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Langwell, Caithness: an exemplar of the Highland economy
Read more: Langwell, Caithness: an exemplar of the Highland economyWilliam Parente explores the challenges faced by Highland communities in the time of the Clearances
Why family ties in Kūfa mattered for early Islamic politics
Aliya A Ali explores how kinship and marriage alliances shaped political power and governance in the early Islamic city of Kūfa.
Rumi – A Life in Pictures
In this interview, John Renard, author of Rumi: A Life in Pictures (out now from the Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art series), discusses his new book, which studies illustrated 16th-century Ottoman manuscripts of a major hagiography of Rumi and his…
Opium in Afghanistan, a glimpse from the past
By Sara Peterson In recent years, the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan has become a news item, with reports from the United Nations and the United States Government documenting record highs (no pun intended) in opium production. Now we…
My First Day in Camp with the Piruzai – Afghanistan, 1971
By Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper In 1971 and 1972 Richard Tapper and I lived with Afghan villagers for nearly a year. The Piruzai, some 200 families, lived in two small settlements near the town of Sar-e Pol in northern Afghanistan. They were…
Interreligious Polemics as a Window into Early Modern Iran
If anyone decided to do a quick search for scholarship on interreligious polemics, especially of the Muslim-Christian kind, he or she will immediately notice a few patterns: Most of the major studies focus on the Classical period (that is, from…
Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900
Read the blog post to find out more about writing the newly published book Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700-1900 by Kevin L. Schwartz. Remembering Iran, Forgetting the Persianate There was a time – roughly from 1000 to 1850 – when…
Three fun ways to create a medieval Arabic manuscript
From recycling to creating huge anthologies, Konrad HIrschler looks at some innovative ways that book lovers created their medieval Arabic manuscripts.
A story of Armenian migration to North America
By David Gutman In April 1906, a man appeared at the United States consulate in Sivas, a city located deep in the Anatolian interior in what is today central Turkey. In fluent English, the man identified himself as Ohannes Topalian,…
An interview with Taef El-Azhari, author of ‘Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661–1257’
Tell us a bit about your book Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661–1257 is the first comprehensive study of sexual politics in medieval Islamic history. While there are several books written on the Ottomans and Safavids, we do…