Islamic History and Thought
Publisher: Gorgias Press
Series Board: Prof. Dr Peter Adamson Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Prof. Dr Beatrice Gründler Freie Universität Berlin Prof. Dr Ahmad Khan Universität Hamburg Prof. Dr Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Chair) Freie Universität Berlin Prof. Dr Jack Tannous Princeton University Dr Manolis Ulbricht University of GöttingenSeries Board: Prof. Dr Peter Adamson Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Prof. Dr Beatrice Gründler Freie Universität Berlin Prof. Dr Ahmad Khan Universität Hamburg Prof. Dr Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Chair) Freie Universität Berlin Prof. Dr Jack Tannous Princeton University Dr Manolis Ulbricht University of GöttingenSeries Board: Prof. Dr Peter Adamson Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Prof. Dr Beatrice Gründler Freie Universität Berlin Prof. Dr Ahmad Khan Universität Hamburg Prof. Dr Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Chair) Freie Universität Berlin Prof. Dr Jack Tannous Princeton University Dr Manolis Ulbricht University of Göttingen
The Islamic History & Thought series provides a platform for scholarly research on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic/Muslim world, stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. Scholars are invited to submit proposals for original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes related to these broad areas of research. Submissions are accepted in English, Arabic, German, French, Spanish, and Italian). All accepted submissions will be peer-reviewed by two specialists and the series is overseen by an editorial board made up of leading scholars in the field.
Various books published under this series have been recognised for their important contribution to field of Islamic Studies through journal reviews, academic awards and digital platforms. The first book in the series joined a prestigious list of previous winners of the 26th World Award for the Book of the Year, and two further titles from this series and another title from the Gorgias Islamic Studies series are ranked among the '94 Best Islamic History Books of All Time' by Book Authority.The Islamic History & Thought series provides a platform for scholarly research on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic/Muslim world, stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. Scholars are invited to submit proposals for original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes related to these broad areas of research. Submissions are accepted in English, Arabic, German, French, Spanish, and Italian). All accepted submissions will be peer-reviewed by two specialists and the series is overseen by an editorial board made up of leading scholars in the field.
Various books published under this series have been recognised for their important contribution to field of Islamic Studies through journal reviews, academic awards and digital platforms. The first book in the series joined a prestigious list of previous winners of the 26th World Award for the Book of the Year, and two further titles from this series and another title from the Gorgias Islamic Studies series are ranked among the '94 Best Islamic History Books of All Time' by Book Authority.The Islamic History & Thought series provides a platform for scholarly research on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic/Muslim world, stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. Scholars are invited to submit proposals for original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes related to these broad areas of research. Submissions are accepted in English, Arabic, German, French, Spanish, and Italian). All accepted submissions will be peer-reviewed by two specialists and the series is overseen by an editorial board made up of leading scholars in the field.
Various books published under this series have been recognised for their important contribution to field of Islamic Studies through journal reviews, academic awards and digital platforms. The first book in the series joined a prestigious list of previous winners of the 26th World Award for the Book of the Year, and two further titles from this series and another title from the Gorgias Islamic Studies series are ranked among the '94 Best Islamic History Books of All Time' by Book Authority.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781463246211
Pub Date: 31 May 2024
Description:
A biography of Abū al-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās, the half brother, diplomat, and negotiator of al-Ḥusayn. The author was named Distinguished Scholar of Shia Studies in the Islamic Republic of Iran's 28th World Book Awards in 2020. He is at present a resident faculty member of PISAI, lecturing in Shīʿī Islamic studies, Qurʾān and Islamic Ethics, and a visiting lecturer at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 391
ISBN: 9781463244972
Pub Date: 31 Aug 2023
Description:
Coherence of the Incoherence: Between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on Nature and the Cosmos is the first of a two-part critical examination of the seminal debate carried out in the pages of Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers and Ibn Rushd’s Incoherence of the Incoherence. While an upcoming second volume focuses on the elements in that debate related to the God and the soul, this volume focuses on questions related to nature and the cosmos, including the controversies over the eternity of the universe and necessity of natural causation. The debate, I argue, is not simply a polemic between ‘faith and reason,’ but a penetrating philosophical discussion with enduring potential to inform work in philosophy and analytic theology.
