From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman,…
Drawing on a wealth of previously unstudied primary sources in several languages, Vahid Brown and Don Rassler map the anatomy of a group frequently described as the most lethal actor in the Afghan insurgency. The Haqqani network has for decades operated at the centre of a transnational nexus of Islamist militancy, lending support to the…
Robert D. McChesney, B.A. 1967, Ph.D. 1973.
In Central Asia, Muslim shrines have served as community centers for centuries, particularly the large urban shrines that seem, in many cases, to have served as the inspiration as well for a city’s architectural development. In Four…
Luke Yarbrough, Ph.D. 2012.
A runner-up for the 2020 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize
The caliphs and sultans who once ruled the Muslim world were often assisted by…
As in many areas of pre-modern history, the study of medieval Islamic history has been critically hindered by the lack of available evidence. Unlike many parallel fields, however, the shortage of contemporary documentary evidence for medieval Islam has less to do with the…
Cole Bunzel, Ph.D. 2018.
While the Islamic State dominates headlines through its brutal tactics and pervasive propaganda, there is little awareness of the unique ideology driving the group's strategy. Drawing from private correspondence, statements, speeches, and Islamic theology, Cole Bunzel unpacks the ideology of the Islamic State…
Edited by Saiyad Nizamuddin Ahmad, Ph.D. 2000.
This groundbreaking study illuminates the Egyptian experience of modernity by critically analyzing the foremost medium through which it was articulated: history. The first comprehensive analysis of a Middle Eastern intellectual tradition, Gatekeepers of the Past examines a system of knowledge that replaced the intellectual and…
Karen A. Bauer, Ph.D. 2008.
“This book explores how medieval and modern Muslim religious scholars ('ulamā') interpret gender roles in Qur'ānic verses on legal testimony, marriage, and human creation. Citing these verses, medieval scholars developed increasingly complex laws and interpretations upholding a male-dominated gender…
Explore the life and accomplishments of the Mongol conqueror who established the largest empire in history. Age Range: 11 to 17 years.
Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981
This fascinating work profiles Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), the foremost Islamic scholar and mystic of the medieval period. Attracting the patronage of the vizier Nizam al-Mulk early in his career, he was appointed head of the Nizamiyyah College at Baghdad, and attracted audiences from across the…
Despite President George W. Bush's assurances that Islam is a peaceful religion and that all good Muslims hunger for democracy, confusion persists and far too many Westerners remain convinced that Muslims and terrorists are synonymous. In the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the recent bombings…
Co-authored by Norman Itzkowitz, Ph.D. 1959.
Explore the life of a poor peasant who became one of the most powerful men in Russia by claiming to have mystical powers. Age Range: 11 to 17 years.
Uriel I. Simonsohn, Ph.D. 2008
The family stands at the centre of the present volume. Its networks of kinship and influence are a central tenet of Late Antique communities. The relations within the family and between the family and the community occupy an important place in Late…
This is a controversial study of the origins of Islamic civilisation, first published in 1977. By examining non-Muslim sources, the authors point out the intimate link between the Jewish religion and the earliest forms of Islam. As a serious, scholarly attempt to open up a new, exploratory path of Islamic history, the book has already…
Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981
This catalogue describes over 2,000 Arabic manuscripts acquired by the Princeton University Library since the 1950s, providing information on an important collection of Arabic works, many of which were previously unknown or unrecorded.
“In a book with a bold new view of medieval Jewish history, written in a style accessible to nonspecialists and students as well as to scholars in the field, Marina Rustow changes our understanding of the origins and nature of heresy itself. Scholars have long believed that the Rabbanites and Qaraites, the two major Jewish groups under Islamic…
Martin S. Kramer, Ph.D. 1982
The foreign hostages in Lebanon are living reminders of the challenge posed to the West by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed movement of fundamentalist Lebanese Shi’ites. Hezbollah has conducted its operational campaign with a great measure of strategic and tactical savvy. Yet its ideologues understand and…
By analyzing a wide range of Arab and Persian literature, Louise Marlow demonstrates that Islam's initial orientation was markedly egalitarian, but the social aspect of this egalitarianism was soon undermined in the aftermath of Islam's political success. Although the memory of its early promise never entirely receded, social egalitarianism was…
John H. Lorentz, Ph.D. 1974.
Iran is a country with a deep and complex history. Over several thousand years, Iran has been the source of numerous creative contributions to the spiritual and literary world, and the site of many remarkable manifestations of material culture. The special place that Iran has come to hold in contemporary…
Kenneth J. Perkins, Ph.D. 1973.
Reviews
"A valuable addition to the comparatively small collection of reference works about Tunisia. This is a useful, valuable and needed addition..." —CHOICE
Kenneth J. Perkins, Ph.D. 1973.
Containing an updated chronology, additional entries, and an enlarged bibliography, this second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Tunisia offers interested historians the information they need for continued research into this unique African nation. As a link between Arab…
Kenneth J. Perkins, Ph.D. 1973.
The demographically modest, but strategically significant, country of Tunisia has experienced profound and revolutionary change in the almost two decades since the publication of the previous edition of this volume (1997). Most dramatically, a populist uprising in 2011 ousted the entrenched dictatorship…
Translated by Lawrence I. Conrad, Ph.D. 1981
Translation of: al-Takwīn al-Tārīkhī lil-ummah al-ʻArabīyah.
