Author: Paul Wheatley Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226894282 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 591
Book Description
What makes a city an economic, political, and cultural center? In The Places Where Men Pray Together, Paul Wheatley draws on two decades of astonishingly wide-ranging research to demonstrate that Islamic cities are defined by function rather than form—by what they do rather than what they are. Focusing on the roles of cities during the first four centuries of Islamic expansion, Wheatley explores interconnected cultural, historical, economic, political, and religious factors to provide the clearest and most extensively documented portrait of early Islamic urban centers available to date. Building on the tenth-century geographer al-Maqdisi's writings on urban centers of the Islamic world, buttressed by extensive comparative material from roadbooks, topographies, histories, adab literatures, and gazetteers of the time, Wheatley identifies the main functions of different Islamic urban centers. Chapters on each of the thirteen centers that al-Maqdisi identified, ranging from the Atlantic to the Indus and from the Caspian to the Sudan, form the heart of this book. In each case Wheatley shows how specific agglomeration and accessibility factors combined to make every city functionally distinct as a creator of effective space. He also demonstrates that, far from revolutionizing every aspect of life in these cities, the adoption of Islam often affected the development of these cities less than previously existing local traditions. The Places Where Men Pray Together is a monumental work that will speak to scholars and readers across a broad variety of disciplines, from historians, anthropologists, and sociologists to religious historians, archaeologists, and geographers.
Author: John Peter Radez Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1793615691 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 163
Book Description
Ibn Miskawayh, the Soul, and the Pursuit of Happiness explores the moral philosophy and context of Ibn Miskawayh (932–1030), an advocate of the intellectually cultivated life with a strong religious bent. Though not necessarily a major innovator, he sought through his writings to provide a moral compass for turbulent times, much like thinkers such as Petrarch (1304–1374), Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Francois Rabelais (1494–1553), Montesquieu (1689–1755) or more recently, Mortimer Adler (1902–2001). Despite the tumultuous times in which they lived, these thinkers offered the world hope through a humanism that cultivated both civic and moral character. Whether directly expressed in his moral philosophy or illustrated in the examples of renowned or notorious historical figures, Miskawayh’s core idea is that one’s character is much easier kept than recovered. In this book, John Peter Radez shows how Miskawayh stands out not only as one of Islam’s first ethicists, but also one of its true intellectuals: thinker, historian, codifier of the science of adab, and a truly happy sage who represented the best of his generation’s intellectual and cultural elite. Miskawayh’s message of how to create lives worthy of human beings—his civic humanism—resonates today.
Author: Maaike van Berkel Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004252703 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
The reign of al-Muqtadir (295-320/908-32) is a crucial and controversial epoch in the history of the Abbasid empire. Al-Muqtadir’s regime has traditionally been depicted as one of decline, when the political power of the caliphate and the lustre of its capital began to crumble. This book not only offers a substantial investigation of the idea and reality of decline, but also provides new interpretations of the inner workings of the court and the empire. The authors, four specialists of Abbasid history, explore the formal and informal power relationships that shaped politics at the court, involving bureaucrats, military, harem, courtiers and of course al-Muqtadir himself. A study of the topography of Baghdad completes this vivid picture of the court and its capital.
Author: Shahin Nezhad Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH ISBN: 3832556117 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
The Sassanid Persia (224-651 CE) has received increasing attention in both Western and domestic scholarship, not to mention within Iranians in general, particularly in the last three decades. The 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the theoretic-clerical regime, the apparent failure of its ideologues in their attempt to reinvent an Irano-Islamic identity based on Twelver Shia myth, and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) were all key stimuli that have contributed to this increased attention towards the revival of a none-Islamic historicity. The present work sheds light on some significant sociopolitical and cultural aspects which played decisive roles in the collapse of the Sasanian Empire, a world's antique power, whose decline--with on exaggeration--rewrote the history of the three Asian, European and African continents. The authors meticulously describe, analyze and evaluate all the major historical events at the eve of the Arabo-Islamic invasions whose prediction, and subsequently underestimation by and rivalry within the Sasanian nobility put a definite end to the last Iranian pre-Islamic monarchy. The reader hence, by studying this book, may reconsider the downfall of Sasanians and the rise of the Islamic Caliphate to be a mere unexpected event; a cliche which still dominates within majority of scholars and those interested in the Middle East and Iranian Studies looking at Sasanians' decline as an incomprehensible surprise.
Author: Julie Scott Meisami Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 9780415185721 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 460
Book Description
This reference work covers the classical, transitional and modern periods. Editors and contributors cover an international scope of Arabic literature in many countries.
Author: Paul Wheatley
Author: John Peter Radez
Author: Aḥmad Ibn-Muḥammad Ibn-Ḫallikān
Author: Aḥmad Ibn-Muḥammad Ibn-H̲allikān
Author: Maaike van Berkel
Author: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
Author: Shahin Nezhad
Author: 
Author: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
Author: Julie Scott Meisami