http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/
I have been meaning to write this post for a while but this is the most appropriate time to do so. Ismaili Mail has just completed 3 full years of existence and has received almost 3 million hits from readers on 6 continents. I crunched some numbers and that works out on average to around 2740 hits per day, 114 hits per hour or 2 hits per minute, all occuring 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year since it began. It is indeed a well-visited and well-read website.
It is not unreasonable to ask who publishes Ismaili Mail and what makes this person tick. I did some sleuthing and have it on good authority that Ismaili Mail is a solo effort by a person who chooses to remain anonymous.
A detailed look at the Ismaili Mail website reveals the vast array of topics it has covered and continues to cover. It is a repository of information, knowledge and wisdom pertaining to anything that has to do with the Shia Nizari Ismaili Muslim tariqa of Islam. Ismaili Mail is obviously a labour of love and we all know who this love is directed at.
For me personally, the author of a Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam, Ismaili Mail is the mother ship to my baby Blog. My Blog, along with many other Blogs, has benefitted greatly from the publicity afforded to it by Ismaili Mail's publisher and I am eternally grateful for this gesture.
On this third anniversay of the Ismaili Mail website it is fitting, I think, to pay tribute to its publisher, a kind-hearted, selfless, hard-working and determined individual whose efforts have enriched all of us and promise to continue enriching all of us for years to come.
Easy Nash
Creator of the trademarked phrase "..much-visited and wildly popular ISMAILI MAIL website." http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/12/533a-blog-begun-as-retirement-project.html
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
536) A Collection Of Posts On The Much-Visited And Wildly Popular ISMAILI MAIL Website Entitled 'BBC: Science And Islam-The Power Of Doubt'.
Physicist Jim Al-Khalili tells the story of the great leap in scientific knowledge that took place in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th centuries.
Al-Khalili turns detective, hunting for clues that show how the scientific revolution that took place in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe had its roots in the earlier world of medieval Islam.
Each part on the ISMAILI MAIL website has a comment by Easy Nash.
1)Part 1
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/bbc-science-and-islam-the-power-of-doubt-part-1/
2)Part 2
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-2/
3)Part 3
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-3/
4)Part 4
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-4/
5)Part 5
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-5/
6)Part 6
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-6/
7)Part 7-Final
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-final/
8)ISMAILI MAIL'S summary, youtube links and interesting observations of the 7-part series by the BBC on Science and Islam
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/physicist-jim-al-khalilis-science-and-islam/
Related posts from this Blog:
Blogpost Five Hundred IS Blogpost Four Hundred, The High-Octane Fuel That Powers My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
A Collection Of Posts Describing The Ethos Of My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam; Quotes Of Aga Khans And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html
'The Sciences' from the IIS's 'Muslim Philosophy And The Sciences' by Dr Alnoor Dhanani; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/507the-sciences-from-iiss-muslim.html
A Collection of Posts on this Blog about Great Scientists; Quote of Aga Khan IV.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/437a-collection-of-blogposts-on-great.html
Blogpost Four Hundred, Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion: Comprehensive Quotes of Aga Khan IV and Others; a never-ending post..
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Al-Khalili turns detective, hunting for clues that show how the scientific revolution that took place in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe had its roots in the earlier world of medieval Islam.
Each part on the ISMAILI MAIL website has a comment by Easy Nash.
1)Part 1
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/bbc-science-and-islam-the-power-of-doubt-part-1/
2)Part 2
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-2/
3)Part 3
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-3/
4)Part 4
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-4/
5)Part 5
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-5/
6)Part 6
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-part-6/
7)Part 7-Final
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/bbc-science-and-islam-%e2%80%93-the-power-of-doubt-%e2%80%93-final/
8)ISMAILI MAIL'S summary, youtube links and interesting observations of the 7-part series by the BBC on Science and Islam
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/physicist-jim-al-khalilis-science-and-islam/
Related posts from this Blog:
Blogpost Five Hundred IS Blogpost Four Hundred, The High-Octane Fuel That Powers My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
A Collection Of Posts Describing The Ethos Of My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam; Quotes Of Aga Khans And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html
'The Sciences' from the IIS's 'Muslim Philosophy And The Sciences' by Dr Alnoor Dhanani; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/507the-sciences-from-iiss-muslim.html
A Collection of Posts on this Blog about Great Scientists; Quote of Aga Khan IV.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/437a-collection-of-blogposts-on-great.html
Blogpost Four Hundred, Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion: Comprehensive Quotes of Aga Khan IV and Others; a never-ending post..
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Saturday, December 19, 2009
535)Cancer Treatment Takes A Giant Step Forward As Scientists Crack Code; Quote From Blogpost Four Hundred.
"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
The complete genetic codes of two human cancers have been mapped for the first time. The move could herald a medical revolution in which every tumour can be targeted with personalised therapy.
The exhaustive genetic maps, which catalogue every DNA mutation found in two patients’ tumours, will transform treatment of the disease. It has been described as the most significant milestone in cancer research in more than a decade.
Scientists predict that by about 2020 all cancer patients could have their tumours analysed to find the genetic defects that drive them. This information would then be used to select the treatments most likely to work.
Insights from the genomes will also lead to the development of powerful drugs to target DNA errors that cause cancer and highlight ways in which the disease can be prevented. Cancers would be diagnosed and treated according to their genetic profiles rather than their position in the body.
“The pace at which genomics is moving is probably the most exciting thing that’s gone on in cancer research in more than a decade,” said Professor Sir John Bell, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences. “These cancer genome projects are a major landmark, as significant as the sequencing of the human genome itself.”
The research was led by Professor Mike Stratton, of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge. He said that the findings would transform the way we see cancer.
“These catalogues of mutations are telling us about how the cancer has developed, so they will inform us on prevention. They tell us about all the processes which are disrupted in cancer cells, which we can try to influence through our treatments. So this is a really fundamental moment in the history of cancer research. I can envisage a time a decade or more hence when these catalogues will become routine, and influential in selecting treatment for that individual. That’s what we’re expecting — every cancer patient will have one of these charts.”
Cancer is a disease of the genes. Environmental factors such as smoking, radiation or alcohol consumption inflict DNA damage that causes cells to grow out of control.
The new maps, which are published in the journal Nature, plot this genetic chaos in unprecedented detail for the tumours of two cancer patients. One had small-cell lung cancer; the second had malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Sir Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, which funded the research, said: “This is the first glimpse of the future of cancer medicine, not only in the laboratory, but eventually in the clinic. The findings from today will feed into knowledge, methods and practice in patient care.”
The catalogues are the first of thousands that are being created by the International Cancer Genome Consortium, a £600 million project to identify all the mutations that drive 50 common types of cancer.
The initiative will sequence tumours from 500 patients with each cancer type, including several forms of breast and liver cancer, and compare the results with the genetic code of healthy cells. It will reveal which DNA defects contribute to the onset and spread of cancer, and which are incidental.
Peter Campbell, of the Sanger Institute, said: “The knowledge we extract over the next few years will have major implications for treatment. By identifying all the cancer genes we will be able to develop new drugs that target the specific mutated genes and work out which patients will benefit from these novel treatments.”
Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, added: “The next step will be to find out which of these thousands of mutations are just collateral damage, and which actually drive these cancers. Only then can we begin to find ways to correct or prevent them. Never before has the potential of genomics to bring benefits to patients been so apparent.”
CASE STUDY
The prospect of genetically mapping individual cancers was given a cautious welcome today by Tom Haswell, 64 (Lucy Bannerman writes).
When the lung cancer patient was diagnosed with a tumour the size of an orange in his chest, doctors said he had three to six months to live.
That was 16 years ago. Mr Haswell, who now describes his quality of life as “totally acceptable”, said he hoped the new research will help speed up the process of finding the right treatment for the right patient.
“The idea of targeting treatment options to one particular kind of cancer would be brilliant,” he said. “I hope it will eliminate the approach many people face after diagnosis, which is, ‘let’s try this, and if that doesn’t work, let’s try another.’
In his own case, Mr Haswell had to wait three months to be advised of his treatment options. Eventually, having been informed there were no suitable chemotherapy drugs and that curative radiotherapy would not be practical, the retired father of two from Glasgow decided to take part in a drug trial, which helped shrink the tumour significantly.
“I was told I could take part in the clinical trial or die, basically.
“So, I particularly like the idea of knowing treatment would be personalised. That would be a great benefit to everyone.
“I would also be interested to know the differences in mutations, for example, between cancers in smokers and non-smokers. Maybe that will help us understand why people who have never smoked, also develop the disease.”
If shortcuts are found, that could also help prevent patients having to go through gruelling treatments unnecessarily, Mr Haswell added.
However, he said: “From the point of view of researchers, and clinicians, this must be the best news they have had all year. “But from a patient perspective, I treat every new about a breakthrough, or ‘wonder drug’ with caution. These things take years to develop, so it is not going to have any benefit for today’s lung cancer patient.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6959325.ece
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580441,00.html?test=latestnews
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
The complete genetic codes of two human cancers have been mapped for the first time. The move could herald a medical revolution in which every tumour can be targeted with personalised therapy.
The exhaustive genetic maps, which catalogue every DNA mutation found in two patients’ tumours, will transform treatment of the disease. It has been described as the most significant milestone in cancer research in more than a decade.
Scientists predict that by about 2020 all cancer patients could have their tumours analysed to find the genetic defects that drive them. This information would then be used to select the treatments most likely to work.
Insights from the genomes will also lead to the development of powerful drugs to target DNA errors that cause cancer and highlight ways in which the disease can be prevented. Cancers would be diagnosed and treated according to their genetic profiles rather than their position in the body.
“The pace at which genomics is moving is probably the most exciting thing that’s gone on in cancer research in more than a decade,” said Professor Sir John Bell, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences. “These cancer genome projects are a major landmark, as significant as the sequencing of the human genome itself.”
The research was led by Professor Mike Stratton, of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge. He said that the findings would transform the way we see cancer.
“These catalogues of mutations are telling us about how the cancer has developed, so they will inform us on prevention. They tell us about all the processes which are disrupted in cancer cells, which we can try to influence through our treatments. So this is a really fundamental moment in the history of cancer research. I can envisage a time a decade or more hence when these catalogues will become routine, and influential in selecting treatment for that individual. That’s what we’re expecting — every cancer patient will have one of these charts.”
Cancer is a disease of the genes. Environmental factors such as smoking, radiation or alcohol consumption inflict DNA damage that causes cells to grow out of control.
The new maps, which are published in the journal Nature, plot this genetic chaos in unprecedented detail for the tumours of two cancer patients. One had small-cell lung cancer; the second had malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Sir Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, which funded the research, said: “This is the first glimpse of the future of cancer medicine, not only in the laboratory, but eventually in the clinic. The findings from today will feed into knowledge, methods and practice in patient care.”
The catalogues are the first of thousands that are being created by the International Cancer Genome Consortium, a £600 million project to identify all the mutations that drive 50 common types of cancer.
The initiative will sequence tumours from 500 patients with each cancer type, including several forms of breast and liver cancer, and compare the results with the genetic code of healthy cells. It will reveal which DNA defects contribute to the onset and spread of cancer, and which are incidental.
Peter Campbell, of the Sanger Institute, said: “The knowledge we extract over the next few years will have major implications for treatment. By identifying all the cancer genes we will be able to develop new drugs that target the specific mutated genes and work out which patients will benefit from these novel treatments.”
Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, added: “The next step will be to find out which of these thousands of mutations are just collateral damage, and which actually drive these cancers. Only then can we begin to find ways to correct or prevent them. Never before has the potential of genomics to bring benefits to patients been so apparent.”
CASE STUDY
The prospect of genetically mapping individual cancers was given a cautious welcome today by Tom Haswell, 64 (Lucy Bannerman writes).
When the lung cancer patient was diagnosed with a tumour the size of an orange in his chest, doctors said he had three to six months to live.
That was 16 years ago. Mr Haswell, who now describes his quality of life as “totally acceptable”, said he hoped the new research will help speed up the process of finding the right treatment for the right patient.
“The idea of targeting treatment options to one particular kind of cancer would be brilliant,” he said. “I hope it will eliminate the approach many people face after diagnosis, which is, ‘let’s try this, and if that doesn’t work, let’s try another.’
In his own case, Mr Haswell had to wait three months to be advised of his treatment options. Eventually, having been informed there were no suitable chemotherapy drugs and that curative radiotherapy would not be practical, the retired father of two from Glasgow decided to take part in a drug trial, which helped shrink the tumour significantly.
“I was told I could take part in the clinical trial or die, basically.
“So, I particularly like the idea of knowing treatment would be personalised. That would be a great benefit to everyone.
“I would also be interested to know the differences in mutations, for example, between cancers in smokers and non-smokers. Maybe that will help us understand why people who have never smoked, also develop the disease.”
If shortcuts are found, that could also help prevent patients having to go through gruelling treatments unnecessarily, Mr Haswell added.
However, he said: “From the point of view of researchers, and clinicians, this must be the best news they have had all year. “But from a patient perspective, I treat every new about a breakthrough, or ‘wonder drug’ with caution. These things take years to develop, so it is not going to have any benefit for today’s lung cancer patient.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6959325.ece
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580441,00.html?test=latestnews
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
534)Weaving Together The KESHAVJEE Family Story From The Accounts of Mamdoo Keshavjee, Lella Umedaly, Muthal Naidoo and Easy Nash; Quote Of Aristotle.
"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Contents:
1)THE REMOTE REMOTE HISTORY, LIKE I MEAN FROM 10-15 THOUSAND YEARS AGO: HOW DNA FROM INNER CHEEK CELLS(MOUTH CHEEK NOT BUTT CHEEK ;-)) CAN TELL A FASCINATING STORY
2) THE EARLY YEARS, THE PIONEERING SPIRIT: MUTHAL NAIDOO GIVES US A GLIMPSE
3)LELLA UMEDALY WRITES A COOKBOOK AND MASTERFULLY WEAVES IN OUR FAMILY STORY AMIDST DESCRIPTIONS OF CULINARY EXCELLENCE.
4)ABC BAKERY, TOLSTOY FARM, RAJABALI AND THE MAHATMA, NAUGHTY NAUGHTY REHMTULLA AND THE POLITICS OF DEFIANCE: MUTHAL NAIDOO ELABORATES
5)POLITICS IN THE BLOOD OF RAJABALI'S DESCENDANTS?
6)CHARISMATIC HABIB:
RECRUITS MIRIAM MAKEBA, DOLLY RATHEBE, SYDNEY POITIER, CANADA LEE TO EMPIRE CINEMA;
ENTICES THE KHIMANIS FROM PAKISTAN TO COME AND TEACH RELIGION TO THE KIDS;
KK KHOJA AND GULAM MANJEE SET UP ROYAL CINEMA;
MRS MANJEE KESHAVJEE DONATES LAND FOR THE AGA KHAN NURSERY SCHOOL;
SHERBANOO VELSHI SETS UP HEALTH AND SOCIAL WELFARE CLINICS.
7)LELLA UMEDALY GOES TO THE DIAMOND JUBILEE DARBAR IN DAR ES SALAAM; GETS MARRIED; DESCRIBES THE SCATTERING OF OVER 2000 KESHAVJEE DESCENDANTS TO THE FOUR CORNERS.
8)MAMDOO'S MAGNIFICENT MOSAIC MAKING MAGIC IN MARABASTAD NEAR THE MAGALIESBERG, PRESAGING OUR GLOBAL VILLAGE.
