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This text looks at the medieval monument of the Gunbad-i `Alawiyan in Hamadan, which is a unique and intriguing architectural phenomenon, with an amazing richness of brick and stucco decoration both within and without. The book contains a complete recording of the Gunbad-i `Alawiyan, based on regular visits to the site conducted by Professor Shani during the years 1974-1978. In this book Profesor Shani succeeds in solving many controversial issues by tracing the person who built the monument and...

Two major events occurred in the early centuries of Islam that determined its historical and spiritual development in the centuries that followed: the formation of the sacred scriptures, namely the Qur'an and the Hadith, and the chronic violence that surrounded the succession of the Prophet, manifesting in repression, revolution, massacre, and civil war. This is the first book to evaluate the writing of Islam's major scriptural sources within the context of these bloody, brutal conflicts. Conduc...

Laurence Louer's timely study immediately precedes the outbreak of unrest in Bahrain that triggered the escalation of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. In addition to issues relating to the role of Shiite Islamist movements in regional politics, she provides context for the Bahraini conflict and Shiism's wider implications as a political force in the Arab Middle East. Louer's study depicts Bahrain's troubles as a phenomenon rooted in local perceptions of injustice rather than in the fallout fr...

What is the nature and social role of women? In today's Shi'ism, these questions are often answered through the "separate-but- equal" ideology which emphasizes the role of women as wives and mothers, and places men in authority. But is this the only ideology which can be derived from Shi'i scriptural sources? This book takes a more nuanced approach to that question by exploring how women are portrayed in hadith on ancient sacred narrative - the stories of the prophets. It shows far more diverse...

Laurence Louer, author of the critically acclaimed To Be an Arab in Israel, brings her extensive knowledge of the Middle East to an analysis of the historical origins and present situation of militant Shia transnational networks. She focuses on three key countries in the gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, whose Shia Islamic groups are the offspring of various Iraqi movements that have surfaced over recent decades. Louer explains how these groups first penetrated local societies by espousi...

This text offers a wide-ranging overview of the principal tenets of Shi'i Islam. It is useful not only as an introductory text on Shi'i thought and practice, but also as a contemporary expression, from within, of this branch of this vibrant branch of the Islamic faith. Comprehensive and concise, this work is principally theological and jurisprudential, dealing with such issues as the concept of knowledge, the nature of being and the problem of evil.

This collection of essays explores the nature of political and religious leadership in Shi'ism. The contributors look at a variety of historical periods - from medieval to modern - to reveal the social, political, and theological factors that have influenced the development of Shi'ite leadership.

There are few ideals of character as distinctive and divisive as the ancient virtue of 'greatness of soul'. A larger-than-life virtue embodying nothing less than a vision of human greatness, it has often been seen as a relic of the Homeric world and its honour-loving heroes. In philosophy, it found its most celebrated expression in Aristotle's ethics, and it has lived on in the minds of philosophers and theologians in different forms ever since. Yet among the many lives this virtue has led in in...

Shi'i Islam has been the official religion of Iran from the Safavids (1501-1732) to the present day. The Shi'i world experience has provided a rich artistic tradition, encompassing painting, sculpture and the production of artefacts and performance, which has helped to embed Shi'i identity in Iran as part of its national narrative. In what areas of material culture has Iranian Shi'ism manifested itself through objects or buildings that are unique within the overall culture of Islam? To what exte...

As the world focuses on the conflict in Iraq, the most important political players in that country today are not the Sunni insurgents. Instead, they are Iraq's Shi'I majority - part of the Middle East's ninety million Shi'I Muslims who hold the key to the future of the region and the relations between Muslim and Western societies. So contends Yitzhak Nakash, one of the world's foremost experts on Shi'ism. With his characteristic verve and style, Nakash traces the role of the Shi'is in the strugg...

"An astonishingly powerful and profoundly moving story of a young couple willing to risk everything for love that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about women's rights in the Muslim world. Zakia and Ali were from different tribes, but they grew up on neighboring farms in the hinterlands of Afghanistan. By the time they were young teenagers, Zakia, strikingly beautiful and fiercely opinionated, and Ali, shy and tender, had fallen in love. Defying their families, sectarian differences, cult...

Political Theology in Post-Revolutionary Iran follows the transformation of Iran's post-revolutionary religious intellectuals, as their outlook has evolved from regime support to dissent. Throughout the revolution's second decade, these intellectuals began to re-enivsage the political order and its theological foundations. This book focuses particularly on the intellectual background and theoreticians of the reform movement of the late 1990s and administration of President Hojjat al-Islam Moha...

Patriotic Ayatollahs explores the contributions of senior clerics in state and nation-building after the 2003 Iraq war. Caroleen Sayej suggests that the four so-called Grand Ayatollahs, the highest-ranking clerics of Iraqi Shiism, took on a new and unexpected political role after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Drawing on previously unexamined Arabic-language fatwas, speeches, and communiqués of Iraq’s four grand ayatollahs, this book analyzes how their new pronouncements and narratives shaped publ...