Download or read book Inside the Immaculate Portal written by Mansur Al-Azizi Al-Jawdhari and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Hamid Haji is a specialist in Fatimid literature. He studied at the Sorbonne and is currently a Research Associate at The Institute of Ismaili Studies. His publications include Founding the Fatimid State: The Rise of an Early Islamic Empire (London, 2006).

Download or read book Inside the Immaculate Portal written by Manṣūr (al-Kātib) and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Hamid Haji is a specialist in Fatimid literature. He studied at the Sorbonne and is currently a Research Associate at The Institute of Ismaili Studies. His publications include Founding the Fatimid State: The Rise of an Early Islamic Empire (London, 2006)."--Bloomsbury publishing.

Download or read book Celibate and Childless Men in Power written by Almut Höfert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores a striking common feature of pre-modern ruling systems on a global scale: the participation of childless and celibate men as integral parts of the elites. In bringing court eunuchs and bishops together, this collection shows that the integration of men who were normatively or physically excluded from biological fatherhood offered pre-modern dynasties the potential to use different reproduction patterns. The shared focus on ruling eunuchs and bishops also reveals that these men had a specific position at the intersection of four fields: power, social dynamics, sacredness and gender/masculinities. The thirteen chapters present case studies on clerics in Medieval Europe and court eunuchs in the Middle East, Byzantium, India and China. They analyze how these men in their different frameworks acted as politicians, participated in social networks, provided religious authority, and discuss their masculinities. Taken together, this collection sheds light on the political arena before the modern nation-state excluded these unmarried men from the circles of political power.

Download or read book IIS Update 2012 written by and published by The Institute of Ismaili Studies. This book was released on with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Portals written by Amy Catania Kulper and published by Actar D, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portals: Pedagogy, Practice, and Architecture’s Future Imaginary considers the COVID-19 pandemic and the remote pedagogy it occasioned globally in schools of architecture, as a critical threshold to future architectural pedagogy, practice, and spatial imaginaries. Given that the conceit of a “return to normal” is neither desirable nor possible, this book speculates upon possible futures for the discipline of architecture, through the lens of the Thesis and Directed Research projects of the RISD Architecture class of 2020. This book documents an interregnum, a pause, a moment of self-reflection in which architects, imperiled by the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the forms of inequity that this global crisis surfaced, confronted remote architectural pedagogy and practice as a critical threshold for the future imaginary of the discipline. The renowned group of architects, educators, theorists, critics, and curators assembled in this volume provide critical insights into the future of architectural pedagogy, utilizing the thesis and design research projects of the RISD Architecture class of 2020 as exemplars of the transformations currently taking place in the field. This volume considers the forms that architectural activism and advocacy take in a moment when architects are critically reexamining the conventions of their practice and the question of which constituencies they serve. With Contributions by RISD B.Arch & M.Arch students with Iñaki Alday, Daniel A. Barber, Hansy Better Barraza, Sean Canty, Kevin Crouse, Peggy Deamer, David Gersten, Mario Gooden, Timothy Hyde, Daniel Ibañez, Kent Kleinman, Amy Catania Kulper, Carl Lostritto, Ryan McCaffrey, Ana Miljački, Kiel Moe, Nicholas de Monchaux, Ijlal Muzaffar, Ben Pell, Rachely Rotem, Jacqueline Shaw, Lola Sheppard, Georgeen Theodore, Mason White, Dr. Mabel O. Wilson, Jason Young

Download or read book The Lost Archive written by Marina Rustow and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling look at the Fatimid caliphate's robust culture of documentation The lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909–1171) survived in an unexpected place: the storage room, or geniza, of a synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by medieval Jews. Marina Rustow tells the story of this extraordinary find, inviting us to reconsider the longstanding but mistaken consensus that before 1500 the dynasties of the Islamic Middle East produced few documents, and preserved even fewer. Beginning with government documents before the Fatimids and paper’s westward spread across Asia, Rustow reveals a millennial tradition of state record keeping whose very continuities suggest the strength of Middle Eastern institutions, not their weakness. Tracing the complex routes by which Arabic documents made their way from Fatimid palace officials to Jewish scribes, the book provides a rare window onto a robust culture of documentation and archiving not only comparable to that of medieval Europe, but, in many cases, surpassing it. Above all, Rustow argues that the problem of archives in the medieval Middle East lies not with the region’s administrative culture, but with our failure to understand preindustrial documentary ecology. Illustrated with stunning examples from the Cairo Geniza, this compelling book advances our understanding of documents as physical artifacts, showing how the records of the Fatimid caliphate, once recovered, deciphered, and studied, can help change our thinking about the medieval Islamicate world and about premodern polities more broadly.