9)EPILOGUE
1)THE REMOTE REMOTE HISTORY, LIKE I MEAN FROM 10-15 THOUSAND YEARS AGO: HOW DNA FROM INNER CHEEK CELLS(MOUTH CHEEK NOT BUTT CHEEK ;-)) CAN TELL A FASCINATING STORY:
"Curious about my remote origins, I joined an international National Geographic genetic study done by world-renowned geneticist Spencer Wells in 2004 and dutifully sent a sample of my inner cheek cells to his research lab in the USA. Since I am endowed with the genes that issued forth from the venerable loins of the patriarch of this family, the father of those four brothers, the man whose first name was Keshavjee, I was pleased to sacrifice myself to discover knowledge of our origins. I was startled to discover that I, of northwestern Indian stock, share the same genetic markers as a caucasian Englishman I know and that a very large proportion of Europe's, Central Asia's and the northern Indian subcontinent's population all originate from one man who lived in the area of present-day Ukraine or Southern Russia ten to fifteen thousand years ago! This is how I described my heritage based on the information sent to me by Spencer Wells, the world-renowned geneticist:
"Based on a genetic analysis done in 2004 of the Y-chromosome extracted from my cheek cell DNA, which shows that I belong to the R1a haplogroup of the M17 genetic marker, my remote ancestor was a man of European origin born on the grassy steppes in the region of present-day Ukraine or Southern Russia 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. This man's descendants(known also as the Kurgan people) became the nomadic steppe dwellers who eventually spread as far afield as India and Iceland. I am descended from the Indo-European branch of this clan, which is thought to be responsible for, among other things, the domestication of the horse and the development of the Proto-Indo-European language, leading eventually to the development of English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, other Romance languages as well as Sanskrit-based languages like Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati and Urdu. Many of the Indo-European languages share similar words for animals, plants, tools and weapons. My more recent ancestors were originally Hindus living in Chotila, Gujarat, India(35% of people currently living in the State of Gujarat, millions of people, carry the same genetic marker as me). They were converted to Shia Ismaili Islam by Persian Sufi Mystics(Pirs) around the 14th century CE. My great-grandfather and his 3 brothers travelled by ship and train from India to Pretoria, South Africa around 1894. Thus, having originally left Africa 60,000 years ago during the big migration, my ancestors had, once again, returned to Africa. I emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada from Pretoria, South Africa in 1973. My wife has a similar heritage to me but she was born in Mbale, Uganda and lived in Kampala, Uganda. Both our children(son 25yrs, daughter 16yrs) were born in Canada. I am very proud of my heritage."(Easy Nash, 2007)
2) THE EARLY YEARS, THE PIONEERING SPIRIT: MUTHAL NAIDOO GIVES US A GLIMPSE
"The community of Shia Muslims.......was small but very enterprising. Its founder, Jivan Keshavjee, had arrived in Pretoria in 1894, about the time the Coolie Location was set aside for Indian occupation. He was from Chotila, a village near Rajkot in India, where his family was engaged in commerce. He came to South Africa with a friend, Ganibhai Haji Cassim, who had relatives in the country. Jivan and Ganibhai worked in Port Elizabeth for a short while before they left for the Coolie Location in 1894.
In the next year, with the help of other Muslims already established in the area, Jivan started a business at 112 Prinsloo Street, K.J. Keshavjee and Sons, so named as he was known as "Khoja" Jivan Keshavjee. ‘Khoja' means trader. His relatives who were not Keshavjees, entered the country as "Khojas," adopted the designation as their surname and used it for their businesses. At some point, Jivan Keshavjee dropped the term and when his brothers, Velshi, Manjee and Naran, arrived in Pretoria, they came in as Keshavjees.
In 1903, in an attempt to confine Indian trade to the location, the Coolie Location was given bazaar status and became the Asiatic Bazaar. This meant that Indians could own property, establish businesses and build places of worship. So the Keshavjees, Jivan and his brothers, acquired a number of stands on which they built their homes and shops. They had businesses on almost every corner of Blood(Bloed) Street. Jivan Keshavjee's shop was on the corner of Fifth and Blood Streets; Manjee had a shop on the corner of Jerusalem and Blood. On the corner of Fourth and Blood was KK Khoja and Company and there was another shop on the corner of Blood and Sixth. Velshi had a shop at the corner of Grand and Sixth Streets. Other Ismailis, relatives of the Keshavjees, MA Khoja and HK Khoja, also owned general dealerships along Blood Street and in other places in the location. The Ismailis were hardworking and successful businessmen, and the location, as tiny as it was, was a fortuitous place to have a shop. It consisted of a grid of a dozen streets that housed about twenty thousand people. So business boomed."(Muthal Naidoo, 2008)
3)LELLA UMEDALY WRITES A COOKBOOK AND MASTERFULLY WEAVES IN OUR FAMILY STORY AMIDST DESCRIPTIONS OF CULINARY EXCELLENCE.
"In the 1890s when my great-uncle, Jiwan Keshavjee left the family home in Chotila, Gujarat, a province near Bombay (now called Mumbai). He traveled on a steamer ship tracing the ancient trade routes from India to Africa, and his three brothers, Velshi (my grandfather), Naran, and Manji, followed soon after, leaving a life of struggle and poverty in search of opportunity. Most Indian immigrants settled in East Africa or Mozambique, but the brothers went almost as far as the steamer could take them. Disembarking on the eastern coast of South Africa, probably at Durban, our family often tries to imagine why these unique and adventurous men, our Keshavjee clan founders, traveled so far. Once the ship docked, the authorities sent them far inland to Pretoria, the Dutch capital, and they lived there for more than two generations.
The brothers, in their youth, did not know the adversities they would face. There were few Indians, and segregation was already thoroughly entrenched, so we lived apart from the Bantu, the white Afrikaner, and the British colonialists. The region proved to be a difficult place to live and raise a family, but the brothers, though poor, were young and strong. They worked hard as merchants, opening small grocery shops, and soon were able to send to India for their wives, sisters, and extended families. Each of the brothers had four to six children, and this group was the start of what we now think of as the Keshavjee clan. I am part of the second generation born in South Africa.
My grandfather, Velshi, was a very religious Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim who was strict in his ways. He and his three brothers built a beautiful mosque in the heart of Pretoria’s Indian area. In those years, my grandfather also developed a friendship with the famous Indian pacifist and statesman Mahatma Gandhi. The Mahatma came to South Africa as a young man, after he completed his law degree in England, and he lived near Durban, on the coast. He traveled to Pretoria to try an important case and befriended my grandfather, and even though he was of the Hindu faith, he tutored my uncle Rajabali, helping him to learn his Ismaili Muslim prayers. Because of Gandhi’s close relationship and influence, Uncle Rajabali became a vegetarian. Thus we all learned to cook many simple vegetarian dishes, some of which are described in this cookbook. A number of our family members even supported Mahatma Gandhi’s passive resistance and participated in acts of civil disobedience to protest the passes that all Indians once had to carry. Today letters between Gandhi and my grandfather Velshi, are in Ghandi’s ashram near Ahmedabad, India.
With time and great effort, the family prospered in their various businesses. One uncle had a bakery, another had a gas station and yet another a small machinery auction house. My father owned a movie theatre, but the government censored the movies, not allowing us to see white people kissing, for example, and they insisted that movie houses be segregated. Indians, blacks, and white Afrikaner were all separated, and my father was forced to choose between an Indian and a black clientele. This segregation would precipitate my father’s later decision to leave South Africa for Kenya.
My father’s generation of men brought young brides from India or from Indian communities in East Africa so they could marry within their religion. And so the family grew. To marry my mother, Sakina, my father had to return to Vichia, a village in the province of Gujarat where my family originated. My grandfather had arranged the marriage, and Mahatma Gandhi was asked to take the wedding jewelry to my father’s intended to seal the proposal. Sakina came to South Africa as a young bride of fifteen and was immediately responsible for cooking, under the auspices of the matriarch, my grandmother, Jabubai.
I was born in 1930, the second of five children. My mother died of a weak heart when she was just 29 years old, so I became responsible for my brothers and sisters when I was only twelve. Soon after, my father remarried to a distant relative, whose name was also Sakina, the family grew further with three more brothers.
The growing clan of Keshavjees now numbered over one hundred people, and the community was one large family, often sitting, praying, and eating together. We lived in homes that were close together, where all doors were open to all the children. In addition to caring for each others‘ children, the women shared the cooking and cleaning tasks."(Lella Umedaly, 2006)
4)ABC BAKERY, TOLSTOY FARM, RAJABALI AND THE MAHATMA, NAUGHTY NAUGHTY REHMTULLA AND THE POLITICS OF DEFIANCE: MUTHAL NAIDOO ELABORATES
"By 1920, the Keshavjees, having established flourishing general dealerships, began to diversify and expand their interests. Velshi Keshavjee acquired the ABC Bakery, a tiny business in a tin shanty that made deliveries by horse and cart. He bought out the owner, a Chinese man who had gone bankrupt, modernised the bakery and put in the latest equipment and machinery. Under Rajabali, Velshi's eldest son, it became the eleventh most advanced bakery in the country. Rajabali was an enterprising businessman and a progressive thinker. As a young boy, he had lived at Tolstoy Farm, the satyagrahi settlement that Mahatma Gandhi had established in 1910 at Lawley on the outskirts of Johannesburg. So he was interested in the political movements of the time and in social upliftment and supported the work of the Indian Congresses.
His large, spacious house behind the bakery became a guesthouse for many prominent political figures. As there was no hotel accommodation for people of colour in the area at that time, when the Kajees (A.I. Kajee was chairman of the Natal Indian Congress in the 1940s) came to Pretoria, they went straight to Rajabali's home at the bakery. In 1952, Rehmtulla, Rajabali's son, took part in the Defiance Campaign and marched to Germiston Location in Patrick Duncan's batch, which also included Mrs Thayanayagie Pillay. His involvement in politics brought people like Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu to the bakery. Though their visits were very discreet, the police were aware of the activities at the bakery and raided it frequently"(Muthal Naidoo, 2008)
5)POLITICS IN THE BLOOD OF RAJABALI'S DESCENDANTS?
"The descendants of Rajabali seem to have politics in their blood. The 8-year old Rajabali had already been sensitized to Gandhi's Satyagraha movement and human rights issues in 1910 at Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg. The anti-apartheid defiance campaign preoccupied Rajabali's eldest son, Rehmtulla, whose family paid a steep price for his shenenigans and were eventually forced to leave South Africa in 1973/74. After arriving in Canada he became a card-carrying member of the socialist New Democratic Party and did a lot of work for them till the day he died in 1992. Rajabali's younger son, Murad, became the first ever South Asian member of parliament in Canada, representing the provincial Liberal Party in the Toronto riding of Don Mills from 1985-1990. Rajabali's daughter's husband was a member of the Kenyan parliament from the town of Kisumu during the 1960s and '70s. Murad's son, a prominent Business journalist with CNN, also dabbled in provincial Canadian Liberal politics as well as American democratic congressional politics and his involvement in the political arena may not yet have fully unfolded. Rajabali's great-grandson, Rehmtulla's grandson, is at present the Director of Communications and Parliamentary Affairs for a senior minister in the current Canadian Conservative government. With activism spanning the entire political spectrum the descendants of Rajabali Velshi Keshavjee have beenderdundat."(Easy Nash, 2009)
6)CHARISMATIC HABIB:
RECRUITS MIRIAM MAKEBA, DOLLY RATHEBE, SYDNEY POITIER, CANADA LEE TO EMPIRE CINEMA;
ENTICES THE KHIMANIS FROM PAKISTAN TO COME AND TEACH RELIGION TO THE KIDS;
KK KHOJA AND GULAM MANJEE SET UP ROYAL CINEMA;
MRS MANJEE KESHAVJEE DONATES LAND FOR THE AGA KHAN NURSERY SCHOOL; SHERBANOO VELSHI SETS UP HEALTH AND SOCIAL WELFARE CLINICS.
"But the Ismaili community, in general, did not become involved in political activities; it concentrated its efforts on business and building a sound economic base for social services. Among the most successful Ismailis, were the Keshavjees whose various branches comprised many enterprising individuals. In the Velshi Keshavjee family for instance, in addition to Velshi himself there were his sons, Rajabali and Habib, and his daughter Sherbanoo. They took on interests as diverse as the bakery business, the film industry, social work, education and the building of the Jamatkhana, the white mosque in Boom Street.
In the 1920s, when the Ismaili community was ready for a new mosque, Velshi Keshavjee, made that his special project and headed up a committee that undertook to replace the little tin shanty set up as a mosque by Velshi's pioneer brother, Jivan, with a magnificent jamatkhana. The committee commissioned an architect who drew up plans for a fine building with interior décor of wood panelling and plush carpeting. When work on the building in Boom Street was completed in 1928, the Asiatic Bazaar had a new landmark - a beautiful white mosque, the Jamatkhana. A black plaque proudly displays the legend that Velshi Keshavjee laid the foundation stone. As fate would have it, Velshi Keshavjee died in an accident right at the doors of the mosque in 1954. He was crossing the road when a Putco bus hit him and dragged him to the gates of the Jamatkhana where he died. The Jamatkhana, the pride of the Ismaili Muslim community in the location, became renowned among Ismailis throughout Africa. It still stands on the corner of Boom and Fifth Streets and is now a national monument.
During their time in the location, Velshi's son, Habib, and his daughter, Sherbanoo, a social worker, turned the Jamatkhana into a community centre. Habib helped Sherbanoo establish a clinic on the premises with visiting doctors who came in on a regular basis and more frequently when there were epidemics of one sort or another. In 1944, their aunt, Mrs Manjee Keshavjee, donated a plot of land behind the mosque for a crèche and enabled Sherbanoo and Habib to start the first nursery school in the location. Habib recruited Glennie Tomlinson, a teacher from Cape Town, and went from door to door to encourage people to send their children to the crèche. The response was good and they employed several teachers for whom they provided training in Montessori methods. Habib was also something of a dietician and insisted on healthy nutrition at the school.
In 1949, after donating a plot of land on Barber Street for a madressa, Habib recruited Mowlana Sadruddin Khimani and his wife, Malek, from Pakistan, to induct Ismaili children in the Shia understanding of Islam. The Jamatkhana, with the madressa on Barber Street, became the hub of Ismaili community life. It was a multipurpose community centre, with its clinic, nursery school, madressa, a Council Room downstairs and a prayer area upstairs. With the exception of the prayer area, which was restricted exclusively to Ismailis, the venues at the Jamatkhana were open to all.
Habib's involvement at the mosque consumed only a small part of his energies. His main interest was in the cinema business. In the 1920s, the Keshavjee brothers, Jivan, Velshi, Manjee and Naran, originally part of the firm of Keshavjee & Co. split up, formed separate companies and went into independent ventures. Some branches of the clan acquired sites that had been used for showing films, such as the Bombay Star Bioscope and the Nav Jivan. The new owners of these venues, converted the Bombay Star into a shirt factory and sold the Nav Jivan. They left the development of cinemas to Habib and his uncles KK Khoja and Goolam Manjee Keshavjee. Habib had been running film shows for African audiences at the Dougall Hall from about 1926. When, in 1928, his uncles built the Royal Theatre on Grand Street that was the start of a rivalry that gave rise to a thriving cinema industry in the location. Bioscopes were a lucrative venture for the Keshavjees because the entertainment business provided a world of make-believe that allowed people to escape the squalor of their surroundings. In Marabastad, there was a large population hungry for escapist fare. So stars like the young Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, Betty Grable, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald, Tyrone Power, Boris Karloff and Johnny Weismuller became icons in the locations.
At the Royal, KK Khoja and Goolam Manjee showed Warner Brothers movies. In order to outdo them, when Habib acquired the Empire Theatre around 1933, he obtained contracts with MGM, United Artists and Twentieth Century Fox. As a showman, he did everything he could to bring people into the Empire. He kept abreast of technological developments and ensured that his theatre offered the highest quality entertainment. He employed an African pianist to provide background music during the silent film era, and in the forties, he commissioned Omarjee Suliman, a young man with a passionate interest in film technology, to create special exhibits using animation. So there were flamboyant displays at the Empire to advertise new features such as David and Beersheba, Samson and Delilah and Mighty Joe Young.
Habib also used the cinema to promote local talent. In 1947, Miriam Makeba performed at the Empire for five pounds a show. Other African artists who appeared there were the Manhattan Brothers and the cast of the film, The Magic Queen, starring Dolly Rathebe. Habib devised a promotion campaign for the film with photo sessions that took the stars to various venues and landmarks such as the Union Buildings.
At Easter, the bioscope was crowded mainly with African people. They came from Marabastad, Bantule, Lady Selborne, Newclare and locations all over Pretoria, to continuous showings of The Life of Christ. These performances, which began early in the morning and finished late at night, were always sold out.
