Ideas such as those of ‘Abduh were ‘in the air’ in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. We find similar groups of reformers in all the more advanced of the Muslim countries, and perhaps it is too simple to explain them in terms of the influence of al-Afghani and ‘Abduh. It could be said, as an alternative, that al-'Urwa al-wuthqa could only have had its influence because there were already little groups of Muslims thinking on the lines which it made popular. In Tunis such a group existed among the associates and followers of Khayr al-Din: in particular, there was Muhammad Bayram, one of a line of religious scholars, who wrote a number of works on reform of the law, as well as an important history of his age. In Baghdad there were the scholars of the Alusi family, one of whom wrote a vast commentary on the Quran, a judicious summary of the traditional learning, while another, a generation younger, wrote a defence of Ibn Taymiyya against charges of unorthodoxy—a sign of the influence which such ideas were now beginning to exercise over educated Muslims of a different tradition. In Syria similar men can be found in all the great centres of Muslim learning, Aleppo, Damascus, Tripoli, and Jerusalem. Among those who were roughly contemporary with ‘Abduh, and had some contact with him, was Tahir al-Jaza'iri (1851–1920).