Contemporary historians have searched for the historical Muhammad along many paths. In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam (University of California Press, 2020), Sean Anthony, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University, recommends employing non-Muslim and Muslim sources in tandem in order to v ... Show More
Nov 22
Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam" (Yale UP, 2025)
Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began ... Show More
1h 4m
Nov 21
Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule?
Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterre ... Show More
1h 5m
Nov 14
Basit Kareem Iqbal, "The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution" (Fordham UP, 2025)
Basit Kareem Iqbal's new book The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (Fordham UP, 2025) uses ethnographic scenes from Jordan and Canada to contextualize the role of Muslim charities and community organizations that support displaced refugees from t ... Show More
1h 16m
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
Apr 2020
Christiane Gruber, “The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images" (Indiana UP, 2019)
In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The sometimes violent backlash to these images has reinforced th ... Show More
1 h
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
Adam Bursi, "Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Adam Bursi’s Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam (Edinburg University Press, 2024) uses writings by early Muslims to map a history of material objects, relics, and tombs of prophetic figures as they were conceptualized in the 8th and 9th centuries. The ... Show More
56m 59s
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
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
May 2023
Al-Ándalus y los Califatos, empieza la expansión- Ep.3 (El Islam, de Mahoma al S.XXI)
En apenas unas décadas, el islam medieval forjó uno de los mayores imperios de todos los tiempos, mientras abasíes,omeyas y fatimíes se disputaban la hegemonía y la legitimidad.
El año 661 marca el inicio de una edad dorada para el islam con la irrupción en escena del clan Omeya, ... Show More
17m 28s