Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī

Turkish politician and Islamacist

• Born: 1838
• Birthplace: Asadābād, Persia (now in Iran)
• Died: March 9, 1897
• Place of death: Istanbul, Ottoman Empire (now in Turkey)

Afghānī was a pan-Islamist politician and teacher whose intense opposition to British colonial policies focused the energies of Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Indian Muslim intellectuals on the plight of the masses. His untiring quest for Muslim solidarity influenced Egypt’s nationalist movement and Iran’s constitutional and Islamic revolutions during the twentieth century.

Early Life

Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī as-Sayyid Muḥammad Ibn-i Safdar al-Husain (jah-mahl ahl-deen ahl-ahf-GAH-nee) was born into a family of sayyids in the Persian village of Asadābād, near Hamadan. He claimed, however, that he was born in the village of As ՙadābād, near Kabul, Afghanistan. Only a sketchy account of Afghānī’s childhood can be pieced together from the information provided by his biographer, Mīrzā Lutfullāh Asadābādī. Contrary to his own assertion that he grew up in Afghanistan, Afghānī was educated at home in Asadābād until age ten. He then attended school in Qazvīn and Tehran. During his teens, he studied theology and Islamic philosophy in Karbalā and An Najaf, centers of Shi ՙite learning in Iraq.

In 1855, around the age of seventeen, Afghānī traveled to Büshehr, on the Persian Gulf, and from there to India. In India, he observed British imperialism at work. Indian Muslims were openly discriminated against in government appointments, religious institutions, and education. The Muslims’ struggle against British tyranny left an indelible impression on the young Afghānī. He agreed with the Indians that the British intended to undermine and discredit Islam. From India, Afghānī journeyed to Mecca and then returned to the Shi ՙite centers of learning in Iraq, where he had studied earlier. He remained in that area until 1865, when he traveled to Iran and, the following year, to Afghanistan.

Documented reports of Afghānī’s early years date to 1866, when he was part of the entourage of Muḥammad A’zam Khān, the military ruler of Qandahār under Dōst Muḥammad Khān. When Dōst Muḥammad died in 1863, his three sons fought among themselves for the rulership. Amīr Shīr ՙAlī Khān, Dōst Muḥammad’s third son, assumed power in Kabul, pledging to modernize the nation. Shīr ՙAlī’s brothers, however, rebelled in Quandahār and ousted him in 1866. A ՙzam became king, and Afghānī entered Afghan politics with him as his close confidant.

Afghānī reportedly drew up a national recovery plan that included provisions for a network of schools, a national newspaper, a centralized government, and a well-regulated communications system. In politics, he advised the king to ally himself with Russia against the British in neighboring India. A ՙzam’s rule was short-lived. Shīr ՙAlī returned in 1868, deposing Muḥammad A ՙzam and expelling Afghānī—a foreigner who spoke Farsi with an Iranian accent. Afghānī’s modernizing reforms, however, were retained.

Life’s Work

Afghānī was a mullah with a strong constitution. He had a magnetic personality and a dogged determination, both of which he used competently to penetrate exclusive circles and promote his cause. He cherished secrecy at the expense of social norms. He wore a white turban, while calling himself a sayyid, and adamantly refused any association with women. He was quick-tempered, quick of action, and quick to envisage a British plot at every turn.

Afghanistan afforded Afghānī a worthy education by supplementing his understanding of the dynamics of struggle against imperialism with a possible response. He came to realize that the Shi ՙi and Persian rational philosophy that had inspired him in India could rid the Muslim masses of ignorance and poverty, if it were enhanced with armed struggle and savage confrontation. If Afghans with bare hands could defeat Great Britain in the First Afghan War, he imagined what the impact of an Islamic army under a charismatic leader would be. Afghānī decided to inject himself into the growing confrontation between the Muslim East and the Christian West in Afghanistan.

The Muslim ruler charismatic enough to realize Afghānī’s secret aspiration was Abdülaziz, an Ottoman sultan. In 1869, Afghānī traveled to Istanbul by way of Bombay and Cairo, expecting to be named confidant to the sultan. Turkish officials, busy with the Tanzīmāt reforms, appointed him instead to a lesser position on the Council of Education. While serving in this office, Afghānī began a series of inspiring lectures on reform. These lectures, tinged with anti-imperialist allusions and modernist tendencies, and imbued with Shi ՙite rational philosophy, raised the ire of the Sunnī ulema (holy men) in Istanbul, who found the lectures heretical. The powerful ulema waited for an opportunity to embarrass Afghānī publicly. This opportunity came when Afghānī compared the ulema with a human craft. The ulema brought their wrath down upon him, the sultan, and the Tanzīmāt. To save the Tanzīmāt, Abdülaziz was forced to expel Afghānī from Turkey.

