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Over the past decades, the impact of Atlantic ideas and ideologies in the Americas has become a constant subject of discussion. The ways in which the French and Haitian revolutions determined the actions of African slaves in the Americas have only been matched by the relevance given by scholars to the impact of British Abolitionist policies from 1807 onwards. West African wars associated with the transplantation of Islam were just as important. Until today, the impact and the very existence of Islam among West African slaves taken to Cuba have been all but overlooked. In this article, I attempt to establish connections between Islam in West Africa and Islamized West African slaves in Cuba. My key argument is that in one way or another, Islamized Africans were present in Cuba from a very early period and that they continued to arrive in the following centuries. There are certainly enough elements to offer a first, preliminary sketch of the presence and impact of Islamized West Africans in Cuba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a report from a September 19-21, 2013 conference in Paderborn, Germany on the history of the theological aspects of slavery in the Mediterranean region from antiquity to the modern age. Topics of presentations given included Biblical depictions of Jewish slavery, the financial functions of bishops in late antiquity, and slavery in Islam.

The article focuses on writer Michel-Rolph Trouillot's recent work in which he referred to the work performed by a set of words he aptly designated as "North Atlantic Universals." According to Trouillot, the crucial difference is that categorical apparatus to the degree of global saturation and normativity were not projected by few systems not even early modern Christianity or Islam.

Copyright of Religioni e Società is the property of Fabrizio Serra Editore and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Arab revolts of 2011 raised new questions regarding democracy. On the one hand, a new kind of democracy is apparently born: the democracy of the multitude. On the other, Islam has been a major actor in the Arab revolts and presumably will play a growing role in the future. The article investigates if there is a new political model put forward by the foreseeable Islamic developments of the revolts. If we take for granted that there is not only one kind of democracy and that there is much more space for Islamic organizations in the present and future political arena of the Muslim countries, then it will not sound like a heresy to ask whether there is an Islamic way to democracy. In order to demonstrate this original point of view, it is necessary to deal with the principles of Islamic political thought. The Arab revolts promise to renew and update these principles. The article will try to peruse this revision from the point of view of Antonio Gramsci and his theory of hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we present a cross-national comparison of the discursive framing of political claims on Muslims and Islam in four European countries. We explore these issues empirically and relate the cross-national differences found in the data to a diverging logic in the different integration debates. We argue that persistent variations in discursive framing can be understood by looking at the unique conceptualisation of group categorisation and distinction used in the national integration debates. It is, furthermore, argued that these discursive and symbolic trends do not relate directly to observed differences in integration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study of 239 manumission acts registered in the court records of the Red Sea port of Massawa, now in the modern state of Eritrea, allows us glimpses into the practice of slavery and emancipation in that town in the 1870s and 1880s. The evidence sheds light both on urban slaves owned by local Massawans, commercial entrepreneur-sojourners, Egyptian officers and the Egyptian government, as well as on those slaves who might have been captured en route before their shipment across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. In the context of the scanty historiography of slavery in the Ethio-Eritrean area, the data provides unique information about gender, age, names, origins, geographic provenance and the circumstances of manumission of 276 slaves, many of whom originated in what are today areas of south-western and western Ethiopia, but also from the Eritrean borderlands and the Sudan. The evidence also provides insights into ethnic and racial distinctions and categorisations, as well as the experience of slaves before and after manumission, including concubinage, marriage and, perhaps, employment with the Egyptian government which ruled Massawa between 1865 and 1885. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Horizons of Politics / Horyzonty Polityki is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Fezzeh Khanom (c. 1835–82), an African woman, was a slave of Sayyed ‘Ali-Mohammad of Shiraz, the Bab. Information about her life can be recovered from various pious Baha'i histories. She was honored, and even venerated by Babis, though she remained subordinate and invisible. The paper makes the encouraging discovery that a history of African slavery in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. Scholars estimate that between one and two million slaves were exported from Africa to the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century, most to Iranian ports. Some two-thirds of African slaves brought to Iran were women intended as household servants and concubines. An examination of Fezzeh Khanom's life can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of enslaved women in Iran. The