Middle East category: 7830 books
Postmodernism and Islam
Predicament and Promise
Language: English
Release Date: April 15, 2013
Can West and East ever understand each other? In this extraordinary book one of the world's leading Muslim scholars explores an area which has which has been almost entirely neglected by scholars in the field - the area of postmodernism and Islam. This landmark work is startling, constantly perceptive and certain to be debated for years to come.
In Search of Israel
The History of an Idea
Language: English
Release Date: March 6, 2018
A major new history of the century-long debate over what a Jewish state should be
Many Zionists who advocated the creation of a Jewish state envisioned a nation like any other. Yet for Israel's founders, the state that emerged against all odds in 1948 was anything but ordinary. Born from the...
A Young Palestinian's Diary, 1941–1945
The Life of Sami 'Amr
Language: English
Release Date: December 3, 2009
Writing in his late teens and early twenties, Sāmī 'Amr gave his diary an apt subtitle: The Battle of Life, encapsulating both the political climate of Palestine in the waning years of the British Mandate as well as the contrasting joys and troubles of family life. Now translated from the Arabic,...
The Druze Community and the Lebanese State
Between Confrontation and Reconciliation
Language: English
Release Date: July 11, 2014
One of the fundamental questions of Middle Eastern, and Lebanese studies in particular, is the history of the relationship between the Druze community and the state in modern Lebanon. Arguing that the Druze community has been politically alienated from the Lebanese state, this book explores the historical...
by Malise Ruthven
Language: English
Release Date: January 26, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: January 26, 2012
Islam features widely in the news, often in its most militant versions, but few people in the non-Muslim world really understand the nature of Islam. Malise Ruthven's Very Short Introduction contains essential insights into issues such as why Islam has such major divisions between movements such as...
by Juan Cole
Language: English
Release Date: March 17, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: March 17, 2009
With clarity and concision, Juan Cole disentangles the key foreign policy issues that America is grappling with today--from our dependence on Middle East petroleum to the promotion of Islamophobia by the American right--and delivers his informed advice on the best way forward. Cole's unique ability...
One Thousand Roads to Mecca
Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage
Language: English
Release Date: September 29, 2015
**“Wolfe does an exemplary job of detailing the ceremonies performed at Mecca and the reasons behind them . . . Highly recommended.” —**Library Journal, starred review
This updated and expanded edition of One Thousand Roads to Mecca collects significant works by observant travel writers...
Surviving Images
Cinema, War, and Cultural Memory in the Middle East
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2015
Surviving Images explores the prominent role of cinema in the development of cultural memory around war and conflict in colonial and postcolonial contexts. It does so through a study of three historical eras: the colonial period, the national-independence struggle, and the postcolonial. Beginning...
The Only Language They Understand
Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine
Language: English
Release Date: May 16, 2017
In a myth-busting analysis of the world's most intractable conflict, a star of Middle East reporting, "one of the most important writers" in the field (The New York Times), argues that only one weapon has yielded progress: force.
Scattered over the territory between the Jordan River...
Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century
From Triumph to Despair - New Edition with a new chapter on the twenty-first-century Arab world
Language: English
Release Date: February 16, 2016
Like a great dynasty that falls to ruin and is eventually remembered more for its faults than its feats, Arab nationalism is remembered mostly for its humiliating rout in the 1967 Six Day War, for inter-Arab divisions, and for words and actions distinguished by their meagerness. But people tend to...
Women in the Mosque
A History of Legal Thought and Social Practice
Language: English
Release Date: September 23, 2014
Juxtaposing Muslim scholars' debates over women's attendance in mosques with historical descriptions of women's activities within Middle Eastern and North African mosques, Marion Holmes Katz shows how over the centuries legal scholars' arguments have often reacted to rather than dictated Muslim women's...
The Arabic Historical Tradition & the Early Islamic Conquests
Folklore, Tribal Lore, Holy War
Language: English
Release Date: September 7, 2015
The early Arab conquests pose a considerable challenge to modern-day historians. The earliest historical written tradition emerges only after the second half of the eighth century- over one hundred years removed from the events it contends to describe, and was undoubtedly influenced by the motives...
by Anne Davison
Language: English
Release Date: September 6, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: September 6, 2013
Mention of Iran may bring to mind images of turbaned Mullahs and nuclear weapons. On the other hand Persia may provoke other images; of Persian Gardens, romantic poetry or the beautiful wives of the last Pahlavi Shah.
But this in no way does justice to the people of Iran, or its rich and complex...
The Race for Paradise
An Islamic History of the Crusades
Language: English
Release Date: June 1, 2014
In 1099, when the first Frankish invaders arrived before the walls of Jerusalem, they had carved out a Christian European presence in the Islamic world that endured for centuries, bolstered by subsequent waves of new crusaders and pilgrims. The story of how this group of warriors, driven by faith,...