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A Guide for the Good
This Muslim prayer book is a 1785 copy of an original 15th-century manuscript. The work includes a panorama of Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Islam in Saudi Arabia. Mecca, where the Prophet Muhammad was born and lived for the first 50 years of his life, is the most sacred city in Islam. It is also where the Ka`bah is found, the holiest sanctuary in Islam and called the "house of God" (Bayt Allah). Muslims throughout the world pray facing in the direction of Mecca and the Ka ...
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Library of Congress
Arab Hajji, Probably in Batavia
This carte-de-visite photograph depicts an Arab in the Dutch colonial capital of Batavia (present-day Jakarta) preparing for the hajj. The Arabs in Southeast Asia generally were from the area of Hadramaut in the southern part of Arabia. During the 19th century, the number of Arabs immigrating to Asia increased, but they remained tied to their homeland and often used the wealth acquired in their new homes to finance projects in Arabia. Despite sharing their Muslim faith with native Indonesians, Arabs maintained separate communities, particularly during the colonial period. The photograph ...
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Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and the Caribbean Studies KITLV
A Sketch of the Islamic Law
This manuscript work in two volumes was translated and edited by Ma Boliang (1640–1711), an influential Islamic scholar from Jining, Shandong Province. It deals with the basics of Islam and instructs readers on how to identify unorthodox ideas and deeds. To accommodate some readers, Ma also provided Arabic letters for a few of the most important expressions and terms as well as Chinese characters. The work became very popular in the Muslim community, which constituted a large minority population in China. It has a preface and a postscript, but ...
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Library of Congress
Selected Treatises by Jabir ibn Hayyan
Jabir ibn Hayyan (also known by his Latinized name Geber, circa 721–815 AD) was a Muslim polymath, natural philosopher, and alchemist. He was probably born in Tus, Khorasan, in present-day Iran, although some sources give his birthplace as Kufa, Iraq. Some aspects of the life of Jabir ibn Hayyan, as well as the authenticity of tens, if not hundreds, of the titles of his extremely large body of work have been questioned. More than 3,000 treatises or books are attributed to him in one way or another, with ...
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Bibliotheca Alexandrina