The Near and Middle East - Roberto Tottoli: I profeti biblici nella tradizione islamica [The Biblical Prophets in the Islamic Tradition]. (Studi Biblici 121.) 227 pp., Brescia: Paideia. 1999. Lire 38,000.

2000 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-288
Author(s):  
Pier Cesare Bori
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Islamic Tradition

“The Romans Will Win!” Q 30:2‒7 in Light of 7th c. Political Eschatology

Der Islam ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Tommaso Tesei
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Q 30 ◽  
Eventual Outcome

Abstract: This article addresses a prophecy found in vv. 2‒7 of the thirtieth Qurʾānic sūra, known as al-Rūm (“The Romans”). These verses report on the Romans’ (al-Rūm) involvement in a conflict against an unnamed enemy and predict its eventual outcome. The passage refers to the conflict between the Byzantines and Sasanians that lasted for about thirty years during the first three decades of the 7th c. (602‒628 CE). These verses are usually considered to be the only Qurʾānic allusion to a historical event that can be confirmed by sources external to the Islamic tradition. In this study I will argue that the prophecy on the Rūm has close parallels with other prophecies on the war that were circulating in the Middle East in the first half of the 7th c. The contextualization and comparison with other 7th c. prophecies will provide us with a better understanding of the Qurʾānic passage.

Leading with a Fist: A History of the Salafi Beard in the 20th-Century Middle East

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Rock-Singer
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Facial Hair ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Visual Markers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interpretative Approach

Abstract Salafism is a global religious movement whose male participants often distinguish themselves from their co-religionists by a particular style of facial hair. Historians have focused largely on this movement’s engagement with questions of theology and politics, while anthropologists have assumed that Salafi practice reflects a longer Islamic tradition. In this article, I move beyond both approaches by tracing the gradual formation of a distinctly Salafi beard in the 20th century Middle East. Drawing on Salafi scholarly compendia, leading journals, popular pamphlets, and daily newspapers produced primarily in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I argue that Salafi elites revived a longer Islamic legal tradition in order to distinguish their flock from secular nationalist projects of communal identity and Islamic activists alike. In doing so, I cast light on Salafism’s interpretative approach, the dynamics that define its development as a social movement, and the broader significance of visual markers in modern projects of Islamic piety.

Arabic Contributions to Medieval Political Theory

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles E. Butterworth
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
The One ◽  
Medieval Political Theory

This article explores political philosophy within the medieval Arabic-Islamic tradition of the Middle East, focusing on the contributions of a few thinkers including Alfarabi, Avicenna, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd, Averroes, and Ibn Khaldūn. Political philosophy in general differs from political thought, on the one hand, and political theology, on the other, insofar as it seeks to replace opinion about political affairs by knowledge. Political philosophy in the medieval Arabic-Islamic tradition of the Middle East differs from that in the medieval Arabic-Jewish or Arabic-Christian traditions in that it is beholden neither to political nor to theological currents, its occasional rhetorical bows to one or the other notwithstanding. Political thought, best exemplified by the genre known as “Mirrors for Princes,” is always limited by the opinions that dominate the setting and time. Political theology or, for medieval Islam, jurisprudence focuses on how the beliefs and actions set forth in the religious tradition elucidate the conditions justifying warfare or the qualities an individual must have to be considered a suitable ruler.

The Relevance of aMaqasidApproach for Political Islam Post Arab Revolutions

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 489-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Halim Rane
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
The Past ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Political Office ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Islamic Political Parties

The role of Islam in the politics of Muslim-majority countries has attracted a plethora of scholarly research over the past two decades that generally refers to this phenomenon as political Islam. Much of the focus of this body of literature is concerned with the reconciliation of Islam and democracy. In recent years, the leading scholarship in this field has attempted to anticipate the future of political Islam and the prospect of post-Islamism. Asef Bayet's work on post-Islamists examines various social movements in the Middle East, arguing that Muslims have made Islam democratic by how they have defined Islam in respect to their particular socio-political contexts. However, others have expressed pessimism about the extent to which domestic conditions in Muslim-majority countries and external geopolitical factors will allow the development of an Islamic democracy. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, for instance, sees four main options for Islamists: full revolutionary takeover of their respective countries; completely withdrawing from political office to become Islamic interest or pressure groups; building broader coalitions while maintaining their ideology; or radically restructuring in order to emulate the model of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP). What is missing in this discussion is attention to the capacity of Islamic political parties to draw on Islamic tradition and evolve in response to modernity through a focus on Islam's higher objectives or amaqasidapproach.

