Fred McGraw Donner, B.A. 1968, Ph.D. 1975.
How and why did Muslims first come to write their own history? The author argues in this work that the Islamic historical tradition arose not out of "idle curiosity," or through imitation of antique models, but as a response to a variety of challenges facing the…
Winner of the 2013 Reuven Chaikin Prize, University of Haifa
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013
Nasser's Gamble draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and…
Yaron, Ayalon, Ph.D. 2009.
This book explores the history of natural disasters in the Ottoman Empire and the responses to them on the state, communal, and individual levels. Yaron Ayalon argues that religious boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims were far less significant in Ottoman society than commonly believed. Furthermore,…
Farouk A. Dablan, Ph.D. 1979
Aḥmad Ṭāhir Ḥasanayn, Ph.D. 1977.
Although Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi patriots, their community—which had existed in Iraq for more than 2,500 years—was displaced following the establishment of the state of Israel. New Babylonians chronicles the lives of these Jews, their urban Arab culture, and their hopes for a democratic nation-state. It studies their ideas…
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 selection of articles addressing those fundamental questions that define the agenda for the Jewish state in the 21st century. Among the authors one can find key figures in the Israeli public dialogue, such as Ruth Gavison, Yoram Hazony, Michael Oren, Amnom Rubinstein, and Natan Sharansky.
The first…
Translated from the German by Eric Ormsby, Ph.D. 1981
In Rethinking Islam, Katajun Amirpur argues that the West’s impression of Islam as a backward-looking faith, resistant to post-Enlightenment thinking, is misleading and—due to its effects on political discourse—damaging. Introducing readers to key thinkers and activists…
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…
This volume is a collection of twenty-three articles dedicated to one of the most distinguished philologists and linguists in Near Eastern Studies and one of the most prolific teachers and translators of Near Eastern languages and literatures, Wheeler McIntosh Thackston, Jr. (Harvard University), on the occasion of…
Lewis B. Ware, Ph.D. 1973.