Co-translator and editor Nebil Husayn, Ph.D. 2016.

One of the most enduring sources of conflict among Muslims is the question of power and authority after the Prophet Muḥammad. This anthology of classical Arabic texts, presented in a new English translation, offers a comprehensive overview of the early history of the caliphate and…

Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman, Ph.D. 2007.

Volume 5 examines the history of Judaism in the Islamic World from the rise of Islam in the early sixth century to the expulsion of Jews from Spain at the end of the fifteenth. This period witnessed radical transformations both within the Jewish community itself and in the broader contexts in…

Associate editor Lewis B. Ware, Ph.D. 1973.

In this collection of essays, the contributors examine the implications of the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact on planning for future military threats. They attempt to identify the nature and source of the most likely future threats to global security. Part I…

Looks at the emergence of Shiism as a distinct communal identity within Islam.

The Charismatic Community examines the rise and development of Shiite religious identity in early Islamic history, analyzing the complex historical and intellectual processes that shaped the sense of individual and communal religious vocation. The…

Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action Best Book Award 2010

Muslim beliefs have inspired charitable giving for over fourteen centuries, yet Islamic history has rarely been examined from this perspective. In Charity in Islamic Societies, Amy Singer explains the basic…

Translated by Mona Zaki, Ph.D. 2015

Translation of: Serab alelyel.. al'elekh.

“Students! Write this down in your notebooks! Chewing is infinite!”

Young Mukhtar is frozen in time, gazing at his beloved Fatma as she disappears into the streets of Tripoli, Libya, destined to a life of prostitution. Around…

Translated by Mona Zaki, Ph.D. 2015

Translation of: Serab alelyel.. al'elekh.

“Students! Write this down in your notebooks! Chewing is infinite!”

Young Mukhtar is frozen in time, gazing at his beloved Fatma as she disappears into the streets of Tripoli, Libya, destined to a life of prostitution. Around…

Jane Hathaway, Ph.D. 1992.

Eunuchs were a common feature of pre- and early modern societies that are now poorly understood. Here, Jane Hathaway offers an in-depth study of the chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the harem of the Ottoman Empire. A wide range of primary sources are used to analyze the Chief Eunuch's origins in East…

By the end of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, China was in turmoil, facing an existential crisis. Chinese politicians and intellectuals were trying to find a way out of it and were looking for role models abroad. The late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic were obvious choices.

The Chinese…

Co-edited by Fred McGraw Donner, B.A. 1968, Ph.D. 1975.

The papers in this first volume of the new Oriental Institute series LAMINE are derived from a conference entitled “Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians in the Umayyad State,” held at the University of Chicago on June 17–18,…

Kathryn Babayan, Ph.D. 1993.

Household anthologies of seventeenth-century Isfahan collected everyday texts and objects, from portraits, letters, and poems to marriage contracts and talismans. With these family collections, Kathryn Babayan tells a new history of the city at the…

Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

Nominee, 1993 A.M. Klein Poetry Award, QSPELL. In this collection of poems by the prize-winning author of Bavarian Shrine and Other Poems, Eric Ormsby lives up to the reputation he has gained as a ''stubbornly unfashionable poet of high achievement'' (Montreal Gazette). Coastlines exemplifies the…

Ralph S. Hattox, Ph.D. 1982

Drawing on the accounts of early European travelers, original Arabic sources on jurisprudence and etiquette, and treatises on coffee from the period, the author recounts the colorful early history of the spread of coffee and the influence of coffeehouses in the medieval Near East. Detailed descriptions of…

Introduction written by Ralph S. Hattox, Ph.D. 1982

Nurit Tsafrir, Ph.D. 1993

Offering the first close study of the ʿAqila, a group collectively liable for blood money payments on behalf of a member who committed an accidental homicide, Nurit Tsafrir analyses the group's transformation from a pre-Islamic custom to an institution of the Shari'a, and its further evolution through…

No other North African legend had been adopted, transformed, and used by as many social groups as that of the Kahina myth. In this book, Abdelmajid Hannoum examines the role the myth played in what may be called an ideological conquest. Since its inception in the 9th century, the Kahina legend has provided the ideological armature for use in…

Much of what we know about life in the medieval Islamic Middle East comes from texts written to impart religious ideals or to chronicle the movements of great men. How did women participate in the societies these texts describe? What about non-Muslims, whose own religious traditions descended partly from pre-Islamic late antiquity?

