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…
Eric L. Ormsby, PhD 1981
Bringing together all of the poems from Eric Ormsby’s five previous collections alongside a healthy selection of previously unpublished poems, this volume collects the work of one of the most important poets writing today in Canada — or elsewhere. Beautifully crafted, both complex and delicate, intelligent,…
Ehud R. Toledano, Ph.D. 1979
This groundbreaking book reconceptualizes slavery through the voices of enslaved persons themselves, voices that have remained silent in the narratives of conventional history. Focusing in particular on the Islamic Middle East from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, Ehud R. Toledano…
Since the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, the public has grappled with the relationship between Islamic education and radical Islam. Media reports tend to paint madrasas — religious schools dedicated to Islamic learning — as medieval institutions opposed to all that is Western and as breeding grounds for terrorists. Others have claimed that…
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…
Explore the life and accomplishments of the Mongol conqueror who established the largest empire in history. Age Range: 11 to 17 years.
“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…
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…
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…
A provocative retelling of the story of political corruption in the modern period.
In this provocative retelling of the story of political corruption in the modern period, Ruth A. Miller argues that narratives of political corruption rely upon an explicitly pornographic rhetoric and have been instrumental in carving out…
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,…
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…
Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire explores different genealogies of sexuality and questions some of the theoretical emphases and epistemic assumptions affecting current histories of sexuality. Concerned with the dynamic interplay between cultural constructions of gender and sexuality, the…
This book contains the papers that were presented at the Isfahan International Congress on Islamic Arts and Crafts. The papers are on various subjects including Islamic architecture, the art of calligraphy, arts and cultural dialogue, Islamic paintings and miniature, the influence of Islamic arts and crafts on…
In this seminal study, Jane Hathaway presents a wide-ranging reassessment of the effects of Ottoman rule on the Arab Lands of Egypt, Greater Syria, Iraq and Yemen - the first of its kind in over forty years.
Challenging outmoded perceptions of this period as a demoralizing prelude to the rise of Arab nationalism and Arab nation…
Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action Best Book Award 2010
Muslim beliefs have inspired charitable giving for over fourteen centuries, yet Islamic history has rarely been examined from this perspective. In Charity in Islamic Societies, Amy Singer explains the basic…
Descriptions of dreams abound in the literatures of the Near East and North Africa. The Prophet Muhammad endowed them with a theological dimension, saying that after him “true dreams” would be the only channel for prophecy. Dreams were often used to support conflicting theological and political arguments, and the local chronicles contain many…
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…
The Iranian revolution of 1979 overhauled not only the foundations of Iranian society, religion and politics, but also our understanding of the role of religion in modern government. Here Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi takes us on an enlightening journey, showing that the revolution unintentionally opened up the public sphere to competing…
Ashraf `Ali Thanawi (1863-1943) was one of the most prominent religious scholars in Islamic history. Author of over a thousand books on different aspects of Islam, his work sought to defend the Islamic scholarly tradition and to articulate its authority in an age of momentous religious and political change. In this authoritative biography,…
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-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.
David S. Powers, Ph.D. 1979
The Islamic claim to supersede Judaism and Christianity is embodied in the theological assertion that the office of prophecy is hereditary but that the line of descent ends with Muhammad, who is the seal, or last, of the prophets.
While Muhammad had no natural sons who reached the age of maturity,…
Yusuf al-Qaradawi is one of the most influential Islamic scholars living in the Middle East today. Though classically trained in Islamic studies at al-Azhar, his religious and political thought has been heavily influenced by modernity. Using the ideas of prominent philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, as well as of…
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…
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…
Special issue of Radical History Review (No. 105, Fall 2009).
Contents
Editors' Introduction -- Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi; Mansour Bonakdarian; Nasrin Rahimieh; Ahmad Sadri; Ervand Abrahamian
Features
The Crowd in the Iranian Revolution -- Ervand Abrahamian
…The design principles necessary to create functional and dynamic contemporary mosques can be hard to grasp for those unfamiliar with the Islamic faith. Design Criteria for Mosques and Islamic Centers provides an easy-to-use and practical set of guidelines for mosque design, illustrated with 300 line drawings.
Case studies of…
The multi-volume chronicle of the Cairo scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1753-1825), known in Arabic as caja-’ib al-atha-r fi- al-tara-jim wa-al-akhba-r, which translates roughly as The Most Wondrous Achievements: Biographies and Reports of Events, is the single most important primary source for the history of Egypt over nearly four…
This second volume in the series Minnesota Studies in Early Modern History brings together eleven original studies in the history of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. One of world history’s largest, longest-lived, and most influential empires, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Balkans, Anatolia, and most of the Middle East throughout…
Co-authored by Norman Itzkowitz, Ph.D. 1959.
Explore the life of Vlad "the Impaler" Dracula, the fifteenth-century Romanian prince who served as a model for Bram Stoker's infamous vampire. Age Range: 11 to 17 years.
This anthology of key primary texts provides an unmatched introduction to Islamist political thought from the early twentieth century to the present, and serves as an invaluable guide through the storm of polemic, fear, and confusion that swirls around Islamism today. Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman gather a broad selection of texts from…
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…
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-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…
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…
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.
…
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…
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…
Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Ph.D. 1977.
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…
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…