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"Islam and politics Islamic Empire Historiography."
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Parable and politics in early islamic history
The story of the succession to the Prophet Muhammad and the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 AD) is familiar to historians from the political histories of medieval Islam, which treat it as a factual account. The story also informs the competing perspectives of Sunni and Shi'i Islam, which read into it the legitimacy of their claims. Yet while descriptive and varied, these approaches have long excluded a third reading, which views the conflict over the succession to the Prophet as a parable. From this vantage point, the motives, sayings, and actions of the protagonists reveal profound links to previous texts, not to mention a surprising irony regarding political and religious issues.
In a controversial break from previous historiography, Tayeb El-Hibri privileges the literary and artistic triumphs of the medieval Islamic chronicles and maps the origins of Islamic political and religious orthodoxy. Considering the patterns and themes of these unified narratives, including the problem of measuring personal qualification according to religious merit, nobility, and skills in government, El-Hibri offers an insightful critique of both early and contemporary Islam and the concerns of legitimacy shadowing various rulers. In building an argument for reading the texts as parabolic commentary, he also highlights the Islamic reinterpretation of biblical traditions, both by Qur'anic exegesis and historical composition.
eBook
Enlightening Europe on Islam and the Ottomans : Mouradgea d'Ohsson and his masterpiece
\"Mouradgea d'Ohsson's Tableau général de l'Empire othoman offered the Enlightenment Republic of Letters its most authoritative work on Islam and the Ottomans, also a practical reference work for kings and statesmen. Profusely illustrated and opening deep insights into illustrated book production in this period, this is also the century's richest collection of visual documentation on the Ottomans. Shaped by the author's personal struggles, the work yet commands recognition in its own totality as a monument to intercultural understanding. In form one of the great taxonomic works of Enlightenment thought, this is a work of advocacy in the cause of reform and amity among France, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Mehmed the Conqueror between Sulh-i Kull and Prisca Theologia
This article presents a new interpretation of the reign of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) as refracted through the twin historical lenses of Mughal South Asia and the Renaissance Mediterranean. On the one hand, it argues that Mehmed, despite his current reputation as a conquering hero of Islam, in fact aspired to a model of sovereignty analogous to Akbar's Sulh-i Kull, and with a common point of origin in the conceptual worlds of post-Mongol Iran and Timurid central Asia. On the other hand, it also draws from the historiography of the Italian Renaissance to interpret Mehmed's cultural politics as being simultaneously inspired by a particular thread of Renaissance philosophy, the Prisca Theologia, which in many ways served as the Ottoman equivalent of Akbar's Sulh-i Kull.
Journal Article
Peaceful Wars and Unlikely Unions: The Azhar Strike of 1909 and the Politics of Comparison in Egypt
In January 1909, the students of the Azhar, the Islamic world’s most prestigious university, went on strike. Protesting recent curricular and administrative changes introduced by the Egyptian Khedive, they demanded increased material support and asserted the university’s right to govern itself. After several weeks of demonstrations that drew thousands of supporters into the streets of Cairo, the Khedive suspended the reforms that first caused the Azharis to walk out. Oddly, this remarkable mobilization has nearly vanished into obscurity. Drawing on reporting from the Egyptian press and intelligence memoranda from the Egyptian Ministry of Interior, this article argues that the apparent incongruity of Azharis on strike was no mistake. Their willful rejection of ascribed categories helps to explain both why this movement of unionized seminarians speaking a language of self-government proved so striking for contemporary supporters and critics alike and why this event has slipped through the cracks of a historiography still framed by those very categories. Long forgotten in histories of both nationalism and organized labor, the Azhar strike represented a pivotal moment in the emergence of mass politics in Egypt. In invoking “union,” the Azharis engaged in multiple, overlapping acts of comparison. Inspired by the modular repertoires of militant labor, they simultaneously hailed the constitutional revolution of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress as a model for political transformation. Rooted in a self-conscious critique of colonial comparativism, their struggle thereby furnished new materials with which to elaborate a telescopic series of anti-colonial solidarities that were themselves fundamentally comparative.
Journal Article
GIVING A NAME TO ISLAM SOUTH OF THE SAHARA: AN ADVENTURE IN TAXONOMY
This article revisits the concept of islam noir (black Islam) crafted in the context of French rule of sub-Saharan Muslims. For the French colonial administration, islam noir connoted the idea of a degraded Islam tainted by animist practices and therefore different from the pure Islam practiced in Arab countries. This differentiation was a way to separate it from ‘Arab Islam’, which was considered a subversive model. This distinction was not entirely new for it had already a long history behind it. Arabic sources had often shown a high distrust of sub-Saharan Africans who converted to Islam; they never really enjoyed a status equal to that of Arab Muslims. After the end of colonial rule, the story still continues. The theme of a specific sub-Saharan Islam (African Islam) remained a convenient category that was used by scholars, regardless of old prejudices. In the latest period, some African intellectuals have also embraced this concept, conjoining it with the pride of blackness, as a kind of Islam de la négritude, while praising its orthodoxy. It is this long epistemological and taxonomical adventure of islam noir that is examined here.
Journal Article
Frontier fictions
InFrontier Fictions, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet looks at the efforts of Iranians to defend, if not expand, their borders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and explores how their conceptions of national geography influenced cultural and political change. The \"frontier fictions,\" or the ways in which the Iranians viewed their often fluctuating borders and the conflicts surrounding them, played a dominant role in defining the nation. On these borderlands, new ideas of citizenship and nationality were unleashed, refining older ideas of ethnicity.
Kashani-Sabet maintains that land-based conceptions of countries existed before the advent of the modern nation-state. Her focus on geography enables her to explore and document fully a wide range of aspects of modern citizenship in Iran, including love of homeland, the hegemony of the Persian language, and widespread interest in archaeology, travel, and map-making. While many historians have focused on the concept of the \"imagined community\" in their explanations of the rise of nationalism, Kashani-Sabet is able to complement this perspective with a very tangible explanation of what connects people to a specific place. Her approach is intended to enrich our understanding not only of Iranian nationalism, but also of nationalism everywhere.
eBook
Quraysh and the Roman army: Making sense of the Meccan leather trade
This paper argues that the trade in leather and other pastoralist products, which the tradition ascribes to the Meccans, could make sense on the assumption that the goods were destined for the Roman army, which is known to have required colossal quantities of leather and hides for its equipment. The hypothesis that the Meccans were servicing the Roman military is examined and found to be impossible to prove in our current state of knowledge; it is at least compatible with the evidence, however, and also highly promising in terms the light it could throw on the political aspects of the rise of Islam.
Journal Article
Approaches to Coptic History after 641
The study of Coptic history usually brings to mind gnostic texts, remote monastic enclaves, archeological ruins, conflicts with Byzantium, or a long-forgotten language. Until recently, a disproportionate focus on early Christianity has bound Copts to an ancient and seemingly timeless heritage, which explains the dearth of critical examinations on Coptic life from the Islamic conquests to the early modern period. In general, Coptic experiences after 641 have been overshadowed by other themes in Egyptian history writing, in particular political and military changes. Although the latter are as relevant for a better understanding of the Coptic past, they have been predominately examined from the perspective of the Muslim majority, exclusive of Coptic concerns, perspectives, and beliefs. Only in recent years has scholarship on Copts begun to expand. Scholars have drawn from fields such as papyrology, gender studies, art history, and law in pursuit of a more comprehensive historical narrative. We are increasingly encouraged to evaluate the Coptic experience not only as a missing cog in Egyptian historiography but also as one that complicates canonical studies of postconquest Egypt and enriches our understanding of Middle Eastern history in general.
Journal Article