What is jihad? Does it mean violence, as many non-Muslims assume? Or does it mean peace, as some Muslims insist? Because jihad is closely associated with the early spread of Islam, today’s debate about the origin and meaning of jihad is nothing less than a struggle over Islam itself. In Jihad in Islamic History, Michael Bonner provides…
Edited by Intisar Rabb, Ph.D. 2009.
"The papers in this volume largely arise out of proceedings from a conference organized in honor of Professor Roy Mottahedeh upon the occasion of his retirement."
This book presents an in…
Translated, abridged, re-worked, and annotated by Robert D. McChesney, B.A. 1967, Ph.D. 1973.
In January 1929, the reigning monarch of Afghanistan, Amir Aman Allah Khan, was driven from his capital by a former soldier turned outlaw. The uprising was a response to the ruler’s attempts to modernize the tribal culture of Afghanistan…
Translated by Robert D. McChesney, B. A. 1967, Ph.D. 1973.
Through years of neglect, deliberate modernization, and the effect of decades of war, Kabul’s architectural history has virtually disappeared. By meticulous use of all available records including written works, photographs,…
Amit Bein, Ph.D. 2006.
To better understand the lasting legacy of international relations in the post-Ottoman Middle East, we must first re-examine Turkey's engagement with the region during the interwar period. Long assumed to be a period of deliberate disengagement and ruptured ties between Turkey and its neighbours, Amit Bein…
On dönem Osmanlı tarihinde oynadığı belirleyici rolü tartışmasız olan Osmanlı İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Fırkası)’nın yapısı incelendiğinde; farklı alanlarda, değişik liderle karşılaşılıyor. İşte bunlardan biri olan Enver Paşanın 1911–1913 yıllarına ait mektuplarından derlenmiş olan bu kitap son dönem Osmanlı Tarihine kısa da olsa bir bakış…
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…
Co-edited by Nadav Samin, Ph.D. 2013.
Senior scholars of Islamic studies and the anthropology of Islam gather in this volume to pay tribute to one of the giants of the field, Dale F. Eickelman. In diversely arrayed, rigorous and compelling chapters, leading historians, anthropologists, and political scientists elaborate through their…
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…
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…
A gripping account of how al-Qaeda in Yemen rebounded from an initial defeat to once again threaten the United States.
Far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and al-Qaeda are fighting a clandestine war of drones and suicide bombers in an unforgiving corner of Arabia.
The Last Refuge charts…
Law and Empire provides a comparative view of legal practices in Asia and Europe, from Antiquity to the eighteenth century. It relates the main principles of legal thinking in Chinese, Islamic, and European contexts to practices of lawmaking and adjudication. In particular, it shows how legal procedure and legal thinking could be used…
This work covers a number of significant themes explaining the practice of Islamic law. The first article treats taqiyyah (literally, “caution”), the concealment of one’s religion when to reveal it would incur danger, which is based on a Koranic passage. The author provides not only a legal and religious analysis of taqiyyah,…
"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…
Taking natural disaster as the political and legal norm is uncommon. Taking a person who has become unstable and irrational during a disaster as the starting point for legal analysis is equally uncommon. Nonetheless, in Law in Crisis Ruth Miller makes the unsettling case that the law demands an ecstatic subject and that natural…
David S. Powers, Ph.D. 1979
David Powers analyzes the application of Islamic law through six cases which took place during the period 1300 to 1500 in the Maghrib. The source for these disputes are fatwas issued by the muftis, which Powers uses to situate each case in its historical context and to interpret the principles of law. He…
Translation by Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Ph.D. 1985
This visual tour of every one of Le Corbusier's buildings across the world represents the most comprehensive photographic archive of the architect's work. In 2010, photographer Cemal Emden set out to document every building designed by the master architect Le Corbusier. Traveling…
This collection brings together the work of eighteen scholars, all specialists in medieval sufism. Written in French, English and Arabic, the articles focus on Egypt of the Mamluk period (c. 1250-1517). With approaches varying from the historical to the tophographical, from the poetic to the theological, this volume offers a wealth of insight…
Edited by Petra Sijpesteijn, Ph.D. 2004.
