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Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.
In this probing study of death rites, Leor Halevi plays prescriptive texts against material culture, advancing a new way of interpreting the origins of Islam. He shows how religious scholars produced codes of funerary law to create new social patterns in the cities of Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the eastern Mediterranean. They distinguished Islamic from Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian rites; and they changed the way men and women interacted publicly and privately. Each chapter explores a different layer of human interaction, following the movement of the corpse from the deathbed to the grave. Highlighting economic and political factors, as well as key religious and sexual divisions, Halevi forges a fascinating link between the development of funerary rites and the efforts of an emerging religion to carve its own distinct identity. Muhammad's Grave is a groundbreaking history of the rise of Islam and the roots of contemporary Muslim attitudes toward the body and society.
Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam chronicles the experiences, identity and achievements of enslaved black people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Chouki El Hamel argues that we cannot rely solely on Islamic ideology as the key to explain social relations and particularly the history of black slavery in the Muslim world, for this viewpoint yields an inaccurate historical record of the people, institutions and social practices of slavery in Northwest Africa. El Hamel focuses on black Moroccans' collective experience beginning with their enslavement to serve as the loyal army of the Sultan Isma'il. By the time the Sultan died in 1727, they had become a political force, making and unmaking rulers well into the nineteenth century. The emphasis on the political history of the black army is augmented by a close examination of the continuity of black Moroccan identity through the musical and cultural practices of the Gnawa.
In Jonah Blank's important, myth-shattering book, the West gets its first look at the Daudi Bohras, a unique Muslim denomination who have found the core of their religious beliefs largely compatible with modern ideology. Combining orthodox Muslim prayer, dress, and practice with secular education, relative gender equality, and Internet use, this community serves as a surprising reminder that the central values of "modernity" are hardly limited to the West.
Kaifi Azmi's literary legacy remains a bright star in the firmament of Urdu poetry. His poetic temperament-ranging from timeless lyrics in films like Kagaz Ke Phool to soaring revolutionary verses that denounced tyranny-seamlessly combined the radical and the progressive with the lyrical and the romantic. Love and romance, in fact, run like warp through the woof of politics and protest in Kaifi's poetry. This beautifully curated volume brings together poems and lyrics that reflect Kaifi's views on women and romance-from sweetly lyrical odes like 'The First Greeting' to the powerful, anthem-like 'Woman'; from the haunting 'Regret' to the mercurial 'She of Many Faces'. These stunning verses conjure a dynamic portrait of womanhood as seen through the eyes of an exquisitely gifted poet. This scintillating new translation is accompanied by an illuminating introduction by Rakhshanda Jalil on Kaifi Azmi's life and legacy, as well as a moving foreword by his daughter Shabana Azmi.
His Highness the Aga Khan, Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah was a direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad and the spiritual head of millions of Ismailis living across the world. He was a statesman with an international reputation. Providing rich insights into the multifaceted personality of the Aga Khan, this book explores something of what he had done and said as well as how he had achieved a position for himself which had been rivaled by none of his contemporaries. Tracing his descent from Ali who married Fatimah, the only daughter of the Prophet Muhammad by his first wife Khadijah, it describes his ancestry, with a special focus on the lives and achievements of his grandfather and father the Aga Khan Hussain Ali Shah and Aga Khan Aly Shah. Also, it examines the role of Aga khan in India's struggle for independence, as also his contributions toward world peace and educational development.
This book differs from others on name reactions in organic chemistry by focusing on their mechanisms. It covers over 300 classical as well as contemporary name reactions. Biographical sketches for the chemists who discovered or developed those name reactions have been included. Each reaction is delineated by its detailed step-by-step, electron-pushing mechanism, supplemented with the original and the latest references, especially review articles. This book contains major improvements over the previous edition and the subject index is significantly expanded.
"One of the key texts of Malraux's work . . . [its] pages must be counted among the most haunting in all of twentieth century literature."—Victor Brombert "The description of the gas attack on the Russian front in 1915 will never be forgotten by anyone who has read it. . . . [Malraux] writes with the precision, the certitude and the authority of an obsessed person who knows that he has found the essence of what he has been looking for."—Conor Cruise O'Brien, from the Foreword Malraux's greatest novel, Man's Fate, gave a grim, lurid picture of human suffering. [The Walnut Trees of Altenburg], written by a life-long observer of violent upheaval and within the shadows of World War II, gives a calm, thoughtful vision of humanistic endeavor that can transcend the absurdity of existence. Mature readers will find this a rewarding visit to one of the most accomplished writers of our time."—Choice
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