Khawaja Syed Muhammad Nizamuddin Auliya, also known as Hazrat Nizamuddin, Sultan-ul-Mashaikh and Mahbub-e-Ilahi, was an Indian Sunni Muslim scholar, Sufi saint of the Chishti Order, and is one of the most famous Sufis from the Indian Subcontinent. His predecessors were Fariduddin Ganjshakar, Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, and Moinuddin Chishti, who were the masters of the Chishti spiritual chain or silsila in the Indian subcontinent.
The Other Backward Class (OBC) is a collective term used by the Government of India to classify communities that are "educationally or socially backward". It is one of several official classifications of the population of India, along with general castes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The OBCs were found to comprise 52% of the country's population by the Mandal Commission report of 1980 and were determined to be 41% in 2006 when the National Sample Survey Organisation took place. There is substantial debate over the exact number of OBCs in India; it is generally estimated to be sizable, but many believe that it is higher than the figures quoted by either the Mandal Commission or the National Sample Survey.
Bihar Sharif is the headquarters of Nalanda district and the fifth-largest sub-metropolitan area in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. Its name is a combination of two words: Bihar, derived from vihara, also the name of the state; and Sharif. The city is a hub of education and trade in southern Bihar, and the economy centers around agriculture supplemented by tourism, the education sector and household manufacturing. The ruins of the ancient Nalanda Mahavihara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are located near the city.
Bihari is a demonym given to the inhabitants of the Indian state of Bihar. Bihari people can be separated into three main Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic groups, Bhojpuris, Maithils and Magadhis. They are also further divided into a variety of hereditary caste groups. In Bihar today, the Bihari identity is seen as secondary to caste/clan, linguistic and religious identity but nonetheless is a subset of the larger Indian identity. Biharis can be found throughout India, and in the neighbouring countries of Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. During the Partition of India in 1947, many Bihari Muslims migrated to East Bengal. Bihari people are also well represented in the Muhajir people of Pakistan because of Partition.
Reservation is a controversial system of affirmative action in India created during the British rule. Based on provisions in the Indian Constitution, it allows the Union Government and the States and Territories of India to set a high percentage of reserved quotas or seats, in higher education admissions, employment, political bodies, etc., for "socially and economically backward citizens".
Teli is a caste traditionally occupied in the oil pressing and trade in India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Members may be either Hindu or Muslim; Muslim Teli are called Roshandaar or Teli Malik.
Bihari Muslims are adherents of Islam who identify linguistically, culturally, and genealogically as Biharis. They are geographically native to the region comprising the Bihar state of India, although there are significantly large communities of Bihari Muslims living elsewhere in the subcontinent due to the Partition of British India in 1947, which prompted the community to migrate en masse from Bihar to the dominion of Pakistan.
Hakim Syed Zillur Rahman is an Indian scholar of Unani medicine. He founded Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine and Sciences in 2000. He had earlier served as Professor and chairman, Department of Ilmul Advia at the Ajmal Khan Tibbiya College, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, for over 40 years before retiring as Dean Faculty of Unani Medicine. After his retirement, he began serving AMU as "Honorary Treasurer". In 2006, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri for his contribution to Unani medicine.
Muslim communities in South Asia have a system of social stratification arising from concepts other than "pure" and "impure", which are integral to the caste system in India. It developed as a result of relations among foreign conquerors, local upper-caste Hindus convert to Islam and local lower-caste converts (ajlaf), as well as the continuation of the Indian caste system by converts. Non-ashrafs are backward-caste converts. The concept of "pasmanda" includes ajlaf and arzal Muslims; ajlaf status is defined by descent from converts to Islam and by pesha (profession). These terms are not part of the sociological vocabulary in regions such as Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh, and say little about the functioning of Muslim society.
Ali Anwar Ansari is an Indian journalist, social activist and politician. He is the founder of Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, concerned with fighting discrimination against lower-caste and Dalit Muslims.
Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz is an Indian Muslim activist organization based in Patna, Bihar. Founded in 1998, it represents the concerns of the "Pasmanda" Muslims, a new identity that integrates the Dalit Muslims (Arzals) and backward-caste Muslims (Ajlafs). The organization represents the union of several Dalit and backward-caste Muslim organisations under the leadership of Ali Anwar, who is himself a backward-caste Muslim of the Ansari (weaver) caste.
Tailoring is the English translation of Darzi. In the Indian tradition, it was customary to wrap clothing over the body rather than wear stitched clothes. Used in Hindi and Urdu, the word Darzi comes from the Persian language.
The Kulhaiya Sheikh is a Muslim community found in the northeastern part of the Indian state of Bihar, India, as well as the Terai region of south-east Nepal.
Muslim in Uttar Pradesh is the second largest religion in the state with 38,483,967 adherents in 2011, forming 19.26% of the total population. Muslims of Uttar Pradesh have also been referred to as Hindustani Musalman. They do not form a unified ethnic community, but are differentiated by sectarian and Baradari divisions, as well as by language and geography. Nevertheless, the community shares some unifying cultural factors. Uttar Pradesh has more Muslims than any Muslim-majority country in the world except Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Muḥammad Shafī‘ ibn Muḥammad Yāsīn ‘Us̱mānī Deobandī, often referred to as Mufti Muhammad Shafi, was a Pakistani Sunni Islamic scholar of the Deobandi school of Islamic thought.
Ibrahim Malik Baya was a Sufi saint of Suhrawardiyya order and a warrior who arrived in South Bihar, India, in the 14th century and defeated the tribal Kol chiefdoms, who had been oppressing the local Muslims. He was a contemporary of Sharfuddin Yahya Maneri, Syed Ahmed Jajneri, Muzaffar Shams Balkhi, Shah Ahmed Sistani and Syed Ahmad Charamposh.
Maghfoor Ahmad Ajazi was a political activist from Bihar, prominent in the Indian independence movement.
Shamim Hashimi is an Urdu and Persian poet. He is basically a poet of Ghazal. He has also written poems of other forms of poetry in different meters.
Mukhtaruddin Ahmad Arzoo was an Indian literary critic and Writer of Urdu language. He was former Dean of Faculty of Arts at Aligarh Muslim University. He was appointed as the lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Aligarh Muslim University in 1953. He was the founding Vice Chancellor of Maulana Mazharul Haque Arabic and Persian University. He was appointed as the Senior Fellow at Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Jordan in 2004.
