New Releases
Islamic Legal Principles and Intellectual Property Rights in the Gulf States
Nadia Naim – 2023-01
The book focuses on the relationship between Islamic law and intellectual property law and proposes groundbreaking alternatives to better support the growth of intellectual property in line with the Islamic moral economy. The author provides an overview of the development of intellectual property under Shariah principles in the Gulf States. She focuses on how the US and the EU have shaped the intellectual property regimes in the Gulf States, the WTO and WIPO in the pre-TRIPS era, and compliance with the minimum standards o...
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Iranian / Persianate Subalterns in the Safavid Period: Their Role and Depiction
Recovering ’Lost Voices‘
Andrew J. Newman – 2022-06
‘Subaltern studies’ refers to the importance of ‘subordinate’ groups in the making of history. The latter are usually defined as encompassing the urban and rural underclasses, the majority in any society, although generally the term is said to refer to all non-elites, including women. Most often the discourse concentrates on instances of social protest as points whereat the ‘subalterns’ make their ‘voices’ heard in response to, or even independent of, manipulations by the elite. The book draws on wide-ranging sources to b...
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The Arab Spring: Ten Years On
Sujata Ashwarya, Mujib Alam (eds.) – 2022-06
It has been a decade since people across the Arab world rose up in revolt against their governments in 2010/11, demanding political empowerment, social reform and economic improvement. Pro-democracy protests, as they were called in common parlance, which spread rapidly through the mobilisation of social media calls, ended up overthrowing long-standing authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya. That gave rise to hope for a more representative future, as well as economic reforms, after decades of mismanagemen...
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Grand Strategy in the Contemporary Middle East
The Concepts and Debates
Tore T. Petersen, Clive Jones (eds.) – 2022-01
This unique volume explores the role that Grand Strategy has played in the shaping of the Middle East and why, conceptually, its core principles still have traction in explaining the shifting alliances and dispensation of power across the region. When so much of the spatial as well as the geo-political boundaries of the Middle East are in flux, it is now time to revisit the very ideas that inform Grand Strategy that once again, are enjoying a wider intellectual renaissance in world affairs. Through a longitudinal met...
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The Holy Land: Travels Through Galilee to Damascus and Baalbek.
And the Green Mosque of Bursa
Pierre Loti – 2022-01
First English translation of ‘La Galilée’, an account of Pierre Loti’s travels in the Holy Land from Jerusalem to Beirut, via Damascus and many other interesting places, in 1894. Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was born Louis-Marie-Julien Viaud into a Protestant family in Rochefort in Saintonge, South-West France (now Charente Maritime). He was an officer of the French Navy and a prolific author of considerable note in 19th-/early-20th-century France, publishing many novels and numerous accounts of his travels around the world. H...
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The Way to Isfahan and Passing through Muscat
An Account of a Trip to Persia and Oman in 1900
Pierre Loti – 2021-05
From 17 April, 1900, to 6 June of that year, Pierre Loti travelled in a private capacity from Bushire on the Persian Gulf, northwards through Shiraz, Persepolis, Isfahan and Tehran, before returning via the Caspian Sea to Europe. It is the personal day-by-day account of his journey, the hardships of the mountainous terrain and the empty desert. Loti excels in his descriptions of the world around him: the sky, the mountains, the fertile plains, the deserted desert. His descriptions of the people he meets, their dress and mann...
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The Trucial Coast Political Reports 1958-1963
The Slow Progress from Pearls to Oil
David Heard (ed.) – 2021-05
The Trucial Coast Political Reports are a unique record of events, commented on by a small group of British men living in Sharjah and Dubai. This was in the years leading up to the commencement of oil exports from the desert of Abu Dhabi. These men regularly met to discuss and negotiate with the Rulers of the Trucial States - sometimes in a state of mutual incomprehension - the conditions under which the Company (Petroleum Development/ Trucial Coast or PD/TC) would operate in their various territories. Boundaries and fronti...
