Jamal Ad-Din Al-Afghani - Early Life and Origin

Early Life and Origin

He claimed to be of Afghan origin most of his life but convincing evidence shows that he was in fact born in Iran. Although some older sources claim that al-Afghani was born in a district of Kunar Province in Afghanistan which is also called Asadabad, overwhelming documentation (especially a collection of papers left in Iran upon his expulsion in 1891) now proves that he was born in Iran, in the village of Asadābād, near the city of Hamadān into a family of Sayyids. Records indicate that he spent his childhood in Iran and was brought up as a Shi'a Muslim. According to evidence reviewed by Nikki Keddie, he was educated first at home then taken by his father for further education to Qazvin, to Tehran, and finally, while he was still a youth, to the Shi'a shrine cities in Iraq. It is thought that followers of Shia revivalist Shaikh Ahmad Ahsa'i had an influence on him. An ethnic Persian, al-Afghani claimed to be an Afghan in order to present himself as a Sunni Muslim and escape oppression by the Iranian ruler Nāṣer ud-Dīn Shāh. One of his main rivals, the sheikh Abū l-Hudā, called him Mutaʾafghin ("the one who claims to be Afghan") and tried to expose his Shia roots. Other names adopted by Al-Afghani were al-Kābulī (" from Kabul") and al-Istānbulī (" from Istanbul"). Especially in his writings published in Afghanistan, he also used the pseudonym ar-Rūmī ("the Roman" or "the Anatolian").