Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam - By Kecia Ali (original) (raw)
Related papers
Conquest to Conversion: The Formation of the Islamic World
Undergraduate class taught at Brown University in Spring 2014. How did the Arabs, originally a small group of tribes, come to conquer and rule a vast region from Spain to Iran? And how did their faith – Islam – become a major world religion? Moving between past to present, the course combines the evidence of texts, landscapes, architecture and images to examine how a Muslim empire emerged, to explore what it meant to be Muslim and/or Arab, and to follow the spread of Islam.
Conquered Populations in Early Islam
A particular feature of medieval Islamic civilisation was its wide horizons. In this respect it differed profoundly from medieval Europe, which from the point of view of geography, ethnicity and population was much smaller and narrower in its scope and in its mindset. The Muslims fell heir not only to the Graeco-Roman world of the Mediterranean, but also to that of the ancient Near East, to the empires of Assyria, Babylon and the Persians-and beyond that, they were in frequent contact with India and China to the east and with black Africa to the south. This intellectual openness can be sensed in many interrelated fields of Muslim thought: philosophy and theology, medicine and pharmacology, algebra and geometry, astronomy and astrology, geography and the literature of marvels, ethnology and sociology. It also impacted powerfully on trade and on the networks that made it possible. Books in this series reflect this openness and cover a wide range of topics, periods and geographical areas.
ORIGINS OF ISLAM: POLITICAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT (final version)
The authors suggest to view the origins of Islam against the background of the 6th century AD Arabian socio-ecological crisis whose model is specified in the paper through the study of climatological, seismological, volcanological and epidemiological history of the period. Most socio-political systems of the Arabs reacted to the socio-ecological crisis by getting rid of the rigid supra- tribal political structures (kingdoms and chiefdoms) which started posing a real threat to their very survival. The decades of fighting which led to the destruction of most of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms (reflected in Ayyãm al- 'Arab tradition) led to the elaboration of some definite "anti- royal" freedom-loving tribal ethos. At the beginning of the 7th century tribes which would recog- nise themselves as subjects of some terrestrial super-tribal political authority, the "king", risked to lose its honour. However, this seems not to be applicable to the authority of another type, the "ce- lestial" one. At the meantime the early 7th century evidences the merging of the Arabian tradition of prophecy and the Arabian Monotheist "Rahmanist" tradition which produced "the Arabian pro- phetic movement". The Monotheist "Rahmanist" prophets appear to have represented a supratribal authority just of the type many Arab tribes were looking for at this very time, which seems to ex- plain to a certain extent those prophets' political success (including the extreme political success of Muhammad).
The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam
Quote as: Salvatore Armando, Babak Rahimi, and Roberto Tottoli (eds). 2018. The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. [You'll find the Introduction and my two co-authored Chapters in the section 'Book Chapters and Intros' by scrolling down my main academia webpage] A theoretically rich, nuanced history of Islam and Islamic civilization with a unique sociological component. This major new reference work offers a complete historical and theoretically informed view of Islam as both a religion and a sociocultural force. It surveys and discusses the transformation of Muslim societies in different eras and various regions, providing a broad narrative of the historical development of Islamic civilization. This text explores the complex and varied history of the religion and its traditions. It provides an in-depth study of the diverse ways through which the religious dimension at the core of Islamic traditions has led to a distinctive type of civilizational process in history. The book illuminates the ways in which various historical forces have converged and crystallized in institutional forms at a variety of levels, embracing social, religious, legal, political, cultural, and civic dimensions. Together, the team of internationally renowned scholars move from the genesis of a new social order in 7th-century Arabia, right up to the rise of revolutionary Islamist currents in the 20th century and the varied ways in which Islam has grown and continues to pervade daily life in the Middle East and beyond. This book is essential reading for students and academics in a wide range of fields, including sociology, history, law, and political science. It will also appeal to general readers with an interest in the history of one of the world’s great religions.