With hopes dashed, Afghānī accepted Riyadh Pasha’s invitation and, in 1871, went to Egypt. There he continued to teach and to pursue his dream of a pan-Islamic nation free from imperialist domination. In a series of provocative lectures, he grafted the example of Egypt’s economic strangulation by European banks to medieval Islamic philosophy in order to foment revolt against Western exploitation. He also formed and led a Masonic lodge in Cairo, among whose members were counted such promising young leaders as Muḥammad ՙAbduh, a future leader of the pan-Islamic movement.

Afghānī’s activities in Egypt brought him in direct confrontation with Khedive Ismā ՙīl of Egypt and his suzerain, Sultan Abdülhamid II , as well as with European, particularly British, powers. Afghānī had placed Khedive Ismā ՙīl in a difficult position by openly condemning his financial mismanagement as the cause of Egypt’s capitulation to European bankers. To ward off Afghānī’s allegations, Ismā ՙīl blamed the foreign bankers, who, in turn, pressured the sultan to depose the khedive, which the sultan did in 1879. Muḥammad Tawfīq Pasha, Ismā ՙīl’s son, expelled Afghānī from Egypt that same year. From Egypt, Afghānī traveled to Hyderabad, south of India, where, for two years, he offered seminars, gave public lectures, and wrote. “The Refutation of the Materialists” (1881) was written at this time. This essay affords a glimpse of Afghānī’s growing interest in social consciousness, modernism, and rational thinking.

Writing within the utopian tradition, Afghānī described his vision of the “Virtuous City” as a hierarchically structured society that functions on the principles of shame, trustworthiness, and truthfulness, and aspires to the ideals of intelligence, pride, and justice. Higher intelligence, Afghānī argued, leads to new capabilities and advanced civilizations; pride leads to competition and progress; and justice leads to global peace and harmony among nations. Naturalists (neicherīs), Afghānī argued, intended to destroy the solidarity of the Virtuous City through division and sectarianism.

From Hyderabad, Afghānī traveled to London and, shortly thereafter, to Paris, where he engaged the French philosopher Ernest Renan in a debate on the position of scientific discovery in Islam. Then, in 1844, Afghānī began his most consequential activity—his collaboration with Muḥammad ՙAbduh on editing a revolutionary journal in Arabic, al-ՙUrwat al-Wuthqā (the firmest bond). This publication established Afghānī as the champion of pan-Islamism, the movement rooted in the bitter memory of Abdülhamid’s 1877 defeat in the Russo-Turkish War—whereby the Tanzīmāt reforms had been proved ineffective—and in the 1882 occupation of Egypt by Great Britain. Al-ՙUrwat al-Wuthqā published articles by Afghānī and ՙAbduh on diverse topics. The sultan was not impressed. Disappointed, Afghānī left for Russia. Waiting at Büshehr to collect his books, Afghānī received an invitation from Nāser od-Dīn Shāh, the sovereign in Tehran, who had read a translation of an essay from al-ՙUrwat al-Wuthqā. When this brief interview did not go well, Afghānī resumed his trip.

In Russia, Afghānī continued his anti-British activities. He argued that, with his mobilization of Indian and Central Asian Muslims, Russians would easily drive the British out of the subcontinent. The Russians humored him, delaying his departure to irk the British. Afghānī’s two-year visit in Russia gained for him a second royal invitation to Tehran. Iran of the 1890’s was much like Egypt of the 1870’s. It was plagued with financial mismanagement and hounded by foreign investors, who sought concessions on every resource. The shah, however, unlike the khedive, ruled under the protection of divine right. He could sell Iran to whomever he pleased.

Afghānī arrived in Iran from St. Petersburg at a time when Iranians were growing increasingly alarmed by Nāser od-Dīn’s doling out of their country’s resources. Afghānī himself had distributed leaflets condemning these concessions. Afghānī was not received by his host, who also denied Afghānī’s claim that he had been commissioned in Munich to go to St. Petersburg and make amends on Iran’s behalf. Worse yet, Afghānī was clandestinely informed of orders for his arrest. To save himself from the shah’s wrath, he took sanctuary (bast) in the shrine of Shāh Abdul ՙAzīm, south of Tehran. From there, using clandestine methods and superb oratorical techniques, Afghānī attracted Iranians in droves to his fiery attacks on the shah’s past antireformist actions, especially the murder of Mīrzā Taqī Khān, Amīr Kabīr.

Afghānī predicted that Iran would capitulate to British might, as Egypt had in 1882. He demanded that Iranian revenues be spent on the construction of a railroad, on education and hospitals, and on an army to thwart imperialism, rather than on the shah’s pleasure trips to Europe. Iranians, he said, must be given the right to express their opinions in publications independent of the government. Iran must have a constitution, a parliament, and a house of justice. Above all, he emphasized, Iranians deserved a just king.

