Abu 'Isa (also known as Ovadiah, Ishaq ibn Ya'qub al-Isfahani, Isaac ibn Jacob al-Isfahani) was a self-proclaimed Jewish prophet sometime in the 8th century AD in Persia. He is known as the originator of the first Jewish sect since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem,^{[citation needed]} the leader of a revolt, and one of a line of Jewish pseudo-messiahs^{[citation needed]} in 8th-century Persia.

The dating of Abu Isa's career has been disputed since the Middle Ages. The two main sources for information of him are Qirqisani, a Karaite historian; and Shahrastani, who wrote an extensive guide to Jewish sects over the ages. Qirqisani places the events in the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik (685 - 705 CE) while Shahrastani says it began under the reign of Marwan II (744 - 750) on through to al-Mansur (d. 775). Qirqisani's dates place Abu Isa's uprising during Umayyad clashes with the Byzantines which would coincide with Messianic stories of the battle between Gog and Magog and place it early enough to influence Karaism; Shahrastani's would put the revolt at the end of the Umayyad Dynasty and thus at a pivotal point of upheaval in the Muslim world. Both are plausible and there is no direct Isawite documentation.

Muhammad Abduh (or Mohammed 'Abduh) (Arabic: محمد عبده‎) (Nile Delta, 1849 – Alexandria, July 11, 1905) was an Egyptian jurist, religious scholar and liberal reformer, regarded as the founder of Islamic Modernism. A recent book titled "Islam and Liberty" regarded Muhammad Abduh as the founder of the so-called Neo-Mutazilism.

Muhammad Abduh was born in 1849 into a family of peasants in Lower Egypt. He was educated by a private tutor and a reciter of the Quran. When he turned thirteen he was sent to the Aḥmadī mosque which was one of the largest educational institutions in Egypt. A while later Abduh ran away from school and got married. He enrolled at al-Azhar in 1866. Abduh studied logic, philosophy and mysticism at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He was a student of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a philosopher and religious reformer who advocated Pan-Islamism to resist European colonialism. Under al-Afghani's influence, Abduh combined journalism, politics, and his own fascination in mystic spirituality. Al-Afghani taught Abduh about the problems of Egypt and the Islamic world and about the technological achievements of the west.