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Examining a single broad tribal identity - al-Azd - from pre-Islamic Arabia through the Umayyad and into the early Abbasid era, this book notes the ways it was continually refashioned over that time. It explores the ways in which the rise of the early Islamic empire influenced the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula who became a core part of it, and examines the connections between the kinship societies and the developing state of the early caliphate. This helps us to understand how what are often called 'tribal' forms of social organisation identity conditioned its growth and helped shape what became its common elite culture. Studying the relationship between tribe and state during the first two centuries of the caliphate, the focus is on understanding the survival and transformation of tribal identity until it became part of the literate high culture of the Abbasid caliphate and a component of a larger Arab ethnic identity. The book argues that, from pre-Islamic Arabia to the caliphate, greater continuity existed between tribal identity and social practice than is generally portrayed.

Some of the world’s most exquisite medieval paintings, from late fifteenth-century Herat and the early Safavid workshops, illustrate well-known episodes of popular romances––like Leyla & Majnun––that give prominence to depictions of unrelated figures such as a milkmaid or a spinner at the scene of the hero Majnun’s death. This interdisciplinary study aims to uncover the significance of this enigmatic, century-long trend from its genesis at the Timurid court to its continued development into the Safavid era. The analysis of iconography in several luxury manuscript paintings within the context of contemporary cultural trends, especially the ubiquitous mystical and messianic movements in the post-Mongol Turco-Persian world, reveals the meaning of many of these obscure figures and scenes and links this extraordinary innovation in the iconography of Persian painting to one of the most significant events in the history of Islam: the takeover of Iran by the Safavids in 1501. The apparently inscrutable figures, which initially appeared in illustrations of didactic Sufi narrative poetry, allude to metaphors and verbal expressions of Sufi discourse going back to the twelfth century. These “emblematic” figure-types served to emphasize the moral lessons of the narrative subject of the illustrated text by deploying familiar tropes from an intertextual Sufi literary discourse conveyed through verses by poets like Rumi, Attar and Jami, and ended up complementing and expressing Safavid political power at its greatest extent: the conversion of Iran to Shiism.

Discussions of Turkish Islam are still frequently dominated by political considerations and dualistic paradigms: modern vs. traditional, secular vs. religious. Yet there exists a body of Muslim institutions in Turkey, Turkish theology faculties, or ilahiyat faculties, whose work cannot always be so easily reduced to political considerations or black and white paradigms. By taking Turkish theology up on its theological rather than political concerns, this book sheds light on complex Muslim theological voices already entangled in encounters with a largely Western and Christian modernity. Rather than ask whether or not Turkish Muslim theology is “modern,” this book aims to re-frame the binary implied in such a question by delving into the conceptual worlds of Turkish Muslim theologians. As part of this reframing, this book examines how Turkish theology dialectically mediates multiple intellectual traditions, lending particular focus to Turkish Muslim engagement with Western Christian thought. Featuring the work of RecepAlpyağıl (Istanbul University) and Şaban Ali Düzgün (Ankara University), this study provides a concise survey of Turkish Muslim positions on religious pluralism and atheism as well as detailed treatments of both critical and appreciative Turkish Muslim perspectives on Western Christianity. The result is a critical reframing of the category of modernity through responses of Turkish theologians to the Western intellectual tradition alongside a detailed exploration of an ongoing chapter in Muslim-Christian relations.

This book constitutes the first exploration of artistic self-reflection in Islamic art. In the absence of a tradition of self-portraiture, how could artists signal their presence within a painting? Centred on late Timurid manuscript painting (ca. 1470-1500), this book reveals that pictures could function as the painter’s delegate, charged with the task of centring and defining artistic work, even as they did not represent the artist’s likeness. Influenced by the culture of the majlis, an institutional gathering devoted to intricate literary performances and debates, late Timurid painters used a number of strategies to shift manuscript painting from an illustrative device to a self-reflective object, designed to highlight the artist’s imagination and manual dexterity. These strategies include visual abundance, linear precision, the incorporation of inscriptions addressing aspects of the painting and the artist’s signature. Focusing on one of the most iconic manuscripts of the Persianate tradition, the Cairo Bustan made in late Timurid Herat and bearing the signatures of the painter Bihzad, this book explores Persian manuscript painting as a medium for artistic performance and self-representation, a process by which artistic authority was shaped and discussed. In addition, each chapter explores a different theme: how painters challenged the conventions of royal representation (chapter 1); the role of writing in painting, its relation to ekphrasis and the context of the majlis (chapter 2); image, mimesis and potential world (Chapter 3); the line and its calligraphic quality (Chapter 4); signature (Chapter 5); the mobility of manuscripts (epilogue).

