One of the most intriguing minority groups in the Middle East is now a thousand years old. It emerged in the city of Cairo, spread to what is today Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and subsequently became known by outsiders as Druze (in Arabic, Durooz, meaning Druzes). Druzes have played a major role in the history of the Middle East and often been misunderstood by neighbors and outsiders because of their esoteric religious doctrine, the secretive nature that such a doctrine has instilled in them, and the variety of perspectives or divisions prevalent among members of the community. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Druzes covers their history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Druzes.

The first encounters between the Islamic world and Tibet took place in the course of the expansion of the Abbasid Empire in the eighth century. Military and political contacts went along with an increasing interest in the other side. Cultural exchanges and the transmission of knowledge were facilitated by a trading network, with musk constituting one of the main trading goods from the Himalayas, largely through India. From the thirteenth century onwards the spread of the Mongol Empire from the Western borders of Europe through Central Asia to China facilitated further exchanges. The significance of these interactions has been long ignored in scholarship. This volume represents a major contribution to the subject, bringing together new studies by an interdisciplinary group of international scholars. They explore for the first time the multi-layered contacts between the Islamic world, Central Asia and the Himalayas from the eighth century until the present day in a variety of fields, including geography, cartography, art history, medicine, history of science and education, literature, hagiography, archaeology, and anthropology.

This book provides researchers and students with an understanding of the basic legal tenets of the Islamic finance industry, studying the real economic effects of those tenets using the tools of the modern economic theory. Split into four parts, the book begins with an introduction to the history and a legal framework for Islamic banking, covering typical Islamic financial products such as Sukuk and Takaful and examining the structure of Islamic financial institutions. It then analyzes and discusses the Miller-Modigliani Theorem, which is of direct relevance to Islamic banks which are prohibited to charge interest and often have to rely of profit-loss sharing agreements. Part III of the book introduces the reader to modern mechanism design theory, paying particular attention to optimal contracting under hidden action and hidden information, and final part of the book applies the tools of economic theory to understand performance of Islamic financial institutions such as Islamic banks and Takaful operators. Islamic Finance in Light of Modern Economic Theory brings together all the necessary technical tools for analyzing the economic effects of Islamic frameworks and can be used as an advanced textbook for graduate students who wish to specialize in the area, as a reference for researchers and as a tool to help economists improve the design of Islamic financial institutions.

Originally published in 1964, this volume gathers together extracts from many of Arberry's best-known works and supplements them with a selection of previously unpublished translations. The material therefore presents a vivid picture of the richness and variety of Islamic civilization from its origins to the late twentieth century.

This work studies not only the philosophical and religious underpinnings of Sharia law, but case material and legal statistics to analyse its application in the area of personal status law in the Sudan. It stresses marriage, divorce, child custody, women's status and social movements for change.

Originally published in 1962, this book presents important studies on the history, literature and religion of the Islamic peoples as well as an appraisal of contemporary intellectual currents in the Middle East. Part I interprets the basic political and cultural development in medieval Islam, set in the context of its growth from a religious movement in the Arabian peninsula to an imperial structure extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of China. Part II includes studies of Islamic institutions, philosophy and religion. The close relationship of Islam to Western traditions through the Biblical and Greek heritages is emphasized and the factors which have moulded unique and distinctive institutions are considered.

A lively debate is currently being conducted in the social sciences around the concepts of "tribe", "segmentary societies" and "Islam in society". This wide-ranging collection by thirteen distinguished anthropologists contributes to the debate by examining various segmentary Islamic tribal societies from Morocco to Pakistan.

Mawlana Mawdudi was one of the most influential and important Islamic thinkers of the modern world, whose brand of political Islam has won widespread acceptance in South and South East Asia as well as the Middle East. He was not only an Islamic scholar, but also a journalist and political activist who founded the Jama at-i-Islami, which has subsequently influenced the development of many Islamic movements and parties throughout the Muslim world.

