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This book presents a detailed investigation of the Cairene descendants of the Abbasid family during the period of so-called ‘Mamluk’ rule in Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and reveals a nuanced understanding of the Abbasid Caliphate according to elite members of Syro-Egyptian society. In doing so, Mustafa Banister addresses the function of the caliph and his office amidst the breakdown and recreation of each new socio-political order of the Cairo Sultanate. The book examines the uniquely medieval Egyptian conditions of both the idea and the institution of the caliphate, including how it was socially and textually performed in the context of the late medieval sultanate. Part One of the book (Chapters 1–5) creates a sprawling historical narrative, which establishes a chronological framework that contextualises the rest of the work. Part Two of the book (Chapters 6–9), as a social and intellectual history, then broadens the focus of the study by analysing contemporary perceptions of the Abbasid Caliphate of Cairo. For specialist and non-specialist readers, this book provides a comprehensive dynastic history of the Cairene Abbasids, as well as a study of the manifestations of ‘Caliphate’ in the Cairo Sultanate based on narrative, prescriptive and documentary sources.

This book discusses how justice was administrated and applied in medieval Egypt. The model that evolved during the early middle ages involved four judicial institutions: the cadi, the court of complaints (mazalim), the police (shurta), responsible for criminal justice, and the Islamised market law (hisba), administrated by the market supervisor (the muhtasib). Literary and non-literary sources are used to highlight how these institutions worked in real-time situations such as the famine of 1024-1025, which posed tremendous challenges to both the market supervisor and the ruling establishment. The inner workings of the court of complaint during the Fatimid period (10^th-12^th century) are also extensively discussed. The discussion is extended to include the way the courts of non-Muslim communities were perceived and functioned during the Fatimid period. The discussion also provides insights into the scope of non-Muslim self-rule/judicial autonomy in medieval Islam.

The making of the modern world was a result of the fall of empires and the emergence of nation-states. This is particularly true across the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, a region connecting the Balkans to the Black Sea littoral, and the Middle East to the Caucasus. In approaching this poly-ethnic, multi-religious and trans-imperial hub of turmoil, the existing historiographies have either trivialized or idealized the role of rebels, revolutionaries and racketeers. Although revisionist scholarship has critically analysed political violence, imperialism and nation-state building, there is still a need to develop a comparative understanding of political actors that shaped the moments of political transition in these frontiers of empires. We accordingly propose a new genre of comparative and connected histories of rebels, revolutionaries and racketeers during what we call an “Age of Rogues.”

There are more than 15 million people over age 65 currently living in the Arab world, yet little attention has been paid to the cultural significance of growing old. The book recognizes the widespread silence by countering the critical corpus that reads the modern Arabic novel as a political discourse with an emphasis on youth achievement. By offering close readings of 16 fictional works from different parts of the Arab world such as novels by Alia Mamdouh, Sahar Khalifah, Iman Kachachi, Rashid al-Daif and Alaa al-Aswany, the study utilizes biological and cultural theories of ageing- particularly from the perspective of gender and feminism- that shed light on the representation of ageing in the Arabic novel. The study makes use of feminist theories of ageing and gerontology that focus on sexism and ageism, including works by Simone de Beauvoir and Margaret Marganroth Gullette to present aging as a relational formation between men and women, and their idiosyncratic experiences of the process of ageing, revealing that there is no prototype of oldness in the Arabic novel and that older men and women manifest a multiplicity of identities, concerns and experiences. The study challenges the ungendered image generally attributed to older persons and examines how they navigate old age and subvert it. As they grow older men and women manifest a multiplicity of identities, concerns, and experiences revealing that the ageing process is an ongoing inherently unstable project.

The Fatimids’ apocalyptic vision of their central place in an imminent utopia played a critical role in transfiguring the intellectual and political terrains of North Africa in the early tenth century. Yet the realities that they faced on the ground often challenged their status as the custodians of a pristine Islam at the end of time. Through an examination of a variety of sources including works of taʾwīl or symbolic interpretation, this book illustrates some of the specific structures and functions of Fatimid apocalypticism. It then examines how various components of the apocalyptic myth—especially the utopia that it promised—evolved in response to shifting historical circumstances. The book also focuses on how the evolution of apocalyptic symbolism was related to the Fatimids’ consolidation of authority. The book ends with an extensive analysis of both the ritual and textual dimensions of another apocalyptic event linked to a Fatimid lineage: the Nizari Ismaili declaration of the end of time on August 8, 1164.

