A00008 - Abdullah ibn Muhammad, Khalifa of Sudan

Abdullah ibn Muhammad or Abdullah Ibn-Mohammed or Abdullah al-Taashi or Abdullah al-Taaisha or Abdallahi ibn Muhammad or 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad At-ta'i'shi, also known as "The Khalifa" (Arabic:  عبدالله بن سيد محمد خليفة)‎ (b. 1846, Sudan – d. November [24?] 25, 1899, Kordofan) was a Sudanese Ansar General and ruler who was one of the principal followers of Muhammad Ahmad. Ahmad claimed to be the Mahdi, building up a large following. After his death Abdallahi ibn Muhammad took over the movement, adopting the title of Khalifat al-Mahdi (usually rendered as "Khalifa"). His attempt to create an Islamist military dictatorship led to widespread discontent, and his eventual defeat and death at the hands of the British.

Abdullah followed his family’s vocation for religion. In about 1880 he became a disciple of Muḥammad Aḥmad, who announced that he had a divine mission, became known as al-Mahdī, and appointed Abdullah a caliph (khalīfah). When al-Mahdī died in 1885, Abdullah became leader of the Mahdist movement. His first concern was to establish his authority on a firm basis. Al-Mahdī had clearly designated him as successor, but the Ashraf, a portion of al-Mahdī’s supporters, tried to reverse this decision. By promptly securing control of the vital administrative positions in the movement and obtaining the support of the most religiously sincere group of al-Mahdī’s followers, Abdullah neutralized this opposition. Abdullah could not claim the same religious inspiration as had al-Mahdī, but, by announcing that he received divine instruction through al-Mahdī, he tried to assume as much of the aura as was possible.

Abdullah believed he could best control the disparate elements that supported him by maintaining the expansionist momentum begun by al-Mahdī. He launched attacks against the Ethiopians and began an invasion of Egypt.  But Abdullah had greatly overestimated the support his forces would receive from the Egyptian peasantry and underestimated the potency of the Anglo-Egyptian military forces, and in 1889 his troops suffered a crushing defeat in Egypt.

A feared Anglo-Egyptian advance up the Nile did not materialize. Instead Abdullah suffered famine and military defeats in the eastern Sudan. The most serious challenge to his authority came from a revolt of the Ashraf in November 1891, but he kept this from reaching extensive proportions and reduced his opponents to political impotence.

During the next four years, Abdullah ruled securely and was able to consolidate his authority. The famine and the expense of large-scale military campaigns came to an end. Abdullah modified his administrative policies, making them more acceptable to the people. Taxation became less burdensome. Abdullah created a new military corps, the mulazimiyah, of whose loyalty he felt confident.

However, in 1896 Anglo-Egyptian forces began their reconquest of the Sudan. Although Abdullah resisted for almost two years, he could not prevail against British machine guns. In September 1898 he was forced to flee his capital, Omdurman, but he remained at large with a considerable army. Many Egyptians and Sudanese resented the Condominium Agreement of January 1899, by which the Sudan became almost a British protectorate, and Abdullah hoped to rally support.  On November 24, 1899, a British force engaged the Mahdist remnants, and Abdullah died in the fighting.

A00007 - The Battle of Omdurman

At the Battle of Omdurman, the Mahdist forces were defeated.

At the Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), an army commanded by the British General Herbert Kitchener defeated the army of Abdullah al-Taashi, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. It was a demonstration of the superiority of a highly disciplined army equipped with modern rifles, machine guns and artillery over a vastly larger force armed with older weapons, and marked the success of British efforts to re-conquer the Sudan. However, it was not until the 1899 Battle of Umm Diwaykarat that the final Mahdist forces were defeated.

Omdurman is today a suburb of Khartoum in central Sudan, with a population of some 1.5 million. The village of Omdurman was chosen in 1884 as the base of operations by the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. After his death in 1885, following the successful siege of Khartoum, his successor (Khalifa) Abdullah retained it as his capital.

The battle took place at Kerreri, 11 kilometeres north of Omdurman. Kitchener commanded a force of 8,000 British regulars and a mixed force of 17,000 Sudanese and Egyptian troops. He arrayed his force in an arc around the village of Egeiga, close to the bank of the Nile, where a gunboat flotilla waited in support, facing a wide, flat plain with hills rising to the left and right. The British and Egyptian cavalry was placed on either flank.

