The Five Pillars of Islam are five basic acts in Islam, considered mandatory by believers and are the foundation of Muslim life. They are summarized in the famous hadith of Gabriel.
Muhammad was the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet, sent to present and confirm the monotheistic teachings preached previously by Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is viewed as the final prophet of God in all the main branches of Islam, though some modern denominations diverge from this belief. Muhammad united Arabia into a single Muslim polity, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis of Islamic religious belief.
Mecca, also spelled Makkah, is a city in the Hejazi region of the Arabian Peninsula, and the plain of Tihamah in Saudi Arabia, and is also the capital and administrative headquarters of the Makkah Region. The city is located 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of 277 m (909 ft) above sea level, and 340 kilometres (210 mi) south of Medina. Its resident population in 2012 was roughly 2 million, although visitors more than triple this number every year during the Ḥajj period held in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah.
Abdullah bin Abdul al Kadir (1796–1854) also known as Munshi Abdullah, was a Malayan writer of mixed ancestry. He was a famous Malacca-born munshi of Singapore and died in Jeddah, a part of the Ottoman Empire.
The military career of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, lasted for the final ten years of his life, from 622 to 632. After he and his small fellowship were pushed out of the holy trading town of Mecca, controlled by the powerful Quraish tribe, he started intercepting Meccan caravans. After his first victory in a pitched battle at Badr in 624, his power grew increasingly and he began to subjugate other tribes through either diplomacy or conquest. In 630 he finally accomplished his long-term goal of conquering Mecca and the Kaaba. By his death in 632, Muhammad had managed to unite most of Arabia, laying the foundation for the subsequent Islamic expansion.
Iram of the Pillars, also called "Irum", "Irem", "Erum", or the "City of the tent poles," is a lost city, region or tribe mentioned in the Qur'an.
Al-Lat, also spelled Allat, Allāt,Allatu and Alilat, is a name and title used to refer to multiple goddesses worshipped in the ancient Near East, including the Semitic goddess Asherah-Athirat. More importantly, it refers to the pre-Islamic Arabian goddess worshipped under various associations throughout the entire peninsula, including Mecca, often alongside Manat and al-'Uzza.
In Twelver Shia Islam, the ten Ancillaries of the Faith are the ten practices that Shia Muslims have to carry out.
The Battle of Hunayn was fought by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his followers against the Bedouin tribe of Hawazin and its subsection the Thaqif, in 630 CE, in the Hunayn valley, on the route from Mecca to At-Ta’if. The battle ultimately ended in a decisive victory for the Muslims, who captured enormous spoils. It is mentioned in Surat at-Tawbah of the Qur’an, and is one of the few battles mentioned by name in the Qur’an.
Muhammad Asad was a Jewish-born Austro-Hungarian, Pakistani Ambassador, Muslim journalist, traveler, writer, linguist, thinker, political theorist, diplomat and Islamic scholar. Asad was one of the most influential European Muslims of the 20th century.
Zainab Cobbold was a Scottish noblewoman and convert to Islam.
Islam is an Abrahamic religion founded in the Arabian peninsula, while Sikhism is a Dharmic religion founded in the Indian subcontinent. Islam means "submission". The word Sikh is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning 'disciple', or one who learns.
Mecca2Medina are a British Islamic Hip hop Nasheed group.
Uthman ibn al-Huwayrith was an Arab of the Quraysh who converted to Christianity. After revolting against idol worship in Mecca in favor of monotheism during the late 6th century, he sought assistance from the Byzantine Empire in 590 in a ploy to install himself as king of Mecca. While in Byzantium, he converted to Christianity. He is also known for having compiled poetic works.
Hamza Mohammad Bogary or Boqari (1932–1984) was an Arabic author from Mecca who also worked in broadcasting, becoming Director General of Broadcasting; from 1965 to 1967, he served as Saudi Arabia's Deputy Minister of Information. In 1967, he became a cofounder of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Of his writings, the best known outside of Arabia is his "lightly fictionalized memoir" Saqifat al-Safa, translated into English as The Sheltered Quarter: "His descriptions of school and family life resemble closely what we know of a male student's rounds in eighteenth-century Mecca. The book is a Meccan bildungsroman, calling up those final days before the oil boom that transformed Saudi Arabia and the Hajj."
The Hajj is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims, and a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and can support their family during their absence. Literally speaking, Hajj means heading to a place for the sake of visiting. In Islamic terminology, Hajj is a pilgrimage made to Kaaba, the ‘House of God’, in the sacred city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The rites of Hajj, which according to Islam go back to the time of Prophet Abraham who re-built Kaaba after it had been first built by Prophet Adam, are performed over five or six days, beginning on the eighth and ending on the thirteenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, alongside Shahadah, Salat, Zakat and Sawm. The Hajj is the second largest annual gathering of Muslims in the world, after the Arba'een Pilgrimage in Karbala, Iraq. The state of being physically and financially capable of performing the Hajj is called istita'ah, and a Muslim who fulfils this condition is called a mustati. The Hajj is a demonstration of the solidarity of the Muslim people, and their submission to God (Allah). The word Hajj means "to attend a journey", which connotes both the outward act of a journey and the inward act of intentions.
Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah ke Mekah was the last work of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir. The work recounts Abdullah’s voyage from Singapore to Jeddah on his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The summarized three parts of the story was first published by the Cermin Mata magazine in Singapore in 1858-1859.
Joseph Pitts (1663–1735?) was an Englishman who was taken into slavery by Barbary pirates from Algeria in 1678 at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Little is known about Pitts aside from what is revealed in his narrative concerning his time held captive in Northern Africa, during which time he went through three masters ranging widely in their cruelty towards him over the course of more than fifteen years, with whom he travelled to Cairo and Alexandria. Though he escaped between the years 1693 and 1694, it was not until 1704 that Pitts first published his account. Pitts's A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans, with an Account of the Author's Being Taken Captive includes descriptions of his capture and captivity, including some of the first English descriptions of Islamic rituals. Converting to the religion while a slave, Pitts was the first Englishman to record the proceedings of the hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam. Pitts also describes the people of seventeenth-century North Africa in detail, providing particulars on their manner of eating and dressing, the customs of their religion and marriage, and their economic and slave systems. Though its accuracy is debatable, Pitts’s narrative was the first and most detailed description of the religion of Islam and the manners of Muslims written by a European during the seventeenth century.