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The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East
Volume 1: Problems in the Literary Source Material
Averil Cameron, Lawrence I. Conrad (eds.) – 2021-05
This volume focuses on the problems researchers face when using (Byzantine) Greek, Syriac and Arabic sources together for the reconstruction of Near Eastern history from 400–c. 800. Contributions to the volume set the stage for a critical re-reading and revisionist interpretations of selected sources in the various cultural and literary traditions. The volume thus brings together neighbouring disciplines in ways that shed new light on this vitally important time in history. 1. Michael Whitby, Greek Historical Writing after ...
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The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East
Volume 2: Land Use and Settlement Patterns
Geoffrey King, Averil Cameron (eds.) – 2021-05
This volume revisits archaeological evidence from Syria, Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Egypt describing a variety of land-use patterns and the development of a particular type of settlement across the Near East. 1. Pierre-Louis Gatier, Villages du Proche-Orient protobyzantin (4ème-7ème s.): Étude régionale 2. Henry Innes Macadam, Settlements and Settlement Patterns in Northern and Central Transjordania, c. 550 – c. 750 3. Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, From Scythopolis to Baysan - Changing Concepts of Urbani...
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The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East
Volume 3: States, Resources and Armies
Averil Cameron (ed.) – 2021-05
A comparative analysis of Byzantine, Sasanian and Muslim armies and their impact on state resources. Contributions discuss the organization and financing of the army in the late Roman state, the transformations and continuities of the late Sasanid state and with authority and armies in the early Muslim state. Thus, the volume brings together perspectives from neighbouring fields, presents military issues in an intercultural manner and assembles important pieces of knowledge in a comprehensive manner. 1. Jean-Michel Carrié, L...
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The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East
Volume 4: Elites Old and New
John Haldon, Lawrence I. Conrad (eds.) – 2021-05
A collection of critical analyses of the structure, historical development, and composition of the elite strata of late Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic societies in the eastern Mediterranean basin. Culture change, economic foundations, political roles and function, social composition, and background and origins of old and new elites are the focus of the contributions by scholars who deal with the fate of the later Roman elite and its successors. 1. Hugh Kennedy, Elite lncomes in the Early lslamic State 2. William Lancast...
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The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East
Set, Volumes 1-4
Averil Cameron, Lawrence I. Conrad, John Haldon, Geoffrey King (eds.) – 2021-05
Volume 1: Problems in the Literary Source Material focuses on the problems researchers face when using (Byzantine) Greek, Syriac and Arabic sources together for the reconstruction of Near Eastern history from 400–ca. 800. Volume 2: Land Use and Settlement Patterns revisits archaeological evidence from Syria, Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Egypt describing a variety of land-use patterns and the development of a particular type of settlement across the Near East. Volume 3: States, Resources and Armies focuses on a ...
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The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule.
An Historical and Archaeological Study
Robert Schick – 2021-05
An assessment of the nature and social continuity of Christian communities in Palestine from 602–813. By synthesizing literary and archeological evidence, it provides a detailed discussion of disparate historical and archeological data. In the first part, the Sasanian, Byzantine and early Muslim invasions of southern Syria and the changing of government policies towards Christians are discussed. Topical studies about church use, conversion and iconoclasm, are also included. . The second part offers a useful alphabetical ...
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Narratives of Islamic Origins:
The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing
Fred M. Donner – 2021-05
How and why did Muslims first come to write their own history? The author argues in this work that the Islamic historical tradition arose not out of idle curiosity, or through imitation of antique models, but as a response to a variety of challenges facing the Islamic community during its first several centuries. In the first part, the author presents an overview of four approaches that have characterized scholarship on the literary sources, including the source-critical and the skeptical approaches, then it discusses histo...
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Studies in Early Islamic History
with an Introduction by G. R. Hawting
Martin Hinds – 2021-05
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 Abb sid 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. Kufan Political Alignments and Their Background in the Mid-Seventh Century A.D...
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A Gateway To Hell, A Gateway To Paradise.
The North African Response to the Arab Conquest
Elizabeth Savage – 2021-05
This book is a study of the early history of the lbadiyya in North Africa, a "moderate" movement among the Kharijis which from its base in Basra gradually spread among the Berbers of the Maghrib in the 750s. The Berbers found in this new religious allegiance an attractive ideology with which to rebel against the central caliphate. An Ibadi imamate, headed by the Rustamid dynasty, was founded in Tahart in 160 or 162/777 or 779 and lasted until 296/909, when it fell to the Fatimids. The book is divided into seven ch...
