Syed Ahmad Barelvi, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetSyed Ahmad Barelvi
Muslim activist
Date of Birth: 28-Nov-1786
Place of Birth: Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, India
Date of Death: 06-May-1831
Profession: revolutionary
Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius 
About Syed Ahmad Barelvi
- Syed Ahmad Barelvi or Sayyid Ahmad Shahid (1786–1831) was an Indian Muslim revivalist from Raebareli, a part of the historical United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now called Uttar Pradesh).
- The epithet Barelvi is derived from Raebareli, his place of origin. Syed Ahmad toured India preaching Islamic renewal and jihad, and built a highly developed network of personal friends and partisans spread across northern India organized to recruit and dispatch men and financial aid.
- In 1826 he provided an Islamic challenge to an expanding Sikh empire when he arrived in Peshawar, (now in Pakistan), with a few hundred disciples, to establish an Islamic state among Pashtun tribes in the area with the support of his network.
- During the last years of his life, his supporterignated him Amir al-Mu'minin ("Commander of the Believers"), and Shaheed ("martyr") after his death in the Battle of Balakot in 1831.
- He is thought to have been killed, along with hundreds of his troops and followers, by the Sikh army in Balakot, Mansehra District in 1831, but a number of his followers survived and continued to fight on, taking part in tribal uprisings in the North-west province as late as 1897.Syed Ahmad is thought by at least one scholar (Edward Mortimer), to have anticipated modern Islamists in waging jihad and attempting to create an Islamic state with strict enforcement of Islamic law, and by at least one other (Olivier Roy), to be the first modern Islamic leader to lead a movement that was "religious, military and political," and to address the common people and rulers with a call for jihad.
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