In honor of Fred M. Donner's long and distinguished career as one of the foremost interpreters of early Islam, this volume collects more than a dozen original studies by his students. They range over a wide array of sub-fields in Islamic history and Islamic studies, including early history, historiography, Islamic law, religious studies, Qur'anic studies and Islamic archaeology. The book also includes a bibliography of Donner's works and a biographical sketch of sorts. Taken together, these essays are a clear testament to Donner's wide-ranging and continuing impact on the field. Contributors...

This critical Arabic text edition of K. al-Bayāḍ wa-l-sawād min khaṣāʾiṣ ḥikam al-ʿibād fī naʿt al-murīd wa-l-murād ("The Black and White in the Words of Wisdom by Bondsmen Describing the Seeker and the Mystic Quest"), a substantial handbook of early Sufism by Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī (d. ca. 470/1077), is based on three manuscripts and is introduced by a detailed analytical study of the author and his work. The work is written in the tone of a guiding Sufi...

This critical Arabic text edition of Salwat al-ʿārifīn wa-uns al-mushtāqīn, a manual of early Sufism by Abū Khalaf al-Ṭabarī (d. ca. 470/1077), is based on a very old manuscript preserved in Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīya of Cairo, Egypt and copied in 459/1067. It is introduced by a detailed analytical study of the author and his work. Salwat al-ʿārifīn forms an integral part of Sufi literature and reflects Islamic developments in Nishapur in northeastern Iran. This crucial Arabic text, published for the first...

The collection examines the view of holiness in the "Holy Land" through the writings of pilgrims, travelers, and missionaries. The period extends from 1517, the Ottoman conquest of Syria and Palestine, to the Franco-British treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and the consolidation of European hegemony over the Mediterranean. The writers in the collection include Christians (Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic), Muslims, and Jews, who originate from countries such as Sweden, England, France, Holland, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Syria. This book is the first to juxtapose writers of different...

Traditional medical lore along with its practitioners - druggists and healers - survives in Yemen today. Owing to the country's rich biodiversity, the main body of the medicines is plant-based. This book features fourteen scholars from Europe, North America and the Middle East (three of them from Yemen) who represent both humanities and natural sciences. They address the topic of herbal medicines and their multifaceted applications within traditional Yemeni society across boundaries of disciplines, such as Islamic studies, history, social anthropology, pharmacy and agriculture. The approaches...

George Dimitri Sawa's Arabic Musical and Socio-Cultural Glossary of Kitāb al-Aghānī is the first comprehensive lexicographical study of Umayyad and early Abbāsid-era music theory and practices. It defines melodic and rhythmic modes, musical forms, instruments, technical terms and metaphors used in evaluating compositions and performances, and the emotional effects of ṭarab. It explains the processes of composition and learning, performance practice, musical change and aesthetics, and addresses the behavior of court musicians to help understand societal views...

This volume brings together articles on various aspects of the intellectual and social histories of Islamicate societies and of the traditions and contexts that contributed to their formation and evolution. Written by leading scholars who span three generations and who cover such diverse fields as Late Antique Studies, Islamic Studies, Classics, and Jewish Studies, the volume is a testament to the breadth and to the sustained, deep impact of the corpus of the honoree, Professor Patricia Crone. Contributors are: David Abulafia, Asad Q. Ahmed, Karen Bauer, Michael Cooperson, Hannah Cotton,...

This publication systematically categorizes and provides a nearly complete overview of the great variety of maps, both manuscript and printed, that have been made of the Dutch Antilles. The map descriptions are clarified with information on the creators of the maps and the historical background of the map image. The author has extensively studied how and for which reasons these maps were created. The cartobibliography is preceded by an extensive introduction in which the history of the islands and their inhabitants are described. In Dutch, with an English summary.

The volume contains critical editions of the extant parts of two hitherto unknown theological works by the Būyid vizier al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/925), who is well known to have vigorously promoted the teaching of Muʿtazilī theology throughout Būyid territories and beyond. The manuscripts on which the edition is based come from Cairo Geniza store rooms. They consist of two manuscripts for each of the two texts--testimony to the impact of al-Ṣāḥib's education policy on the contemporaneous Jewish community in...