Gibb Memorial Trust imprint: 22 books

Academician Barthold's famous work begins in the late 7th century with the Muslim invasions of what became Russian Central Asia and carries the history of the region through the period of Abbasid centralization, that of the rise of local Muslim dynasties and successive phases of Turkish dominance...

Shirvan, today mainly part of Azerbaijan, existed as an autonomous khanate, under Iranian influence, until 1820, when under pressure from Russia, the khan fled to Iran, and Shirvan was immediately annexed along with two neighbouring khanates. Thus the last independent region in the South Caucasus...

One of the problems pervading the study of medieval Islamic technology is the lack of surviving technical treatises. Tradition tended to be handed down by example and by word of mouth, and apprenticeships could last for decades. Fortunately, however, occasional treatises do exist. The treatise "On...

This description of the province of Fars, was written around the beginning of the 12th century A.D. The author cites his qualifications for it "I was well acquainted with the present condition of the people of Fars ... being well versed also in the events of their history and exactly acquainted with the story of their kings and rulers." This is a reprint of the edition of 1952.

This book is about an aspect of mediaeval Arabic culture and literature known in Arabic as mujùn (roughly 'libertinism, licentiousness, frivolity, indecency, profligacy, shamelessness, impertinence', etc.), a concept that students of mediaeval Arabic texts may find rather hard to define but which...

In the past four decades since the field of late antique studies began to gather real momentum, scholars have debated the place of early Islam within the late antique world, particularly in relation to the issue of where and when 'Late Antiquity' ends. Although the Sasanian empire became an equal...

A study of the tradition and practice of early Arabic poetry, this book provides an investigation of the multiple versions of early poems that exist in various Abbasid collections. It offers a corrective to the more exaggerated claims concerning this poetry and revises some hitherto fundamental attitudes by advancing an individual philologically-driven vision of the period.

Murtada al-Zabidi was a Humanist scholar and a Muslim, whose twelfth-century writings are here examined in the context of their geographical and historical setting. The period when Zabidi was writing saw a shift in the balance of power from the Muslim empires to the Western world, reflected in the...