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

1. Problems in the literary source material -- 2. Land use and settlement patterns -- 3. States, resources and armies -- 6. Elites old and new in the Byzantine and early Islamic Near East

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

Contagion - even today the word conjures up fear of disease and plague and has the power to terrify. The nine essays gathered here examine what pre-modern societies thought about the spread of disease and how it could be controlled: to what extent were concepts familiar to modern epidemiology…

Lawrence I. Conrad, Ph.D. 1981

The influence of Greek medical practices dating back to the fifth century B.C. has had an immeasurable impact on the development of medicine in the West over the subsequent centuries. This text is designed to cover the history of Western medicine from Classical Antiquity to 1800. As one guiding thread it…

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

Modernising scientific medicine emerged in the nineteenth century as an increasingly powerful agent of change in a context of complex social developments. Women's lives and expectations in particular underwent a transformation in the years after 1870 as education, employment opportunities and…

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

The World of Ibn Ṭufayl" consists of ten essays by scholars in different fields in Arab-Islamic studies on Ibn Ṭufayl's “Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān,” one of the most extraordinary works of medieval Arabic literature, and a text with important dimensions in social and intellectual history, literature,…

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…

For nearly eight centuries, the Iberian Peninsula was remarkable for its political, religious, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity. In Medieval Iberia Olivia Remie Constable brings together nearly one hundred original sources that testify to the peninsula's rich and sometimes volatile mix of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. The documents…

Olivia Remy Constable, Ph.D. 1989.

This volume surveys Iberian international trade from the tenth to the fifteenth century, with particular emphasis on commerce in the Muslim period and on changes brought by Christian conquest of much of Muslim Spain in the thirteenth century. From the tenth to the thirteenth century, markets in the…

Olivia Remy Constable, Ph.D. 1989.

What do clothing, bathing, or dining habits reveal about one's personal religious beliefs? Nothing, of course, unless such outward bodily concerns are perceived to hold some sort of spiritual significance. Such was the case in the multireligious world of medieval Spain, where the ways in…

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…

A global account of how and why human history unfolded as it did from the rise of agriculture to the fall of the Twin Towers. Why has human history been crowded into the last few thousand years? Why has it happened at all? Could it have happened in a radically different way? What should we make of the disproportionate role of the West in…

Winner of the Albert Hourani Award (2001) Winner of the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize (2001)

Winner of the British-Kuwait Friendship Society prize (2001)

What duty do we have to stop others from doing wrong? The question is intelligible in almost any culture, but few seek to answer it in a rigorous fashion. 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…

Michael Cook's classic study, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 2001), reflected upon the Islamic injunction to forbid wrongdoing. This book is a short, accessible survey of the same material. Using Islamic history to illustrate his argument, Cook unravels the complexities of the subject by…

"Bringing together essays on topics related to Islamic law, this book is composed of articles by prominent legal scholars and historians of Islam. The authors cover a wide swath of issues, ranging from a detailed examination of Shi'i traditions governing legal interpretations about everyday affairs like prayer to the intellectual exchanges…

The Koran has constituted a remarkably resilient core of identity and continuity for a religious tradition that is now in its fifteenth century. In this Very Short Introduction, Michael Cook provides a lucid and direct account of the significance of the Koran both in the modern world and in that of traditional Islam. He gives vivid accounts of…

Just over a sixth of the world's population subscribes to the Muslim belief that 'there is no god but God, and Muhammad is his Messenger'. Michael Cook gives an incisive account of the man who inspired this faith, drawing on the traditional Muslim sources to describe Muhammad's life and teaching. He also attempts to stand back from this…

Papers submitted to a conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in the University of London in July 1967

In contrast to the gradual formation of the high cultures of most of the world, the process by which Islamic civilisation emerged and took on its classical form between the 7th and 9th centuries was unusually sudden. The studies collected here are concerned with aspects of this remarkable development. Their topics are varied, including the…

Edited by Ralph M. Coury, Ph.D. 1984

Arab debates about the critical relationship between religion and modernity began in the early nineteenth century. Such debates are now integral to the struggle for power between a variety of political groups and their opponents, and are vital to understanding the modern Middle East. This unique…

Ralph M. Coury, Ph.D. 1984

Examines the early years of Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, the first Secretary-General of the Arab League from 1945 to 1952 and addresses the development of his nationalism through a richly textured study of Azzam's early years, including his student activism, his resistance during the war, and his emergence as…

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…

Farouk A. Dablan, Ph.D. 1979

Farouk A. Dablan, Ph.D. 1979

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."

