Key Figures in the History of Islam. 201Egypt to Sunni Islam after defeating the Fatimid caliphate, and
ejected the Crusaders from Jerusalem. Salah ad-Din (known as Sal-
adin in the West) was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty.
Selim I: Ottoman sultan (1512-20) who conquered Syria, Palestine and
Egypt from the Mamluks.
Selim III: Ottoman sultan (1 789-1807) who attempted a Westernizing
reform of the empire.
Shafii, Muhammad Idris al- (d. 820): revolutionized the study of fiqh
by laying down the principles {usul) of Islamic law; founder of the
Shafii school of jurisprudence.
Shah Jihan: Moghul emperor (1627-58) whose reign saw the height of
Moghul refinement and sophistication; he commissioned the Taj
Mahal.
Shah Valli-Ullah (1703-62): a Sufi reformer in India who was one of
the first Muslim thinkers to see the threat that Western modernity
posed to Islam.
Sinan Pasha (d. 1578): architect of the Suleymaniye mosque in Istanbul
and the Selimye mosque in Edirne.
Sorush, Abdolkarim (1945-): leading Iranian intellectual who advo-
cates a more liberal interpretation of Shiism, while still rejecting
Western secularism.
Suhrawardi, Yahya (d. 1191): Sufi philosopher, founder of the school of
illumination (ishraq) based on pre-Islamic Iranian mysticism. He was
executed for his allegedly heterodox beliefs by the Ayyubid regime
in Aleppo.
Suleiman I: Ottoman sultan (1520-66), known as al-Qanuni, the Law-
giver, in the Islamic world, and the Magnificent in the West. He
crafted the distinctive institutions of the empire, which reached the
fullest extent of its power during his reign.
Tabari, Abu Jafar (d. 923): a scholar of Shariah and historian, who pro-
duced a universal history, tracing the success and failure of the vari-
ous communities who had been called to the worship of God,
concentrating particularly on the Muslim ummah.
Tahtawi, Rifah al- (1801-73): an Egyptian dim who described his pas-
sionate appreciation of European society in his published diary, was
responsible for the translation of European books into Arabic and
promoted the idea of modernization in Egypt.
Umar 11: an Umayyad caliph (717-20) who tried to rule according to
the principles of the religious movement. He was the first caliph to