Princeton Papers

Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

Princeton Papers is a refereed journal published by Markus Wiener Publishers for the Near Eastern Studies Department, which is solely responsible for the content. Each issue is devoted to a single topic or theme under the supervision of a guest editor. Recent topics have included "Constellations of the Caucasus," “Culinary Approaches to Ottoman History,” “Sufism and Politics,” “The Ottoman Balkans,” and “The Islamic Middle East and Japan.” For descriptions of all seventeen volumes, please see the individual links below.

The Editorial Board welcomes proposals for thematic issues on any aspect of Middle Eastern Studies. Proposals for thematic issues should be addressed to William Blair, Managing Editor of Princeton Papers, at [email protected].

Requests for permission to photocopy or for reprints should be sent to Markus Wiener Publishers, 231 Nassau Street , Princeton , NJ 08542 ; fax 609-921-1140; http://www.markuswiener.com/ . Subscription orders should be sent to academic agents or the publisher. Single copy and back orders should be sent to the publisher.

Publications List

53 Publications
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The dog has captured the Jewish imagination from antiquity to the contemporary period, with the image of the dog often used to characterize and demean Jewish populations in medieval Christendom. In the interwar period, dogs were still considered goyishe nakhes (‘a gentile pleasure’) 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…

Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman, Ph.D. 2007.

Finalist in the 2014 National Jewish Book Awards (Sephardic Culture Category), sponsored by the Jewish Book Council.

The Cairo Geniza is the largest and richest store of documentary evidence for the medieval Islamic world. This book seeks to revolutionize the way scholars use that…

Fatwas of condemnation : Islam and the limits of dissent examines a particularly rich and relatively untapped source for Islamic intellectual history, namely the genre of legal writing represented by the compendia of Islamic legal response to examine the limits of dissent in Islam. Not confining himself to a particular period of history, but…

Edited by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad, Ph.D. 2000.

Contains a series of studies into the philosophical trends and thinkers associated with the Shīʻī tradition from a symposium held September 2-4, 2015, at the Warburg Institute in London, England. The volume offers insight into the rich intellectual history in Shīʻah Islam of examining…

Shahab Ahmed, Ph.D. 1999.

What is Islam? How do we grasp a human and historical phenomenon characterized by such variety and contradiction? What is "Islamic" about Islamic philosophy or Islamic art? Should we speak of Islam or of islams? Should we distinguish the Islamic (the religious) from the Islamicate (the cultural)? Or should we…

Translated with notes by Asad Q. Ahmed, Ph.D. 2007.

This book offers for the first time a complete scholarly translation, commentary, and glossary in a modern European language of the logic section of Ibn Sina's (d. 1037 CE) very important compendium al-Najat (The Deliverance). The original, written in Arabic, is the product…

This volume brings together articles on various aspects of the intellectual and social
histories of Islamicate societies and of the traditions and contexts that contributed to their
formation and evolution. Written by leading scholars who span three generations and
who cover such diverse fields as Late Antique Studies, Islamic…

The volume contains highly original articles on Islamic history, law, and thought, each either proposing new hypotheses or readjusting existing ones. The contributions range from studies in the formulation of the pre-Islamic Arabian calendar to notes on the "blood-money group" in Islamic law, and to transformations in Arabic logic in the post…

Asad Q. Ahmed, Ph.D. 2007

Palimpsests of Themselves is an intervention in current discussions about the fate of philosophy in postclassical Islamic intellectual history. Asad Q. Ahmed uses as a case study the most advanced logic textbook of Muslim South Asia, The Ladder of the Sciences, presenting in…

Written by leading authorities in the field Examines one of the most controversial thinkers in Islamic history

Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) is one of the most controversial thinkers in Islamic history. Today he is revered by what is called the Wahhabi movement and championed by Salafi groups who demand a return to the pristine golden…

Shahab Ahmed, Ph.D. 1999.

One of the most controversial episodes in the life of the Prophet Muhammad concerns an incident in which he allegedly mistook words suggested by Satan as divine revelation. Known as the Satanic verses, these praises to the pagan deities contradict the Islamic belief that Allah is one and absolute. Muslims…

*This work was published before Akarca entered Princeton as a graduate student.

Engin Deniz Akarlı, Ph.D. 1976.

Long notorious as one of the most turbulent areas of the world, Lebanon nevertheless experienced an interlude of peace between its civil war of 1860 and the beginning of the French Mandate in 1920. Engin Akarli examines the sociopolitical changes…

Co-edited by Engin Deniz Akarlı, Ph.D. 1976.

Papers presented at a colloquium held May 1972 at Princeton University and sponsored by the Princeton University Program in Near Eastern Studies and Center of International Studies.

Why did the Ottoman Empire enter the First World War in late October 1914, months after the war's devastations had become clear? Were its leaders 'simple-minded,' 'below-average' individuals, as the doyen of Turkish diplomatic history has argued? Or, as others have claimed, did the Ottomans enter the war because War Minister Enver Pasha,…

Usaama Al-Azami (Ph.D. 2018)

An original examination of the role of religious scholars in either supporting the Arab revolutions or advocating their repression. With particular focus on Egypt, al-Azami traces the public engagements and pronouncements of several prominent scholars. Considers how the engagements of counter…

Co-editor Joseph Norment Bell, Ph.D. 1971.