This book is the first to critically engage and assess his career and legacy within the wider context of political Islam. It includes coverage of his early life and influences, and examines his considerable influence in the contemporary Islamic world. The issues that were a concern for Mawdudi and continue to have resonance for our world today include such questions as the role of women in Islam, the possibilities for democracy in an Islamic state, the importance of jihad, and the moral and religious responsibility of the individual. Whilst focus is on Mawdudi s life and writings, this is placed within the wider context of topical, often contentious, Islamic thought.

Providing an up-to-date and detailed critical study of Mawlana Mawdudi and many issues surrounding political Islam both in his time and today, this book will be an important text for scholars of Islamic Studies, Political Science and Philosophy.

In Reading Islam Fabio Vicini offers a journey within the intimate relations, reading practices, and forms of intellectual engagement that regulate Muslim life in two enclosed religious communities in Istanbul. Combining anthropological observation with textual and genealogical analysis, he illustrates how the modes of thought and social engagement promoted by these two communities are the outcome of complex intellectual entanglements with modern discourses about science, education, the self, and Muslims' place and responsibility in society. In this way, Reading Islam sheds light on the formation of new generations of faithful and socially active Muslims over the last thirty years and on their impact on the turn of Turkey from an assertive secularist Republic to an Islamic-oriented form of governance.

A clear, intelligently-written guide to a crucial period of Spanish history Written in the same tradition as John Julius Norwich's engrossing accounts of Venice and Byzantium, Richard Fletcher's Moorish Spain entertains even as it enlightens. He tells the story of a vital period in Spanish history which transformed the culture and society, not only of Spain, but of the rest of Europe as well. Moorish influence transformed the architecture, art, literature and learning and Fletcher combines this analysis with a crisp account of the wars, politics and sociological changes of the time.

Within the complex religious landscape of modern India, the community of Sindh stands out as a powerful example of interfaith relations. This Hindu community moved to India and practiced Sufism following Sindh's inclusion to Pakistan in the 1947 partition. Drawing on a close analysis of literature and poetry, interviews with key informants, and a reading of historic rituals and architectures, Michel Boivin demonstrates that this active religious minority has managed to retain its unique Hindu-Sufi identity amidst the rigidification of official religions in both India and Pakistan. Of particular significance, Boivin argues, was the creation of sacred spaces called darbars. These shrines include a religious building where the Hindu Sindhis worship Sufi saints, chant Sufi poetry and perform Sufi rituals. In looking at this vibrant community as a trans-religious culture capable of navigating the challenges of the modern nation state, this book is an important contribution to understanding the Muslim-Hindu encounter in India.

One of the most common religious practices among medieval Eastern Christian communities was their devotion to venerating crosses and crucifixes. Yet many of these communities existed in predominantly Islamic contexts, where the practice was subject to much criticism and often resulted in accusations of idolatry. How did Christians respond to these allegations? Why did they advocate the preservation of a practice that was often met with confusion or even contempt? To shed light onto these questions, Charles Tieszen looks at every known apologetic or polemical text written between the eighth and fourteenth centuries to include a relevant discussion. With sources taken from across the Mediterranean basin, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, the result is the first in-depth look at a key theological debate which lay at the heart of these communities' religious identities. By considering the perspectives of both Muslim and Christian authors, Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World also raises important questions concerning cross-cultural debate and exchange, and the development of Christianity and Islam in the medieval period. This is an important book that will shine much needed light onto Christian-Muslim relations, the nature of inter-faith debates and the wider issues facing the communities living across the Middle East during the medieval period.

'The book maintains a clear objectivity about contentious topics like fundamentalism and science and women in Islam...as a desk and shelf reference work, it holds its own very well in a crowded field' - Reference Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Islamic Civilisation and Religion provides scholarly coverage of the religion, culture and history of the Islamic world, at a time when that world is undergoing considerable change and is a focus of international study and debate.

The non-Muslim world's perceptions of Islam have often tended to be dominated by unrepresentative radical extremist movements and media interpretations of events involving such movements, to the extent that many people are unaware of the depth and variety of Islamic thought. At the same time, many who have had a formal training in Islamic studies have tended to concentrate on the traditional, to the exclusion of the contemporary. The Encyclopedia of Islamic Civilisation and Religion covers the full range of Islamic thought, in historical depth, but it also provides substantial coverage of contemporary trends across the Muslim world.

