Series: Makers of the Muslim World

Ahmad ibn Tulun (835–884) governed Egypt on behalf of the Abbasid dynasty for sixteen years, taking strides to unify what was a fractious land. An aggressive and innovative actor, he pursued an ambitious political agenda that often put him at odds with his imperial masters, who once tried to remove him by force. In spite of this, he ultimately remained...

Shah Waliyullah Dihlavi (d. 1762) was a highly renowned and influential scholar of Islam who produced works on the Qur’an, Islamic law and jurisprudence, Sufism, philosophy, and politics. He sought to reconcile seemingly competing strands of Muslim intellectual thought and practice, pursuing a cosmopolitan Islam marked not by dogmatism and finality but by debate and flexibility. In South Asia today,...