Lamaholot
Lamaholot (Ata Kiwan) (Holo) (Solor) (Solorese) (Solot). Nearly all the people who live in the Solor Islands and the eastern portion of Flores -- called the East Flores Regency in the Indonesian province of East Southeast Islands -- speak Lamaholot, the name of the language and their ethnic designation. Lamaholot Muslims are Sunni and follow the Shafi school of law. The Dutch called them Solorese after the Solor Island, the smallest, driest and most impoverished of the islands in the archipelago, which includes Adonara and Lembata.
Long before Islam became established on Java and elsewhere in Indonesia, Muslims had brought their religion to the Lamaholot. A Jesuit, Father Baltasar Diaz, who visited Solor in 1559, discovered there a mosque and many Muslims. In 1561, Portuguese Dominicans opened a mission on Solor and erected a palisade on lontar palm trunks as protection against the Muslims. In 1563, a fleet, said to be Java Muslims, attacked and burned the palisade, but the fortuitous arrival of a Portuguese galleon, which surprised their boats, saved the priests. This stroke of good fortune so impressed the Lamaholot that many of them abandoned Islam and became Christians.
Prior to the coming of the Portuguese, the Lamaholot had been influenced by Hindu Javanese. A Majapahit fleet conquered Larantuka, Flores, in 1357, and the Negarakertagama listed Solor as a Majapahit dependency. In the sixteenth century some Lamaholot recognized the suzerainty of the Sultan of Ternate, and on at least one occasion they sent him envoys requesting military assistance. The straight between Solor and Adonara is narrow, shallow and protected from the winds. It was a favorite harbor, especially during the storms of December and through March at the height of the wet monsoon, for ships trading in sandalwood and beeswax acquired principally on Timor. The ships could remain safe while awaiting calmer winds. Before the Portuguese took control of the sandalwood trade, it was plied by Malays, Javanese, Chinese, Indians, Arabs and others. During the sixteenth and part of the seventeenth centuries, the harbor and the access it provided to sandalwood gave the Lamaholot region a relative importance which it has never again held.
In 1566, the Portuguese erected a stone fort at Lohayong (Lawayong), Solor, and soon had converted several thousand persons to Catholicism, including the villages of Lamakera, Solor, and Lamahala, Adonara. The Muslim village of Trong, Adonara, attacked its neighbor, Lamahala, in 1590. Thereafter, Lamahala became and remained Muslim. In 1598, villagers at Lohayong and Lamakera temporarily overthrew their Portuguese masters, but in re-establishing themselves the following year, the Portuguese burned Lamakera to the ground. The 2,000 former Christians of Lamakera soon rebuilt their village, and thereafter they adhered to Islam. So, too, did the young man who succeeded to the principal position of leadership among the Lamaholot, Kaichil Partani, known as Dom Diogo. However, he did not do so openly until the Dutch captured the fort from the Portuguese in 1613.
Eventually, the Portuguese retired to Larntuka, Flores, but retained influence on east Solor and parts of Adonara. For most of the seventeenth century and later, the Portuguese and Dutch faced each other in the region in a relative stalemate. One party or another on several occasions burned, plundered or sometimes abandoned the fort, and the Dutch twice took it from the Portuguese. Two severe earthquakes devastated the fort in 1648, and it ceased to have real importance, although the structure still stands. In 1653, the Dutch shifted the center of their interest to Timor.
The split between the two European powers eventually coincided with a division in the Lamaholot community. There were two groups, Demonara and Pajinara, descendants of two mythical brothers named Demon and Paji. Each lived in different villages and were set against each other by a fissure of hatred passed on from generation to generation. Their villages were distributed in an irregular pattern across the four islands, being mixed among each other in places on Adonara by dividing Solor roughly in half, Demon to the east, Paji to the west. Those called Pajinara (today usually simply Paji) either retained traditional Lamaholot religious forms or adopted Islam. The Demonara (today, Demon) frequently accepted Christianity.
Ironically, the Portuguese first established themselves among the Paji and tried to convert them. When these reverted to Islam the Portuguese found themselves supported by the Demon. The Dutch were left with an uneasy alliance with the predominantly Muslim Paji. For a variety of reasons, the Portuguese and Dutch were not particularly active in this part of Indonesia during the eighteenth century. In 1859,the Portuguese ceded their rights in the Solor Archipelago to the Dutch as part of a general regulation of the holdings of these powers in the vicinity, much to the anguish of the Raja of Larantuka, who did not regard himself and his people as property subject to sale.
Through a series of military actions toward the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the Dutch established for the first time direct control throughout the islands. Subsequently, they consolidated Paji villages under the Raja of Adonara and Demon villages under the Raja of Larantuka. The structure in which all groups are part of the same regency does not recognize the division, and the government takes steps to diminish the confrontaion.
Conversion to Islam and Christianity greatly increased in the twentieth century, with both sides stepping up their efforts at proselytizing. There are now many villages, especially Lambeta, where both religions are represented. Nevertheless many people, particularly in more remote communities, have resisted efforts to convert them from more traditional means of religious expression. In some villages as many as a third of the population may keep to the older practices.
Solorese see Lamaholot
Ata Kiwan see Lamaholot
Holo see Lamaholot
Solor see Lamaholot
Solot see Lamaholot
Lamaholot (Ata Kiwan) (Holo) (Solor) (Solorese) (Solot). Nearly all the people who live in the Solor Islands and the eastern portion of Flores -- called the East Flores Regency in the Indonesian province of East Southeast Islands -- speak Lamaholot, the name of the language and their ethnic designation. Lamaholot Muslims are Sunni and follow the Shafi school of law. The Dutch called them Solorese after the Solor Island, the smallest, driest and most impoverished of the islands in the archipelago, which includes Adonara and Lembata.
Long before Islam became established on Java and elsewhere in Indonesia, Muslims had brought their religion to the Lamaholot. A Jesuit, Father Baltasar Diaz, who visited Solor in 1559, discovered there a mosque and many Muslims. In 1561, Portuguese Dominicans opened a mission on Solor and erected a palisade on lontar palm trunks as protection against the Muslims. In 1563, a fleet, said to be Java Muslims, attacked and burned the palisade, but the fortuitous arrival of a Portuguese galleon, which surprised their boats, saved the priests. This stroke of good fortune so impressed the Lamaholot that many of them abandoned Islam and became Christians.
Prior to the coming of the Portuguese, the Lamaholot had been influenced by Hindu Javanese. A Majapahit fleet conquered Larantuka, Flores, in 1357, and the Negarakertagama listed Solor as a Majapahit dependency. In the sixteenth century some Lamaholot recognized the suzerainty of the Sultan of Ternate, and on at least one occasion they sent him envoys requesting military assistance. The straight between Solor and Adonara is narrow, shallow and protected from the winds. It was a favorite harbor, especially during the storms of December and through March at the height of the wet monsoon, for ships trading in sandalwood and beeswax acquired principally on Timor. The ships could remain safe while awaiting calmer winds. Before the Portuguese took control of the sandalwood trade, it was plied by Malays, Javanese, Chinese, Indians, Arabs and others. During the sixteenth and part of the seventeenth centuries, the harbor and the access it provided to sandalwood gave the Lamaholot region a relative importance which it has never again held.
In 1566, the Portuguese erected a stone fort at Lohayong (Lawayong), Solor, and soon had converted several thousand persons to Catholicism, including the villages of Lamakera, Solor, and Lamahala, Adonara. The Muslim village of Trong, Adonara, attacked its neighbor, Lamahala, in 1590. Thereafter, Lamahala became and remained Muslim. In 1598, villagers at Lohayong and Lamakera temporarily overthrew their Portuguese masters, but in re-establishing themselves the following year, the Portuguese burned Lamakera to the ground. The 2,000 former Christians of Lamakera soon rebuilt their village, and thereafter they adhered to Islam. So, too, did the young man who succeeded to the principal position of leadership among the Lamaholot, Kaichil Partani, known as Dom Diogo. However, he did not do so openly until the Dutch captured the fort from the Portuguese in 1613.
Eventually, the Portuguese retired to Larntuka, Flores, but retained influence on east Solor and parts of Adonara. For most of the seventeenth century and later, the Portuguese and Dutch faced each other in the region in a relative stalemate. One party or another on several occasions burned, plundered or sometimes abandoned the fort, and the Dutch twice took it from the Portuguese. Two severe earthquakes devastated the fort in 1648, and it ceased to have real importance, although the structure still stands. In 1653, the Dutch shifted the center of their interest to Timor.
The split between the two European powers eventually coincided with a division in the Lamaholot community. There were two groups, Demonara and Pajinara, descendants of two mythical brothers named Demon and Paji. Each lived in different villages and were set against each other by a fissure of hatred passed on from generation to generation. Their villages were distributed in an irregular pattern across the four islands, being mixed among each other in places on Adonara by dividing Solor roughly in half, Demon to the east, Paji to the west. Those called Pajinara (today usually simply Paji) either retained traditional Lamaholot religious forms or adopted Islam. The Demonara (today, Demon) frequently accepted Christianity.
Ironically, the Portuguese first established themselves among the Paji and tried to convert them. When these reverted to Islam the Portuguese found themselves supported by the Demon. The Dutch were left with an uneasy alliance with the predominantly Muslim Paji. For a variety of reasons, the Portuguese and Dutch were not particularly active in this part of Indonesia during the eighteenth century. In 1859,the Portuguese ceded their rights in the Solor Archipelago to the Dutch as part of a general regulation of the holdings of these powers in the vicinity, much to the anguish of the Raja of Larantuka, who did not regard himself and his people as property subject to sale.
Through a series of military actions toward the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the Dutch established for the first time direct control throughout the islands. Subsequently, they consolidated Paji villages under the Raja of Adonara and Demon villages under the Raja of Larantuka. The structure in which all groups are part of the same regency does not recognize the division, and the government takes steps to diminish the confrontaion.
Conversion to Islam and Christianity greatly increased in the twentieth century, with both sides stepping up their efforts at proselytizing. There are now many villages, especially Lambeta, where both religions are represented. Nevertheless many people, particularly in more remote communities, have resisted efforts to convert them from more traditional means of religious expression. In some villages as many as a third of the population may keep to the older practices.