To that end, I analyze and evaluate the arguments made by both sides, explaining the philosophical concepts involved in their historical context and the core questions on which their differences turn. In the process, I draw some illuminating connections between points of the debate and modern and contemporary philosophy and advance some original arguments aimed at reactivating the discussion and contributing to the developing field of contemporary Islamic philosophy and analytic theology.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 289
ISBN: 9781463240776
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2023
Description:
The important text of Kitāb al-sawād al-a‘ẓam by al-Ḥakīm Muḥammad b. Ismā‘īl al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953) is an early Ḥanafī creed from Transoxania that found consensus among Ḥanafī scholars within the region, and was translated into Persian sometime between 366/976 and 387/997.
Al-Samarqandī attained fame not only as a scholar of religious sciences and law, but, moreover, as an ascetic and a sage (ḥakīm), in the sense of possessing a 'divine blessing' for calling to the way of God, knowledge of inner rightfulness, and wisdom about high spiritual truths (ḥikma). This volume offers an annotated critical edition and a detailed study of this important text.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 615
ISBN: 9781463243845
Pub Date: 16 Feb 2023
Description:
The Qāḍī Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī was an Ašʿarite theologian, a Maliki jurist and an Andalusian traditionalist of the fifth-sixth / eleventh-twelfth century. His influence in the Muslim West is undeniable: he is one of the most important figures in the history of ašʿarism in al-Andalus, and introduced kalām books that quickly became references of local teaching, such as the Iršād of al-Ǧuwaynī. He also introduced treatises of uṣūl al-fiqh such as the Mustaṣfā and the Manḫūl of al-Ġazālī.
Ibn al-ʿArabī is also the most famous disciple of the latter and one of the first to have transmitted his thought to Andalusian scholars, then to the rest of the Muslim West. Through a critical, introduced, translated and commented edition of his sum of legal theory entitled Nukat al-Maḥṣūl fī ʿilm uṣūl, this present work shows how the legal thought of the Qāḍī is articulated between language and theology.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 197
ISBN: 9781463244736
Pub Date: 14 Feb 2023
Description:
The study of sectarianism in Islam and the study of Muslim-Christian relations are both sub-specialities attracting growing numbers of scholars in Islamic studies. Rarely, though, are these two fields put into direct conversation with each other. In this work, Steven Gertz brings the two together to ask how the Sunni-Shi'a divide in Islam impacts Muslim relationships with Christians.
Do tensions within Islam do more to help Muslim relationships with Christians, or harm them? Gertz goes about answering this through a historical study of the Fatimid caliphate in Palestine and Egypt during the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries. He specifically works to understand how Fatimid religious principles (ascertained through the study of law) and politics (ascertained through the study of history) impacted Christians in light of Fatimid-Abbasid rivalry. In the process of doing so, he makes a valuable contribution to the study of Islamic religious identity formation as it concerns sectarianism within Islam and inter-religious relations with non-Muslims.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 374
ISBN: 9781463242473
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2022
Description:
This book is an inquiry into the mystical thought of Gregory Barhebraeus (1226-1286CE) and its contemporary relevance, to offer a reading of Barhebraeus’ mystical texts by bringing them into conversation with critical religious studies and the hermeneutical tradition of philosophy. The methodological focus of my thesis has led me to pay particular attention to the language used for the study of mysticism, and I lay emphasis on finding a new language that avoids the phenomenological assumptions concerning ‘mysticism’ to attend to the particularity of ‘mystic’ traditions, such as that of the Syriac mystic tradition inherited by Barhebraeus.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 422
ISBN: 9781463206499
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2022
Description:
The book analyses all extant works by Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (d. 224/839–310/923), referring to their individual methodologies; their legacy as al- madhhab al-jariri; and their scholarly and socio- political context. Through the study of al- Tabari’s works, the book addresses research debates over dating the legal and scholarly institutions and their disciplines; authorship and transmission of scholarly writings; political theory and administration; and ‘origins’ of the Qur’an and Islam.