This book is a comprehensive examination of the historical process of social formation that gave rise to the communal consciousness of the Arab nation and determined its sense of identity. It aims to provide a…
For four decades Abraham L. Udovitch has been a leading scholar of the medieval Islamic world, its economic institutions, social structures, and legal theory and practice. In pursuing his quest to understand and explain the complex phenomena that these broad rubrics entail, he has published widely, collaborated internationally with other…
Translation, introduction, notes and index for volumes 1–2 by Robert D. McChesney, B.A. 1967, Ph.D. 1973. Translation and notes for volume 3–4 by McChesney and Mehdi Muhammad Khorrami.
The Sirāj al-tawārīkh is the most important history of Afghanistan ever written. It was…
The Hanafi school of law is one of the oldest legal schools of Islam, coming into existence in the eighth century in Iraq, and surviving up to the present. So closely is the early development of the Hanafi school interwoven with non-legal spheres, such as the political, social, and theological, that the study of it…
Kenneth J. Perkins, Ph.D. 1973.
Kenneth Perkins' book traces the history of Tunisia from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. After initially examining the years of French colonial rule from 1881 to 1956, when the Tunisians achieved independence, he describes the subsequent process of state-building, including the design of…
Kenneth J. Perkins, Ph.D. 1973.
Kenneth Perkins's second edition of A History of Modern Tunisia, updated with a new chapter, carries the history of this country from 2004 to the present, with particular emphasis on the Tunisian revolution of 2011 – the first critical event of that year's Arab Spring and the…
Contents
List of maps
Publisher's preface
Introduction M. A. Cook
1. The rise of the Ottoman Empire H. İnalcik
2. The reigns of Bāyezīd II and Selīm I, 1451–1520 V. J. Parry
3. The reign of Sulaimān the Magnificent, 1520–66 V. J. Parry
4. The successors of Sulaimān, 1566…
Boaz Shoshan, Ph.D. 1978
Introduced and described by Martin B. Dickson, Ph.D. 1958, and Stuart Cary Welch.
The Greek pandocheion, the Arabic funduq, and Latin fondaco were hostelries for medieval Mediterranean travellers that evolved into centers of trade between Muslim and Christian regions. Olivia Remie Constable traces the evolution of this family of institutions from the pandocheion in Late Antiquity to the arrival of European merchants in…
Edited by Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Ph.D. 1985
The girl Hüsn and the boy Aşk are betrothed to each other as children. But Hüsn violates the custom of the tribe by falling in love with him, and Aşk must undergo the trials of a journey to Diyar-i-Kalp, the Land of the Heart, to prove himself worthy—a journey to realization of both his and…
Caner K. Dagli, Ph.D. 2006.
Ibn al-'Arabi (d. 1240) was one of the towering figures of Islamic intellectual history, and among Sufis still bears the title of al-shaykh al-akbar, or "the greatest master."
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…
Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World is a collection of articles authored by the students and colleagues of Norman Itzkowitz. The contributors include Engin Deniz Akarli, Karl K. Barbir, Cornell H. Fleischer, Jane Hathaway, Cemal Kafadar, Metin Kunt, Rudi Paul Lindner, Heath W. Lowry, Scott Redford, Vamik D. Volkan, and…
Since 2007, five volumes of the collection of Modarressi's early (pre-1979) Persian articles have been published. These include volumes entitled Ijtima'iyat, Qummiyat, Sanadiyat, Kitabiyat, and Tarikhiyat. Having access to these reprints is most welcome given the fact that most of the articles…
Michael S. Doran, Ph.D. 1997.
In 1956 President Nasser of Egypt moved to take possession of the Suez Canal, thereby bringing the Middle East to the brink of war. The British and the French, who operated the canal, joined with Israel…
Co-authored by Norman Itzkowitz, Ph.D. 1959.
This book "traces the psychological origins of Atatürk's lifelong mission to save and repair the Turkish nation, with emphasis on the intertwining between psychological motivations and historical events."
Leslie Peirce, Ph.D. 1988.
Winner of the M. Fuat Köprülü Book Prize of the Turkish Studies Association
Examines the sources of royal women's power and assesses the reactions of contemporaries, which ranged from loyal devotion to armed opposition Argues that the exercise of political power was tied to definitions of sexuality …
Orit Baskin, Ph.D. 2005.
Co-Winner of the 2018 Nikki Keddie Book Award, sponsored by the Middle East Studies Association.
Between 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to the newly established Israeli state. Lacking the resources to absorb them all, the Israeli government resettled them in maabarot, or…
Simon Fuchs, Ph.D. 2015.
Centering Pakistan in a story of transnational Islam stretching from South Asia to the Middle East, Simon Wolfgang Fuchs offers the first in-depth ethnographic history of the intellectual production of Shi'is and their religious competitors in this …
Aaron Rock-Singer, Ph.D. 2015
Salafis explicitly base their legitimacy on continuity with the Quran and the Sunna, and their distinctive practices—praying in shoes, wearing long beards and short pants, and observing gender segregation—are understood to have a similarly ancient pedigree. In this book, however, Aaron Rock-Singer draws…