…

Winner of the Albert Hourani Award (2001) Winner of the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize (2001)

Winner of the British-Kuwait Friendship Society prize (2001)

What duty do we have to stop others from doing wrong? The question is intelligible in almost any culture, but few seek to answer it in a rigorous fashion. The…

"In A Common Justice Uriel I. Simonsohn examines the legislative response of Christian and Jewish religious elites to the problem posed by the appeal of their coreligionists to judicial authorities outside their communities. Focusing on the late seventh to early eleventh centuries in the region between Iraq in the east and present-day…

Olga M. Davison, Ph.D. 1983

This work, a collection of seven essays, centers on classical Persian poetics, primarily the epic art of Ferdowsi's Shâhnâma. It combines traditional literary approaches with new comparative methods, especially those developed by Albert B. Lord in his ethnographic fieldwork on living oral traditions and by…

Samuel Helfont, Ph.D. 2015.

Co-editor Edmund Burke, III, Ph.D. 1970.

This long-awaited book is a vivid history of Frelimo, the liberation movement that gained power in Mozambique following the sudden collapse of Portuguese rule in 1974. The leading scholar of the liberation struggle in Portuguese Africa, John Marcum completed this work shortly before his death,…

Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Ph.D. 1977

Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Ph.D. 1977

This classic learning aid, popular with teachers and students alike, has now been fully revised and substantially expanded for a complete new edition. With a fully vocalized Arabic text in clear, legible type, this invaluable lexicon now contains more than 3,500 Arabic verbs from 1,450 verb roots…

Based on actual cases, these original essays present an honest and critical evaluation of the problems and challenges that confront Muslims in the Contemporary world. Using the Muslim experience in the United States as a lens, the author examines what he identifies as a pervasive alienation suffered by Muslims over their place in history,…

Co-authored by Lewis B. Ware, Ph.D. 1973.

Translated by Fred McGraw Donner, B.A. 1968, Ph.D. 1975.

Translation of extracts from: Taʼrīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk.

Vassilios Christides, Ph.D. 1970.

Table of Contents

I. Greek sources - Arabic sources - Sources in other languages

II. Byzantine and islamic navies in the ninth and tenth centuries - Moslem naval centers - Ships. Technological superiority of the Arabs - Crews - Naval tactics and weapons - Greek…

Edited by Michael A. Reynolds, Ph.D. 2003.

"The Caucasus has fascinated humanity for millennia. A natural crossroads and perpetual borderland, the Caucasus has often been described as the meeting place of East and West, Europe and Asia, Christendom and Islam. The Caucasus Mountains are home to a bewildering diversity of languages and…

Presents the political, social, and cultural context behind Ottoman charity.

Ottoman charitable endowments (waqf) constituted an enduring monument to imperial beneficence and were important instruments of policy. One type of endowment, the public soup kitchen (imaret) served travelers, scholars, pious…

Edited by Lawrence I. Conrad, Ph.D. 1981

Contagion - even today the word conjures up fear of disease and plague and has the power to terrify. The nine essays gathered here examine what pre-modern societies thought about the spread of disease and how it could be controlled: to what extent were concepts familiar to modern epidemiology…

Co-edited by Nimrod Hurvitz, Ph.D. 1994, Christian Sahner, Ph.D. History 2015, Uriel Simonsohn, Ph.D. 2008, and Luke Yarbrough, B.A. 2004 and Ph.D. 2012.

Conversion to Islam is a phenomenon of immense significance in human history. At the outset of Islamic rule in the seventh…

Louise Marlow, Ph.D. 1987

A textual and contextual study of an early Arabic mirror for princes

Mirrors for princes form a substantial and important genre in many pre-modern literatures. Their ostensible purpose is to advise the king; at the same time they assert that the king, if he is truly virtuous, will appreciate being…

“From its beginnings in the wake of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, al-Qa’ida has been at war with itself. In disputes that have largely been invisible to the broader public, its leadership has been in a constant battle over what al-Qa’ida should be, what strategy it should pursue, even who its real enemies are. Very early in al-Qa’ida’s…

The years 260–329/874–941, known among the Shî’ites as the period of Minor Occultation, comprised undoubtedly the most difficult and critical period in the history of Imâmite Shî'ism. The death of the eleventh Imam, with no apparent successor, resulted in internal conflicts, many desertions and conversions, and the emergence of numerous…

Edited by Ehud R. Toledano, Ph.D. 1979

Thematic issue of Poetics Today 14, nr. 2 (summer 1993).

Co-editor Vassilios Christides, Ph.D. 1970.

Unearths the history of the Naqshbandiyya, one of the most widespread and enduring Sufi brotherhoods.

A Culture of Sufism opens a window to a new understanding of one of the most prolific and enduring of all the Sufi brotherhoods, the Naqshbandiyya, as it spread from its birthplace in central Asia to Iran, Anatolia,…