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The Sufi Path of Love
This is the most accessible work in English on the greatest mystical poet of Islam, providing a survey of the basic Sufi and Islamic doctrines concerning God and the world, the role of man in the cosmos, the need for religion, man's ultimate becoming, the states and stations of the mystical ascent to God, and the means whereby literature employs symbols to express "unseen" realities. William Chittick translates into English for the first time certain aspects of Rumi's work. He selects and rearranges Rumi's poetry and prose in order to leave aside unnecessary complications characteristic of other English translations and to present Rumi's ideas in an orderly fashion, yet in his own words. Thorough, nontechnical introductions to each chapter, and selections that gradually present a greater variety of terms and images, make this work easily accessible to those interested in the spirituality of any tradition.
Classical Persian Literature
Reprint of a classic text, this volume gives an insight into the rebirth of national literature in the national language and traces the course of its development and full maturity from the beginning of the ninth to the end of the fifteenth century.
Islamic Tolerance
Although pluralism and religious tolerance are most often associated today with Western Enlightenment thinkers, the roots of these ideologies stretch back to non-Western and premodern societies, including many under Muslim rule. This book explores the development of pluralism in Islam in South Asia through the work of the poet, historian and musician Amir Khusraw and sheds new light on how Islam developed its own culture of tolerance. Countering stereotypes of Islam as intrinsically intolerant, the book provides a better understanding of how rhetorics of pluralism develop, which may aid in identifying and encouraging such discourses in the present. Khusraw, a practicing Muslim who showed gre...
The Middle East
Renowned historian Bernard Lewis charts the history of the Middle East over the last 2,000 years—from the birth of Christianity through the modern era, focusing on the successive transformations that have shaped it. Drawing on material from a multitude of sources, including the work of archaeologists and scholars, Lewis chronologically traces the political, economical, social, and cultural development of the Middle East, from Hellenization in antiquity to the impact of westernization on Islamic culture. Meticulously researched, this enlightening narrative explores the patterns of history that have repeated themselves in the Middle East. From the ancient conflicts to the current geographical and religious disputes between the Arabs and the Israelis, Lewis examines the ability of this region to unite and solve its problems and asks if, in the future, these unresolved conflicts will ultimately lead to the ethnic and cultural factionalism that tore apart the former Yugoslavia. Elegantly written, scholarly yet accessible, this is the most comprehensive single volume history of the region ever written from the world’s foremost authority on the Middle East.
Religion, Language, and Power
Religion, Language and Power shows that the language of ‘religion’ is far from neutral, and that the packaging and naming of what English speakers call ‘religious’ groups or identities is imbued with the play of power. Religious Studies has all too often served to amplify voices from other centers of power, whether scripturalist or otherwise normative and dominant. This book’s de-centering of English classifications goes beyond the remit of most postcolonial studies in that it explores the classifications used in a range of languages — including Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, Greek and English — to achieve a comparative survey of the roles of language and power in the making of ‘religion’ . In contextualizing these uses of language, the ten contributors explore how labels are either imposed or emerge interactively through discursive struggles between dominant and marginal groups. In dealing with the interplay of religion, language and power, there is no other book with the breadth of this volume.
Interpreting al-Tha'labi's Tales of the Prophets
Al-Tha’labi was a renowned Qur’anic scholar of the fifth/eleventh century, and his ‘Ara’is al-majalis is arguably the finest and most widely consulted example of the Islamic qisas al-anbiya’ genre. Drawing on primary Arabic sources, Klar applies modern critical methods in order to explore the nature of al-Tha’labi’s ‘Ara'is al-majalis within its historical and literary context, and thereby produces a compelling examination of the stories of Noah, Job, Saul and David as portrayed in the key historiographical and folkloric texts of the medieval Islamic period. Via a close analysis of the relevant narratives, the book considers a number of universal aspects of the human conditio...
The History of the Seljuq State
The Akhbar al-dawla al-saljuqiyya is one of the key primary documents on the history of Western Persia and Iraq in the 11th and 12th centuries. This book provides an accessible English translation and commentary on the text, making available to a new readership this significant work on the pre-modern history of the Middle East and the Turkish peoples. The text is a chronicle of the Seljuq dynasty as it emerged within the Iranian lands in the 11th and 12th centuries, dominating the Middle Eastern lands, from Turkey and Syria to Iran and eastern Afghanistan. During this formative period in the central and eastern Islamic lands, they inaugurated a pattern of Turkish political and military dominance of the Middle East and beyond, from Egypt to India, in some cases well into the 20th century. Shedding light on many otherwise obscure aspects of the political history of the region, the book provides a more detailed context for the political history of the wider area. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Middle Eastern history and is an important addition to the existing literature on the Seljuq dynasty.