The prime objective of this book is to underpin the Maghrebi encounter with the Occident, which evolved from fascination (Occidentophilia), to Ambivalence, to rejection of the Occident (Occidentophobia) through a process of decolonization. It sheds light on many neglected areas in the study of Maghrebi literature and culture by rehabilitating and reintegrating the pre-1945 novels, hitherto shunned as politically decadent, into the history and the study of Maghrebi literature. It deconstructs this endangered literary corpus with depth, and situates it with other works produced concomitantly in the form of manifestos and letters addressed to the Occident. These works represent the voices of the pre-1945 elite who expressed their fascination of occidental culture with a plea to the Occident to extend its civilization to all factions of the colonized society. The book traces literary depictions of Algerian converts to Christianity; a community obliterated by mainstream discourse of nationalism. The book unearths their voices and gives explanation to their anguishes, and dilemmas as exemplified in the work of the Amrouche family of authors. It also delves into Imperial Feminism and the writings of French feminists on their mission to save native Maghrebi women. To complete the circle the book examines the birth of Algerian feminism and its depiction through literature, of the native women’s encounter with the Occident as advocated in the work of Djamila Débêche. The book concludes by analysing the reasons behind the failure of the East –West encounter as the end of a chimera.

The Ottoman Syrians - residents of modern Syria and Lebanon during the Ottoman Empire - formed the first Arabic-speaking Evangelical Church in the region. Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria offers a fresh narrative of the encounters of this minority Protestant community with American Presbyterian missionaries, Eastern churches and Muslims at the height of the Nahda (or Arab renaissance), from 1860 to 1915. Drawing on rare Arabic publications, the book challenges histories that focus on Western male actors. Instead it shows that Syrian Protestant women and men were agents of their own history who sought the salvation and modernization of Syria while adapting and challenging missionary teachings. These pioneers included scholars, poets, novelists, activists, school teachers, Protestant pastors, evangelistic preachers, Biblewomen, and public speakers. Such Syrian Protestants established a critical link between evangelical religiosity and the socio-cultural currents of the Nahda, making possible the literary and educational achievements of the American Syria Mission and transforming Syrian society in ways that still endure today. Locating Syrian Protestant narratives within American, Ottoman, and global histories, this book brings Middle Eastern Studies into conversation with the field of World Christianity and explores questions of American-Arab relations and gender roles in the Islamic world.

Although regarded as a single community of Islamists, Islamic political movements utilise vastly different means to pursue their goals. This book examines why some Islamic movements facing the same socio-political structures pursue different political paths, while their counterparts in diverse contexts make similar political choices. Based on qualitative fieldwork involving personal interviews with Islamic politicians, journalists, and ideologues – conducted both before and after the Arab Spring – this study draws close comparisons between six Islamic movements in Jordan, Morocco and Turkey. It analyses how some Islamic movements decide to form a political party to run in elections, while their counterparts in the same country reject doing so and instead engage in political activism as a social movement through informal channels. More broadly, this study demonstrates the role of internal factors, ideological priorities and organisational needs in explaining differentiation within Islamic political movements, and discusses its effects on democratisation. In Morocco, this book examines the Movement for Unity and Reform that formed the Party for Justice and Development, and the Justice and Spirituality Movement that eschewed party politics. In Turkey, it examines the National Outlook Movement that is the mother-movement to various Islamic political parties, and the Gülen Movement that has a complicated relationship with incumbent parties. In Jordan, this book examines the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing the Islamic Action Front Party, and the Quietist Salafis rejecting institutional politics.

Throughout the twentieth century Scottish miners resisted deindustrialisation through collective action and by leading the campaign for Home Rule. This book shows that coal miners occupy a central position in Scotland’s economic, social and political history. It highlights the role of miners in formulating labour movement demands for political-constitutional reforms that helped create the conditions for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The book examines the moral economy, which prioritised communal security and collective voice. Three different generations of Scottish coal miners are identified, shaped by successive predominant forms of coal mining unit across the twentieth century. The Village Pit generation, born in the 1900s, defined the terms of the moral economy, and secured nationalisation in 1947. The New Mine generation, born in the 1920s, enforced the moral economy and made nationalisation work in the interests of miners. It advanced Home Rule arguments to protect economic security in the struggle against deindustrialisation. The Cosmopolitan Colliery generation, born in the 1950s, tried to protect the moral economy and communal security in the coalfields in the great strike of 1984-85. The experiences of miners are used to explore working class wellbeing more broadly throughout the prolonged and politicised period of deindustrialisation that culminated in the Thatcherite assault of the 1980s.