Download or read book Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus 1190 1350 written by Michael Chamberlain and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-27 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reconceptualisation of the relationship between the society and culture of the Middle East.
Download or read book Knowledge and Its Uses in Medieval Damascus written by Michael Chamberlain and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is a study of relationships between the production of knowledg e and the social reproduction of elites in high medieval Damascus (1190-1350). I t advances several related arguments intended to reassess relations between soci ety and culture in the pre-Ottoman Middle East. First, it argues that because of the peculiarities of political power in the medieval Middle East, the social hi story of the region cannot be compared to that of others through analysis of ins titutions, social bodies, or social structures. The most productive level of com parison is practices of social reproduction, rather than the institutions that i n other societies were the forms such practices took. Second, it argues that the best evidence for elite political and social strategies is to be found not in o riginal documents stored in archives, but rather in the biographical dictionarie s, which constituted a written repository for the critical practices of the soci ety. Third, it suggests that as medieval Damascus was a city without strong lega l, state, or corporate institutions, all status, wealth, and power were prizes w on and held through constant competition. To the civilian elite, control over th e production of knowledge was both the object of such competition and the instru ment by which it was carried out. An introduction examines approaches to relatio nships between society and culture in the pre-Ottoman Middle East. Chapter one e xamines how a changing form of domination in twelfth and thirteenth century Dama scus transformed the recruitment, relations to state power, and social reproduct ion of the civilian elite. Chapter two looks at madrasas to understand whether t hey constituted the form of specialized higher education scholars have thought t hey did. It argues that madrasas did not transform the nature of education in Da mascus, but had their greatest effect in establishing a set of prizes for social competition among elites. Chapter three examines how elites acquired their soci al and cultural capital through the cultivation of knowledge. It is especially i nterested in the ritual and performative aspects of the production of knowledge. Chapter four examines how the civilian elite made use of their control over the production of knowledge in social competition.
Download or read book Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century written by Khaled El-Rouayheb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of the twentieth century, the intellectual life of the Ottoman and Arabic-Islamic world in the seventeenth century was ignored or mischaracterized by historians. Ottomanists typically saw the seventeenth century as marking the end of Ottoman cultural florescence, while modern Arab nationalist historians tended to see it as yet another century of intellectual darkness under Ottoman rule. This book is the first sustained effort at investigating some of the intellectual currents among Ottoman and North African scholars of the early modern period. Examining the intellectual production of the ranks of learned ulema (scholars) through close readings of various treatises, commentaries, and marginalia, Khaled El-Rouayheb argues for a more textured - and text-centered - understanding of the vibrant exchange of ideas and transmission of knowledge across a vast expanse of Ottoman-controlled territory.
Download or read book Muslim Preaching in the Middle East and Beyond written by Stjernholm Simon Stjernholm and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preaching has been central to Muslim communities throughout the centuries. The liturgical Friday sermon is a prime example, although other genres that are less commonly known also serve important functions. This book addresses the ways in which Muslims relate various forms of religious oratory to authoritative tradition in 21st-century Islamic practice, while striving to adapt to local contexts and the changing circumstances of politics, media and society. This is the first book of its kind to look at homiletics beyond a specific country focus. Taking into consideration the historical developments of Muslim preaching, it offers a collection of thoroughly contextualised case studies of oratory in Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Sweden and the USA. The analyses presented here show shared emphasis on struggles for legitimacy, efforts to speak authoritatively, as well as discursive opportunities and constraints.
Download or read book Cosmopolitan Civility written by Ruth Abbey and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays reflecting on the prolific, pioneering, and wide-ranging scholarship of Fred Dallmayr. Prolific and pioneering, Fred Dallmayr has been an active scholar for over fifty years. His research interests include modern and contemporary political theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, continental political thought, democratic theory, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and cosmopolitanism. Dallmayr is also one of the founders of comparative political thought and his interest in non-Western political theory spans Chinese, Islamic, Indian, Buddhist, and Latin American traditions. In emulation of the vast interdisciplinary and international character of Dallmayr’s work, this book draws upon senior and emerging scholars from an array of disciplines and countries, with essays that are philosophical (in the Western and non-Western traditions), cultural and/or political, and international. Dallmayr himself responds to the essays in a concluding chapter. “This book is both unique and outstanding. In very few other volumes have I come across such cross-cultural, diverse, and high quality responses to an author’s work. It is truly rare to find a volume that is so broad ranging and at the same time clearly and coherently organized, just as it is rare to find a scholar of Dallmayr’s range and depth. He counts as one of the great humanists of our time, and this book is a richly merited tribute to him.” — Joseph Prabhu, editor of The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar
Download or read book Islam and Travel in the Middle Ages written by Houari Touati and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Middle Ages, Muslim travelers embarked on a rihla, or world tour, as surveyors, emissaries, and educators. On these journeys, voyagers not only interacted with foreign cultures—touring Greek civilization, exploring the Middle East and North Africa, and seeing parts of Europe—they also established both philosophical and geographic boundaries between the faithful and the heathen. These voyages thus gave the Islamic world, which at the time extended from the Maghreb to the Indus Valley, a coherent identity. Islam and Travel in the Middle Ages assesses both the religious and philosophical aspects of travel, as well as the economic and cultural conditions that made the rihla possible. Houari Touati tracks the compilers of the hadith who culled oral traditions linked to the prophet, the linguists and lexicologists who journeyed to the desert to learn Bedouin Arabic, the geographers who mapped the Muslim world, and the students who ventured to study with holy men and scholars. Travel, with its costs, discomforts, and dangers, emerges in this study as both a means of spiritual growth and a metaphor for progress. Touati’s book will interest a broad range of scholars in history, literature, and anthropology.