Solorese see Lamaholot
Ata Kiwan see Lamaholot
Holo see Lamaholot
Solor see Lamaholot
Solot see Lamaholot
Lam, Banu
Lam, Banu (Banu Lam). Numerous and formerly powerful Arab tribe living on the borders of Iran and Iraq. The Banu Lam are an Arab tribe of central Arabia and southern Iraq. The tribe claimed descent from the ancient Arab tribe of Tayy, and dominated the western Nejd (the region between Medina and al-Yamama) before the fifteenth century of the Christian calendar. The tribe split into three main Bedouin (nomadic) groups: the Fudhool, the Al Kathir, and the al-Mughira. The Bani Lam tribes gradually left the Nejd, settling mostly in southern Iraq, where they converted from Sunni to Shi'a Islam. Many clans from Bani Lam, however, remained in the Nejd as settled townspeople. The Fudhool were the last of Bani Lam to leave the Nejd, in the eighteenth century.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, all members of the Banu Lam spoke Arabic, but a minority also knew and used Persian. The great majority are Shi‘a. In the eighteenth century, they joined forces with Nadir Shah Afshar. Many punitive military expeditions were organized against them by the Ottomans. They retained in general a position of autonomy between the Ottoman Empire and Persia.
Banu Lam see Lam, Banu
Lam, Banu (Banu Lam). Numerous and formerly powerful Arab tribe living on the borders of Iran and Iraq. The Banu Lam are an Arab tribe of central Arabia and southern Iraq. The tribe claimed descent from the ancient Arab tribe of Tayy, and dominated the western Nejd (the region between Medina and al-Yamama) before the fifteenth century of the Christian calendar. The tribe split into three main Bedouin (nomadic) groups: the Fudhool, the Al Kathir, and the al-Mughira. The Bani Lam tribes gradually left the Nejd, settling mostly in southern Iraq, where they converted from Sunni to Shi'a Islam. Many clans from Bani Lam, however, remained in the Nejd as settled townspeople. The Fudhool were the last of Bani Lam to leave the Nejd, in the eighteenth century.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, all members of the Banu Lam spoke Arabic, but a minority also knew and used Persian. The great majority are Shi‘a. In the eighteenth century, they joined forces with Nadir Shah Afshar. Many punitive military expeditions were organized against them by the Ottomans. They retained in general a position of autonomy between the Ottoman Empire and Persia.
Banu Lam see Lam, Banu
Lamech
Lamech (in Arabic, Lamak). In Genesis 9:21, the invention of music is attributed to Jubal, son of Lamech, but various Arabic sources give primacy to Lamak, the sixth generation descendant of Cain.
Lamech is a character in the genealogies of Adam in the Book of Genesis. One is the seventh generation descendant of Cain (Genesis 4:18); his father was named Methusael and he was responsible for the "Song of the Sword." He is also noted as the first polygamist mentioned in the Bible, taking two wives, Ada and Tselah. He is not to be confused with the Lamech in Genesis 5.
Lamak see Lamech
Lamech (in Arabic, Lamak). In Genesis 9:21, the invention of music is attributed to Jubal, son of Lamech, but various Arabic sources give primacy to Lamak, the sixth generation descendant of Cain.
Lamech is a character in the genealogies of Adam in the Book of Genesis. One is the seventh generation descendant of Cain (Genesis 4:18); his father was named Methusael and he was responsible for the "Song of the Sword." He is also noted as the first polygamist mentioned in the Bible, taking two wives, Ada and Tselah. He is not to be confused with the Lamech in Genesis 5.
Lamak see Lamech
Lami‘i, Shaykh Mahmud
Lami‘i, Shaykh Mahmud (Shaykh Mahmud Lami‘i) (1472-1531). Ottoman Sufi writer and poet. He introduced fresh themes into Turkish literature. Of his works, about thirty titles are known.
Shaykh Mahmud Lami'i see Lami‘i, Shaykh Mahmud
Lami‘i, Shaykh Mahmud (Shaykh Mahmud Lami‘i) (1472-1531). Ottoman Sufi writer and poet. He introduced fresh themes into Turkish literature. Of his works, about thirty titles are known.
Shaykh Mahmud Lami'i see Lami‘i, Shaykh Mahmud
Laminu Njitiya
Laminu Njitiya (d. 1871). Adviser to Shehu ‘Umar and effective ruler of the Kanuri state of Bornu. Laminu Njitiya was of Shuwu Arab and Kanembu descent. He began his career as a bandit. However, he later became a part of a noble household. It was while he was a part of this noble household that Laminu became the first assistant to Shehu ‘Umar’s chief adviser. Shehu ‘Umar was a weak and indecisive man. He was deposed in 1853 but regained the throne in 1854. Because Laminu had remained loyal to ‘Umar, ‘Umar rewarded Laminu with a large fief and an untitled position as his most trusted confidant. In this position, and because of ‘Umar’s weak personality, Laminu became the de facto ruler of Bornu. Laminu was a highly popular figure. He increased Bornu’s holding by conquering some of the Marghai country to the south. After Laminu’s death, Bukar, ‘Umar’s son and successor, became the de facto ruler of the Kanuri state of Bornu.
Njitiya, Laminu see Laminu Njitiya
Laminu Njitiya (d. 1871). Adviser to Shehu ‘Umar and effective ruler of the Kanuri state of Bornu. Laminu Njitiya was of Shuwu Arab and Kanembu descent. He began his career as a bandit. However, he later became a part of a noble household. It was while he was a part of this noble household that Laminu became the first assistant to Shehu ‘Umar’s chief adviser. Shehu ‘Umar was a weak and indecisive man. He was deposed in 1853 but regained the throne in 1854. Because Laminu had remained loyal to ‘Umar, ‘Umar rewarded Laminu with a large fief and an untitled position as his most trusted confidant. In this position, and because of ‘Umar’s weak personality, Laminu became the de facto ruler of Bornu. Laminu was a highly popular figure. He increased Bornu’s holding by conquering some of the Marghai country to the south. After Laminu’s death, Bukar, ‘Umar’s son and successor, became the de facto ruler of the Kanuri state of Bornu.
Njitiya, Laminu see Laminu Njitiya
Lamtuna
Lamtuna. Berber tribe belonging to the branch of the Sanhaja. They already formed a considerable kingdom in the eighth century, and became Muslims, at first only nominally, in the ninth century. The Lamtuna are from a region of Mauritania-Western Sahara-Morocco-Algeria. The Lamtuna claim descent from Himyar, a state in ancient Southern Arabia. The Almoravids, the founders of Marrakech in Morocco, are descendants of this tribe.
The Lamtuna are a Berber tribe from the region of Mauritania-Western Sahara-Morocco-Algeria. They claim descent from Himyar, one of the South Arabian eponyms. The Almoravids, the founders of Marrakech in Morocco where they established their capital, originated from this tribe.
Lamtuna. Berber tribe belonging to the branch of the Sanhaja. They already formed a considerable kingdom in the eighth century, and became Muslims, at first only nominally, in the ninth century. The Lamtuna are from a region of Mauritania-Western Sahara-Morocco-Algeria. The Lamtuna claim descent from Himyar, a state in ancient Southern Arabia. The Almoravids, the founders of Marrakech in Morocco, are descendants of this tribe.
The Lamtuna are a Berber tribe from the region of Mauritania-Western Sahara-Morocco-Algeria. They claim descent from Himyar, one of the South Arabian eponyms. The Almoravids, the founders of Marrakech in Morocco where they established their capital, originated from this tribe.
Lamtuni, Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al-
Lamtuni, Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al- (Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al-Lamtuni) (d. 1075). War leader of the Almoravids and, above all, the real founder of Marrakesh.
Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al-Lamtuni see Lamtuni, Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al-
Lamtuni, Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al- (Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al-Lamtuni) (d. 1075). War leader of the Almoravids and, above all, the real founder of Marrakesh.
Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al-Lamtuni see Lamtuni, Abu Bakr al-Sanhaji al-
Laq
Laq. Muslim people of the Caucasus. Their final conversion to Islam occurred in the thirteenth century.
Laq. Muslim people of the Caucasus. Their final conversion to Islam occurred in the thirteenth century.
Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al-
Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al- (Muhammad ibn Salah al-Lari) (Muslih al-Din) (c.1510-1572). Persian scholar and historian. He wrote on philosophy and astronomy, on the Qur’an and hadith, and composed a widely-known universal history.
Muhammad ibn Salah al-Lari see Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al-
Muslih al-Din see Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al-
Din, Muslih al- see Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al-
Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al- (Muhammad ibn Salah al-Lari) (Muslih al-Din) (c.1510-1572). Persian scholar and historian. He wrote on philosophy and astronomy, on the Qur’an and hadith, and composed a widely-known universal history.
Muhammad ibn Salah al-Lari see Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al-
Muslih al-Din see Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al-
Din, Muslih al- see Lari, Muhammad ibn Salah al-
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) (Lashkar-e-Taiba) (Lashkar-i-Tayyaba) (Lashkar-e-Tayyaba) (Lashkar-i-Taiba) (Lashkar Taiba) (LeT) (Army of the Righteous) (Army of the Pure) (Army of the Good). The LT is the armed wing of the Pakistan based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI) -- a Sunni anti-United States missionary organization formed in 1989. One of the three largest and best-trained groups fighting in Kashmir against India, it is not connected to a political party. The LT leader is MDI chief, Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Almost all LT cadres are foreigners -- mostly Pakistanis from seminaries across the country and Afghan veterans of the Afghan wars. The LT trains its mobile training camps across Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the largest and most active Islamist militant organizations in South Asia. It was founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal in Afghanistan. It is currently based in Muridke[citation needed] (near Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan) and operates several training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Lashkar-e-Taiba members have carried out major attacks against India and its objective is to introduce an Islamic state in South Asia and to "liberate" Muslims residing in Indian Kashmir. The organization is banned as a terrorist organization by India, Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Russia and Australia. As of December 2008 U.S. intelligence officials believed that Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continued to give LT intelligence help and protection.
