A History of the Muslim World to 1750


Book Description

A History of the Muslim World to 1750 traces the development of Islamic civilization from the career of the Prophet Muhammad to the mid-eighteenth century. Encompassing a wide range of significant events within the period, its coverage includes the creation of the Dar al-Islam (the territory ruled by Muslims), the fragmentation of society into various religious and political groups including the Shi'ites and Sunnis, the series of catastrophes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that threatened to destroy the civilization, and the rise of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. Including the latest research from the last ten years, this second edition has been updated and expanded to cover the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Fully refreshed and containing over sixty images to highlight the key visual aspects, this book offers students a balanced coverage of the Muslim world from the Iberian Peninsula to South Asia, and detailed accounts of all cultures. The use of maps, primary sources, timelines, and a glossary further illuminates the fascinating yet complex world of the pre-modern Middle East. Covering art, architecture, religious institutions, theological beliefs, popular religious practice, political institutions, cuisine, and much more, A History of the Muslim World to 1750 is the perfect introduction for all students of the history of Islamic civilization and the Middle East.




A History of the Islamic World, 600-1800


Book Description

A History of the Islamic World, 600–1800 supplies a fresh and unique survey of the formation of the Islamic world and the key developments that characterize this broad region’s history from late antiquity up to the beginning of the modern era. Containing two chronological parts and fourteen chapters, this impressive overview explains how different tides in Islamic history washed ashore diverse sets of leadership groups, multiple practices of power and authority, and dynamic imperial and dynastic discourses in a theocratic age. A text that transcends many of today’s popular stereotypes of the premodern Islamic past, the volume takes a holistically and theoretically informed approach for understanding, interpreting, and teaching premodern history of Islamic West-Asia. Jo Van Steenbergen identifies the Asian connectedness of the sociocultural landscapes between the Nile in the southwest to the Bosporus in the northwest, and the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in the northeast to the Indus in the southeast. This abundantly illustrated book also offers maps and dynastic tables, enabling students to gain an informed understanding of this broad region of the world. This book is an essential text for undergraduate classes on Islamic History, Medieval and Early Modern History, Middle East Studies, and Religious History.




"The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450?750 "


Book Description

Unprecedented in its range - extending from Venice to the New World and from the Holy Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire - this collection probes the place that the Ottoman Turks occupied in the Western imaginaire, and the ways in which this occupation expressed itself in the visual arts. Individual essays in this volume examine specific images or groups of images, problematizing the 'truths' they present and analyzing the contexts that shape the presentation of Ottoman or Islamic subject matter in European art. The contributors trace the transmission of early modern images and representations across national boundaries and across centuries to show how, through processes of translation that often involved multiple stages, the figure of the Turk (and by extension that of the Muslim) underwent a multiplicity of interpretations that reflect and reveal Western needs, anxieties and agendas. The essays reveal how anachronisms and inaccuracies mingled with careful detail to produce a "Turk," a figure which became a presence to reckon with in painting, sculpture, tapestry and printmaking.




Professional Mobility in Islamic Societies (700-1750)


Book Description

The present edited volume offers a collection of new concepts and approaches to the study of mobility in pre-modern Islamic societies. It includes nine remarkable case studies from different parts of the Islamic world that examine the professional mobility within the literati and, especially, the social-cum-cultural group of Muslim scholars (ʿulamāʾ) between the eighth and the eighteenth centuries. Based on individual case studies and quantitative mining of biographical dictionaries and other primary sources from Islamic Iberia, North and West Africa, Umayyad Damascus and the Hejaz, Abbasid Baghdad, Ayyubid and Mamluk Syria and Egypt, various parts of the Seljuq Empire, and Hotakid Iran, this edited volume presents professional mobility as a defining characteristic of pre-modern Islamic societies. Contributors Mehmetcan Akpinar, Amal Belkamel, Mehdi Berriah, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Adday Hernández López, Konrad Hirschler, Mohamad El-Merheb, Marta G. Novo, M. A. H. Parsa, M. Syifa A. Widigdo.




Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment


Book Description

Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.




Court Cultures in the Muslim World


Book Description

Courts and the complex phenomenon of the courtly society have received intensified interest in academic research over recent decades, however, the field of Islamic court culture has so far been overlooked. This book provides a comparative perspective on the history of courtly culture in Muslim societies from the earliest times to the nineteenth century, and presents an extensive collection of images of courtly life and architecture within the Muslim realm. The thematic methodology employed by the contributors underlines their interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to issues of politics and patronage from across the Islamic world stretching from Cordoba to India. Themes range from the religious legitimacy of Muslim rulers, terminologies for court culture in Oriental languages, Muslim concepts of space for royal representation, accessibility of rulers, the role of royal patronage for Muslim scholars and artists to the growing influence of European courts as role models from the eighteenth century onwards. Discussing specific terminologies for courts in Oriental languages and explaining them to the non specialist, chapters describe the specific features of Muslim courts and point towards future research areas. As such, it fills this important gap in the existing literature in the areas of Islamic history, religion, and Islam in particular.




A History of the Muslim World to 1405


Book Description

Muslims first appeared in the early seventh century as members of a persecuted religious movement in a sun-baked town in Arabia. Within a century, their descendants were ruling a vast territory that extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River valley in modern Pakistan. This region became the arena for a new cultural experiment in which Muslim scholars and creative artists synthesized and reworked the legacy of Rome, Greece, Iran, and India into a new civilization. A History of the Muslim World to 1405 traces the development of this civilization from the career of the Prophet Muhammad to the death of the Mongol emperor Timur Lang. Coverage includes the unification of the Dar a1-Islam (the territory ruled by Muslims), the fragmentation into various religious and political groups including the Shi'ite and Sunni, and the series of catastrophes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that threatened to destroy the civilization. Features: Balanced coverage of the Muslim world encompassing the region from the Iberian Peninsula to South Asia. Detailed accounts of all cultures including major Shi'ite groups and the Sunni community. Primary sources. Numerous maps and photographs featuring a special four-color art insert. Glossary, charts, and timelines.




Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750


Book Description

Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 engage with the idea that “Sunnism” itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres—ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents—developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of ‘tradition’, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire. Contributors: Helen Pfeifer; Nabil al-Tikriti; Derin Terzioğlu; Tijana Krstić; Nir Shafir; Guy Burak; Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu; Grigor Boykov; H. Evren Sünnetçioğlu; Ünver Rüstem; Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer; Vefa Erginbaş; Selim Güngörürler.




Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean


Book Description

Before the age of Industrial Revolution, the great Asian civilisations constituted areas not only of high culture but also of advanced economic development.




The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals


Book Description

Between 1453 and 1526 Muslims founded three major states in the Mediterranean, Iran and South Asia: respectively the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. By the early seventeenth century their descendants controlled territories that encompassed much of the Muslim world, stretching from the Balkans and North Africa to the Bay of Bengal and including a combined population of between 130 and 160 million people. This book is the first comparative study of the politics, religion, and culture of these three empires between 1300 and 1923. At the heart of the analysis is Islam, and how it impacted on the political and military structures, the economy, language, literature and religious traditions of these great empires. This original and sophisticated study provides an antidote to the modern view of Muslim societies by illustrating the complexity, humanity and vitality of these empires, empires that cannot be reduced simply to religious doctrine.