Islamic History and Thought

Publisher: Gorgias Press
Series Board: Prof. Dr Peter Adamson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Prof. Dr Beatrice, Gründler Freie Universität Berlin; Prof. Dr Ahmad Khan, Universität Hamburg; Prof. Dr Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Chair), Freie Universität Berlin; Prof. Dr Jack Tannous, Princeton University; Dr Manolis Ulbricht, University of Göttingen

The Islamic History & Thought series provides a platform for scholarly research on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic/Muslim world, stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. All accepted submissions are peer-reviewed by two specialists and the series is overseen by an editorial board made up of leading scholars in the field. Various books published under this series have been recognised for their important contribution to field of Islamic Studies through journal reviews, academic awards and digital platforms. The first book in the series joined a prestigious list of previous winners of the 26th World Award for the Book of the Year, and two further titles from this series and another title from the Gorgias Islamic Studies series are ranked among the '94 Best Islamic History Books of All Time' by Book Authority.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 200

ISBN: 9781463246211

Pub Date: 31 Jan 2025

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

A biography of Abū al-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās, the half brother, diplomat, and negotiator of al-Ḥusayn. The author was named Distinguished Scholar of Shia Studies in the Islamic Republic of Iran's 28th World Book Awards in 2020. He is at present a resident faculty member of PISAI, lecturing in Shīʿī Islamic studies, Qurʾān and Islamic Ethics, and a visiting lecturer at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 391

ISBN: 9781463244972

Pub Date: 31 Aug 2023

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

Coherence of the Incoherence: Between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on Nature and the Cosmos is the first of a two-part critical examination of the seminal debate carried out in the pages of Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers and Ibn Rushd’s Incoherence of the Incoherence. While an upcoming second volume focuses on the elements in that debate related to the God and the soul, this volume focuses on questions related to nature and the cosmos, including the controversies over the eternity of the universe and necessity of natural causation. The debate, I argue, is not simply a polemic between ‘faith and reason,’ but a penetrating philosophical discussion with enduring potential to inform work in philosophy and analytic theology.

Critical Edition of Kitāb alsawād al-a‘ẓam by al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953) Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 289

ISBN: 9781463240776

Pub Date: 30 Jun 2023

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

The important text of Kitāb al-sawād al-a‘ẓam by al-Ḥakīm Muḥammad b. Ismā‘īl al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953) is an early Ḥanafī creed from Transoxania that found consensus among Ḥanafī scholars within the region, and was translated into Persian sometime between 366/976 and 387/997.

Langage et théologie chez Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī (543/1148) Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 615

ISBN: 9781463243845

Pub Date: 16 Feb 2023

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

The Qāḍī Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī was an Ašʿarite theologian, a Maliki jurist and an Andalusian traditionalist of the fifth-sixth / eleventh-twelfth century. His influence in the Muslim West is undeniable: he is one of the most important figures in the history of ašʿarism in al-Andalus, and introduced kalām books that quickly became references of local teaching, such as the Iršād of al-Ǧuwaynī. He also introduced treatises of uṣūl al-fiqh such as the Mustaṣfā and the Manḫūl of al-Ġazālī.

Shiʿite Rulers, Sunni Rivals, and Christians in Between Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 197

ISBN: 9781463244736

Pub Date: 14 Feb 2023

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

The study of sectarianism in Islam and the study of Muslim-Christian relations are both sub-specialities attracting growing numbers of scholars in Islamic studies. Rarely, though, are these two fields put into direct conversation with each other. In this work, Steven Gertz brings the two together to ask how the Sunni-Shi'a divide in Islam impacts Muslim relationships with Christians.

Gregory Barhebraeus' Mystical Hermeneutics of the Love of God in Dialogue with Islamic Tradition Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 374

ISBN: 9781463242473

Pub Date: 30 Nov 2022

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

This book is an inquiry into the mystical thought of Gregory Barhebraeus (1226-1286CE) and its contemporary relevance, to offer a reading of Barhebraeus’ mystical texts by bringing them into conversation with critical religious studies and the hermeneutical tradition of philosophy. The methodological focus of my thesis has led me to pay particular attention to the language used for the study of mysticism, and I lay emphasis on finding a new language that avoids the phenomenological assumptions concerning ‘mysticism’ to attend to the particularity of ‘mystic’ traditions, such as that of the Syriac mystic tradition inherited by Barhebraeus.

Rule of Law, ‘Natural Law’, and Social Contract in the Early ‘Abbasid Caliphate Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 422

ISBN: 9781463206499

Pub Date: 30 Nov 2022

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

The book analyses all extant works by Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (d. 224/839–310/923), referring to their individual methodologies; their legacy as al- madhhab al-jariri; and their scholarly and socio- political context. Through the study of al- Tabari’s works, the book addresses research debates over dating the legal and scholarly institutions and their disciplines; authorship and transmission of scholarly writings; political theory and administration; and ‘origins’ of the Qur’an and Islam.