In 1949, when Canada Lee and the young Sydney Poitier, stars of the film, Cry the Beloved Country, were on location in South Africa, Habib invited them to the Empire. From the stage of the bioscope, they encouraged the mostly African audience not to give up hope for freedom.
Though there were restrictions regarding the admission of African people to the bioscopes, cinema owners ignored them. With the coming of apartheid, however, the authorities began to fine cinema owners for admitting African people to "violent" films, American gangster movies and such like. People like Habib could see the writing on the wall and believed that their progress would be stunted under apartheid. Soon after the Nationalist government came into power in 1948, His Highness, Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan, the Ismaili Imam, called on his followers in South Africa to leave the country. As they saw no hope of a viable future in South Africa, the Keshavjees sold their cinemas to the Chetty brothers, the emerging cinema moghuls, and emigrated.
Habib, like his pioneer Uncle Jivan, was a charismatic figure. When he left in 1952, he drew people to Kenya in the same way that Jivan had drawn people from India to the Asiatic Bazaar. Almost everyone followed. Ten years later there was no longer an Ismaili Muslim community in Pretoria. A few individuals remained but the majority had made their way to other parts of the world"(Muthal Naidoo, 2008)
7)LELLA UMEDALY GOES TO THE DIAMOND JUBILEE DARBAR IN DAR ES SALAAM; GETS MARRIED; DESCRIBES THE SCATTERING OF OVER 2000 KESHAVJEE DESCENDANTS TO THE FOUR CORNERS.
"In 1946, when I was fifteen, my father decided to go with the family to Dar es Salaam in East Africa. We went to attend a ceremony honoring our spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, Sultan Mohamed Shah, who had become Imam of the Ismailis when he was eight years old and had served as our leader for seventy-five years. This Diamond Jubilee brought Ismailis from all over the world, and they watched as our Imam, a heavy-set man, was weighed against an equal amount of un-cut diamonds. The entire East African congregation had contributed money to purchase the diamonds, and once he was weighed, this treasure trove was sold again to establish a trust. Now called the Aga Khan Foundation, this trust is of great importance to the Ismailis. It is used for humanitarian aid around the world and to provide low-interest loans to Ismailis everywhere, to build homes, attend universities, and start businesses. I sat in the front and witnessed this amazing ceremonial occasion.
The journey to the diamond jubilee was a trip of a lifetime…a real safari. The countries through which we traveled, now called Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya, were beautiful. The roads were all murum (dirt), so it took us two weeks to cover 3,000 miles, and we had enough flat tires to last a lifetime! But we made many friends along the way and ate rich and different foods that are part of the Indian cuisine of East Africa. We learned some mouthwatering recipes like Biryani, chicken curries, and mutton curries.
This journey was to have a major impact on my family. It was when I first met my future husband. It was also a time when apartheid was becoming a huge and oppressive issue for our family, and my father was contemplating leaving South Africa. n 1951, he and his cousins would decide to seek their fortunes in a more open society. Following the advice of our Imam, they would migrate to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and in later years, many members of the Keshavjee clan would follow. A few remained in South Africa, however, this was to be the first of the moves that would scatter the clan around the world.
Members of the clan now number approximately 2,000 and have settled all over the world. We keep in touch by e-mail today, but we can recognize each other a mile away, so strong are our physical resemblances. Once a Keshavjee speaks, the recognition is complete, because of tone of voice and abundant use of gestures. We confirm our kinship by asking, “Where have you been and what have you done?” The answers are inevitably bold and enthusiastic, so it seems that most members of the Keshavjee clan have adventurous souls and ambitious dreams. We are also people with a good sense of humor, and we love family get-togethers over a sumptuous meal"(Lella Umedaly, 2006)
8)MAMDOO'S MAGNIFICENT MOSAIC MAKING MAGIC IN MARABASTAD NEAR THE MAGALIESBERG, PRESAGING OUR GLOBAL VILLAGE.
"As I reflect on my life, I sometimes go back to my childhood days and recollect my thoughts about the life we led in the non-white ghetto in Pretoria. There were three ghettos in a total area of about a mile and a quarter by a mile and a quarter for the three basic non-white groups, namely coloured or Cape coloured (those of mixed race), Indian or Asian and African or Bantu. The ghetto was made up of Marabastaadt, the area for blacks, the Asiatic Bazaar for Indians and the Cape Location for those of mixed race. All of us who lived there just called it Location.
By the mid-forties, the Black African population was growing rapidly and they were slowly being moved out to Atteridgeville. The blacks called it Pelindaba --a basic bare-boned city, some 8 or 9 miles West from the City of Pretoria. Atteridgeville was ethnically divided to keep people from different black tribes who came from different areas of South Africa apart. This was in keeping with the divide and conquer philosophy of the ruling party in South Africa –Apartheid began at the ethnic or root level. Once the Blacks had been moved out, plans for moving the Coloureds was initiated. The Coloureds were moved to Derdepoort, an area some 10 miles East of Pretoria. Similar arrangements were made in Johannesburg and other major and minor cities of South Africa. Indians in Pretoria were to be moved to Laudium, which today is a reality and somehow also ethnically divided. However, before all those events took place, all three races lived in the one Location.
The Location was bounded on the North side by the Magalis (pronounced with a throaty g –almost like a raspy h) range of low mountains. Struben Street acted as the Southern border. The Municipality of Pretoria had a fence along the entire Southern border, behind which they stored road building equipment and other requisites. The West side of the Location was cut off by a highway called Von Wielligh Street. The East side was cut off by the Apis (Monkey) River. Boom Street ran through the middle of the Location, connected by a bridge on the East side to the White areas and the outside world. These three major groups of people shared their destiny of being cut off from so-called superior White civilization. We definitely lived in a world of our own.
Some Indians who had shops in the City of Pretoria, from the early part of the century before the official Apartheid policy came into effect, were allowed to go to their businesses during the day, but had to be back by evening to spend the night in the Location. Some Indian businessmen did have homes behind their businesses in the City, but this was an anomaly from the early part of the century. By the mid-fifties they were already ear-marked for removal –both business and residence. This was part of the Group Areas Act which set aggressive milestones for the separation of the races.
Those were years of increasing oppression and being on the receiving end of an inherently discriminatory and divisive policy. South African White policy in those years was designed to progressively remove all economic and political opportunities from non-whites. However, reminiscing of the days in the Location, all is not lost because life is not measured in terms of money, places or status. It is measured in how we lived with our fellow man and the trials and tribulations we bore together and how we emerged from it all.The first great thing that came to be was that Mahatma Gandhi came to live in the Location in the early part of the 20th century. This was surely divinely ordered. He lived there for many years before moving to Natal and eventually back to India. Everyone knows the mark he left on India. Few have heard of the legacy he left in South Africa –a legacy of pride in heritage, fighting for freedom and belief in the greatness of ordinary people. I went to school with many children who came from families who took the Mahatma as their leader. Many of them later played important roles in the South African freedom movement.
Now my thoughts go back to the fact that the Location was probably one of the richest sources of cultural exchange on the face of the globe at that time –something never to be repeated in this fast changing, modern world of ours. Toronto is probably the only other place where this cultural heterogeneity is encouraged, to a point. However, Toronto is not a ghetto and it is also so large that the ethnics have their own ghettos. But Pretoria’s Location was unparalleled on the planet because nowhere else were so many different people put together in such a small area from where they could not leave by their own choice.
The richness of life that I’m also talking about is the people who lived in this Location. And my memory takes me to re-meet the neighbours and their cultures and the languages that were spoken here all around us. The Location was over-crowded because the Indian area was no more than about ¾ of a mile by ¾ of a mile. There were close to 10,000 people in that small area, living in poverty and under an oppressive regime. Families and extended families of 20 or 30 people using one toilet was not uncommon. But people got along. We survived. We learned to tolerate each other. Understand each other. We visited each other in our homes. We went to school together in this one-of-a-kind place in the world, the Location. We had three movie theatres, showing Indian, American, British, Egyptian and Tamil movies. This was our escape.
When I look back on my school days and school mates, first of all, everyone spoke either one of the country’s major legal languages, English or Afrikaans. The Coloureds mostly spoke either local or Cape Afrikaans (a Dutch-German derivative language, with a smattering of Flemish and English mixed in). The African servants and black customers at the local shops (blacks were allowed to be there until 7 pm, but had to observe the curfew that forced them to go back to their areas by 7 pm), spoke either Zulu, Xosa, Venda, Sesutho, Swazi, Ndebele, Tswana or Mchangan. Most of the Indians and local business people spoke at least 2 of the above languages, including their own local language from India. In addition most also spoke Hindi, English or Afrikaans or both.
Indians were truly multi-lingual out of necessity. They were the trades people of the area –running small shops and service businesses for the blacks and coloureds, who worked in the white areas. There were also a couple dozen Chinese families living in the Location. Some came from Mainland China, others from Hong Kong or Macau. They spoke either Cantonese or Mandarin.In the Location, there were Indians from South India, especially Tamils, who were a big percentage of the population. They spoke, depending on where they came from in the South of India, Madrasi, Telegu or Malayalam. Also, some from the mid-section of India spoke a few different dialects of Indian languages. There were the Hyderabadis, who spoke their own language. There were Cochnis from Cochin, they spoke their own distinct language. There were a few from Ceylon, who spoke Sinhalese. Moving North towards Pakistan, there were many Urdu speaking peoples. Indians from Mumbai spoke Marhastran. And Parsis, who also came from the same area, especially from Mumbai, spoke Gujerati. Then there were the Gujeratis, with a big ethnic population, who spoke their different brands of Gujerati –the Kanamyas, the Surtis, the Katchis, the Katchi-Mehman and Halai-Mehman from Sindh. There were Sindis who spoke pure Sindi, with their own unique script. There were those who spoke Hindi and as we go further North, we find the Sikhs, with their own language, Punjabi. There were people from Kolkata, speaking Kalkatian language. And from Bangladesh, people spoke Bengali. There were Patthan-speaking Indians from the North West of India and Punjabi-speakers from the Punjab.
This was a microcosm of almost all the people you could think of. Pizzaro and Cortes didn’t allow the Aztecs and the Mayas to be in the Location, otherwise we would have had them also. And the North American Indians and the Northern Aboriginals all fighting for survival –they were not here.
There were Portuguese-speaking Indians who came from Portuguese speaking enclaves in India. The Malays of the Cape were also here, with their Malay-mixed Afrikaans. They had come to South Africa with the Dutch from Malaysia. There were German-speaking coloureds who came from the Cape province, on the border with Southwest Africa, where they spoke German. And there were Arab-speaking Mullahs at the local Madrassa.
I’m sure I’m forgetting some other people with their peculiar language here. But they were there in this Location. All their children, boys and girls, were at the local school. Nowhere on Earth will you find this. The children of the very, very wealthy and those of the very poor, went to the same school because of the Apartheid ghetto –which did not differentiate between rich and poor –only between white and non-white.
In spite of the oppression and lack of opportunities, what could be more momentous than having one of the greatest men on this planet as a neighbour living in this Location? That’s what it felt like to have Mahatma Gandhi as part of our neighbourhood. It gave our lives and experiences meaning and richness in a larger global sense. When I see Ben Kingsley portraying Mahatma Gandhi, I say to myself, ‘We had the real thing.’
In conclusion, I must reiterate the richness of this once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-long-historical-period that only divine intervention could have produced. Where in the world would you get a Location of so many cultural and sub-cultural backgrounds with their rich heritage of music, dress, color, religion and language have come together in such a small place? Yes, there were even Ismailis here. One family in particular, the Keshavjees, had very close contact with Mahatma Gandhi. This was truly a historical event of a magnitude that would have world-wide impact. Mahatma Gandhi was part of this beautiful historical mosaic. Indians and Africans played out their roles, while the British and Dutch looked on from the side-lines with their attitudes of Apartheid, snobbery and British arrogance. Look where they are today.
This was a one-time phenomenon with, not Ben Kingsly whose relatives are also known to me, but the real thing thrown in: the Mahatma. This is my legacy. A tapestry full of riches, a mosaic to cherish, with all the different music, art, religion, dances, stories and languages woven into the fabric of life. The White man in South Africa, with his one superior language truly missed out. To him, Gandhi was yet another `coolie` to be derided and ridiculed. What irony. Wake up Canada, smell the real world that the divine created. Embrace it or you’ll lose out also".(Mohamed Ally(Mamdoo) Keshavjee, 2008)
9)EPILOGUE
"When the Ismailis left Marabastad, Pretoria lost the contributions that fine minds make to enhance a society. Had the "Khojas" remained in the Asiatic Bazaar, however, many avenues of development would have been closed to them. In other countries they had the freedom to fulfil their potential. In Canada and the United Kingdom, they embarked on careers that carried the most gifted - among them the descendants of Velshi Keshavjee - to the top of their professions. In 1987, Murad Keshavjee, Velshi Keshavjee's grandson, who became a member of the Ontario Liberal Government of David Peterson, was deputy whip of the Liberal Party, Chair of the Committee of the Ombudsman and Parliamentary Assistant to the Ministry of Citizenship. Shafique Keshavjee, Sherbanoo Velshi Keshavjee's grandson, is the leading heart-and-lung thoracic surgeon in Canada and director of the Toronto Lung-Transplant Programme.
The successes of Ismailis, even in diaspora, are clearly attributable to the cohesiveness of their community, a unity fostered through religious beliefs and the spiritual guidance of the Imam"(Muthal Naidoo, 2008).
Relevant posts and links:
The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society: How I discovered my ancestry from 10-15 thousand years ago.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2007/11/249the-genographic-projectnational.html
Blogger Muthal Naidoo posts a goldmine of information on the Keshavjees and other Shia Ismaili Muslim families of South Africa.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/504blogger-muthal-naidoo-posts-goldmine.html
http://www.muthalnaidoo.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=123&Itemid=96
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/jivan-keshavjee-habib-chagan-and-the-ismaili-community-of-pretoria/
http://www.muthalnaidoo.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=108&Itemid=89
Mamajee's Kitchen, by Lella Umedaly-Cuisine
http://mamajeeskitchen.com/mylife.html
http://mamajeeskitchen.com/index.html
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/01/25/mamajees-kitchen-by-lella-umedaly-cuisine/
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/125another-one-of-those-off-topic-posts.html
Languages in the Location
http://mamdoochacha.blogspot.com/2008/03/languages-in-location.html
Two Magnificent Accounts describing the sojourn of the Keshavjee family in Pretoria, apartheid South Africa, during the 20th Century: A Legacy
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/10/414two-magnificent-accounts-describing.html
A Collection Of Posts On My Blog About All Things KESHAVJEE; Quotes from Blogpost Four Hundred.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/505a-collection-of-posts-on-my-blog.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Contents:
1)THE REMOTE REMOTE HISTORY, LIKE I MEAN FROM 10-15 THOUSAND YEARS AGO: HOW DNA FROM INNER CHEEK CELLS(MOUTH CHEEK NOT BUTT CHEEK ;-)) CAN TELL A FASCINATING STORY
2) THE EARLY YEARS, THE PIONEERING SPIRIT: MUTHAL NAIDOO GIVES US A GLIMPSE
3)LELLA UMEDALY WRITES A COOKBOOK AND MASTERFULLY WEAVES IN OUR FAMILY STORY AMIDST DESCRIPTIONS OF CULINARY EXCELLENCE.
4)ABC BAKERY, TOLSTOY FARM, RAJABALI AND THE MAHATMA, NAUGHTY NAUGHTY REHMTULLA AND THE POLITICS OF DEFIANCE: MUTHAL NAIDOO ELABORATES
5)POLITICS IN THE BLOOD OF RAJABALI'S DESCENDANTS?
6)CHARISMATIC HABIB:
RECRUITS MIRIAM MAKEBA, DOLLY RATHEBE, SYDNEY POITIER, CANADA LEE TO EMPIRE CINEMA;
ENTICES THE KHIMANIS FROM PAKISTAN TO COME AND TEACH RELIGION TO THE KIDS;
KK KHOJA AND GULAM MANJEE SET UP ROYAL CINEMA;
MRS MANJEE KESHAVJEE DONATES LAND FOR THE AGA KHAN NURSERY SCHOOL;
SHERBANOO VELSHI SETS UP HEALTH AND SOCIAL WELFARE CLINICS.