paper discusses African influences on Iranian culture, especially in wealthy households and in the royal court. The limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom when applied to the Muslim world is noted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract The Zaydīs in Yemen are the only current within Islam that fostered the continuous transmission and study of Mutazilī kalām up to the present time. This article aims to examine the presence and quality of Mutazilī kalām in a major Zaydī composition of the 20th century, namely Alī b. Muammad al-Agrī's (1320-1407/1902-1987) Miftā al-saāda, which was completed in May 1952. The Miftā and other works of Zaydī scholars written during the first half of the 20th century provide us with valuable insights into Zaydī-Hādawī scholarship in Northern Yemen prior to the Republican revolution of 1962 and furnish important information about the education of 20th century Zaydī-Hādawī scholars and the contents of their libraries. The wide range of Mutazilī and non-Mutazilī sources used and quoted in the Miftā sheds light on the distinct impact of various phases of a centuries-old school- and teaching-tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the theories of Sayyid Qutb on Islam, as well as the secular through the analysis of Talal Asad's engagements with the secular. It focuses on the quasi-historical diagnosis by Qutb of the rule of jahiliyya, which he directly derived from the Qur'an. It discusses the Althusserian concept of ideology, as well as the interplay of the concepts of the secular, religion and ideology. It cites the secular studies of Tariq Ramadan and Abdullahi al-Na'im. The book "Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity,' by Asad is also cited.

Copyright of History in Africa: A Journal of Method is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Between 1906 and 1949, more than 950 slaves reported at the British agencies in Bahrain, Kuwait, Muscat, and Sharjah and asked for manumission. Their written statements prove that slavery was an important part of the local socio-economic system and that many slaves had for generations been bound with the same families of owners. The manumission movement was caused mainly by the collapse of the pearl industry in the Gulf in the 1920s and 1930s, but it was the psychological factor rather than the economic one which played the decisive role in slaves coming to a decision to run away from their master. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historians of slavery in Africa have long struggled to recover the voices of enslaved people. In this article, an unusual set of sources found in Timbuktu (Mali) reveals the existence of a stratum of literate, Muslim slaves who wrote and received letters written in Arabic. These letters make it possible to probe the Islamic rhetoric used by Muslim slaves and ask how enslaved people who adopted Islam understood their faith. Did Muslim slaves arrive at different interpretations of Islam than those Muslims who were free? Using the correspondence of two slaves who worked as agents in their master's commercial activities in the Niger Bend and Central Sahara during the second half of the nineteenth century, this article demonstrates the extent to which Muslim slaves used appeals to their own piety in attempting to carve out a certain amount of social autonomy. For these Muslim slaves, Islam could be made to serve both spiritual and practical ends. And yet, this did not require slaves to interpret Islam in ways that rejected the legitimacy of slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ottomans and Moroccans on France's galleys from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century violated the kingdom's 'free soil' principle. Evaluating naval, spatial, strategic, theological and juridical explanations, this article argues that employing Muslim rowers served pragmatic and symbolic ends, while provoking relatively little consternation among French leaders. Only after colonial slaves began claiming liberty in the metropole did questions about the lawfulness of keeping esclaves turcs arise. The rationales proposed suggest that a categorical shift in French understandings of servitude accompanied more limited access to freedom as the Atlantic slave trade eclipsed the Mediterranean one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the testimony of the non-Muslims from two aspects: first, their testimony on each other. Second their testimony that involves Muslims. The study results revealed that the testimony of Non-Muslims on each other is permissible to sustain their rights and for stability to their dealings. While, their testimony on Muslims, according to consensus of scholars in Islam Jurisprudence, is not acceptable, however, the exception of this origin is to accept their testimony on a Muslim will during traveling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real home of Hızır Shah who is the son of the Muslim Judge of Balat, Mollah Abdullatef and the one of scholars at the time of Ottoman Sultan Murat II is Mantashe. He has gotten his first education in Mantashe. Hızır Shah who then went to Egypt and had his high education there (15 years) has returned to Anatolia and benefitted from him in scientific talks, when he had taken the news about Ali Tusi (d.1482) came to Anatolia. Together with the sources mention about his work called "Ta'lika ala Hashiyet-at-Talwih", they do not address a booklet that He drew up with the aim of criticizing on the booklet about "Walaa", which is belong to Mollah Husraw. We have ascertained the booklet during the library scans that we made by the name of this author. After Basmala, Hamdala and Salwale, Hızır Shah who states that Mollah Husraw wrote a work about Walaa and this work consisted of introduction, purpose, chapters and conclusion, lays stress on Mollah Husraw's opinions and tries to prove its invalidity after he shares the quotations that he takes from reliable sources. After Hızır Shah presents the norm concerned with the past, saying, "If narratives coming from the narrators are appropriate for the hadiths about Walaa and the general procedure, it may be agreed; if not, not agreed", He criticized Mollah Husraw's word "Child is subject to mother at the point of slavery and freedom" and expressed that like this rule is not present at the narratives coming about the clarity of Walaa rule. Hızır Shah, together with warning Mollah Husraw who has weak opinions according to him, saying "Husraw should think and hold on justice", has also shared the same opinions with him in some issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