This book explores the dialectical relationship between discourse and social change during and post the conflict. In particular, the book examines how Arabic public and political discourse shapes and is shaped by the wider social, cultural and political environment. Analysing the dialogue of various actors, Islamic parties and stakeholders – as well as marginalised voices – Arabic Political Discourse in Transition identifies the key linguistic strategies and features used to frame, represent and position oneself at times of conflict. It provides a detailed analysis of the use of language in political discourse, demonstrating therefore key shifts and strategies in the use of language during conflicts. Key Features • Provides a detailed micro- and macro-analysis of Arabic political discourse. • Presents an innovative framework for the analysis of Arabic discourse in the context of conflict. • Provides a comprehensive review of key literature pertaining to discourse, framing and representation. • Offers a detailed examination of the strategic shifts in discourse throughout the course of the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia • Analyses how some Arab officials and the Arab public use discourse to position themselves in relation to each other. • Examines the power of image in conveying discourses at times of conflict Highlights key framing and representation strategies in discourses of key actors.

When the modernist movement in Arabic poetry was launched in the 1940s, it threatened to blur the distinctions between poetry and everything else. The Arabic prose poem, qaṣīdat al-nathr, is probably the most subversive and extreme manifestation of this blurring. The term was first introduced in 1960, as a translation of the French phrase «poème en prose» and is the first example of non-metrical Arabic poetry. This book examines this “new genre” as a poetic practice and as a critical lens which gave rise to a profound, contentious and continuing debate about the definition of an Arabic poem, its limits, and its relation to its readers. It examines the history of the prose poem, its claims of autonomy and distance from its socio-political context, and the anxiety and scandal it generated. It takes as case-studies several understudied and unstudied poets, such as Salim Barakat (b. 1951), Unsi al-Hajj (1937-2014), and Muhammad al-Maghut (1934-2006), who are important in their own right and who exerted great influence on the poets who succeeded them. The book also sheds light on the works of more recent poets, such as the Egyptian poets of the nineties and younger poets whose careers launched in the twenty-first century and who have not hitherto been studied in English.

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.

Architecture as a Cross-Cultural Project: Building in Jerusalem during the British Mandate 1917-1948, examines a fascinating and critical epoch in the architectural history of Jerusalem. It proposes a fresh and analytical discussion of British Mandate-era architecture by studying buildings that impacted Jerusalem’s built environment for years to come. By applying relational history methodology, the book reveals how these building projects evolved as an outcome of cross-cultural influences and relations among the British, American, Jewish-Zionist and Muslim-Palestinian communities. The book focuses on 4 case studies: the Muslim Palestinian Palace Hotel, the Jewish-Zionist Zionist Executive Buildings, the British Palestine Archaeological Museum (the Rockefeller Museum) and the American Jerusalem YMCA Building. These buildings’ analysis shows the major role that architecture and architectural culture had in constructing communal and national identities in Jerusalem and in Mandate Palestine The building and design processes, as well as the outcome of the edifices discussed here, present new perspectives on the adaptation of modern architecture in the Middle East and the negotiation of historicism and vernacular architecture during the first half of the twentieth century.

A socio-political and cultural history of the Armenians in Cold War Lebanon, this book argues that Armenians around the world – in the face of the Genocide, and despite the absence of an independent nation-state after World War I – developed dynamic socio-political, cultural, ideological and ecclesiastical centres. And it focuses on one such centre, Beirut, in the postcolonial 1940s and 1950s. Tsolin Nalbantian explores Armenians’ discursive re-positioning within the newly independent Lebanese nation-state; the political-cultural impact (in Lebanon as well as Syria) of the 1946–8 repatriation initiative to Soviet Armenia; the 1956 Catholicos election; and the 1957 Lebanese elections and 1958 mini-civil war. What emerges is a post-Genocide Armenian history of – principally – power, renewal and presence, rather than one of loss and absence. Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own investigates Lebanese Armenians’ changing views of their place in the making of the Lebanese state and its wider Arab environment, and in relation to the Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic. It challenges the dominant Armenian historiography, which treats Lebanese Armenians as a subsidiary of an Armenian global diaspora, and contributes to an understanding of the development of class and sectarian cleavages that led to the breakdown of civil society in Lebanon from 1975. In highlighting the role of societal actors in the US–Soviet Cold War in the Middle East, it also questions the tendency to read Middle East history through the lens of dominant (Arab) nationalisms.

