The Islamic Scholarly Tradition


Book Description

Bringing together the expansive scholarly expertise of former students of Professor Michael Allan Cook, this volume contains highly original articles in Islamic history, law, and thought. The contributions range from studies in the pre-Islamic calendar, to the "blood-money group" in Islamic law, to transformations in Arabic logic.




Islamic Historiography


Book Description

How did Muslims of the classical Islamic period understand their past? What value did they attach to history? How did they write history? How did historiography fare relative to other kinds of Arabic literature? These and other questions are answered in Chase F. Robinson's Islamic Historiography, an introduction to the principal genres, issues, and problems of Islamic historical writing in Arabic, that stresses the social and political functions of historical writing in the Islamic world. Beginning with the origins of the tradition in the eighth and ninth centuries and covering its development until the beginning of the sixteenth century, this is an authoritative and yet accessible guide through a complex and forbidding field, which is intended for readers with little or no background in Islamic history or Arabic.




Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography


Book Description

The history of the early Abbasid Caliphate has long been studied as a factual or interpretive synthesis of various accounts preserved in the medieval Islamic chronicles. Tayeb El-Hibri s book breaks with the traditional approach, applying a literary-critical reading to examine the lives of the caliphs. By focusing on the reigns of Harun al-Rashid and his successors, the study demonstrates how the various historical accounts were not in fact intended as faithful portraits of the past, but as allusive devices used to shed light on controversial religious, political and social issues of the period. The analysis also reveals how the exercise of decoding Islamic historigraphy, through an investigation of the narrative strategies and thematic motifs used in the chronicles, can uncover new layers of meaning and even identify the early narrators. This is an important book which represents a landmark in the field of early Islamic historiography.




Studies in Islamic History and Institutions


Book Description

Goitein s selection of studies dealing with Islamic institutions and social history offers a general introduction to Islamic civilization by one who lived all his life with Islam. His fruit of specialized research gives a rounded view of important aspects of Islamic civilization and provides the student with an opportunity to acquaint himself not only with the results of research, but also with the methods by which they were obtained. With a new foreword by Norman A. Stillman




Conversion to Islam


Book Description

Why did non-Muslims convert to Islam during Muhammad's life and under his immediate successors? How did Muslim historians portray these conversions? Why did their portrayals differ significantly? To what extent were their portrayals influenced by their time of writing, religious inclinations, and political affiliations? These are the fundamental questions that drive this study. Relying on numerous works, including primary sources from over a hundred classical Muslim historians, Conversion to Islam is the first scholarly study to detect, trace, and analyze conversion themes in early Muslim historiography, emphasizing how classical Muslims remembered conversion, and how they valued and evaluated aspects of it. Ayman S. Ibrahim examines numerous early Muslim sources and wrestles with critical observations regarding the sources' reliability and unearths the hidden link between historical narratives and historians' religious sympathies and political agendas. This study leads readers through a complex body of literature, provides insights regarding historical context, and creates a vivid picture of conversion to Islam as early Muslim historians sought to depict it.




Studies in Early Islamic History


Book Description

Collection of all of Martin Hinds' (1941-1988) full-length articles which appeared in journals as well as one of his articles for the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition. Most of the articles have to do with the early period of Islamic history, while two others deal with the early ʿAbbāsid caliphate. The volume is especially important in light of the fact that all of the articles were revised by the editors based on Hinds' own corrected copies: 1. Kūfan Political Alignments and Their Background in the Mid-Seventh Century A.D 2. The Murder of the Caliph 'Uthmān 3. The Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement 4 . The Banners and Battle Cries of the Arabs at Ṣiffīn (A.D. 657) 5. Sayf ibn 'Umar's Sources on Arabia 6. A Letter from the Governor of Egypt Concerning Egyptian-Nubian Relations in 141/758 7. Maghāzī and Sīra in Early Islamic Scholarship 8. The First Arab Conquests in Fārs 9. Miḥna "Hinds' articles are essential reading for any specialist in early Islamic history" (Michael Bates)




Islamic History


Book Description

This book will be immensely helpful to those who wish to orient themselves to what has become a very large body of literature on medieval Islamic history. Combining a bibliographic study with an inquiry into method, it opens with a survey of the principal reference tools available to historians of Islam and a systematic review of the sources they will confront. Problems of method are then examined in a series of chapters, each exploring a broad topic in the social and political history of the Middle East and North Africa between A.D. 600 and 1500. The topics selected represent a cross-section of Islamic historical studies, and range from the struggles for power within the early Islamic community to the life of the peasantry. Each chapter pursues four questions. What concrete research problems are likely to be most challenging and productive? What resources do we possess for dealing with these problems? What strategies can we devise to exploit our resources most effectively? What is the current state of the scholarly literature for the topic under study?




Studies in Islamic Historiography


Book Description

This book offers students and scholars an introduction to and insight into the wealth of historiographies produced in various Muslim milieus. Four articles deal with the classical period: archaeology and history in early Islamic Amman; an analysis of sources dealing with Muwaḥḥid North Africa; al-Maqrizī’s prosopographical production; the rise of early Ottoman historiography. Three examine sacred history as historiography: in 10th century Fatimid Egypt; in the 16th century Indian Chishtī Sufi milieu; and in the Sino-Muslim Confucian tradition in Qing China. The final two articles provide fresh approaches to historiography by respectively looking into the sijils of Ottoman Cairo as historical sources and by highlighting the regional approach to the writing of the history of the Indian Ocean. Contributors: Frédéric Bauden, Heather J. Empey, Derryl MacLean, Sami G. Massoud, Murat Cem Mengüç, Reem Meshal, Hyondo Park, Patricia Risso, Shafique N. Virani and Michael Wood.




Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History


Book Description

Tayeb El-Hibri draws on medieval Islamic chronicles to remap the origins of Islamic political and religious orthodoxy, offering an insightful critique of both early and contemporary Islam and the concerns of legitimacy shadowing various rulers. He also highlights the Islamic reinterpretation of biblical traditions.




Islam and World History


Book Description

Published in 1974, Marshall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam was a watershed moment in the study of Islam. By locating the history of Islamic societies in a global perspective, Hodgson challenged the orientalist paradigms that had stunted the development of Islamic studies and provided an alternative approach to world history. Edited by Edmund Burke III and Robert Mankin, Islam and World History explores the complexity of Hodgson’s thought, the daring of his ideas, and the global context of his world historical insights into, among other themes, Islam and world history, gender in Islam, and the problem of Muslim universality. In our post-9/11 world, Hodgson’s historical vision and moral engagement have never been more relevant. A towering achievement, Islam and World History will prove to be the definitive statement on Hodgson’s relevance in the twenty-first century and will introduce his influential work to a new generation of readers.