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…
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…
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…
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…
"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…
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,…
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,…
Translated with notes by Asad Q. Ahmed, Ph.D. 2007.
This book offers for the first time a complete scholarly translation, commentary, and glossary in a modern European language of the logic section of Ibn Sina's (d. 1037 CE) very important compendium al-Najat (The Deliverance). The original, written in Arabic, is the product…
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…
İ. Metin Kunt, Ph.D. 1970
In recent decades the history of premodern states and empires has undergone major revision. At the heart of this process stood the court, encompassing the household as well as government institutions. This volume for…
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,…
This volume contains case studies that examine how medieval cultures (western European, Arab/Islamic and Jewish) adopted ideas from the past and from each other in fields such as philosophy, literature, religion, and medicine.
In this volume the McGill University Research Group on Transmission, Translation, and Transformation in…
"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…
"Politik und Religion ist wieder Thema wissenschaftlicher Agenda. Mit dem Zuwachs an Diskursen geht auch deren Ausdifferenzierung einher. Ein Teilbereich dieser Auseinandersetzungen beinhaltet die Analyse des Verhältnisses von Demokratie und Religion. Dieser Sammelband untersucht diesbezüglich drei Loslösungsprozesse und verfolgt zum einen die…
This volume presents articles on the topics of biography and autobiography in a range of sources produced within Iran and the larger Persianate world. In the context of a growing scholarly literature devoted to these subjects, especially in the Arabic literary tradition, the volume presents studies that explore still neglected areas, including…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Ph.D. 1977.
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;…