Looks at the emergence of Shiism as a distinct communal identity within Islam.

The Charismatic Community examines the rise and development of Shiite religious identity in early Islamic history, analyzing the complex historical and intellectual processes that shaped the sense of individual and communal religious vocation. The…

Bridging the pragmatic and the theoretical, leading scholars and policy analysts delve into the critical issues facing Afghanistan today. Their exploration of questions relating to security and peacekeeping, the rule of law, institutional design, mobilization of the economy,…

Raphael Danziger, Ph.D. 1974.

As the Commander of the Faithful in the 1830s and 40s, Abd al-Qadir's task was twofold: to resist the incursions of the French with whatever resources he could muster, and to bring some measure of unitiy to the tribal peoples of Algeria.

Olga M. Davison, Ph.D. 1983

This work, a collection of seven essays, centers on classical Persian poetics, primarily the epic art of Ferdowsi's Shâhnâma. It combines traditional literary approaches with new comparative methods, especially those developed by Albert B. Lord in his ethnographic fieldwork on living oral traditions and by…

Edited by Olga M. Davidson, Ph.D. 1983

Many spectacular works of classical Persian art—miniature paintings as well as architectural decorations—survive to the present day, safeguarded in Istanbul and beyond. But the fragmentation of these works over time calls for careful historical research in reconstructing the history of the art…

Edited by Olga M. Davidson, Ph.D. 1983

Ferdowsi's Shahnama: Millennial Perspectives celebrates the ongoing reception, over the last thousand years, of a masterpiece of classical Persian poetry. The epic of the Shahnama or Book of Kings glorifies the spectacular achievements of Iranian civilization…

Olga M. Davidson, Ph.D. 1983

A milestone in Persian Classical literature, Ferdowsi’s Book of Kings evokes a long span of Iranian history and myths following a chronicle of its kings from the creation of the world to the conquest of Iran by the armies of the Moslem Arabs in the latter half of the seventh century. Drawing on…

Edited by Petra Sijpesteijn, Ph.D. 2004.

Authority and Control in the Countryside looks at the economic, religious, political and cultural instruments that local and regional powers in the late antique to early medieval Mediterranean and Near East used to manage their rural hinterlands. Measures of direct control – land…

Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries brings together ten original studies on historical aspects of Sufism in this region. A central question, of ongoing significance, underlies each contribution: what is the relationship between Sufism as it was manifested in this region prior to the Russian…

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…

Special Issue of Historical Reflaxion/Reflexions Historiques, Vol. 41, no. 3 (2015)

Di-Capua, Yoav. “Trauma and Other Historians: An Introduction.”

Archambeau, Nicole. “Miraculous Healing for the Warrior Soul: Transforming Fear, Violence, and Shame in Fourteenth-Century Provence.”

Steinberg,…

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…

Introduced and described by Martin B. Dickson, Ph.D. 1958, and Stuart Cary Welch.

Michael W. Dols, Ph.D. 1971

In the middle of the fourteenth century a devastating epidemic of plague, commonly known in European history as the “Black Death,” swept over the Eurasian continent. This book, based principally on Arabic sources, establishes the means of transmission…

Michael W. Dols, Ph.D. 1971

This is a study of madness in the medieval Islamic world. Using a wide variety of sources--historical, literary, and art--the late Michael Dols explores beliefs about madness in Islamic society and examines attitudes towards individuals afflicted by mental illness or disability. The book demonstrates the…

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

This volume reprints nineteen articles that deal with the formation of the first Islamic state under the "rightly-guided" and Umayyad caliphs (632-750 CE). The articles (five of which originally appeared in languages other than English and…

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…

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…

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…