NES Newsletters

725 Publications

From the avant-garde design of the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City to the simplicity of the Dar al-Islam Mosque in Abiquiu, New Mexico, the American mosque takes many forms of visual and architectural expression. The absence of a single, authoritative model and the plurality of design nuances reflect the heterogeneity of the American…

"As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists, aspiring peacemakers continue to search for the precise territorial dividing line that will satisfy both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist demands. The prevailing view assumes that this struggle is nothing more than a dispute over real estate. Defining Neighbors boldly challenges this view, shedding…

In January 2003, RAND called together a group of renowned experts with knowledge in the fields of Islamic law, constitution writing, and democracy, and with specific country and regional expertise. Their task was to identify ways in which the constitution of Afghanistan could help put the country on the path to a strong, stable democracy…

Edited by Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980

Demography and politics in the Arab States.

“While much of the international community regards the forced deportation of Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, where approximately 800,000 to 1.5 million Armenians perished, as genocide, the Turkish state still officially denies it.

In Denial of Violence, Fatma Müge Göçek seeks to decipher the roots of this…

The design principles necessary to create functional and dynamic contemporary mosques can be hard to grasp for those unfamiliar with the Islamic faith. Design Criteria for Mosques and Islamic Centers provides an easy-to-use and practical set of guidelines for mosque design, illustrated with 300 line drawings.

Case studies of…

David S. Powers, Ph.D. 1979

The first eleven essays in this collection treat the application of Islamic law in qadi courts in the Maghrib in the period between 1100 and 1500 CE. Based on preserved legal documents and the expert opinions of Muslim jurists (Muftis), the essays examine family law cases involving legal minority,…

 

Translator Alan Verskin, Ph.D. 2010

In 1524, a man named David Reubeni appeared in Venice, claiming to be the ambassador of a powerful Jewish kingdom deep in the heart of Arabia. In this era of fierce rivalry between great powers, voyages of fantastic discovery, and brutal conquest of new lands, people throughout the…

Kristina Richardson, Certificate in Near Eastern Studies 2003. This book outlines the complex significance of bodies in the late medieval central Arab Islamic lands.

"Did you know that blue eyes, baldness, bad breath and boils were all considered bodily 'blights' by Medieval Arabs, as were cross eyes, lameness and deafness? What…

This study presents a comprehensive, balanced and factually grounded narrative of the Turco-Greek Exchange of Populations as a historic event that has been the subject of much distortion in the historiographical traditions of nationalist lore in Greece and Turkey, as well as in scholarly publications of various sorts elsewhere over the span of…

Boaz Shoshan, Ph.D. 1978

In this book, Shoshan asserts that in contemporary Middle Eastern countries the field of struggle that cultures constitute provides the ground for contesting and transforming the hegemonic patriarchal discourse and recently began to give voice, especially in women's literature, to feminist critique. Examining…

Edited and translated by Justin K. Stearns, Ph.D. 2007

Al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī was arguably the most influential and well-known Moroccan intellectual figure of his generation. In 1084/1685, at the age of roughly fifty-four, and after a long and distinguished career, this Amazigh…

Nevzat Uyanık, Ph.D. 2012.

“Prior to World War I, American involvement in Armenian affairs was limited to missionary and educational interests. This was contrary to Britain, which had played a key role in the diplomatic arena since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, when the Armenian question had become a subject of great power…

Edited by David S. Powers, Ph.D. 1979

Dispensing Justice is designed to serve as a sourcebook of Islamic legal practice and qadi court records from the rise of Islam to modern times, drawing upon court records and qadi judgments, in addition to literary sources. In the first chapter, we survey the state of the field,…

This volume is an annotated edition of a work by Idris Bitlisi, an Ottoman Kurdish religious scholar and administrator from Bitlis who began his career in the court of the Aq Qoyunlu (Ak Koyunlu), a dynasty which ruled Iran in the 15th century. After the dynasty was overthrown by the Safavid Isma'il I, he moved to the land of the Ottomans and…

Special issue of Jewish History 32, nos. 2–4 (2019).

Contents

Introduction: A Handbook for Documentary Geniza Research in the Twenty-First Century.

Edited by Petra Sijpesteijn, Ph.D. 2004.

Historians have long lamented the lack of contemporary documentary sources for the Islamic middle ages and the inhibiting effect this has had on our understanding of this critically important period. Although the field is richly served by surviving evidence, much of it is hard to locate,…

Intisar A. Rabb, Ph.D. 2009.

This book considers an important and largely neglected area of Islamic law by exploring how medieval Muslim jurists resolved criminal cases that could not be proven beyond a doubt. Intisar A. Rabb calls into question a controversial popular notion about Islamic law today, which is that Islamic law is a…

Descriptions of dreams abound in the literatures of the Near East and North Africa. The Prophet Muhammad endowed them with a theological dimension, saying that after him “true dreams” would be the only channel for prophecy. Dreams were often used to support conflicting theological and political arguments, and the local chronicles contain many…

Based on Muhammad al-Zawâwî's extraordinary diary of 109 dream conversations with the Prophet Muhammad, this study provides a rare, intimate view of 15th-century North African Muslim life.
The study reconstructs Zawâwî's lifestory over a critical ten-year period and examines his career as a sufi in the historical context of North Africa…

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

This volume comprises a new edition of The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors, a pioneering study on early Arab-Islamic historiography by the German Orientalist Josef Horovitz (1874-1931). The first comprehensive work of modern European scholarship on the early accounts of…

In collaboration with Lawrence I. Conrad, Ph.D. 1981; translated from the German by Michael Bonner, Ph.D. 1987

Contents

I. The Salient Themes of Early Historical Tradition. Primary Themes. Ridda. Futuh. Fitna. Administration. Sirat al-khulafa. Ansab. Iran. Secondary Themes. Gharat. Dating According to the…

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

In this contribution to the ongoing debate on the nature and causes of the Islamic conquests in Syria and Iraq during the sixth and seventh centuries, Fred Donner argues for a necessary distinction between the causes of the conquests, the…

The key sources for the reconstruction of the early history of Muslim dogma are a group of texts ascribed to authors of the late first century of the Hijra. These texts bear on two major doctrinal controversies, the Murji'ite and the Qadarite, raising issues related on the one hand to the judgement of the events of the First Civil War, and on…

Robert Finn, Ph.D. 1978.

