Publications

725 Publications

Advanced Turkish DVD-ROM is comprehensive multimedia language courseware. This DVD-ROM package is the equivalent of a textbook and workbook, with audio and video.

It can be used either by independent learners or by students in a traditional or self-instructional classroom setting, and covers material…

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 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…

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…

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…

In Violent Modernity: France in Algeria, Abdelmajid Hannoum examines the advent of political modernity in Algeria and shows how colonial modernity was not only a project imposed by violence but also a violent project in and of itself, involving massive destruction and significant transformation of the population of Algeria. The author…

Rifa‘at Abou-El-Haj (Ph.D., Princeton, 1963) started teaching at California State University, Long Beach, in 1964, and moved to the State University of New York (SUNY), Binghamton, in 1992. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, as well as two books, The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics (1984;…

Although scholars have begun to revise the traditional view that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries marked a decline in the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire, Baki Tezcan’s book proposes a radical new approach to this period. While he concurs that decline did take place in certain areas, he constructs a new framework by foregrounding the…

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…

“Two prominent anthropologists describe their long “journey” with the Afghan people, a journey that lasted thirty years and was punctuated by the events that caused Afghanistan’s transformation from the monarchic state of Zaher Shah to Daoud’s republic, from the communist dictatorship to the Taliban terror and then to the uncertainties of the…
Winner of the 2011 Waldo G. Leland Prize for the “most outstanding reference tool in the field of history” published between May 1, 2006, and April 30, 2011!   "The New Cambridge History of Islam offers a comprehensive history spanning fourteen centuries of Islamic civilization, from its beginnings in the oases and deserts of seventh-century…

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…

In the Middle Ages, a varied and vibrant Islamic culture flourished in all its aspects, from religious institutions to legal and scientific endeavors. Lassner, Reisman, and Bonner detail how all three montheist traditions are linked to the same sacred history. They trace the most current scholarship on the Arabian background to Islam, the…

A new international maritime order was forged in the early modern age, yet until now histories of the period have dealt almost exclusively with the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants shifts attention to the Mediterranean, providing a major history of an important but neglected sphere of the early modern maritime world…

A documentary by Brigid Maher; [Tiny Leaps Productions & School of Communication at American University present]; produced and directed by Brigid Maher; co-produced [and written] by Karen Bauer].

"Women across the Middle East are trying to reclaim their role as leaders in Islam. Veiled voices goes in-depth into the world of three…

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.

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

The origins of Islam have been the subject of increasing controversy in recent years. The traditional view, which presents Islam as a self-consciously distinct religion tied to the life and revelations of the prophet…

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…

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…

Infectious Ideas is a comparative analysis of how Muslim and Christian scholars explained the transmission of disease in the premodern Mediterranean world.

How did religious communities respond to and make sense of epidemic disease? To…

To better understand the diverse inheritance of Islamic movements in present-day Turkey, we must take a closer look at the religious establishment, the ulema, during the first half of the twentieth century. During the closing years of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the Republic of Turkey, the spread of secularist and anti-religious…

The first biography of legendary Delta bluesman Son House Ventures beyond the usual analysis of House as driven by religious guilt for playing "the Devil's music" Provides uniquely subtle commentary on the influence of blues on American culture

In June of 1964, three young, white blues fans set out from New York City in a Volkswagen,…

Translated by Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Ph.D. 1985

The New Cultural Climate in Turkey is a beautifully written collection of essays by a leading Turkish intellectual. It presents a compelling analysis of cultural politics in Turkey, arguing that the dominant clichéd dualities of East/West and secular/sacred mask a reality of…

This book is an attempt to explore how jihadi authors make use of the Sunni tradition in order to bolster their case. Such a discussion is a desideratum even in Islamic studies since oftentimes radical authors are chastised a priori for their untenable misrepresentation of religion. Similarly, their arguments are tossed aside as a…

Treating language as a type of machine code opens new avenues for the study of history and politics.

