Published by Gorgias Press

The Modern Muslim World

Volumes

Book Ahead of Publication 2023

Designing Empire

Ottoman Architecture at the Vienna World’s Fair

Mary Roberts, Samuel Williams

Volume 16 in this series

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Ottoman Architecture is the first modern history of Ottoman architecture written by Ottomans themselves, yet it is little known outside the field of late Ottoman studies. This magnificently-illustrated volume codifies the empire’s architectural history into a series of preliminary stages culminating in the efflorescence of the Ottoman classical tradition in the sixteenth-century. At the same time, the text positions this imperial architectural legacy in relation to modernising projects in the late Ottoman Empire; in particular, the “Ottoman architectural Renaissance” sponsored by Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861-1876). Moreover, as Ahmet Ersoy (2015) has argued in his monograph on this book, architecture is a prism through which the authors offer a larger analysis of modernity in the Ottoman Empire; an analysis where built heritage serves “as an index for various stages in the transformation of the Ottoman state and civilization.”

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9781463245030
ISBN:: 9781463245030
Subject:: Arts
Subject:: Arts, general
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2022

Islam Before Modernity

Aḥmad alDardīr and the Preservation of Traditional Knowledge

Walead Mosaad

Volume 14 in this series

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This book examines the role of tradition and discursive knowledge transmission on the formation of the ‘ulamā’, the learned scholarly class in Islam, and their approach to the articulation of the Islamic disciplines. The basis of this examination is the twelfth/eighteenth century scholar, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Dardīr, an Egyptian Azharī who wrote highly influential treatises in the disciplines of creedal theology, Mālikī jurisprudence, and taṣawwuf (Sufism). He also occupied a prominent role in the urban life of Cairo, and is accredited with several incidents of intercession with the rulers on behalf of the Cairo populace. This book argues that a useful framework for evaluating the intellectual contributions of post-classical scholars such as al-Dardīr involves the concept of an Islamic discursive tradition, where al-Dardīr’s specific contributions were aimed towards preserving, upholding, and maintaining the Islamic tradition, including the intellectual “sub-traditions” that came to define it.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463243814
ISBN:: 9781463243814
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2022

Islamic Jurisprudence and the Role of Custom

A Comparative Case Study of Saudi Arabia and Iran

Sumeyra Yakar

Volume 13 in this series

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The book argues for the importance of custom (‘urf) in the application of Islamic law in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Irrespective of whether there is a direct reference to ‘urf, the interpretation and use of Islamic legal principles have a relatively close connection to the surrounding contextual environment and customs. The extensive use of customary norms in the absence of legal sources or in the course of interpretation of legal texts are in excess of the permitted legal limits. The book compares the diversity of legal opinions and court verdicts between the two countries by placing a particular emphasis upon the usage of ‘urf, whether in the form of a legal principle with semi-independent style or the form of a subsidiary source that is dependent upon various legal principles. The latter includes istiḥsān, (common practice), istiṣlāḥ (common good), istiṣḥāb (presumption of continuity) sadd al-dharā’i‘ (blocking the means), ḍarūra (necessity), and siyāsa shar‘iyya (politics in accordance with the Islamic law). The study compares approaches adopted by Saudi-Ḥanbalī and Iranian-Ja‘farī scholars towards the shar‘ī status of ‘urf (custom) in three particular categories; the methodological perspective (classic and contemporary), the shar‘ī opinions of scholars (fatwā) and the court verdicts of judges (aḥkām). It illustrates the ways in which scholars achieve different implementations in their sharī‘a systems through the application of direct or indirect ‘urf. In addition, the book examines the extent to which the shar‘ī regulations have been altered or sustained through the prioritisation of the legal concept of ‘urf. The attitude of ‘ulamā’ (religious scholars) towards the application of ‘urf demonstrates that both the classical Ḥanbalī and Ja‘farī schools have approved the validity of ‘urf in the shar‘ī area. This applies both to direct usage of ‘urf and manipulations of its utility by rational explanations or secondary legal principles.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463243524
ISBN:: 9781463243524
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2021

Pluralism and Plurality in Islamic Legal Scholarship

The Case of the Fatāwā l-ʿĀlamgīrīya

Mouez Khalfaoui

Volume 11 in this series

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This book presents the positions held by ḥanafite Muslim jurists in South Asia in the 17th century with regard to the coexistence of Muslims and non-Muslims, and, secondly, compares the opinions put forth by these South Asian jurists with those maintained by their counterparts in Central Asia and the Middle East.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463242329
ISBN:: 9781463242329
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Religious Studies
Subject:: Islam
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2020

Living the Quran with Joy and Purpose

Selections on Tawhid from Said Nursi's Epistles of Light

Yamina Bouguenaya, Umeyye Yazicioglu

Volume 10 in this series

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The current volume is an annotated translation of selections from a noteworthy Muslim theologian Said Nursi (1876-1960) on the Quranic theme of oneness of God (tawhid). Given the scarcity of theological themes in Islamic literature in English as well as the lack of studies on Said Nursi, who wrote in Ottoman Turkish, the book is an important contribution to the field. It offers a contemporary peek into the view that faith in God could be profoundly meaningful and fulfilling spiritual path.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463242701
ISBN:: 9781463242701
Subject:: Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Subject:: Quran
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2021