LT see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Army of the Righteous see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Army of the Pure see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-i-Tayyaba see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-i-Taiba see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT) (Lashkar-e-Taiba) (Lashkar-i-Tayyaba) (Lashkar-e-Tayyaba) (Lashkar-i-Taiba) (Lashkar Taiba) (LeT) (Army of the Righteous) (Army of the Pure) (Army of the Good). The LT is the armed wing of the Pakistan based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI) -- a Sunni anti-United States missionary organization formed in 1989. One of the three largest and best-trained groups fighting in Kashmir against India, it is not connected to a political party. The LT leader is MDI chief, Professor Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Almost all LT cadres are foreigners -- mostly Pakistanis from seminaries across the country and Afghan veterans of the Afghan wars. The LT trains its mobile training camps across Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the largest and most active Islamist militant organizations in South Asia. It was founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zafar Iqbal in Afghanistan. It is currently based in Muridke[citation needed] (near Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan) and operates several training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Lashkar-e-Taiba members have carried out major attacks against India and its objective is to introduce an Islamic state in South Asia and to "liberate" Muslims residing in Indian Kashmir. The organization is banned as a terrorist organization by India, Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Russia and Australia. As of December 2008 U.S. intelligence officials believed that Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continued to give LT intelligence help and protection.
LT see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Army of the Righteous see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Army of the Pure see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-i-Tayyaba see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lashkar-i-Taiba see Lashkar-e-Tayyiba
Lat, al-
Lat, al- (Allat). Pre-Islamic solar deity, frequently invoked by tribal poets. The deep attachment felt by the Banu Thaqif towards al-Lat, by the Aws and the Khazraj towards Manat, and by the Quraysh towards al-‘Uzza, constituted the greatest obstacle in the path of the peaceful implantation of Islam in the regions of the Hijaz. Among Muhammad’s tribesmen, the Quraysh, she was so highly esteemed that a divine revelation was needed to affirm that Lat, together with two other goddesses, al-‘Uzza and Manat, were not to be approached as intercessors before Allah, the Almighty Creator of the Universe.
Allāt or Al-Lāt was a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess who was one of the three chief goddesses of Mecca. She is mentioned in the Qur'an (Sura 53:19), which indicates that pre-Islamic Arabs considered her as one of the daughters of Allāh along with Manāt and al-‘Uzzá.
Allat see Lat, al-
Lat, al- (Allat). Pre-Islamic solar deity, frequently invoked by tribal poets. The deep attachment felt by the Banu Thaqif towards al-Lat, by the Aws and the Khazraj towards Manat, and by the Quraysh towards al-‘Uzza, constituted the greatest obstacle in the path of the peaceful implantation of Islam in the regions of the Hijaz. Among Muhammad’s tribesmen, the Quraysh, she was so highly esteemed that a divine revelation was needed to affirm that Lat, together with two other goddesses, al-‘Uzza and Manat, were not to be approached as intercessors before Allah, the Almighty Creator of the Universe.
Allāt or Al-Lāt was a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess who was one of the three chief goddesses of Mecca. She is mentioned in the Qur'an (Sura 53:19), which indicates that pre-Islamic Arabs considered her as one of the daughters of Allāh along with Manāt and al-‘Uzzá.
Allat see Lat, al-
Lat Dyor Diop
Lat Dyor Diop (Lat Dior) (Lat Dior Ngone Latyr Diop) (c. 1842-1886). Ruler of the Wolof kingdom of Kayor (1862-1864 and 1871-1882). Because Lat Dyor Diop’s mother was of Kayor royal blood, Lat Dyor was eligible for the kingship and was chosen in 1862. Two years later, after coming into conflict with French imperial forces, Lat Dyor was forced to flee to Saloum, where he took refuge with the Muslim leader Maba Diakhou Ba. At the time, Maba Diakhou Ba was fighting both the French and local non-Muslims. While with Maba Diakhou Ba, Lat Dyor converted to Islam. Maba was killed in 1867. After Maba’s death, Lat Dyor came to terms with the French. Returning to Kayor, Lat Dyor was reinstated as the ruler of the Wolof kingdom in 1871. In 1875, Lat Dyor allied with the French against Ahmadu ibn ‘Umar Tall, who was struggling to maintain the Tukolor empire against the French. In 1877, Lat Dyor won control over the neighboring state of Baol. His power and position enabled him to affect the Islamization of a large segment of western Senegal. In 1882, Lat Dyor was again pitted against the French when they began to build a railway through Kayor to connect St. Louis with Dakar. Realizing the threat to his sovereignty, Lat Dyor refused the French passage, and was again forced to flee. Lat Dyor fought the French sporadically until he was killed in 1886.
Lat Dior Ngoné Latyr Diop, son of Sakhéwère Sokhna Mbaye and the Linguère royal Ngoné Latyr Fall, was a 19th century Damel (king) of Cayor, a Wolof state that is today in south central Sénégal.
A great resistance hero of Senegalese history, famed for his defiance and battles against the French, Lat Dior was deposed twice, in 1869 and 1879.
Lat Dior converted to Islam around 1861, and made common cause with other Wolof and Fulani states to resist French colonialism. Instrumental in his conversion was the Almamy of Saloum, Maba Diakhou Bâ. An ally of the Toucouleur empire's El Hadj Umar Tall, Maba convinced Lat-Dior both to convert, and to aid non-Wolof Islamic states of the region against their common foes.
Dior led his troops beside Maba in the battle of Rip on November 30, 1865, at the battle of Pathé Badiane in 1864 and Ngol Ngol in 1865. With Lat Dior, Maba took part in the conquests of the states of Sine, Baol and Djolof.
At Kaolack in 1865, they combined forces with soldiers from Waalo, Ndiambour and Ndiander to face the French fortifications of governor Émile Pinet-Laprade but were repulsed.
After the French conquered Waalo, (re-appointed) governor Louis Faidherbe invaded Cayor in 1865 in order to stop the Damel's opposition to the construction of the Dakar to Saint-Louis railway. Dior is reported to have told the later French Governor Servatius:
"As long as I live, be assured, I shall oppose, with all my might the construction of this railway."
However, the French defeated Lat Dior's forces at the battle of Dekheule on October 26, 1868, after Faidherbe's retirement. Lat Dior struck a deal for limited autonomy and re-installment in 1871. In response to further French expansion, Cayor rose up again with Dior at their head, only to be defeated and be annexed again in 1879.
The Cayor kingdom was extinguished in its entirety October 6, 1886.
Faidherbe is reputed to have said of Dior's troops: "Ceux-là, on les tue on ne les déshonore pas." ("They can be killed but not dishonored"). This has been adapted as the motto of the Senegalese Army: "On nous tue, on ne nous déshonore pas".
In Dakar there is a giant statue of Maalaw, the legendary horse of Lat Dior, near the great mosque.
Lat Dior see Lat Dyor Diop
Diop, Lat Dyor see Lat Dyor Diop
Lat Dior Ngone Latyr Diop see Lat Dyor Diop
Dior, Lat see Lat Dyor Diop
Diop, Lat Dior Ngone Latyr see Lat Dyor Diop
Lat Dyor Diop (Lat Dior) (Lat Dior Ngone Latyr Diop) (c. 1842-1886). Ruler of the Wolof kingdom of Kayor (1862-1864 and 1871-1882). Because Lat Dyor Diop’s mother was of Kayor royal blood, Lat Dyor was eligible for the kingship and was chosen in 1862. Two years later, after coming into conflict with French imperial forces, Lat Dyor was forced to flee to Saloum, where he took refuge with the Muslim leader Maba Diakhou Ba. At the time, Maba Diakhou Ba was fighting both the French and local non-Muslims. While with Maba Diakhou Ba, Lat Dyor converted to Islam. Maba was killed in 1867. After Maba’s death, Lat Dyor came to terms with the French. Returning to Kayor, Lat Dyor was reinstated as the ruler of the Wolof kingdom in 1871. In 1875, Lat Dyor allied with the French against Ahmadu ibn ‘Umar Tall, who was struggling to maintain the Tukolor empire against the French. In 1877, Lat Dyor won control over the neighboring state of Baol. His power and position enabled him to affect the Islamization of a large segment of western Senegal. In 1882, Lat Dyor was again pitted against the French when they began to build a railway through Kayor to connect St. Louis with Dakar. Realizing the threat to his sovereignty, Lat Dyor refused the French passage, and was again forced to flee. Lat Dyor fought the French sporadically until he was killed in 1886.
Lat Dior Ngoné Latyr Diop, son of Sakhéwère Sokhna Mbaye and the Linguère royal Ngoné Latyr Fall, was a 19th century Damel (king) of Cayor, a Wolof state that is today in south central Sénégal.
A great resistance hero of Senegalese history, famed for his defiance and battles against the French, Lat Dior was deposed twice, in 1869 and 1879.
Lat Dior converted to Islam around 1861, and made common cause with other Wolof and Fulani states to resist French colonialism. Instrumental in his conversion was the Almamy of Saloum, Maba Diakhou Bâ. An ally of the Toucouleur empire's El Hadj Umar Tall, Maba convinced Lat-Dior both to convert, and to aid non-Wolof Islamic states of the region against their common foes.
Dior led his troops beside Maba in the battle of Rip on November 30, 1865, at the battle of Pathé Badiane in 1864 and Ngol Ngol in 1865. With Lat Dior, Maba took part in the conquests of the states of Sine, Baol and Djolof.
At Kaolack in 1865, they combined forces with soldiers from Waalo, Ndiambour and Ndiander to face the French fortifications of governor Émile Pinet-Laprade but were repulsed.
After the French conquered Waalo, (re-appointed) governor Louis Faidherbe invaded Cayor in 1865 in order to stop the Damel's opposition to the construction of the Dakar to Saint-Louis railway. Dior is reported to have told the later French Governor Servatius:
"As long as I live, be assured, I shall oppose, with all my might the construction of this railway."
However, the French defeated Lat Dior's forces at the battle of Dekheule on October 26, 1868, after Faidherbe's retirement. Lat Dior struck a deal for limited autonomy and re-installment in 1871. In response to further French expansion, Cayor rose up again with Dior at their head, only to be defeated and be annexed again in 1879.
The Cayor kingdom was extinguished in its entirety October 6, 1886.
