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In Formation of a Religious Landscape: Shi‘i Higher Learning in Safavid Iran, Maryam Moazzen offers the first systematic examination of Shi‘i educational institution and practices by exploring the ways in which religious knowledge was produced, authenticated, and transmitted in the second half of Safavid rule (1588-1722). By analyzing the deeds of endowment of the Madrasa-yi Sulṭānī and other mosque-madrasas built by the Safavid elite, this study sheds light on the organizing mechanisms and structures utilized by such educational foundations. Based on the large number of ijazās and other primary sources including waqfiyyas, biographical dictionaries and autobiographies, this study also reconstructs the Safavid madrasas’ curriculum and describes the pedagogical methods used to transmit religious knowledge as well as issues that faced Shi‘i higher learning in early modern times.
Teachers and Students: Reflections on Learning in Near and Middle Eastern Cultures. Collected Studies in Honour of Sebastian Günther contains essays on the developments, ideals, and practices of teaching and learning in the Islamicate world, past and present. The authors address topics that reflect – and thus honour – Sebastian Günther’s academic achievements in this particular area. The volume offers fresh insights into key issues related to education and human development, including their shared characteristics as well as their influence on and interdependence with cultures of the Islamicate world, especially in the classical period of Islam (9th-15th century CE). The diverse spectrum of topics covered in the book, as well as the wide range of innovative interdisciplinary approaches and research tools employed, pay tribute to Sebastian Günther’s research focus on Islamic education and ethics, through which he has inspired many of his students, colleagues, and friends.
Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam offers a multi-disciplinary study of Muslim thinking about paradise, death, apocalypse, and the hereafter. It focuses on eschatological concepts in the Quran and its exegesis, Sunni and Shi‘i traditions, Islamic theology, philosophy, mysticism, and other scholarly disciplines reflecting Islamicate pluralism and cosmopolitanism. Gathering material from all parts of the Muslim world, ranging from Islamic Spain to Indonesia, and the entirety of Islamic history, this publication in two volumes also integrates research from comparative religion, art history, sociology, anthropology and literary studies. Unparalleled and unprecedented in its scope and comprehensiveness, Roads to Paradise promises to become the definitive reference work on Islamic eschatology for the years to come.
Knowledge and Education in Classical Islam: Religious Learning between Continuity and Change is a pioneering collection of essays on the historical developments, ideals, and practices of Islamic learning and teaching in the formative and classical periods of Islam (i.e., from the seventh to fifteenth centuries CE). Based on innovative and philologically sound primary source research, and utilizing the most recent methodological tools, this two volume set sheds new light on the challenges and opportunities that arise from a deep engagement with classical Islamic concepts of knowledge, its production and acquisition, and, of course, learning. Learning is especially important because of its rel...
In Politics, Poetry, and Sufism in Medieval Iran Chad Lingwood offers new insights into the political significance of poetry and Sufism at the court of Sulṭān Ya‘qūb (d. 896/1490), leader of the Āq Qoyūnlū. The basis of the study is Salāmān va Absāl, a Persian allegorical romance ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), the great Timurid belletrist and Naqshbandi Sufi, dedicated to Ya‘qūb. Lingwood demonstrates that Salāmān va Absāl, which modern critics have dismissed as ‘crude’ and ‘grotesque,’ is a sophisticated work of political and mystical advice for a Muslim ruler. In the process, he challenges received wisdom concerning Jāmī, the Āq Qoyūnlū, and Perso-Islamic advice literature. Significantly, the study illustrates the extent to which Jāmī’s compositions integrated the Timurid and Āq Qoyūnlū realms.
Julie Peteet offers a fascinating tour through the rich cultural history of hammams, or baths, in the Mediterranean and Middle East. These sacred structures date back to the Bronze and Iron Ages and have evolved through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods. In this original work, Peteet provides the first comprehensive examination of hammams through their architecture, the labor pool, clientele, meanings, notions of the body and hygiene, and economy. Exploring the hammam as both a tangible architectural structure and an intangible social practice, Peteet sheds light on how the bath has functioned as a central hub of religious ceremonies and a space that transcends any speci...
The authoritative account of Islam's schism that for centuries has shaped events in the Middle East and the Islamic world. In 632, soon after the Prophet Muhammad died, a struggle broke out among his followers as to who would succeed him. Most Muslims argued that the leader of Islam should be elected by the community's elite and rule as Caliph. They would later become the Sunnis. Otherswho would become known as the Shiabelieved that Muhammad had designated his cousin and son-in-law Ali as his successor, and that henceforth Ali's offspring should lead as Imams. This dispute over who should guide Muslims, the Caliph or the Imam, marks the origin of the Sunni-Shii split in Islam. Toby Matthiese...
During its Qajar period (1210–1344/1795–1925), Iran witnessed some lively and significant philosophical discourse. Yet apart from studies devoted to individual figures such as Mullā Hādī Sabzawārī and Shaykh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī, modern scholarship has paid little attention to the animated discussions and vibrant traditions of philosophy that continued in Iran during this period. The articles assembled in this book present an account of the life, works and philosophical challenges taken up by seven major philosophers of the Qajar period. As a collection, the articles convey the range and diversity of Qajar philosophical thinking. Besides indigenous thoughts, the book also deals with the reception of European philosophy in Iran at the time.
Psycho-nationalism focuses on the history of the use of Iranian identity under the Shah, as well as by the governments since the 1979 Iranian revolution, to offer an exploration into the psychological and political roots of national identity and how these are often utilised by governments.
This volume inquires into the history of local educational traditions both before and after their encounter with European powers, and their own modernities.