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Boundaries of Belonging
Explores citizenship, rights and belonging in post-Independence South Asia, examining the long-term impact of the 1947 Partition.
Sufi Saints and State Power
In this book, Dr Sarah Ansari examines the system of political control constructed by the British in Sind between 1843 and 1947. In particular, she explores the part of the local Muslim elite, the pirs or hereditary sufi saints. Using a wealth of historical material and in depth interviews, the author looks at the development of the institution of the pir, its power base and the mechanics of the system of control into which the pirs were drawn. The overall success of the political system depended on the willingness of the elite to participate and Dr Ansari argues that it did indeed work in Sind. This enabled the British to govern while allowing the pirs to adapt to colonial rule, and later independence, without serious damage to their interests. The author demonstrates that only in the heightened nationalist atmosphere of the 1940s did the system break down.
Women, Religion and Culture in Iran
Investigates how women, religion and culture have interacted in the context of 19th and 20th century Iran, covering topics as seemingly diverse as the social and cultural history of Persian cuisine, the work and attitudes of 19th century Christian missionaries, the impact of growing female literacy, and the consequences of developments since 1979.
Life After Partition
By the 1990s, ethnic politics had come to dominate Sindh, with calls for Karachi to become a fifth province in its right. Life After Partition examines the historical background to these developments by focusing on events in the province in the years immediately following partition, when migrants from India and local people in Sindh found themselves living alongside each other in the newly created state of Pakistan. How far they retained distinctive notions of community and identity, and what its impact was on processes of accommodation and integration forms the main focus of this study of life in Sindh between 1947 and 1962.
The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World
Islamic peoples account for one fifth of the world's population and yet there is widespread misunderstanding in the West of what Islam really is. Francis Robinson and his team set out to address this, revealing the complex and sometimes contrary nature of Muslim culture. As well as taking on the issues uppermost in everyone's minds, such as the role of religious and political fundamentalism, they demonstrate the importance of commerce; literacy and learning; Islamic art; the effects of immigration, exodus, and conquest; and the roots of current crises in the Middle East, Bosnia, and the Gulf. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the interaction between Islam and the West, from the first Latin translations of the Quran to the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. This elegant book deliberately sets out to dismantle the Western impression of Islam as a monolithic world and replace it with a balanced view, from current issues of fundamentalism to its dynamic culture and art. Francis Robinson is the editor of two outstanding reference works: Atlas of the Islamic World Since 1500 (Cambridge, 1982) and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India (1989).
From Subjects to Citizens
The book offers a fresh and timely perspective on the broader field of early postcolonial South Asian history.
The Sufi Paradigm and the Makings of a Vernacular Knowledge in Colonial India
This book demonstrates how a local elite built upon colonial knowledge to produce a vernacular knowledge that maintained the older legacy of a pluralistic Sufism. As the British reprinted a Sufi work, Shah Abd al-Latif Bhittai's Shah jo risalo, in an effort to teach British officers Sindhi, the local intelligentsia, particularly driven by a Hindu caste of professional scribes (the Amils), seized on the moment to promote a transformation from traditional and popular Sufism (the tasawuf) to a Sufi culture (Sufiyani saqafat). Using modern tools, such as the printing press, and borrowing European vocabulary and ideology, such as Theosophical Society, the intelligentsia used Sufism as an idiomatic matrix that functioned to incorporate difference and a multitude of devotional traditions—Sufi, non-Sufi, and non-Muslim—into a complex, metaphysical spirituality that transcended the nation-state and filled the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional voids of postmodernity.
Lebanese Women at the Crossroads
Thirty years after the end of the civil war, Lebanese women are still struggling for gender equality. This study builds on recent scholarship on women’s activism in the Arab world, in the context of the Arab Spring. It examines how discourses of secularism and equal civil rights have informed the contemporary Lebanese women’s movement in their campaigns for a domestic violence law, women’s nationality rights, a women’s quota in parliament, the reform of personal status law and the recognition of civil marriage. This book argues that women are caught between sect and nation, due to Lebanon’s plural legal system, which makes a division between religious and civil law. While both jurisdictions allocate women relational rights, guided by the logic of patrilineal descent, women’s inequality is central to the reproduction of sectarian difference and patriarchal control within the confessional political system, as a whole.