Faidherbe is reputed to have said of Dior's troops: "Ceux-là, on les tue on ne les déshonore pas." ("They can be killed but not dishonored"). This has been adapted as the motto of the Senegalese Army: "On nous tue, on ne nous déshonore pas".
In Dakar there is a giant statue of Maalaw, the legendary horse of Lat Dior, near the great mosque.
Lat Dior see Lat Dyor Diop
Diop, Lat Dyor see Lat Dyor Diop
Lat Dior Ngone Latyr Diop see Lat Dyor Diop
Dior, Lat see Lat Dyor Diop
Diop, Lat Dior Ngone Latyr see Lat Dyor Diop
Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston, October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator. He became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after his conversion to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam in 1950.
Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and also used a number of non-western instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul and koto. He is known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with "Eastern" music.
Lateef wrote and published a number of books including two novellas entitled A Night in the Garden of Love and Another Avenue, the short story collections Spheres and Rain Shapes, along with his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written in collaboration with Herb Boyd. Along with his record label YAL Records, Lateef owned Fana Music, a music publishing company. Lateef published his own work through Fana, which includes Yusef Lateef's Flute Book of the Blues and many of his own orchestral compositions.
Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved, in 1923, to Lorain, Ohio and again in 1925, to Detroit, Michigan, where his father changed the family's name to "Evans".
Throughout his early life, Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Lateef was a proficient saxophonist by the time of his graduation from high school at the age of 18, when he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands.
In 1949, he was invited by Dizzy Gillespie to tour with his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam and became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association which continued until 1959. The earliest of Lateef's album's for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap with them. Musicians such as Wilbur Harden (trumpet, flugelhorn), bassist Herman Wright, drummer Frank Gant, and pianist Hugh Lawson were among his collaborators during this period.
By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds, Lateef's dominant presence within a group context had emerged. His 'Eastern' influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings, with spots for instruments like the rahab, shanai, arghul, koto and a collection of Chinese wooden flutes and bells along with his tenor and flute. Even his use of the western oboe sounds exotic in this context; it is not a standard jazz instrument. Indeed, the tunes themselves are a mixture of jazz standards, blues and film music usually performed with a piano/bass/drums rhythm section in support. Lateef made numerous contributions to other people's albums including his time as a member of saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's Quintet during 1962–64.
Lateef's sound has been claimed to have been a major influence on the saxophonist John Coltrane, whose later period free jazz recordings contain similarly 'Eastern' traits. For a time (1963–66) Lateef was signed to Coltrane's label, Impulse. He had a regular working group during this period, with trumpeter Richard Williams and Mike Nock on piano.
In the late 1960s, Lateef began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, still with a strong blues underlay, on albums such as Detroit and Hush'n'Thunder. Lateef expressed a dislike of the terms "jazz" and "jazz musician" as musical generalizations. As is so often the case with such generalizations, the use of these terms do understate the breadth of his sound. For example, in the 1980s, Lateef experimented with new age and spiritual elements.
In 1960, Lateef again returned to school, studying flute at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Music in 1969 and a Master's Degree in Music Education in 1970. Starting in 1971, he taught courses in autophysiopsychic music at the Manhattan School of Music, and he became an associate professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1972.
In 1975, Lateef completed his dissertation on Western and Islamic education and earned a Ed.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In the early 1980s, Lateef was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in the city of Zaria, Nigeria. Returning to the United States in 1986 he took a joint teaching position at the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College.
Lateef's 1987 album Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. His core influences, however, were clearly rooted in jazz, and in his own words: "My music is jazz."
In 1992, Lateef founded YAL Records. In 1993, Lateef was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne to composeThe African American Epic Suite, a four-part work for orchestra and quartet based on themes of slavery and disfranchisement in the United States. The piece has since been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
In 2010, Lateef received the lifetime Jazz Master Fellowship Award from NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency.
The Manhattan School of Music, where Lateef earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, awarded him a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.
Lateef's last albums were recorded for Adam Rudolph's "Meta Records". To the end of his life, he continued to teach at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. Lateef died on the morning of December 23, 2013 at the age of 93 after suffering from prostate cancer.
The discography of Yusef Lateef include the following:
- Savoy 1957-1959
- Jazz for the Thinker (1957)
- Jazz Mood (1957)
- Jazz and the Sounds of Nature (1957)
- Prayer to the East (1957)
- The Dreamer (1959)
- The Fabric of Jazz (1959)
- Impulse! 1963-1966
- Jazz 'Round the World (1963)
- Live at Pep's (1964)
- 1984 (1965)
- Psychicemotus (1965)
- A Flat, G Flat and C (1966)
- The Golden Flute (1966)
- Atlantic 1967 -1991
- The Complete Yusef Lateef (1967)
- The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968)
- Yusef Lateef's Detroit (1969)
- The Diverse Yusef Lateef (1969)
- Suite 16 (1970)
- The Gentle Giant (1971)
- Hush 'N' Thunder (1972)
- Part of the Search (1973)
- 10 Years Hence (1974)
- The Doctor is In... and Out (1976)
- Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony (1987)
- Concerto for Yusef Lateef (1988)
- Nocturnes (1989)
- Meditations (1990)
- Yusef Lateef's Encounters (1991)
- YAL Records 1992-2002
- Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Von Freeman (1992)
- Heart Vision (1992)
- Yusef Lateef Plays Ballads (1993)
- Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp (1993)
- Woodwinds (1993)
- Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Ricky Ford (1994)
- Yusef Lateef's Fantasia for Flute (1996)
- Full Circle (1996)
- CHNOPS: Gold & Soul (1997)
- Earth and Sky (1997)
- 9 Bagatelles (1998)
- Like the Dust (1998)
- Live at Luckman Theater (2001)
- Earriptus (2001)
- So Peace (2002)
- A Tribute Concert for Yusef Lateef: YAL's 10th Anniversary (2002)
- Meta Records
- The World at Peace (1997)
- Beyond the Sky (2000)
- Go: Organic Orchestra: In the Garden (2003)
- Towards the Unknown (2010)
- Voice Prints (2013)
- Other labels
- Before Dawn: The Music of Yusef Lateef (Verve, 1957)
- The Sounds of Yusef (Prestige, 1957)
- Other Sounds (New Jazz, 1957)
- Lateef at Cranbrook (Argo, 1958)
- Cry! - Tender (New Jazz, 1959)
- The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef (Riverside, 1960)
- The Centaur and the Phoenix (Riverside, 1960)
- Lost in Sound (Charlie Parker, 1961)
- Eastern Sounds (Moodsville, 1961)
- Into Something (New Jazz, 1961)
- Autophysiopsychic (1977, CTI Records)
- In a Temple Garden (1979, CTI Records)
- Yusef Lateef in Nigeria (Landmark, 1983)
- Influence with Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo (2005)
- Roots Run Deep (Rogue Art, 2012)
With Cannonball Adderley
- The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York (Riverside, 1962)
- Cannonball in Europe! (Riverside, 1962)
- Jazz Workshop Revisited (Riverside, 1962)
- Autumn Leaves (Riverside, 1963)
- Nippon Soul (Riverside, 1963)
With Nat Adderley
- That's Right! (Riverside, 1960)
With Ernestine Anderson
- My Kinda Swing (1960)
With Art Blakey
- The African Beat (1962)
With Donald Byrd
- Byrd Jazz (Transition, 1955)
- First Flight (1957)
With Paul Chambers
- 1st Bassman (1961)
With Art Farmer
- Something You Got (CTI, 1977)
With Curtis Fuller
- Images of Curtis Fuller (Savoy, 1960)
- Boss of the Soul-Stream Trombone (Warwick, 1960)
- Gettin' It Together (1961)
With Grant Green
- Grantstand (Blue Note, 1961)
With Slide Hampton
- Drum Suite (1962)
With Louis Hayes
- Louis Hayes featuring Yusef Lateef & Nat Adderley (1960)
With Les McCann
- Invitation to Openness (1972)
With Don McLean
- Homeless Brother (1973)
With Charles Mingus
- Pre-Bird (aka, Mingus Revisited, 1960)
With Babatunde Olatunji
- Drums of Passion (1960)
With Sonny Red
- Breezing (Jazzland, 1960)
With Leon Redbone
- Double Time (Warner Bros., 1976)
With Clark Terry
- Color Changes (1960)
With Doug Watkins
- Soulnik (New Jazz, 1960)
With Randy Weston
- Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960)
With Frank Wess
- Jazz Is Busting Out All Over (1957)
Latifi, ‘Abd al-Latif Celebi
Latifi, ‘Abd al-Latif Celebi (‘Abd al-Latif Celebi Latifi) (1491-1582). Turkish biographer, litterateur and poet. His Biographies of the Poets is generally considered, after ‘Ashiq Celebi’s, to be the second finest biographical work in Ottoman literature.
'Abd al-Latif Celebi Latifi see Latifi, ‘Abd al-Latif Celebi
Latifi, ‘Abd al-Latif Celebi (‘Abd al-Latif Celebi Latifi) (1491-1582). Turkish biographer, litterateur and poet. His Biographies of the Poets is generally considered, after ‘Ashiq Celebi’s, to be the second finest biographical work in Ottoman literature.
'Abd al-Latif Celebi Latifi see Latifi, ‘Abd al-Latif Celebi
Lawal
Lawal (1797-1872). Ruler of the Fula emirate of Adamawa. Lawal’s father, Adama, had been sanctioned by Fula revolutionary ‘Uthman dan Fodio to create the Adamawa emirate, at the southeastern limit of ‘Uthman’s empire. When Lawal succeeded Adama in 1848, the problems Lawal faced were essentially the same as those of his father -- expansion of the emirate and suppression of rebellions. Although Lawal was nominally under the control of ‘Uthman’s successors at Sokoto, the explorer Barth claimed that he ruled almost independently of them. Lawal was a strict fundamentalist in matters of Islamic law; moral conduct and dress were closely regulated, and Lawal himself eschewed ostentation. Islamic schools were opened throughout the emirate. Lawal died in 1872 and was succeeded by his brother, Sanda.