7)LELLA UMEDALY GOES TO THE DIAMOND JUBILEE DARBAR IN DAR ES SALAAM; GETS MARRIED; DESCRIBES THE SCATTERING OF OVER 2000 KESHAVJEE DESCENDANTS TO THE FOUR CORNERS.
8)MAMDOO'S MAGNIFICENT MOSAIC MAKING MAGIC IN MARABASTAD NEAR THE MAGALIESBERG, PRESAGING OUR GLOBAL VILLAGE.
9)EPILOGUE
1)THE REMOTE REMOTE HISTORY, LIKE I MEAN FROM 10-15 THOUSAND YEARS AGO: HOW DNA FROM INNER CHEEK CELLS(MOUTH CHEEK NOT BUTT CHEEK ;-)) CAN TELL A FASCINATING STORY:
"Curious about my remote origins, I joined an international National Geographic genetic study done by world-renowned geneticist Spencer Wells in 2004 and dutifully sent a sample of my inner cheek cells to his research lab in the USA. Since I am endowed with the genes that issued forth from the venerable loins of the patriarch of this family, the father of those four brothers, the man whose first name was Keshavjee, I was pleased to sacrifice myself to discover knowledge of our origins. I was startled to discover that I, of northwestern Indian stock, share the same genetic markers as a caucasian Englishman I know and that a very large proportion of Europe's, Central Asia's and the northern Indian subcontinent's population all originate from one man who lived in the area of present-day Ukraine or Southern Russia ten to fifteen thousand years ago! This is how I described my heritage based on the information sent to me by Spencer Wells, the world-renowned geneticist:
"Based on a genetic analysis done in 2004 of the Y-chromosome extracted from my cheek cell DNA, which shows that I belong to the R1a haplogroup of the M17 genetic marker, my remote ancestor was a man of European origin born on the grassy steppes in the region of present-day Ukraine or Southern Russia 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. This man's descendants(known also as the Kurgan people) became the nomadic steppe dwellers who eventually spread as far afield as India and Iceland. I am descended from the Indo-European branch of this clan, which is thought to be responsible for, among other things, the domestication of the horse and the development of the Proto-Indo-European language, leading eventually to the development of English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, other Romance languages as well as Sanskrit-based languages like Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati and Urdu. Many of the Indo-European languages share similar words for animals, plants, tools and weapons. My more recent ancestors were originally Hindus living in Chotila, Gujarat, India(35% of people currently living in the State of Gujarat, millions of people, carry the same genetic marker as me). They were converted to Shia Ismaili Islam by Persian Sufi Mystics(Pirs) around the 14th century CE. My great-grandfather and his 3 brothers travelled by ship and train from India to Pretoria, South Africa around 1894. Thus, having originally left Africa 60,000 years ago during the big migration, my ancestors had, once again, returned to Africa. I emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada from Pretoria, South Africa in 1973. My wife has a similar heritage to me but she was born in Mbale, Uganda and lived in Kampala, Uganda. Both our children(son 25yrs, daughter 16yrs) were born in Canada. I am very proud of my heritage."(Easy Nash, 2007)
2) THE EARLY YEARS, THE PIONEERING SPIRIT: MUTHAL NAIDOO GIVES US A GLIMPSE
"The community of Shia Muslims.......was small but very enterprising. Its founder, Jivan Keshavjee, had arrived in Pretoria in 1894, about the time the Coolie Location was set aside for Indian occupation. He was from Chotila, a village near Rajkot in India, where his family was engaged in commerce. He came to South Africa with a friend, Ganibhai Haji Cassim, who had relatives in the country. Jivan and Ganibhai worked in Port Elizabeth for a short while before they left for the Coolie Location in 1894.
In the next year, with the help of other Muslims already established in the area, Jivan started a business at 112 Prinsloo Street, K.J. Keshavjee and Sons, so named as he was known as "Khoja" Jivan Keshavjee. ‘Khoja' means trader. His relatives who were not Keshavjees, entered the country as "Khojas," adopted the designation as their surname and used it for their businesses. At some point, Jivan Keshavjee dropped the term and when his brothers, Velshi, Manjee and Naran, arrived in Pretoria, they came in as Keshavjees.
In 1903, in an attempt to confine Indian trade to the location, the Coolie Location was given bazaar status and became the Asiatic Bazaar. This meant that Indians could own property, establish businesses and build places of worship. So the Keshavjees, Jivan and his brothers, acquired a number of stands on which they built their homes and shops. They had businesses on almost every corner of Blood(Bloed) Street. Jivan Keshavjee's shop was on the corner of Fifth and Blood Streets; Manjee had a shop on the corner of Jerusalem and Blood. On the corner of Fourth and Blood was KK Khoja and Company and there was another shop on the corner of Blood and Sixth. Velshi had a shop at the corner of Grand and Sixth Streets. Other Ismailis, relatives of the Keshavjees, MA Khoja and HK Khoja, also owned general dealerships along Blood Street and in other places in the location. The Ismailis were hardworking and successful businessmen, and the location, as tiny as it was, was a fortuitous place to have a shop. It consisted of a grid of a dozen streets that housed about twenty thousand people. So business boomed."(Muthal Naidoo, 2008)
3)LELLA UMEDALY WRITES A COOKBOOK AND MASTERFULLY WEAVES IN OUR FAMILY STORY AMIDST DESCRIPTIONS OF CULINARY EXCELLENCE.
"In the 1890s when my great-uncle, Jiwan Keshavjee left the family home in Chotila, Gujarat, a province near Bombay (now called Mumbai). He traveled on a steamer ship tracing the ancient trade routes from India to Africa, and his three brothers, Velshi (my grandfather), Naran, and Manji, followed soon after, leaving a life of struggle and poverty in search of opportunity. Most Indian immigrants settled in East Africa or Mozambique, but the brothers went almost as far as the steamer could take them. Disembarking on the eastern coast of South Africa, probably at Durban, our family often tries to imagine why these unique and adventurous men, our Keshavjee clan founders, traveled so far. Once the ship docked, the authorities sent them far inland to Pretoria, the Dutch capital, and they lived there for more than two generations.
The brothers, in their youth, did not know the adversities they would face. There were few Indians, and segregation was already thoroughly entrenched, so we lived apart from the Bantu, the white Afrikaner, and the British colonialists. The region proved to be a difficult place to live and raise a family, but the brothers, though poor, were young and strong. They worked hard as merchants, opening small grocery shops, and soon were able to send to India for their wives, sisters, and extended families. Each of the brothers had four to six children, and this group was the start of what we now think of as the Keshavjee clan. I am part of the second generation born in South Africa.
My grandfather, Velshi, was a very religious Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim who was strict in his ways. He and his three brothers built a beautiful mosque in the heart of Pretoria’s Indian area. In those years, my grandfather also developed a friendship with the famous Indian pacifist and statesman Mahatma Gandhi. The Mahatma came to South Africa as a young man, after he completed his law degree in England, and he lived near Durban, on the coast. He traveled to Pretoria to try an important case and befriended my grandfather, and even though he was of the Hindu faith, he tutored my uncle Rajabali, helping him to learn his Ismaili Muslim prayers. Because of Gandhi’s close relationship and influence, Uncle Rajabali became a vegetarian. Thus we all learned to cook many simple vegetarian dishes, some of which are described in this cookbook. A number of our family members even supported Mahatma Gandhi’s passive resistance and participated in acts of civil disobedience to protest the passes that all Indians once had to carry. Today letters between Gandhi and my grandfather Velshi, are in Ghandi’s ashram near Ahmedabad, India.
With time and great effort, the family prospered in their various businesses. One uncle had a bakery, another had a gas station and yet another a small machinery auction house. My father owned a movie theatre, but the government censored the movies, not allowing us to see white people kissing, for example, and they insisted that movie houses be segregated. Indians, blacks, and white Afrikaner were all separated, and my father was forced to choose between an Indian and a black clientele. This segregation would precipitate my father’s later decision to leave South Africa for Kenya.
My father’s generation of men brought young brides from India or from Indian communities in East Africa so they could marry within their religion. And so the family grew. To marry my mother, Sakina, my father had to return to Vichia, a village in the province of Gujarat where my family originated. My grandfather had arranged the marriage, and Mahatma Gandhi was asked to take the wedding jewelry to my father’s intended to seal the proposal. Sakina came to South Africa as a young bride of fifteen and was immediately responsible for cooking, under the auspices of the matriarch, my grandmother, Jabubai.
I was born in 1930, the second of five children. My mother died of a weak heart when she was just 29 years old, so I became responsible for my brothers and sisters when I was only twelve. Soon after, my father remarried to a distant relative, whose name was also Sakina, the family grew further with three more brothers.
The growing clan of Keshavjees now numbered over one hundred people, and the community was one large family, often sitting, praying, and eating together. We lived in homes that were close together, where all doors were open to all the children. In addition to caring for each others‘ children, the women shared the cooking and cleaning tasks."(Lella Umedaly, 2006)
4)ABC BAKERY, TOLSTOY FARM, RAJABALI AND THE MAHATMA, NAUGHTY NAUGHTY REHMTULLA AND THE POLITICS OF DEFIANCE: MUTHAL NAIDOO ELABORATES
"By 1920, the Keshavjees, having established flourishing general dealerships, began to diversify and expand their interests. Velshi Keshavjee acquired the ABC Bakery, a tiny business in a tin shanty that made deliveries by horse and cart. He bought out the owner, a Chinese man who had gone bankrupt, modernised the bakery and put in the latest equipment and machinery. Under Rajabali, Velshi's eldest son, it became the eleventh most advanced bakery in the country. Rajabali was an enterprising businessman and a progressive thinker. As a young boy, he had lived at Tolstoy Farm, the satyagrahi settlement that Mahatma Gandhi had established in 1910 at Lawley on the outskirts of Johannesburg. So he was interested in the political movements of the time and in social upliftment and supported the work of the Indian Congresses.
His large, spacious house behind the bakery became a guesthouse for many prominent political figures. As there was no hotel accommodation for people of colour in the area at that time, when the Kajees (A.I. Kajee was chairman of the Natal Indian Congress in the 1940s) came to Pretoria, they went straight to Rajabali's home at the bakery. In 1952, Rehmtulla, Rajabali's son, took part in the Defiance Campaign and marched to Germiston Location in Patrick Duncan's batch, which also included Mrs Thayanayagie Pillay. His involvement in politics brought people like Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu to the bakery. Though their visits were very discreet, the police were aware of the activities at the bakery and raided it frequently"(Muthal Naidoo, 2008)
5)POLITICS IN THE BLOOD OF RAJABALI'S DESCENDANTS?
"The descendants of Rajabali seem to have politics in their blood. The 8-year old Rajabali had already been sensitized to Gandhi's Satyagraha movement and human rights issues in 1910 at Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg. The anti-apartheid defiance campaign preoccupied Rajabali's eldest son, Rehmtulla, whose family paid a steep price for his shenenigans and were eventually forced to leave South Africa in 1973/74. After arriving in Canada he became a card-carrying member of the socialist New Democratic Party and did a lot of work for them till the day he died in 1992. Rajabali's younger son, Murad, became the first ever South Asian member of parliament in Canada, representing the provincial Liberal Party in the Toronto riding of Don Mills from 1985-1990. Rajabali's daughter's husband was a member of the Kenyan parliament from the town of Kisumu during the 1960s and '70s. Murad's son, a prominent Business journalist with CNN, also dabbled in provincial Canadian Liberal politics as well as American democratic congressional politics and his involvement in the political arena may not yet have fully unfolded. Rajabali's great-grandson, Rehmtulla's grandson, is at present the Director of Communications and Parliamentary Affairs for a senior minister in the current Canadian Conservative government. With activism spanning the entire political spectrum the descendants of Rajabali Velshi Keshavjee have beenderdundat."(Easy Nash, 2009)
6)CHARISMATIC HABIB:
RECRUITS MIRIAM MAKEBA, DOLLY RATHEBE, SYDNEY POITIER, CANADA LEE TO EMPIRE CINEMA;
ENTICES THE KHIMANIS FROM PAKISTAN TO COME AND TEACH RELIGION TO THE KIDS;
KK KHOJA AND GULAM MANJEE SET UP ROYAL CINEMA;
MRS MANJEE KESHAVJEE DONATES LAND FOR THE AGA KHAN NURSERY SCHOOL; SHERBANOO VELSHI SETS UP HEALTH AND SOCIAL WELFARE CLINICS.
"But the Ismaili community, in general, did not become involved in political activities; it concentrated its efforts on business and building a sound economic base for social services. Among the most successful Ismailis, were the Keshavjees whose various branches comprised many enterprising individuals. In the Velshi Keshavjee family for instance, in addition to Velshi himself there were his sons, Rajabali and Habib, and his daughter Sherbanoo. They took on interests as diverse as the bakery business, the film industry, social work, education and the building of the Jamatkhana, the white mosque in Boom Street.
In the 1920s, when the Ismaili community was ready for a new mosque, Velshi Keshavjee, made that his special project and headed up a committee that undertook to replace the little tin shanty set up as a mosque by Velshi's pioneer brother, Jivan, with a magnificent jamatkhana. The committee commissioned an architect who drew up plans for a fine building with interior décor of wood panelling and plush carpeting. When work on the building in Boom Street was completed in 1928, the Asiatic Bazaar had a new landmark - a beautiful white mosque, the Jamatkhana. A black plaque proudly displays the legend that Velshi Keshavjee laid the foundation stone. As fate would have it, Velshi Keshavjee died in an accident right at the doors of the mosque in 1954. He was crossing the road when a Putco bus hit him and dragged him to the gates of the Jamatkhana where he died. The Jamatkhana, the pride of the Ismaili Muslim community in the location, became renowned among Ismailis throughout Africa. It still stands on the corner of Boom and Fifth Streets and is now a national monument.
During their time in the location, Velshi's son, Habib, and his daughter, Sherbanoo, a social worker, turned the Jamatkhana into a community centre. Habib helped Sherbanoo establish a clinic on the premises with visiting doctors who came in on a regular basis and more frequently when there were epidemics of one sort or another. In 1944, their aunt, Mrs Manjee Keshavjee, donated a plot of land behind the mosque for a crèche and enabled Sherbanoo and Habib to start the first nursery school in the location. Habib recruited Glennie Tomlinson, a teacher from Cape Town, and went from door to door to encourage people to send their children to the crèche. The response was good and they employed several teachers for whom they provided training in Montessori methods. Habib was also something of a dietician and insisted on healthy nutrition at the school.
In 1949, after donating a plot of land on Barber Street for a madressa, Habib recruited Mowlana Sadruddin Khimani and his wife, Malek, from Pakistan, to induct Ismaili children in the Shia understanding of Islam. The Jamatkhana, with the madressa on Barber Street, became the hub of Ismaili community life. It was a multipurpose community centre, with its clinic, nursery school, madressa, a Council Room downstairs and a prayer area upstairs. With the exception of the prayer area, which was restricted exclusively to Ismailis, the venues at the Jamatkhana were open to all.
Habib's involvement at the mosque consumed only a small part of his energies. His main interest was in the cinema business. In the 1920s, the Keshavjee brothers, Jivan, Velshi, Manjee and Naran, originally part of the firm of Keshavjee & Co. split up, formed separate companies and went into independent ventures. Some branches of the clan acquired sites that had been used for showing films, such as the Bombay Star Bioscope and the Nav Jivan. The new owners of these venues, converted the Bombay Star into a shirt factory and sold the Nav Jivan. They left the development of cinemas to Habib and his uncles KK Khoja and Goolam Manjee Keshavjee. Habib had been running film shows for African audiences at the Dougall Hall from about 1926. When, in 1928, his uncles built the Royal Theatre on Grand Street that was the start of a rivalry that gave rise to a thriving cinema industry in the location. Bioscopes were a lucrative venture for the Keshavjees because the entertainment business provided a world of make-believe that allowed people to escape the squalor of their surroundings. In Marabastad, there was a large population hungry for escapist fare. So stars like the young Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, Betty Grable, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald, Tyrone Power, Boris Karloff and Johnny Weismuller became icons in the locations.
