Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies

The history of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study dates back to 1935, and it is the one area of scholarship that has been continuously represented at the Institute ever since. The volume opens with a historical sketch of the study of the Near and Middle East at the Institute. The second part of the volume consists of essays and short studies by IAS scholars, past and present, covering fields such as the ancient Near East and early Islamic history, the Bible and the Qurʾān, Islamic intellectual history within and beyond denominational history, Arabic and other Semitic languages and literatures, Islamic religious and legal practices, law and society, the Islamic West, the Ottoman world, Iranian studies, the modern Middle East, and Islam in the West.

An account of the family life of the Prophet Mohammad, concerning the noble ladies who lived in his house. The text gives an insight into the life of women in the beginning of the Islamic Era.

A study of the identity-formation process that the Christians of Syria-Palestine experienced during the Umayyad Caliphate. It approaches this subject by using John of Damascus and his writings on Islam as a case-study. This provides an exhaustive study of the available historical data in order to stimulate some further thought on John of Damascus’s theology and legacy from a contextual and intercultural methodology. Such an examination has not yet been pursued in the scholarship of Byzantine Christianity during that era. Proceeding from a centralizing ‘context’, the monograph revisits John of Damascus’s legacy (and the Umayyad Christians’ identity-formation of that era) from the perspective of his historical, Islamic-Arabic context, and not from any assumed, metanarrative, common to contemporary pro-Byzantine theology scholars.

This book explores the process, effects, and results of codification of Egyptian personal status laws as seen through the eyes of the ‘ulamā’. The codification process began in the mid-1800s and continued until the abolishment of the Sharī‘a courts in 1955 with the absorption of personal status statutes into the newly drafted civil code and the national courts that administered them.

Moses is an inspirational prophetic figure in Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious traditions. This book journeys through the Abrahamic faiths and illustrates their respective depictions of the Moses’ stories. In exploring the differences and similarities between the Hebrew Bible, Jewish rabbinical commentaries, Syriac Christian exegesis and the Qur’an, this book seeks for a deeper understanding of the Prophet Moses in the religious history of humanity.

This study challenges the conventional image of the tenth-century Sufi mystic Al-Husayn Ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāğ (d. 929) as an anti-philosophical mystic. Unlike the predominantly theological or text-historical studies which constitute much of the scholarly literature on Ḥallāğ, this study is completely philosophical in nature, placing Ḥallāğ within the tradition of Graeco-Arabic philosophy and emphasizing, in a positive light, his continuity with the pagan Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus.

In 1934 the New York Public Library (NYPL) purchased a sizable collection of 250 volumes of Arabic manuscripts through the fund for Semitic literature that had been provided by Jacob Heinrich Schiff. Ms New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Arabic Manuscripts Collection, Volume 51985A, a facsimile of which is included in the present publication, belongs to the Shīʿī material among the collection. It is a multitext volume of 269 leaves which in its present form comprises seven individual works. It is hoped that the present facsimile edition will enable and encourage scholars to delve into the materials it contains.

How was the past imagined by Hui Muslims in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China? Chen argues that this was a productive time for historical thought, bookended by the establishment of a robust Sino-Islamic knowledge base by Liu Zhi on one end and Republican China on the other end. This book explores histories that unify vast stretches of time and place: from genesis to the modern era, from Arabia to China. Hui historians create narratives that transform China into an Islamic space and Islam into a Chinese religion.

This seminal work continues to shape the thought of specialists studying the Late Antique crossroads at which Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Islamic histories met, by offering the field a new approach to the vexing question of how to write the early history of Islam. The new edition of the study produces the original text with the addition of a substantial forward in which Hoyland discusses how the field has developed over the two decades that proceeded the book’s first publication. Hoyland also shares some personal reflections on how his thinking has since developed and the potential impact of this on the findings of the original study. The book also includes new appendices that detail the later publications of the author.

He Did Not Fear: Xusro Parviz, King of Kings of the Sasanian Empire spotlights Xusro II, the man who almost conquered the Roman Empire in the Roman-Sasanian War of the Seventh Century CE, and examines his historical prominence.

Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa'd to Who's Who is a groundbreaking study of 40 bibliographical collections, dating from the 9th century to the present, investigating which type of woman Muslim scholars have deemed worthy of recording for posterity. The analysis clearly indicates that Muslim women have achieved prominence in certain fields at certain times.

The only child of Muhammad to survive him, Fâṭima was from early times taken up by Shî’a Islam, for whose adherents she is the virgin mother, the heavenly intercessor with untold power before God’s throne, and the grieving mother of al-Husayn, the Shî’a's most important martyr. During her life she was impoverished and weak, neglected, marginalized, and divested of justice: but her reward in heaven comprises incalculable riches, all those in heaven will bow their heads to her, and her company will be the angels and the friends of God. Here, for the first time, her story is told.

As Abû ʿAbd Allâh al-Ḥusayn, son of ʿAlî and Fâṭima and grandson of Muḥammad, moved inexorably towards death on the field of Karbalâʾ, his sister Zaynab was drawn ever closer to the centre of the family of Muḥammad, the ‘people of the house’ (ahl al-bayt). There she would remain for a few historic days, challenging the wickedness of the Islamic leadership, defending the actions of her brother, initiating the commemorative rituals, protecting and nurturing the new Imâm, al-Ḥusayn’s son ʿAlî b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlî b. Abî Ṭâlib, until he could take his rightful place. This is her story.

The only child of Muhammad to survive him, Fâṭima was from early times taken up by Shî’a Islam, for whose adherents she is the virgin mother, the heavenly intercessor with untold power before God’s throne, and the grieving mother of al-Husayn, the Shi’a's most important martyr. During her life she was impoverished and weak, neglected, marginalized, and divested of justice: but her reward in heaven comprises incalculable riches, all those in heaven will bow their heads to her, and her company will be the angels and the friends of God. Here, for the first time, her story is told.

For believers in a resurrection of the body, there arises the question of what happens after death but before the Last Day: the intermediate state. For most Muslims, the intermediate state is the barzakh. It is a fantastical and frightening time in the grave. The present study will examine where the belief in the barzakh comes from through a study of the Qur'an.

Iranian libraries hold only few manuscripts that testify to the extended and intensive Muʿtazilite past in the various centers of Zaydi scholarship in the Caspian region, in Ḫurāsān, and in Rayy. Among the few Muʿtazilite Zaydi works preserved in the libraries of Iran is a miscellany held by the library of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Shiraz (ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī Library). The maǧmūʿa, a facsimile of which is included in the present publication, was written between 673/1274-75 and 676/1277 and contains doctrinal works by Imāmi and Zaydi theologians from both Iran and from Yemen. Most of the codex consists of a theological summa, a taʿlīq that had been composed or transcribed by one Abū Ṭāhir b. ʿAlī al-Ṣaffār which was based on the Kitāb al-Uṣūl by Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad b. Ḫallād al-Baṣrī, the distinguished disciple of the Muʿtazilite theologian and founder of the Bahšamiyya, Abū Hāšim al-Ǧubbāʾī (d. 321/933), with an unknown number of commentary layers in between.

Comprised of some our latest and best-selling books on Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, the Women in Shi'ism Bundle* is perfect for anyone interested in the achievements, portrayal and social roles of women in Shi'a Islam. Combining hadith, historical and bibliographical research, you will gain diverse perspectives on the lives and achievements of Shi'a women through the volumes, which include, Fâtima, Daughter of Muhammad (second edition, hardback), Half of My Heart: The Narratives of Zaynab, Daughter of ʿAli (hardback), Women in Shiʿism: Ancient Stories, Modern Ideologies (hardback), and Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa'd to Who's Who (hardback). *Please note, no additional discounts apply to this bundle. The price quoted below is the lowest price

A short history of the Syriac Orthodox community in North America between 1895, the year of the First Sayfo that triggered the first wave of immigration to North America, and 1995, marking the passing away of Metropolitan Mor Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, the first and only Archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of the United States and Canada.

The book comprises an annotated critical edition and a detailed study of Kitāb al-Sawād al-a‘ẓam by al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953).

The year 652 marked a fundamental political change in the Middle East and the surrounding region. An important and contemporary source of the state of the Christian Church at this time is to be found in the correspondence of the patriarch of the Church of the East, Išū‘yahb III (649–659), which he wrote between 628 and 658. This books discusses Išū‘yahb’s view of and attitudes toward the Muslim Arabs.

The aim with the present series, The Quran: Key Words in Context, is to present the Quran as raw data with as little interpretation as possible. The digital text used for this purpose is the Uthmani text of the Tanzil Quran Text. Each word in the Quran is presented in context, with five words to the right and left of it. In assigning each word a root and lemma, Classical dictionaries and Quran commentaries, as well as modern Quran dictionionaries have been consulted. Words have been grouped by root > verbal form > lemma. Verbs are quoted first (when attested), each followed by its associated nominal and/or adjectival derived forms.

The aim with the present series, The Quran: Key Words in Context, is to present the Quran as raw data with as little interpretation as possible. The digital text used for this purpose is the Uthmani text of the Tanzil Quran Text. Each word in the Quran is presented in context, with five words to the right and left of it. In assigning each word a root and lemma, Classical dictionaries and Quran commentaries, as well as modern Quran dictionionaries have been consulted. Words have been grouped by root > verbal form > lemma. Verbs are quoted first (when attested), each followed by its associated nominal and/or adjectival derived forms.

The aim with the present series, The Quran: Key Words in Context, is to present the Quran as raw data with as little interpretation as possible. The digital text used for this purpose is the Uthmani text of the Tanzil Quran Text. Each word in the Quran is presented in context, with five words to the right and left of it. In assigning each word a root and lemma, Classical dictionaries and Quran commentaries, as well as modern Quran dictionionaries have been consulted. Words have been grouped by root > verbal form > lemma. Verbs are quoted first (when attested), each followed by its associated nominal and/or adjectival derived forms.

The aim with the present series, The Quran: Key Words in Context, is to present the Quran as raw data with as little interpretation as possible. The digital text used for this purpose is the Uthmani text of the Tanzil Quran Text. Each word in the Quran is presented in context, with five words to the right and left of it. In assigning each word a root and lemma, Classical dictionaries and Quran commentaries, as well as modern Quran dictionionaries have been consulted. Words have been grouped by root > verbal form > lemma. Verbs are quoted first (when attested), each followed by its associated nominal and/or adjectival derived forms.

The aim with the present series, The Quran: Key Words in Context, is to present the Quran as raw data with as little interpretation as possible. The digital text used for this purpose is the Uthmani text of the Tanzil Quran Text. Each word in the Quran is presented in context, with five words to the right and left of it. In assigning each word a root and lemma, Classical dictionaries and Quran commentaries, as well as modern Quran dictionionaries have been consulted. Words have been grouped by root > verbal form > lemma. Verbs are quoted first (when attested), each followed by its associated nominal and/or adjectival derived forms.