Intellectual Currents and the Practice of Engagement

Ottoman and Algerian Writers in a Francophone Milieu, 1890-1914

David Beamish

Volume 9 in this series

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The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a great increase in the use of the printed word and the press by non-European actors to express and disseminate ideas and to participate in the intellectual life of both their home societies and a wider international context. This book examines the French-language writings of Ottoman and Algerian writers between 1890 and 1914. The volume of engagement by these figures in the French-language intellectual and journalistic space is a historical phenomenon that reflects a particular mode of engagement with the West in the decades before the First World War. Rather than analyse these writings through the lens of their connection to particular specific groups, such as Young Turks or Young Algerians, this book aims to take this body of work as a unique category of textual production that performed a specific function. By tracing the works of a wide variety of Ottoman and Algerian writers across multiple platforms in this period, it is possible to conclude that these individuals were engaged in more than acts of political opposition. Rather, they were working to situate themselves within a specific cultural and intellectual space. The book is organised around four thematic chapters that appear throughout these writings across the timeframe. They are: the presentation and function of history, the nature of Islam, the question of identity and citizenship and the shape of reform. By analysing their commonalities, differences and development, we can draw conclusions about this type of intellectual activity that transcends political movements, religion and nationality.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463242404
ISBN:: 9781463242404
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2021

The Many Faces of Iranian Modernity

Sufism and Subjectivity in the Safavid and Qajar Periods

Robert Ames

Volume 8 in this series

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This book proceeds from two related insights: the first of these is that Sufism in early modern Iran possessed a coherent theory of knowledge that reflected the period’s culture more broadly. The second is that this episteme not only survived modernization, but actually proliferated and took on new literary forms throughout the Qajar period (1785-1925). Sufism achieved this influence in the modern era despite the fact that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are usually figured as ruptures with the early modern intellectual life of the Timurid (1370-1501) and Safavid periods (1501-1722), when its role in intellectual life was more visible, if also controversial. This study into both reformism and mysticism demonstrates both that mystical rhetoric appeared regularly in supposedly anti-mystical modernist writing and that nineteenth- and twentieth-century Sufis actually addressed questions of intellectual and political reform in their writing, despite the common assertion that they were irrationally traditional and politically quietist.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463242381
ISBN:: 9781463242381
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2019

Rewriting Islamic Law

The Opinions of the 'Ulamā' Towards Codification of Personal Status Law in Egypt

Tarek Elgawhary

Volume 6 in this series

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The codification process of personal status laws in Egypt began in the mid-1800s, continuing until the abolition of the Sharī‘a courts in 1955, with the absorption of personal these statutes into the newly drafted civil code and the national courts that administered them. Throughout this period, legal codification entailed finding appropriate rulings from the annals of Islamic law and structuring these rulings using the model and language of European legal codes, usually the French code. Prior to this, the area of personal status law was the exclusive domain of the ‘ulamā’ and the Sharī‘a. In Egypt, personal status laws were exclusively based on Ḥanafī law, and issues surrounding the consolidation and codification of these laws first took place within the framework of classical Islamic law, not outside of it. To understand the significance of the process of codification, therefore, it is important to examine the attitudes of the ‘ulamā’ regarding it and its place within the edifice of Islamic law. Furthermore, since the ‘ulamā’ themselves are a diverse group, it is also important to understand the various approaches adopted to the process of codification to fully appreciate the great significance it had on the re-formatting and re-writing of Islamic law. "Sharia codification in the 19th and 20th centuries is an important chapter in the story of Islamic law and modernity. The author is an accomplished scholar, trained in both Western academia and at the al-Azhar Seminary, and has done a wonderful job of narrating and analyzing this historic process." H.E. Dr. Ali Gomaa, Former Grand Mufti of Egypt. "A fascinating and meticulously-researched study highlighting the tensions in turning shari'ah personal status laws into state law in Egypt during the twentieth century" HRH Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad of Jordan.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463241193
ISBN:: 9781463241193
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book Open Access 2022

Entangled Confessionalizations?

Dialogic Perspectives on the Politics of Piety and Community Building in the Ottoman Empire, 15th18th Centuries

