Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Marvine Howe, Turkey Today: A Nation 

Divided over Islam’s Revival (Boulder, Colo.: Westview 

Press, 2000); David Shankland, Islam and Society in 

Turkey (Huntingdon, U.K.: Eothen Press, 1999).

refugees

Civilians who are forced to flee their homes to 

escape violence or persecution are known as refu-

gees. Several major refugee migrations are known 

in the history of Islam before the modern era. 

These include the flight of Muslims to s

yria

 and 

e

gypt

 in the west and i

ndia

 in the east to escape 

the onslaught of the Mongol armies that invaded 

the Middle East in the 13th century, and again in 

the 14th and 15th centuries. These refugees con-

tributed significantly to religious, intellectual, and 

social life in the countries where they made their 

new homes. Another significant refugee popula-

tion consisted of Jews and Muslims who were 

driven out of Spain by the European Christian 

armies of the Reconquista in the 14th and 15th 

centuries. Most of these refugees settled in North 

Africa,  e

gypt

, and lands in the east Mediterra-

nean basin. In the 19th century sizeable Muslim 

refugee populations were created as a result of the 

Crimean War (1853–56) and the British suppres-

sion of the Sepoy Rebellion in northern India in 

1857.

Like many other parts of the world, lands with 

sizeable Muslim populations in the Middle East 

and South Asia witnessed massive population 

displacements in the 20th century, resulting in the 

creation of millions of refugees and significant dis-

ruptions to economic, social, political, religious, 

and personal networks. Ottoman massacres of 

Armenian Christians in the early part of the cen-

tury forced survivors of that minority community 

to flee to Syria, l

ebanon

,  p

alestine

, and Egypt. 

In 1947 the partition of India led to unparalleled