Download or read book Avicenna s Allegory on the Soul written by Wilferd Madelung and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies The Persian philosopher Ibn Sina (d. 1037), known in Europe as Avicenna, was arguably the greatest master of Aristotelian thought in the Muslim world. The symbolical Poem on the Soul (Qasidat al-nafs), which portrays all earthly human souls as in temporary exile from heaven, is traditionally attributed to Avicenna, and was received with enthusiasm by its commentators. A highly significant commentary on the Qasida was written by ?Ali b. Muhammad b. al-Walid (d. 1215 CE), a major early representative of the Tayyibi Ismaili tradition, which emerged and flourished in medieval Yemen. In his view, the poem encapsulated Tayyibi beliefs, whose doctrines bear striking parallels with late antique Gnosticism. Avicenna s Allegory on the Soul presents the first edition of the Arabic text of Ibn al-Walid s commentary, The Useful Epistle (al-Risala al-mufida), alongside an English translation and extended introduction. It offers invaluable insight into the intricacies of Muslim thought and a deeper understanding of Avicenna s substantial intellectual legacy."

Download or read book The Founder of Cairo written by Shainool Jiwa and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reign of the founder of Cairo, the fourth Fatimid Imam-caliph al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah (341-365/953-975), marks a watershed in the transformation of the Fatimid state from a regional North African dynasty to an expansive Mediterranean empire. It was also under al- Mu'izz that articulations of the supreme authority of the Fatimid Ismaili imamate were written and disseminated across various regions of Fatimid influence. The writings of Idris 'Imad al-Din (d. 872/1468) provide a distinctive presentation of the Fatimid imamate from the perspective of the Ismaili da'wa itself. as the chief d'ai of the Yemeni Tayyib Ismailis, Idris composed his monumental "Uyun al-akhbar wa funun al-athar' as a record of the Ismaili imamate from its inception to his own time. in doing so, Idris drew upon the rich repertoire of Ismaili and non-Ismaili sources that had been part of the corpus of the Fatimid literary tradition, many of which have subsequently been lost due to the vagaries of time and circumstance. As the only surviving medieval Ismaili work documenting the history of the Fatimid dynasty, the "Uy-un al-akhbar' is among its principal primary sources. This book provides the first annotated English translation of the extensive chapter on al-Mu'izz in the "Uy-un', which remains a vital yet relatively unknown Ismaili source. The introduction to this work not only outlines the salient features of al-Mu'izz's reign but also examines Idris' purpose and approach to historical writing. In providing an insider's account of the reign of one of the most influential rulers of the medieval Muslim world, this work will be of particular interest to students of Ismaili history and thought, medieval Mediterranean history and Muslim historiography.

Download or read book The Fatimids written by Shainool Jiwa and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Emerging from a period of long seclusion, the leader of the burgeoning community of Ismaili Shi'i Muslims was declared the first Fatimid Imam-caliph in the year 909. Abd Allah al-Mahdi founded the only sustained Shi'i dynasty (909-1171) to rule over substantial parts of the medieval Muslim world, rivalling both the Umayyads of Spain and the Abbasids. At its peak, the Fatimid Empire extended from the Atlantic shores of North Africa, across the southern Mediterranean and down both sides of the Red Sea, covering also Mecca and Medina. This accessible history, the first of two volumes, tells the story of the birth and expansion of the Fatimid Empire in the 10th century. Drawing upon eyewitness accounts, Shainool Jiwa introduces the first four generations of Fatimid Imam-caliphs -- al-Mahdi, al-Qa'im, al-Mansur, and al-Mu'izz -- as well as the people who served them and those they struggled against. Readers are taken on a journey through the Fatimid capitals of Qayrawan, Mahdiyya, and Mansuriyya and on to the founding of Cairo. In this lively and comprehensive introduction, readers will discover various milestones in Fatimid history and the political and cultural achievements that continue to resonate today.

Download or read book The Fatimids written by Paul Walker and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-08-28 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters of this volume contain a series of detailed studies of various aspects of Fatimid rule in the regions of its Mediterranean and Near Eastern empire, 909 to 1171 AD, including separately the role of the imam-caliph, wazīr, chief qāḍī and dāʿī, and other political and public offices of this Shīʿī caliphate. Geographically it covers North Africa, Sicily, the Levant, Hijaz, Cairo and Egypt in the medieval period, with special attention to books, science and libraries, court society, festivals, intellectual traditions and Ismaili doctrines, its religious appeal, military, enemies and rivals, among them the Abbasids, Umayyads, and Ibadis.

