High rates of divorce, often taken to be a modern and western phenomenon, were also typical of medieval Islamic societies. By pitting these high rates of divorce against the Islamic ideal of marriage,Yossef Rapoport radically challenges usual assumptions about the legal inferiority of Muslim women and their economic dependence on men. He argues…
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together all of the poems from Eric Ormsby’s five previous collections alongside a healthy selection of previously unpublished poems, this volume collects the work of one of the most important poets writing today in Canada — or elsewhere.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,…
Imarets have long been recognized as one signature institution of the Ottoman Empire. These public kitchens were typically located in mosque complexes or multi-structured complexes, which included some or all of the following buildings: mosque, medrese, mekteb, tomb, caravansaray, sufi tekke (or tekye) , hospital,…
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…
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…
Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World is a collection of articles authored by the students and colleagues of Norman Itzkowitz. The contributors include Engin Deniz Akarli, Karl K. Barbir, Cornell H. Fleischer, Jane Hathaway, Cemal Kafadar, Metin Kunt, Rudi Paul Lindner, Heath W. Lowry, Scott Redford, Vamik D. Volkan, and…
Leor Halevi, B.A. 1994
Winner of MESA’s 2007 Albert Hourani Award
Winner of the American Academy of Religion 2008 Award for Excellence in the category of Analytical-Descriptive studies
Winner of Phi Beta Kappa Society’s 2008 Ralph Waldo Emerson Award
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…
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…
Table of Contents
Map of the Ottoman Balkans ca. 1800
Frederick F. Anscombe, “Introduction”
Antonis Anastasopoulos, “Crisis and State Intervention in Late Eighteenth-Century Karaferye (mod. Veroia)”
Michael R. Hickok, “Homicide in Ottoman Bosnia”
Virginia H. Aksan, “Whose…
In the years leading up to World War I, the Great Powers of Europe jostled one another for control over Morocco, the last sovereign nation in North Africa. France beat out its rivals and added Morocco to its vast colonial holdings through the use of diplomatic intrigue and undisguised force. But greed and ambition alone do not explain the…
The first English translation of a novel by popular Turkish writer Nazlı Eray.
The myth of Orpheus has inspired revisions and retellings from writers and artists around the world—from poet Rainer Maria Rilke, to novelist Salman Rushdie, to filmmakers Jean Cocteau and Marcel Camus. In this version, celebrated Turkish author Nazlı Eray…
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…
This study presents a comprehensive, balanced and factually grounded narrative of the Turco-Greek Exchange of Populations as a historic event that has been the subject of much distortion in the historiographical traditions of nationalist lore in Greece and Turkey, as well as in scholarly publications of various sorts elsewhere over the span of…
As the world focuses on the conflict in Iraq, the most important political players in that country today are not the Sunni insurgents. Instead, they are Iraq’s Shi’I majority — part of the Middle East’s ninety million Shi’I Muslims who hold the key to the future of the region and the relations between Muslim and Western societies. So contends…
Edited by David S. Powers, Ph.D. 1979
Dispensing Justice is designed to serve as a sourcebook of Islamic legal practice and qadi court records from the rise of Islam to modern times, drawing upon court records and qadi judgments, in addition to literary sources. In the first chapter, we survey the state of the field,…
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 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…
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…
As in many areas of pre-modern history, the study of medieval Islamic history has been critically hindered by the lack of available evidence. Unlike many parallel fields, however, the shortage of contemporary documentary evidence for medieval Islam has less to do with the…
The Modern Middle East presents a wide-ranging and varied collection of translated sources covering the period from 1700 to the present. These sources include official and private archives, the…
Collection of articles previously published in Zaman newspaper.