Ruth A. Miller demonstrates the potential of taking nonhuman linguistic activity—such as the running of machine code—as an analytical model. Via a lively discussion of 19th-century pro- and antisuffragists, Miller tells a new…

A collection of essays written by scholars invited to the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003–2004.

Over the past several decades, the field of Jewish studies has expanded to encompass an unprecedented range of research topics, historical periods, geographic regions, and…

Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

The Baboons of Hada introduces thirty years of Eric Ormsby’s precise and generous poetry. Opening with an exuberant bestiary of spiders and starfish, penguins, snakes and contemplative baboons, the collection moves on to explore a world of intricate wonders and memories: the grandeur of noses, the…

Translated with an introduction & notes by Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

The Book of Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment is the thirty-sixth chapter of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Revival of the Religious Sciences. This was the first treatise which established not merely the possibility but the necessity for the love…

Food is a marker of identity, culture, and class, and it denotes power, routine, leisure, and celebration. Despite its importance to every aspect of historical research, this topic has not been sufficiently explored in Ottoman history. This volume places the study of food in the mainstream of Ottoman history by analizing major issues--origins,…

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…

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

The undeniable presence of the past and its cultural vestiges in the daily lives of displaced populations has been a noticeable feature of diasporas across the globe. The world of spirits and the…

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…

This volume is an annotated edition of a 9th/15th-century literary anthology of Persian poetry on the affection and love for the House of Prophet Muhammad in pre-Safavid Iran. The book is edited on the basis of a unique manuscript dated 849/1445. It contains 81 panegyrics in praise of the Prophet Muhammad and his House, many by poets who are…

Much traditional historiography consciously and unconsciously glosses over certain discourses, narratives, and practices. This book examines silences or omissions in Middle Eastern history at the turn of the twenty-first century, to give a fuller account of the society, culture and politics.

With a particular focus on the Ottoman…

Co-Winner of the 2011 American Historical Association George Louis Beer Prize for the best work on any phase of European international history since the year 1895!   The break-up of the Ottoman empire and the disintegration of the Russian empire were watershed events in modern history. The unravelling of these empires was both cause and…

Arabic and Persian panegyric poetry was one of the most important genres of literature in the medieval Middle East and Central Asia. Jocelyn Sharlet argues that panegyric poetry is important not only because it provides a commentary on society and culture in the medieval Middle East, but also because panegyric writing was one of the key means…

"When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the first president of Turkey in 1923, he set about transforming his country into a secular republic where nationalism sanctified by science—and by the personality cult Atatürk created around himself—would reign supreme as the new religion. This book provides the first in-depth look at the intellectual life of…

"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…

For some historians, medieval Iberian society was one marked by peaceful coexistence and cross-cultural fertilization; others have sketched a harsher picture of Muslims and Christians engaged in an ongoing contest for political, religious, and economic advantage culminating in the fall of Muslim…

Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981

Fine Incisions is a collection of twenty-four gracious, intelligent and occasionally fractious essays, wide-ranging in their interests and rigorous in their analyses. Ormsby’s reverence for language is luminously clear as he examines his international travels, the work of James Merrill, the state of…

Burying the Beloved traces the relationship between the law and literature in Iran to reveal the profound ambiguities at the heart of Iranian ideas of modernity regarding women's rights and social status. The book reveals how novels mediate legal reforms and examines how authors have used realism to challenge and re-imagine notions of "the real."…

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,…

Reading the Islamic City offers insights into the implications the practices of the Maliki school of Islamic law have for the inhabitants of the Islamic city, the madinah. The problematic term madinah fundamentally indicates a phenomenon of building, dwelling, and urban settlement patterns that evolved after the 7th century CE in the Maghrib …

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Ottoman state identified multiple threats in its eastern regions. In an attempt to control remote Kurdish populations, Ottoman authorities organized them into a tribal militia and gave them the task of subduing a perceived Armenian threat. Following the story of this militia, Klein explores the…

One hundred years after the deportations and mass murder of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other peoples in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the history of the Armenian genocide is a victim of historical distortion, state-sponsored falsification, and deep divisions between Armenians and Turks. Working together for the first time,…