Download or read book The First Aga Khan Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam written by Daryoush Mohammad Poor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Muhammad Hasan al-Husayni, also known as Hasan 'Ali Shah and, more generally, as the Aga Khan (1804-1881), was the 46th Imam of the Nizari Ismailis and the first Ismaili Imam to bear the title of Aga Khan, bestowed on him by the contemporary Qajar monarch of Persia. This book is the first English translation of his memoirs, the 'Ibrat-afza, `A Book of Exhortation, or Example', and includes a new edition of the Persian text and a detailed introduction to the work and its context. The 'Ibrat-afza was composed in the year 1851, following the Ismaili Imam's departure from Persia and his permanent settlement in India. The text recounts the Aga Khan's early life and political career as the governor of the province of Kirman in Persia, and narrates the dramatic events of his conflict with the Qajar establishment followed by his subsequent travels and exploits in Afghanistan and British India. The 'Ibrat-afza provides a rare example of an autobiographical account from an Ismaili Imam and a first-hand perspective on the regional politics of the age. It offers a window into the history of the Ismailis of Persia, India and Central Asia at the dawn of the modern era of their history. Consequently, the book will be of great interest to both researchers and general readers interested in Ismaili history and in the history of the Islamic world in the nineteenth century.

Download or read book Affirming the Imamate Early Fatimid Teachings in the Islamic West written by Wilferd Madelung and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies The two sermons edited and translated here for the first time are primary material from the years before the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in 297/909. The authors have been identified as Abu 'Abd Allah al-Shi'i and Abu'l-'Abbas Muhammad, two brothers who were central to the success of the Ismaili da'wa in North Africa. Da'wa, a term used to describe how Muslims teach others about the beliefs and practices of their Islamic faith, therefore provide a unique view of the nature and development of Islam throughout history. In this case, the primary texts shed light on the development of Islam among the Berbers of the Maghreb. The first text by Abu 'Abd Allah al-Shi'i shows how the arguments for belief in the 'imamate' of the family of the Prophet, that is, the Shi'a belief that all imams should be spiritual descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and his household, were developed and presented to bring new adherents to the cause. The Book of the Keys to Grace by his elder brother Abu'l-'Abbas, too, concerns not only the centrality of the imam in the faith but also sheds light on the hierarchy of the da'wa in this early period and its organisational sophistication. Both texts also reveal the contemporary theology propagated by the Ismaili da'wa, including for instance, the powerful analogy of Moses/Aaron and Muhammad/'Ali, the awareness of a variety of religious traditions and the use of detailed Qur'anic quotations and a wide range of hadith. As such they constitute primary source material of interest not only for Ismaili history but for this early period of Islam in general.

Download or read book The Donkey and the Boat written by Chris Wickham and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other. Chris Wickham offers a new account of the Mediterranean economy in the tenth to twelfth centuries, based on a completely new look at the sources, documentary and archaeological. Our knowledge of the Mediterranean economy is based on syntheses which are between 50 and 150 years old; they are based on outdated assumptions and restricted data sets, and were written before there was any usable archaeology; and Wickham contends that they have to be properly rethought. This is the first book ever to give a fully detailed comparative account of the regions of the Mediterranean in this period, in their internal economies and in their relationships with each other. It focusses on Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy, and gives the first comprehensive account of the changing economies of each; only Byzantium has a good prior synthesis. It aims to force our rethinking of how economies worked in the medieval Mediterranean. It also offers a rethinking of how we should understand the underlying logic of the medieval economy in general.

Download or read book Fatimid Empire written by Michael Brett and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete history of the Fatimids, showing the significance of the empire to Islam and the wider worldThe Fatimid empire in North Africa, Egypt and Syria was at the centre of the political and religious history of the Islamic world in the Middle Ages, from the breakdown of the aAbbasid empire in the tenth century, to the invasions of the Seljuqs in the eleventh and the Crusaders in the twelfth, leading up to its extinction by Saladin. As Imam and Caliph, the Fatimid sovereign claimed to inherit the religious and political authority of the Prophet, a claim which inspired the conquest of North Africa and Egypt and a following of believers as far away as India. The reaction this provoked was crucial to the political and religious evolution of mediaeval Islam. This book combines the separate histories of Isma'ilism, North Africa and Egypt with that of the dynasty into a coherent account. It then relates this account to the wider history of Islam to provide a narrative that establishes the historical significance of the empire.Key FeaturesThe first complete history of the Fatimid empire in English, establishing its central contribution to medieval Islamic historyCovers the relationship of tribal to civilian economy and society, the formation and evolution of the dynastic state, and the relationship of that state to economy and societyExplores the question of cultural change, specifically Arabisation and IslamisationGoes beyond the history of Islam, not only to introduce the Crusades, but to compare and contrast the dynasty with the counterparts of its theocracy in Byzantium and Western Europe

