AFGHĀNĪ, JAMĀL AL-DĪN AL- (1838/9–1897), Muslim thinker and politician. Born near Hamadhan in Iran, al-Afghānī was Iranian, in spite of his later claim to be Afghan. His own version of his early life was not always accurate, but it seems clear that he had a traditional education in Iran and then in the Shīʿī holy city of Najaf, Iraq. He spent some early years in India, where he first learned of modern Western ideas and observed British rule over a partly Muslim population. From then onward his life was one of movement and shifting fortunes: in Afghanistan, Istanbul, and Cairo, then India again, then Paris and London, then Iran, Russia, and Iran once more, and finally in Istanbul, the capital of...