[20][21] He is also known for his involvement with his follower Mirza Reza Kermani in the successful plot to assassinate Shah Naser-al-Din, whom Afghani considered to be making too many concessions to foreign powers, especially the British Empire.

[1][2][10][23][24][25] Another theory, championed by Nikki Keddie and accepted by several modern scholars, holds that he was born and raised in a Shia family in Asadabad, Iran near Hamadan.

[1][2][3][10][11][13][26][27] Supporters of the latter theory view his claim to an Afghan origin as motivated by a desire to gain influence among Sunni Muslims[3][26][28][29] or escape oppression by the Iranian emperor Naser al-Din Shah Qajar.

The British representatives reported that he wore the traditional clothes of the Nogais of Central Asia and spoke Persian, Arabic and Turkish fluently.

Both the standard biography and Lutfallāh's account take Afghānī's word that he entered Afghan government service before 1863, but since documents from Afghanistan show that he arrived there only in 1866, we are left with several years unaccounted for.

[13] Reports from the colonial British Indian and Afghan government stated that he was a stranger in Afghanistan and spoke Iranian Persian, following a European lifestyle and not observing Muslim practices, including Ramadan.

The Egyptian government originally gave him a stipend, but due to his public attacks on France and England, he was exiled to India in August 1879, where he stayed in Hyderabad and Calcutta.

[41] When Afghani was warned that the lodge was not a political platform, he replied, "I have seen a lot of odd things in this country [Egypt], but I would never have thought that cowardice would infiltrate the ranks of masonry to such an extent.

[citation needed] When al-Afgani was visiting Bushehr in southern Iran in the spring of 1886, planning to pick up books he had shipped there and carry on to Russia, he fell ill.

Although Al-Afghani quarreled with most of his patrons, it is said he "reserved his strongest hatred for the Shah," whom he accused of weakening Islam by granting concessions to Europeans and squandering the money earned thereby.

While in Istanbul in 1895, al-Afghani was visited by a Persian ex-prisoner, Mirza Reza Kermani, who had been his servant and disciple,[11] and together they planned the assassination of Emperor Naser al-Din of Iran.

[29] According to Muhammad Abduh, Al-Afghani's main struggle in life was to decrease British domination of eastern nations and to minimize its power over Muslims.

"[50] Blunt, Jane Digby and Richard Francis Burton, were close with Emir Abdelkader (1808–1883), an Algerian Islamic scholar, Sufi, and military leader.

[51][52] Blunt had supposedly become a convert to Islam under the influence of al-Afghani and shared his hopes of establishing an Arab Caliphate based in Mecca to replace the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul.

[55] He believed that Islam and its revealed law were compatible with rationality and, thus, Muslims could become politically unified while still maintaining their faith based on religious social morality.

These beliefs had a profound effect on Muhammad Abduh, who went on to expand on the notion of Mu'amalat, using rationality in the human relations aspect of Islam.

[56] In 1881 he published a collection of polemics titled Al-Radd ʻalā al-dahrīyīn "Refutation of the Materialists", agitating for pan-Islamic unity against Western imperialism.

In October 2002, the American Ambassador to Afghanistan, Robert Finn, pledged a donation of $25,000 to restore the mausoleum from damage sustained during the civil war.

Blavatsky's masters were real people, and "Serapis Bey" was Jamal Afghani, as a purported leader of an order named the "Brotherhood of Luxor".

[62] Afghani was introduced to the Star of the East Lodge, of which he became the leader, by its founder Raphael Borg, the British consul in Cairo, who was in communication with Blavatsky.

[62] As concluded by Joscelyn Godwin in The Theosophical Enlightenment, "If we interpret the 'Brotherhood of Luxor' to refer to the coterie of esotericists and magicians that Blavatsky knew and worked with in Egypt, then we should probably count Sanua and Jamal ad-Din as members.

Afghani was forced to leave Egypt and settled in Hyderabad, India, in 1879, the year the Theosophical Society's founders arrived in Bombay.