Lawal (1797-1872). Ruler of the Fula emirate of Adamawa. Lawal’s father, Adama, had been sanctioned by Fula revolutionary ‘Uthman dan Fodio to create the Adamawa emirate, at the southeastern limit of ‘Uthman’s empire. When Lawal succeeded Adama in 1848, the problems Lawal faced were essentially the same as those of his father -- expansion of the emirate and suppression of rebellions. Although Lawal was nominally under the control of ‘Uthman’s successors at Sokoto, the explorer Barth claimed that he ruled almost independently of them. Lawal was a strict fundamentalist in matters of Islamic law; moral conduct and dress were closely regulated, and Lawal himself eschewed ostentation. Islamic schools were opened throughout the emirate. Lawal died in 1872 and was succeeded by his brother, Sanda.
Lawata, Banu
Lawata, Banu (Banu Lawata). Berber ethnic group who are known to live in Egypt, Barqa (Cyrenaica), Tripolitania, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Sicily.
Banu Lawata see Lawata, Banu
Lawata, Banu (Banu Lawata). Berber ethnic group who are known to live in Egypt, Barqa (Cyrenaica), Tripolitania, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Sicily.
Banu Lawata see Lawata, Banu
Lawati, Abu Muhammad ‘Abd Allah al-
Lawati, Abu Muhammad ‘Abd Allah al- (Abu Muhammad ‘Abd Allah al-Lawati). Ibadi historian, transmitter of hadith, biographer and poet of the eleventh century. He wrote a work on the history of the North African Ibadiyya and taught Ibadi history to numerous pupils.
Lawati, Abu Muhammad ‘Abd Allah al- (Abu Muhammad ‘Abd Allah al-Lawati). Ibadi historian, transmitter of hadith, biographer and poet of the eleventh century. He wrote a work on the history of the North African Ibadiyya and taught Ibadi history to numerous pupils.
Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Lawrence, Thomas Edward (T. E. Lawrence) (T. E. Shaw) (Lawrence of Arabia) (born August 15, 1888, Tremadoc, Caernarvonshire, Wales—died May 19, 1935, Clouds Hill, Dorset, England). British intelligence officer who helped inspire the Arab Revolt. T. E. Lawrence was a gifted writer and an advocate of Arab nationalism.
Thomas Edward Lawrence was known as the legendary “Lawrence of Arabia”. He earned this title from his exploits during World War I which led helped drive the Ottomans out of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant.
T. E. Lawrence, byname Lawrence Of Arabia, was British archaeological scholar, military strategist, and author best known for his legendary war activities in the Middle East during World War I and for his account of those activities in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).
Lawrence was the son of Sir Thomas Chapman and Sara Maden, the governess of Sir Thomas’ daughters at Westmeath, with whom he had escaped from both marriage and Ireland. As “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence,” the couple had five sons (Thomas Edward was the second) during what was outwardly a marriage with all the benefits of clergy. In 1896, the family settled in Oxford, where T.E. (he preferred the initials to the names) attended the High School and Jesus College. Medieval military architecture was his first interest, and he pursued it in its historical settings, studying crusader castles in France and (in 1909) in Syria and Palestine and submitting a thesis on the subject that won him first-class honors in history in 1910. (It was posthumously published, as Crusader Castles, in 1936.) As a protégé of the Oxford archaeologist D.G. Hogarth, he acquired a demyship (travelling fellowship) from Magdalen College and joined an expedition excavating the Hittite settlement of Carchemish on the Euphrates, working there from 1911 to 1914, first under Hogarth and then under Sir Leonard Woolley, and using his free time to travel on his own and get to know the language and the people. Early in 1914 he and Woolley, and Captain S.F. Newcombe, explored northern Sinai, on the Turkish frontier east of Suez. Supposedly a scientific expedition, and in fact sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund, it was more a map-making reconnaissance from Gaza to Aqaba, destined to be of almost immediate strategic value. The cover study was nevertheless of authentic scholarly significance; written by Lawrence and Woolley together, it was published as The Wilderness of Zin in 1915.
The month the war began, Lawrence became a civilian employee of the Map Department of the War Office in London, charged with preparing a militarily useful map of Sinai. By December 1914 he was a lieutenant in Cairo. Experts on Arab affairs—especially those who had travelled in the Turkish-held Arab lands—were rare, and he was assigned to intelligence, where he spent more than a year, mostly interviewing prisoners, drawing maps, receiving and processing data from agents behind enemy lines, and producing a handbook on the Turkish Army. When, in mid-1915, his brothers Will and Frank were killed in action in France, T.E. was reminded cruelly of the more active front in the West. Egypt at the time was the staging area for Middle Eastern military operations of prodigious inefficiency; a trip to Arabia convinced Lawrence of an alternative method of undermining Germany’s Turkish ally. In October 1916 he had accompanied the diplomat Ronald Storrs on a mission to Arabia, where Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, amīr of Mecca, had the previous June proclaimed a revolt against the Turks. Storrs and Lawrence consulted with Ḥusayn’s son Abdullah, and Lawrence received permission to go on to consult further with another son, Fayṣal, then commanding an Arab force southwest of Medina. Back in Cairo in November, Lawrence urged his superiors to abet the efforts at rebellion with arms and gold and to make use of the dissident shaykhs by meshing their aspirations for independence with general military strategy. He rejoined Fayṣal’s army as political and liaison officer.
Lawrence was not the only officer to become involved in the incipient Arab rising, but from his own small corner of the Arabian Peninsula he quickly became—especially from his own accounts—its brains, its organizing force, its liaison with Cairo, and its military technician. His small but irritating second front behind the Turkish lines was a hit-and-run guerrilla operation, focusing upon the mining of bridges and supply trains and the appearance of Arab units first in one place and then another, tying down enemy forces that otherwise would have been deployed elsewhere, and keeping the Damascus-to-Medina railway largely inoperable, with potential Turkish reinforcements thus helpless to crush the uprising. In such fashion Lawrence—“Amīr Dynamite” to the admiring Bedouins—committed the cynical, self-serving shaykhs for the moment to his king-maker’s vision of an Arab nation, goaded them with examples of his own self-punishing personal valor when their spirits flagged, bribed them with promises of enemy booty and English gold sovereigns.
Aqaba—at the northernmost tip of the Red Sea—was the first major victory for the Arab guerrilla forces. They seized it after a two-month march on July 6, 1917. Thenceforth, Lawrence attempted to coordinate Arab movements with the campaign of General Sir Edmund Allenby, who was advancing toward Jerusalem, a tactic only partly successful. In November, Lawrence was captured at Darʿā by the Turks while reconnoitering the area in Arab dress and was apparently recognized and homosexually brutalized before he was able to escape. The experience, variously reported or disguised by him afterward, left real scars as well as wounds upon his psyche from which he never recovered. The next month, nevertheless, he took part in the victory parade in Jerusalem and then returned to increasingly successful actions in which Fayṣal’s forces nibbled their way north, and Lawrence rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).
By the time the motley Arab army reached Damascus in October 1918, Lawrence was physically and emotionally exhausted, having forced body and spirit to the breaking point too often. He had been wounded numerous times, captured, and tortured; had endured extremities of hunger, weather, and disease; had been driven by military necessity to commit atrocities upon the enemy; and had witnessed in the chaos of Damascus the defeat of his aspirations for the Arabs in the very moment of their triumph, their seemingly incurable factionalism rendering them incapable of becoming a nation. (Anglo-French duplicity, made official in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Lawrence knew, had already betrayed them in a cynical wartime division of expected spoils.) Distinguished and disillusioned, Lawrence left for home just before the Armistice and politely refused, at a royal audience on October 30, 1918, the Order of the Bath and the DSO, leaving the shocked king George V (in his words) “holding the box in my hand.” He was demobilized as a lieutenant colonel on July 31, 1919.
A colonel at 30, Lawrence was a private at 34. In between he lobbied vainly for Arab independence at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 (even appearing in Arab robes) and lobbied vainly against the detachment of Syria and Lebanon from the rest of the Arab countries as a French mandate. Meanwhile he worked on his war memoir, acquiring for the purpose a research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, effective (for a seven-year term) in November 1919. By that time his exploits were becoming belatedly known to a wide public, for in London in August 1919 an American war correspondent, Lowell Thomas, had begun an immensely popular series of illustrated lectures, “With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia.” The latter segment soon dominated the program, and Lawrence, curious about it, went to see it himself.
Lawrence was already on a third draft of his narrative when, in March 1921, he was wooed back to the Middle East as adviser on Arab affairs to the colonial minister, then Winston Churchill. After the Cairo political settlements, which redeemed a few of the idealistic wartime promises Lawrence had made, he rejected all offers of further positions in government; and, with the covert help of his wartime colleague, Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, enlisted under an assumed name (John Hume Ross) in the Royal Air Force on Aug. 28, 1922. He had just finished arranging to have eight copies of the revised and rhetorically inflated 330,000-word text of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom run off by the press of the Oxford Times and was emotionally drained by the drafting of his memoir. Now he was willing to give up his £1,200 Colonial Office salary for the daily two shillings ninepence of an aircraftman, not only to lose himself in the ranks but to acquire material for another book. He was successful only in the latter. The London press found him at the Farnborough base, the Daily Express breaking the story on December 27. Embarrassed, the RAF released him early the next month.
Finding reinstatement impossible, Lawrence looked around for another service and through the intervention of a War Office friend, Sir Philip Chetwode, was able to enlist on March 12, 1923, as a private in the Royal Tank Corps, this time as T.E. Shaw, a name he claimed to have chosen at random, although one of the crucial events of his postwar life was his meeting in 1922, and later friendship with, George Bernard Shaw. (In 1927 he assumed the new name legally.) Posted to Bovington Camp in Dorset, he acquired a cottage nearby, Clouds Hill, which remained his home thereafter. From Dorset he set about arranging for publication of yet another version of Seven Pillars; on the editorial advice of his friends, notably George Bernard Shaw, a sizable portion of the Oxford text was pruned for the famous 128-copy subscription edition of 1926, sumptuously printed and bound and illustrated by notable British artists commissioned by the author.
Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom remains one of the few 20th-century works in English to make epical figures out of contemporaries. Though overpopulated with adjectives and often straining for effects and “art,” it is, nevertheless, an action-packed narrative of Lawrence’s campaigns in the desert with the Arabs. The book is replete with incident and spectacle, filled with rich character portrayals and a tense introspection that bares the author’s own complex mental and spiritual transformation. Though admittedly inexact and subjective, it combines the scope of heroic epic with the closeness of autobiography.
To recover the costs of printing Seven Pillars, Lawrence agreed to a trade edition of a 130,000-word abridgment, Revolt in the Desert. By the time it was released in March 1927, he was at a base in India, remote from the publicity both editions generated; yet the limelight sought him out. Unfounded rumors of his involvement as a spy in Central Asia and in a plot against the Soviet Union caused the RAF (to which he had been transferred in 1925 on the intervention of George Bernard Shaw and John Buchan with the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin) to return him to England in 1929. In the meantime, he had completed a draft of a semi-fictionalized memoir of Royal Air Force recruit training, The Mint (published 1955), which in its explicitness horrified Whitehall officialdom and which in his lifetime never went beyond circulation in typescript to his friends. In it he balanced scenes of contentment with air force life with scenes of splenetic rage at the desecration of the recruit’s essential inviolate humanity. He had also begun, on commission from the book designer Bruce Rogers, a translation of Homer’s Odyssey into English prose, a task he continued at various RAF bases from Karāchi in 1928 through Plymouth in 1931. It was published in 1932 as the work of T.E. Shaw, but posthumous printings have used both his former and adopted names.
Little else by Lawrence was published in his lifetime. His first postwar writings, including a famous essay on guerrilla war and a magazine serial version of an early draft of Seven Pillars, have been published as Evolution of a Revolt (edited by S. and R. Weintraub, 1968). Minorities (1971) reproduced an anthology of more than 100 poems Lawrence had collected in a notebook over many years, each possessing a crucial and revealing association with something in his life.
Lawrence’s last years were spent among RAF seaplanes and seagoing tenders, although officialdom refused him permission to fly. In the process, moving from bases on the English Channel to those on the North Sea and leading charismatically from the lowest ranks as Aircraftman Shaw, he worked on improved designs for high-speed seaplane-tender watercraft, testing them in rigorous trials and developing a technical manual for their use.
Discharged from the Royal Air Force on February 26, 1935, Lawrence returned to Clouds Hill to face a retirement, at 46, filled alternately with optimism about future publishing projects and a sense of emptiness. To Lady Astor, an old friend, he described himself as puttering about as if “there is something broken in the works . . . my will, I think.” A motorcycling accident on May 13 solved the problem of his future. He died six days later without regaining consciousness.
Lawrence became a mythic figure in his own lifetime even before he published his own version of his legend in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. His accomplishments themselves were solid enough for several lives. More than a military leader and inspirational force behind the Arab revolt against the Turks, he was a superb tactician and a highly influential theoretician of guerrilla warfare. Besides The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, his sharply etched service chronicle, The Mint, and his mannered prose translation of the Odyssey added to a literary reputation further substantiated by an immense correspondence that establishes him as one of the major letter writers of his generation.
Lawrence found despair as necessary as ambition. He lived on the masochistic side of asceticism, and part of his self-punishment involved creating within himself a deep frustration to immediately follow, and cancel out, high achievement by denying to himself the recognition he had earned. At its most extreme, this impulse involved a symbolic killing of the self, a taking up of a new life and a new name. Under whatever guise, he was a many-sided genius whose accomplishments precluded the privacy he constantly sought. By the manufacture of his myth, however solidly based, he created in his own person a characterization rivaling any in contemporary fiction.
Thomas Edward Lawrence see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Lawrence, T. E. see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
T. E. Lawrence see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Lawrence of Arabia see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
T. E. Shaw see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Shaw, T. E. see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Lawrence, Thomas Edward (T. E. Lawrence) (T. E. Shaw) (Lawrence of Arabia) (born August 15, 1888, Tremadoc, Caernarvonshire, Wales—died May 19, 1935, Clouds Hill, Dorset, England). British intelligence officer who helped inspire the Arab Revolt. T. E. Lawrence was a gifted writer and an advocate of Arab nationalism.
Thomas Edward Lawrence was known as the legendary “Lawrence of Arabia”. He earned this title from his exploits during World War I which led helped drive the Ottomans out of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant.
T. E. Lawrence, byname Lawrence Of Arabia, was British archaeological scholar, military strategist, and author best known for his legendary war activities in the Middle East during World War I and for his account of those activities in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).
Lawrence was the son of Sir Thomas Chapman and Sara Maden, the governess of Sir Thomas’ daughters at Westmeath, with whom he had escaped from both marriage and Ireland. As “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence,” the couple had five sons (Thomas Edward was the second) during what was outwardly a marriage with all the benefits of clergy. In 1896, the family settled in Oxford, where T.E. (he preferred the initials to the names) attended the High School and Jesus College. Medieval military architecture was his first interest, and he pursued it in its historical settings, studying crusader castles in France and (in 1909) in Syria and Palestine and submitting a thesis on the subject that won him first-class honors in history in 1910. (It was posthumously published, as Crusader Castles, in 1936.) As a protégé of the Oxford archaeologist D.G. Hogarth, he acquired a demyship (travelling fellowship) from Magdalen College and joined an expedition excavating the Hittite settlement of Carchemish on the Euphrates, working there from 1911 to 1914, first under Hogarth and then under Sir Leonard Woolley, and using his free time to travel on his own and get to know the language and the people. Early in 1914 he and Woolley, and Captain S.F. Newcombe, explored northern Sinai, on the Turkish frontier east of Suez. Supposedly a scientific expedition, and in fact sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund, it was more a map-making reconnaissance from Gaza to Aqaba, destined to be of almost immediate strategic value. The cover study was nevertheless of authentic scholarly significance; written by Lawrence and Woolley together, it was published as The Wilderness of Zin in 1915.
The month the war began, Lawrence became a civilian employee of the Map Department of the War Office in London, charged with preparing a militarily useful map of Sinai. By December 1914 he was a lieutenant in Cairo. Experts on Arab affairs—especially those who had travelled in the Turkish-held Arab lands—were rare, and he was assigned to intelligence, where he spent more than a year, mostly interviewing prisoners, drawing maps, receiving and processing data from agents behind enemy lines, and producing a handbook on the Turkish Army. When, in mid-1915, his brothers Will and Frank were killed in action in France, T.E. was reminded cruelly of the more active front in the West. Egypt at the time was the staging area for Middle Eastern military operations of prodigious inefficiency; a trip to Arabia convinced Lawrence of an alternative method of undermining Germany’s Turkish ally. In October 1916 he had accompanied the diplomat Ronald Storrs on a mission to Arabia, where Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, amīr of Mecca, had the previous June proclaimed a revolt against the Turks. Storrs and Lawrence consulted with Ḥusayn’s son Abdullah, and Lawrence received permission to go on to consult further with another son, Fayṣal, then commanding an Arab force southwest of Medina. Back in Cairo in November, Lawrence urged his superiors to abet the efforts at rebellion with arms and gold and to make use of the dissident shaykhs by meshing their aspirations for independence with general military strategy. He rejoined Fayṣal’s army as political and liaison officer.
Lawrence was not the only officer to become involved in the incipient Arab rising, but from his own small corner of the Arabian Peninsula he quickly became—especially from his own accounts—its brains, its organizing force, its liaison with Cairo, and its military technician. His small but irritating second front behind the Turkish lines was a hit-and-run guerrilla operation, focusing upon the mining of bridges and supply trains and the appearance of Arab units first in one place and then another, tying down enemy forces that otherwise would have been deployed elsewhere, and keeping the Damascus-to-Medina railway largely inoperable, with potential Turkish reinforcements thus helpless to crush the uprising. In such fashion Lawrence—“Amīr Dynamite” to the admiring Bedouins—committed the cynical, self-serving shaykhs for the moment to his king-maker’s vision of an Arab nation, goaded them with examples of his own self-punishing personal valor when their spirits flagged, bribed them with promises of enemy booty and English gold sovereigns.
Aqaba—at the northernmost tip of the Red Sea—was the first major victory for the Arab guerrilla forces. They seized it after a two-month march on July 6, 1917. Thenceforth, Lawrence attempted to coordinate Arab movements with the campaign of General Sir Edmund Allenby, who was advancing toward Jerusalem, a tactic only partly successful. In November, Lawrence was captured at Darʿā by the Turks while reconnoitering the area in Arab dress and was apparently recognized and homosexually brutalized before he was able to escape. The experience, variously reported or disguised by him afterward, left real scars as well as wounds upon his psyche from which he never recovered. The next month, nevertheless, he took part in the victory parade in Jerusalem and then returned to increasingly successful actions in which Fayṣal’s forces nibbled their way north, and Lawrence rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).
By the time the motley Arab army reached Damascus in October 1918, Lawrence was physically and emotionally exhausted, having forced body and spirit to the breaking point too often. He had been wounded numerous times, captured, and tortured; had endured extremities of hunger, weather, and disease; had been driven by military necessity to commit atrocities upon the enemy; and had witnessed in the chaos of Damascus the defeat of his aspirations for the Arabs in the very moment of their triumph, their seemingly incurable factionalism rendering them incapable of becoming a nation. (Anglo-French duplicity, made official in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Lawrence knew, had already betrayed them in a cynical wartime division of expected spoils.) Distinguished and disillusioned, Lawrence left for home just before the Armistice and politely refused, at a royal audience on October 30, 1918, the Order of the Bath and the DSO, leaving the shocked king George V (in his words) “holding the box in my hand.” He was demobilized as a lieutenant colonel on July 31, 1919.
A colonel at 30, Lawrence was a private at 34. In between he lobbied vainly for Arab independence at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 (even appearing in Arab robes) and lobbied vainly against the detachment of Syria and Lebanon from the rest of the Arab countries as a French mandate. Meanwhile he worked on his war memoir, acquiring for the purpose a research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, effective (for a seven-year term) in November 1919. By that time his exploits were becoming belatedly known to a wide public, for in London in August 1919 an American war correspondent, Lowell Thomas, had begun an immensely popular series of illustrated lectures, “With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia.” The latter segment soon dominated the program, and Lawrence, curious about it, went to see it himself.
