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This first detailed study of slavery in medieval Yemen examines the lives of women and men who were enslaved as children and then placed in various subaltern positions - from domestic servant to royal concubine, from quarryman to army commander., Diese erste detaillierte Studie der Sklaverei im mittelalterlichen Jemen analysiert das Leben von Frauen und Männern, die als Kinder versklavt wurden und dann verschiedene Rollen für ihre Besitzer:innen einnahmen - von Hausgehilfinnen und Steinbrucharbeitern bis hin zu königlichen Konkubinen und Kommandanten.

The renaissance of Shi’i Islam began in the 9th/15th century when the Ismailis experienced the Anjudan revival and Twelver Shi’i traditions were also renewed. This renaissance gained further strength when the Safavids succeeded in establishing a state in the early decades of the 10th/16th century, making Ithna’ashari Shi’i Islam their official religion. The chapters in this open access book represent the most recent scholarship on the intellectual and spiritual life of the age and discuss what prepared the ground for its appearance as well as its achievements. Although the political and artistic developments of the Safavid era of the 10th-12th/16th-18th centuries have been extensively studied, the complexities of the different groups, movements and strands of thought in the renaissance of Shi’i Islam still remain largely unexplored. The major themes that characterised the Shi’i renaissance are explored, including: popular reactions to messianic movements; the development of legal theories and concepts; the investigation of theological and philosophical problems, above all by the ‘School of Isfahan’; Shi’i-Sufi interactions and intra-Shi'i relations; the collection of Shi’i hadith and its application in Shi’i exegesis; and the interplay between political considerations and religious beliefs. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Institute of Ismaili Studies.

The Shi’i Ismaili Muslims of Central Asia have a complex political history. This open access book is the first English-language study of the Ismaili Muslims in this region, based on analysis of the Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship about them. It sheds new light on their history and heritage, and also shows how the Ismailis of Central Asia have been understood and presented in the academic literature. Divided into three parts, the first covers the spread of the Ismaili da’wa (mission) throughout Central Asia - known as Khurasan - from the 3rd/9th century until modern times. This part examines the prominent poet da’i Nasir-i Khusraw, who played an instrumental role in the expansion and development of Ismailism in Badakhshan in the eleventh century and reveals the impact of his religio-philosophical legacy in the life of the contemporary community. The second part examines the initial interest in Ismaili Studies engendered by Russian imperial rule. It also shows how approaches to the study of Ismailism were affected by 70 years of Communist atheist rule and the demise of the Communist political and ideological system. The third part presents an annotated bibliography of books, articles, and published and unpublished materials, including documents and oral materials on the history, thought and practices of the Ismailis of Central Asia, most of which has not been hitherto easily accessible to Western scholarship. The comprehensive survey and rich bibliography aims to illuminate the history and historiography of the Ismailis in Central Asia and facilitate further study on the subject by experts around the world.

Imaging and Imagining Palestine is the first comprehensive study of photography during the British Mandate period (1918–1948). It addresses well-known archives, photos from private collections never available before and archives that have until recently remained closed. This interdisciplinary volume argues that photography is central to a different understanding of the social and political complexities of Palestine in this period. While Biblical and Orientalist images abound, the chapters in this book go further by questioning the impact of photography on the social histories of British Mandate Palestine. This book considers the specific archives, the work of individual photographers, methods for reading historical photography from the present and how we might begin the process of decolonising photography. "Imaging and Imagining Palestine presents a timely and much-needed critical evaluation of the role of photography in Palestine. Drawing together leading interdisciplinary specialists and engaging a range of innovative methodologies, the volume makes clear the ways in which photography reflects the shifting political, cultural and economic landscape of the British Mandate period, and experiences of modernity in Palestine. Actively problematising conventional understandings of production, circulation and the in/stability of the photographic document, Imaging and Imagining Palestine provides essential reading for decolonial studies of photography and visual culture studies of Palestine." - Chrisoula Lionis, author of Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film. "Imaging and Imagining Palestine is the first and much needed overview of photography during the British Mandate period. From well-known and accessible photographic archives to private family albums, it deals with the cultural and political relations of the period thinking about both the Western perceptions of Palestine as well as its modern social life. This book brings together an impressive array of material and analyses to form an interdisciplinary perspective that considers just how photography shapes our understanding of the past as well as the ways in which the past might be reclaimed." - Jack Persekian, Founding Director of Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem. "Imaging and Imagining Palestine draws together a plethora of fresh approaches to the field of photography in Palestine. It considers Palestine as a central node in global photographic production and the ways in which photography shaped the modern imaging and imagining from within a fresh regional theoretical perspective." - Salwa Mikdadi, Director al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, New York University Abu Dhabi. Readership: Anyone interested in the Middle East, Palestinian history, history of photography, Middle Eastern visual culture, religious and Orientalist imaging, decolonising photography, cultural studies, and cultural histories.