Spiritual Elite Communities in the Contemporary Middle East

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-140
Author(s):  
Albert de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
High Level

This article claims that we are in need of alternative ways of modelling religious diversity in the Middle East. This region is characterized by a high level of religious diversity, which can only be partly explained by the persistence of religions that were already in existence when Islam arose. Many communities came into being since the Islamization of the area. The communities addressed in this article therefore include one pre-Islamic tradition, the Mandaeans, and five communities that crystallized (much) later: the Yezidis, the Ahl-e Haqq, the Druze, the Alawis, and the (Turkish) Alevis. These have often been discussed in conjunction with each other, in ways that are historically and conceptually problematic. A focus on two characteristics these communities share—endogamy and a “spiritual elite” structure—makes it possible to discuss the processes in which these communities have come into being, have crystallized, and relate to the wider Islamic setting in a new light. Three communities have continued to distance themselves from Islam, and three have been in a constant process of negotiating their relation with more mainstream versions of Islam. This has consequences for the maintenance, or gradual dissolution, of religious pluralism in the Middle East.

scholarly journals The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources as an Element of Cultural Diffusion

Verbum Vitae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 1233-1261
Author(s):  
Bożena Prochwicz-Studnicka ◽  
Andrzej Mrozek
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Textual Traditions

The article harks back to the publication entitled “The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources” (VV 38/2 [2020]), which was devoted to the analysis of the eponymous theme in the foundational sources of Islam: the Quran and the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the motif of angel(s) may have been borrowed from two monotheistic traditions that came before. The verification of the thesis that the motif of the angel(s) of death underwent diffusion was carried out in several steps. First, the motif was identified in the textual traditions of Judaism and early Christianity (i.e. sets of texts that were known and, in all likelihood, widespread in the Middle East during the formative period of Islam). As a result of the analysis, most of the themes recognised in the foundational texts of Islam were found. The next step was to identify possible routes of their transmission and percolation into the Islamic tradition and to determine the “ideological demand” for the motif of the angel(s) of death in the burgeoning Islam. Although Jewish and Christian imagery and beliefs about angels are an important (if not the primary) source of influence on Muslim angelology, there was most likely a two-way interaction between the monotheistic traditions, albeit to a limited extent.

The Realm of the Imām the Faṭīmids in the tenth century

1996 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-449
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Modern History ◽  
The Third ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

Despite their period from the tenth to the twelfth century, at the height of the Middle Ages; despite their position in Egypt, at the centre of the civilization of the Near and Middle East; and despite their prominence as the third Caliphate of Islam, the Fāṭimids lack a satisfactory modern history of their dynasty. This is partly because of the length of their life, which covers the histories of so many hundreds of years; partly because of the span of their empire from North Africa to Egypt and Syria, stretching across the histories of so many regions; and finally because, at the level of Islam itself, their empire was divided between their dawla or state and their daՙwa or doctrine. The doctrine, which focused on the Fāṭimid Imām as the quṭb or pole of faith, gave the dynasty its peculiar strength and endurance. The failure of that doctrine to supersede the Islam of the schools, however, left the Fāṭimids increasingly isolated and ultimately vulnerable. Standing outside the mainstream of Islamic tradition, the dynasty's own version of its history was disregarded. Instead, its components passed out of their original context to be incorporated into the regional or universal histories of subsequent authors. Maqrīzī was alone in compiling his Ittiՙāẓ al-ḥunafā' as a history of the dynasty in Egypt, introduced by a miscellany of information on its origins and previous career.

Philip Khuri Hitti

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Farhat J. Ziadeh
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
To Come ◽  
Middle East Studies

Students of Middle East Studies in this country will, for generations to come, continue to sing the praises of the dean of American Arabists and Islamicists, who passed away last Christmas Eve. For there is hardly a scholar of the Middle East in this country whose academic career or intellectual development has not been directly or indirectly influenced by him, his students, or his many publications. There is hardly a center of Middle East studies in this country that has not followed the tradition for these studies which he established at Princeton University. In a real sense he was the father of these studies in America. Small wonder that his students and colleagues—following the medieval Islamic tradition in designating the head of an intellectual school—lovingly called him “al-Shaykh.”

Writing the Unwritten Life of the Islamic Eve: Menstruation and the Demonization of Motherhood

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Spellberg
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Critical Part ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Biological Aspects ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Islamic Faith ◽  
Christian Influence ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Early Islamic

Western scholars have long studied Jewish and Christian influence in shaping early Islamic tradition, but almost none of them has considered Eve's transformation as a critical part of the “genesis” of an Islamic historical framework and the evolution of its gender categories. I trace the transformation of the wife of Adam from the revelation contained in the Qurʾan and note the abrupt and distinct changes wrought upon this Qurʾanic persona in post-Qurʾanic sources in the matters of menstruation and motherhood. The figure of Satan plays a pivotal role in both of these biological aspects of Eve's biography. Her function as the first woman serves to explain not just the physiology of all women, but also the essential aspects of character that allegedly make all females different from the normative male in biology and behavior. As a wife, Eve is tested and fails, but as a mother, she both fails and passes the test of satanic temptation. I argue that in her role as wife, she is depicted in post-Qurʾanic sources in accordance with pre-Islamic monotheist precedent. However, in Eve's role as mother—especially as the mother of the prophetic patriline that culminates in Muhammad—Muslim scholars distinguished the meaning and implications of her temptation as distinctly Islamic. Eve embodied a fusion of traditions, a continuity of monotheistic meanings about the feminine in the Middle East, as well as an identity that distinguished her as the first woman of a new, emerging Islamic faith.

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