Author: S. K. Mendoza Forrest File Type: pdf

Author: Buṭrus Abū Mannah File Type: pdf This book focuses on the evolution of Ottoman reform as it was perceived, and negotiated, from the perspectives of the capital Istanbul and of the Arab provinces of Syria, including Palestine. It also examines the close interrelationship between the symbolic and actual measures introduced by the state, and the role of Islam as its foundational ethos and as the religion of the majority of the population. The twelve case studies included in this volume reveal the extent of the changes that the Ottoman Empire underwent throughout the period, ranging from the Ottoman dynasty and court at the top, to the marginalized Druzes and Bedouin populations on the periphery. **About the Author Itzchak Weismann and Fruma Zachs are lecturers at the Department of Middle Eastern History, the University of Haifa, Israel.

Author: Ondrej Beránek File Type: pdf In various parts of the Islamic world over the past decades virulent attacks have targeted Islamic funeral and sacral architecture. Rather than being random acts of vandalism, these are associated with the idea of performing ones religious duty as attested to in the SalafiWahhabi tradition and texts. Graves, shrines and tombs are regarded by some Muslims as having the potential to tempt a believer to polytheism. Hence the duty to level the graves to the ground (taswiyat al-qubur). In illuminating the ideology behind these acts, this book explains the current destruction of graves in the Islamic world and traces the ideological sources of iconoclasm in their historical perspective, from medieval theological and legal debates to contemporary Islamist movements including ISIS. **

Author: E. B. Fryde File Type: pdf The Byzantine world underwent a remarkable recovery of intellectual energy in the period following the recovery of Constantinople in 1261. The reaction of the emperors and their entourage of well-educated high officials to their political disasters was a deliberate reivial of the glories of ancient Greek culture. The main subject of this book is the preservation and dissemination by this learned elite of such ancient literature, philosophy and science as still survived then, the development of editorial techniques which resulted in more complete and less corrupt texts, and their improvement buy the addition of commentaries and other innovations.Review...a welcome addition to the growing list of publications dedicated to the late Byzantine period, and its breadth will be especially appreciated by undergraduate and beginning post-graduate students, for whom it will supply a good traditional overviewa practical and accessible survey of a too-little studied period, and will be especially helpful for those of us attempting to teach the period to undergraduates. With its publication, Fryde has paved the way for future generations of scholars to consider the period in a more nuanced way.Leslie Brubaker, TMR, 2001.