At the Royal, KK Khoja and Goolam Manjee showed Warner Brothers movies. In order to outdo them, when Habib acquired the Empire Theatre around 1933, he obtained contracts with MGM, United Artists and Twentieth Century Fox. As a showman, he did everything he could to bring people into the Empire. He kept abreast of technological developments and ensured that his theatre offered the highest quality entertainment. He employed an African pianist to provide background music during the silent film era, and in the forties, he commissioned Omarjee Suliman, a young man with a passionate interest in film technology, to create special exhibits using animation. So there were flamboyant displays at the Empire to advertise new features such as David and Beersheba, Samson and Delilah and Mighty Joe Young.
Habib also used the cinema to promote local talent. In 1947, Miriam Makeba performed at the Empire for five pounds a show. Other African artists who appeared there were the Manhattan Brothers and the cast of the film, The Magic Queen, starring Dolly Rathebe. Habib devised a promotion campaign for the film with photo sessions that took the stars to various venues and landmarks such as the Union Buildings.
At Easter, the bioscope was crowded mainly with African people. They came from Marabastad, Bantule, Lady Selborne, Newclare and locations all over Pretoria, to continuous showings of The Life of Christ. These performances, which began early in the morning and finished late at night, were always sold out.
In 1949, when Canada Lee and the young Sydney Poitier, stars of the film, Cry the Beloved Country, were on location in South Africa, Habib invited them to the Empire. From the stage of the bioscope, they encouraged the mostly African audience not to give up hope for freedom.
Though there were restrictions regarding the admission of African people to the bioscopes, cinema owners ignored them. With the coming of apartheid, however, the authorities began to fine cinema owners for admitting African people to "violent" films, American gangster movies and such like. People like Habib could see the writing on the wall and believed that their progress would be stunted under apartheid. Soon after the Nationalist government came into power in 1948, His Highness, Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan, the Ismaili Imam, called on his followers in South Africa to leave the country. As they saw no hope of a viable future in South Africa, the Keshavjees sold their cinemas to the Chetty brothers, the emerging cinema moghuls, and emigrated.
Habib, like his pioneer Uncle Jivan, was a charismatic figure. When he left in 1952, he drew people to Kenya in the same way that Jivan had drawn people from India to the Asiatic Bazaar. Almost everyone followed. Ten years later there was no longer an Ismaili Muslim community in Pretoria. A few individuals remained but the majority had made their way to other parts of the world"(Muthal Naidoo, 2008)
7)LELLA UMEDALY GOES TO THE DIAMOND JUBILEE DARBAR IN DAR ES SALAAM; GETS MARRIED; DESCRIBES THE SCATTERING OF OVER 2000 KESHAVJEE DESCENDANTS TO THE FOUR CORNERS.
"In 1946, when I was fifteen, my father decided to go with the family to Dar es Salaam in East Africa. We went to attend a ceremony honoring our spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, Sultan Mohamed Shah, who had become Imam of the Ismailis when he was eight years old and had served as our leader for seventy-five years. This Diamond Jubilee brought Ismailis from all over the world, and they watched as our Imam, a heavy-set man, was weighed against an equal amount of un-cut diamonds. The entire East African congregation had contributed money to purchase the diamonds, and once he was weighed, this treasure trove was sold again to establish a trust. Now called the Aga Khan Foundation, this trust is of great importance to the Ismailis. It is used for humanitarian aid around the world and to provide low-interest loans to Ismailis everywhere, to build homes, attend universities, and start businesses. I sat in the front and witnessed this amazing ceremonial occasion.
The journey to the diamond jubilee was a trip of a lifetime…a real safari. The countries through which we traveled, now called Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Kenya, were beautiful. The roads were all murum (dirt), so it took us two weeks to cover 3,000 miles, and we had enough flat tires to last a lifetime! But we made many friends along the way and ate rich and different foods that are part of the Indian cuisine of East Africa. We learned some mouthwatering recipes like Biryani, chicken curries, and mutton curries.
This journey was to have a major impact on my family. It was when I first met my future husband. It was also a time when apartheid was becoming a huge and oppressive issue for our family, and my father was contemplating leaving South Africa. n 1951, he and his cousins would decide to seek their fortunes in a more open society. Following the advice of our Imam, they would migrate to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and in later years, many members of the Keshavjee clan would follow. A few remained in South Africa, however, this was to be the first of the moves that would scatter the clan around the world.
Members of the clan now number approximately 2,000 and have settled all over the world. We keep in touch by e-mail today, but we can recognize each other a mile away, so strong are our physical resemblances. Once a Keshavjee speaks, the recognition is complete, because of tone of voice and abundant use of gestures. We confirm our kinship by asking, “Where have you been and what have you done?” The answers are inevitably bold and enthusiastic, so it seems that most members of the Keshavjee clan have adventurous souls and ambitious dreams. We are also people with a good sense of humor, and we love family get-togethers over a sumptuous meal"(Lella Umedaly, 2006)
8)MAMDOO'S MAGNIFICENT MOSAIC MAKING MAGIC IN MARABASTAD NEAR THE MAGALIESBERG, PRESAGING OUR GLOBAL VILLAGE.
"As I reflect on my life, I sometimes go back to my childhood days and recollect my thoughts about the life we led in the non-white ghetto in Pretoria. There were three ghettos in a total area of about a mile and a quarter by a mile and a quarter for the three basic non-white groups, namely coloured or Cape coloured (those of mixed race), Indian or Asian and African or Bantu. The ghetto was made up of Marabastaadt, the area for blacks, the Asiatic Bazaar for Indians and the Cape Location for those of mixed race. All of us who lived there just called it Location.
By the mid-forties, the Black African population was growing rapidly and they were slowly being moved out to Atteridgeville. The blacks called it Pelindaba --a basic bare-boned city, some 8 or 9 miles West from the City of Pretoria. Atteridgeville was ethnically divided to keep people from different black tribes who came from different areas of South Africa apart. This was in keeping with the divide and conquer philosophy of the ruling party in South Africa –Apartheid began at the ethnic or root level. Once the Blacks had been moved out, plans for moving the Coloureds was initiated. The Coloureds were moved to Derdepoort, an area some 10 miles East of Pretoria. Similar arrangements were made in Johannesburg and other major and minor cities of South Africa. Indians in Pretoria were to be moved to Laudium, which today is a reality and somehow also ethnically divided. However, before all those events took place, all three races lived in the one Location.
The Location was bounded on the North side by the Magalis (pronounced with a throaty g –almost like a raspy h) range of low mountains. Struben Street acted as the Southern border. The Municipality of Pretoria had a fence along the entire Southern border, behind which they stored road building equipment and other requisites. The West side of the Location was cut off by a highway called Von Wielligh Street. The East side was cut off by the Apis (Monkey) River. Boom Street ran through the middle of the Location, connected by a bridge on the East side to the White areas and the outside world. These three major groups of people shared their destiny of being cut off from so-called superior White civilization. We definitely lived in a world of our own.
Some Indians who had shops in the City of Pretoria, from the early part of the century before the official Apartheid policy came into effect, were allowed to go to their businesses during the day, but had to be back by evening to spend the night in the Location. Some Indian businessmen did have homes behind their businesses in the City, but this was an anomaly from the early part of the century. By the mid-fifties they were already ear-marked for removal –both business and residence. This was part of the Group Areas Act which set aggressive milestones for the separation of the races.
Those were years of increasing oppression and being on the receiving end of an inherently discriminatory and divisive policy. South African White policy in those years was designed to progressively remove all economic and political opportunities from non-whites. However, reminiscing of the days in the Location, all is not lost because life is not measured in terms of money, places or status. It is measured in how we lived with our fellow man and the trials and tribulations we bore together and how we emerged from it all.The first great thing that came to be was that Mahatma Gandhi came to live in the Location in the early part of the 20th century. This was surely divinely ordered. He lived there for many years before moving to Natal and eventually back to India. Everyone knows the mark he left on India. Few have heard of the legacy he left in South Africa –a legacy of pride in heritage, fighting for freedom and belief in the greatness of ordinary people. I went to school with many children who came from families who took the Mahatma as their leader. Many of them later played important roles in the South African freedom movement.
Now my thoughts go back to the fact that the Location was probably one of the richest sources of cultural exchange on the face of the globe at that time –something never to be repeated in this fast changing, modern world of ours. Toronto is probably the only other place where this cultural heterogeneity is encouraged, to a point. However, Toronto is not a ghetto and it is also so large that the ethnics have their own ghettos. But Pretoria’s Location was unparalleled on the planet because nowhere else were so many different people put together in such a small area from where they could not leave by their own choice.
The richness of life that I’m also talking about is the people who lived in this Location. And my memory takes me to re-meet the neighbours and their cultures and the languages that were spoken here all around us. The Location was over-crowded because the Indian area was no more than about ¾ of a mile by ¾ of a mile. There were close to 10,000 people in that small area, living in poverty and under an oppressive regime. Families and extended families of 20 or 30 people using one toilet was not uncommon. But people got along. We survived. We learned to tolerate each other. Understand each other. We visited each other in our homes. We went to school together in this one-of-a-kind place in the world, the Location. We had three movie theatres, showing Indian, American, British, Egyptian and Tamil movies. This was our escape.
When I look back on my school days and school mates, first of all, everyone spoke either one of the country’s major legal languages, English or Afrikaans. The Coloureds mostly spoke either local or Cape Afrikaans (a Dutch-German derivative language, with a smattering of Flemish and English mixed in). The African servants and black customers at the local shops (blacks were allowed to be there until 7 pm, but had to observe the curfew that forced them to go back to their areas by 7 pm), spoke either Zulu, Xosa, Venda, Sesutho, Swazi, Ndebele, Tswana or Mchangan. Most of the Indians and local business people spoke at least 2 of the above languages, including their own local language from India. In addition most also spoke Hindi, English or Afrikaans or both.
Indians were truly multi-lingual out of necessity. They were the trades people of the area –running small shops and service businesses for the blacks and coloureds, who worked in the white areas. There were also a couple dozen Chinese families living in the Location. Some came from Mainland China, others from Hong Kong or Macau. They spoke either Cantonese or Mandarin.In the Location, there were Indians from South India, especially Tamils, who were a big percentage of the population. They spoke, depending on where they came from in the South of India, Madrasi, Telegu or Malayalam. Also, some from the mid-section of India spoke a few different dialects of Indian languages. There were the Hyderabadis, who spoke their own language. There were Cochnis from Cochin, they spoke their own distinct language. There were a few from Ceylon, who spoke Sinhalese. Moving North towards Pakistan, there were many Urdu speaking peoples. Indians from Mumbai spoke Marhastran. And Parsis, who also came from the same area, especially from Mumbai, spoke Gujerati. Then there were the Gujeratis, with a big ethnic population, who spoke their different brands of Gujerati –the Kanamyas, the Surtis, the Katchis, the Katchi-Mehman and Halai-Mehman from Sindh. There were Sindis who spoke pure Sindi, with their own unique script. There were those who spoke Hindi and as we go further North, we find the Sikhs, with their own language, Punjabi. There were people from Kolkata, speaking Kalkatian language. And from Bangladesh, people spoke Bengali. There were Patthan-speaking Indians from the North West of India and Punjabi-speakers from the Punjab.
This was a microcosm of almost all the people you could think of. Pizzaro and Cortes didn’t allow the Aztecs and the Mayas to be in the Location, otherwise we would have had them also. And the North American Indians and the Northern Aboriginals all fighting for survival –they were not here.
There were Portuguese-speaking Indians who came from Portuguese speaking enclaves in India. The Malays of the Cape were also here, with their Malay-mixed Afrikaans. They had come to South Africa with the Dutch from Malaysia. There were German-speaking coloureds who came from the Cape province, on the border with Southwest Africa, where they spoke German. And there were Arab-speaking Mullahs at the local Madrassa.
I’m sure I’m forgetting some other people with their peculiar language here. But they were there in this Location. All their children, boys and girls, were at the local school. Nowhere on Earth will you find this. The children of the very, very wealthy and those of the very poor, went to the same school because of the Apartheid ghetto –which did not differentiate between rich and poor –only between white and non-white.
In spite of the oppression and lack of opportunities, what could be more momentous than having one of the greatest men on this planet as a neighbour living in this Location? That’s what it felt like to have Mahatma Gandhi as part of our neighbourhood. It gave our lives and experiences meaning and richness in a larger global sense. When I see Ben Kingsley portraying Mahatma Gandhi, I say to myself, ‘We had the real thing.’
In conclusion, I must reiterate the richness of this once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-long-historical-period that only divine intervention could have produced. Where in the world would you get a Location of so many cultural and sub-cultural backgrounds with their rich heritage of music, dress, color, religion and language have come together in such a small place? Yes, there were even Ismailis here. One family in particular, the Keshavjees, had very close contact with Mahatma Gandhi. This was truly a historical event of a magnitude that would have world-wide impact. Mahatma Gandhi was part of this beautiful historical mosaic. Indians and Africans played out their roles, while the British and Dutch looked on from the side-lines with their attitudes of Apartheid, snobbery and British arrogance. Look where they are today.
This was a one-time phenomenon with, not Ben Kingsly whose relatives are also known to me, but the real thing thrown in: the Mahatma. This is my legacy. A tapestry full of riches, a mosaic to cherish, with all the different music, art, religion, dances, stories and languages woven into the fabric of life. The White man in South Africa, with his one superior language truly missed out. To him, Gandhi was yet another `coolie` to be derided and ridiculed. What irony. Wake up Canada, smell the real world that the divine created. Embrace it or you’ll lose out also".(Mohamed Ally(Mamdoo) Keshavjee, 2008)
9)EPILOGUE
"When the Ismailis left Marabastad, Pretoria lost the contributions that fine minds make to enhance a society. Had the "Khojas" remained in the Asiatic Bazaar, however, many avenues of development would have been closed to them. In other countries they had the freedom to fulfil their potential. In Canada and the United Kingdom, they embarked on careers that carried the most gifted - among them the descendants of Velshi Keshavjee - to the top of their professions. In 1987, Murad Keshavjee, Velshi Keshavjee's grandson, who became a member of the Ontario Liberal Government of David Peterson, was deputy whip of the Liberal Party, Chair of the Committee of the Ombudsman and Parliamentary Assistant to the Ministry of Citizenship. Shafique Keshavjee, Sherbanoo Velshi Keshavjee's grandson, is the leading heart-and-lung thoracic surgeon in Canada and director of the Toronto Lung-Transplant Programme.
The successes of Ismailis, even in diaspora, are clearly attributable to the cohesiveness of their community, a unity fostered through religious beliefs and the spiritual guidance of the Imam"(Muthal Naidoo, 2008).
Relevant posts and links:
The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society: How I discovered my ancestry from 10-15 thousand years ago.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2007/11/249the-genographic-projectnational.html
Blogger Muthal Naidoo posts a goldmine of information on the Keshavjees and other Shia Ismaili Muslim families of South Africa.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/504blogger-muthal-naidoo-posts-goldmine.html
http://www.muthalnaidoo.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=123&Itemid=96
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/jivan-keshavjee-habib-chagan-and-the-ismaili-community-of-pretoria/
http://www.muthalnaidoo.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=108&Itemid=89
Mamajee's Kitchen, by Lella Umedaly-Cuisine
http://mamajeeskitchen.com/mylife.html
http://mamajeeskitchen.com/index.html
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/01/25/mamajees-kitchen-by-lella-umedaly-cuisine/
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/125another-one-of-those-off-topic-posts.html
Languages in the Location
http://mamdoochacha.blogspot.com/2008/03/languages-in-location.html
Two Magnificent Accounts describing the sojourn of the Keshavjee family in Pretoria, apartheid South Africa, during the 20th Century: A Legacy
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/10/414two-magnificent-accounts-describing.html
A Collection Of Posts On My Blog About All Things KESHAVJEE; Quotes from Blogpost Four Hundred.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/505a-collection-of-posts-on-my-blog.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
533)A Blog Begun As A Retirement Project "To Prevent My Brain From Turning Into Mush":No 13 On The Top 50 Science Blogs among 125,000 NetworkedBlogs.
