The Holy City of Medina

The Holy City of Medina
Author: Thomas Henry Robert Munt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2014-07-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1107042135

Examines the emergence of Medina as a holy city, focusing on the historical developments of the first three Islamic centuries.

Muslims, Jews and Pagans

Muslims, Jews and Pagans
Author: Michael Lecker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2017-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781463206642

Muslims, Jews and Pagans examines in detail the available source material on the ʿĀliya area south of Medina on the eve of Islam and at the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. It provides part of the necessary background for the study of the Prophet's history by utilizing in addition to the Prophet's biographies, various texts about the history, geography and inhabitants of this area. The topics include the landscape, especially the fortifications, the delayed conversion to Islam of part of the Aws tribe, the Qubāʾ village and the incident of Masjid al-Ḍirār in 9 AH. The three appendices deal with historical apologetics, pointing to the social context in which the Prophet's biography emerged during the first Islamic century.

The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina

The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina
Author: Haggai Mazuz
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2014-07-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004266097

In The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina Haggai Mazuz offers an account of the halakhic character of the Jewish community of Medina in the seventh century CE. Making use of a unique methodology of comparison between Islamic and Jewish sources, Mazuz convincingly argues that the Jews of Medina were Talmudic-Rabbinic Jews in almost every respect. Their sages believed in using homiletic interpretation of the Scriptures, as did the sages of the Talmud. On many halakhic issues, their observations were identical to those of the Talmudic sages. In addition, they held Rabbinic beliefs, sayings and motifs derived from the Midrashic literature. "The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina is a wonderful reference work for Talmudic study, Jewish history, and Islamic history. A must-have book for every library." - Haim Gottschalk, Association of Jewish Libraries, vol.5, no.3 (2015) "Mazuz confronts an admirably wide range of Arabic sources, from the Qurʾan to prophetic biographies and ḥadīth compilations as well as legal and theological works. The breadth of the evidence provided to support the conclusion about the religious identity of Medina’s Jews is impressive." - Harry Munt, University of York, The Review of Rabbinic Judaism, vol.19 (2016)

Early Islam in Medina

Early Islam in Medina
Author: Yasin Dutton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2021-10-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1350261882

This book considers the transmission of the Sunna through the lens of the great Madinan legal scholar, Imam Malik ibn Anas (d. 179 AH/795 CE), in his renowned book al-Muwatta', or 'The well-trodden path'. It considers not only the legal judgements preserved in this book, but also the key scholars involved in the transmission of these judgements, namely, Malik's teachers and students. These different transmissions provide very strong evidence for the reliability of Malik's transmission of the Sunna. Overriding these textual considerations is the concept of 'amal, or the Practice of the People of Medina. This is accepted as a prime source by Malik and those following him, but is effectively rejected by the other schools, who prefer hadith (textual reports) as an indication of Sunna. Given the contested nature of 'amal in both ancient and modern times, and the general unawareness of it in contemporary Islamic studies, this source receives extended treatment here. This allows for a deeper understanding of the nature of Islamic law and its development, and, by extension, of Islam itself.

The Crucible of Islam

The Crucible of Islam
Author: G. W. Bowersock
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2017-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674978218

Little is known about Arabia in the sixth century, yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from the Iberian peninsula to India. Today, Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the global population. A renowned classicist, G. W. Bowersock seeks to illuminate this obscure and dynamic period in the history of Islam—exploring why arid Arabia proved to be such fertile ground for Muhammad’s prophetic message, and why that message spread so quickly to the wider world. The Crucible of Islam offers a compelling explanation of how one of the world’s great religions took shape. “A remarkable work of scholarship.” —Wall Street Journal “A little book of explosive originality and penetrating judgment... The joy of reading this account of the background and emergence of early Islam is the knowledge that Bowersock has built it from solid stones... A masterpiece of the historian’s craft.” —Peter Brown, New York Review of Books

The Jewel of Medina

The Jewel of Medina
Author: Sherry Jones
Publisher:
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9781906142414

This novel, banned shortly before publication in Sept '08 by Random House, attracting British and world-wide media attention, tells for the first time the moving but little known love story between Mohammed and his favoured wife Ai'sha. A wonderful fast-paced novel and an uplifting subject that readers from all religions will enjoy.

Muhammad and the Believers

Muhammad and the Believers
Author: Fred M. Donner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2012-05-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674064143

Looks at the history of Islam, arguing that its origins began with the "Believers" movement that emphasized strict monotheism and righteous behavior that included both Christians and Jews in its early years.

Mālik and Medina

Mālik and Medina
Author: Umar F. Abd-Allah
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2013-03-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004247882

This book studies the legal reasoning of Mālik ibn Anas (d. 179 H./795 C.E.) in the Muwaṭṭa’ and Mudawwana. Although focusing on Mālik, the book presents a broad comparative study of legal reasoning in the first three centuries of Islam. It reexamines the role of considered opinion (ra’y), dissent, and legal ḥadīths and challenges the paradigm that Muslim jurists ultimately concurred on a “four-source” (Qurʾān, sunna, consensus, and analogy) theory of law. Instead, Mālik and Medina emphasizes that the four Sunnī schools of law (madhāhib) emerged during the formative period as distinctive, consistent, yet largely unspoken legal methodologies and persistently maintained their independence and continuity over the next millennium.

Creating a New Medina

Creating a New Medina
Author: Venkat Dhulipala
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2015-02-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107052122

This book challenges the fundamental assumptions regarding the foundations of Pakistani nationalism during colonial rule in India.

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture
Author: Finbarr Barry Flood
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1442
Release: 2017-06-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1119068576

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)