This book follows the development of classical mathematics and the relation between work done in the Arab and Islamic worlds and that undertaken by the likes of Descartes and Fermat.

'Early modern, ' mathematics is a term widely used to refer to the mathematics which developed in the West during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. For many historians and philosophers this is the watershed which marks a radical departure from 'classical mathematics, ' to more modern mathematics; heralding the arrival of algebra, geometrical algebra, and the mathematics of the continuous. In this...

The Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity and the home to a number of Eastern Churches with millions of followers. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the various denominations in the modern Middle East and will be of interest to a wide variety of scholars and students studying theology, history and politics.

Qur'anic exegesis has become the battleground of political Islam and theological conflict among various Muslim schools of thought. Using comparative and contrastive methodology, examples from the Qur'an are investigated in the light of various theological views to delineate the birth, development and growth of Qur'anic exegesis.

The political status quo, in the past and at present, has impinged upon Qur'anic exegesis more than on any other discipline in Islamic studies. This book illustrates the dichotomy between mainstream and non-mainstream Islam, showing how Qur'anic...

This fifth volume of A History of Arabic Sciences and Mathematics is complemented by four preceding volumes which focused on the main chapters of classical mathematics: infinitesimal geometry, theory of conics and its applications, spherical geometry, mathematical astronomy, etc.

This book includes seven main works of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) and of two of his predecessors, Thābit ibn Qurra and al-Sijzī

• The circle, its transformations and its properties;
• Analysis and synthesis: the founding of analytical art;

...

Offering a detailed analysis of the structure of authority in Islamic law, this book focuses on the figure of Yahyā b. Sharaf al-Nawawī, who is regarded as the chief contributor to the legal tradition known as the Shāfi'ī madhhab in traditional Muslim sources, named after Muhammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi'ī (d. 204/820), the supposed founder of the school of law.

Al-Nawawī's legal authority is situated in a context where Muslims demanded to stabilize legal disposition that is consistent with the authority of the madhhab, since...

Arabs and Iranians in the Islamic Conquest Narrative analyzes how early Muslim historians merged the pre-Islamic histories of the Arab and Iranian peoples into a didactic narrative culminating with the Arab conquest of Iran.　

This book provides an in-depth examination of Islamic historical accounts of the encounters between representatives of these two peoples that took place in the centuries prior to the coming of Islam. By doing this, it uncovers anachronistic projections of dynamic identity and political discourses within the contemporaneous Islamic...

Moral Rationalism and Shar 'a is the first attempt at outlining the scope for a theological reading of Shar 'a, based on a critical examination of why 'Adliyya theological ethics have not significantly impacted Sh ' readings of Shar 'a.

Within Sh ' works of Shar 'a legal theory (us l al-fiqh) there is a theoretical space for reason as an independent source of normativity alongside the Qur' n and the Prophetic tradition. The position holds that humans are capable of understanding moral values independently of revelation. Describing...

This book provides translated selections from the writings of Muhammad Ibn Othman al-Miknasi (d. 1799). The only writings by an Arab-Muslim in the pre-modern period that present a comparative perspective, his travelogues provide unique insight with in to Christendom and Islam.

Translating excerpts from his three travelogues, this book tells the story of al-Miknasi's travels from 1779-1788. As an ambassador, al-Miknasi was privy to court life, government offices and religious buildings, and he provides detailed accounts of cities, people, customs, ransom negotiations, historical...

Presenting a critical, yet innovative, perspective on the cultural interactions between the "East" and the "West," this book questions the role of travel in the production of knowledge and in the construction of the idea of the "Islamic city."

This volume brings together authors from various disciplines, questioning the role of Western travel writing in the production of knowledge about the East, particularly focusing on the cities of the Muslim world. Instead of concentrating on a specific era, chapters span the Medieval and Modern eras in order to present the...

Through analysing ancient and classical Arabic literature, including the Qur'an, from within the Arabic literary tradition, this book provides an original interpretation of poetics, and of other important aspects of Arab culture.

Ancient Arabic literature is a realm of poetry; prose literary forms emerged rather late, and even then remained in the shadow of poetic creative efforts. Traditionally, this literature has been viewed through a philologist's lens and has often been represented as 'materialistic' in the sense that its poetry lacked imagination. As a result, Arabic...