With well over a thousand entries on Islamic theology, history, arts, science, law and institutions, and coverage of Islam in individual countries and cities around the world, the Encyclopedia of Islamic Civilisation and Religion provides an extremely rich resource for students and researchers in religious studies and Middle Eastern studies.

Entries are cross-referenced and bibliographies are provided. There is a full index. Routledge published The Qura'n: An Encyclopedia in 2005, an excellent companion to the Encyclopedia of Islamic Civilisation and Religion.

Cutting-edge research in the study of Islamic scholarship and its impact on the religious, political, economic and cultural history of Africa; bridges the "europhone"/"non-europhone" knowledge divides to significantly advance decolonial thinking, and extend the frontiers of social science research in Africa. The study of Islamic erudition in Africa is growing rapidly, transforming not just Islamic studies, but also African Studies. This interdisciplinary volume from leading international scholars fills a lacuna in presenting not only the history and spread of Islamic scholarship in Africa, but its current state and future concerns. Challenging the notion that Muslim societies in black Africa were essentially oral prior to the European colonial conquest at the turn of the 20th century, and countering the largely Western division of sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, the authors take an inclusive approach to advance our knowledge of the contribution of people of African descent to the life of Mecca. This book explores in depth the intellectual and spiritual exchanges between populations in the Maghreb, the Sahara and West Africa. A key theme is Islamic learning. The authors examine the madrasa as asite of knowledge and learning, the relationship between "diasporas" and Islamic education systems, female learning circles, and the use of ICT. Diversifying the study of Islamic erudition, the contributors look at the interactions between textuality and orality, female learning circles, the vernacular study of poetry and cosmological texts, and the role of Ajami - the use of Arabic script to transcribe 80 African languages. Africa: Cerdis

For fifteen years, Lebanon's disparate confessional groups waged a bloody and protracted civil war. Still today, power-sharing between Sunni, Shi'i, Christian and Druze groups is a precarious balance, greatly affected by and in turn affecting events across the Middle East. But even during times of conflict, Lebanon's communities have managed a modicum of coexistence: agreeing on the importance of maintaining the Lebanese state and sharing the fear of being the player left standing in a macabre game of musical chairs. Tracing the origins of the civil war, Theodor Hanf shows that it was primarily a surrogate war over Palestine which escalated into a conflict between the diverse Lebanese communities. Hanf's central theme is the problem of conflict and conflict regulation between these groups, a theme which continues to have resonance over two decades since the end of the civil war. This highly influential book - now available in a paperback edition - delves into vital issues, such as how conflicts were peacefully regulated before the war, and how the country came to be a battlefield for proxy wars and analyses the prospects for permanent coexistence.

Political leaders of the 1930s may be accused of blindness to danger in their failed attempts to appease totalitarian aggression, but no one doubts they believed they were doing so to preserve their way of life. In contrast, Raphael Israeli suggests that twenty-first century appeasement of Islamists, wherever it occurs, is different. Appeasement in the advanced modern states of this century--in Europe, Australia, Canada, and even in parts of Asia--is characterized by what amounts to a self-inflicted humiliation, in misguided efforts to slow the advance of a rising Islamist tide. Such appeasement surrenders core aspects of sovereignty, turning non-Muslim populations into second- and third-class citizens in their own countries.

Disturbing warning signs first emerged in Europe, but were either not noticed or denied. They extended to the periphery of the Muslim world, but their development in Western countries were unnoticed or denied, until they hit also the peripheral areas of the Muslim world. Canada and Australia, and to some extent the countries of Asia, fell into a syndrome of denial, which persisted until they were forced to listen, often at a price in human lives and carnage. In Europe, the core of the Muslim presence developed in countries like Britain, France and Germany, which lacked law-enforcement against terrorists because the executive and judiciary emphasized human rights and apparent safety over defensive measures to protect their citizens and way of life.