Lawrence was already on a third draft of his narrative when, in March 1921, he was wooed back to the Middle East as adviser on Arab affairs to the colonial minister, then Winston Churchill. After the Cairo political settlements, which redeemed a few of the idealistic wartime promises Lawrence had made, he rejected all offers of further positions in government; and, with the covert help of his wartime colleague, Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, enlisted under an assumed name (John Hume Ross) in the Royal Air Force on Aug. 28, 1922. He had just finished arranging to have eight copies of the revised and rhetorically inflated 330,000-word text of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom run off by the press of the Oxford Times and was emotionally drained by the drafting of his memoir. Now he was willing to give up his £1,200 Colonial Office salary for the daily two shillings ninepence of an aircraftman, not only to lose himself in the ranks but to acquire material for another book. He was successful only in the latter. The London press found him at the Farnborough base, the Daily Express breaking the story on December 27. Embarrassed, the RAF released him early the next month.
Finding reinstatement impossible, Lawrence looked around for another service and through the intervention of a War Office friend, Sir Philip Chetwode, was able to enlist on March 12, 1923, as a private in the Royal Tank Corps, this time as T.E. Shaw, a name he claimed to have chosen at random, although one of the crucial events of his postwar life was his meeting in 1922, and later friendship with, George Bernard Shaw. (In 1927 he assumed the new name legally.) Posted to Bovington Camp in Dorset, he acquired a cottage nearby, Clouds Hill, which remained his home thereafter. From Dorset he set about arranging for publication of yet another version of Seven Pillars; on the editorial advice of his friends, notably George Bernard Shaw, a sizable portion of the Oxford text was pruned for the famous 128-copy subscription edition of 1926, sumptuously printed and bound and illustrated by notable British artists commissioned by the author.
Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom remains one of the few 20th-century works in English to make epical figures out of contemporaries. Though overpopulated with adjectives and often straining for effects and “art,” it is, nevertheless, an action-packed narrative of Lawrence’s campaigns in the desert with the Arabs. The book is replete with incident and spectacle, filled with rich character portrayals and a tense introspection that bares the author’s own complex mental and spiritual transformation. Though admittedly inexact and subjective, it combines the scope of heroic epic with the closeness of autobiography.
To recover the costs of printing Seven Pillars, Lawrence agreed to a trade edition of a 130,000-word abridgment, Revolt in the Desert. By the time it was released in March 1927, he was at a base in India, remote from the publicity both editions generated; yet the limelight sought him out. Unfounded rumors of his involvement as a spy in Central Asia and in a plot against the Soviet Union caused the RAF (to which he had been transferred in 1925 on the intervention of George Bernard Shaw and John Buchan with the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin) to return him to England in 1929. In the meantime, he had completed a draft of a semi-fictionalized memoir of Royal Air Force recruit training, The Mint (published 1955), which in its explicitness horrified Whitehall officialdom and which in his lifetime never went beyond circulation in typescript to his friends. In it he balanced scenes of contentment with air force life with scenes of splenetic rage at the desecration of the recruit’s essential inviolate humanity. He had also begun, on commission from the book designer Bruce Rogers, a translation of Homer’s Odyssey into English prose, a task he continued at various RAF bases from Karāchi in 1928 through Plymouth in 1931. It was published in 1932 as the work of T.E. Shaw, but posthumous printings have used both his former and adopted names.
Little else by Lawrence was published in his lifetime. His first postwar writings, including a famous essay on guerrilla war and a magazine serial version of an early draft of Seven Pillars, have been published as Evolution of a Revolt (edited by S. and R. Weintraub, 1968). Minorities (1971) reproduced an anthology of more than 100 poems Lawrence had collected in a notebook over many years, each possessing a crucial and revealing association with something in his life.
Lawrence’s last years were spent among RAF seaplanes and seagoing tenders, although officialdom refused him permission to fly. In the process, moving from bases on the English Channel to those on the North Sea and leading charismatically from the lowest ranks as Aircraftman Shaw, he worked on improved designs for high-speed seaplane-tender watercraft, testing them in rigorous trials and developing a technical manual for their use.
Discharged from the Royal Air Force on February 26, 1935, Lawrence returned to Clouds Hill to face a retirement, at 46, filled alternately with optimism about future publishing projects and a sense of emptiness. To Lady Astor, an old friend, he described himself as puttering about as if “there is something broken in the works . . . my will, I think.” A motorcycling accident on May 13 solved the problem of his future. He died six days later without regaining consciousness.
Lawrence became a mythic figure in his own lifetime even before he published his own version of his legend in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. His accomplishments themselves were solid enough for several lives. More than a military leader and inspirational force behind the Arab revolt against the Turks, he was a superb tactician and a highly influential theoretician of guerrilla warfare. Besides The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, his sharply etched service chronicle, The Mint, and his mannered prose translation of the Odyssey added to a literary reputation further substantiated by an immense correspondence that establishes him as one of the major letter writers of his generation.
Lawrence found despair as necessary as ambition. He lived on the masochistic side of asceticism, and part of his self-punishment involved creating within himself a deep frustration to immediately follow, and cancel out, high achievement by denying to himself the recognition he had earned. At its most extreme, this impulse involved a symbolic killing of the self, a taking up of a new life and a new name. Under whatever guise, he was a many-sided genius whose accomplishments precluded the privacy he constantly sought. By the manufacture of his myth, however solidly based, he created in his own person a characterization rivaling any in contemporary fiction.
Thomas Edward Lawrence see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Lawrence, T. E. see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
T. E. Lawrence see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Lawrence of Arabia see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
T. E. Shaw see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Shaw, T. E. see Lawrence, Thomas Edward
Laye, Camara
Laye, Camara (Camara Laye) (b. January 1, 1928, Kouroussa, French Guinea [now in Guinea] - d. February 4, 1980, Senegal). Guinean novelist. Laye comes from a Malinke family from Kouroussa, Upper Guinea. His father was a jeweller and goldsmith, his mother a smith’s daughter. A Muslim by faith, Laye attended a Qur’anic school, then the French primary school at Kouroussa. At Conakry technical college, he received a first class proficiency certificate in mechanical engineering. He was sent to France to the Central School of Automobile Engineering at Argenteuil. On his own initiative, he entered the Ecole Ampere in Paris, working for the diploma in industrial instruction. To earn a living, Laye had to work for eight months as a mechanic at the Simca works, while following evening courses at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. He finally studied for a specialized diploma in engineering at the Technical College for Aeronautics and Automobile Construction.
Laye’s literary career began in his Paris student days. Unlike most other African writers -- some of whom have adversely criticized Laye -- Laye is politically non-partisan, and remarkable rather for his psychological insight. His first book, L’enfant noir (The Dark Child) (1953) is an autobiographical novel for which Laye, still a student in Paris, was awarded the Charles Veillon prize. It is remarkable for its picture of the traditions of Malinke civilization. Laye’s second novel, Le regard du roi (The Radiance of the King) (1954) is an allegory about man’s search for God, written in a colloquial griot style, in which the adventures of the hero are developed in a narrative sometimes comic, sometimes touching, and always with immense verve.
Camara Laye (born January 1, 1928, Kouroussa, French Guinea [now in Guinea]; d. February 4, 1980, Senegal) was an African writer from Guinea. During his time at college he wrote The African Child (L'Enfant noir), a novel based loosely on his own childhood. He would later become a writer of many essays and was a foe of the government of Guinea. His novel The Radiance of the King (Le Regard du roi) is considered to be one of his most important works.
Camara Laye was born Malinke (a Mandé speaking ethnicity) into a caste that traditionally worked as blacksmiths and goldsmiths. His family name is Camara, and following the tradition of his community, it precedes his given name -- Laye. His mother was from the village of Tindican, and his immediate childhood surroundings were not predominantly influenced by French culture. He attended both the Koranic and French elementary schools in Kouroussa. At age fourteen he went to Conakry, capital of Guinea, to continue his education. He attended vocational studies in motor mechanics. In 1947, he travelled to Paris to continue studies in mechanics. There he worked and took further courses in engineering and worked towards the baccalauréat.
In 1953, he published his first novel, L'Enfant noir (The African Child, 1954, also published under the title The Dark Child), an autobiographical story, which narrates in the first person a journey from childhood in Kouroussa, through challenges in Conakry, to France. The book won the Prix Charles Veillon in 1954. L'Enfant noir was followed by Le Regard du roi (1954; The Radiance of the King, 1956). These two novels are among the very earliest major works in francophone African literature.
In 1956, Camara returned to Africa, first to Dahomey (now Benin), then Gold Coast (now Ghana) and then to newly independent Guinea, where he held government posts. In 1965, he left Guinea for Dakar, Senegal because of political issues. In 1966 his third novel, Dramouss (A Dream of Africa, 1968), was published. In 1978 his fourth and final work was published, Le Maître de la parole - Kouma Lafôlô Kouma (The Guardian of the Word, 1980), based on a Malian epic, as told by the griot Babou Condé, about the famous Sundiata Keita (also spelled Sunjata), the thirteenth-century founder of the Mali Empire.
In 1975 Laye became acutely ill with a kidney condition that had first troubled him back in 1965, but he could not afford the treatment in Europe that he needed. Reine Carducci, wife of the Italian UNESCO ambassador to Senegal and an admirer of Laye's work, became conscious of Laye's plight and championed an appeal for financial support. Félix Houphouët-Boigny, president of the Ivory Coast, made the largest contribution; Laye later wrote his biography and expressed his admiration for the leader. Laye received the necessary medical care in Paris and returned periodically for further treatment.
In 1971, Laye began writing Le Maître de la parole (1978). Though eschewing collaboration with the many exiled enemies of Touré, Laye in an interview did not hide his debt to Kafka and the surrealists and his intention to mingle fiction and reality into a new and greater truth in the effort to express his own outrage at what had happened to his homeland. An honest artist and a sensitive participant in the pains of a post-colonial world, Laye produced works that speak about the clamor and that are more poignant because of their intense dream-like style. Eventually, Laye's ill health caught up with him and he died on February 4, 1980, in Dakar, Senegal, where he is buried.