Nāser od-Dīn was approaching his fiftieth year of rule. Because Afghānī had been instrumental in the shah’s recent humiliation as the first shah to revoke his own writ—the tobacco concession—and because this action had precipitated Iran’s first foreign debt, the shah ordered the unruly mullah to be expelled. Ignoring the rules of sanctuary, the shah’s guards invaded the holy shrine in 1892, placed Afghānī, half naked and during the middle of winter, on the bare back of a mule, and deported him. Afghānī went to London, where he reestablished ties with his lodge members and then traveled to Turkey at the invitation of the sultan. Rather than becoming the sultan’s confidant and pan-Islamist consultant as Afghānī had hoped, he became the sultan’s prisoner.

From Turkey, Afghānī continued to foment revolt in Iran, using his devotees to carry out his behests. One such devotee was Mīrzā Rezā Kermānī, who, in 1896, was commissioned to murder Nāser od-Dīn. Mīrzā Rezā carried out his mission on the anniversary of the shah’s fiftieth year of reign in the very sanctuary in which Afghānī had been humiliated a few years before. Afghānī died of cancer of the chin at the age of about sixty and was buried in a secret grave. In 1944, the government of Afghanistan claimed him as a citizen, and his supposed remains were transferred to and buried on the grounds of the University of Kabul under a respectful shrine.

Significance

Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī was an Iranian by birth. His activities and the corpus of his writings reflect that. When visiting Europe, he affiliated himself with Afghanistan; when in Afghanistan, he associated himself with Ottoman Turkey and called himself “Istanbūlī,” to gain the confidence of Sunnī rulers and evade Iranian officials. There are several reasons that Afghānī failed in materializing his dream. First, he put too much trust in the goodwill of Muslim rulers and too little in the people of the Middle East.

In ignoring the grassroots support for his pan-Islamism, al-Afghānī violated the rules of his own Virtuous City, a violation that he regretfully acknowledged in a letter he wrote from prison before his death. Second, he used religion to achieve political aims, and, assuming that world rulers acted independently of one another, secretly groomed all for the same office—that of caliph. This policy backfired on him many times, finally costing him his life. Third, he annoyed rulers by lecturing them. Nāser od-Dīn dismissed him when Afghānī blatantly offered himself as a sword with which the shah could cripple the imperialists. The sultan was more gracious. Finally, Afghānī failed to distinguish between policy and personal disposition. He sought Queen Victoria’s assistance against Nāser od-Dīn within a short time of the tobacco boycott against British interests in Iran, a boycott that he himself had helped bring to fruition.

Bibliography

Ahmad, Aziz. “Sayyid Ahmad Khān, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muslim India.” Studia Islamica 13 (1960): 55-78. An important source of information on Afghānī’s involvement in Indian Muslim affairs. Compares Afghānī’s advocacy of jihad and khilāfat to Sayyid Ahmad Khān’s policy of capitulation to British rule. Ahmad believes that Afghānī and Sayyid Ahmad Khān differed only in political matters.

Algar, Hamid. Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969. Provides the larger picture. Examines the life and works of Afghānī’s colleagues and assesses Afghānī’s contribution in the light of past philosophical and doctrinal efforts.

Hodgson, Marshall G. Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times. Vol. 3 in The Venture of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Hodgson examines Afghānī’s efforts in the context of an alliance among the Shi’i ulema, the bazaaris, and the intellectuals. Afghānī emerges as an opportunist in his calls for reform, emphasizing the political, religious, or social aspects depending on the weight each carried in a particular situation.

Karpat, Kemal H. The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Examines the transformation of the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the rise of pan-Islamism and the rule of Abdülhamid II. Includes information on Afghānī.

Keddie, Nikki R. An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn “al-Afghānī.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. A comprehensive study of Afghānī’s life. Includes sample translations of his works as well as analytical notes on his worldview. Also contains a bibliography and a good index.

Kedourie, Elie. Afghānī and ՙAbduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam. London: Frank Cass, 1966. Kedourie discusses Afghānī’s teachings from the point of view of his disciple, ՙAbduh, and of circumstances that influenced those teachings. Kedourie’s discussion of Mahdīsm, as expounded by both Afghānī and Muḥammad Ahmad of Sudan, is noteworthy.

Kramer, Martin. Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. The first two chapters deal with the genesis of the pan-Islamic ideal and its challenge to authority. The contributions of Afghānī are discussed in the context of a rising tide of discontent among Muslims from Indonesia, Sumatra, and Central Asia to Daghistan and the Crimea, as these are reflected at the court of the Ottoman sultans.