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…
Yoav Di-Capua, Ph.D. 2004.
It is a curious and relatively little-known fact that for two decades—from the end of World War II until the late 1960s—existentialism’s most fertile ground outside of Europe was in the Middle East, and Jean-Paul Sartre was the Arab intelligentsia’s uncontested champion. In the Arab world, neither before nor…
This volume is a collection of twenty-three articles dedicated to one of the most distinguished philologists and linguists in Near Eastern Studies and one of the most prolific teachers and translators of Near Eastern languages and literatures, Wheeler McIntosh Thackston, Jr. (Harvard University), on the occasion of…
Nadav Samin, Ph.D. 2013.
Why do tribal genealogies matter in modern-day Saudi Arabia? What compels the strivers and climbers of the new Saudi Arabia to want to prove their authentic descent from one or another prestigious Arabian tribe? Of Sand or Soil looks at how genealogy and tribal belonging have informed the lives of…
Edited by Samer Traboulsi, Ph.D. 2005.
The Ikhwan al-Safa' (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa …
"After 13 years in America, Abu Saheeh has returned to his native Iraq, a nation transformed by the American military presence. Alone in a new city, he has exactly what he wants: freedom from his past. Then he meets Layla, a whimsical fourteen-year-old girl who enchants him with her love of American pop culture. Enchanted by Layla's stories and…
Edited by Celene Ibrahim, B.A. 2008.
Comprised of the wisdom of over fifty scholars, preachers, poets, and artists, this anthology is born of the conviction that open-hearted engagement across our differences is a prerequisite for healthy civic life today. The collection offers…
Nebil Husayn, Ph.D. 2016
Islam's fourth caliph, Ali, can be considered one of the most revered figures in Islamic history. His nearly universal portrayal in Muslim literature as a pious authority obscures centuries of contestation and the eventual rehabilitation of his character…
Michael Oren, Ph.D. 1986.
This book represents the first scholarly examination of the origins of the 1956 Sinai campaign between Egypt and Israel. Utilising a wide range of primary sources, the study analyses the reasons for the breakdown of the Armistice Agreement between…
The Sunnī-Shi'a schism is often framed as a dispute over the identity of the successor to Muhammad. In reality, however, this fracture only materialized a century later in the important southern Iraqi city of Kūfa (present-day Najaf). This book explores the birth and development of Shī'i identity. Through a critical analysis of legal texts,…
The first English translation of a novel by popular Turkish writer Nazlı Eray.
The myth of Orpheus has inspired revisions and retellings from writers and artists around the world—from poet Rainer Maria Rilke, to novelist Salman Rushdie, to filmmakers Jean Cocteau and Marcel Camus. In this version, celebrated Turkish author Nazlı Eray…
Collection of articles previously published in Zaman newspaper.
Co-edited by Onur Yıldırım, Ph.D. 2002.
Suraiya Faroqhi, yasaminin buyuk bolumunu Osmanli toplumunun koylulerinden eskiyalarina, dervislerinden zanaatkrlarina kadar uzanan farkli kesimlerini incelemeye adadi. Faroqhi, bu kesimlerin hem devletle hem de kendilerini cevreleyen toplumsal, ekonomik ve siyasal kosullarla nasil basa cikmaya…
The Other Iraq challenges the notion that Iraq has always been a totalitarian, artificial state, torn by sectarian violence. Chronicling the rise of the Iraqi public sphere from 1921 to 1958, this enlightening work reveals that the Iraqi intellectual field was always more democratic and pluralistic than historians have tended to…
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…
Norman Itzkowitz, Ph.D. 1959.
This skillfully written text presents the full sweep of Ottoman history from its beginnings on the Byzantine frontier in about 1300, through its development as an empire, to its late eighteenth-century confrontation with a rapidly modernizing Europe…
Co-translator Norman Itzkowitz, Ph.D. 1959.
Reviews
A preeminent scholar of Turkish history vividly portrays 300 years of this distinctively Eastern culture as it grew from a military principality to the world's most powerful Islamic state. He paints a…
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…
Keiko Kiyotaki is an Associate Research Scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
In Ottoman Land Reform in the Province of Baghdad, Keiko Kiyotaki traces the Ottoman reforms of tax farming and land tenure and establishes that their effects were the key ingredients of agricultural progress. These modernizing reforms…
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,…
Karl Barbir, Ph.D. 1977.
On the basis of new evidence from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul, Karl Barbir challenges the current interpretation of Ottoman rule in Damascus during the eighteenth century. He argues that the prevailing themes of decline and stagnation — usually applied to the entire century — in fact apply only to the…