Abd Allah al-Ajlan
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Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Ajlan is a Saudi scholar and educational official, best known for his historical study Harakat al-tajdid wa-l-islah fi Najd fi al-asr al-hadith ("The Movement of Renewal and Reform in Najd in the Modern Era") .
Career and Scholarly Contributions
Al-Ajlan served as the deputy general president for higher education within the General Presidency for Girls' Education in Saudi Arabia . He was also appointed as a member of the preparatory committee at the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States for the symposium "Trends of Contemporary Islamic Thought," which took place in Bahrain in Jumada al-Akhirah 1405 AH (March 1985) .
For that conference, the committee commissioned him to write a study on the reform movement of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, which he initially drafted as a fifty-page treatise and later expanded and published in Riyadh in 1409 AH (1989 CE) under the title Harakat al-tajdid wa-l-islah fi Najd fi al-asr al-hadith . In this work, al-Ajlan analyzed the political and religious conditions of Najd prior to the mid-twelfth century AH, observing that central Arabia suffered from political isolation and instability due to minimal Ottoman administrative interest, which created the environment in which the reform movement arose . His research also examined the theological positions of the movement and documented contemporary apologetics and polemics .
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List of Works
Harakat al-Tajdid wal-Islah fi Najd fi al-Asr al-Hadith (The Movement of Renewal and Reform in Najd in the Modern Era) is a study examining the religious, educational, and intellectual dimensions of the reform movement led by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in Najd. Rather than offering a strictly chronological or political history, the book focuses on the movement's foundational principles, theological tenets, pedagogical methodology, and the roots of the controversies surrounding it.