Category Archives: Books You Should Read

Arabic Books Online

Books You Should Read, Folklore and Proverbs, Islam: Introduction, Islamic History, Islamic Law, Islamic Sciences, Islamic Texts, Languages, Literature, Scholars, Teaching Resources

In 1981, during a trip to Egypt, I bought the old multi-volume Cairo edition of the mother of all Arabic dictionaries: al-Zabidi’s Taj al-‘Arus. It took up an entire suitcase and was so heavy that I paid the porter extra. As I arrived home, the handle broke and the books spilled in the landing of my home. Those were the days when most Arabic books had to be physically bought in the Middle East and carried home in luggage. Books that used to be accessible only in major libraries are often available online today. If one is patient just about any classic Arabic text from the past is available online. Some are pdf scans, where there is a treasure trove at archive.org and 4.shared.com. It is usually best to search these sites in Arabic. But even a ouja-board Google search in Arabic can yield full texts.

Continue reading Arabic Books Online →

Free Reads from U. California Press

Anthropology/Sociology, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Books You Should Read, Scholars, Teaching Resources


Brinkley Messick’s 1992 book on Yemeni legal reasoning, one of the many books available to read online at the U. of California Press website

The University of California Press is offering online viewers the opportunity to read online 770 of the books it published between 1982 and 2004.

Some 36 selections on the Middle East published between 1982-2004 are available to read online by clicking here.

The Canonization of Islamic Law

Books You Should Read, Islamic Law, Sunni

Ahmed El Shamsy, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History
Cambridge University Press, 2013

by SherAli Tareen, New Books in Islamic Studies, January 10, 2014

In his brilliant new book, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge UP, 2013), Ahmed El Shamsy, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, explores the question of how the discursive tradition of Islamic law was canonized during the eighth and ninth centuries CE. While focusing on the religious thought of the towering Muslim jurist Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafi‘i (d. 820) and the intellectual and social milieu in which he wrote, El Shamsy presents a fascinating narrative of the transformation of the Muslim legal tradition in early Islam. He convincingly argues that through al-Shafi‘i’s intervention, a previously mimetic model of Islamic law inseparable from communal practice made way for a more systematic hermeneutical enterprise enshrined in a clearly defined scriptural canon. Through a rich and multilayered analysis, El Shamsy shiningly demonstrates how and why this process of canonization came about. Written in a remarkably lucid fashion, this groundbreaking study will delight and benefit specialists and non-specialists alike. In our conversation, we talked about the shift from oral to written culture in early Islam, the contrast between the normative projects of Malik and al-Shafi‘i, al-Shafi‘i’s theory of language, the social and political reasons for the success of his legal theory, and the transmission of al-Shafi‘i’s thought by his students.

For an interview with the author, click here and scroll down.

Joshua Davidson and the Spirit of Christmas

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics

I suspect that no one reading this blog has ever heard of Joshua Davidson. He was born, actually created, in 1872 as a fictional character in a social commentary novel published by Eliza Lynn Linton and entitled The True History of Joshua Davidson, Christian and Communist, which is available online. I came across this fascinating not-quite-modern-day parable in a published lecture by the British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Linton’s book, originally published anonymously, imagines Jesus as a mid-19th century Englishman who sees the vicars of his day as pharisees and the money-changers outside the fancy cathedrals. In the end he is killed, like Christ, because he dared to live like the Jesus of the Gospels. The book is well worth a read speaking truth to the imperialist and high-church-minded power of Britain well over a century ago. But let the narrative speak for itself.

Continue reading Joshua Davidson and the Spirit of Christmas →

A Wolff in Shepherd’s Clothing, #3

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Kurds, Lithographs, Orientalism, Travel, Turkey


Dervish,; photograph by Sevryugin Anton (1830 – 1933), the official photographer of the Imperial Court of Iran

In the early 19th century there was a florescence of Protestant missionary interest in saving Muslim, Jewish and other kinds of Christian souls in the Middle East. This thread continues excerpts from one of the earliest accounts from the 19th century, that of Joseph Wolff (1795-1862), a convert from Judaism to Christianity. In 1837 he published a diary of his travels. Like a number of Christians visiting the Muslim world, Wolff is more impressed by Muslim sobriety and devotion in their ritual than he is by the Christians he sees:

There is also an intriguing encounter between the Christian missionary and a Kurdish Muslim dervish:

Chalk one up for the Kurdish dervish over the atheists of Europe.

A Wolff in Shepherd’s Clothing, #2

Aden, Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Orientalism, Travel, Yemen, Zaydi

In the early 19th century there was a florescence of Protestant missionary interest in saving Muslim, Jewish and other kinds of Christian souls in the Middle East. This thread continues excerpts from one of the earliest accounts from the 19th century, that of Joseph Wolff (1795-1862), a convert from Judaism to Christianity. In 1837 he published a diary of his travels. Here are the passages related to a brief stop in several of Yemen’s ports:

to be continued…

A Wolff in Shepherd’s Clothing, #1

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Orientalism, Travel

In the early 19th century there was a florescence of Protestant missionary interest in saving Muslim, Jewish and other kinds of Christian souls in the Middle East. One of the earliest accounts from the 19th century is that of Joseph Wolff (1795-1862), a convert from Judaism to Christianity. His missionary travels began in 1821 and he also went in search of the “lost tribes” of Israel. In 1837 he published a diary of his travels. This is a fascinating book to read, once one gets by the evangelistic fervor. He was considered by fellow missionaries to be somewhat of an “eccentric,” as he acknowledges in the frontispiece to his travels.

Here is how he begins his book… Continue reading A Wolff in Shepherd’s Clothing, #1 →

Damascus after the Muslim Conquest

Archaeology and Antiquities, Books You Should Read, Islamic History, Islamic Texts, Syria

[The following is a link to an interview with Professor Nancy Khalek on her recent book, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam
Oxford University Press, 2011]

by Matthew Long, New Books in Islamic Studies, September 6, 2013

A top five finalist for the Best First Book in the History of Religion Award, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest (Oxford University Press, 2011) by Nancy Khalek, professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, is a study of the city of Damascus, the seat of power for the Umayyad dynasty. More specifically, this book explores the interaction between the recently arrived Muslim Arab rulers and the Byzantine-Christian peoples who made up the majority of the population in Syria. Khalek employs both traditional historical texts, such as Ibn ‘Asākir’s Tārīkh Dimashq, along with art and architecture from the region. She displays a mastery of both the Muslim and Christian sources, discerning the value of their historicity but highlighting the narrative and iconographic significance that can be extrapolate from those sources. During her study of the stories and art, the narratives and iconography reveal that the Muslim and Christian cultures of Syria were in a type of dialogue with each other. She takes care to avoid stating this was a replacement one culture or one borrowing from anther, but instead wishes to portray a blending of these cultures; a blending whose legacy lived on for centuries. Khalek’s work is truly a significant contribution to the field of Islamic Studies and an indispensable interdisciplinary study for both its use of a variety of lesser known source material and its re-imagining of Umayyad history in Syria.