This study is an investigation of novels in Turkish of the end of the nineteenth century. After 1850, the impact of European economic and political influences in the Ottoman Empire led to the adoption of European cultural modes as well. It evokes the…

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

Table of Contents

Preliminary note / V. Christides Across the history L'Afrique dans les Ethnika de Stéphane de Byzance / Jehan Desanges Arabs, Turks and Chinese in central Asia during the first third of the 8th century, under the light of the Turkic Orkhon…

Co-authored by Barbara Sude, Ph.D. 1975.

This monograph analyzes the finances of the militant group al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI) in Anbar province during 2005 and 2006, at the peak of the group's power and influence. The authors draw on captured documents that give details on the daily…

Co-authored by Barbara Sude, Ph.D. 1975.

This monograph analyzes the finances of the militant group al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI) in Anbar province during 2005 and 2006, at the peak of the group's power and influence. The authors draw on captured documents that give details on the daily…

Deniz T. Kılınçoğlu, Ph.D. 2012.

“Is it possible to generate "capitalist spirit" in a society, where cultural, economic and political conditions did not unfold into an industrial revolution, and consequently into an advanced industrial-capitalist formation? This is exactly what some prominent public intellectuals in the late Ottoman…

Molly Greene, Ph.D. 1993.

“The period of Ottoman rule in Greek history has undergone a dramatic reassessment in recent years. Long reviled as four hundred years of unrelieved slavery and barbarity ('the Turkish yoke'), a new generation of scholars, based mainly but not exclusively in Greece, is rejecting this view in favor of a more…

Edited by Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980

Computer File: Bibliographic data1 CD-ROM + 1 Installation guide

Articles relating to Egypt, extracted from Middle East Contemporary Survey, volumes 1–21.

Co-editor Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Ph.D. 2004.

During the period 500–1000 CE Egypt was successively part of the Byzantine, Persian and Islamic empires. All kinds of events, developments and processes occurred that would greatly affect its history and that of the eastern Mediterranean in general. This is the first volume to map Egypt's…

Rev. and edited by Norman Itzkowitz, Ph.D. 1959

Proven from years of success at Princeton University, this comprehensive grammar and exercise book yields maximum results in 23 lessons covering all essentials of grammar from alphabet to progressive verb forms. Enables students to quickly understand and use basic patterns of modern…

Acquired by the Bodleian Library in 2002, the Book of Curiosities is now recognized as one of the most important discoveries in the history of cartography in recent decades. This eleventh-century Arabic treatise, composed in Egypt under the Fatimid caliphs, is a detailed account of the heavens and the Earth, illustrated by an…

In Eray’s world of fantasy and fun, there are few boundaries between reality and imagination. There is a roadside tea garden where spirits gather by night to carry on flirtations until they fade into the dawn, and there is a tavern in Bartin where men make their lost illusions of love come alive by thinking of them. The narrator exchanges…

Translated and annotated by David S. Powers, Ph.D. 1979

In this volume, which covers the caliphates of Sulayman, 'Umar II, and Yazid II, al-Tabari provides vivid and detailed accounts of the events spanning the period from 97-105/715-724. We listen to the stirring speeches of Qutaybah b. Muslim, in which he urges his followers to…

Leslie Peirce, Ph.D. 1988.

In Empress of the East, historian Leslie Peirce tells the remarkable story of a Christian slave girl, Roxelana, who was abducted by slave traders from her Ruthenian homeland and brought to the harem of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in…

The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World covers an area of Jewish history, religion, and culture which until now has lacked its own cohesive, discrete reference work. The Encyclopedia fills the gap in academic reference literature on the Jews of Muslim lands particularly in the late medieval, early modern and modern periods.

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

Since around 1500 C.E., humans have shaped the global environment in ways that were previously unimaginable. Bringing together leading environmental historians and world historians, this book offers an overview of global environmental history throughout this remarkable 500-year period. In…

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

The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded in these…

A provocative retelling of the story of political corruption in the modern period.

In this provocative retelling of the story of political corruption in the modern period, Ruth A. Miller argues that narratives of political corruption rely upon an explicitly pornographic rhetoric and have been instrumental in carving out…

Edmund Burke, III, Ph.D. 1970.

Alone among Muslim countries, Morocco is known for its own national form of Islam, “Moroccan Islam.” However, this pathbreaking study reveals that Moroccan Islam was actually invented in the early twentieth century by French ethnographers and colonial officers who were influenced by British colonial…

In this thought-provoking interdisciplinary work, Shaun Marmon describes how eunuchs, as a category of people who embodied ambiguity, both defined and mediated critical thresholds of moral and physical space in the household, in the palace and in the tomb of pre-modern Islamic society. The author's central focus is on the sacred society of…

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

This volume presents a selection of the key studies in which leading scholars since the beginning of the 20th century attempt to explain the phenomenally rapid expansion of the early Islamic state during the 7th century CE. The…

Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

Eric Ormsby is a poet who writes prose that is both graceful and hard-headed. With an outspoken contempt for cant and literary persiflage, Ormsby ranges over a surprising array of writers and literatures. Each essay involves a new and sometimes startling viewpoint, whether on Hart Crane’s homosexuality and…