Download or read book The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform written by Adeeb Khalid and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adeeb Khalid offers the first extended examination of cultural debates in Central Asia during Russian rule. With the Russian conquest in the 1860s and 1870s the region came into contact with modernity. The Jadids, influential Muslim intellectuals, sought to safeguard the indigenous Islamic culture by adapting it to the modern state. Through education, literacy, use of the press and by maintaining close ties with Islamic intellectuals from the Ottoman empire to India, the Jadids established a place for their traditions not only within the changing culture of their own land but also within the larger modern Islamic world. Khalid uses previously untapped literary sources from Uzbek and Tajik as well as archival materials from Uzbekistan, Russia, Britain, and France to explore Russia's role as a colonial power and the politics of Islamic reform movements. He shows how Jadid efforts paralleled developments elsewhere in the world and at the same time provides a social history of the Jadid movement. By including a comparative study of Muslim societies, examining indigenous intellectual life under colonialism, and investigating how knowledge was disseminated in the early modern period, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform does much to remedy the dearth of scholarship on this important period. Interest in Central Asia is growing as a result of the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and Khalid's book will make an important contribution to current debates over political and cultural autonomy in the region.
Download or read book The Lighthouse and the Observatory written by Daniel A. Stolz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of astronomy in Egypt reveals how modern science came to play an authoritative role in Islamic religious practice.
Download or read book Religion and State in Syria written by Thomas Pierret and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-25 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Syria has been dominated since the 1960s by a determinedly secular regime, the 2011 uprising has raised many questions about the role of Islam in the country's politics. This book demonstrates that with the eradication of the Muslim Brothers after the failed insurrection of 1982, Sunni men of religion became the only voice of the Islamic trend in the country. Through educational programs, charitable foundations and their deft handling of tribal and merchant networks, they took advantage of popular disaffection with secular ideologies to increase their influence over society. In recent years, with the Islamic resurgence, the Alawi-dominated Ba'thist regime was compelled to bring the clergy into the political fold. This relationship was exposed in 2011 by the division of the Sunni clergy between regime supporters, bystanders and opponents. This book affords a new perspective on Syrian society as it stands at the crossroads of political and social fragmentation.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law written by Anver M. Emon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a comprehensive survey of the contemporary study of Islamic law and a critical analysis of its deficiencies. Written by outstanding senior and emerging scholars in their fields, it offers an innovative historiographical examination of the field of Islamic law and an ideal introduction to key personalities and concepts. While capturing the state of contemporary Islamic legal studies by chronicling how far the field has come, the Handbook also explains why certain debates recur and indicates fundamental gaps in our knowledge. Each chapter presents bold new avenues for research and will help readers appreciate the contested nature of key concepts and topics in Islamic law. This Handbook will be a major reference work for scholars and students of Islam and Islamic law for years to come.
Download or read book Authority Conflict and the Transmission of Diversity in Medieval Islamic Law written by Kevin Jaques and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-04-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication examines how a medieval Syrian Shāfiʿī jurist, Ibn Qāḍī Shuhbah (d. 851/1448), depicted the formation, decline, and the sources for the revival of Islamic law based on his Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ al-shāfiʿīyah (The Generations of the Shāfiʿī Jurists).
Download or read book Subalterns and Social Protest written by Stephanie Cronin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles in this collection provide an alternative view of Middle Eastern history by focusing on the oppressed and the excluded, offering a challenge to the usual elite narratives. The collection is unique in its historical depth - ranging from the medieval period to the present - and its geographical reach, including Iran, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, the Balkans, the Arab Middle East and North Africa. The first to focus on the oppressed and the excluded, and their differing strategies of survival, of negotiation, and of protest and resistance, the book covers: both major social classes and sectors the working class the peasantry the urban poor women marginal groups such as gypsies and slaves Based on perspectives drawn from the work of the great European social historians, and particularly inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the collection seeks to restore a sense of historical agency to subaltern classes in the region, and to uncover ‘the politics of the people’.