Al-Tabari defined the Qur’an in linguistic and legal terms. The linguistic terms refer to rhetoric and semiotics, and the legal to theories of social contract, ‘natural law’, and rule of law. Both sets of terms go into al-Tabari’s theory of prophecy and administration, including of ‘minorities’. By engaging current debates about the usefulness or not of the medieval Muslim scholars in research on the Qur’an and early Islam, this book argues that the – 2 – 20:59 contribution of each medieval scholar be assessed on an individual basis. Al-Tabari’s philosophical, ethical, historical, linguistic, and legal education produced analysis of the Qur’an and ‘origins’ of Islam that stands up to some fronts in contemporary research. The book thus adds to research on al-Tabari; early Islamic disciplines and institutions; and the Qur’an and early Islam.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 335
ISBN: 9781463206444
Pub Date: 28 Jul 2022
Description:
Along with the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, pragmatic documents negotiating land, taxes, and tribal relations are attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad (~570-632 CE) in early Islamic historiography. These are often viewed as relics reflecting the Prophet’s religio-political mission, or as anachronistic texts spuriously ascribed to him. Challenging both conclusions, this book argues that an indigenous Arabian legal and documentary tradition, distinct from classical Islamic law, can be traced in these documents.
Laying out the formularies and formulae of around 200 such documents, these are compared to early Arabic papyri as well as older corpora including Aramaic conveyance documents, Sabaic letters, and Nabataean tomb inscriptions. The book also maps the variation found across medieval redactions of some of the documents; the case of one distinctive legal clause; and the tribal traditions of those who received the documents. The documents of the Prophet maintain a register of everyday transactions and customary law which survives compilation and redaction and is embedded in older local and transregional infrastructures which circulate the language, media, and forms for documents. These documents encourage a reconsideration of the concepts of authorship, literacy, and authenticity applied to medieval texts, as well as the presumed centrality of confessional identity in the legal infrastructures described by medieval Islamic genres such as sīra (biography), ḥadīth (traditions), and taʾrīkh (history). Rather than reflecting authorship as the creative acts of individuals, literacy as the decoding of written text, and authenticity as the faithful transmission of original texts over time, the documents of the Prophet are reflective of transregional communication technologies, customs that trace long-lived, geographically diffuse infrastructures of which formulae are the remnants.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 284
ISBN: 9781463244385
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2022
Description:
A study of the life and background of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, putative founder of the Qādiriyya order, investigating the sources for his life and attributed works. The book seeks to elucidate the ideas of al-Jīlānī, and to formulate a picture of the most prominent trends of pious and mystical thought in Baghdad during the twelfth century, providing a cultural and geographical angle to the study of Islamic mysticism and piety.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 330
ISBN: 9781463207298
Pub Date: 28 Feb 2022
Description:
This monograph examines the principle of dispensation in the Qur'an, which seems to be, if not unique, articulated in a new manner compared to previous religions (cf. Deut 12,32). The Qur'anic dispensations have never been systematically studied and this monograph aims to fill this vacuum in the fields of Qur'anic studies and the Study of Religion.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 426
ISBN: 9781463243821
Pub Date: 29 Dec 2021
Description:
The Futūḥ al-Shām (The Conquests of Greater Syria), usually attributed to Abū Ismāʿīl Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Azdī al-Baṣrī, is one of the primary sources used for historians studying the early Muslim expansion into Greater Syria. This study revaluates the Futūḥ al-Shām narrative and the question of its compiler-author, investigating the history of the narrative as text through an analysis of a new manuscript and important parallel texts, and revisiting the evidence and hypotheses previous scholars have put forward on both al-Azdī’s life and the Futūḥ al-Shām narrative’s text.
It thus offers an overview of the history of Oriental and Islamic Studies on the basis of one work.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 571
ISBN: 9781463241933
Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021
Description:
This book focuses on interactions between the Islamic world and other regions from the late eighth to the twenty-first centuries. Some chapters consider the complex relationship between Islam and the cultures of Late Antiquity in the Middle East and Mediterranean basin. The reprinted chapters in this volume have been revised and updated.