Abdullah's followers, known as Ansar and sometimes referred to as Dervishes, numbered around 50,000, including some 3,000 cavalry. They were split into five groups--a force of 8,000 under Osman Azrak was arrayed directly opposite the British, in a shallow arc along a mile (1.6 km) of a low ridge leading onto the plain, and the other Mahdist forces were initially concealed from Kitchener's force. Abdullah al-Taashi and 17,000 men were concealed behind the Surgham Hills to the west and rear of Osman Azrak's force, with 20,000 more positioned to the northwest, close to the front behind the Kerreri hills, commanded by Ali-Wad-Helu and Sheikh ed-Din. A final force of around 8,000 was gathered on the slope on the right flank of Azrak's force.

The battle began in the early morning, at around 6:00 a.m. After the clashes of the previous day, the 8,000 men under Osman Azrak advanced straight at the waiting British, quickly followed by about 8,000 of those waiting to the northwest, a mixed force of rifle- and spearmen. The British artillery opened fire at around 2750 m (about 1.7 miles), inflicting severe casualties on the Mahdist forces before they even came within range of the Maxim guns and volley fire. The frontal attack ended quickly, with around 4,000 Mahdist casualties; none of the attackers got closer than 50 m to the British trenches. A flanking move from the Ansar right was also checked, and there were bloody clashes on the opposite flank that scattered the Mahdist forces there.

Kitchener was anxious to occupy Omdurman before the remaining Mahdist forces could withdraw there. He advanced his army on the city, arranging them in separate columns for the attack. The British light cavalry regiment, the 21st Lancers, was sent ahead to clear the plain to Omdurman. They had a tough time of it. The 400-strong regiment attacked what they thought were only a few hundred dervishes, but in fact there were 2,500 infantry hidden behind them in a depression. After a fierce clash, the Lancers drove them back (resulting in three Victoria Crosses being awarded). On a larger scale, the British advance allowed the Khalifa to re-organize his forces. He still had over 30,000 men in the field and directed his main reserve to attack from the west while ordering the forces to the northwest to attack simultaneously over the Kerreri Hills.

Kitchener's force wheeled left in echelon to advance up Surgham ridge and then southwards. To protect the rear, a brigade of 3,000 mainly Sudanese, commanded by Hector MacDonald, was reinforced with Maxims and artillery and followed the main force at around 1,350 m. Curiously, the supplies and wounded around Egeiga were left almost unprotected.

MacDonald was alerted to the presence of around 15,000 enemy troops moving towards him from the west, out from behind Surgham. He wheeled his force and lined them up to face the enemy charge. The Mahdist infantry attacked in two prongs and MacDonald was forced to repeatedly re-order his battalions. The brigade maintained a punishing fire. Kitchener, now aware of the problem, began to throw his brigades about as if they were companies. MacDonald's brigade was soon reinforced and the Mahdist forces were forced back. The Mahdists finally broke and fled or died where they stood. The Mahdist forces to the north had regrouped too late and entered the clash only after the force in the central valley had been routed. They pressed Macdonald's Sudanese brigades hard, but the Lincolnshire Regiment was quickly brought up and with sustained section volleys repulsed the advance. A final desperate cavalry charge of around 500 horsemen was utterly destroyed. The march on Omdurman was resumed at about 11:30.

Around 10,000 Mahdists were killed, 13,000 wounded and 5,000 taken prisoner. Kitchener's force lost 47 men killed and 382 wounded, the majority from MacDonald's command.

Controversy over wounded Mahdists killed after the battle began soon afterwards. Churchill thought Kitchener was too brutal in his killing of the wounded.

The Khalifa escaped and survived until 1899, when he was killed in the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat.

Several days after the battle, Kitchener was sent to Fashoda, due to the developing Fashoda Incident.

Kitchener was ennobled as a baron, Kitchener of Khartoum, for his victory. Four Victoria Crosses were awarded, three to members of the 21st Lancers, as a result of this action: 2nd Lieutenant Raymond H.L.J. De Montmorency, Captain Paul A. Kenna, Private Thomas Byrne and one to Captain Nevill Smyth of the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays).

Winston Churchill was present at the battle and he rode with the 21st Lancers. He published an account in 1899 as "The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan". Present as a war correspondent for The Times was Colonel Frank Rhodes, brother of Cecil, who was shot and severely wounded in the right arm. For his services during that battle he was restored to the army active list.

A00006 - Hashim Khan, Patriarch of a Squash Dynasty

Khan, Hashim

Hashim Khan (Urdu: ہاشم خان‎; c. 1910 to 1914 – August 18, 2014) was a squash player from Pakistan. He won the British Open Squash Championships (the then de facto world championship) a total of seven times, from 1951 to 1956, and then again in 1958.

