After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries o ... Show More
Yesterday
Omid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition” (Yale UP, 2018)
It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this 13th-century Muslim have largely detached him from the Islamic tradition, and specifically Sufi mysticism. In Radical Love: Teach ... Show More
1h 17m
Aug 23
Lucia Sorbera, "Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt" (U of California Press, 2025)
It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt (U of California Press, 2025) shows—the long history of women's activism that created the intellectual and politi ... Show More
43m 18s
Aug 20
David Commins, "Saudi Arabia: A Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
A major new history of Saudi Arabia, from its eighteenth-century origins to the present day Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a major player on the international stage and the site of Islam’s two holiest cities. It is also one of the world’s only absol ... Show More
29m 8s
Jul 2023
Ep 4: The Fatimids: Founders of Cairo, with Dr Shainool Jiwa
The Fatimids were an Ismaili dynasty that reigned over a diverse religious and ethnic population for about 200 years, emerging from the vibrant 10th century world of the Mediterranean. At its height, the Fatimid Empire stretched across the length of the southern Mediterranean and ... Show More
38m 11s
Nov 2024
Phillip Lieberman, "The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East: Tracing the Demographic Shift from East to West" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
In The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East: Tracing the Demographic Shift from East to West (Cambridge UP, 2022), Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Je ... Show More
1h 28m
Sep 2024
What We Get Wrong About Studying Muslim History With Dr Yakoob Ahmed
It is said a people without a past are a lost soul. And in today’s turbulent world, the Muslim ummah has come to realise that we have, in many cases, been taught a version of history that fails to appreciate what the late Shabbir Akhtar called Islam as a imperial faith.Dr Yakoob ... Show More
1h 12m
Aug 18
Contemporary Moroccan Thought | Mohammed Hashas
We delve into the need to fill the literary and intellectual gap in Moroccan scholarship, the impacts of notable contemporary Moroccan philosophers and thinkers, and how their ideas engage with local, regional, and global issues like modernity, democracy, and human rights. Dr Moh ... Show More
54m 40s
May 2018
Al Andalus and Islamic Spain
What is Al Andalus and the history of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula? Join us as we take a closer look at the Muslim expansions into Portugal and Spain. In part one of two of discussing Islam in the Maghreb, we examine the Berber and Moorish influences on art, architecture, cultu ... Show More
1 h
Feb 2025
Heart and Soul: The caretaker of Bukhara
Abram Iskhakov is the caretaker of the oldest synagogue in Bukhara, one of the sacred cities of Islam. He is keeper of a Torah inscribed on deer velum and kept safe for 1000 years, or so the story goes. Abram has a powerful voice and recites for us a very special prayer, the Haqq ... Show More
27m 11s
Nov 2024
Book Talk: Controversies in Formative Shi’i Islam: The Ghulat Muslims and Their Beliefs by Dr Mushegh Asatryan
Among the various Muslim communities that were articulating their doctrinal positions in the early Islamic centuries, one in particular was known derisively as the Ghulat ('extremists'). This was owing to their specific interpretation of Islam, which included an 'extreme' devotio ... Show More
5m 20s
Apr 2025
The Moriscos & the Purging of Muslim Spain (1492-1614) | Matthew Carr
The author of "Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain, 1492 to 1614," delves into the complex history of Muslim Spain, starting from the arrival of Muslims in Spain in 711 under a North African general, the formation of al-Andalus, and its eventual decline. Matthew Carr exp ... Show More
1h 5m