Topics include relief-moulded pottery production in Raqqa, the construction of palaces in Samarra, portraiture in Arabic manuscript painting, written descriptions of patterned marble in medieval Islam, images of Muslim rulers in early Modern printed books, and the broadcast of the medical examination of Saddam Hussein. Also included are a critical introduction that considers the challenges involved in the study of cultural interactions between Islamic and non-Islamic regions, a cumulative bibliography, and a previously unpublished study of recently discovered photographs, drawings, and writings relating to the Middle East made by soldiers during and after World War I.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 494
ISBN: 9781463242688
Pub Date: 01 Jun 2021
Description:
The Ṣaḥīfa of Medina is preserved thanks to two 9th century historiographers: Ibn Hishām and Abū ‘Ubayd. It clearly illustrates, through variants present in both the text and its chain of transmission, the challenges posed by sources that reach us by way of oral tradition. The present investigates its nuances, as adding greater clarity to the social and political context of this challenging and important text.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 265
ISBN: 9781463241629
Pub Date: 26 Feb 2021
Description:
Born in the late 9th century Baghdad, the ʿAbbāsid grammarian ‘Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Saḥl Ibn al-Sarrāj came to be remembered as the Banisher of Madness and the virtuous scholar whose life has exemplified the culture of Arabs in its fullness. Lauded as the arch-enemy of Hellenistic sciences and, at the same time, as the main source of transmission of Aristotelian logic from the 10th century philosophers to the grammarians of Baghdad; Ibn al-Sarrāj nonetheless remains a shadowy figure in the history of Arabic grammar studies up until today.
This book addresses this issue by examining the problematic relationship between language, logic and grammar in Ibn al-Sarrāj’s teachings.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 500
ISBN: 9781463207144
Pub Date: 26 Feb 2021
Description:
The Kitāb al-Aghānī (the Book of the Songs) stands as one of the most important extant sources for Arabic literature and Islamic history. Compiled during the first half of the tenth century, the Kitāb al-Aghānī emerges from a pivotal period in the formation of Islamic sectarian identities, a subject of keen and ongoing scholarly debate that is fundamental to our understanding of the later development of Shīʿī Islam. While its compiler, Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (died after 356/967), is generally viewed as a 'Zaydī Shīʿī', no in-depth study has investigated what can be gauged from the Kitāb al-Aghānī about his sectarian perspectives.
The present study addresses the question of whether or not al-Iṣfahānī's sectarian leanings can be discerned from the Kitāb al-Aghānī through an analysis based primarily on redaction criticism. By examining the compiler's editorial interventions, this book argues that al-Iṣfahānī, to some extent at least, presents past people and events central to the Shīʿī worldview in accordance with his sectarian affiliation. Furthermore, this work questions the label 'Zaydī' that is commonly associated with al-Iṣfahānī. Based on textual analyses of the Kitāb al-Aghānī, as well as on evidence from his Maqātil al-Ṭālibīyīn ('The Ṭālibid Martyrs') and other sources rooted in the tenth-century milieu, this book suggests that al-Iṣfahānī's religious thought can be construed as a 'mild' form of Shīʿism - in the sense that it neither comprises belief in a specific lineage of imams, nor repudiation of most of the Companions including the first three caliphs. However, it cannot necessarily be identified with any sect, as set down in the heresiography.
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781463242091
Pub Date: 15 Jan 2021
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781463244088
Pub Date: 22 Oct 2021
Description:
When, on an autumn Medina night in 61/680, the night that saw al-Ḥusayn killed, Umm Salama was torn from her sleep by an apparition of a long-dead Muḥammad, she slipped effortlessly into a progression of her co-religionists who, irrespective of status, gender or standing with God, were the recipients of dark and arresting visions. At the core of those Delphian dreams, peopled by angels or ğinn or esteemed forbears and textured with Iraqi dust and martyrs' blood, was the Karbalāʾ event. Her dream would be recounted by an array of Muslim scholars, from al-Tirmiḏī, stellar pupil of al-Buḫārī, and Ibn ʿAsākir, untiring chronicler of Syrian history, to bibliophile theologian Ibn Ṭāʾūs and Egyptian polymath al-Suyūṭī.
But this was not Umm Salama’s only otherworldly encounter and she was not the only one to have al-Ḥusayn’s fate disturb her nights. This is their story.
