Reveals how medieval Jews developed religious law through contact with their Muslim neighbors After Revelation offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and ......
The two-state solution is doomed; the one-state reality is here to stay
Why have Israelis and Palestinians failed to achieve a two-state solution to the conflict that has cost so much and lasted so long? In Paradigm Lost, Ian S. Lustick brings fifty years as an analyst of the Arab-Israeli dispute to bear ......
Oral Poetry and Narrative Lore from Northern Arabia
The heroic deeds and words of a warrior poet of northern Arabia An epic hero and a poet, the semi-legendary Shayi? al-Amsa? was a prominent ancestor of the Shammar tribal confederation that stretches across the Great Nafud desert in the northern Arabian Peninsula. Shayi?'s corpus of extant poems are preserved in narratives about his chivalrous ......
A classic textbook on the study of logic In the Muslim East, logic was an integral part of the syllabus of schools and found to be especially helpful for legal studies. It was at this time that The Rules of Logic was composed by Najm al-Din al-Katibi, a scholar of the Shafi?i school of law. The Rules of Logic is the most widely read introduction ......
A collection of poems from a changing Bedouin world Bedouin Poets of the Nafud Desert features poetry from three poets of the Ibn Rashid dynasty-the highwater mark of Bedouin culture in the nineteenth century. Khalaf Abu Zwayyid, ?Adwan al-Hirbid, and ?Ajlan ibn Rmal belonged to tribes based around the area of Jabal Shammar in northern Arabia. A ......
An Intellectual Correspondence from the Tenth Century
Questions and answers from two great philosophers Why is laughter contagious? Why do mountains exist? Why do we long for the past, even if it is scarred by suffering? Spanning a vast array of subjects that range from the philosophical to the theological, from the philological to the scientific, The Philosopher Responds is the record of a set of ......
'A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah (d. 923/1517) of Damascus was one of the great women scholars in Islamic history. A mystic and prolific poet and writer, 'A'ishah composed more works in Arabic than any other woman before the twentieth century. Yet despite her extraordinary literary and religious achievements, 'A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah remains largely unknown. ......
Sufism through the eyes of a legal scholar In The Requirements of the Sufi Path, the renowned North African historian and jurist Ibn Khaldun applies his analytical powers to Sufism, which he deems a bona fide form of Islamic piety. Ibn Khaldun is widely known for his groundbreaking work as a sociologist and historian, in particular for the ......
A witty satire of the medical profession The Doctors' Dinner Party is an eleventh-century satire in the form of a novella, set in a medical milieu. A young doctor from out of town is invited to dinner with a group of older medical men, whose conversation reveals their incompetence. Written by the accomplished physician Ibn Bu?lan, the work ......