The earliest major Islamic treatise on mystical love, this work reflects a moderate version of the ecstatic mysticism of the Sufi martyr al-Hallaj. Writing around 1000 C.E., the author summarizes the views of lexicographers, belletrists, philosophers, physicians, theologians, and mystics on…

Co-translator Joseph Norment Bell, Ph.D. 1971.

Translation of ‘Aṭf al-alif al-ma‘lūf.

The earliest major Islamic treatise on mystical love, this work reflects a moderate version of the ecstatic mysticism of the Sufi martyr al-Hallaj. Writing around 1000 C.E., the author summarizes the views of…

The multi-volume chronicle of the Cairo scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1753-1825), known in Arabic as caja-’ib al-atha-r fi- al-tara-jim wa-al-akhba-r, which translates roughly as The Most Wondrous Achievements: Biographies and Reports of Events, is the single most important primary source for the history of Egypt over nearly four…

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…

Edited by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad, Ph.D. 2000.

Valuable tool for increasing understanding of the history and culture of the Middle East Draws upon latest international expertise

The Modern Middle East presents a wide-ranging and varied collection of translated sources covering the period from 1700 to the present. These sources include official and private archives, the…

Translated by Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

For the public at large Shi’ism often implies a host of confused representations, suggesting more often than not obscurantism, intolerance, political violence and other ignominies running hot or cold in response to world events. In fact for many people, Shi’ism stands for "radical Islam", or –…

Translated by Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

Two major events occurred in the early centuries of Islam that determined its historical and spiritual development in the centuries that followed: the formation of the sacred scriptures, namely the Qur'an and the Hadith, and the chronic violence that surrounded the succession of the Prophet,…

Translated from the German by Eric Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

In Rethinking Islam, Katajun Amirpur argues that the West’s impression of Islam as a backward-looking faith, resistant to post-Enlightenment thinking, is misleading and—due to its effects on political discourse—damaging. Introducing readers to key thinkers and activists…

Current standard narratives of Ottoman, Balkan, and Middle East history overemphasize the role of nationalism in the transformation of the region. Challenging these accounts, this book argues that religious affiliation was in fact the most influential shaper of communal identity in the Ottoman era, that religion molded the relationship between…

Table of Contents

Map of the Ottoman Balkans ca. 1800

Frederick F. Anscombe, “Introduction”

Antonis Anastasopoulos, “Crisis and State Intervention in Late Eighteenth-Century Karaferye (mod. Veroia)”

Michael R. Hickok, “Homicide in Ottoman Bosnia”

Virginia H. Aksan, “Whose…

What caused the decline of the Ottoman empire in the Persian Gulf? Why has history credited only London, not Istanbul, with bringing about the birth of the modern Gulf States? Using the Ottoman imperial archives, as well as European and Arab sources, Anscombe explains how the combination of poor communication, scarce resources, and misplaced…

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

In Islamic Legal Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists, twenty-three scholars each contribute a chapter on a distinguished Muslim jurist. The volume is organized chronologically and it includes jurists who represent the formative, classical and modern periods of Islamic legal thought…

Co-edited by Maria Dakake, Ph.D. 2000.

The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an offers an impressive and comprehensive overview of the formative scripture of Islam. Including a wide number of scholarly approaches to the Qur’an by both established authorities and emergent voices, the 40 chapters in this volume represent the…

Noah Amir Arjomand, Certificate in Near Eastern Studies 2010.

News 'fixers' are translators and guides who assist foreign journalists. Sometimes key contributors to bold, original reporting and other times key facilitators of homogeneity and groupthink in the news media, they play the difficult but powerful role of broker between…

Translated by Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Ph.D. 1985.

Scent of the Trace is an expose of an Architect's inner dialogues during the design process. The book contains a detailed and extensive documentation of the internal struggle to conceptually ground and position three different works of architecture; Sancaklar…

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.

Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980

In a brief historic moment, printing presses, publishing ventures, a periodical press, circulation networks, and a mass readership came into being all at once in the Middle East, where none had previously existed, with ramifications in every sphere of the community's life. Among other outcomes, this significant…

Edited by Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980

Demography and politics in the Arab States.

Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980

Middle Eastern society experienced sudden and profound change in the 19th century under the impact of European expansion and influence. But as Western ideas about politics, technology, and culture began to infiltrate Arab society, the old language proved to be an inadequate vehicle for transmitting these alien…

Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980

Named an Outstanding Academic Book for 1995 by Choice

Newspapers and the practice of journalism began in the Middle East in the nineteenth century and evolved during a period of accelerated sociopolitical and cultural change. Inspired by a foreign model, the Arab press…

Yaron, Ayalon, Ph.D. 2009.

This book explores the history of natural disasters in the Ottoman Empire and the responses to them on the state, communal, and individual levels. Yaron Ayalon argues that religious boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims were far less significant in Ottoman society than commonly believed. Furthermore,…

Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980

Prior to the twentieth century, Arab society in Palestine was predominantly illiterate, with most social and political activities conducted through oral communication. There were no printing presses, no book or periodical production, and no written signs in public places. But a groundswell of change rapidly…