Islamic History and Thought

The Kitāb al-Aghānī (the Book of Songs) is one of the most important sources for Arabic literature and Islamic history. It was compiled during the first half of the tenth century — a pivotal period for the formation of the Islamic sectarian identities, which is the subject of keen and ongoing scholarly debate and fundamental to understanding of the later Shīʿī Islam. While its compiler, Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (died after 356/967), is generally viewed as a “Zaydī Shīʿī”, no study has engaged in depth with the manifestation of his sectarian perspective in the Aghānī. This book addresses the question of whether al-Iṣfahānī’s sectarian perspective can be discerned in the Aghānī via analysis based primarily upon redaction criticism. By examining the compiler’s interventions, this book argues that al-Iṣfahānī to some extent presents past people and events central to the Shīʿī worldview in accordance with his sectarian affiliation. Furthermore, this work questions the label “Zaydī” that has been attached to al- Iṣfahānī. Based on textual analyses of the Aghānī, as well as on evidence from his Maqātil al-Ṭālibīyīn (“The Ṭālibid Martyrs”) and other evidence from the tenth- century context, this book suggests that al-Iṣfahānī’s religious thought can be construed as a “mild” form of Shīʿism ― in the sense that it entail neither belief in a specific lineage of imams nor repudiation of most of the Companions including the first three caliphs ― but cannot necessarily be identified with any sect, as set down in the heresiography. It is also suggested that this kind of Shīʿism may have been promoted by al-Iṣfahānī’s patron, the Būyid vizier, Abū Muḥammad al-Muhallabī (291–352/903–963), in the complex sectarian context of mid-tenth- century Iraq.

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.

As Abû ʿAbd Allâh al-Ḥusayn, son of ʿAlî and Fâṭima and grandson of Muḥammad, moved inexorably towards death on the field of Karbalâʾ, his sister Zaynab was drawn ever closer to the centre of the family of Muḥammad, the ‘people of the house’ (ahl al-bayt). There she would remain for a few historic days, challenging the wickedness of the Islamic leadership, defending the actions of her brother, initiating the commemorative rituals, protecting and nurturing the new Imâm, al-Ḥusayn’s son ʿAlî b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlî b. Abî Ṭâlib, until he could take his rightful place. This is her story.

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.

This study of Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī’s (d. 631/1233) teachings on creation offers close analysis of all of his extant works of falsafa and kalām. Some of these were not known to previous scholars, yet they bear witness to key facets of the interaction between the historically inimical traditions of Hellenic philosophy and rational theology at this important intellectual moment. Al-Āmidī is seen to grapple with the encounter of two paradigms for the discussion of creation. On the one hand, Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysical concept of necessity of existence is the basis of his doctrine of the world’s pre-eternal emanation. On the other, for the mutakallimūn, the physical theory of atomism bolsters the view that God created the world from nothing. This study is of interest to scholars of Ibn Sīnā and Ash‘arism alike, as it advances our understanding of the ongoing tradition of rational theology in the Islamic world, long past Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) famous attack on the philosophers.

For believers in a resurrection of the body, there arises the question of what happens after death but before the Last Day: the intermediate state. For most Muslims, the intermediate state is the barzakh. It is a fantastical and frightening time in the grave. The present study will examine where the belief in the barzakh comes from through a study of the Qur'an.

A diachronic study of the development of Aqaba castle, an important Islamic khan at the junction of two major pilgrim routes, both based on Arabic and Crusader sources and the results of the excavations undertaken by Ghent University in Aqaba.

“In the absence of reliable archaeological evidence, the question of how the mosque was made represents a real challenge. Its origin remains moot despite many attempts to settle the question. This study sets out to explore whether early Islam, within the framework of the Prophet’s teachings and practices, as well as the Qurʾān, might have provided the necessary prompts for the making of the mosque and the shaping of its essential functional and architectural features. It also investigates how such religious prompts may have interacted with the political, cultural and socio-economic contexts in which the mosque type materialized. As such, this book scrutinizes two dominant tendencies regarding the mosque type, the modern Western views on its non-Islamic origins and the Islamic legalist views on what it should look like.”

The only child of Muhammad to survive him, Fâṭima was from early times taken up by Shî’a Islam, for whose adherents she is the virgin mother, the heavenly intercessor with untold power before God’s throne, and the grieving mother of al-Husayn, the Shi’a's most important martyr. During her life she was impoverished and weak, neglected, marginalized, and divested of justice: but her reward in heaven comprises incalculable riches, all those in heaven will bow their heads to her, and her company will be the angels and the friends of God. Here, for the first time, her story is told.

What is the nature and social role of women? In today’s Shi‘ism, these questions are often answered through the “separate-but- equal” ideology which emphasizes the role of women as wives and mothers, and places men in authority. But is this the only ideology which can be derived from Shi‘i scriptural sources? This book takes a more nuanced approach to that question by exploring how women are portrayed in hadith on ancient sacred narrative – the stories of the prophets. It shows far more diverse views on what it means to be a woman (and, by extension, a man) – and that early Shi‘is held competing views about ideals for women.

The present work provides a new edition and substantial German commentary of the important theological Arabic work Al-Tamhīd fī bayān al-tauḥīd (“Introduction to the explanation of monotheism”) by the 5th/11th century scholar Abū Shakūr al-Sālimī. The work and its author belong to the theological school that succeeded Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (died 333/944) and still serve as important markers of Sunnī theology into the nineteenth century.

Translated from Hebrew, this groundbreaking study sets out to answer one simple question: who were the commanders of the early Islamic navy? Using the prosopographical method, Elmakias unearths fresh information about early Islam's inexperienced and pioneering naval commanders. Through their fascinating biographies, we learn about the people who led the Islamic navy during the first conquests of the Islamic empire and helped to realise the spread and expansion of Islamic influence.

