History

Mourid Barghouti

Barred from his homeland after the 1967 Six-Day War, the poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile, shuttling among the world’s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation, Barghouti crosses a wooden bridge over the Jordan River into Ramallah and is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Sifting through memories of the old Palestine as they come up against what he now encounters in this mere “idea of Palestine,” he discovers what it means to be deprived not only of a homeland but of “the habitual place and status of a person.” A tour de force of memory and reflection, lamentation and resilience, I Saw Ramallah is a deeply humane book, essential to any balanced understanding of today’s Middle East.

Winner of the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal.

An Annotated Transliteration together with a Translation and an Introduction of His Exposition on the Fundamental Aspects of Sufi Doctrines

Translated by Muhammad Zainiy Uthman, professor at the Center for Advanced Studies on Islam, Science and Civilisation (CASIS), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

The Lata’if al–Asrar li–Ahl Allah al–Atyar (Spiritual Subtleties for the Swiftly Ascending People of God) is a major work of Nur al–Din al–Raniri (died 1658 A.D.), the Shaykh al–Islam of Acheh, Sumatra. It was written at the behest of Sultan Iskandar Thani of Acheh in 1050 A.H./1640 A.D. Two manuscripts (dated 1248 A.H. and 1263 A.H.) found in Terengganu were used to produce an annotated transliteration from the Jawi into Romanized Malay, a translation into English and an introduction. The current work spans 884 pages.

A key text of the Malay World, the Lata’if was written to elucidate the fundamental aspects of Sufi doctrines. It is meant as an introduction to more advanced works for the novice on the path and a reminder for the adept.

In 922 AD during the Abbasid Caliphate, an Arab Muslim envoy from Baghdad named Ibn Fadlan encountered a party of Viking traders on the upper reaches of the Volga River. In his subsequent report on his mission he gave a meticulous and astonishingly objective description of Vikings, as well as the only eyewitness account ever written of a Viking ship cremation.

Between the ninth and fourteenth centuries, Arab travellers such as Ibn Fadlan journeyed widely and frequently into the far north, crossing territories that now include Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Their fascinating accounts describe how the numerous tribes and peoples they encountered traded furs, paid tribute and waged wars. This accessible new translation by Paul Lunde offers an illuminating insight into the world of the Arab geographers, and the medieval lands of the far north.

Michael Laffan
Excerpt:
“It was probably in Mecca that al-Sharqawi inducted two Jawis into the Sammani brotherhood, founded by the Medinese Muhammad Samman (1717-76). One of these Jawi initiates was the ecstatic Muhammad Nafis al-Banjari (1770-1820), the other was the more sober (and prolific) Da’ud al-Fatani (d. 1845).”
Also interesting to read that Singapore was such an important printing centre for the whole of the Malay World in the 19th century. Presses in the vicinity of Masjid Sultan were printing Qur’an, mawlid books, religious manuals such as the Safinah al-Najah, and even a Sufi manual for the Shattari brotherhood in 1877.

Doreen Ingrams

Palestine Papers gives the vivid, inside story of the creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, formed with the divergent objectives of fostering Zionism and protecting the rights of the native Palestinians. This is history caught in the making: no rhetoric, no apology, no bomblast, just the original documents culled from the secret minutes of Cabinet meetings, and from telegrams and memos of ministers, generals, ambassadors and the Intelligence Services.

Patrick Tyler

Riveting history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East from Eisenhower to Bush II.

Roxanne Euben

The contemporary world is increasingly defined by dizzying flows of people and ideas. But while Western travel is associated with a pioneering spirit of discovery, the dominant image of Muslim mobility is the jihadi who travels not to learn but to destroy.

Journeys to the Other Shore challenges these stereotypes by charting the common ways in which Muslim and Western travelers negotiate the dislocation of travel to unfamiliar and strange worlds. In Roxanne Euben’s groundbreaking excursion across cultures, geography, history, genre, and genders, travel signifies not only a physical movement across lands and cultures, but also an imaginative journey in which wonder about those who live differently makes it possible to see the world differently.

Tamim Ansary

A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

Shafiq Morton

Caroline Finkel