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This paper investigates the overlooked topic of maternal ties of kinship in Umayyad history through the case study of ʿĀʾisha bint Hishām ibn Ismāʿīl al-Makhzūmī, the mother of Hishām ibn ʿ⁠Abd al-Malik (r. 105–125/724–743). Using a range of primary sources, including annalistic, adab , and eschatological sources, as well as early Islamic poetry, it investigates the significance of matrilineal kinship and naming practices in the Marwanid period. ʿĀʾisha's representations across sources illuminates how sources discuss caliphal mothers and the role of the matrilineal family in marriage and naming practices. A brief prosopographical analysis also demonstrates the widespread use of maternal names in early Islamic society – ʿĀʾisha is said to have named her son after her father. Early Islamic poets praised maternal kinship ties, indicating an appeal to caliphal constituents from the maternal family. Overall, by incorporating maternal ties of kinship into Marwanid history, we may gain a more complete understanding of early Islamic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of studies argue that the Ottomans became militantly Sunni in the sixteenth century as they participated in the age of confessionalization. In defining Ottoman Sunnism, state policy and state-appointed jurists and scholars played a significant role. This paper attempts to define Ottoman Sunnism in the sixteenth century in a manner subtly different from that of the jurists, by looking at the views of Ottoman historians on the issues that divided the original Muslim community, ultimately resulting in the Sunni-Shiʿi schism. Despite the seemingly sectarian conflicts of the sixteenth century, neither rigid Sunnism nor fierce confessionalization was carried over into the intellectual and cultural scene. A moderate inclination towards Shiʿism/ʿAlidism and strong attachment to Ahl al-Bayt continued to be potent forces in Sunni Ottoman intellectual circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of pre- and early-modern science, medicine, and technology in the Islamicate world has been traditionally charted around certain signposts: Translation, Golden Age, and Decline. These signposts tethered the history of Islamic sciences to a European story that culminates in the Scientific Revolution and that links European colonial expansion (causally and chronologically) to modernity. This article looks at the roots of the classical narrative of the history of Islamic sciences and explores its connections to the production of colonial sciences and the proliferation of colonial education. Moving beyond the validity or accuracy of the Golden-Age/Decline narrative, it asks about the archives that such a narrative constructs and the viability of categories and chronologies, such as the "early modern," in thinking about histories of the Global South, in general, and of the Islamicate "world" in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes reports about the capture and torture of the companion ʿAmmār b. Yāsir and their later use in the exegesis of Kor 16, 106. It also shows why the reports were generated by different sectarian communities (Imamī Šīʿites, Zaydites, Murǧiʾites) in the different parts of the early Islamic empire (Kufa, Mecca, Medina, Basra, and Jazira) in the late first/seventh and early second/eighth centuries. Through a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the isnāds of reports, the article shows that it is possible to correlate information about the sectarian affiliations of reports’ transmitters with the contents of the reports and in the process shows why different communities remembered and transmitted the specific forms of the reports that they did. The article shows how literary Islamic sources are susceptible to a much more granular historical analysis than previously assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of individuals converting to Islam and later returning to their former religions is well attested in both narrative and documentary records from the early Islamic period. Such shifts in religious commitments posed social and legal problems for the communities to which their former members sought reentry. Specifically, legal authorities were faced with the challenge of assessing the trustworthiness of returning apostates, whether their return was wholehearted and sincere or, rather, opportunistic and deceitful. The present discussion offers the historical context and a comparative analysis of some of the legal mechanisms by which the Jewish ge'onim of Babylonia and Eastern Christian church leaders attempted to overcome this challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on African studies which include the rapid growth of Pentecostal forms of Christianity in Africa, the intense propaganda campaign in Zimbabwe as the political and economic crisis worsened between 2000 and 2003 and the religious situation in Zambia since the declaration in 1991 of the country as a Christian nation in the light of the secularization theory.

Using the writings of the religious scholar 'Abdullahi al-Qutbi', this article examines the 'transregional' nature of Muslim reformist discourse in the early twentieth century and the way in which the trajectories of individuals, objects and ideas cut across the largely imaginary boundaries traditionally used to divide the Middle East and Africa. African Muslims have maintained intimate ties with their non-African brethren across space through various intellectual, economic and political relationships throughout the history of Islam. However, they have also remained entwined across time via engagement with the more or less commonly accepted canon of the faith and what Talal Asad has termed the 'discursive tradition'. This essay demonstrates the persistence of these processes through the age of European colonialism into the early twentieth century. But equally important is the way in which the increasingly elaborate and rapid networks of empire created in the nineteenth century facilitated and intensified the interaction of both people and ideas helping create the modern horizontally integrated community of believers. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors have caused and sustained Islamism in West Africa? In answering this historically relevant question, this article re-examines the dominant narratives and hegemonic schools of thought that have attempted to tackle this phenomenon. Drawing from existing theoretical trends, this article repackages and synthesises their hypotheses into a basic formula. Escaping the ideological trappings of the past and overcoming the old structure-agency and material-ideational divide, this article argues that in West Africa, and the Sahel-Sahara region in particular, prerequisites for terrorism and factors that allow an effective dissemination of 'Salafi-jihadism' are primarily located in geography (human and physical) and history. Islamism, this article argues, is thus a mix of context-derived geopolitical and contemporary factors and a case of ideational resuscitation of historical events and religious memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1885 AD, the Mahdiyya defeated the Turco-Egyptian forces that had been occupying the Nilotic Sudan. The authority and legitimacy of the movement revolved around its leader, Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi, whose authority was built upon a charismatic foundation. Upon succeeding the Mahdi, the original charismatic leader, his successor, the Khalifa Abdallahi al-Taishi, used similar symbolic, rhetorical and political strategies to establish his legitimacy. However, in the absence of the original charismatic leader, ceremony came to play an ever increasingly greater role in affirming the Khalifa's authority. As the Mahdi assumed a position analogous to that of the Prophet Muhammad, the Khalifa assumed one analogous to the first of the Orthodox Caliphs, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq. This paper treats the ceremonial idiom within the context of the Khalifa's rule, his use of insignias of authority, and the creation of a mythic concordance', between not solely the Khalifa and Abu Bakr al-Siddiq but the Mahdi as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]