Tijana Krstić, Derin Terzioğlu

Volume 15 in this series

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Historians of the early modern Ottoman Empire have long been pointing out that in the early sixteenth century the religious outlook of the sultans and the imperially sponsored hierarchy of religious scholars underwent a shift: while heretofore they had been largely unconcerned with defining, observing or enforcing a Sunni ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’, they now became increasingly invested in precisely such a project. How did the understanding of what constituted a Sunni orthodoxy and orthopraxy evolve across the spectrum of Ottoman society between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries and how did it affect various Ottoman communities? Was it by chance or perhaps due to similar social and political processes that the growing polarization between Sunnism and Shi‘ism, as well as contemporaneous building of Ottoman and Safavid empires, precisely coincided with the Catholic-Protestant (and later Calvinist) polarization and the rise of confessional states in Europe? Were these contemporaneous projects of defining correct belief and/or practice in some sort of dialogue, and is this dialogue traceable in the sources left by various individuals and communities living in or passing through Ottoman domains between c. 1500 and c. 1750? The present volume explores these questions and early modern Muslim, Jewish and Christian discourses on communal belonging, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ through the framework of a shared ‘confessional age’, thus obviating the top-down model of inter-confessional relations in which Christians and Jews are always seen solely as Ottoman subjects. It offers a unique perspective on Ottoman society and early modern politics of piety by approaching empire’s religious groups not as homogenous blocks of ‘Muslims’, ‘Jews’ and ‘Christians’ but rather highlighting intra-communal diversity. By adopting a wider Eurasian perspective, contributors explore the repercussions of the developments within various Ottoman communities as far afield as the Safavid Empire, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia, and Europe, and vice versa. The papers focus on specific people who disseminated ideas about ritual and creedal normativity and social clusters through which such ideas spread. At the same time, they also explore the limits of such normative discourses and their agents, as well as the role of alternative ideas about confessional and communal belonging informed by various forms of ambiguity.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463243586
ISBN:: 9781463243586
Subject:: History
Subject:: Topics in History
Subject:: Global History
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2021

The Two-Edged Sea

Heterotopias of Contemporary Mediterranean Migrant Literature

Nahrain Al-Mousawi

Volume 12 in this series

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The boat journey is central to the narrative of Mediterranean migration of the undocumented. The boat itself is flimsy, fragile, unstable, and easily breakable. It is trifling and insubstantial. But it has captured the attention of the world – after all, the boat and its aftermath have produced recurring images of migrants washing up along southern Europe’s picturesque beaches in the visual archive of undocumented migration. But the boat has also sharply put into relief the divides of the Mediterranean. After all, the few miles of the Mediterranean separating Africa’s northern shore and Europe’s southern shore is a common observation in migrant narratives. At the same time, they also reflect on how the Mediterranean has been imagined as starkly divided into two incommensurable spaces and civilizational models – North and South (in actuality, by colonial powers in the modern period). Much Mediterranean migrant literature indeed captures the Mediterranean’s fossilized binaries, North and South. But, The Two-Edged Sea also reveals that one inheres within the other. While the book explores two Mediterraneans, with asymmetrical power relations that reflect the sea’s northern and southern shores, it also delves into how they are and have been in dialogue with each other, effectively deconstructing the binary.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463243739
ISBN:: 9781463243739
Subject:: Theology and Religion
Subject:: Religious Studies
Subject:: Islam
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2017

Bethlehem's Syriac Christians

Self, nation and church in dialogue and practice

Mark Calder

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An anthropological study of Syriac Orthodox Christian identity in a time of displacement, upheaval, and conflict. For some Syriac Orthodox Christians in Bethlehem, their self-articulation - the means by which they connect themselves to others, things, places and symbols - is decisively influenced by their eucharistic ritual. This ritual connects being siryāni to a redeemed community or 'body', and derives its identity in large part from the Incarnation of God as an Aramaic-speaking Bethlehemite.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463237226
ISBN:: 9781463237226
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2017

Middle Eastern Minorities and the Arab Spring

Identity and Community in the Twenty-First Century

Kenneth Scott Parker, Tony Emile Nasrallah

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Middle Eastern Minorities and the Arab Spring: Identity and Community in the Twenty-First Century examines eleven minority groups in the early years of the so-called Arab Spring. Wide-ranging in scope, minorities of diverse religious and ethno-linguistic backgrounds are included from North Africa, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. Each has experienced the Arab Spring differently and uniquely depending upon their context. Of particular concern to the international team of scholars involved in this volume, is the interaction and reaction of minorities to the protest movements across the Arab World that called for greater democratic rights and end to respective autocratic regimes. While some minorities participated in the Arab Spring, others were wary of instability and the unintended effects of regime change – notably the rise of violent Islamism. The full effects of the Arab Spring will not be known for years to come, but for the minorities of the Middle East, the immediate future seems certainly tenuous at best.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463237301
ISBN:: 9781463237301
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press

Book 2017

The Struggle to Define a Nation

Rethinking Religious Nationalism in the Contemporary Islamic World

Marco Demichelis, Paolo Maggiolini

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In the present edited volume, a serious of internationally recognised scholars adopt an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of ‘religious nationalism’ and the ‘nationalization’ of religion, through focusing on case studies and the religious affiliations and denominations of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The aim of this book is to reconsider the ongoing debate between different communities of the so-called Islamic World regarding the nature of the nation and state, and the role of religion in a nation-state’s institutional ground, both as a viable integrative or segregating factor. It is through focusing on the state dimension, as the subject of collective action or socio- cultural and political representation, that the book proposes to reconsider the relationship between religion, politics and identity in the perspective of ‘religious nationalism’ and the ‘nationalization’ of religion in the contemporary Islamic World.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.31826/9781463237257
ISBN:: 9781463237257
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: Arab World
Publisher:: Gorgias Press