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Arabs and Others In Early Islam
Suliman Bashear – 2021-05
This work investigates available early Arabic hadith and exegetical literature in order to determine the great complexity of how Arabs, Muslims and Arab-Muslims viewed themselves and members of other communities. In particular, it focuses on the relation between definitions of “Arabness” and “otherness” with Islamic ascriptions of believers and nonbelievers and endeavors to trace the changing of these views over time. Moreover, this is an in-depth analysis of a series of ad ths and isn ds that discusses when, where, why, an...
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The Continuatio of the Samaritan Chronicle of Abū l-Fatḥ al-Sāmirī al-Dinfī
Including an Annotated TranslatIon
Milka Levy-Rubin (ed.) – 2021-05
A complete facsimile edition of the previously unedited Samaritan sequel to the Kitab al-Ta‘rikh by Abū l-Fatḥ al-Sāmirī al-Dinfī (d. ca. 1355). The edition of this chronicle photographically reproduces Paris BN Ms. Samaritain 10 (pp. 203–264), which, written in Middle Arabic, seems easily readable but poses a plethora of editorial problems. The editor entitled the work a Continuatio, and translated it into English with full editorial and explanatory annotation. The work describes the local history of the Samaritan people i...
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The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors
Josef Horovitz – 2021-05
Josef Horovitz (1874-1931) wrote this classic monograph a century ago in two parts in German. The editor added footnotes, corrections and the preface, and it is now a book in its own right. The translation was prepared by Marmaduke Pickthall (d. 1936). Lawrence I. Conrad, who re-edited the articles also presents a slightly corrected textual version, expanding and updating the notes and bibliography and adding a new introduction dealing with Horovitz’s and other orientalists’ work on early Islam in the early 20th century. H...
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Ibn Asakir and Early Islamic History
James E. Lindsay (ed.) – 2021-05
Ibn Asakir’s massive Tarikh madinat Dimashq (TMD) is a veritable gold mine of information for our understanding of the first five and one-half centuries of Islamic history. This book offers important insights on the mechanics of Arabic historiography, in particular on biographical sources from the Middle period. Moreover, two contributions show that Ibn ‘Asakir pursued a political and sectarian agenda within his TMD. 1. James E. Lindsay, Ibn ‘Asakir, His Ta‘rikh madinat Dimashq and its Usefulness for Understanding Early Isl...
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Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic
David Cook – 2021-05
A detailed study on the nature of Muslim apocalyptic material in Islam, both Sunni and Shi‘i . Taking a transcultural perspective by also discussing Christian and Jewish apocalyptic traditions, it offers in eight studies and three appendices a typology of apocalypses and many new insights into the matter. For instance, historical apocalypses as well as apocalyptic figures, like the Dajjal, the Sufyani and the Mahdi are discussed. Moreover, apocalyptic hadith literature, in particular Nu‘aym b. Hammadi’s (d. 844) Kitab al-Fi...
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The Late Antique World of Early Islam:
Muslims among Christians and Jews in the East Mediterranean
Robert G. Hoyland (ed.) – 2021-05
This book offers a number of innovative studies on the three main communities of the East Mediterranean lands—Muslims, Jews and Christians—in the aftermath of the seventh-century Arab conquests. It focuses principally on how the Christian majority were affected by and adapted to their loss of political power in such arenas as language use, identity construction, church building, pilgrimage, and the role of women. Attention is also paid to how the Muslim community defined itself, administered justice, and regulated relations ...
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The Place to Go: Contexts of Learning in Baghdad, 750-1000 C.E.
Jens Scheiner, Damien Janos (eds.) – 2021-05
This work focuses on the intellectual and educational history of Baghdad in the early ‘Abbasid and Buyid periods (8th–10th centuries). It covers a wide range of disciplines taught in the metropolis before the institutionalization of the madrasa system. Among these fields of knowledge are Arabic poetry and literature, the transmission of prophetic reports, Arabic historiography and astronomical-astrological teaching. Christian learning in the city is highlighted by two contributions, while two more papers focus on Jewish pra...
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