As Mīr Ways Khān slept: miraculous possibilities in Afghan history
What happens when we view supernatural happenings as a wellspring of historical possibilities, rather than as excess to be cut away?
Q&A with the author of The Ottoman Canon and the Construction of Arabic and Turkish Literatures
C. Ceyhun Arslan discusses the inspiration behind his new book, and the surprises he encountered along the way.
The Demolition of Jeddah and the Relocation of a Neighbourhood in Turkey
Magnus Marsden explores the connection between built neighbourhoods and heritage.
EUP 75: Our Publishing in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Discover the story of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh University Press – the first publications, the books that changed the field and what you can expect to see in future.
Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt
A Q&A with Heba Arafa Abdelfattah In this author Q&A, Heba Arafa Abdelfattah introduces her latest book, Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt, which explores the formative years of Egyptian film (1919–52) to contest the contradiction between Islam and…
How to Get Banned from Teaching the Quran: Medieval Cairo Edition
by Shuaib Ally, McGill University Around the turn of the 15th century in Cairo, a hadith scholar named Salah al-Din al-Aqfahsi heard Salah al-Din al-Kalai, a scholar associated with the Sufi Shadhili order, teaching the Quran. Part of his teaching…
Situating the crusades in Syrian history: a Q&A with James Wilson
Tell us a bit about your book My book is about the situation in Syria before, during and after the first crusaders arrived in the near east. The crusader armies arrived in Syria in 1097 and immediately began interacting with…
Journalism under hybrid politics
by Kjetil Selvik, Jacob Høigilt Only a few years ago, Tunisia was the freest country in the Arab world, with a flourishing media scene. Journalists were scrambling to reinvent their role in the public sphere that emerged after the Jasmine…
Writing about the People of Iraq
by Catherine Cobham and Fabio Caiani 23 March 2023 marked the twentieth anniversary of the attack on Iraq. Predictably, western mainstream media made little or no reference to contemporary Iraqi culture. Recently, however, there has been a growing interest in…