İn the article named "Social Dimension of the Foundation in İslamic Law" first it was briefly focused on the position, basis and establishment of the foundation in İslamic Law then social dimension and benefits for the society were explained the community aimed to prevent poor and unemployed people from begging by the way of cooperating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds upon previous work on the discourse of legal and illegal slavery in Islamic West Africa and on the issue of illegal enslavement as a major cause of the Sokoto jihad. It argues that the protection of freeborn Muslims was a major policy concern for the Sokoto government but that, due to internal factors, the government could not stop the enslavement of freeborn Muslims nor enforce the legally preferred remedy of free release. The government's acceptance of the ransoming of illegally captive individuals by family and friends is interpreted as a demonstration of the weakness of the Sokoto Caliphate government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Iqbal (d. 1356/1938), when Islam passed through Western and Central Asia, it was influenced by what he calls ajamiyyat i.e. Persianism. Consequently Sufism was heavily influenced by this, losing therefore much of its original character. What are these influences that he is so critical about? Does his critique imply a rejection of Sufism in total? This article aims to address these and similar other questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islam first came to New Zealand with Chinese gold miners in the late nineteenth century. However, it was to be many years before a distinctive Muslim community would emerge with its own forms of organization and purpose-built mosques. This article will review the arrival of Islam and the place of Muslims in New Zealand and discuss the challenges and issues faced by them, as well as considering social responses and perceptions of Islam that have been forged more by external global issues than local factors. Although by no means the full story, it is nevertheless the case that attitudes to the presence of Muslims currently give evidence of a rising diffuse anxiety: Antipodean angst would seem a pervasive feature with respect to the encounter with Islam in this far-flung corner of the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the form of an abridged and annotated version of an affidavit that I wrote in support of Ahmed Zaoui, an Algerian refugee who spent 10 months in solitary confinement in New Zealand. Its central aims are to reflect sociologically on some of the issues that were at stake in this case, within the context of an analysis of Islamic fundamentalism as a specific synthesis of traditionalist and liberal Islam. I observe that fundamentalism is often analysed in terms of a 'failure' to recognize or value the products of modernity and mysticism, even in academic discourses, and that its use is vitiated by a negative evaluation of fundamentalism prior to the point of definition. Furthermore, the understanding of Islamic fundamentalism is central to Western perceptions and fears of Islam, and, specifically, to the allegations of the New Zealand SIS (Security and Intelligence Service) against Zaoui; the case turned around the question of whether or not he was an Islamic fundamentalist. This case therefore shows that the sociological analysis of terms such as Islamic fundamentalism has a real bearing on people's lives, and is not merely a conceptual or theological discussion that occurs within the ivory towers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In countries such as Lebanon, with the historical presence of a variety of large religious communities, particular linguistic expressions may reveal the religious affiliation of the individual using them. This article analyses the opposite phenomenon: the purposeful use of expressions associated with other religious groups in the written discourse of an individual. This case study will explore the novel Buna Anṭun (Father Antun), written in 1937 by the journalist and author Karam Melhem Karam, in which the writer, who was a Maronite, constantly uses expressions associated with Islam. This article suggests that these expressions reflect the well-established multi-religious character of the society and that they are deliberately used as a way to rebel against an imposed sectarian social system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of the late 1880s, focusing particularly on aspects associated with skill, ethnic identity, and social power of its Zanzibar-based porters. An overview of the Expedition and its goals is presented and historical sources about the Expedition are considered. Other subjects include the adaptation of African caravan practices by the Expedition, the use of slaves as opposed to free men as porters and servants by the Expedition, and the self-identification of some porters as Muslim gentlemen.