"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
In the dying days of 2007 some of my Blog readers were enquiring about why I use the cybername Easy Nash so I did what any self-respecting Blogger would do: I prepared a post to explain myself including why I decided to start writing a Blog in the first place. The Blog was my own private retirement project undertaken to satisfy my curiosity about a topic that has enthralled, fascinated and preoccupied me since I was a 17-year old undergraduate Science student at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada during the early 1970s: the link between Science and Religion in Islam. I began writing my Blog in March 2006 after hearing some inspirational words from His Highness Aga Khan IV, 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Nizari Ismaili Muslims, during his visit to Toronto in June 2005. I also remarked that another reason for blogging was to keep my brain exercised during retirement and "prevent it from turning into mush":
268)Why Easy Nash?; Who the hell is Easy Nash?
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2007/12/268why-easy-nash-who-hell-is-easy-nash.html
Fast forward to December 2009, almost 4 years later. I had decided to link my Blog to my Facebook account in 2007 and also linked it to the NetworkedBlogs application on Facebook about a year ago. Since then it has risen in current rankings to Number 13 on the Top 50 Science Blogs on NetworkedBlogs, a collection of over 125,000 Blogs worldwide. It's a fluid situation and that Number 13 ranking may not last as there are other Bloggers not far behind me in the rankings and I can feel them nipping at my heels ;-)
http://www.networkedblogs.com/topic/science/
It is very satisfying and gratifying for me to have such a positive validation of my retirement project. On the subject of preventing my brain from turning into mush I'll say that the jury is still out on that one(heh heh). My deepest thanks go to ALL from 6 continents(those not on Facebook as well as those on Facebook) who follow and support my Blog: "Science and Religion in Islam: The Link"
http://www.networkedblogs.com/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
In the dying days of 2007 some of my Blog readers were enquiring about why I use the cybername Easy Nash so I did what any self-respecting Blogger would do: I prepared a post to explain myself including why I decided to start writing a Blog in the first place. The Blog was my own private retirement project undertaken to satisfy my curiosity about a topic that has enthralled, fascinated and preoccupied me since I was a 17-year old undergraduate Science student at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada during the early 1970s: the link between Science and Religion in Islam. I began writing my Blog in March 2006 after hearing some inspirational words from His Highness Aga Khan IV, 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Nizari Ismaili Muslims, during his visit to Toronto in June 2005. I also remarked that another reason for blogging was to keep my brain exercised during retirement and "prevent it from turning into mush":
268)Why Easy Nash?; Who the hell is Easy Nash?
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2007/12/268why-easy-nash-who-hell-is-easy-nash.html
Fast forward to December 2009, almost 4 years later. I had decided to link my Blog to my Facebook account in 2007 and also linked it to the NetworkedBlogs application on Facebook about a year ago. Since then it has risen in current rankings to Number 13 on the Top 50 Science Blogs on NetworkedBlogs, a collection of over 125,000 Blogs worldwide. It's a fluid situation and that Number 13 ranking may not last as there are other Bloggers not far behind me in the rankings and I can feel them nipping at my heels ;-)
http://www.networkedblogs.com/topic/science/
It is very satisfying and gratifying for me to have such a positive validation of my retirement project. On the subject of preventing my brain from turning into mush I'll say that the jury is still out on that one(heh heh). My deepest thanks go to ALL from 6 continents(those not on Facebook as well as those on Facebook) who follow and support my Blog: "Science and Religion in Islam: The Link"
http://www.networkedblogs.com/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
532)Ibn al-Haytham(Alhazen) Revisited: He Criticised The Theories Of His Predecessors And Revolutionised Mathematical Optics In His Book 'Optics'
"....AND SHOULD'NT IB SCIENCE STUDENTS not learn about Ibn al-Haytham, the Muslim scholar who developed modern optics, as well as his predecessors Euclid and Ptolemy, whose ideas he challenged.....The legacy which I am describing actually goes back more than a thousand years, to the time when our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. For many centuries, a commitment to learning was a central element in far-flung Islamic cultures. That commitment has continued in my own Imamat through the founding of the Aga Khan University and the University of Central Asia and through the recent establishment of a new Aga Khan Academies Program."(Aga Khan IV, "The Peterson Lecture" on the International Baccalaureate, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 18 April 2008)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Dr Alnoor Dhanani from the Institute Of Ismaili Studies:
In the physical sciences, Muslim scientists were engaged in problems of natural philosophy, optics, and astronomy. The discussion of natural philosophy (focussed on the structure of matter, space, time, and motion) was largely between the religious philosophers and the Islamic Hellenistic philosophers. The former subscribed to atomism and the existence of the vacuum. In addition, they were proponents of an impetus theory of motion. Such views were in sharp opposition to Aristotelian natural philosophy. The two groups were therefore engaged in an examination and refutation of the ‘other’ system. Nevertheless, the religious philosophers’ theory of motion may have played a role in Ibn Sina’s formulation of his non-Aristotelian theory of “forced” and “natural” motion. Furthermore, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi (died after 1165 CE) rejected the Aristotelian theory of time and place and also believed that a vacuum was possible under certain circumstances. Finally, as has been noted above, Ibn Bajja rejected a key aspect of Aristotelian dynamics, that is, Aristotle’s formulation of the relationship between force, resistance, and velocity.
For the Hellenistic and early Islamic scientists, optics was a mathematical examination of light rays as they were transmitted through or reflected by various media, including lenses and mirrors of various shapes. This examination drew upon the works of Euclid and Ptolemy and advocated a theory of vision in which a cone of “visual rays” streamed from the eye to the visual object. A different account of vision was formulated by the Aristotelian natural philosophers (including Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd) in their discussion of perception. For them, vision is the reception of the “form” of the visual object by the eye. A third account of vision formulated by such medical writers as Galen and his followers (including the translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq) held that, as visual rays emerged from the eyes, the air was transformed into an instrument of vision. Therefore, the act of vision was the result of the contact of the “instrument” with the visual object. In the eleventh century CE, mathematician-scientist al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (died 1040 CE) criticised the theories of his predecessors and revolutionised mathematical optics in his Optics. He maintained that optical inquiry “requires a combination of the natural and mathematical sciences”, thus anticipating one of the key methodological positions of the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution – the mathematisation of physics. Furthermore, Ibn al-Haytham recognized that any account of optics must include an account of vision and must therefore discuss the psychology of visual perception.
Methodologically, Ibn al-Haytham’s work is significant for its clear concept and use of experiment to confirm the specific properties of light by setting up a controlled situation where certain parameters may be varied. With regard to vision, he rejects the visual ray hypothesis (rays stream from the eye to the visual object) in favour of the natural philosophers intromission hypothesis (vision is the reception of the form of the visual object in the eye). Ibn al-Haytham’s achievement was to reverse the direction of the visual rays of the mathematicians and hence mathematicise the “forms” of the natural philosophers. Surprisingly, the Optics does not seem to have made an impact in the Muslim world until the thirteenth century CE, and then only in the commentary on the Optics by Kamal al-din al-Farisi (died circa 1320 CE). In this work, al-Farisi formulated an explanation of the shape and colours of the primary and secondary rainbow on the basis of refraction and reflection in raindrops. Quite independently, a similar formulation was almost simultaneously arrived at in medieval Europe by Theoderic of Freiberg (died circa 1310 CE).
Ibn al-Haytham’s critical outlook also extended to astronomy where he was again critical of mathematical models of planetary motion and their lack of correspondence with physics. Astronomy was a technical mathematical science based primarily on Ptolemy’s Almagest, although Sanskrit astronomical works had been translated into Arabic in the eighth century. The subsequent history of astronomy in classical and medieval Muslim civilisation consists of both theory and observations. Observations were made not only by individual astronomers but were also conducted within the institution of the astronomical observatory – this institution is one of the contributions of Muslim civilisation to science. It was founded and established in Baghdad in the ninth century by the Caliph al-Mamun. The Baghdad observatory was staffed by several astronomers who were charged with revising Ptolemy’s astronomical tables on the basis of fresh observations. The result was compiled into the Tested Astronomical Tables. The Baghdad observatory is but one of several observatories founded in classical and medieval Islam. Others include the famous Maragha observatory of the thirteenth century which was under the supervision of Nasir al-din al-Tusi and the fifteenth-century observatory of Ulugh Beg in Samarkand, both of which compiled their own astronomical tables. The precision reached by these observatories was such that one modern author has exclaimed that the astronomer Tycho Brahe could have easily been a Turk! The influence of Arabic observational astronomy survives in star names in use today, many of which are derived from Arabic, as are common astronomical terms such as “nadir,” “azimuth,” and “zenith.”
Astronomical measurements required innovation in measuring instruments. Here, too, Muslim stronomers surpassed their predecessors by designing new instruments, revising older ones, and sometimes building extremely large instruments to increase accuracy. The astrolabe is an example of an astronomical instrument that was derived from the Greeks but was improved by Islamic astronomers. Primarily used for determining the position of celestial bodies, it was combined with a number of movable plates and arcs to graphically solve complex trigonometrical functions and thereby determine direction or time of prayer.
Theoretical innovation in astronomy was initiated by Ibn al-Haytham’s critical remarks about Ptolemy’s planetary models. According to the then prevalent Aristotelian natural philosophy, celestial bodies could only move in geocentric circles around the stationary earth. While Ptolemy had acknowledged this principle in his Almagest, he had to abandon it in his planetary models in order to account for observed positions of planets. Ibn al-Haytham objected to this practice in his Doubts against Ptolemy. This initiated a research project that culminated in the formulation of a new method of devising planetary models by Nasir al-din al-Tusi in the thirteenth century. Significantly, the same objections underlie Nicolaus Copernicus’ reformation of Ptolemaic astronomy. Moreover, Copernicus’ earlier work on the motion of the moon resembles the discussion of al-Tusi, raising speculation of a possible Muslim influence on the Polish astronomer who revolutionised astronomy with his heliocentric system.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106391#physical%20-%20Muslim%20sciences
Related Posts:
One mega-post, encompassing five regular posts, on the pioneering 9th century Muslim scientist Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen(965CE to 1039CE).
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/296one-mega-post-encompassing-four.html
'The Sciences' from the IIS's 'Muslim Philosophy And The Sciences' by Dr Alnoor Dhanani; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/507the-sciences-from-iiss-muslim.html
A Collection of Posts on this Blog about Great Scientists; Quote of Aga Khan IV.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/437a-collection-of-blogposts-on-great.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Dr Alnoor Dhanani from the Institute Of Ismaili Studies:
In the physical sciences, Muslim scientists were engaged in problems of natural philosophy, optics, and astronomy. The discussion of natural philosophy (focussed on the structure of matter, space, time, and motion) was largely between the religious philosophers and the Islamic Hellenistic philosophers. The former subscribed to atomism and the existence of the vacuum. In addition, they were proponents of an impetus theory of motion. Such views were in sharp opposition to Aristotelian natural philosophy. The two groups were therefore engaged in an examination and refutation of the ‘other’ system. Nevertheless, the religious philosophers’ theory of motion may have played a role in Ibn Sina’s formulation of his non-Aristotelian theory of “forced” and “natural” motion. Furthermore, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi (died after 1165 CE) rejected the Aristotelian theory of time and place and also believed that a vacuum was possible under certain circumstances. Finally, as has been noted above, Ibn Bajja rejected a key aspect of Aristotelian dynamics, that is, Aristotle’s formulation of the relationship between force, resistance, and velocity.
For the Hellenistic and early Islamic scientists, optics was a mathematical examination of light rays as they were transmitted through or reflected by various media, including lenses and mirrors of various shapes. This examination drew upon the works of Euclid and Ptolemy and advocated a theory of vision in which a cone of “visual rays” streamed from the eye to the visual object. A different account of vision was formulated by the Aristotelian natural philosophers (including Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd) in their discussion of perception. For them, vision is the reception of the “form” of the visual object by the eye. A third account of vision formulated by such medical writers as Galen and his followers (including the translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq) held that, as visual rays emerged from the eyes, the air was transformed into an instrument of vision. Therefore, the act of vision was the result of the contact of the “instrument” with the visual object. In the eleventh century CE, mathematician-scientist al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (died 1040 CE) criticised the theories of his predecessors and revolutionised mathematical optics in his Optics. He maintained that optical inquiry “requires a combination of the natural and mathematical sciences”, thus anticipating one of the key methodological positions of the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution – the mathematisation of physics. Furthermore, Ibn al-Haytham recognized that any account of optics must include an account of vision and must therefore discuss the psychology of visual perception.
Methodologically, Ibn al-Haytham’s work is significant for its clear concept and use of experiment to confirm the specific properties of light by setting up a controlled situation where certain parameters may be varied. With regard to vision, he rejects the visual ray hypothesis (rays stream from the eye to the visual object) in favour of the natural philosophers intromission hypothesis (vision is the reception of the form of the visual object in the eye). Ibn al-Haytham’s achievement was to reverse the direction of the visual rays of the mathematicians and hence mathematicise the “forms” of the natural philosophers. Surprisingly, the Optics does not seem to have made an impact in the Muslim world until the thirteenth century CE, and then only in the commentary on the Optics by Kamal al-din al-Farisi (died circa 1320 CE). In this work, al-Farisi formulated an explanation of the shape and colours of the primary and secondary rainbow on the basis of refraction and reflection in raindrops. Quite independently, a similar formulation was almost simultaneously arrived at in medieval Europe by Theoderic of Freiberg (died circa 1310 CE).
Ibn al-Haytham’s critical outlook also extended to astronomy where he was again critical of mathematical models of planetary motion and their lack of correspondence with physics. Astronomy was a technical mathematical science based primarily on Ptolemy’s Almagest, although Sanskrit astronomical works had been translated into Arabic in the eighth century. The subsequent history of astronomy in classical and medieval Muslim civilisation consists of both theory and observations. Observations were made not only by individual astronomers but were also conducted within the institution of the astronomical observatory – this institution is one of the contributions of Muslim civilisation to science. It was founded and established in Baghdad in the ninth century by the Caliph al-Mamun. The Baghdad observatory was staffed by several astronomers who were charged with revising Ptolemy’s astronomical tables on the basis of fresh observations. The result was compiled into the Tested Astronomical Tables. The Baghdad observatory is but one of several observatories founded in classical and medieval Islam. Others include the famous Maragha observatory of the thirteenth century which was under the supervision of Nasir al-din al-Tusi and the fifteenth-century observatory of Ulugh Beg in Samarkand, both of which compiled their own astronomical tables. The precision reached by these observatories was such that one modern author has exclaimed that the astronomer Tycho Brahe could have easily been a Turk! The influence of Arabic observational astronomy survives in star names in use today, many of which are derived from Arabic, as are common astronomical terms such as “nadir,” “azimuth,” and “zenith.”
Astronomical measurements required innovation in measuring instruments. Here, too, Muslim stronomers surpassed their predecessors by designing new instruments, revising older ones, and sometimes building extremely large instruments to increase accuracy. The astrolabe is an example of an astronomical instrument that was derived from the Greeks but was improved by Islamic astronomers. Primarily used for determining the position of celestial bodies, it was combined with a number of movable plates and arcs to graphically solve complex trigonometrical functions and thereby determine direction or time of prayer.
Theoretical innovation in astronomy was initiated by Ibn al-Haytham’s critical remarks about Ptolemy’s planetary models. According to the then prevalent Aristotelian natural philosophy, celestial bodies could only move in geocentric circles around the stationary earth. While Ptolemy had acknowledged this principle in his Almagest, he had to abandon it in his planetary models in order to account for observed positions of planets. Ibn al-Haytham objected to this practice in his Doubts against Ptolemy. This initiated a research project that culminated in the formulation of a new method of devising planetary models by Nasir al-din al-Tusi in the thirteenth century. Significantly, the same objections underlie Nicolaus Copernicus’ reformation of Ptolemaic astronomy. Moreover, Copernicus’ earlier work on the motion of the moon resembles the discussion of al-Tusi, raising speculation of a possible Muslim influence on the Polish astronomer who revolutionised astronomy with his heliocentric system.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106391#physical%20-%20Muslim%20sciences
Related Posts:
One mega-post, encompassing five regular posts, on the pioneering 9th century Muslim scientist Ibn al-Haytham or Alhazen(965CE to 1039CE).