Download or read book Sufi Heirs of the Prophet written by Arthur F. Buehler and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the sources and evolution of personal authority in one Islamic society Sufi Heirs of the Prophet explores the multifaceted development of personal authority in Islamic societies by tracing the transformation of one mystical sufi lineage in colonial India, the Naqshbandiyya. Arthur F. Buehler isolates four sources of personal authority evident in the practices of the Naqshbandiyya—lineage, spiritual traveling, status as a Prophetic exemplar, and the transmission of religious knowledge—to demonstrate how Muslim religious leaders have exercised charismatic leadership through their association with the most compelling of personal Islamic symbols, the Prophet Muhammad. Buehler clarifies the institutional structure of sufism, analyzes overlapping configurations of personal sufi authority, and details how and why revivalist Indian Naqshbandis abandoned spiritual practices that had sustained their predecessors for more than five centuries. He looks specifically at the role of Jama'at 'Ali Shah (d. 1951) to explain current Naqshbandi practices.
Download or read book History and Society during the Mamluk Period 1250 1517 written by Bethany J. Walker and published by V&R Unipress. This book was released on 2021-04-12 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a collection of research essays submitted by fellows of the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, an Advanced Center of Research in Mamluk Studies. It covers three themes, which correspond to the research agenda of the final three academic years of the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg. These were: environmental history, material culture studies, and im/mobility. The aim of the contributions is to overcome the disciplinary boundaries of the field and to engage in scholarly debates in Ottoman Studies, European history, archae-ology and art history, and even the natural sciences.
Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law written by Peri Bearman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unparalleled Companion provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to Islamic law to all with an interest in this increasingly relevant and developing field. The volume presents classical Islamic law through a historiographical introduction to and analysis of Western scholarship, while key debates about hot-button issues in modern-day circumstances are also addressed. In twenty-one chapters, distinguished authors offer an overview of their particular specialty, reflect on past and current thinking, and point to directions for future research. The Companion is divided into four parts. The first offers an introduction to the history of Islamic law as well as a discussion of how Western scholarship and historiography have evolved over time. The second part delves into the substance of Islamic law. Legal rules for the areas of legal status, family law, socio-economic justice, penal law, constitutional authority, and the law of war are all discussed in this section. Part three examines the adaptation of Islamic law in light of colonialism and the modern nation state as well as the subsequent re-Islamization of national legal systems. The final section presents contemporary debates on the role of Islamic law in areas such as finance, the diaspora, modern governance, and medical ethics, and the volume concludes by questioning the role of Sharia law as a legal authority in the modern context. By outlining the history of Islamic law through a linear study of research, this collection is unique in its examination of past and present scholarship and the lessons we can draw from this for the future. It introduces scholars and students to the challenges posed in the past, to the magnitude of milestones that were achieved in the reinterpretation and revision of established ideas, and ultimately to a thorough conceptual understanding of Islamic law.
Download or read book Autobiography and the Construction of Identity and Community in the Middle East written by NA NA and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from the early modern period to the present day, this edited collection uses biography as a window into the history of the Arab-Islamic Middle East. The contributors reinterpret the lives of the famous such as George Antonius and Doria Shafiq and rediscover the lives of individuals previously consigned to the margins of history, including the notorious individuals of 17th-century Syria and the 20th-century Palestinian activist Kulthum Auda. The book also draws on the biographical tradition of Arab historical writing, including biographical dictionaries, for an understanding of the region s social and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope and theoretically informed, this volume brings to light individual lives which are essential to an understanding of Middle Eastern history.
Download or read book History and Society During the Mamluk Period 1250 1517 written by Stephan Conermann and published by V&R unipress GmbH. This book was released on 2014 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once a person starts to study the 250-some years of the Mamluk Era in Egypt and Syria (12501517), one characteristic of that period stands out immediately the very unusual polarization of its society. A predominantly Arabic population was dominated by a purely Turkish-born elite of manu-mitted military slaves who sought to regenerate themselves continuously through a self-imposed fiat. The only person who could become a Mamluk was a Turk who had been born free outside the Islamic territories as a non-Muslim, then enslaved, brought to Egypt as a slave, converted to Islam, freed, and finally, trained as a warrior. Only those who met these prerequisites were members of the ruling stratum with all the concomitant political, military, and economic advantages. On this historically unique model of a society, Stephan Conermann has published a series of seminal articles. In this edited volume the reader gets an excellent introduction to some of the central issues of the ongoing research on the Mamluk history and society.