Journalist, agitator, lecturer, teacher, reformer – Muhammad ‘Abduh’s many contributions to modern Muslim history as the leading reformist of the al-Azhar circle sometimes earned him the title of the father of ‘Islamic Modernism’. This intellectual biography by Charles Adams, a sympathetic American academic, examine Islamic reformism in Egypt through the work of ‘Abduh (1849-1905), revealing the influences that molded his thought and tracing his transformation from someone who was “buried in mystic visions?” to a leading champion of Islamic reform. “