anti-Arabism that both Washington and the pro-Israeli lobby have come to embrace.”
    Mr. Ajami received many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982 and a National Humanities Medal in 2006. He is survived by his wife, Michelle. In a profile in The Nation in 2003, Adam Shatz described Mr. Ajami’s distinctive appearance, characterized by a “dramatic beard, stylish clothes and a charming, almost flirtatious manner.”
    He continued: “On television, he radiates above-the-frayness, speaking with the wry, jaded authority that men in power admire, especially in men who have risen from humble roots. Unlike the other Arabs, he appears to have no ax to grind. He is one of us; he is the good Arab.”

    *****

    Fouad A. Ajami (Arabic: فؤاد عجمي‎; September 18, 1945 – June 22, 2014), was a MacArthur Fellowship winning,Lebanese-born American university professor and writer on Middle Eastern issues. He was a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
    Ajami was an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War, the nobility of which he believed there "can be no doubt".[1]

    Personal[edit]

    Ajami was born in Arnoun, a rocky hamlet in the south of Lebanon. His Shiite family had come to Arnoun from Tabriz, Iran in the 1850s.[2] In Arabic, the word "Ajami" means "non-Arab"; or "non-Arabic-speaker", specifically "Persian", "Persian speaker".[3]
    Ajami arrived in the United States in the fall of 1963, just before he turned 18. He did some of his undergraduate work at Eastern Oregon College (now Eastern Oregon University) in La Grande, Oregon. He did his graduate work at the University of Washington, where he wrote his thesis on international relations and world government, and earned a PhD.[4]

    Career[edit]

    Academia[edit]

    In 1973 Ajami joined the politics department of Princeton University where he did not get tenure. He made a name for himself there as a vocal supporter ofPalestinian self-determination.

    Government[edit]

    Ajami was an advisor to United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as well as a friend and colleague of Paul Wolfowitz.[5]

    Journalism[edit]

    Ajami was a frequent contributor on Middle Eastern issues and contemporary international history to The New York Times Book Review, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, as well as other journals and periodicals. He was also a contributor and close friend to Anderson Cooper of CNN.

    Television[edit]

    Ajami frequently appeared on PBS, CBS and CNN News.[6]

    Books[edit]

    In "The Fate of Nonalignment," an essay in the Winter 1980/81 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, Ajami outlines how the Third world has fared in a context of nonalignment in post Cold war politics. In 1980, he accepted an offer from Johns Hopkins University to become director of Middle East Studies at their international relations graduate program in Washington, D.C.: the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He holds an endowed chair as the Majid Khadduri professor.[7]
    A year after arriving at SAIS, Ajami published his first book, The Arab Predicament, which analyzed what Ajami described as an intellectual and political crisis that swept the Arab world following its defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.[8]
    Subsequently, Ajami has written several other books: The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey (1998), Beirut: City of Regrets (1988), and The Vanished Imam: Musa Al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (1986).[9]
    In The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey, Ajami surveyed the intellectual landscape in the Arab world and Iran, in what was in some ways an autobiography as well as a sequel to "The Arab Predicament." On Middle Eastern politics, he wrote of "a world where triumph rarely comes with mercy or moderation." On Pan-Arabism, he described the ideology as "Sunni dominion dressed in secular garb."
    Ajami's most recent book: The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, The Arabs and The Iraqis in Iraq (2006), is about the American invasion of Iraq.[10]

    Philosophy[edit]

    View of Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"[edit]

    One notable contribution Ajami made in the September October 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs was a rebuttal to Samuel Huntington’s "The Clash of Civilizations?", regarding the state and future of international relations after the Cold War.
    Huntington presents a world divided at the highest level into eight civilizations, and includes a number of countries that are “torn” between two civilizations, arguing that these civilizational divides are far more fundamental than economic interests, ideology, and regimes, and that the world is becoming a smaller place with increasingly close interactions. He further claims that the pre-eminence of a so-called "kin-country" syndrome will provide a civilizational rallying point that will replace political ideology and traditional "balance of power" considerations for relations between states and nations, resulting in a division between the West and "the rest" creating a backlash against Western values (which supposedly "differ fundamentally" from those prevalent in other civilizations).
    In his article “The Summoning”, Ajami criticises Huntington for ignoring the empirical complexities and state interests which drive conflicts in and between civilizations. Ajami believes that states will remain the dominant factor influencing the global framework and interaction. He also argues that civilizational ties are only utilized by states and groups when it is in their best interest to do so and that modernity and secularism are here to stay, especially in places with considerable struggles to obtain them, and he cites the example of the Indian middle class. Ajami also believes that civilizations do not control states; rather, states control civilizations.
    Ajami later relented on his initial criticism of Huntington's theories in the January 6, 2008 issue of the New York Times Book Review in an article titled "The Clash" in which he wrote that "Huntington’s thesis about a civilizational clash seems more compelling to me than the critique I provided at that time."[11]

    Support for Iraq War[edit]

    Ajami has been an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War, which he believes "issued out of a deep American frustration... with the culture of terrorism that had put down roots in Arab lands."[12]
    In an August 2002 speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, US Vice President Dick Cheney sought to assuage concerns about the anticipated US invasion of Iraq, stating: "As for the reaction of the Arab 'street,' the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are 'sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.'"[13]
    Ajami cautioned the United States about the likely negative consequences of the Iraq War. In a 2003 essay in Foreign Affairs, "Iraq and the Arabs' Future," Ajami wrote,
    There should be no illusions about the sort of Arab landscape that America is destined to find if, or when, it embarks on a war against the Iraqi regime. There would be no "hearts and minds" to be won in the Arab world, no public diplomacy that would convince the overwhelming majority of Arabs that this war would be a just war. An American expedition in the wake of thwarted UN inspections would be seen by the vast majority of Arabs as an imperial reach into their world, a favor to Israel, or a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil. No hearing would be given to the great foreign power.[14]
    But he also goes on to say:
    America ought to be able to live with this distrust and discount a good deal of this anti-Americanism as the "road rage" of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds. There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power's simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region's age-old prohibitions and defects.
    Ajami retained a positive view of the war three years later. In a 2006 book on the invasion and its aftermath, he described it as a noble effort, and argued that despite many unhappy consequences, it was too soon to write it off as a failure.[15]
    Vice President Cheney cited Ajami again in an October 21, 2007 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stating, "We have no illusions about the road ahead. As Fouad Ajami said recently, Iraq is not yet 'a country at peace, and all its furies have not burned out, but a measure of order has begun to stick on the ground.'"[16]
    Eight days after U.S. President Barack Obama took office, a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Ajami called Obama a "messenger of the old, settled ways," claimed that the George W. Bush administration's diplomacy had had "revolutionary impact," and chided Obama for not praising the Iraq War.[17] Ajami credited the Egyptian Revolution and Tunisian revolution to the Iraq War and Bush's advocacy of democracy:
    [Bush] can definitely claim paternity...One despot fell in 2003. We decapitated him. Two despots, in Tunisia and Egypt, fell, and there is absolutely a direct connection between what happened in Iraq in 2003 and what's happening today throughout the rest of the Arab world.[18]
    He also stated, however, that
    It wasn't American tanks [that brought about this moment]...It was a homegrown enterprise. It was Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans conquering their fear – people went out and conquered fear and did something amazing.[19]
    In June 2011, Ajami wrote an article for The New Republic arguing that the U.S. troops should remain in Iraq, writing that "the United States will have to be prepared for and accept the losses and adversity that are an integral part of staying on, rightly, in so tangled and difficult a setting."[20] On June 13, 2011 he wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the unrest in Syria that "The mask of the Assad regime finally falls..."[21]

    Death[edit]

    On June 22, 2014, Ajami died from cancer, aged 68.[22][23]

    Awards[edit]

    Ajami was a 1982 winner of a five-year MacArthur Prize Fellowship in the arts and sciences.[9] In 2006, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bush.

    Memberships[edit]

    Ajami was a member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Board of Advisors of the journal Foreign Affairs. Ajami was a founding member of ASMEA (The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa) and is Vice Chairman of its academic council.[1] Ajami also sat on the editorial board of Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank. He was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the cochair of their Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.[24]

    *****
    Fouad A. Ajami (Arabic: فؤاد عجمي‎; September 18, 1945 – June 22, 2014), was a MacArthur Fellowship winning, Lebanese-born American university professor and writer on Middle Eastern issues. He was a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
    Ajami was an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War, the nobility of which he believed there "can be no doubt".
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    Thursday, June 19, 2014

    A00028 - Ahmed Abu Khattala, Islamist Militia Commander in Libya

    Khattala, Ahmed Abu
    Ahmed Abu Khattala (born c. 1971) was a Islamist militia commander in Libya, a commander of Ansar al-Sharia militia. He is suspected of participating in the 2012 Benghazi attack on the American diplomatic mission at Benghazi, in which the American Ambassador and three other Americans were killed. In a December 2013 investigation of the attack, the New York Times described Abu Khattala as a central figure.  However, Abu Khattala denied killing the Americans or being part of the attack.

    Abu Khattala spent most of his adult life in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, jailed by the Qaddafi government for his Islamist views. During the 2011 uprising against Qaddafi in Libya, he formed his own militia of perhaps two dozen fighters, naming it Obeida Ibn Al Jarra for an early Islamic general. He later became involved in Ansar al-Shariah, a group of as many as 200 militants who, had broken away from the other militias in 2012 in protest of those militia's support for parliamentary elections in Libya.  Abu Khattala opposed American involvement in Libya and in interviews with the New York Times stated that “the enmity between the American government and the peoples of the world is an old case.” In regards to the role of the air campaign of NATO that overthrew Colonel Qaddafi, he believed that if NATO had not intervened, “God would have helped us.” He also claimed that, “We know the United States was working with both sides” and considering “splitting up" Libya.

    Witnesses of the September 11, 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi say they saw Abu Khattala leading the attack. On August 6, 2013, United States officials confirmed that Abu Khattala had been charged with playing a significant role in the attack. 



    On the weekend of June 14 to June 15, 2014, U.S. Special Forces captured Abu Khattala in a covert mission in Libya. Khattala is one of the suspected leaders of the 2012 Benghazi attack. 
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    Thursday, May 29, 2014

    A00028 - 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 )
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    A00027 - 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.
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    Wednesday, May 21, 2014

    A00026 - 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

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    Wednesday, May 14, 2014

    A00025 - Nazim al-Haqqani, Sufi Spiritual Leader



    Sheikh Nazim, Spiritual Leader to Sufis, Dies at 92

    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





      Sheikh Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Qubrusi al-Haqqani in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 2010.Petros 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.

      *****

      Nazim Al-Haqqani

      From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      Nazim Al-Haqqani
      Sheij Nazim al Haqqani.jpg
      BornMehmet Nazım Adil
      21 April 1922
      Larnaca, Cyprus
      Died7 May 2014 (aged 92)
      Lefkosa, Turkish-Cyprus
      OccupationLeader of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order
      ReligionSunni, Sufi Islam
      Website
      www.Saltanat.org
      Sufism and Tariqa
      Shrine of Abdul Qadir Jilani in Baghdad, Iraq
      Portal Mosque02.svg Portal
      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.

      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.

      *****

      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.
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