The author reflects on the prudential concealment in Shi'ite Islam. He mentions the Shi'ite leaders and their followers' employment of the Islam doctrine taqī ya in avoiding confrontation with Sunni majorities and governments. He contends that the main motivation for prudential concealment seems to have been an eagerness in Shi'ite minorities to identify themselves socially with Sunni communities. Moreover, he emphasizes the importance of the doctrine for Islamic public theology.

In late-seventeenth-century Morocco, Mawlay Isma'il commanded his officials to enslave all blacks: that is, to buy coercively or freely those already slaves and to enslave those who were free, including the Haratin (meaning free blacks or freed ex-slaves). This command violated the most salient Islamic legal code regarding the institution of slavery, which states that it is illegal to enslave fellow Muslims. This controversy caused a heated debate and overt hostility between the 'ulama' (Muslim scholars) and Mawlay Isma'il. Official slave registers were created to justify the legality of the enforced buying of slaves from their owners and the enslavement of the Haratin. An equation of blackness and slavery was being developed to justify the subjection of the free Muslim black Moroccans. To prove the slave status of the black Moroccans, the officials in charge of the slavery project established a fictional hierarchy of categories of slaves. This project therefore constructed a slave status for all black people, even those who were free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses topic related to some aspect of cinema and the historical contribution of Muslim film-maker to cinema. The article discusses the misconception about the Islam which provides Western Imperialism with an ideology that facilitates and drives its machinations around the world. It also offers an elaboration of Islamophobia, which is accordingly not a problem of Muslim, but it affects them in particularly in unpleasant ways. The article also addresses the arguments being made in the mainstream media and public sphere in Great Britain by influential liberal and right-wing voices.

The films of two of Senegal's most acclaimed directors, the Marxist Ousmane Sembene and the maverick Djibril Diop Mambety, illustrate a range of possibilities for engagement with Islam within the postcolonial Senegalese context. In Sembene's Ceddo (1976) we see a critique of Islam from a modernist/modernising and African nationalist perspective. Mambety's Touki-Bouki (1973) is imbued with a sceptical but distinctly Senegalese Sufi aesthetic and, despite the director's ambivalence towards religion, the visual style and narrative structure of his films are informed by the values and worldview of the mystical and highly syncretic form of Islam that exists in much of Senegal. The overall aim of the article is to trace the complex representation of Islam in these two directors' work, which reveals the intricate interplay between various forces - religious, social, cultural, political - in Senegal's predominantly Islamic and democratic republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the responses of the Indonesian public sphere in the reform era to Pope Benedict XVI's call for interfaith dialogue in his speech made in Regensburg on 12 September 2006. It explores five op-ed (opinion and editorial) columns published by Indonesian newspapers (Republika, Harian Pikiran Rakyat, The Jakarta Post and Gatra), a piece posted by the online Wahid Institute, and an interview posted online by Eramuslim. Not only do the arguments contained in these pieces offer a glimpse into the 'battle' between opinions in the public realm in Indonesia, but they also portray the relationship between Muslims and Christians in the country. This paper will present the Muslim responses to the Pope's speech and the 'reassertion' of his original message conducted by two Catholic priest-intellectuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses whether the seemingly similar notions of Jesus as 'word' of God and the role of the spirit in relations between Jesus and God might serve as a starting point for dialogue and deeper appreciation between Christianity and Islam. The article briefly reviews the biblical and qur'anic material on these concepts as they have been interpreted in Christian and Islamic theological traditions. This brief review is needed in order to present the Christological reflection among a group of so-called Isa imandars, a syncretistic Christian-Islamic group in Bangladesh, and to evaluate their claim that there is a similarity between Christian and Islamic concepts. The presentation focuses on how they interpret Jesus as 'Word of God' and 'Spirit