Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Religious Groups Of Mecca And Medina In The Sixth And Seventh Centuries Ce, Ilkka Linstedt

Abdou Filali-Ansary Occasional Paper Series

Ancient and modern urban centres have been important loci for encounters between individuals of different identities. In this article, I present Mecca and Medina as multi-religious towns in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods of the sixth and seventh centuries ce. Mecca was a very small town, but the Kaaba shrine there served as a regional pilgrimage site that drew people from different faith communities. Medina was a larger settlement with a significant Jewish population. Jews, Christians and others (‘pagans’) lived in both towns. Some of these ‘others’ had also adopted some of the basic ideas of monotheism, although they …

Music Making In Iran From The 15th To The Early 20th Century, Amir Hosein Pourjavady

Music & Performance in Muslim Contexts

Music Making in Iran looks at the change and evolution of music in Iran from both social and theoretical perspectives.

Amir Hosein Pourjavady scrutinises the emergence and development of modal entities, rules for modulation, the formation of court repertoires, the progress of rhythmic structures, vocal and instrumental genres and forms of composition. Through this lens, Hosein investigates how Iranian music has been impacted by Western influence, socio-political developments and contact with other musical cultures.

Based on primary sources, the book reveals many new discoveries in its examination of music making during this period, including its centres of patronage, the social …

Studying Hadith Commentaries In The Digital Age, Aslisho Qurboniev, Gowaart Van Den Bossche, Maroussia Bednarkiewicz

Faculty & Staff Publications

In this essay we reflect on the challenges involved in corpus building for hadith studies as well as the advances already made. We specifically focus on the Open Islamicate texts Initiative (OpenItI), a large, academically curated corpus of arabic texts sourced from various online libraries. this corpus is continuously vetted and expanded by scholarly contributions. We discuss its advantages for computational macro-analysis and for more traditional close reading, and survey recent research in digital hadith studies as an example of the possibilities of computational macro-analysis, we focus on assessing the output of the software ‘passim’, which has identified millions of …

The Left In Turkey: Survival And Resistance Under Authoritarianism, Sevgi Adak

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

From Rumi To The Whirling Dervishes: Music, Poetry And Mysticism In The Ottoman Empire, Walter Feldman

Music & Performance in Muslim Contexts

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, whose life and mystical poetry provided the inspiration for the Mevlevi Sufi order, is one of the world's best-known poets.

Yet the centuries-long musical tradition cultivated by the Mevleviye remains much less known. In this deeply researched book, renowned scholar Walter Feldman traces the historical development of Mevlevi music and brings to light the remarkable musical and mystical aesthetics of the Mevlevi ayin – the instrumental and vocal accompaniment to the sublime ceremony of the 'Whirling' Dervishes.

This accessible introduction to the relationship between music and the performative elements of Sufi practice presents the biographies of the …

The Awakening Of Islamic Pop Music, Jonas Otterbeck

Music & Performance in Muslim Contexts

Awakening – an Islamic media company formed in London – has created the soundtrack to many Muslim lives during the last two decades. It has produced three superstars (Sami Yusuf, Maher Zain and Harris J.) among a host of other artists. As the company celebrates their first 20 years in the industry, Jonas Otterbeck examines their remarkable rise to success and their established reputation as one of the most important global enterprises producing pop music inspired by Islam.

Otterbeck thoroughly describes the history and development of new Islamic popular music genres, in particular pop-nashid and Islamic pop, for the first …

Efter Jobbet: En Inledande Diskussion Om Studiet Av Fritid, Leif Stenberg, Anders Ackfeldt

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Islamic And Middle East Area Studies Librarianship, Walid Ghali, Waseem Farooq, Paul Auchterlonie, Arnoud Vrolijk

Abdou Filali-Ansary Occasional Paper Series

The three papers collected here are based on a seminar on Islamic Studies Librarianship held on 31 January 2019 at the Aga Khan Library (AKL), in conjunction with the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC). Curators, area studies directors, and collection librarians, who are currently involved in this field, gathered to discuss common challenges and to identify strategic areas for collaboration.

Secularism In The Arab World: Contexts, Ideas And Consequences, Aziz Al-Azmeh, David Bond

In Translation: Modern Muslim Thinkers

Explores secularism and secularisation in Arab societies since the mid-19th century.

This book is a translation of Aziz al-Azmeh’s seminal work Al-'Ilmaniya min mandhur mukhtalif that was first published in Beirut in 1992. Both celebrated and criticised for its reflections on Arab secularisation and secularism in the modern history of the Arab World, it is the only study to date to approach its subject as a set of historical changes which affected the regulation of the social, political and cultural order, and which permeated the concrete workings of society, rather than as an ideological discussion framed from the outset by …

40 Years On: Reflections On The Iranian Revolution, Sevgi Adak, Touraj Atabaki, Kamran Matin, Valentine M. Moghadam

Abdou Filali-Ansary Occasional Paper Series

The three articles compiled here are based on a panel discussion held at the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) on 23 May 2019.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, its aim was to revisit the debate on the causes and impact of the revolution for Iran and beyond.

Three questions in particular guided the interdisciplinary dialogue and political reflections on this world historical event: How should we analyse the conditions underpinning the revolutionary dynamics in Iran in the global context of the 1970s? How should the Iranian Revolution be analysed in an …

Islam Enligt Den Islamiska Staten - En Islamologisk Kommentar, Leif Stenberg

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction: A Legacy Of Raised Expectations, Leif Stenberg, Christa Salamandra

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Ayatollah Khomeini’S Political Theory And Public Interest, Mohsen Kadivar

Governance Programme Papers

This article analyses the evolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s political theory over four major periods – Qom, Najaf, Paris and Tehran – demonstrating how his thought shifted from a semi‑democratic constitutional vision to the doctrine of al‑wilayat al‑mutlaqah lil‑faqih (the absolute guardianship of the jurist). In the Qom period, Khomeini endorsed a constitutional government supervised by jurists, distancing himself from the notion of direct clerical rule. His Najaf period marked a decisive turn toward a theocratic model, asserting that jurists possessed authority equivalent to that of the Prophet and Shi’ite Imams in public affairs. During the Paris period, Khomeini emphasised …

Naqshbandiyya In Damascus: Strategies To Establish And Strengthen The Order In A Changing Society, Leif Stenberg

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

The Revealed Word And The Struggle For Authority: Interpretation And Use Of Islamic Terminology Among Algerian Islamists, Leif Stenberg

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

The Islamization Of Science: Four Muslim Positions Developing An Islamic Modernity, Leif Stenberg

Books

No abstract provided.