Sa'di

the poet of life, love and compassion

One of greatest Persian writers of both classical prose and poetry, Sa'di was revered in his time as a man of great wisdom and passion. Sometimes said to have lived over one hundred years, the body of his work was written in the thirteenth ...

'Abd al-Rahman III

the first cordoban caliph

Covers the life and work of Abd al-Rahman III, the greatest of the Umayyad rulers of Spain and the first to take the title of Caliph, as well as doing much to stabilise the borders with Christian Spain.

'Abd al-Malik

'Abd al-Malik , who came to prominence during the second civil war of early Islam, ruled the Islamic empire from 692 until 705. Not only did he successfully suppress rebellion within the Muslim world and expand its frontiers, but in many respects he founded the empire ...

Abu Nuwas

a genius of poetry

Abu Nuwas (c.756-813) was one of the greatest Arab poets of the classical period. In literary history he is remembered chiefly as the hard-drinking and eloquent composer of dissolute wine poems, from which he emerges as one of the most charismatic figures in world ...

Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi

in the path of the prophet

Ahmad Riza Khan (1856-1921), the leader of the twentieth-century Barelwi movement, was a scholar of Islamic law and a Sufi mystic in British India. This book examines the life and thought of Ahmad Riza Khan in the context of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century British ...

Shaykh Mufid

This work is a highly readable introduction to Shaykh Mufid, the leading Shi'i scholar of his time, and it examines his contributions in the fields of jurisprudence, theology, and sacred history in clear and straightforward language.

Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis

Fazlallah Astarabadi was a 14th-century Islamic religious leader who believed that the world was about to come to an end. He claimed that he had received direct revelations from God in his dreams and that this made him equal in stature to the prophets Moses ...

Al Ma'mun

The Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (786-813) is best known for sponsoring the translation of Greek philosophy into Arabic and for promoting the activity of mathematicians, astronomers, engineers, physicians and cartographers. In his own time, however, he was a wildly controversial figure: having come to power ...

Amir Khusraw

the poet of sultans and Sufis

The Indian courtier, writer, musician and Sufi Amir Khusraw (1253-1325) is widely regarded as one of his country's greatest poets. As a writer in India, he was conscious of the larger Persian literary world as well as local tastes and preferences and wrote a ...

Ibn 'Arabi

heir to the prophets

Muhyi ad-Din Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) was an outstanding Spanish-born mystic and one of the most prolific writers in Islamic history. He made major contributions to the fields of Qur'an commentary, jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, cosmology, and spiritual psychology, and he was also a great poet ...

The crisis of muslim history

religion and politics in Early Islam

This new study of the Islamic tradition's earliest years presents the key events, individuals, and social-political conditions which defined the era of the first Four Caliphs (from the death of the Prophet to that of Ali, thirty years later), and which led to the ...

Pakistan

At the Crosscurrent of History

This controversial book explores one nation's journey from the margins of history to the centre of the world stage. Tracing the development of the country from its birth in 1947 to the present day, Ziring explores how a country once envisaged as a secular ...

Ikhwan Al-Safa

a brotherhood of idealists on th fringe of orthodox Islam

The 4th-century corpus of writings known as the "Rasa'il Ikhwan al- Safa'" ("Epistles of the Brethren of Purity") occupies a unique place in the history of literature. Its authors, about whom little is known, conceived it as an encyclopaedia of philosophical sciences, covering nearly ...

The holocaust and antisemitism

a short history

The link between antisemitism and the Holocaust is clearly explained in this thoughtful and balanced introductory study. Jocelyn Hellig, a renowned expert on Judaism and interfaith relations in South Africa, explores the development of antisemitism from pagan times to the present day, including coverage of ...

Pre-industrial societies

anatomy of the pre-modern world

This is an updated edition, with a new preface, of a classic text giving a readable and witty explanation of what the world was like before the advent of industry. Eminent historian Patricia Crone offers a blueprint for a world now lost, delineating the key ...

Turkey

the quest for identity

The formative period of islamic thought

Christianity

a short global history

A concise encyclopedia of Islam

Philosophy and religion

from Plato to postmodernism