Forthcoming Publications
PUBLISHER PRIZE 2025 FOR GERLACH PRESS
2025-10
Gerlach Press are delighted and proud to be one of the recipients of this year's Publisher Prize awarded by the Secretary of Culture of the German Federal Government. The main criteria for the jury's decision were an innovative publishing programme, the quality of publishing work, and a particularly appealing design of the books. We would like to thank all our authors who are the very foundation of our success, and hope that this recognition will further strengthen the press. Ad multos annos!...
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Mai Yamani
From Mosul to Mecca: Laila Sulaiman Faidhi
Her Life with Ahmed Zaki Yamani in Letters and Documents
2026-02
This book about Laila Sulaiman Faidhi is more than a biography about a proud and mesmerising Arab woman, the Iraqi wife of one of the most powerful men in Saudi History. The book also gives a unique insight into Arab life and the trajectory of two countries in particular: Iraq, where Laila originated from and Saudi Arabia, the homeland of her larger-than-life husband: Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources under four Saudi monarchs and a minister in OPEC for 25 years. The book then recou...
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N. Janardhan
GLOBAL GULF
Geo-Economic, Geo-Political, and Geo-Technological Transformation in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar
2026-05
It is common knowledge that ‘great powers’, especially the United States and China, exert economic, political and military dominance over the world. But several middle powers, including those in the Gulf region, especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are changing tack. They are increasingly exerting influence through several Cs: crude (oil), capital, commerce, collaboration, cyber (technology), climate, connectivity, competition, and compromise. The chapters of this book argue that the abovementioned...
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Amier Saidula
Legal Pluralism and the Tajik Experience of Xinjiang: Between Custom and the Chinese State
An Ethnographic Perspective
2026-05
At the remote crossroads of Central Asia, the Tajiks of Tashkurgan navigate life as a small minority at the cultural and political margins of China. Legal Pluralism and the Tajik experience of Xinjiang explores how this community sustains internal order and cultural identity under the pressures of a powerful, top-down state. Drawing on rich ethnographic fieldwork (2010–2011) and the author’s insights as a former state prosecutor in Xinjiang, the book examines how disputes are managed through a mix of formal law and informal...
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Cihat Battaloğlu
Qatar’s Societal Security: Towards the Inclusive National Concept of ‘Baladna’
Identity, Migration and External Threats Since 2017
2026-04
Since the 1990s, Qatar has been expanding its concept of societal security to address migration as a presumed threat to national identity. Local citizens regarded communities of migrants increasingly as a threat to existing cultural and linguistic norms, and as a challenge to the country's traditional “we”. The crisis of 2017, which isolated Qatar through a regional blockade, fundamentally changed the perception of the country's societal security. In response, Qatar turned ‘Baladna’ (‘our country’) into a symbol ...
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Wael Hegazy
Islamic Rituals Beyond the Mosque
Historical Evolution of Prayer and Devotion in Physical Space and Cyberspace
2026-04
Prevailing assumptions posit that Islamic rituals are inextricably bound to corporeal enactments and spatial constraints. This study, however, critically interrogates such presuppositions, challenging the notion that ritual praxis necessitates physical embodiment. A common misconception is that the conceptualization of Islamic rituals divorced from spatiality and physicality is a contemporary phenomenon, catalyzed by the exigencies of the Covid-19 pandemic or formulated by modern Muslim intellectuals. This research, however,...
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Mushegh Asatryan
Early Islamic Sectarianism in Context
The Ghulat and Nusayris Between Late Antiquity and Modernity
2026
The essays in this volume open new horizons for studying the Ghulat and early Islamic sectarianism more generally. On the one hand, they eschew the polemical approaches used hitherto, by situating the Ghulat in their proper Late Antique and later contexts. On the other, they engage a number of texts written by the Ghulat themselves, which have only recently become available. In the early 700s, several men rebelled in Iraq, claiming to be acting on behalf of a God who had become incarnate in human shape. They were defeated...
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Walid Ghali
Muhammad ‘Abduh and the Ongoing Project of Islamic Reform
2026
Muhammad ’Abduh as one of the most influential figures in the modern history of Muslim societies and the reform movement. Although his demise was at an early age (53 years) over a century ago, his thoughts and ideas are still discussed in different spheres. In the chaotic political, social and religious circumstances we find ourselves in post-Arab Spring, thinkers and scholars increasingly turn to the work of some great reformers who appeared in the late 19th century. Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905) is an Egyptian philosopher,...
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Mohammed Al Oudat
Al-Ğābirīs Genese und Kritik der Arabischen Vernunft – On Genesis and Critique of Arab Reason by Muḥammed ʿĀbid al-Ğābirī
– Text in German with English Summary –
2026
The Moroccan philosopher and literary scholar Muḥammed ʿĀbid al-Ğābirī (1935–2010) is a pioneering example of how Arab intellectuals can create new spaces for critical thinking and the use of reason. His work has been widely received and has triggered an ambivalent attitude towards him. It has garnered much praise and admiration, but also criticism, and his view of Arab reason in Arab-Islamic thought and the problem of progress is still being discussed today. This monograph aims to give the reader an insight into al-Ğābir...
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