The Islamic World To 1041

"Beginning in the twelfth century, the migration of various Turkic peoples over a four-century period greatly influenced the political and cultural organization of the Islamic world. This book assesses various factors, including the Mongol incursions and the Crusades, during the period of expansion and renewal leading up to Ottoman rule. Also covered are the impacts of colonialism, decolonization, and globalization on Islamic societies. This in-depth, academic guide's exploration of the history of Islam through the present gives readers the tools they need to understand the politics and culture of, and the problems faced by, the Islamic world today."

"During his lifetime in the sixth-seventh centuries, the Prophet Muhammad built the foundations of what would become the second-largest religion in the world. This comprehensive guide presents the history of Islam, beginning with the agrarian prehistory of Afro-Eurasia and the rise of Arabian city-states. It then offers a biographical treatment of Muhammad, followed by an assessment of the spread of Islam, and its splintering into diverse factions, that occurred in the centuries following Muhammad's death. Resources, including a timeline, help readers contextualize and connect the various regional developments during Islam's early period."

Islam scares the West. Militant conservatism and the horrific acts of violent fundamentalists evoke outrage, but the reprehensible few reinforce a longstanding Western stereotype of all Muslims as "incorrigibly fanatical, violent and morally and culturally different." Overlooked is the long history of Muslim intellectual and cultural achievement, and its potential to flower once again. With about 1.5 billion adherents, Islam is the world's fastest growing religion. An understanding of its past glories, present state and future potential has never been more critical. This survey of Muslim intellectual and cultural achievements spans 1,400 years. Chapters fall into three sections: fundamentals of Islamic learning; its growth until the present; and its future direction in the face of anti-intellectual fundamentalism. Arranged chronologically within the sections, chapters begin with an historical overview of the time period they encompass, providing context for the subsequent discussion of key intellectual and cultural achievements within that period. Appendices describe decorative and other arts, the requirements for expertise in Islamic thought, Islamic ethical traditions, and list noteworthy personalities and achievements chronologically. Maps and photographs illustrate the text, which also includes a glossary, notes, a bibliography and an index.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

How widespread was authorship among rulers in the premodern Islamic world? The writings of different types of rulers in different regions and periods are analyzed in this book, from the early centuries in the central lands of Islam to 19th century Sudan. The composition of poetry appears as the most fertile area for authorship among rulers. Prose writings show a wide variety, from astrology to bookmaking, from autobiography to creeds. Some of the rulers made claims to special knowledge, but in all cases authorship played a special role in the construction of the rulers' authority and legitimacy. Contributors: Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk, Sean W. Anthony, María Luisa Ávila†, Teresa Bernheimer, Philip Bockholt, Sonja Brentjes, Christiane Czygan, David Durand-Guédy, Anne-Marie Eddé, Sinem Eryılmaz, Maribel Fierro, Adam Gaiser, Angelika Hartmann†, Livnat Holtzman, Maher Jarrar, Robert S. Kramer, Christian Mauder, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Letizia Osti, Jürgen Paul, Petra Schmidl, Tilman Seidensticker.

The Middle East is the center of three great ancient civilizations--Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian. It is also the seat of four monotheistic religions--Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. Because of the strategic location between the West and the East, the Middle East, since the early nineteenth century, became the fulcrum of competition among and between great powers, including Czarist Russia, and it became intensified with the outbreak of the Cold War the end of the World War II between the two superpowers--the US and the Soviet Union--and with the creation of Israel in 1948 and the discovery of oil. And it remains as such even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The region became an epicenter of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic terrorism, irredentism, and sectarian wars. The region remains politically unstable and unpredictable, given the fact it is run by autocratic regimes and dynastic monarchies except for Israel, a functioning democracy. So the purpose of this work is to introduce students and the general readers to this region's history--the founding of Islam, its spread and split, the Ottoman Empire and its fall, the Western colonization and its end, and the emergence of independent Arab states. The also work examines the domestic, regional, and international of nine countries--the frontline and the Persian Gulf states in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of its impact and nonimpact over them, with the exception of Turkey. An understanding of the region hopefully should help us deal with the vicissitudes and the complexities, given our dependence on the region's oil and the sea shipping through the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf.

Country-by-country, this comprehensive, annotated bibliography brings together the vast number of articles, books, conference papers, theses, dissertations, and reports that have been written about librarianship in the Islamic World during the past fifty years. It highlights sources published on a wide variety of library and information science related topics including academic libraries, bibliometrics, cataloging, collection development, exhibitions, finance, gray literature, indexing, information communication, information science, library staff, literacy, management, national libraries, networks, online databases, periodicals control, preservation, public relations, reference work, research, school libraries, security, technical services, and user training.

The purpose of this book, is to draw attention to the sites of life, politics and culture where current and past generations of the Islamic world have made their mark. Unlike many previous volumes dealing with the city in the Islamic world, this one has been specially expanded not only to include snapshots of historical fabric but also to deal with the transformation of this fabric into modern and contemporary urban entities.