Hashim Khan was born in Nawakille, a small village near Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan, to an ethnically Pashtun family, between 1910 and 1914. The exact birthdate is unknown. According to his family members, he turned 100 on July 1, 2014 (the family celebrated his birthday on July 1). Khan's father, Abdullah Khan was chief steward at a British officer's club in Peshawar. He brought Hashim when he was 8 to the squash courts which were used by military men to relax, when not performing duties. Khan's father died in a car accident when he was 11, and he left school to become a ball boy and cleaner of the courts. 

Khan's father, Abdullah Khan, was the Head Steward at a club in Peshawar where British army officers stationed in the area played squash. As a youngster, Khan served as an unpaid ball boy at the club, retrieving balls that were hit out of court by the officers. When the officers had finished playing, Khan and the other ball boys would take over the courts. In 1942, Khan became a squash coach at a British Air Force officers' mess. In 1944, he won the first All-of-India squash championship in Bombay, and successfully defended this title for the next two years.  When Pakistan became an independent state, he was appointed a squash professional for the Pakistan Air Force, and won the first Pakistani squash championship in 1949.

In 1950, Abdul Bari, a distant relative of Khan's who had chosen to remain in Bombay after the Partition of India in 1947, and who Hashim had beaten in several tournaments in India before partition, was sponsored by the Indian Government to play at the British Open where he finished runner-up to the Egyptian player Mahmoud Karim.  This spurred Khan to seek backing to compete in the British Open the following year. In 1951, when Khan was in his 30s, the government of Pakistan — particularly the Pakistan Air Force — sponsored him for the British Squash Championship. It marked the first time Mr. Khan wore shoes on the court.  Khan travelled to the United Kingdom to play in the British Open, and won the title beating Karim in the final 9–5, 9–0, 9–0. He again beat Karim in the final in 1952 9–5, 9–7, 9–0. He won again for the next four consecutive years, beating R.B.R. Wilson of England in the 1953 final; his younger brother Azam Khan in two tight five-set finals in 1954 and 1955; and Roshan Khan in the final of 1956. Hashim Khan was runner-up to Roshan Khan in 1957, and won his seventh and final British Open title in 1958, when he beat Azam in the final. Khan also won five British Professional Championship titles, three United States Open titles, and three Canadian Open titles.

Khan settled in Denver, Colorado, and continued to appear in veterans' matches at the British Open. The Denver Athletic Club continues to hold a Hashim Khan squash tournament in his honor every year.

Khan had a total of 12 children. His eldest son Sharif Khan became a player on the North American hardball squash circuit in the 1970s, winning a record 12 North American Open titles. Six other sons – Aziz, Gulmast, Liaqat Ali ("Charlie"), Salim ("Sam"), Shaukat, and Mo – also became hardball squash players.

Khan settled in the United States in the 1960s, after being invited to teach squash at the Uptown Athletic Club in Detroit.  On 18 August 18, 2014, he died in his home in Aurora, Colorado due to congestive heart failure. He was widely believed to be 100 years old.

A00005 - Hamdun ibn al-Hajj, Moroccan Scholar

Hamdun ibn al-Hajj
Hamdun ibn al-Hajj or in full Abu al-Fayd Hamdun ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Hamdun ibn Abd al-Rahman Mohammed ibn al-Hajj al-Fasi al-Sulami al-Mirdasi (1760–1817) was one of the most outstanding scholars of the reign of Mulay Suleiman of Morocco.  He was a committed Tijani Sufi but also an outspoken critic of some of the practices of Sufism in that time. Hamdun ibn al-Hajj was also one of the best known poets of the period and the author of a diwan (Silsilat Dhakhair al-turath al-adabi bi-al-Maghrib). He also wrote a commentary on Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Muqaddimah, a gloss on Taftazani's treatise on the Mukhtasar and a series of Diwans including a controversial poem dedicated to Amir Sau'ud ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz.

A00004 - Nazim al-Haqqani, Sufi Spiritual Leader

Nazim al-Haqqani
Nazim al-Haqqani or Mehmet Nâzım Adil (Arabic: محمد ناظم الحقاني ‎, April 21, 1922  / Sha'ban  23, 1340 AH – May 7, 2014), formally referred to as Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Qubrusi al-Haqqani (Turkish: Nazım Kıbrısi), often called Shaykh (or Sheikh) Nazim, was a Turkish Cypriot Sufi Sheikh and leader of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani Order.

