Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib: The First Intellectual Muslim Thinker (Muhammad Abdul Rauf, Ph.D.)
Description
ISBN: 1881963497
Author: Muhammad Abdul Rauf, Ph.D.
Publisher: Al-Saadawi Publications (1995)
Pages: 106 Binding: Paperback
Description from the publisher:
Excerpt from the Forward:
The heroic figure of Ali ibn Abi Talib is etched upon the minds and hearts of Muslims, Sunni and Shiites alike. Ali ibn Abi Talib was once saint and incomparable warrior, caliph and planter of palm trees, commentator upon the Blessed Qur'an and founder of religious disputation and the science of kalam, originator of Arabic calligraphy and supreme embodiment of spiritual chivalry. His two-pronged sword, Dhul-fiqar, symbolizing both exoteric and esoteric authority, has been famous throughout Islamic history. His very blood still flows in the bodies of the numerous descendants of the Blessed Prophet, the sadat of shurafa’, who are the fruits of the union between Ali and the radiant daughter of the Prophet, Fatima, and who are spread throughout the Islamic world. His tomb in Najaf, a major site of pilgrimage, remains to this day, and despite all the recent tragedies, a most important religious center and a university with a millennial history.
He has been celebrated through countless poems in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and many other Islamic languages and numerous prose works have been written and continue to be composed on him in these tongues while his own Nahj al-Balaghah remains to this day a source of religious inspiration as well as a model of eloquence in Arabic prose which some of the most illustrious writes of Arabic have emulates over the centuries. He has been seen and continues to be viewed by the Muslims faithful exactly as the Blessed Prophet described him in the famous hadtih: “I am the city of Knowledge and Ali is the gate.”
Author: Dr. Muhammad Abdul-Rauf, an Egyptian, Hafiz-Qur'an, a Ph.D. in philosophy from University of London, has been the rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia, the director of Islamic Missions at al-Azhar, and The Islamic Center of Washington DC, and chairman of the Council of Imams of North America. His writings include several books and articles on Islamic history, culture, and civilization.