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Jonathan Berkey's 2003 book surveys the religious history of the peoples of the Near East from roughly 600 to 1800 CE. The opening chapter examines the religious scene in the Near East in late antiquity, and the religious traditions which preceded Islam. Subsequent chapters investigate Islam's first century and the beginnings of its own traditions, the 'classical' period from the accession of the Abbasids to the rise of the Buyid amirs, and thereafter the emergence of new forms of Islam in the middle period. Throughout, close attention is paid to the experiences of Jews and Christians, as well as Muslims. The book stresses that Islam did not appear all at once, but emerged slowly, as part of a prolonged process whereby it was differentiated from other religious traditions and, indeed, that much that we take as characteristic of Islam is in fact the product of the medieval period.
This collection of essays by ancient historians, Egyptologists, Coptologists, and historians of religions covers the Egyptian and Jewish backgrounds of Coptic pilgrimage, its major shrines, and diverse responses to it in sermon and literature.
This book studies the Arabic-Islamic view of Byzantium, tracing the Byzantine image as it evolved through centuries of warfare, contact, and exchanges. Including previously inaccessible material on the Arabic textual tradition on Byzantium, this investigation shows the significance of Byzantium to the Arab Muslim establishment and their appreciation of various facets of Byzantine culture and civilization. The Arabic-Islamic representation of the Byzantine Empire stretching from the reference to Byzantium in the Qur'an until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is considered in terms of a few salient themes. The image of Byzantium reveals itself to be complex, non-monolithic, and self-referential. Formulating an alternative appreciation to the politics of confrontation and hostility that so often underlies scholarly discourse on Muslim-Byzantine relations, this book presents the schemes developed by medieval authors to reinterpret aspects of their own history, their own self-definition, and their own view of the world.
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Amid so much twenty-first-century talk of a "Christian-Muslim divide"--and the attendant controversy in some Western countries over policies toward minority Muslim communities--a historical fact has gone unnoticed: for more than four hundred years beginning in the mid-seventh century, some 50 percent of the world's Christians lived and worshipped under Muslim rule. Just who were the Christians in the Arabic-speaking milieu of Mohammed and the Qur'an? The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque is the first book-length discussion in English of the cultural and intellectual life of such Christians indigenous to the Islamic world. Sidney Griffith offers an engaging overview of their initial reaction...
Examines the socio-cultural history of the regions where Islam took hold between the 7th and 16th century. This two-volume work contains 700 alphabetically arranged entries, and provides a portrait of Islamic civilization. It is of use in understanding the roots of Islamic society as well to explore the culture of medieval civilization.
For the non-Muslim, Mecca is the most forbidden of Holy Cities--and yet, in many ways it is the best known. Muslim historians and geographers have studied it, and countless pilgrims and travelers--many of them European Christians in disguise--have left behind lively and well-publicized accounts of life in Mecca and its associated shrine-city of Medina, where the Prophet lies buried. The stories of all these figures, holy men and heathens alike, come together in this book to offer a remarkably revealing literary portrait of the city's traditions and urban life and of the surrounding area. Closely following the publication of F. E. Peters's The Hajj (Princeton, 1994), which describes the peril...
This edited volume examines the importance and significance of the Christian population in the Middle East and North Africa from the rise of Islam to present day. Specifically, the authors focus on the contributions of Christians to Arab politics, economy, and law. Using the current plight of Christians in the Muslim world (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt), the contributors analyze the origins of the crises and propose recommendations and strategies to foster religious freedom, human rights, and an inclusive political system that ensures equality of citizenship for all communities to participate fully in their societies.
In Between Empires Greg Fisher tackles the problem of pre-Islamic Arab identity by examining the relationship between the Roman Empire and the Empire of Sasanian Iran, and a selection of their Arab allies and neighbours, the Jafnids, Nasrids, and Hujrids. Fisher focuses on the last century before the emergence of Islam and stresses the importance of a Near East dominated by Rome and Iran for the formation of early concepts of Arab identity. In particular, he examines cultural and religious integration, political activities, and the role played by Arabic as factors in this process. He concludes that interface with the Roman Empire, in particular, played a key role in helping to lay the foundation for later concepts of Arab identity, and that the world of Late Antiquity is, as a result, of enduring interest in our understanding of what we now call the Middle East.
By addressing various aspects of the Qur'?n's linguistic and historical context and offering close readings of selected passages in the light of Jewish, Christian, and ancient Arabic literature, the volume seeks to stimulate a new interaction between literary and historical scholarship.