A West African Sufi and religious reformer (c.1794-1864), struggled to reconcile the temporal achievements of his jihad with his mystical calling. The fame of Shaykh Omar rested on his reputation as a worker of miracles, and the success of jihad in his path to Allah.

This Volume One of a series on slaves and slavery in Muslim Africa. First published in 1985, it looks at Islam and the ideology of enslavement. Slaves of African origin formed a vital thread in the living lines of economic production in the Near and Middle East and formed the cord of economic activity in Islamic Africa itself. Slaves sustained the salt pits and date palms of desert societies; they worked the spice plantations of the East African littoral - became the porters and placemen i...

First published in 1979, this first of three volumes examines the many means and figures through which Islam was cultivated in West Africa over a prolonged period. It combines the work from eminent scholars in the field, most of which have travelled widely in the historic region of Western Sudan.This book will be of interest to those studying Islamic and West African history.

First Published in 1986. Slavery in Islamic Africa has been a fascinating subject to which many scholars have referred, but of which no detailed monograph has emerged. The better part of the essays in these volumes has its ancestry in a conference held at Princeton University during the Summer of 1977 under the title: “Islamic Africa: Slavery and Related Institutions”. At that international gathering, four principal themes dominated discussion: the servile estate, its genesis and compositi...

Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam chronicles the experiences, identity and achievements of enslaved black people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Chouki El Hamel argues that we cannot rely solely on Islamic ideology as the key to explain social relations and particularly the history of black slavery in the Muslim world, for this viewpoint yields an inaccurate historical record of the people, institutions and social practice...

“A must read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Islamic world” (San Francisco Chronicle)We in the West share a common narrative of world history. But our story largely omits a whole civilization whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed through the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the events of 9/11 and beyond.In Destiny Disrupted,...

The attacks of September 11, 2001, changed the way the world looks at Islam. And rightfully so, according to M.A. Khan, a former Muslim who left the religion after realizing that it is based on forced conversion, imperialism, and slavery: the primary demands of Jihad, commanded by the Islamic God Allah.In this groundbreaking book, Khan demonstrates that Prophet Muhammad meticulously followed these misguided principles and established the ideal template of Islamic Jihad for his futu...

The history of the Islamic faith on the continent of Africa spans fourteen centuries. For the first time in a single volume, The History of Islam in Africa presents a detailed historic mapping of the cultural, political, geographic, and religious past of this significant presence on a continent-wide scale. Bringing together two dozen leading scholars, this comprehensive work treats the historical development of the religion in each major region and examines its effects.Wit...

Does history matter? This book argues not that history matters, but that Islamic history does. This Very Short Introduction introduces the story of Islamic history; the controversies surrounding its study; and the significance that it holds - for Muslims and for non-Muslims alike. Opening with a lucid overview of the rise and spread of Islam, from the seventh to twenty first century, the book charts the evolution of what was originally a small, localised community of beli...

Praise for Bernard Lewis"For newcomers to the subject[el]Bernard Lewis is the man."TIME Magazine“The doyen of Middle Eastern studies."The New York Times“No one writes about Muslim history with greater authority, or intelligence, or literary charm.”British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper“Bernard Lewis has no living rival in his field.”...

What is jihad? Does it mean violence, as many non-Muslims assume? Or does it mean peace, as some Muslims insist? Because jihad is closely associated with the early spread of Islam, today's debate about the origin and meaning of jihad is nothing less than a struggle over Islam itself. In Jihad in Islamic History, Michael Bonner provides the first study in English that focuses on the early history of jihad, shedding much-needed light on the most recent controversies over jihad....

Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939 is the most comprehensive study of the modernizing trend of political and social thought in the Arab Middle East. Albert Hourani studies the way in which ideas about politics and society changed during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, in response to the expanding influence of Europe. His main attention is given to the movement of ideas in Egypt and Lebanon. He shows how two streams of thought, the one aiming to restat...