The idea of the museum as a space committed to dialogue and inclusive representation which is paramount to museology in the Global North has had trouble finding ground in the Middle East and North Africa where museums remain—and have mostly been depicted as—the carriers of homogenous national identities, at the expense of cultural and social difference. Research recently undertaken by anthropologists, museum specialists and historians reveal that this monolithic museographic conception of culture is in the process of being challenged. Whilst some public museums in the region have engaged in the reconsideration of the narratives underpinning their collections, the past two decades have also seen a boom in private museum initiatives led by social and cultural minority groups whose experiences have until now been marginalised within, or absent from, state-led exhibitionary practices. This volume discusses the contradictions and opportunities museums have created for minority groups across the Mediterranean basin, from the early twentieth century to the contemporary period. It explores whether museums can provide a suitable canvas for minorities to express their voice, what kind of narratives is articulated, and whether these can challenge cultural and social stereotypes and deploy new kinds of identities.

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.

Awakening – an Islamic media company formed in London – has created the soundtrack to many Muslim lives during the last two decades and has produced superstars like Sami Yusuf and Maher Zain, among a host of other artists. As the company celebrates its first 20 years in the industry, the book examines Awakening’s rise to global success and their pop music inspired by Islam. Providing the first thorough description of the history and development of new Islamic popular music genres, in particular pop-nashid and Islamic pop, this book argues that Awakening is best understood in relation to the ethical turn in Islamic thinking. In analysing the turn to ethics, the book explores how the Islamic pop industry is, in effect, altering the very formulations of Islamic thought. Closely examining the ethical masculinity of the Awakening artists, alongside their personas in songs, on stage and via social media, the book analyses how popular culture and the creative arts challenge and help change Islamic (re)thinking. The author has been on tour with Awakening artists, analysed the media output by the company and interviewed artists, the Awakening founders, video directors and other key people in the business.

Bayana in Rajasthan and its monuments challenge the perceived but established view of the development of Indo-Muslim architecture and urban form. At the end of the 12th century the Ghurid conquerors took the mighty Hindu fort, building the first Muslim city below on virgin ground. It was the centre of an autonomous region during the 15th and 16th centuries and was even considered by Sikandar Lodī for the capital of his sultanate before he decided on Agra, then a mere village of Bayana. A peculiarity of historic sites in India is that whole towns with outstanding remains can, through political change or climatic events, be either built over by modern developments or fall into obscurity. The latter is the case with Bayana, abandoned following an earthquake in 1505. Going beyond a simple study of the historic, architectural and archaeological remains ‒ surveyed and illustrated in detail ‒ the book takes on the wider issues of how far the artistic traditions of Bayana, which developed independently from those of Delhi, later influenced North Indian architecture and were the forerunners of the Mughal architectural style, which draw many of its features from innovations developed first in Bayana.

Is it lawful to shed the blood of a man or a woman who insults the Prophet Muhammad? Does the Qur’an stipulate a worldly punishment for apostates? Beginning with a genealogy of religious freedom in contemporary Islam, this book tells the gripping story of Rafiq Taqi, an Azerbaijani journalist and writer, who was condemned to death by an Iranian cleric for a blasphemous news article in 2006. Delving into the most sacred sources for all Muslims – the Qur’an and Hadith – Mohsen Kadivar explores the subject of blasphemy and apostasy from the perspective of Shi’a jurisprudence to articulate a polarisation between secularism and extremist religious orthodoxy. In a series of online exchanges, he debates the case with Muhammad Jawad Fazel, the son of Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani who issued the fatwa pronouncing death penalty on Taqi. While disapproving of the journalist’s writings, Kadivar takes a defensive stance against vigilante murders and asks whether death for apostasy reflects the true spirit of Islam. This book presents a back-and-forth debate between modern two Shi’a jurists (one conservative, one reformist) that locates the exact points of controversy surrounding apostasy and blasphemy. It engages with the broader subjects of religious freedom and human rights, addressing both secular and religious interests. The author’s extensive new introduction and annotations throughout the text brings the work up-to-date and place it in its academic and public contexts. Finally, the book takes a front-row seat to the debate on blasphemy and apostasy in Islam.