A00003 - Asad Mansur al-Faqih, First Saudi Arabian Ambassador to United States

Sheik Asad Mansur al-Faqih (1909 - April 2, 1988) was the first Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States, 

Sheik Faqih was a delegate to the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945, where he signed the charter on behalf of Saudi Arabia. He was appointed Ambassador to the United States later that year. He served simultaneously as Ambassador to Canada and Mexico and was his country's delegate to the United Nations from 1946 to 1955. He established Saudi embassies in China and Japan and served as chief inspector of diplomatic missions. He retired as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in 1963.

Sheik Faqih was also his country's Chief Justice and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and played a key role in maintaining strong Saudi ties with the Allies during World War II.

A resident of the United States after 1984, Sheik Faqih died of prostate cancer on April 2, 1988 at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif. He was 79 years old.  He was survived by his wife, Yacout; seven children, Aida Abi-Mershed of London, Selma Hassen, Saniya Hamady and Zuheir al-Faqih of Washington, and Dr. Khaled al-Faqih, Ghida Heaps and Mrs. Hoda Cox of Walnut Creek; 20 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A00002 - Yusef Lateef, Pioneer of World Music

Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston, October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator. He became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after his conversion to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam in 1950.

Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and also used a number of non-western instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul and koto. He is known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with "Eastern" music.

Lateef wrote and published a number of books including two novellas entitled A Night in the Garden of Love and Another Avenue, the short story collections Spheres and Rain Shapes, along with his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written in collaboration with Herb Boyd. Along with his record label YAL Records, Lateef owned Fana Music, a music publishing company. Lateef published his own work through Fana, which includes Yusef Lateef's Flute Book of the Blues and many of his own orchestral compositions.

Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved, in 1923, to Lorain, Ohio and again in 1925, to Detroit, Michigan, where his father changed the family's name to "Evans".

Throughout his early life, Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Lateef was a proficient saxophonist by the time of his graduation from high school at the age of 18, when he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands.

In 1949, he was invited by Dizzy Gillespie to tour with his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam and became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association which continued until 1959. The earliest of Lateef's album's for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap with them. Musicians such as Wilbur Harden (trumpet, flugelhorn), bassist Herman Wright, drummer Frank Gant, and pianist Hugh Lawson were among his collaborators during this period.

By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds, Lateef's dominant presence within a group context had emerged. His 'Eastern' influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings, with spots for instruments like the rahab, shanai, arghul, koto and a collection of Chinese wooden flutes and bells along with his tenor and flute. Even his use of the western oboe sounds exotic in this context; it is not a standard jazz instrument. Indeed, the tunes themselves are a mixture of jazz standards, blues and film music usually performed with a piano/bass/drums rhythm section in support. Lateef made numerous contributions to other people's albums including his time as a member of saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's Quintet during 1962–64.

Lateef's sound has been claimed to have been a major influence on the saxophonist John Coltrane, whose later period free jazz recordings contain similarly 'Eastern' traits. For a time (1963–66) Lateef was signed to Coltrane's label, Impulse. He had a regular working group during this period, with trumpeter Richard Williams and Mike Nock on piano.

In the late 1960s, Lateef began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, still with a strong blues underlay, on albums such as Detroit and Hush'n'Thunder. Lateef expressed a dislike of the terms "jazz" and "jazz musician" as musical generalizations. As is so often the case with such generalizations, the use of these terms do understate the breadth of his sound. For example, in the 1980s, Lateef experimented with new age and spiritual elements.

In 1960, Lateef again returned to school, studying flute at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Music in 1969 and a Master's Degree in Music Education in 1970. Starting in 1971, he taught courses in autophysiopsychic music at the Manhattan School of Music, and he became an associate professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1972.

In 1975, Lateef completed his dissertation on Western and Islamic education and earned a Ed.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In the early 1980s, Lateef was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in the city of Zaria, Nigeria. Returning to the United States in 1986 he took a joint teaching position at the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College.

Lateef's 1987 album Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. His core influences, however, were clearly rooted in jazz, and in his own words: "My music is jazz."

In 1992, Lateef founded YAL Records. In 1993, Lateef was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne to composeThe African American Epic Suite, a four-part work for orchestra and quartet based on themes of slavery and disfranchisement in the United States. The piece has since been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

In 2010, Lateef received the lifetime Jazz Master Fellowship Award from NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency.

The Manhattan School of Music, where Lateef earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, awarded him a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.

Lateef's last albums were recorded for Adam Rudolph's "Meta Records". To the end of his life, he continued to teach at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. Lateef died on the morning of December 23, 2013 at the age of 93 after suffering from prostate cancer.