Laye, Camara (Camara Laye) (b. January 1, 1928, Kouroussa, French Guinea [now in Guinea] - d. February 4, 1980, Senegal). Guinean novelist. Laye comes from a Malinke family from Kouroussa, Upper Guinea. His father was a jeweller and goldsmith, his mother a smith’s daughter. A Muslim by faith, Laye attended a Qur’anic school, then the French primary school at Kouroussa. At Conakry technical college, he received a first class proficiency certificate in mechanical engineering. He was sent to France to the Central School of Automobile Engineering at Argenteuil. On his own initiative, he entered the Ecole Ampere in Paris, working for the diploma in industrial instruction. To earn a living, Laye had to work for eight months as a mechanic at the Simca works, while following evening courses at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. He finally studied for a specialized diploma in engineering at the Technical College for Aeronautics and Automobile Construction.
Laye’s literary career began in his Paris student days. Unlike most other African writers -- some of whom have adversely criticized Laye -- Laye is politically non-partisan, and remarkable rather for his psychological insight. His first book, L’enfant noir (The Dark Child) (1953) is an autobiographical novel for which Laye, still a student in Paris, was awarded the Charles Veillon prize. It is remarkable for its picture of the traditions of Malinke civilization. Laye’s second novel, Le regard du roi (The Radiance of the King) (1954) is an allegory about man’s search for God, written in a colloquial griot style, in which the adventures of the hero are developed in a narrative sometimes comic, sometimes touching, and always with immense verve.
Camara Laye (born January 1, 1928, Kouroussa, French Guinea [now in Guinea]; d. February 4, 1980, Senegal) was an African writer from Guinea. During his time at college he wrote The African Child (L'Enfant noir), a novel based loosely on his own childhood. He would later become a writer of many essays and was a foe of the government of Guinea. His novel The Radiance of the King (Le Regard du roi) is considered to be one of his most important works.
Camara Laye was born Malinke (a Mandé speaking ethnicity) into a caste that traditionally worked as blacksmiths and goldsmiths. His family name is Camara, and following the tradition of his community, it precedes his given name -- Laye. His mother was from the village of Tindican, and his immediate childhood surroundings were not predominantly influenced by French culture. He attended both the Koranic and French elementary schools in Kouroussa. At age fourteen he went to Conakry, capital of Guinea, to continue his education. He attended vocational studies in motor mechanics. In 1947, he travelled to Paris to continue studies in mechanics. There he worked and took further courses in engineering and worked towards the baccalauréat.
In 1953, he published his first novel, L'Enfant noir (The African Child, 1954, also published under the title The Dark Child), an autobiographical story, which narrates in the first person a journey from childhood in Kouroussa, through challenges in Conakry, to France. The book won the Prix Charles Veillon in 1954. L'Enfant noir was followed by Le Regard du roi (1954; The Radiance of the King, 1956). These two novels are among the very earliest major works in francophone African literature.
In 1956, Camara returned to Africa, first to Dahomey (now Benin), then Gold Coast (now Ghana) and then to newly independent Guinea, where he held government posts. In 1965, he left Guinea for Dakar, Senegal because of political issues. In 1966 his third novel, Dramouss (A Dream of Africa, 1968), was published. In 1978 his fourth and final work was published, Le Maître de la parole - Kouma Lafôlô Kouma (The Guardian of the Word, 1980), based on a Malian epic, as told by the griot Babou Condé, about the famous Sundiata Keita (also spelled Sunjata), the thirteenth-century founder of the Mali Empire.
In 1975 Laye became acutely ill with a kidney condition that had first troubled him back in 1965, but he could not afford the treatment in Europe that he needed. Reine Carducci, wife of the Italian UNESCO ambassador to Senegal and an admirer of Laye's work, became conscious of Laye's plight and championed an appeal for financial support. Félix Houphouët-Boigny, president of the Ivory Coast, made the largest contribution; Laye later wrote his biography and expressed his admiration for the leader. Laye received the necessary medical care in Paris and returned periodically for further treatment.
In 1971, Laye began writing Le Maître de la parole (1978). Though eschewing collaboration with the many exiled enemies of Touré, Laye in an interview did not hide his debt to Kafka and the surrealists and his intention to mingle fiction and reality into a new and greater truth in the effort to express his own outrage at what had happened to his homeland. An honest artist and a sensitive participant in the pains of a post-colonial world, Laye produced works that speak about the clamor and that are more poignant because of their intense dream-like style. Eventually, Laye's ill health caught up with him and he died on February 4, 1980, in Dakar, Senegal, where he is buried.
Layth ibn Sa‘d, al-
Layth ibn Sa‘d, al- (713-791). Transmitter of hadith and a jurisconsult of Persian origin in Egypt. He is ranked among the leading authorities on questions of religious knowledge in the early years of the Islamic Empire.
Layth ibn Sa‘d, al- (713-791). Transmitter of hadith and a jurisconsult of Persian origin in Egypt. He is ranked among the leading authorities on questions of religious knowledge in the early years of the Islamic Empire.
Laz
Laz (Lazi) (Lazepe) (Lazlar) (C'ani). People of South Caucasian stock, now dwelling in the southeastern corner of the shores of the Black Sea, in the region called in Ottoman times Lazistan.
The Laz (Lazi are an ethnic group who live primarily on the Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia. One of the chief tribes of ancient kingdom of Colchis, the Laz were initially early adopters of Christianity, and most of them subsequently converted to Sunni Islam during Ottoman rule of Caucasus in the 16th century.
The Laz of Turkey form two principal groups. One of these are indigenous to the eastern Black Sea province formerly known as Lazistan (modern Rize and Artvin provinces). The other group fled the Russian expansion later in the 19th century and settled in Adapazarı, Sapanca, Yalova and Bursa, in western and eastern parts of the Black Sea and Marmara regions, respectively. The Laz speak the Laz language, related to Mingrelian, Georgian and Svan (South Caucasian languages). Laz identity in Georgia has largely merged with a Georgian identity and the meaning of "Laz" is seen as merely a regional category, and are mainly concentrated in Ajaria.
The Laz were converted to Christianity while living under the Byzantine Empire and kingdom of Colchis. During the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the vast majority of Laz became Sunni Muslims of Hanafi madh'hab, and were ruled as part of the Lazistan sanjak. There is also a very limited number of Christian Laz in Georgia. The Laz are primarily designated as fisherfolk by the Turkish public (in fact, they are mostly farmers of tea and maize) because anchovies constitute an important part of their diet.
Lazi see Laz
Lazepe see Laz
Lazlar see Laz
C'ani see Laz
Laz (Lazi) (Lazepe) (Lazlar) (C'ani). People of South Caucasian stock, now dwelling in the southeastern corner of the shores of the Black Sea, in the region called in Ottoman times Lazistan.
The Laz (Lazi are an ethnic group who live primarily on the Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia. One of the chief tribes of ancient kingdom of Colchis, the Laz were initially early adopters of Christianity, and most of them subsequently converted to Sunni Islam during Ottoman rule of Caucasus in the 16th century.
The Laz of Turkey form two principal groups. One of these are indigenous to the eastern Black Sea province formerly known as Lazistan (modern Rize and Artvin provinces). The other group fled the Russian expansion later in the 19th century and settled in Adapazarı, Sapanca, Yalova and Bursa, in western and eastern parts of the Black Sea and Marmara regions, respectively. The Laz speak the Laz language, related to Mingrelian, Georgian and Svan (South Caucasian languages). Laz identity in Georgia has largely merged with a Georgian identity and the meaning of "Laz" is seen as merely a regional category, and are mainly concentrated in Ajaria.
The Laz were converted to Christianity while living under the Byzantine Empire and kingdom of Colchis. During the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the vast majority of Laz became Sunni Muslims of Hanafi madh'hab, and were ruled as part of the Lazistan sanjak. There is also a very limited number of Christian Laz in Georgia. The Laz are primarily designated as fisherfolk by the Turkish public (in fact, they are mostly farmers of tea and maize) because anchovies constitute an important part of their diet.
Lazi see Laz
Lazepe see Laz
Lazlar see Laz
C'ani see Laz
Lazar
Lazar (Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanović) (Tsar Lazar) (1329 - June 28 [O. S. June 15], 1389). King of Serbia who was defeated by Ottomans at Kosovo in 1389. Lazar died in 1389.
Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanović, also known as Tsar Lazar, was a medieval Serbian knez (Knyaz), ruler of Moravian Serbia, a part of the once powerful Serbian Empire under Dušan the Mighty. Lazar fought at the Battle of Kosovo with an army half the size of the Ottoman Empire and perished, together with most of the Serbian nobility and Murad I, which eventually led to the fall of Serbia as a sovereign state. The Battle of Kosovo is regarded as highly important for Serb national consciousness and the knez is venerated as a saint in the Serbian Orthodox Church and a hero in Serbian epic poetry.
Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanović see Lazar
Hrebelianovic, Stefan Lazar see Lazar
Tsar Lazar see Lazar
Lazar (Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanović) (Tsar Lazar) (1329 - June 28 [O. S. June 15], 1389). King of Serbia who was defeated by Ottomans at Kosovo in 1389. Lazar died in 1389.
Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanović, also known as Tsar Lazar, was a medieval Serbian knez (Knyaz), ruler of Moravian Serbia, a part of the once powerful Serbian Empire under Dušan the Mighty. Lazar fought at the Battle of Kosovo with an army half the size of the Ottoman Empire and perished, together with most of the Serbian nobility and Murad I, which eventually led to the fall of Serbia as a sovereign state. The Battle of Kosovo is regarded as highly important for Serb national consciousness and the knez is venerated as a saint in the Serbian Orthodox Church and a hero in Serbian epic poetry.
Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanović see Lazar
Hrebelianovic, Stefan Lazar see Lazar
Tsar Lazar see Lazar
Lazreg, Marnia
Marnia Lazreg (b. January 10, 1941, Mostaganem, French Algeria - d. January 13, 2024, Manhattan, New York City, New York) was an Algerian academic. She was a specialist in the Muslim world, particularly on Muslim women. Her best-known work is Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women.
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