Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture
Studies rebellion as historical phenomenon and literary construct in early Islamicate contexts
- Re-centres the long-neglected subject of rebellion in the early Islamic period as a category in its own right
- Sets out paradigmatic features of early Islamicate rebellion, offering historians in other fields a model for comparative analysis
- Transcends traditional confessional boundaries in Islamic Studies by putting into conversation scholarship on Sunnī, Shīʿī, Ibāḍī, Khārijite, and non-Muslim revolts
- Pursues a multidisciplinary approach by bringing together social historians, scholars of religion and literary scholars
- Embraces case studies from a wide geographical canvas and diverse contexts (e.g., Mashriq and Maghreb; mountains and waterscapes; rural and urban; elites and non-elites)
This book discusses the only known private book collection from pre-Ottoman Jerusalem for which we have a trail of documents. It belonged to an otherwise unknown resident, Burhān al-Dīn; after his death, his books were sold in a public auction and the list of objects sold has survived.This list – edited and translated in this volume – shows that a humble part-time reciter of the late 14th century had almost 300 books in his house, evidence that book ownership extended beyond the elite. Based on a corpus of almost fifty documents from the Ḥaram al-sharīf collection in Jerusalem, it is also possible to get a rare insight into the social world of such an individual. Finally, the book gives a unique insight into book prices as it will make available the largest such set of data for the pre-Ottoman period.
This book traces the journey of new Muslims as they joined the early Islamic community and articulated their identities within it. It focuses on Muslims of slave origins, who belonged to the society in which they lived but whose slave background rendered them somehow alien. How did these Muslims at the crossroads of insider and outsider find their place in early Islamic society? How did Islamic society itself change to accommodate these new members? By analysing how these liminal Muslims resolved the tension between belonging and otherness, Conquered Populations in Early Islam reveals the shifting boundaries of the early Islamic community and celebrates the dynamism of Islamic history.
In the late medieval period, manuscripts galore circulated in Middle Eastern libraries. Yet very few book collections have come down to us as such or have left a documentary trail. This book discusses the largest private book collection of the pre-Ottoman Arabic Middle East for which we have both a paper trail and a surviving corpus of the manuscripts that once sat on its shelves: the Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī Library of Damascus. The book suggests that this library was part of the owner’s symbolic strategy to monumentalise a vanishing world of scholarship bound to his life, family, quarter and home city.
