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The hero cycles of Arabic belong to the literary tradition of The Arabian Nights and can be seen as the popular epics of their civilisation. The Arabian epic covers ten of the main representatives of this genre. Each of these has been developed through the processes of accretive oral story-telling by means of an accumulation of narrative and folklore motifs, many of which belong to what can be seen as a universal tradition. The work is published in three volumes. The first volume introduces the background and the dimensions in which the cycles are set, while the second volume analyses their contents and the literary formulae used in their construction, as well as listing analogues found in other literatures. The epitomes surveyed in the final volume provide non-Arabists with a more immediate insight into the contents of the cycles, drawing attention to their narrative colouring and texture.
In The Foundations of the Composite Culture in India, the focus of the author is the process of establishment of Hindu-Muslim unity as a result of historical, social and cultural factors over a period of ten centuries. Traversing this era, he reveals how the Muslim rulers contributed to such harmony and how the two cultures exchanged and accepted each other's tenets to enrich and formulate a composite Indian culture. To explore the foundations on which the complex culture of India rests, the author examines the contribution of Sufism which inherently connotes syncretism and tolerance, as well as the simultaneous rise of the Bhakti movement in medieval India. This title is co-published with Aakar Books. Print editions not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)
Camphor - origin, distribution, disposal, use - is here examined in the wider context of Old World "aromata." Evidence is drawn from an extensive range of sources in natural and cultural history. Fifteen original maps, twenty-eight other illustrations, and extensive bibliography.
Who would have guessed that an ancient excavation would end in a modern murder...' Under the pressure of war, heroes arise in unusual places. In Aileen Baron's The Torch of Tangier, the main character is not a brave soldier stolen from his home; on the contrary, she is an archeologist. World War II transformed Lily Sampson's job into a nightmar...
In this second volume, starting with the Caliphate of Banu Umayyah, the martyrdom of Imam Husain (R) and the Caliphate of the Abbasids, all areas have been covered as far as the expansion of Islam was. --Publisher description.
Sunni-Shia relations in the GCC countries are analysed by the contributors in the wake of recent protests in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Endymion Wilkinson's bestselling manual of Chinese history has long been an indispensable guide to all those interested in the civilization and history of China. In this latest edition, now in a bigger format, its scope has been dramatically enlarged by the addition of one million words of new text. Twelve years in the making, the new manual introduces students to different types of transmitted, excavated, and artifactual sources from prehistory to the twentieth century. It also examines the context in which the sources were produced, preserved, and received, the problems of research and interpretation associated with them, and the best, most up-to-date secondary works. Because the writing of history has always played a central role in Chinese politics and culture, special attention is devoted to the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese historiography.
Likely to become a standard work for students of the ancient Near East, and for those interested in the high cultures of the region, this account is also a highly accessible repository of information valuable to archaeologists, anthropologists, etc