Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: P. M. Holt, The Sudan of the Three 

Niles: The Funj Chronicle, 970–1288/1504–1871 (Leiden: 

E.J. Brill, 1999); R. S. O’Fahey and J. L. Spaulding, 

Kingdoms of the Sudan (London: Methuen, 1974); Jay 

Spaulding, The Heroic Age in Sinnar (East Lansing: Afri-

can Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1985).

Fyzee, Asaf Ali Asghar

 

(1899–1981)  Indian 

Muslim intellectual and a leading scholar of Ismaili 

Shiism and Islamic law

A. A. A. Fyzee was born near Poona, i

ndia

, to a 

prominent family of Ismaili Shii merchants. His 

family favored the British educational system, 

so after he obtained his college education, they 

sent him to study at Cambridge University, where 

he studied with several of the best Orientalist 

scholars of the early 20th century, including A. 

A. Bevan and R. A. Nicholson. After 1926, he was 

employed at the High Court of Bombay. Fyzee 

continued with his scholarly interests, however, 

publishing studies and translations pertaining to 

Islamic and Anglo-Islamic jurisprudence (

fiqh

). 

As a reflection of the quality of his scholarly 

ability, he was appointed a professor of Islamic 

jurisprudence at Government College in Bombay. 

In 1949, he was appointed India’s ambassador to 

e

gypt

 and then served in several other ambassa-

dorial and government posts. He received many 

academic honors in his later career and taught 

Islamic studies at McGill University in Canada 

and at the University of California at Los Angeles. 

One of Fyzee’s most esteemed contributions to 

scholarship is his Outlines of Muhammadan Law

(1949). At the end of his career, he devoted him-

self to a critical edition of a medieval Ismaili fiqh,

Qadi Numan’s Pillars of Islam (originally written 

in the 10th century).

Fyzee’s views of Islamic religion and law 

(

sharia

 and fiqh) were very modern and progres-

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