Feb 21
Mai Serhan, "I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) is a young woman’s search for connection with her estranged father, her family’s past, and the Palestinian homeland she can never visit Mai Serhan lives in Cairo and has never been ... Show More
32m 13s
Feb 20
Eray Çayli, "Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan" (U Texas Press, 2025)
Extractivism—exploiting the earth for resources—has long driven racial capitalism and colonialism. And yet, how does extractivism operate in a world where ecological and humanitarian sensibilities are unprecedentedly widespread? Eray Çaylı argues it does so by mobilizing these se ... Show More
1h 3m
Feb 19
David Frankfurter ed., "Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic" (Brill, 2019)
In the midst of academic debates about the utility of the term “magic” and the cultural meaning of ancient words like mageia or khesheph, this Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic seeks to advance the discussion by separating out three topics essential to the very idea of magic. T ... Show More
39m 44s
Jul 2021
Supriya Gandhi, "The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India" (Harvard UP, 2020)
In her magnificent and lyrical new book, The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India (Harvard UP, 2020), Supriya Gandhi reorients and adds unprecedented depth to our understanding of the much memorialized but less understood Mughal prince and thinker Dara Shukoh (d. 16 ... Show More
1 h
Sep 2023
Michelle Karnes, "Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Marvels like enchanted rings and sorcerers’ stones were topics of fascination in the Middle Ages, not only in romance and travel literature but also in the period’s philosophical writing. Rather than constructions of belief accepted only by simple-minded people, Michelle Karnes s ... Show More
31m 24s
Aug 2023
Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst, "I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America" (UNC Press, 2023)
Carl Ernst’s and Mbaye Lo’s new book I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America (UNC Press, 2023) is a fascinating and rivetting book that offers the most authoritative account to date of the life and Arabic writings of Omar Ibn Said, a scholar ... Show More
48m 38s
Feb 2024
Keys to Decipher Ibn ʻArabī’s Manzil al-manāzil.
Ibn ʻArabī's unique Quranic journey in Kitāb Manzil: A mystical correlation of 114 suras with the science of numbers and symbolic ascent
Pablo writes: This presentation analyses the content of Ibn ʻArabī’s lesser-known work, Kitāb Manzil al-manāzil al-fahwāniyya ("The Mansion that Gathers [the Keys to All] the Mansions in Which Direct Speech Descends”), which is devoted to Quranic hermeneutics and structured on sy ... Show More
54m 45s
Jul 2021
Ryan J. Lynch, "Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh Al-Buldan of Al-Baladhuri" (I. B. Tauris, 2021)
Of the available sources for Islamic history published before the 9th century of the Christian Era, few are of greater importance than Kitab Futuh al-Buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands), by al-Baladhuri, a ninth-century administrator at the Abbasid court. The text has been ... Show More
1h 13m
Dec 2023
Ta’wīl and Ishāra: The Meaning of these Terms in Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Approach to the Qur’an
Dr. Dakake researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi`ite and Sufi traditions, and women's spirituality and religious experience. She is one of the general editors and contributing authors of the The Study Quran (HarperOne, 2015), which compris ... Show More
21m 50s
Feb 2024
Michael Johnston, "The Middle English Book: Scribes and Readers, 1350-1500" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Michael Johnston's The Middle English Book: Scribes and Readers, 1350-1500 (Oxford UP, 2023) addresses a series of questions about the copying and circulation of literature in late medieval England: How do we make sense of the variety of manuscripts surviving from this period? Wh ... Show More
43m 19s
Lara Harb’s Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a delightful and formidable study on the details and development of poetics and aesthetics in medieval Arabic literature. The central theme of this splendid book centers on the emergence of the evocation of wonder as a key aesthetic experienc ... Show More