Review: Arabs and Empires before Islam, ed. Greg Fisher
English Historical Review, 2019
Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by Greg Fisher (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2015; pp. xxvii + 580. £120; pb. [2017] £30). One of the responses to the revisionist scholarship on early Islam of the seventies and eighties has been a reinvigorated engagement with the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. The revisionists focused their attention on the Islamic tradition and on
Quote as : Salvatore, Armando, Johann P. Arnason, Roberto Tottoli, and Babak Rahimi. 2018. “Introduction: The Formation and Transformations of the Islamic Ecumene,” in The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, ed. Armando Salvatore, Roberto Tottoli and Babak Rahimi, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell (with Johann P. Arnason, Babak Rahimi, and Roberto Tottoli), 1-35. This is the Introduction to a theoretically rich, nuanced history of Islam and Islamic civilization with a unique sociological component. This major new reference work offers a complete historical and theoretically informed view of Islam as both a religion and a sociocultural force. Uniquely comprehensive, it surveys and discusses the transformation of Muslim societies in different eras and various regions, providing a broad narrative of the historical development of Islamic civilization. This text explores the complex and varied history of the religion and its traditions. It provides an in-depth study of the diverse ways through which the religious dimension at the core of Islamic traditions has led to a distinctive type of civilizational process in history. The book illuminates the ways in which various historical forces have converged and crystallized in institutional forms at a variety of levels, embracing social, religious, legal, political, cultural, and civic dimensions. Together, the team of internationally renowned scholars move from the genesis of a new social order in 7th-century Arabia, right up to the rise of revolutionary Islamist currents in the 20th century and the varied ways in which Islam has grown and continues to pervade daily life in the Middle East and beyond. This book is essential reading for students and academics in a wide range of fields, including sociology, history, law, and political science. It will also appeal to general readers with an interest in the history of one of the world’s great religions.
Introduction: The Formation and Transformations of the Islamic Ecumene
2018
The particular complexity of the historical study of Islam is nowadays a given for scholars in the broader field. This acknowledgement contrasts sharply with crass generalizations in public and media discourse on Islam, not only in the West. The project underlying this volume, belonging to the Wiley Blackwell History of Religions series, explores the diverse ways through which the undeniably religious dimension that is at the core of Islamic traditions (or simply Islam) innervates a distinctive type of 'civilizing process' in history. This process crystallized in institutional forms at a variety of levels: broadly social, specifically religious, legal, political, cultural, and, transversally, civic. No doubt the scholarly interest in studying this expansive civilizing process has acquired a new boost due to late 20th-century developments associated with what has been roughly called a "re-Islamization process" occurring in the context of the most recent wave of globalization, whose beginnings should be traced back to the 1970s. Debates on globalization did not always take a historical turn, but when they did, the question of earlier globalizing waves-including premodern oneswas bound to be posed, and the exceptional success of the premodern Islamic expansion stood out as a prime example. Correspondingly, the applicability of modern concepts to the macro-civilizational formation created by this process could be considered.
ORIGINS OF ISLAM: POLITICAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT
The authors suggest to view the origins of Islam against the background of the 6th century AD Arabian socio-ecological crisis whose model is specified in the paper through the study of cli-matological, seismological, volcanological and epidemiological history of the period. Most so-cio-political systems of the Arabs reacted to the socio-ecological crisis by getting rid of the rig-id supra-tribal political structures (kingdoms and chiefdoms) which started posing a real threat to their very survival. The decades of fighting which led to the destruction of the most of the Arabian kingdoms and chiefdoms (reflected in Ayyam al-Arab tradition) led to the elaboration of some definite "anti-royal" freedom-loving tribal ethos. At the beginning of the 7th century a tribe which would recognize themselves as subjects of some terrestrial super-tribal political au-thority, a "king", risked to lose its honour. However, this seems not to be applicable to the au-thority of another type, the "celestial" one. At the meantime the early 7th century evidences the merging of the Arabian tradition of prophecy and the Arabian Monotheist "Rahmanist" tradi-tion which produced "the Arabian prophetic movement". The Monotheist "Rahmanist" proph-ets appear to have represented a supratribal authority just of the type many Arab tribes were looking for at this very time, which seems to explain to a certain extent those prophets' politi-cal success (including the extreme political success of Muhammad).