Islamic Origins, Arabian Custom, and the Documents of the Prophet Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 335

ISBN: 9781463206444

Pub Date: 28 Jul 2022

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

Along with the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, pragmatic documents negotiating land, taxes, and tribal relations are attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad (~570-632 CE) in early Islamic historiography. These are often viewed as relics reflecting the Prophet’s religio-political mission, or as anachronistic texts spuriously ascribed to him. Challenging both conclusions, this book argues that an indigenous Arabian legal and documentary tradition, distinct from classical Islamic law, can be traced in these documents.

Baghdad during the time of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 284

ISBN: 9781463244385

Pub Date: 30 Jun 2022

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

A study of the life and background of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, putative founder of the Qādiriyya order, investigating the sources for his life and attributed works. The book seeks to elucidate the ideas of al-Jīlānī, and to formulate a picture of the most prominent trends of pious and mystical thought in Baghdad during the twelfth century, providing a cultural and geographical angle to the study of Islamic mysticism and piety.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 330

ISBN: 9781463207298

Pub Date: 28 Feb 2022

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

This monograph examines the principle of dispensation in the Qur'an, which seems to be, if not unique, articulated in a new manner compared to previous religions (cf. Deut 12,32). The Qur'anic dispensations have never been systematically studied and this monograph aims to fill this vacuum in the fields of Qur'anic studies and the Study of Religion.

Rediscovering al-Azdī and the Futūḥ al-Shām Narrative Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 426

ISBN: 9781463243821

Pub Date: 29 Dec 2021

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

The Futūḥ al-Shām (The Conquests of Greater Syria), usually attributed to Abū Ismāʿīl Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Azdī al-Baṣrī, is one of the primary sources used for historians studying the early Muslim expansion into Greater Syria. This study revaluates the Futūḥ al-Shām narrative and the question of its compiler-author, investigating the history of the narrative as text through an analysis of a new manuscript and important parallel texts, and revisiting the evidence and hypotheses previous scholars have put forward on both al-Azdī’s life and the Futūḥ al-Shām narrative’s text.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 571

ISBN: 9781463241933

Pub Date: 28 Jun 2021

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

This book focuses on interactions between the Islamic world and other regions from the late eighth to the twenty-first centuries. Some chapters consider the complex relationship between Islam and the cultures of Late Antiquity in the Middle East and Mediterranean basin. The reprinted chapters in this volume have been revised and updated.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 494

ISBN: 9781463242688

Pub Date: 01 Jun 2021

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

The Ṣaḥīfa of Medina is preserved thanks to two 9th century historiographers: Ibn Hishām and Abū ‘Ubayd. It clearly illustrates, through variants present in both the text and its chain of transmission, the challenges posed by sources that reach us by way of oral tradition. The present investigates its nuances, as adding greater clarity to the social and political context of this challenging and important text.

Format: Hardback

Pages: 265

ISBN: 9781463241629

Pub Date: 26 Feb 2021

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

Born in the late 9th century Baghdad, the ʿAbbāsid grammarian ‘Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Saḥl Ibn al-Sarrāj came to be remembered as the Banisher of Madness and the virtuous scholar whose life has exemplified the culture of Arabs in its fullness. Lauded as the arch-enemy of Hellenistic sciences and, at the same time, as the main source of transmission of Aristotelian logic from the 10th century philosophers to the grammarians of Baghdad; Ibn al-Sarrāj nonetheless remains a shadowy figure in the history of Arabic grammar studies up until today.

The Shīʿī Past in the Great Book of the Songs Cover

Format: Hardback

Pages: 500

ISBN: 9781463207144

Pub Date: 26 Feb 2021

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

The Kitāb al-Aghānī (the Book of the Songs) stands as one of the most important extant sources for Arabic literature and Islamic history. Compiled during the first half of the tenth century, the Kitāb al-Aghānī emerges from a pivotal period in the formation of Islamic sectarian identities, a subject of keen and ongoing scholarly debate that is fundamental to our understanding of the later development of Shīʿī Islam. While its compiler, Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (died after 356/967), is generally viewed as a 'Zaydī Shīʿī', no in-depth study has investigated what can be gauged from the Kitāb al-Aghānī about his sectarian perspectives.

Format:

Hardback Paperback

Pages: 280

ISBN: 9781463242091

Pub Date: 15 Jan 2021

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Pages: 280

ISBN: 9781463244088

Pub Date: 22 Oct 2021

Imprint: Gorgias Press

Series: Islamic History and Thought

Description:

When, on an autumn Medina night in 61/680, the night that saw al-Ḥusayn killed, Umm Salama was torn from her sleep by an apparition of a long-dead Muḥammad, she slipped effortlessly into a progression of her co-religionists who, irrespective of status, gender or standing with God, were the recipients of dark and arresting visions. At the core of those Delphian dreams, peopled by angels or ğinn or esteemed forbears and textured with Iraqi dust and martyrs' blood, was the Karbalāʾ event. Her dream would be recounted by an array of Muslim scholars, from al-Tirmiḏī, stellar pupil of al-Buḫārī, and Ibn ʿAsākir, untiring chronicler of Syrian history, to bibliophile theologian Ibn Ṭāʾūs and Egyptian polymath al-Suyūṭī.