This book examines the most important writings of a tenth century Islamic theologian and jurist who was one of the most original thinkers of his period. It argues that Qadi al-Nu'man's works constituted new and vital genres in Ismaili Shi'i literature, an emergence necessitated by the Fatimids' transition from revolutionary movement to…
This collection of ten essays focuses on the way major schools and individuals have narrated histories of the Middle East. The distinguished contributors explore the historiography of economic and intellectual history, nationalism, fundamentalism, colonialism, the media, slavery, and gender. In doing so, they engage with some of the most…
This is a comparative study dealing with the maritime practices which prevailed in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds around the Mediterranean from 7-10 centuries C.E. and consists of seven chapters. The first chapter describes the physical and legal significance of the ship, computation of capacity, and the importance of naming commercial…
Joseph Evan LeBaron, Ph.D. 1980
This study explores the relationship between economic development and political evolution during a decisive period of modern Sudanese history. During the first half of the 20th century, Mahdists competed with nationalists in shaping politics and…
Khaled Abou El Fadl's book represents the first systematic examination of the idea and treatment of political resistance and rebellion in Islamic law. Pre-modern jurists produced an extensive and sophisticated discourse on the legality of rebellion and the treatment due to rebels under Islamic law. The book examines the emergence and…
The Militant Ideology Atlas identifies the most influential thinkers in the Jihadi Movement and delineates the movement’s key ideological vulnerabilities. It situates the Jihadi Movement within the various Muslim constituencies that Jihadi leaders seek to influence and persuade. Each constituency is responsive to leaders in the broader…
Fatwas of condemnation : Islam and the limits of dissent examines a particularly rich and relatively untapped source for Islamic intellectual history, namely the genre of legal writing represented by the compendia of Islamic legal response to examine the limits of dissent in Islam. Not confining himself to a particular period of history, but…
Modern Algeria has been, in many ways, a harbinger of events and trends that have affected the Arab and Muslim worlds. The country's bold experiment in democratization broke down in the early 1990s, largely over the question of whether the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) should be permitted to come to power following its victories in local,…
Unearths the history of the Naqshbandiyya, one of the most widespread and enduring Sufi brotherhoods.
A Culture of Sufism opens a window to a new understanding of one of the most prolific and enduring of all the Sufi brotherhoods, the Naqshbandiyya, as it spread from its birthplace in central Asia to Iran, Anatolia,…
This book explores the life of el-Hajj Beshir Agha (ca. 1657-1746), the most powerful Chief Harem Eunuch in the history of the Ottoman Empire Enslaved in his native Ethiopia as a boy, then castrated in Egypt, el-Hajj Beshir became one of hundreds of East African eunuchs who inhabited the imperial palace's enormous…
Khaled Abou El Fadl is a classically-trained Islamic jurist, an American lawyer and law professor, and one of the most important Islamic thinkers today. In this updated and expanded edition of The Search for Beauty in Islam, Abou El Fadl offers eye-opening and enlightening insights into the contemporary realities of the current state of Islam…
Edited by Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Ph.D. 1985
The girl Hüsn and the boy Aşk are betrothed to each other as children. But Hüsn violates the custom of the tribe by falling in love with him, and Aşk must undergo the trials of a journey to Diyar-i-Kalp, the Land of the Heart, to prove himself worthy—a journey to realization of both his and…
Despite President George W. Bush's assurances that Islam is a peaceful religion and that all good Muslims hunger for democracy, confusion persists and far too many Westerners remain convinced that Muslims and terrorists are synonymous. In the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the recent bombings…
Translated from the Ottoman Turkish with an introduction and key by Victoria Rowe Holbrook, Ph.D. 1985
The girl Beauty and the boy Love are betrothed to each other as children. But Beauty violates the custom of the tribe by falling in love with him, and Love must undergo the trials of a journey to the Land of the Heart to prove…
Intermediate 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…
The Ottoman Empire was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state encompassing most of the modern Middle East, and for much of its 600-year existence it managed to rule effectively its diverse peoples. The essays of this work move beyond the traditional state- and community-centered approaches and instead seek to explore the unknown terrain that…
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…
Eric L. Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981
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…