As Abû ʿAbd Allâh al-Ḥusayn, son of ʿAlî and Fâṭima and grandson of Muḥammad, moved inexorably towards death on the field of Karbalâʾ, his sister Zaynab was drawn ever closer to the centre of the family of Muḥammad, the ‘people of the house’ (ahl al-bayt). There she would remain for a few historic days, challenging the wickedness of the Islamic leadership, defending the actions of her brother, initiating the commemorative rituals, protecting and nurturing the new Imâm, al-Ḥusayn’s son ʿAlî b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlî b. Abî Ṭâlib, until he could take his rightful place. This is her story.

A study of the identity-formation process that the Christians of Syria-Palestine experienced during the Umayyad Caliphate. It approaches this subject by using John of Damascus and his writings on Islam as a case-study. This provides an exhaustive study of the available historical data in order to stimulate some further thought on John of Damascus’s theology and legacy from a contextual and intercultural methodology. Such an examination has not yet been pursued in the scholarship of Byzantine Christianity during that era. Proceeding from a centralizing ‘context’, the monograph revisits John of Damascus’s legacy (and the Umayyad Christians’ identity-formation of that era) from the perspective of his historical, Islamic-Arabic context, and not from any assumed, metanarrative, common to contemporary pro-Byzantine theology scholars.

This study challenges the conventional image of the tenth-century Sufi mystic Al-Husayn Ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāğ (d. 929) as an anti-philosophical mystic. Unlike the predominantly theological or text-historical studies which constitute much of the scholarly literature on Ḥallāğ, this study is completely philosophical in nature, placing Ḥallāğ within the tradition of Graeco-Arabic philosophy and emphasizing, in a positive light, his continuity with the pagan Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus.

This book focuses on the production, sale, and consumption of portable arts in regions covered today by the modern polities of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestine Authority. The reprinted chapters in this volume have been revised and updated. They offer interdisciplinary approaches to the material culture of the region from the twelfth to the early twentieth centuries, combining evidence from primary written sources, archaeology, and objects in museums and private collections. Topics include the production and distribution of pottery, importation of glazed wares into the Middle East, shadow puppetry, economic activity associated with the Syrian hajj, the manufacturing practices of the crafts operating in Damascus during the last decades of Ottoman rule, and the decoration of artillery shell cases during and after World War I. Also included are an introduction containing a critical evaluation of the main sources of information, a cumulative bibliography, and a previously unpublished study of leatherworking in the late Ottoman period.

The only child of Muhammad to survive him, Fâṭima was from early times taken up by Shî’a Islam, for whose adherents she is the virgin mother, the heavenly intercessor with untold power before God’s throne, and the grieving mother of al-Husayn, the Shî’a's most important martyr. During her life she was impoverished and weak, neglected, marginalized, and divested of justice: but her reward in heaven comprises incalculable riches, all those in heaven will bow their heads to her, and her company will be the angels and the friends of God. Here, for the first time, her story is told.

This in-depth study examines the relation between legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and speculative theology (ʿīlm al-kalām). It compares the legal theory of four classical jurists who belonged to the same school of law, the Shāfiʿī school, yet followed three different theological traditions. The aim of this comparison is to understand to what extent, and in what way, the theology of each jurist shaped his choices in legal theory.

This volume explores aspects of religious culture in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula across Late Antiquity – the period of dynamic and historically crucial developments, culminating in the emergence of Islam. While it would be impossible to provide an exhaustive examination of the topic in a single volume, it is the main aim of this book to further stimulate scholarly research on the Late Antique context of the origins of Islam and the history of early Arab-Muslim culture.

Die folgende Studie beschäftigt sich mit der Rezeption Konstantins in der arabischen Historiographie, sowoh christlicher- als auch muslimischerseits. Eine genauere Analyse der Texte wird zeigen, wie die Geschichte des ersten christlichen Kaisers eine Projektionsfläche für Identitätskonstrutkionen werden konnte, auch über Religionsgrenzen hinaus.

‘Abd al-‘Azīz b. Marwān (d. 86/705) reigned as the amīr of Egypt and walī al-‘ahd (heir apparent) to the Islamic caliphate for over 20 years. This book intends to revive this largely forgotten amīr and demonstrate the critical role he played in the formation of the Marwānid dynasty. The founding thesis of this study is that ‘Abd al-‘Azīz was appointed the amīr of Egypt and second heir apparent due to the legitimacy his maternal lineage brought the nascent dynasty.

This important work is a source-critical study of a group of traditions (aḥādīth) found in Ibn Isḥāq's Biography (Sīra) of the prophet Muḥammad, widely considered one of the most important early historical texts on the Prophet's life. Through a meticulous isnād-cum-matn analysis, the author reveals that Ibn Isḥāq relied on Muḥammad b. Abī Muḥammad, a hitherto undocumented source of his. Important new light is also shed on problems with Ibn Hishām’s recension of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra.

For believers in a resurrection of the body, there arises the question of what happens after death but before the Last Day: the intermediate state. For most Muslims, the intermediate state is the barzakh. It is a fantastical and frightening time in the grave. The present study will examine where the belief in the barzakh comes from through a study of the Qur'an.

Early Islamic historical literature attributes several hundred pragmatic documents to the Prophet Muḥammad. The consistent use of epistolary and legal formulae, which are found only in these documents, encourages us to treat these texts as a corpus. In addition to consistent terminology, formulaic structure, and formulae, these texts show remarkable stability through transmission. A comparison of these texts with Umayyad and ʿAbbasid papyri reveals that the Prophet's documents reflect obsolete or otherwise unattested formulae. This study will demonstrate through three case studies the particular functions of these documents in the history of social relations in late antique Arabia.

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.