Al-Azhar University in the context of "Cairo University"

Darul Uloom Deoband is an Islamic seminary in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh, India, established on 15 Muharram 1283 AH / 31 May 1866, in the aftermath of the 1857 revolt, through the efforts of Sayyid Muhammad Abid and other local scholars and notables. Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi is later described in historiography as the seminary’s intellectual guide and principal founder (bānī-yi aʿẓam). The institution, which began under a pomegranate tree with the Dars-i Nizami curriculum, later developed into a leading center of Islamic learning in South Asia, after Al-Azhar University. It came to be regarded as a vanguard of Sunni Muslim identity in the Indian subcontinent and gave rise to the Sunni Deobandi movement. The seminary has been described not merely as a madrasa but as a 'center of Islamic culture' and a 'patrimony for the Islamic world.'

ʿIzz ad-Dīn ibn Abd al-Qāder ibn Mustafā ibn Yūsuf ibn Muhammad al-Qassām (Arabic: عز الدين بن عبد القادر بن مصطفى بن يوسف بن محمد القسام; 1881 or 19 December 1882 – 20 November 1935) was a Syrian Muslim preacher and a leader in the local struggles against British and French Mandatory rule in the Levant and an opponent of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s.

Qassam was born in Jableh, Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire in 1882. He studied at Al-Azhar University in Egypt and afterward became an Islamic revivalist preacher in his hometown. Following his return, he became an active supporter of the Libyan resistance to the Italian occupation starting 1911, raising funds and fighters to aid the Libyans and penning an anthem for them. He would later lead his own group of rebels in alliance with Ibrahim Hananu to fight against the French Mandate in northern Syria ratified on 29 September 1923.

The Cairo edition (Arabic: المصحف الأميري, "the Amiri Mus'haf"), or the King Fu'ād Quran (مصحف الملك فؤاد) or the Azhar Quran, is an edition of the Quran printed by the Amiri Press in the Bulaq district of Cairo on July 10, 1924. It is the first printed Quran to be accepted by a Muslim authority, this authority being Al-Azhar.

The process of creating the Fu'ad Quran lasted 17 years, from 1907 to 1924, achieved with the support by Fuad I of Egypt and the supervision of Azhari scholars. It was regarded as an "official" Quran and was replicated by a number of following editions.

Muḥammad ʿAbduh (also spelled Mohammed Abduh; Arabic: محمد عبده; 1849 – 11 July 1905) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar, judge, and Grand Mufti of Egypt. He was a central figure of the Arab Nahḍa and Islamic Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

He began teaching advanced students esoteric Islamic texts at Al-Azhar University while he was still studying there. From 1877, with the status of ʿālim, he taught logic, theology, ethics, and politics. He was also made a professor of history at Dar al-ʿUlūm the following year, and of Arabic language and literature at Madrasat al-Alsun. ʿAbduh was a champion of the press and wrote prolifically in Al-Manār and Al-Ahram. He was made editor of Al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyya in 1880. He also authored Risālat at-Tawḥīd (Arabic: رسالة التوحيد; "The Theology of Unity") and a commentary on the Quran. He briefly published the pan-Islamist anti-colonial newspaper al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqā alongside his teacher and mentor Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī.