Böcker i Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization-serien

The Shiites of Lebanon under Ottoman Rule provides a perspective on the previously ignored history of the Shiites as a constituent of Lebanese society, calling into question the historic place within 'Lebanon' of what has today become the country's largest and most activist sectarian community.

This book explores Muslim interpretations of Qur'anic verses on gender roles in testimony, human creation and marriage. Karen Bauer traces the evolution of these interpretations, showing how they have been adopted, adapted, rejected or replaced over time, by comparing the Qur'an with a wide range of Qur'anic commentaries and interviews.

The Islamic tradition has always held animals in high esteem. This original book examines the status of animals in the Qur'an, in which they are portrayed as spiritual, moral and accountable beings. The study challenges the prevalent view of man's superiority over animals and suggests new ways of interpreting the Qur'an.

Centered on legal discourses of the first six centuries of Islam, this book provides a detailed analysis of Islamic scholarly writings on the topic of rape and argues that classical Islamic jurisprudence contained highly nuanced and substantially divergent doctrines of sexual violation as a punishable crime.

This pioneering study examines the process of reasoning in Islamic law. By analysing rulings from the Hanafi school, the author questions whether sacred law operated differently from secular law, why laws changed and how different cultural and historical settings impacted on the development of legal rulings. The result is a fascinating overview of the evolution of Islamic law.

This book shows how regulations that applied to minorities in early Islamic societies were based on traditions originating from the conquerors and the conquered.

This revisionist account of the history of Islamic political thought from the early to the late medieval period focuses on Ibn Taymiyya, one of the most brilliant theologians of his day. In reassessing the influence and philosophy of Ibn Taymiyya's work, this book marks a major departure from traditional interpretations of medieval Islamic thought.

The Ayyubid and Mamluk periods were some of the most intellectually fecund in Islamic history. Megan H. Reid's book recovers the stories of medieval men and women who were renowned not only for their intellectual prowess but also for their devotional piety, uncovering previously unseen trends in voluntary religious practice.

A rigorous scholarly appraisal of the legendary biographies of Tamerlane. The book sheds light not only on the character of Tamerlane and how he was remembered by many generations after his demise, but also on the era in which the biographies were written and how they were received by the local populace during an age of crisis.

This book is a study of the writings of Ibn Barrajan, an influential Sunni mystic who introduced a worldview to the Muslim West based in Muslim scripture and Neoplatonic cosmology. It will be of interest to researchers of the medieval Islamic world, and those studying the history of mysticism and Sufism in the Muslim West.

This book proposes a radical approach to history of the late Ottoman Empire. Baki Tezcan constructs a new framework by foregrounding the proto-democratization of the Ottoman polity in this era, and shows how the empire embarked on a period of seismic change in the political, economic, military, and social spheres.

This book examines gender politics through slavery and social regulation in the Ottoman Empire. In a challenge to prevailing notions, it shows that throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries female slavery was not only central to Ottoman practice, but a critical component of imperial governance and elite social reproduction.

Gabor Agoston's book contributes to an emerging strand of military history, that examines organised violence as a challenge to early modern states, their societies and economies. Based on extensive research in the Turkish archives, the book affords much insight regarding the early success and subsequent failure of an Islamic empire against European adversaries.

In this 2000 study exploring the origins of classical Arabic biography, the author demonstrates how Muslim scholars used notions of heirship and transmission to document the activities of political, scholarly and religious communities. The author illustrates his argument by analysing four figures whose biographies exemplify a particular tradition.

In a comprehensive 2002 account of the Arabic administration of Norman Sicily, the author demonstrates that, contrary to the traditional view, the Normans deliberately imported the island's Arabic administration from contemporary Egypt. He also suggests that its primary function was not administration but the projection of the royal image.

A fascinating account of the official methods of communication employed in the Near East from pre-Islamic times to the Mamluk period. This is a long-awaited contribution to the history of pre-modern communications systems in the Near Eastern world.

A comprehensive history of Iran in the early fifteenth century, under the Timurids, a Turkic dynasty of nomadic origin. Beatrice Forbes Manz gives a vivid portrait of society in court, city and countryside, and challenges much received wisdom concerning the relationship between government and society in the medieval Middle East.

This study describes and explains the revolutionary changes which transformed the agricultural life of the Islamicized world in the four centuries following the early Arab conquests. Professor Watson discusses eighteen crops - from sorghum and rye to the watermelon - which spread through the Near East and North Africa during this period.

What were the attitudes to diplomacy and kingship in the medieval Islamic world? Anne Broadbridge explores the ideologies of two different powers, the Mongol Khanates of the Golden Horde in Iran and Anatolia and the Mamluk Sultans of Syria and Egypt, who ruled from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.

First published in 2000, Chase Robinson's book takes account of the research available in early Islamic history, interweaving history and historiography to interpret the political, social and economic transformations in the Mesopotamian region after the Islamic conquests. This is a sophisticated study in a burgeoning field in Islamic studies.

Masters explores the evolution of Christian and Jewish communities in the Ottoman empire over four hundred years. Early communities lived with the hierarchy of Muslim law, but the nineteenth century marked the beginning of tensions between Muslims and Christians and the twentieth-century rhetoric of religious fundamentalism.

In this 1996 study of military society in Ottoman Egypt, Jane Hathaway contends that the basic framework within which this elite operated was the household, a conglomerate of patron-client ties. This pioneering study will have a major impact on the understanding of Egyptian history, and will be essential reading for scholars in the field, and for pre-modern historians generally.

Through a study of the Islamic patronate, this book tests the hypothesis that Roman law was a formative influence on Islamic law. It concludes that Roman law contributed only in so far as it was part and parcel of the rather different legal practice of the Near Eastern provinces.

This book considers the importance of the silk trade in Safavid Iran and its commercial relationship with its European neighbours. Theoretical and innovative, it makes a major contribution to debates on the social and economic history of the pre-modern world.

This is the first book-length study of the ideas and teachings of the leading tenth-century Ismaili theoretician Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani.

The empire of the Qara Khitai, one of the least known dynasties in the history of Central Asia, existed for nearly a century before it was conquered by the Mongols in 1218. Michal Biran considers its political, institutional and cultural histories.

In this 2005 book, Ruby Lal explores domestic life and the place of women in the Mughal court of the sixteenth century. Challenging traditional interpretations of the haram, she reveals a complex society where noble men and women negotiated their everyday life and political affairs in the 'inner' chambers and the 'outer' courts.

This book attempts to identify elements of mannerism and classicism in medieval Arabic poetry. Instead of focusing on rhetorical devices, as is conventional in such studies, the author carries out a structuralist analysis of complete poems.

A survey of an entire tradition of historical thought and writing across a span of eight hundred years.

Thomas Allsen's latest book breaks new scholarly boundaries in its exploration of cultural and scientific exchanges across Mongol Eurasia. Contrary to popular belief, Mongol rulers were intensely interested in the culture of their sedentary subjects and, under their auspices, commodities, ideologies and technologies were disseminated from East to West.