The discography of Yusef Lateef include the following:

Savoy 1957-1959

• Jazz for the Thinker (1957)
• Jazz Mood (1957)
• Jazz and the Sounds of Nature (1957)
• Prayer to the East (1957)
• The Dreamer (1959)
• The Fabric of Jazz (1959)

Impulse! 1963-1966

• Jazz 'Round the World (1963)
• Live at Pep's (1964)
• 1984 (1965)
• Psychicemotus (1965)
• A Flat, G Flat and C (1966)
• The Golden Flute (1966)

Atlantic 1967 -1991

• The Complete Yusef Lateef (1967)
• The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968)
• Yusef Lateef's Detroit (1969)
• The Diverse Yusef Lateef (1969)
• Suite 16 (1970)
• The Gentle Giant (1971)
• Hush 'N' Thunder (1972)
• Part of the Search (1973)
• 10 Years Hence (1974)
• The Doctor is In... and Out (1976)
• Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony (1987)
• Concerto for Yusef Lateef (1988)
• Nocturnes (1989)
• Meditations (1990)
• Yusef Lateef's Encounters (1991)

YAL Records 1992-2002

• Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Von Freeman (1992)
• Heart Vision (1992)
• Yusef Lateef Plays Ballads (1993)
• Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp (1993)
• Woodwinds (1993)
• Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Ricky Ford (1994)
• Yusef Lateef's Fantasia for Flute (1996)
• Full Circle (1996)
• CHNOPS: Gold & Soul (1997)
• Earth and Sky (1997)
• 9 Bagatelles (1998)
• Like the Dust (1998)
• Live at Luckman Theater (2001)
• Earriptus (2001)
• So Peace (2002)
• A Tribute Concert for Yusef Lateef: YAL's 10th Anniversary (2002)

Meta Records

• The World at Peace (1997)
• Beyond the Sky (2000)
• Go: Organic Orchestra: In the Garden (2003)
• Towards the Unknown (2010)
• Voice Prints (2013)

Other labels

• Before Dawn: The Music of Yusef Lateef (Verve, 1957)
• The Sounds of Yusef (Prestige, 1957)
• Other Sounds (New Jazz, 1957)
• Lateef at Cranbrook (Argo, 1958)
• Cry! - Tender (New Jazz, 1959)
• The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef (Riverside, 1960)
• The Centaur and the Phoenix (Riverside, 1960)
• Lost in Sound (Charlie Parker, 1961)
• Eastern Sounds (Moodsville, 1961)
• Into Something (New Jazz, 1961)
• Autophysiopsychic (1977, CTI Records)
• In a Temple Garden (1979, CTI Records)
• Yusef Lateef in Nigeria (Landmark, 1983)
• Influence with Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo (2005)
• Roots Run Deep (Rogue Art, 2012)

With Cannonball Adderley

• The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York (Riverside, 1962)
• Cannonball in Europe! (Riverside, 1962)
• Jazz Workshop Revisited (Riverside, 1962)
• Autumn Leaves (Riverside, 1963)
• Nippon Soul (Riverside, 1963)

With Nat Adderley

• That's Right! (Riverside, 1960)

With Ernestine Anderson

• My Kinda Swing (1960)

With Art Blakey

• The African Beat (1962)

With Donald Byrd

• Byrd Jazz (Transition, 1955)
• First Flight (1957)

With Paul Chambers

• 1st Bassman (1961)

With Art Farmer

• Something You Got (CTI, 1977)

With Curtis Fuller

• Images of Curtis Fuller (Savoy, 1960)
• Boss of the Soul-Stream Trombone (Warwick, 1960)
• Gettin' It Together (1961)

With Grant Green

• Grantstand (Blue Note, 1961)

With Slide Hampton

• Drum Suite (1962)

With Louis Hayes

• Louis Hayes featuring Yusef Lateef & Nat Adderley (1960)

With Les McCann

• Invitation to Openness (1972)

With Don McLean

• Homeless Brother (1973)

With Charles Mingus

• Pre-Bird (aka, Mingus Revisited, 1960)

With Babatunde Olatunji

• Drums of Passion (1960)

With Sonny Red

• Breezing (Jazzland, 1960)

With Leon Redbone

• Double Time (Warner Bros., 1976)

With Clark Terry

• Color Changes (1960)

With Doug Watkins

• Soulnik (New Jazz, 1960)

With Randy Weston

• Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960)

With Frank Wess

• Jazz Is Busting Out All Over (1957)