Six years before the Egyptian revolution of January 2011, many young Egyptians had resorted to blogging as a means of self-expression and literary creativity. Some of these bloggers have not only received big popularity within the online community, but have also attracted the interest of independent and mainstream publishing houses, and have made their way into the Arab cultural field. Previous research on the impact of the Internet in the Middle East has been dominated by a focus on politics and the public sphere, while its influence on cultural domains remains very little explored. Blogging From Egypt aims at filling this gap by exploring young Egyptians’ blogs as forms of digital literature. It studies a corpus of 40 personal blogs written and distributed online between 2005 and 2016, combining literary analysis with interviews with the authors. The study reveals that the experimentation with blogging resulted in the emergence of a new literary genre: the autofictional blog. The book explores the aesthetic features of this genre, as well as its relation to the events of the “Arab Spring”. Finally, it discusses how blogs have evolved in the last years after 2011 and what is left of the blog in Arabic literary production. The book includes original extracts and translation from blogs, made available for the first time to an English-speaking audience.

Why does a designated terrorist organisation decide to abandon and de-legitimate political violence and terrorism? When does a rebel leader decide to turn an insurgency into a non-violent social movement? How does a radical militia turn into a reformist party? Why do these transformations and collective de-radicalisation processes happen? And what are the conditions for initiating and sustaining them? These are the main questions that this edited book engages with to explain group transformations from bullets to ballots. The book starts with the testimonies of two leaders of collective transformations – from violent to non-violent activism – who co-led their own, very different organisations. The first is a former leftist guerrilla commander who became the minister of intelligence services in his own country. The second is a former spokesperson of a jihadist organisation who co-led its abandonment of terrorism and became the political advisor to its party. The book goes on to qualitatively analyse over 20 different cases in more than 15 countries. The authors rethink collective de-radicalisation processes of organisations inspired by ideologies ranging from religious to leftist to ethnonationalist, in times of setbacks, global rise of nationalist populism and persistence of violent extremism. Their findings impact and contribute to democratic transition, ending civil wars, peacebuilding, countering violent extremism, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism.

Bathhouses (hamams) play a prominent role in Turkish culture, because of their architectural value and social function as places of hygiene, relaxation and interaction. As architectural spaces, hamams have been continuously shaped by social and historical change at many scales. The life story of Mimar Sinan’s Çemberlitaş Hamamı in Istanbul provides an important example: established in 1583/4, it was modernized in the Turkish Republic (since 1923) and now is a tourist attraction. As a social space shared between tourists and Turks, it is a critical site through which to investigate how global tourism affects local traditions and how places provide a nucleus of cultural belonging in a globalized world. This book constitutes the first in-depth, monographic study of a single hamam, espousing an original and experimental biographical approach.

Current popular and academic discussions make certain assumptions regarding Islam and its lack of compatibility with pluralism. Some notable liberal thinkers have even argued that pluralism itself is inherently antithetical to Islam. This volume addresses these assumptions by bringing clarity to some of their key suppositions and conjectures. It seeks to go beyond the parameters of political correctness by engaging in a dialogue that refutes these postulations in a direct, frontal debate. In this volume scholars from around the world explore notions of pluralism, discussing the broad spectrum of its relevance and application to modern-day societies, from secularism and multiculturalism to democracy, globalization, and the pivotal role of civil society.

The temptation to invoke idealised histories of Islamic cosmopolitanism as the antithesis to the militancy associated with contemporary groups, such as the Islamic State (IS), is quite powerful. Many writers have pointed to the flourishing of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula and the mobile societies of the premodern Indian Ocean as paradigmatic examples both of the storied past and the potential future of cosmopolitan forms of religious vitality. However, if one pushes beyond nostalgic images of coexistence, pluralism and mobility, it is also possible to discern more complex stories. The chapters in Challenging Cosmopolitanism, specifically direct attention to the historical experiences of Muslims in China and Southeast Asia to explore such complexities. Marked by considerable inflows of Muslim migrants that further complicated the demographics of already heterogeneous populations, the experiences of Muslim communities in these regions provide insights into contests to define legitimate forms of difference. Spanning from the 16th through 21st centuries, this volume presents case studies of itinerant Sufis who overthrew governments in the Indian Ocean and religious shrines patronized by warlords in early Java; of thinkers who promoted ‘Islamic military cosmopolitanism’ in Qing-era China and Americans who supported US-Ottoman cooperation in the pacification of the Philippines; of Muslim rebels in early 20^th-century Malaya who resisted borders and Afghan refugees in China whose experience reflects contemporary dynamics of ‘armoured’ forms of 21^st century cosmopolitanism. Through such explorations, this volume illuminates the fraught relationships between mobility, coercion and border-crossing, thereby contributing to more nuanced frameworks of analysis for Islamic cosmopolitanism.