Riḥla ilā Bilād al-‘Arab رحلة إلى بلاد العرب

Riḥla ilā Bilād al-‘Arab رحلة إلى بلاد العرب
Author: Munther Younes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2021-10-14
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1000430480

Riḥla ilā Bilād al-‘Arab starts with the Arabic alphabet and gradually and systematically builds the reading and writing skills and mastery of Fuṣḥā grammar. As students develop their reading, writing, and grammar skills, they will be learning about Arab history, society, and culture. This book contextualizes Arabic grammar teaching with sufficient and relevant drills and exercises. Added personal and cultural interest is given by the diary of Amal, an American student of Arab descent, who travels to Jordan and Palestine. This textbook includes maps, illustrations, and photographs and is accompanied by audio on the companion website that can be viewed here: www.routledge.com/cw/younes . The book is designed for Arabic heritage students—students who can understand and speak an Arabic dialect (Egyptian, Iraqi, Moroccan, etc.) but are unfamiliar with Modern Standard Arabic, known as Fuṣḥā.

The Unveiling Origin of Mecca

The Unveiling Origin of Mecca
Author: Mohammed Alal Khan
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 807
Release: 2021-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1665528095

The Unveiling Origin of Mecca provides insights into the history of Kaaba (Ka’ba) in Mecca. The Ka’ba is the first house built on earth. It is one of the few and perhaps the only Islamic History books that looks at modern archaeological evidence and the Holy Quran and the history of the Quran to explore the proper location of the Ka’ba. The author notes that in the Holy Quran, Mecca, sometimes also called Becca, which words are synonymous, and signify “a place of great intercourse,” is undoubtedly one of the most ancient cities in the world. Some authors imagine it to be the Mesa, or Mesha, of the Scripture and that it deduced its name from one of Ishmael’s sons. It stands in a stony and barren valley, surrounded by mountains under the exact parallel with the Macoraba of Ptolemy, and about 40 Arabian miles from the sea 'Al Kolzom. There is a magnificent temple in the city, like the Colosseum at Rome. However, it is not made of such large stones but burnt bricks and round in the same manner. It has ninety or one hundred doors around it and is arched...upon entering the temple you descend ten or twelve steps of marble, and here and there about the said entrance there stand men who sell jewels and nothing else. Researching ancient Islam and the origin of Mecca, the author asserts that the Ka’ba is currently misplaced, contradicting the Holy Quran and Arabian geography. Although there are many Islamic scholars and Quran research Institutes throughout the world, sadly, none of them have yet verified the exact places, mountains surrounding Ka’ba, and its sacred area according to the Holy Quran.

Arab Nationalism

Arab Nationalism
Author: Peter Wien
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2017-02-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315412209

This book sheds light on cultural expressions of Arab Nationalism and the contradictory meanings often attached to it. It presents nationalism as an experienceable set of identity markers – in stories, visual culture, narratives of memory and struggles with ideology. Using case studies, the book transcends a conventional history that reduces nationalism in the Arab lands to a pattern of political rise and decline. It suggests Arabs have constructed an identifiable shared national culture, and it critically dissects conceptions about Arab nationalism as an easily graspable secular and authoritarian ideology modelled on Western ideas and visions of modernity.

Arab Representations of the Occident

Arab Representations of the Occident
Author: Rasheed El-Enany
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2006-04-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113432099X

This is one of the first books in English to explore Arab responses to Western culture and values in modern Arab literature. Through in-depth research El-Enany examines the attitudes as expressed mainly through works of fiction written by Arab authors during the twentieth, and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth century. It constitutes an original addition to the age-old East-West debate, and is particularly relevant to the current discussion on Islam and the West. Alongside raising highly topical questions about stereotypical ideas concerning Arabs and Muslims in general, the book explores representations of the West by the foremost Arab intellectuals over a two-century period, up to the present day, and will appeal to those with an interest in Islam, the Middle East, nationalism and the so-called ‘Clash of Civilizations’.

Reasoning with God

Reasoning with God
Author: Khaled Abou El Fadl
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 557
Release: 2014-10-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1442238445

In light of recent concern over Shari’ah, such as proposed laws to prohibit it in the United States and conflict over the role it should play in the new Egyptian constitution, many people are confused about the meaning of Shari‘ah in Islam and its role in the world today. In Reasoning with God, renowned Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl explains not only what Shari‘ah really means, but also the way it can revitalize and reengage contemporary Islam. After a prologue that provides an essential overview of Shari‘ah, Abou El Fadl explores the moral trajectory of Islam in today’s world. Weaving powerful personal stories with broader global examples, he shows the ways that some interpretations of Islam today have undermined its potential in peace and love. Rather than simply outlining challenges, however, the author provides constructive suggestions about how Muslims can reengage the ethical tradition of their faith through Shari‘ah. As the world’s second largest religion, Islam remains an important force on the global stage. Reasoning with God takes readers—both Muslim and non-Muslim—beyond superficial understandings of Shari‘ah to a deeper understanding of its meaning and potential.

Transformed Landscapes

Transformed Landscapes
Author: Walid Khalidi
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789774162473

A collective look at aspects of the historical background to the continuing Palestinian question

Islam and the Devotional Object

Islam and the Devotional Object
Author: Richard J. A. McGregor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2020-05-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 110858506X

In this book, Richard J. A. McGregor offers a history of Islamic practice through the aesthetic reception of medieval religious objects. Elaborate parades in Cairo and Damascus included decorated objects of great value, destined for Mecca and Medina. Among these were the precious dress sewn yearly for the Ka'ba, and large colorful sedans mounted on camels, which mysteriously completed the Hajj without carrying a single passenger. Along with the brisk trade in Islamic relics, these objects and the variety of contested meanings attached to them, constituted material practices of religion that persisted into the colonial era, but were suppressed in the twentieth century. McGregor here recovers the biographies of religious objects, including relics, banners, public texts, and coverings for the Ka'ba. Reconstructing the premodern visual culture of Islamic Egypt and Syria, he follows the shifting meanings attached to objects of devotion, as well as the contingent nature of religious practice and experience.

Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age

Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age
Author: Jonathan Shepard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2023-09-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0755618173

The year 922 saw a series of remarkable face-to-face encounters in the steppes between Bukhara and the Middle Volga. Ibn Fadlan was an intrepid member of a diplomatic and religious mission from the distant caliphate in Baghdad to the ruler of the Volga Bulgars. His account gives a vivid eyewitness description of the peoples he came upon (whose appearance, rituals and filthy habits both fascinate and appal) and a famous depiction of a Viking Rus ship burial. It is unique testimony to burgeoning exchanges between several different cultures, and to the emergence of new political structures on the steppes. Yet the account survives only as part of a later composite work, raising questions of meaning and historical interpretation. This pioneering interdisciplinary study of Ibn Fadlan's text and the world he surveyed draws on a variety of specialists to give readers both 'the bigger picture' of cultural and economic change in Eurasia, Byzantium and the Muslim world, and hard facts, in the form of archaeological and numismatic data.

Guardians of Faith in Modern Times

Guardians of Faith in Modern Times
Author: Meir Hatina
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2009
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004169539

This collective volume provides an integrative historical and contemporary discussion of Sunni EulamaE3/4 in the Middle East in both an urban and a semi-tribal context. The various chapters reinforce a renewed interest in the position of the EulamaE3/4 in modern times and offer new insights as to their ideological vitality and contribution to the public discourse on moral and sociopolitical issues.