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From the world-renowned authority on religion comes a completely revised and updated version of his masterpiece. Explore the essential elements and teachings of the world's most predominant faiths, including: Hinduism; Buddhism; Confucianism; Taoism; Islam; Judaism; Christianity; the native traditions of Australia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. Originally titled The Religions of Man, this completely revised and updated edition of Smith's masterpiece, now with an engaging new foreword, explo...

What would it mean to imagine Islam as an immanent critique of the West? Sayyid Ahmad Khan lived in a time of great tribulation for Muslim India under British rule. By examining Khan's work as a critical expression of modernity rooted in the Muslim experience of it, Islam as Critique argues that Khan is essential to understanding the problematics of modern Islam and its relationship to the West. The book re-imagines Islam as an interpretive strategy for investigating the modern condition,...

Forget about global warming, population growth, alien invasion and asteroid strikes. Islamic prophetic traditions can predict the fate of 21st century civilisation. A History of Time: Volume One, based on Islamic Eschatology, displays a kaleidoscope of the world, offering an understanding of what is taking place around us. It unveils the meaning of the classic Islamic terms of Yajuj wa Majuj and Dajjal under the light of a comparative narrative of world history. It allows us to see where we stan...

This book tells a surprising story. Many think of Christianity as a Western faith, which grew out of its origins in the Middle East towards Rome and into Europe, paving the way for the Enlightenment, science and modernity. However, Philip Jenkins reveals, the largest and most influential churches of Christianity's youth lay to the east of Rome, covered the world from China to North Africa, encountered a full spectrum of acceptance to persecution under Islamic rule and only expired after a thousa...

This book examines the way in which early Muslims begin to understand normative Islamic practice through the role of Muslim scholars who define, preserve, and pass on Islamic traditions. This later becomes the foundation of Sunni identity and Sufi piety. In the figure of 'Abdallah b. al-Mubarak (118-181/736-797), we find a paragon of the fields of hadith, zuhd, and jihad, as attested to by the large number of references to him in the classical Islamic texts.

Malika Zeghal analyzes the historical roots and recent evolution of Moroccan Islamist movements in the context of a new political system that combines pluralistic electoral competition with authoritarian government. To elucidate these ideological and institutional transformations, she stresses the role of 'ulama and Islamic institutions and the history of their tense and unequal relationship with an authoritarian monarchy constrained by the religious origins of its legitimacy. She analyzes the t...

Conquered in 1492 and colonized by invading Castilians, the city and kingdom of Granada faced radical changes imposed by its occupiers throughout the first half of the sixteenth century - including the forced conversion of its native Muslim population. Written by Francisco Nunez Muley, one of Granada's New Christians, this extraordinary letter lodges a clear-sighted, impassioned protest against the unreasonable and strongly assimilationist laws that required all Granadans to dress, speak, eat, m...

Nineteen authors from nine countries analyze reports of travels to the Ottoman Empire between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The volume discusses questions of perceptions of "otherness", the circulation of knowledge, intermedial relations, gender roles, and explores possibilities and limits of digital analysis.

Niels Hemmingsen (1513-1600) is one of the most influential Danish theologians in history. As a professor at the University of Copenhagen, Hemmingsen played an important role in moulding Danish society according to his understanding of Lutheranism during the second half of the sixteenth century. Drawing on sociology of knowledge, cultural memory, and confessional culture, Mattias Skat Sommer examines Hemmingsen's works and life in political and theological contexts. By studying Hemmingsen's role...

The columns referred to as Jachin and Boaz are certainly one of the most controversial features of the First Temple of Jerusalem. In this volume, Daniel Prokop examines the appearance and the meaning of the twin pillars by approaching them from different perspectives. He investigates the epigraphic evidence from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine, defines the relationship between the six different descriptions in the Hebrew Bible, and compares the most important textual witnesses of 1 Kgs 7...

Moroccan Jewry has a long tradition, harking back to the area’s earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. In Jews and Muslims of Morocco historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists examine the complex and hybrid history of intercultural exchange between Moroccan Jewry and the Arab and Berber cultures through analyses of the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, charac...