This book is more than a devotional. There are already shelves full of devotionals, many of them good and helpful. What there are not many of — perhaps hardly any at all — are modern-day parables. Stories rooted in the world we actually live in. Stories shaped by the Gulf breeze, by the rumble of surf on Padre Island, by the long shadows of aging, by the quiet courage of ordinary people, and by the hard-won wisdom that comes only after life has knocked you around a bit. As I approach my ni...

First Published in 1986. Slavery in Islamic Africa has been a fascinating subject to which many scholars have referred, but of which no detailed monograph has emerged. The better part of the essays in these volumes has its ancestry in a conference held at Princeton University during the Summer of 1977 under the title: “Islamic Africa: Slavery and Related Institutions”. At that international gathering, four principal themes dominated discussion: the servile estate, its genesis and compositi...

This Volume One of a series on slaves and slavery in Muslim Africa. First published in 1985, it looks at Islam and the ideology of enslavement. Slaves of African origin formed a vital thread in the living lines of economic production in the Near and Middle East and formed the cord of economic activity in Islamic Africa itself. Slaves sustained the salt pits and date palms of desert societies; they worked the spice plantations of the East African littoral - became the porters and placemen i...

A West African Sufi and religious reformer (c.1794-1864), struggled to reconcile the temporal achievements of his jihad with his mystical calling. The fame of Shaykh Omar rested on his reputation as a worker of miracles, and the success of jihad in his path to Allah.

First published in 1979, this first of three volumes examines the many means and figures through which Islam was cultivated in West Africa over a prolonged period. It combines the work from eminent scholars in the field, most of which have travelled widely in the historic region of Western Sudan.This book will be of interest to those studying Islamic and West African history.

Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam chronicles the experiences, identity and achievements of enslaved black people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Chouki El Hamel argues that we cannot rely solely on Islamic ideology as the key to explain social relations and particularly the history of black slavery in the Muslim world, for this viewpoint yields an inaccurate historical record of the people, institutions and social practice...

From secular-minded autocrats like Saddam Hussein to religious fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden, powerful voices in the Islamic world have been united by a fierce hatred of the West. If we want to know why they think the way they do, we have to understand the history of Islam and its continuous interactions with the West.This masterly collection of essays by a leading expert on Islam and the Middle East ranges over the whole sweep of Islamic history and Western attempts to comp...

Praise for Bernard Lewis"For newcomers to the subject[el]Bernard Lewis is the man."TIME Magazine“The doyen of Middle Eastern studies."The New York Times“No one writes about Muslim history with greater authority, or intelligence, or literary charm.”British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper“Bernard Lewis has no living rival in his field.”...

The definitive account of the life and thought of the medieval Arab genius who wrote the MuqaddimaIbn Khaldun (1332–1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world--a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. ...

The religious thinkers, political leaders, law-makers, writers and philosophers of the early Muslim world helped to shape the 1,400-year-long development of todays secondlargest world religion. But who were these people? What do we know of their lives, and the ways in which they influenced their societies?Chase F. Robinson draws on the long tradition in Muslim scholarship of commemorating in writing the biographies of notable figures, but weaves these ambitious lives together to cr...

In this book:'A pioneering writer on Islam' - GuardianWho was the real Muhammad?Muhammad: All That Matters, by bestselling expert on Islam Ziauddin Sardar, seeks to look beyond Muhammad the prophet, to find Muhammad the man. By returning to the original sources, and incorporating new research on pre-Islamic Mecca, Sardar is able to focus on Muhammad's character, his values, and on events in his life which up until now have largely beenignore...

The 'Alawis, or Alawites, are a prominent religious minority in northern Syria, Lebanon, and southern Turkey, best known today for enjoying disproportionate political power in war-torn Syria. In this book, Stefan Winter offers a complete history of the community, from the birth of the 'Alawi (Nusayri) sect in the tenth century to just after World War I, the establishment of the French mandate over Syria, and the early years of the Turkish republic. Winter draws on a wealth of Ottoman archi...