Muhajir

Muhajir or Mohajir (Arabic: مهاجر‎) is an Arabic word meaning emigrant.^[1] The Islamic calendar Hejira starts when Muhammad and his companions left Mecca for Medina in what is known as Hijra. They were called Muhajirun. The Arabic root word for immigration and emigration is Hijrat.

Over centuries, the term has been applied to a number of other Muslim refugee and emigrant groups:

• Muhajir Khwarezm, the Muslim refugees that escaped Genghis Khan's Mongol invasion of Muslim lands in 13th century; they settled in other Muslim lands not touched by the conquerors. Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi fled Afghanistan and settled in Anatolia (modern Turkey) to escape the Mongol army.
• Muhajir (Albania), Albanians that used to live in Serbia (near Nis and Prokuplje), and were violently displaced through the ethnic cleansing exercised by Serbian army in 1878. As a consequence, thousands of them settled in Kosovo where they live today.
• Muhajir Crimean, the Muslim refugees of Crimean ancestry, Crimean Tatars, that settled in Ottoman Empire after the Russian Empire conquered Muslim Crimean Khanate.
• Muhajir (Caucasus), the Muslim population of Caucasus resettled in Ottoman Empire and Middle East after the Caucasian War.
• Muhajir (Turkey), the Muslims of Balkan ancestry that settled in Turkey after the collapse of Ottoman Empire.
• Muhajir (Pakistan), Muslim refugees from India, who settled in Pakistan after independence from Britain in 1947.
• Palestinian refugees, Arab refugees, both Muslim and Christian, who migrated from the territory that became Israel, and are now mostly in neighbouring countries.
• Afghan refugees, Muslim muhajirs from Afghanistan who escaped the Soviet invasion in 1979 until the 2001 U.S. invasion in which the Taliban government was overthrown. The vast majority of them settled in Pakistan as well as in Iran.

Notes

Look up muhajir or مهاجر in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

• Lane, Edward William (1801-1876). [1956] Arabic-English lexicon. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing. (Originally published in London, 1863-1893)

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