The present volume contributes to research on historic Arabic texts from late medieval Egypt and Syria. Departing from dominant understandings of these texts through the prisms of authenticity and “literarization,” it engages with questions of textual constructedness and authorial agency. It consists of 13 contributions by a new generation of scholars in three parts. Each part represents a different aspect of their new readings of particular texts. Part one looks at concrete instances of textual interdependencies, part two at the creativity of authorial agencies, and part three at the relationship between texts and social practice. New Readings thus participates in the revaluation of late medieval Arabic historiography as a critical field of inquiry. Readership: All interested in medieval history and Islamic history, especially Mamluk studies, and anyone concerned with historiography and Arabic literature.

Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450–c. 1750 engage with the idea that “Sunnism” itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres – ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents – developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of ‘tradition’, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire. Readership: All interested in the debates on Sunni Islam and in the politics of religion and confessionalism in the early modern Ottoman Empire and in “post-classical” Islamic history more generally.

The commodification of Islamic antiques intensified in the late Ottoman Empire, an age of domestic reform and increased European interference following the Tanzimat (reorganisation) of 1839. Mercedes Volait examines the social life of typical objects moving from Cairo and Damascus to Paris, London, and beyond, uncovers the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in the trade of architectural salvage and historic handicraft, and traces impacts on private interiors, through creative reuse and Revival design, in Egypt, Europe and America. By devoting attention to both local and global engagements with Middle Eastern tangible heritage, the present volume invites to look anew at Orientalism in art and interior design, the canon of Islamic architecture and the translocation of historic works of art. Readership: All interested in tangible heritage in Cairo and Damascus, visual Orientalism (including photography), Islamic art collecting, and anyone concerned with commodification and intercultural contact zones.

This book offers an account of how merchants litigated on the basis of mercantile custom as well as specific legal procedures, using an ensemble of cases brought before the Dutch consul in Izmir in the second half of the eighteenth century.; Readership: All interested in the legal and socio-cultural tools early modern merchants had at their disposal to ensure the functioning of long-distance and cross-cultural trade. Those interested in European presence in the Ottoman Empire.

This volume, which pays tribute to the work of G.H.A. Juynboll, is a collection of original articles on the state of Islamic sciences and Arabic culture in the early phases of their crystallization.; Readership: Specialists and advanced students interested in early and medieval Islam and the various branches of Islamic learning and literature, such as hadith scholarship, Qur'anic studies, history, book lore and grammar.

By employing the innovative lenses of ‘thing theory’ and material culture studies, this collection brings together essays focused on the role played by Arabia’s things - from cultural objects to commodities to historical and ethnographic artifacts to imaginary things - in creating an Arabian identity over time. The Arabian identity that we convey here comprises both a fabulous Arabia that has haunted the European imagination for the past three hundred years and a real Arabia that has had its unique history, culture, and traditions outside the Orientalized narratives of the West. All Things Arabia aims to dispel existing stereotypes and to stimulate new thinking about an area whose patterns of trade and cosmopolitanism have pollinated the world with lasting myths, knowledge, and things of beauty. Readership: Scholars interested in the study of the material culture of the Middle East/Arabian Peninsula and the wider public interested in the cultures of collection, connoisseurship, and (neo)orientalism(s) at large.

From the early phases of modern missions, Christian missionaries supported many humanitarian activities, mostly framed as subservient to the preaching of Christianity. This anthology contributes to a historically grounded understanding of the complex relationship between Christian missions and the roots of humanitarianism and its contemporary uses in a Middle Eastern context. Contributions focus on ideologies, rhetoric, and practices of missionaries and their apostolates towards humanitarian-ism, from the mid-19th century Middle East crises, examining di􀀃ferent missionaries, their society’s worldview and their networks in various areas of the Middle East. In the early 20th century Christian missions increasingly paid more attention to organ-isation and bureaucratisation (‘rationalisation’), and media became more important to their work. The volume seeks to discover and retrace such ‘entangled histories’ for the 􀀄􀀅rst time in an integral perspective. Readership: Those interested in the modern and contemporary history of the Middle East, in religious studies, international relations, scholars, students and practitioners of humanitarianism.

