Book: The Islamic Scholarly Tradition

The book “The Islamic Scholarly Tradition, Studies in History, Law and Thought in Honor of Professor Micnael Cock” contains highly original articles on Islamic history, law, and thought, each either proposing new hypotheses or readjusting existing ones.

The contributions range from studies in the formulation of the pre-Islamic Arabian calendar to notes on the “blood-money group” in Islamic law, and to transformations in Arabic logic in the post-Avicennan period. Prepared by former students of Michael A. Cook, to whom this volume is dedicated, these studies not only shed new light on the development of the Islamic scholarly tradition from various perspectives, but together they also represent the honoree’s vast, profound, and continuing impact on the field.
This collection of highly empirical articles is intended for scholars and students specializing in various subfields within Islamic Studies.

The book Edited by Asad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi and Michael Bonner.

About the Authors

Asad Q. Ahmed, Ph.D., Princeton (2007), is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He has published on early Islamic social history and Islamic intellectual history, including the forthcoming The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Ḥijāz (P&G, University of Oxford, 2010) and The Deliverance: Logic (Oxford University Press, 2011). His awards include fellowships and grants from the National Humanities Center, the NEH, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Mellon Sawyer Seminars, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Behnam Sadeghi, Ph.D., Princeton (2006), is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is the author of “The Chronology of the Qur’ān: A Stylometric Research Program,” Arabica; “The Traveling Tradition Test: A Method for Dating Muslim Traditions,” Der Islam, 85/1 (2010): 203-242; “The Codex of a Companion and the Qur’ān of the Prophet,” Arabica, 57/4-5 (2010); ““The Authenticity of Two 2nd/8th-Century Legal Texts: the Kitāb al-Āthār and al-Muwaṭṭa’ of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī,” Islamic Law and Society, 17/3 (November 2010); and Women and Prayer in the Islamic Legal Tradition: The Logic of Law Making (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Michael Bonner, Ph.D., Princeton (1987), is Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. His recent publications include Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practices (Princeton University Press, 2006), and Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts, co-edited with Amy Singer and Mine Ener (SUNY Press, 2003). He was Director of the University of Michigan Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies in 1997-2000 and 2001-2003, and Acting Chair of the
Department of Near Eastern Studies in 2007-08.

Contributors include: Asad Q. Ahmed, Karen Bauer, Michael Bonner, Maribel Fierro, Najam Haider, Leor Halevi, Jane Hathaway, R. Stephen Humphreys, Nimrod Hurvitz, Nancy Khalek, Adam Sabra, Petra Sijpesteijn, Justin Stearns, Samer Traboulsi, Nurit Tsafrir.

Table of Contents

Studies in Early Islamic History

“Times has come full circle”: Markets, fairs and he calendar in Arabia before Islam, Michael Bonner

The Wasiyya of Abu Hashim: the Impact of polemic in pre-modern Muslim historiography, Najam Haider

Building an Egypian identity. Petra M. Sijpesteijn

The battle of the Ditch (al-Khandaq) of the Cordoban Caliph Abd al-Rahman III, Maribel Fieroo

Dreams of Hagia Sophia: the Muslim Siege of Constantinople in 674 CE, Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, and  the medival Islamic Imagination, Nancy Khalek

Studies in Early Modern and Modern Islamic History

The Second Ottoman Conquest of Egypt: Rhetoric and politics in seventeenth Century Egyptian Historiography, Adam Sabra

Habesi Mehmed Agha: the fist chief Haram Eunuch, (Darussaade Agasi) of the Ottoman Empire, Jane Hathaway

“ Entered Mecca… and I destroyed all the toms”: some remarks on Saudi Ottoman Correspondence, Samer Tradoulsi

Juridical and intellectual history

The Aqila in Hanafi law: preliminary notes, Nurit tsafrir

Legal doctrines, historical contexts, and moral visitors: the case of sectarians in the courts of law, Nimrod Hurvitz

The legal statues of Science in the Muslim World in the early modern period: an initial consideration of fatwas from three maghribi sources, Jusin Stearns

Reinterpretations and transformations

“ I have seen the people’s antipathy to this knowledge”: the Muslim exegete and his audience, 5^th/11^th-7^th/13^th centuries , Karen Bauer

Lex Mahomethi: carnal and spiritual representations of Islamic Law and ritual in a Twelfth-century dialogue by a Jewish Convert to Christianity, Leor Halevi

Systematic growth in sustained Error: a case study in the dynamism of post-classical Islamic Scholasticism, Asad Q, Ahmed

Bibliographic Information

Title: The Islamic Scholarly Tradition: Studies in History, Law, and Thought in Honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook

Editors: Asad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi and Michael Bonner

Publisher: BRILL

 Language: English

Length: 386 pages

ISBN: 9789004194359

Pub. Date: March 2011