This volume is a tribute to the work of legal and social historian and Arabist Rudolph Peters (University of Amsterdam). Presenting case studies from…
Legislation Authority addresses issues of law, state violence, and state authority within the Ottoman and Turkish context.
Contents
Historical context -- Legal context -- 1840 to 1850 : crime and the bureaucracy -- 1851 to 1858 : the disappearance of the victim -- 1859 to 1876 : crimes against the…
Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Ph.D. 1977
Daniel Stolz, Ph.D. 2013.
An observatory and a lighthouse form the nexus of this major new investigation of science, religion, and the state in late Ottoman Egypt. Astronomy, imperial bureaucrats, traditionally educated Muslim scholars, and reformist Islamic publications, such as The Lighthouse, are linked to examine the making of…
This volume argues that legislation on abortion, adultery, and rape has been central to the formation of the modern citizen. The author draws on rights literature, biopolitical scholarship, and a gender-studies perspective as a foundation for rethinking the sovereign relationship. In approaching the politicization of reproductive space from…
Abdelmajid Hannoum, Ph.D. 1996
Since the early 1990s, new migratory patterns have been emerging in the southern Mediterranean. Here, a large number of West Africans and young Moroccans, including minors, make daily attempts to cross to Europe. The Moroccan city of Tangier, because of its proximity to Spain, is one of the main gateways…
This pioneering study examines the process of reasoning in Islamic law. Some of the key questions addressed here include whether sacred law operates differently from secular law, why laws change or stay the same, and how different cultural and historical settings impact the development of legal rulings. In order to explore these questions, the…
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…
"In the United States and Europe, the word 'caliphate' has conjured historically romantic and increasingly pernicious associations. Yet the caliphate’s significance in Islamic history and Muslim culture remains poorly understood. This book explores the myriad meanings of the caliphate for Muslims around the…
Winner of the 2022 Haskins Medal awarded by The Medieval Academy of America.
The lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909–1171) survived in an unexpected place: the storage room, or geniza, of a synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by…
Yossef Rapoport, Ph.D. 2002.
About a millennium ago, in Cairo, an unknown author completed a large and richly illustrated book. In the course of thirty-five chapters, this book guided the reader on a journey from the outermost cosmos and planets to Earth and its lands, islands, features, and inhabitants. This treatise, known as
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…
Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Ph.D. 1977.
Edited by Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980
Co-edited by Michel Le Gall, Ph.D. 1986, and Kenneth J. Perkins, Ph.D. 1973
A wealth of historical writing dealing with the Maghrib (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) has been published during the roughly forty years since European colonial control ended in the region. This book provides a “state of the field” survey of this…
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…
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…
Studying Muslim fundamentalisms, this book compares key movements, examining their commonalities, differences, and intricate relations, as well as their achievements and failures. Muslim fundamentalisms have the sympathy of approximately half of the Muslim population in the world. Yet, they are divided among themselves and are in a constant…
Honorable mention, Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies (Association for the Study of Nationalities)
In Making Uzbekistan, Adeeb Khalid chronicles the tumultuous history of Central Asia in the age of the Russian revolution. Traumatic upheavals—war, economic collapse, famine—transformed…
Edited by Ami Ayalon, Ph.D. 1980
Focusing on Near Eastern history in Mamluk and Ottoman times, this book, dedicated to Michael Winter, stresses elements of variety and continuity in the history of the Near East, an area of study which has traditionally attracted little attention from Islamists.
Ranging over the period from…
Edited by Adam A. Sabra, Ph.D. 1998.
Contents
Al-Kawkab al-durrī fī manāqib al-ustādh al-Bakrī / taʼlīf Muḥammad Abū al-Surūr al-Ṣiddīqī al-Bakrī al-Shāfiʻī -- Kitāb Qalāʼid al-minan wa-farāʼid al-zaman / taʼlīf Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Zayn al-ʻĀbidīn -- Kitāb Nismat al-nafaḥāt al-miskīyah fī dhikr al-baʻḍ…
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…