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/296one-mega-post-encompassing-four.html
'The Sciences' from the IIS's 'Muslim Philosophy And The Sciences' by Dr Alnoor Dhanani; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/507the-sciences-from-iiss-muslim.html
A Collection of Posts on this Blog about Great Scientists; Quote of Aga Khan IV.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/437a-collection-of-blogposts-on-great.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Monday, December 14, 2009
531)Scientists explain mystery of triangular snowflakes: a snowflake's fall helps determine its shape.
"In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K.)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Scientists explain mystery of triangular snowflakes
A snowflake's fall helps determine its shape
By Stephen Ornes
Enlarge
Shape of a flakeThese triangular snowflakes, which have three short edges and three long edges, were captured in the wild.
Most people who love snow have to wait for winter. But that’s not the case for Kenneth Libbrecht, a scientist in sunny southern California. In his laboratory, he’s got snow all year long.
But the light white stuff is not falling from the sky—it’s growing in a lab. Libbrecht studies the science of snowflakes at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is a physicist, or a scientist who studies motion, matter and energy. In a recent experiment, Libbrecht and another physicist, Hannah Arnold, solved an old mystery about the shape of snowflakes.
They were able to figure out one way in which triangle-shaped snowflakes form in nature. Snowflakes are hexagonal, which means they have six sides, but snowflake-watchers have been seeing three-sided snowflakes—or at least, snowflakes with three long sides and three short sides—for a long time. “People have noticed them for hundreds of years,” says Libbrecht. Until now, scientists didn’t know how they formed.
In the laboratory, Libbrecht and Arnold created an artificial snowfall and looked at the flakes to study their shapes. Most of them, as they had expected, had six sides of roughly equal length. But once they counted up all the triangle-shaped snowflakes, they found more than they had been expecting—suggesting that three-sided snowflakes may not be rare at all.
They reasoned that as a snowflake falls, it may come across a tiny piece of dust in the air. These bits of dust can cause one edge of the snowflake to tilt up. As a result, the two sides that are pointing down may grow faster as the wind blows by and adds more fluff to the growing flake. Libbrecht and Arnold found that snowflakes that form in this way are stable, which means they don’t change very much before they land on the ground.
Snowflakes may seem like a beautiful topic for a scientific investigation—but there’s more to them than the geometry of three- and six-sided figures. This experiment by Libbrecht and Arnold helps scientists learn about aerodynamics, or the study of how objects move through the air. Without knowing about aerodynamics, it would be impossible to build airplanes or send rockets into space.
But, of course, they are beautiful—and no one knows it better than Libbrecht, who keeps the snow growing year-round. In addition to studying the snow, he takes pictures of snowflakes and publishes them in books and online.
POWER WORDS
Aerodynamics: The study of bodies moving relative to gases, especially the interaction of moving objects with the atmosphere.
Hexagon: A polygon with six sides.
Triangle: A polygon with three sides.
Physics: The science of matter and energy and of interactions between the two, grouped in traditional fields such as acoustics, optics, mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism, as well as in modern extensions including atomic and nuclear physics, cryogenics, solid-state physics, particle physics, and plasma physics.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/50770/title/FOR_KIDS_Scientists_explain_mystery_of_triangular_snowflakes
Related articles from this Blog:
Snowflakes, a beautiful, symmetric 'ayat'(sign) in creation and one of its marvels.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/292snowflakes-beautiful-symmetric.html
The learning of mathematics was therefore linked to the Muslim religion and developing an understanding of the world...."; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/319the-learning-of-mathematics-was.html
A Collection of Posts on Symmetry in Nature, as a Product of the Human Mind, Geometry and Harmonious Mathematical Reasoning; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/454a-collection-of-posts-on-symmetry-in.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Scientists explain mystery of triangular snowflakes
A snowflake's fall helps determine its shape
By Stephen Ornes
Enlarge
Shape of a flakeThese triangular snowflakes, which have three short edges and three long edges, were captured in the wild.
Most people who love snow have to wait for winter. But that’s not the case for Kenneth Libbrecht, a scientist in sunny southern California. In his laboratory, he’s got snow all year long.
But the light white stuff is not falling from the sky—it’s growing in a lab. Libbrecht studies the science of snowflakes at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is a physicist, or a scientist who studies motion, matter and energy. In a recent experiment, Libbrecht and another physicist, Hannah Arnold, solved an old mystery about the shape of snowflakes.
They were able to figure out one way in which triangle-shaped snowflakes form in nature. Snowflakes are hexagonal, which means they have six sides, but snowflake-watchers have been seeing three-sided snowflakes—or at least, snowflakes with three long sides and three short sides—for a long time. “People have noticed them for hundreds of years,” says Libbrecht. Until now, scientists didn’t know how they formed.
In the laboratory, Libbrecht and Arnold created an artificial snowfall and looked at the flakes to study their shapes. Most of them, as they had expected, had six sides of roughly equal length. But once they counted up all the triangle-shaped snowflakes, they found more than they had been expecting—suggesting that three-sided snowflakes may not be rare at all.
They reasoned that as a snowflake falls, it may come across a tiny piece of dust in the air. These bits of dust can cause one edge of the snowflake to tilt up. As a result, the two sides that are pointing down may grow faster as the wind blows by and adds more fluff to the growing flake. Libbrecht and Arnold found that snowflakes that form in this way are stable, which means they don’t change very much before they land on the ground.
Snowflakes may seem like a beautiful topic for a scientific investigation—but there’s more to them than the geometry of three- and six-sided figures. This experiment by Libbrecht and Arnold helps scientists learn about aerodynamics, or the study of how objects move through the air. Without knowing about aerodynamics, it would be impossible to build airplanes or send rockets into space.
But, of course, they are beautiful—and no one knows it better than Libbrecht, who keeps the snow growing year-round. In addition to studying the snow, he takes pictures of snowflakes and publishes them in books and online.
POWER WORDS
Aerodynamics: The study of bodies moving relative to gases, especially the interaction of moving objects with the atmosphere.
Hexagon: A polygon with six sides.
Triangle: A polygon with three sides.
Physics: The science of matter and energy and of interactions between the two, grouped in traditional fields such as acoustics, optics, mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism, as well as in modern extensions including atomic and nuclear physics, cryogenics, solid-state physics, particle physics, and plasma physics.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/50770/title/FOR_KIDS_Scientists_explain_mystery_of_triangular_snowflakes
Related articles from this Blog:
Snowflakes, a beautiful, symmetric 'ayat'(sign) in creation and one of its marvels.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/292snowflakes-beautiful-symmetric.html
The learning of mathematics was therefore linked to the Muslim religion and developing an understanding of the world...."; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/319the-learning-of-mathematics-was.html
A Collection of Posts on Symmetry in Nature, as a Product of the Human Mind, Geometry and Harmonious Mathematical Reasoning; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/454a-collection-of-posts-on-symmetry-in.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Sunday, December 13, 2009
530)New NASA Craft, With Infrared Power, Will Map The Unseen Sky; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.
"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)
"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
Chapter 51, verse 47: We built the heavens with might, and We expand it wide(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)
Chapter 21, Verse 30: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder, and of water fashioned every thing? Will they not then believe?(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)
Chapter 30, Verse 27: He originates creation; then refashions it - for Him an easy task. His is the most Sublime Symbol in the heavens and the earth(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)
"Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect"(Noble Quran)
Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)
"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)
"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
"Astronomy, the so-called “Science of the Universe” was a field of particular distinction in Islamic civilization-–in sharp contrast to the weakness of Islamic countries in the field of Space research today. In this field, as in others, intellectual leadership is never a static condition, but something which is always shifting and always dynamic"(Aga Khan IV, Convocation, American University of Cairo, Cairo, Egypt, June 15th 2006)
The above are 12 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
December 8, 2009
New NASA Craft, With Infrared Power, Will Map the Unseen Sky
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Most of the light from stars and other objects like planets in the universe is doubly invisible. It comes in the form of infrared, or heat radiation, with wavelengths too long for our eyes to pick up. Moreover, most infrared wavelengths do not penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere to get to our unseeing eyes.
So to take a proper inventory of cosmic shenanigans, astronomers have had to take to space. On Friday, they will get a little more help when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is scheduled to launch the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as early as 9:09 a.m., Eastern time.
Circling the Earth in a polar orbit 300 miles high, the spacecraft, equipped with a 16-inch telescope and infrared detectors, will photograph the entire sky every six months.
WISE is a successor to the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, or IRAS, which was launched in 1983 and made the first heat maps of the sky. And it is a trailblazer for the giant James Webb Space Telescope due in 2014.
But whereas IRAS had 62 pixels in its camera, WISE has 4 million, said Edward L. Wright of the University of California, Los Angeles, principal investigator for the spacecraft. As a result, WISE will be hundreds of times as sensitive as its predecessor and able to survey a vastly larger volume of space.
Dr. Wright said he and his colleagues expected to see millions of new infrared sources, including ultraluminous galaxies that are breeding stars copiously inside shrouds of dust, and a thousand of the cool almost-stars known as brown dwarfs, which are bigger than Jupiter but too small to ignite thermonuclear reactions.
“We should find out how many old, cold brown dwarfs are out there,” Dr. Wright said.
The other prime targets include asteroids, especially so-called near-Earth objects that might one day pose a threat to civilization. The WISE astronomers hope to measure the diameters of hundreds of thousands of asteroids to get a better sense of how dangerous they are.
Dr. Wright said the project had been almost 12 years in the making and cost $320 million, including operations and launching.
“What we hope to do is find the most interesting objects for next-generation telescopes to look at,” he said.
“If we don’t find something totally unexpected,” he added, “I’ll be surprised.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/space/08wise.html?_r=1&ref=science
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
Chapter 51, verse 47: We built the heavens with might, and We expand it wide(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)
Chapter 21, Verse 30: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder, and of water fashioned every thing? Will they not then believe?(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)
Chapter 30, Verse 27: He originates creation; then refashions it - for Him an easy task. His is the most Sublime Symbol in the heavens and the earth(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)
"Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect"(Noble Quran)
Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)
"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)
"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)
"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)
"Astronomy, the so-called “Science of the Universe” was a field of particular distinction in Islamic civilization-–in sharp contrast to the weakness of Islamic countries in the field of Space research today. In this field, as in others, intellectual leadership is never a static condition, but something which is always shifting and always dynamic"(Aga Khan IV, Convocation, American University of Cairo, Cairo, Egypt, June 15th 2006)
The above are 12 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
December 8, 2009
New NASA Craft, With Infrared Power, Will Map the Unseen Sky
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Most of the light from stars and other objects like planets in the universe is doubly invisible. It comes in the form of infrared, or heat radiation, with wavelengths too long for our eyes to pick up. Moreover, most infrared wavelengths do not penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere to get to our unseeing eyes.
So to take a proper inventory of cosmic shenanigans, astronomers have had to take to space. On Friday, they will get a little more help when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is scheduled to launch the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as early as 9:09 a.m., Eastern time.
Circling the Earth in a polar orbit 300 miles high, the spacecraft, equipped with a 16-inch telescope and infrared detectors, will photograph the entire sky every six months.
WISE is a successor to the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, or IRAS, which was launched in 1983 and made the first heat maps of the sky. And it is a trailblazer for the giant James Webb Space Telescope due in 2014.
But whereas IRAS had 62 pixels in its camera, WISE has 4 million, said Edward L. Wright of the University of California, Los Angeles, principal investigator for the spacecraft. As a result, WISE will be hundreds of times as sensitive as its predecessor and able to survey a vastly larger volume of space.
Dr. Wright said he and his colleagues expected to see millions of new infrared sources, including ultraluminous galaxies that are breeding stars copiously inside shrouds of dust, and a thousand of the cool almost-stars known as brown dwarfs, which are bigger than Jupiter but too small to ignite thermonuclear reactions.
“We should find out how many old, cold brown dwarfs are out there,” Dr. Wright said.
The other prime targets include asteroids, especially so-called near-Earth objects that might one day pose a threat to civilization. The WISE astronomers hope to measure the diameters of hundreds of thousands of asteroids to get a better sense of how dangerous they are.
Dr. Wright said the project had been almost 12 years in the making and cost $320 million, including operations and launching.
“What we hope to do is find the most interesting objects for next-generation telescopes to look at,” he said.
“If we don’t find something totally unexpected,” he added, “I’ll be surprised.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/space/08wise.html?_r=1&ref=science
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Monday, December 7, 2009
529)A Collection Of Posts:The Delegation Decoded-An Esoteric Exegesis of the Delegation of the Isma‘ili Imamat, by Khalil Andani;Quotes Of Aga Khan IV
The links to ISMAILIMAIL on this post do not work so I have refreshed this post with the new links; this post can now be read at:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/08/636a-collection-of-poststhe-delegation.html
This collection of posts, written by Khalil Andani, will be an exclusive publication by the much-visited and wildly popular ISMAILI MAIL website, home to almost 3 million hits. This series will be posted here as they become available on the Ismaili Mail website.
Mr Andani uses 10th-13th century Ismaili intellectual literature to show religious symbolism in a creation of the inspired mind of man, a building. In my Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam I use the same literature to show the same symbolism in nature and the universe around us, God's creation:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html
Quotes Of Aga Khan IV:
"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)
"...As we use our intellect to gain new knowledge about Creation, we come to see even more profoundly the depth and breadth of its mysteries. We explore unknown regions beneath the seas – and in outer space. We reach back over hundreds of millions of years in time. Extra-ordinary fossilised geological specimens seize our imagination – palm leaves, amethyst flowers, hedgehog quartz, sea lilies, chrysanthemum and a rich panoply of shells. Indeed, these wonders are found beneath the very soil on which we tread – in every corner of the world – and they connect us with far distant epochs and environments.
And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives – the more our imagination staggers. Just think for example what might lie below the surfaces of celestial bodies all across the far flung reaches of our universe. What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration.
Using rock crystal’s irridescent mystery as an inspiration for this building, does indeed provide an appropriate symbol of the Timelessness, the Power and the Mystery of Allah as the Lord of Creation.
What we celebrate today can thus be seen as a new creative link between the spiritual dimensions of Islam and the cultures of the West. Even more particularly, it represents another new bridge between the peoples of Islam and the peoples of Canada”(Aga Khan IV, Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/easy-nashs-blogpost-four-hundred-updated-with-quotes-from-the-opening-of-the-delegation-of-the-ismaili-imamat/
"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)
The above are 4 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
1)The Delegation Decoded – An Esoteric Exegesis of the Delegation of the Isma‘ili Imamat, by Khalil Andani
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/the-delegation-decoded-an-esoteric-exegesis-of-the-delegation-of-the-isma‘ili-imamat-by-khalil-andani/
2)The Delegation Decoded: An Esoteric Exegesis of the Delegation of the Isma‘ili Imamat – Overview
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/the-delegation-decoded-an-esoteric-exegesis-of-the-delegation-of-the-isma‘ili-imamat-overview/
3)The Delegation Decoded – Introduction: The World of Faith
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/the-delegation-decoded-introduction-the-world-of-faith/
4)The Delegation Decoded – Jali Screen and Atrium: Exoteric and the Esoteric
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/the-delegation-decoded-jali-screen-and-atrium-exoteric-and-the-esoteric/
5)The Delegation Decoded – Upper Glass Dome: The Lords of Inspiration
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/the-delegation-decoded-upper-glass-dome-the-lords-of-inspiration-2/
6)The Delegation Decoded – Inner Glass Fibre Canopy: The Masters of Instruction
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/the-delegation-decoded-inner-glass-fibre-canopy-the-masters-of-instruction/
7)The Delegation Decoded – Jali Screen Sections: The Summoners of Knowledge
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/the-delegation-decoded-jali-screen-sections-the-summoners-of-knowledge/
8)The Delegation Decoded – The Atrium Floor: The Seven Repeated Ones
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/the-delegation-decoded-the-atrium-floor-the-seven-repeated-ones/
9)The Delegation Decoded – Char-Bagh Garden: The Rivers of Paradise
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-delegation-decoded-char-bagh-garden-the-rivers-of-paradise/
10)The Delegation Decoded – Conclusion: Searching Below the Surface
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/the-delegation-decoded-conclusion-searching-below-the-surface/
Other posts on this Blog by Khalil Andani:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/07/492an-article-by-khalil-andani-that.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/08/636a-collection-of-poststhe-delegation.html
This collection of posts, written by Khalil Andani, will be an exclusive publication by the much-visited and wildly popular ISMAILI MAIL website, home to almost 3 million hits. This series will be posted here as they become available on the Ismaili Mail website.