Breaching the Bronze Wall deals with the idea that the words of honorable Muslims constitute proof and that written documents and the words of non-Muslims are of inferior value. Thus, foreign merchants in cities such as Istanbul, Damascus or Alexandria could barely prove any claim, as neither their contracts nor their words were of any value if countered by Muslims. Francisco Apellániz explores how both groups labored to overcome the 'biases against non-Muslims' in Mamluk Egypt’s and Syria’s courts and markets (14th–15th c.) and how the Ottoman conquest (1517) imposed a new, orthodox view on the problem. The book slips into the Middle Eastern archive and the Ottoman , and scrutinizes sharia’s intricacies and their handling by consuls, dragomans, qadis and other legal actors. Readership: Readers of Ottoman and Mamlūk history, Islamic law and justice and anyone interested in the history of Venice and the East and Christian-Muslim relations, as well as cross-cultural relations more broadly.

Schutz und Andacht im Islam befasst sich mit handschriftlichen Dokumenten in Rollenform, die zwischen dem 14. und 19. Jh. entstanden sind. Die vorgestellten Belegstücke stammen aus unterschiedlichen geographischen Kontexten: a. Städtedreieck Tabriz-Konya-Bagdad; b. persischer Kulturraum; c. Osmanisches Reich. Diese Rollen waren bei Angehörigen von Männerbünden (Sufi-Orden, Futuwwa- und Aḫī-Gruppierungen, Gilden) beliebt. Die Studie untersucht das auf diesen Dokumenten verwendete textliche und ge¬stalterische Vokabular. Neben Passagen aus dem Koran (auch vollständige Abschriften) lassen sich oft Gebete und weitere Texte frommen Inhalts feststellen. Gelegentlich finden sich Hinweise, dass die Dokumente aus heterodoxen Umfeldern stammen. Die Studie unterstreicht ausserdem den hohen kunsthistorischen Wert der vorgestellten Belegstücke, die oft für Angehörige von gesellschaftlichen Eliten angefertigt worden sind. Devotion and Protection in Islam deals with hand-written documents in the scroll format dating from the 14th–19th centuries. These documents can be attributed to various geographic contexts: a. the triangle between the cities of Tabriz, Konya and Baghdad; b. the Persianate world; c. the Ottoman Empire. These scrolls were appreciated by members of different associations ( Männerbünde; e.g. Sufi orders, Futuwwa and Aḫī groups). This study analyses the textual and ornamental vocabulary applied on the scrolls. The copied texts mostly comprise passages from the Quran and prayers. Certain features suggest that such scrolls were often produced in heterodox environments. Additionally, this study underscores the high art-historical value of these documents, particularly appreciated by members of the ruling elite.

Arabic and its Alternatives discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion and communal identities in the Middle East in the period following the First World War, taking its starting point in the non-Arabic and non-Muslim communities of the region. Readership: All those interested in the modern and contemporary history of the Middle East, in religious and linguistic minorities, in identity formation and nationalism and in the relationship between language and religion.

The region of the Middle East has been called the cradle of mankind. This volume studies historical, cultural, religious, social and political legacies, which play a central role in obstructing intercultural dialogue in the Middle East. The region became home to numerous cultures, religions and ethnicities with long experience of living together in a multicultural environment and has an immense impact on the entire human civilization as first human civilizations were born there. Today, more than 50% of world population follow Abrahamic religions (e.g. Christianity, Islam, Judaism), which have their roots in the Middle East. This book focuses on multiple topics related to the Middle East, including ancient history, the religion and mythology of the Ancient Near Eastern regions, Arabic, Persian and Islamic studies, Persian, Turkish and Arab literature, as well as modern Middle Eastern issues related to politics, security, society and the economy. The volume includes papers by Amar Annus, Tanja Dibou, Peeter Espak, Yoel Guzansky, Ingrida Kleinhofa, Jaan Lahe, Lidia Leontjeva, Aynura Mahmudova, Yossi Mann, Kobi Michael, Holger Mölder, Limor Nobel-Konig, Üllar Peterson, Itamar Rickover, Vladimir Sazonov and Krzyztof Ulanowski.

Migration and Islamic Ethics, Issues of Residence, Naturalization and Citizenship contains various cases of migration movements in the Muslim world from ethical and legal perspectives to argue that Muslim migration experiences can offer a new paradigm of how the religious and the moral can play a significant role in addressing forced migration and displacement Readership: All interested in migration movements including residence, naturalization, and citizenship; Islamic Ethics and Islamic legal debates on movements in and out of the Muslim world, including asylum seekers and refugees.