Both the United States and Great Britain needed a traumatic jolt before they moved to act. In the United States, it would be the watershed event of September 11, 2001; in London, the July 7, 2005 bombings. And there were events in other countries: in Spain, the March 2004 Madrid train bombings; in France, the violent riots of 2005; in Amsterdam, the van Gogh murder; in Asia, the Bali horror; and finally in Scandinavia, the Cartoon Affair. These jolts shattered the tranquility of populations who had believed in peaceful coexistence with Muslim immigrants and in the feasibility of their integration into national societies. This study fills a large void in the examination of the consequences of new migrations of Muslim populations into advanced and modern societies throughout the world.

Featuring Immanuel Wallerstein, Joseph Massad, Marnia Lazreg, and other well-known and emerging new authors, this book seeks a more accurate understanding of Islam and Islamic societies role and relations to global cultural and economic realities. The book confronts a trend today of analyzing Islam as a cultural system that stands outside of, and even predates, modernity. The authors see this trend as part of a racist discourse unaware of the realities of contemporary Islam. Islamic societies today are products of the world capitalist system and cannot be understood as being separate from its forces. The authors offer a more carefully constructed and richer portrait of Islamic societies today while forcefully challenging the belief that Islam is not part of, nor much affected by, the modern world-system.

In recent years, interest in Sufism a " often regarded as the mystical dimension of Islam a " has blossomed. Taught in European and American universities for many years, Sufism is an increasingly popular area of research in disciplines such as Islamic studies, comparative religion, area studies, anthropology, history, and politics.

In this new Routledge Major Work, the editor, a leading scholar in the field, has gathered in four volumes the canonical and the very best cutting-edge literature on Sufism to create an indispensable reference resource. The collection focuses on: origins and development; hermeneutics and doctrines; ritual, authority, and word; and modern Sufism.

This volume presents a selection of the key studies in which leading scholars since the beginning of the 20th century attempt to explain the phenomenally rapid expansion of the early Islamic state during the 7th century CE. The articles debate the causes for the conquest movement or expansion, the reasons for its success, the nature of the movement itself, the impact the expansion had on the countries affected by it, and the complex questions surrounding the sources on which historians have constructed their views of the expansion, and the reliability (or lack of it) of those sources. No articles devoted to the actual conquest of a given locality are included-hundreds exist-but a fairly extensive bibliography lists many of the more important contributions in this genre. The editor's introduction addresses the phenomenon of the expansion and how scholars have approached and grappled with it.

This installment in the critically acclaimed Contemporary Debates series uses evidence-based documentation to provide a full and impartial examination of beliefs and claims made about Muslim individuals, families, and communities in the United States. Muslims in America: Examining the Facts provides an objective overview of the realities and experiences of Muslims in the United States, both historically and in the present day, and of their relationship with their fellow Americans. It surveys the history of American Muslims' settlement and integration into the United States; explores the dominant social, political, cultural, and economic characteristics of American Muslim families and communities; and studies the ways in which their experiences and beliefs intersect with various notions of American national identity. In the process, the book critically examines the more dominant social and political narratives and claims surrounding American Muslims and their religion of Islam, including false or malicious claims about their attitudes toward terrorism and other important issues. Muslims in America: Examining the Facts thus gives readers a clear and accurate understanding of the actual lives, actions, and beliefs of Muslim people in the United States. Provides evidence-based information about American Muslims and their historical and current roles in American life and culture Surveys and explains ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity among the US Muslim population Offers an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of Islamophobia and its impact on American Muslims Objectively examines claims that Muslims are "un-American" or potential threats to American national security and society

The Savafid dynasty represented, in political, cultural and economic terms the pinnacle of Iran's power and influence in its early modern history. The evidence for this -the creation of a nation state, military expansion and success, economic dynamism and the exquisite art and architecture of the period - is well-known. What is less understood is the extent to which the Safavid success depended on - and was a product of - a class of elite originating from outside Iran: the slaves of Caucasian descent and the Armenian merchants of New Julfa in the city of Isfahan. It was these groups, bolstered by Shah Abbas the Great (1589 - 1629) and his successors, who became the pillars of Safavid political, economic and cultural life. This book describes how these elites, following their conversion to Islam, helped to form a new language of Savafid absolutism. It documents their contributions, financed by the Armenian trade in Safavid silk, to the transformation of Isfahan's urban, artistic and social landscape. The insights provided here into the multi-faceted roles of the Safavid royal household offer an original and comprehensive study of slave elites in imperial systems common to the political economies of the Malmuk, Ottoman and Safavid courts as well as contributing to the earlier Abbasid, Ghaznavid and Saljuq eras. As such this book makes an original and important contribution to our understanding of the history of the Islamic world from the 16th to the 18th centuries and will prove invaluable for students and scholars of the period.