Download or read book Command and Creation A Shi i Cosmological Treatise written by Daryoush Mohammad Poor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the considerable oeuvre of Muhammad al-Shahrastani (1086–1153), the prominent Persian theologian and heresiographer, the Majlis-i maktub ('The Transcribed Sermon') is his only known work in Persian. First delivered as a sermon in Khwarazm in Central Asia, this treatise invokes the theme of creation and command, providing an esoteric cosmological narrative where faith, revelation, prophecy and the spiritual authority of the Household of the Prophet are interwoven. The Majlis-i maktub further discusses themes such as the evolution of religious law (shari'at) and its culmination in the qiyamat (resurrection), the relation between free will and predestination, the interplay between the exoteric and esoteric aspects of faith, and the role and function of the Shi?i Imams in the cosmological narrative. This treatise is arguably the most dense expression of al-Shahrastani's thought, and it demonstrably indicates the Ismaili inclination of this Muslim scholar who has usually been regarded as a Shafi'i-Ash'ari. Daryoush Mohammad Poor's comparative study of this treatise and the corpus of Nizari Ismaili literature from the Alamut period (1090–1256) reveals the massive impact of al-Shahrastani's thought on every aspect of the doctrines of Nizari Ismailis.

Download or read book Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World written by Fozia Bora and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 'encyclopaedic' fourteenth century, Arabic chronicles produced in Mamluk cities bore textual witness to both recent and bygone history, including that of the Fatimids (969–1171CE). For in two centuries of rule over Egypt and North Africa, the Isma'ili Fatimids had left few self-generated historiographical records. Instead, it fell to Ayyubid and Mamluk historians to represent the dynasty to posterity. This monograph sets out to explain how later historians preserved, interpreted and re-organised earlier textual sources. Mamluk historians engaged in a sophisticated archival practice within historiography, rather than uncritically reproducing earlier reports. In a new diplomatic edition, translation and analysis of Mamluk historian Ibn al-Furat's account of late Fatimid rule in The History of Dynasties and Kings, a widely known but barely copied universal chronicle of Islamic history, Fozia Bora traces the survival of historiographical narratives from Fatimid Egypt. Through Ibn al-Furat's text, Bora demonstrates archivality as the heuristic key to Mamluk historical writing. This book is essential for all scholars working on the written culture and history of the medieval Islamic world, and paves the way for a more nuanced reading of pre-modern Arabic chronicles and of the epistemic environment in which they were produced.

Download or read book Between Reason and Revelation written by Eric Ormsby and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies This is the first English translation of the final philosophical work of the great eleventh-century Ismaili thinker, poet, and Fatimid emissary, N?sir-i Khusraw. Appointed from Cairo by command of the Fatimid Imam-caliph al-Mustansir to serve first as a d?'?, and then as the hujjat, for the entire region of Khur?s?n, he maintained his allegiance both to his mission and his Imam-caliph for the rest of his life, even when threatened and driven into exile. Written during his exile in Badakhsh?n in the year 1070, N?sir-i Khusraw here develops a powerful presentation of both Aristotelian philosophy and Ismaili exegesis, or ta'w?l, and strives to show that they are ultimately in harmony. The work is presented as a learned commentary on a long philosophical poem, written in the previous century and sent to N?sir by the am?r of Badakhsh?n, 'Al? b. al-Asad, who copied the poem out in his own hand from memory and asked the poet-philosopher to explicate it. In doing so, N?sir ranges over a huge span of topics from logic and language to the nature of the physical world, from the spheres of the highest heavens to the plants and animals of the earthly realm, and, most importantly, hidden spiritual realities: the esoteric (b?tin) as well as the exoteric (z?hir) realms. He thus discusses the nature of God, the creation of human beings, and the mysteries concealed in the physical world, itself a reflection of a higher, transcendent realm. Between Reason and Revelation: Twin Wisdoms Reconciled is an annotated translation of the Persian text prepared by Henry Corbin and Mohammed Mu'?n based on the single surviving manuscript of the work, now in the Süleymaniye Mosque Library in Istanbul. It is a work of great philosophical and spiritual insight, which is also a pioneering attempt to tackle difficult intellectual problems in the Persian language; it is at once lucid and lyrical, precise and speculative. N?sir's influence has been immense as both a poet and a thinker, and the Kit?b-i J?mi' al-hikmatayn is his crowning work.