Mr Andani uses 10th-13th century Ismaili intellectual literature to show religious symbolism in a creation of the inspired mind of man, a building. In my Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam I use the same literature to show the same symbolism in nature and the universe around us, God's creation:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html
Quotes Of Aga Khan IV:
"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)
"...As we use our intellect to gain new knowledge about Creation, we come to see even more profoundly the depth and breadth of its mysteries. We explore unknown regions beneath the seas – and in outer space. We reach back over hundreds of millions of years in time. Extra-ordinary fossilised geological specimens seize our imagination – palm leaves, amethyst flowers, hedgehog quartz, sea lilies, chrysanthemum and a rich panoply of shells. Indeed, these wonders are found beneath the very soil on which we tread – in every corner of the world – and they connect us with far distant epochs and environments.
And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives – the more our imagination staggers. Just think for example what might lie below the surfaces of celestial bodies all across the far flung reaches of our universe. What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration.
Using rock crystal’s irridescent mystery as an inspiration for this building, does indeed provide an appropriate symbol of the Timelessness, the Power and the Mystery of Allah as the Lord of Creation.
What we celebrate today can thus be seen as a new creative link between the spiritual dimensions of Islam and the cultures of the West. Even more particularly, it represents another new bridge between the peoples of Islam and the peoples of Canada”(Aga Khan IV, Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/easy-nashs-blogpost-four-hundred-updated-with-quotes-from-the-opening-of-the-delegation-of-the-ismaili-imamat/
"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)
The above are 4 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
1)The Delegation Decoded – An Esoteric Exegesis of the Delegation of the Isma‘ili Imamat, by Khalil Andani
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/the-delegation-decoded-an-esoteric-exegesis-of-the-delegation-of-the-isma‘ili-imamat-by-khalil-andani/
2)The Delegation Decoded: An Esoteric Exegesis of the Delegation of the Isma‘ili Imamat – Overview
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/the-delegation-decoded-an-esoteric-exegesis-of-the-delegation-of-the-isma‘ili-imamat-overview/
3)The Delegation Decoded – Introduction: The World of Faith
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/the-delegation-decoded-introduction-the-world-of-faith/
4)The Delegation Decoded – Jali Screen and Atrium: Exoteric and the Esoteric
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/the-delegation-decoded-jali-screen-and-atrium-exoteric-and-the-esoteric/
5)The Delegation Decoded – Upper Glass Dome: The Lords of Inspiration
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/the-delegation-decoded-upper-glass-dome-the-lords-of-inspiration-2/
6)The Delegation Decoded – Inner Glass Fibre Canopy: The Masters of Instruction
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/the-delegation-decoded-inner-glass-fibre-canopy-the-masters-of-instruction/
7)The Delegation Decoded – Jali Screen Sections: The Summoners of Knowledge
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/the-delegation-decoded-jali-screen-sections-the-summoners-of-knowledge/
8)The Delegation Decoded – The Atrium Floor: The Seven Repeated Ones
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/the-delegation-decoded-the-atrium-floor-the-seven-repeated-ones/
9)The Delegation Decoded – Char-Bagh Garden: The Rivers of Paradise
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-delegation-decoded-char-bagh-garden-the-rivers-of-paradise/
10)The Delegation Decoded – Conclusion: Searching Below the Surface
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/the-delegation-decoded-conclusion-searching-below-the-surface/
Other posts on this Blog by Khalil Andani:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/07/492an-article-by-khalil-andani-that.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Friday, December 4, 2009
528)Dr Paul Walker: Abu Ya‘qub al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary; Publication of the Institute of Ismaili Studies
Abu Ya‘qub al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary
Dr Paul Walker
Published by the Institute of Ismaili Studies
1996
Synopsis
The writings of al–Sijistani come from a period in history that has dramatic importance for the development of Islamic thought. Many trends in Islamic philosophy and in theology, law, Sufism, or issues of sectarian rivalry crystallised only during the 4th/10th century when this eminent Ismaili theoretician lived and worked. It was also an age of powerful achievement for the Shi‘a and, particularly, for the Ismailis. One generation prior to al–Sijistani, they were a secret movement largely unknown. By the end of his lifetime, they possessed a vast empire of both political and spiritual power.
The Ismaili revolution attested to by these changes involved, first and foremost, issues of religious loyalty, but, in addition, matters of reasoning and of an intellectual commitment to a way of understanding Islam and the mission of its Prophet. This second, more intellectual dimension of the Ismaili programme was as serious as the first, and it required for its propagation and defence a thoroughly trained group of writers and thinkers. Their goal was the conversion of other Muslims to the truth, not merely in respect to proper leadership in religious and political affairs, but in all matters that arise in the pursuit of knowledge.
The 4th/10th century was also the time of a great intellectual ferment in Islamic thought. The Mu‘tazilites brought to Muslim doctrine a kind of rationalism; the Philosophers did likewise but in a different manner. Other groups found their own answers and tried to nullify the influence of both of these. In the midst of all this doctrinal strife, the Ismailis proposed their own solutions and fought hard to have them accepted. Rather than shy away from the great debates, they entered the fray and became a party to the conflicts and contentions of these other scholars. The Ismailis could not do otherwise if they hoped to contend for the hearts and, especially, the minds of the majority. The generation of al–Sijistani aimed to become the voice of majority Islam.
In the midst of this turmoil, al–Sijistani stands as the pre–eminent spokesman of the intellectual wing of the Ismaili mission. He was, of course, not alone, nor was he the first. From our modern perspective, however, we see him more clearly than the rest because Ismaili disciples of the following centuries chose to preserve his books rather than those of his predecessors or contemporaries. Therefore, strictly in terms of the scholarly literature that expresses Ismaili doctrine – outside of the subject of positive law – al–Sijistani’s treatises assumed the highest position for his century and earlier.
Ironically, the man himself is a mystery. There now exist almost no details of his personal life except his name, two dates, the name of the governor who ordered his execution, and his curious nickname “cotton–seed.” In Ismaili tradition he is called Abu Ya‘qub Ishaq ibn Ahmad al–Sijistani. The nisba, al–Sijistani, links him to the Iranian province of Sistan or Sijistan and appears to indicate his main place of residence and activity. Here then we have a major Ismaili writer and agent, active in Sistan from roughly 320/932 to 361/971. Not long after 361/971, he was put to death by the governor of Sistan, Khalaf b. Ahmad, and he thus became a martyr for the Ismaili cause.
These few facts, however, add up to little. Yet, from the prominence of his books and the profoundly impressive intellectual contributions they represent, we discover a truly significant mind and voice – one that deserves recognition as an outstanding figure in the Ismaili past and as a major force in Islamic thought in general. But, in looking at Ismaili literature of the kind produced by al–Sijistani, with its quasi–philosophical themes that bridge the subjects of religion and science, we discovered less political ideology than of rather lofty and abstract, almost timeless, discussions of soul, intellect and God. The questions in al–Sijistani’s writings turn out to concern problems in the theory of creation, in epistemology, in the origin of nature, in the ultimate end of humankind, and in salvation through knowledge. Al–Sijistani wrote about prophecy and human development, the role of law, the formation of law, its interpretation, previous prophets and history, and other themes that had little direct application to the everyday practice of governments and political movements.
Prior to writing this book, Dr. Paul E. Walker wrote another one specifically on al–Sijistani’s Neoplatonism (Early Philosophical Shi‘ism: the Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abu Ya‘qub al–Sijistani). It seemed to him at the time that the most interesting aspect of al–Sijistani’s thought was his combination of Neoplatonic ideas and Ismaili doctrine. But the Ismaili Shi‘ism of al–Sijistani holds a comparable interest. Al–Sijistani himself wanted most to provide the movement with a sound, readily defensible theoretical foundation; he personally cared little for philosophy, Neoplatonic or otherwise.
Only one of al–Sijistani’s books, The Wellsprings, has been edited and published carefully. Because it represents a fascinating combination of philosophy and Ismaili religious doctrine, Dr. Walker followed Early Philosophical Shi‘ism with a volume entitled The Wellsprings of Wisdom containing a complete English translation and commentary on it.
Both of these earlier publications had a scholarly reader in mind. Each, for example, has a full apparatus of citations to the original sources and the early Ismailis, the Greek and pseudo–Greek philosophical texts in Arabic that were read by al–Sijistani and his colleagues, the exact contributions of al–Sijistani’s predecessors in the Ismaili mission, and other matters pertinent to al–Sijistani and his work. In as much as these details of specialised scholarship were already available, it seemed quite appropriate that they not be repeated again in the present volume.
As a new approach, therefore, Walker decided to rearrange al–Sijistani’s own statements – statements which he certainly never presented in a single coherent fashion himself – and to draw out of them a picture of the whole cosmic system that he was trying to describe. In his own writings al–Sijistani explained his thought one item at a time. Never once did he provide either an introduction to the whole or a general framework in which the individual pieces fit.
Nevertheless, he did envision a master plan, a scheme that explains the cosmos at large, the position of the human species in it, and the role of a series of mediators who all convey knowledge of the truth about God and about the universe to the individual, to the community and to the nation.
This book about al–Sijistani differs from the others, therefore, in that it looks at his thought as a coherent whole without special regard to his own discussions of precise details or controversial aspects of individual doctrines. Instead the chapters in it, by assembling its parts and forming them into one complete system, constitute more generally the author's reflections about what al–Sijistani wrote and why he said what he said. Its purpose then is to explain the sources of al–Sijistani’s knowledge, the universe he analysed, the paradise he longed for, and the God he worshipped.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=100518
Related Posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/284abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Dr Paul Walker
Published by the Institute of Ismaili Studies
1996
Synopsis
The writings of al–Sijistani come from a period in history that has dramatic importance for the development of Islamic thought. Many trends in Islamic philosophy and in theology, law, Sufism, or issues of sectarian rivalry crystallised only during the 4th/10th century when this eminent Ismaili theoretician lived and worked. It was also an age of powerful achievement for the Shi‘a and, particularly, for the Ismailis. One generation prior to al–Sijistani, they were a secret movement largely unknown. By the end of his lifetime, they possessed a vast empire of both political and spiritual power.
The Ismaili revolution attested to by these changes involved, first and foremost, issues of religious loyalty, but, in addition, matters of reasoning and of an intellectual commitment to a way of understanding Islam and the mission of its Prophet. This second, more intellectual dimension of the Ismaili programme was as serious as the first, and it required for its propagation and defence a thoroughly trained group of writers and thinkers. Their goal was the conversion of other Muslims to the truth, not merely in respect to proper leadership in religious and political affairs, but in all matters that arise in the pursuit of knowledge.
The 4th/10th century was also the time of a great intellectual ferment in Islamic thought. The Mu‘tazilites brought to Muslim doctrine a kind of rationalism; the Philosophers did likewise but in a different manner. Other groups found their own answers and tried to nullify the influence of both of these. In the midst of all this doctrinal strife, the Ismailis proposed their own solutions and fought hard to have them accepted. Rather than shy away from the great debates, they entered the fray and became a party to the conflicts and contentions of these other scholars. The Ismailis could not do otherwise if they hoped to contend for the hearts and, especially, the minds of the majority. The generation of al–Sijistani aimed to become the voice of majority Islam.
In the midst of this turmoil, al–Sijistani stands as the pre–eminent spokesman of the intellectual wing of the Ismaili mission. He was, of course, not alone, nor was he the first. From our modern perspective, however, we see him more clearly than the rest because Ismaili disciples of the following centuries chose to preserve his books rather than those of his predecessors or contemporaries. Therefore, strictly in terms of the scholarly literature that expresses Ismaili doctrine – outside of the subject of positive law – al–Sijistani’s treatises assumed the highest position for his century and earlier.
Ironically, the man himself is a mystery. There now exist almost no details of his personal life except his name, two dates, the name of the governor who ordered his execution, and his curious nickname “cotton–seed.” In Ismaili tradition he is called Abu Ya‘qub Ishaq ibn Ahmad al–Sijistani. The nisba, al–Sijistani, links him to the Iranian province of Sistan or Sijistan and appears to indicate his main place of residence and activity. Here then we have a major Ismaili writer and agent, active in Sistan from roughly 320/932 to 361/971. Not long after 361/971, he was put to death by the governor of Sistan, Khalaf b. Ahmad, and he thus became a martyr for the Ismaili cause.
These few facts, however, add up to little. Yet, from the prominence of his books and the profoundly impressive intellectual contributions they represent, we discover a truly significant mind and voice – one that deserves recognition as an outstanding figure in the Ismaili past and as a major force in Islamic thought in general. But, in looking at Ismaili literature of the kind produced by al–Sijistani, with its quasi–philosophical themes that bridge the subjects of religion and science, we discovered less political ideology than of rather lofty and abstract, almost timeless, discussions of soul, intellect and God. The questions in al–Sijistani’s writings turn out to concern problems in the theory of creation, in epistemology, in the origin of nature, in the ultimate end of humankind, and in salvation through knowledge. Al–Sijistani wrote about prophecy and human development, the role of law, the formation of law, its interpretation, previous prophets and history, and other themes that had little direct application to the everyday practice of governments and political movements.
Prior to writing this book, Dr. Paul E. Walker wrote another one specifically on al–Sijistani’s Neoplatonism (Early Philosophical Shi‘ism: the Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abu Ya‘qub al–Sijistani). It seemed to him at the time that the most interesting aspect of al–Sijistani’s thought was his combination of Neoplatonic ideas and Ismaili doctrine. But the Ismaili Shi‘ism of al–Sijistani holds a comparable interest. Al–Sijistani himself wanted most to provide the movement with a sound, readily defensible theoretical foundation; he personally cared little for philosophy, Neoplatonic or otherwise.
Only one of al–Sijistani’s books, The Wellsprings, has been edited and published carefully. Because it represents a fascinating combination of philosophy and Ismaili religious doctrine, Dr. Walker followed Early Philosophical Shi‘ism with a volume entitled The Wellsprings of Wisdom containing a complete English translation and commentary on it.
Both of these earlier publications had a scholarly reader in mind. Each, for example, has a full apparatus of citations to the original sources and the early Ismailis, the Greek and pseudo–Greek philosophical texts in Arabic that were read by al–Sijistani and his colleagues, the exact contributions of al–Sijistani’s predecessors in the Ismaili mission, and other matters pertinent to al–Sijistani and his work. In as much as these details of specialised scholarship were already available, it seemed quite appropriate that they not be repeated again in the present volume.
As a new approach, therefore, Walker decided to rearrange al–Sijistani’s own statements – statements which he certainly never presented in a single coherent fashion himself – and to draw out of them a picture of the whole cosmic system that he was trying to describe. In his own writings al–Sijistani explained his thought one item at a time. Never once did he provide either an introduction to the whole or a general framework in which the individual pieces fit.
Nevertheless, he did envision a master plan, a scheme that explains the cosmos at large, the position of the human species in it, and the role of a series of mediators who all convey knowledge of the truth about God and about the universe to the individual, to the community and to the nation.
This book about al–Sijistani differs from the others, therefore, in that it looks at his thought as a coherent whole without special regard to his own discussions of precise details or controversial aspects of individual doctrines. Instead the chapters in it, by assembling its parts and forming them into one complete system, constitute more generally the author's reflections about what al–Sijistani wrote and why he said what he said. Its purpose then is to explain the sources of al–Sijistani’s knowledge, the universe he analysed, the paradise he longed for, and the God he worshipped.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=100518
Related Posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/284abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)