Featuring Immanuel Wallerstein, Joseph Massad, Marnia Lazreg, and other well-known and emerging new authors, this book seeks a more accurate understanding of Islam and Islamic societies role and relations to global cultural and economic realities. The book confronts a trend today of analyzing Islam as a cultural system that stands outside of, and even predates, modernity. The authors see this trend as part of a racist discourse unaware of the realities of contemporary Islam. Islamic societies today are products of the world capitalist system and cannot be understood as being separate from its forces. The authors offer a more carefully constructed and richer portrait of Islamic societies today while forcefully challenging the belief that Islam is not part of, nor much affected by, the modern world-system.

In recent years, geographies of identities, including those of ethnicity, religion, 'race' and gender, have formed an increasing focus of contemporary human geography. The events of September 11th, 2001 particularly illustrated the ways in which identities can be transformed across time and space by both global and local events of a social, cultural, political and economic nature. Such transformations have also demonstrated the temporal and spatial construction of hate and fear, and of increasing incidences of 'Islamophobia' through the construction of Muslims as 'the Other'. As the social scientific study of religion continues to be marginalized within mainstream scholarship, there remains an important gap in the literature. This timely book addresses this gap by collecting a range of cutting-edge contributions from the social, cultural, political, historical and economic sub-disciplines of geography, together with writings from gender studies, cultural studies and leisure studies where research has revealed a strong spatial dimension to the construction, representation, contestation and reworking of Muslim identities. The contributors illustrate the ways in which such identities are constructed, represented, negotiated and contested in everyday life in a wide variety of international contexts, focusing upon issues connected with diaspora, gender and belonging.

Hikayat Abi l-Qasim al-Baghdadi (The Portrait of Abu l-Qasim al-Baghdadi) is an 11th-century Arabic work by Abu l-Mutahhar Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Azdi which tells the story of a Baghdadi party-crasher crashing a party in Isfahan. It is introduced by its author as a microcosm of Baghdad. This work, written in prose but containing numerous poems, is widely hailed among scholars as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, but The Portrait also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts, from "Trimalchio's Dinner Party" and Plato's Symposium to the works of Rabelais. It also paints a portrait of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, a figure familiar among scholars of the ancient Cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters, and saints from literatures around the Mediterranean and beyond. While some early scholars of The Portrait dismissed it as disgusting and obscene, this work, with its wealth of material-cultural, philosophical, spiritual, and literary treasures, is much more than just a "dirty book". Following an introduction, which offers new insights into the relationship of the work to both its Greek predecessors and to its European descendants, the volume presents a new, improved edition of the Arabic text, together with a richly annotated translation, that aims at being both scholarly and readable, reflecting the often racy style of the Arabic. This makes it not only useful to specialists and students of medieval Arabic literature, but also accessible to a much wider general readership of those interested in comparative literature or "world literature". There are extensive indexes of names, places, subjects, and rhymes.

Hassan Mahamdallie walks the streets of Detroit - the city America allowed to die, Ziauddin Sardar visits the 'first city' at the crossroads of Asia, Boyd Tonkin is shocked at the new gleaming cultural capitals of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Robert Irwin unearths Basra during the Abbasid period, Kevin Ovenden looks at modern-day Athens in turmoil, Judy Cox sees London through the visions of William Blake and Nazry Bahrawi takes in the nostalgia and popular culture of Singapore. Also in this issue past and present explorations of Lahore, Melbourne, Istanbul, a photo essay on the dreams of the migrant workers of the Gulf and the last word column by Myriam Francois-Cerrah.