of God' in the borderland between Islam and Christianity. In conclusion, the article discusses how the clear systematic-theological incompatibility and the simultaneous lived compatibility of Christological titles and descriptions should be evaluated in answering the initial question of whether or not common concepts are helpful for dialogue and understanding between Christianity and Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Islamic era, Muslims were pioneers in preserving intellectual property rights. Nowadays, however, according to Halāl and Harām, Islamic scholars view intellectual property rights differently, depending on the perspective taken during consideration. As a consequence, one may question whether there is any basis for the concept 'intellectual property rights' in Islamic rules, values, or thoughts, and whether violation of such rights would constitute a sin, similar to violation of any other tangible property. This study on intellectual property rights presents diverging opinions encountered in Islam and concludes that issuing a verdict of Harām or Halāl would be unsuitable for the violation of intellectual property rights, which is a secular issue. The concept 'Intellectual Property' existed in Islam centuries ago in the dress of moral rights. While financial rights, on the other hand, are an arguable issue, intellectual property rights shall be protected and affected as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay deals with the influential anthropological work of Prof. Talal Asad on Islam, secularism and the secular. I argue that the binary 'Western-non-Western' which is constitutive for Asad, the relative absence of ethnography in Asad's work, and the state-centred nature of Asad's approach to secularism and the secular has contributed to an anthropological impasse whereby the complex engagement of Muslims living in secular and liberal 'Western' contexts with the secular has become difficult to conceptualize. I argue in favour of the conceptualizations in a nascent body of works which transcend some of these binaries, most notably those of Marsden and Soares and Otayek, and in favour of investigating the secular as a vernacular practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study process some thoughts of Ahmad Amın about to socity Who lived in Egypt, between 1996- 1954. Ahmad Amin was one of the scholars and thinkers who lived in Egypt in the last century. He was born in Cairo on 1 October 1886 and died on 30 May 1954. Having studied in al-Azhar for a while, Ahmad Amin pursued his education in the Law School (Madrasah al-Qadâ' al-Shar'iyye). After the graduation, he taught in the same school for a period of fıfteen years. Quitting his position there, he worked as a judge for 4 years. During his judgeship in the court of Ozbakiyya, he was appointed as a professor in the Faculty of Letters upon the suggestion of Taha Husayn. He also held the deanship of the faculty for a while. Ahmad Amin was selected as the director of Administration of Culture of Arab Union in 1947 and has remained in this post until his death. He also kept membership in Damascus institution of Science, Baghdad Institution of Science and Cairo Linguistic Institutiorı He was awarded honorary doctorate by the Council of the Faculty of Letters and the Council of the University of King Fuad 1 in 1948. Among many published books and articles, the most important works of Ahmad Amin are Fajr al-Islam, Duha' al-Islam and Zuhr al-Islam that all are about the history of lslamic thought. in Fajr al-Islam, the author deals with the history of thought, culture and civilisation from the Jahiliyya period to the end of the Umayyad time. The latter two are the continuation of the fırst book in which he examines the same subjects during the Abbasid period. Due to his ideas concerning lslamic jurisprudence, prophetic tradition, Qur'anic commentary, Islamic faith, Arab literature and Sufizm, he has been criticized, and several works to challenge him have been composed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Messiah figure originates from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. In a linear setting it interprets his person and work politically, spiritually, and apocalyptically. The New Testament applies this Hebrew concept spiritually and apocalyptically to Jesus of Nazareth: he is unrepeatably and irreversibly the Messiah/Christ of both Jews and gentiles. In the Qu'ran Jesus is known as al-Masih, but there this term merely functions as a name. However, the Islam points to the coming of the Mahdi figure at the end of the times, comparable with the Second Coming in Christianity. Therefore, the Messiah/Christ/Mahdi figure, as a unique figure, is at home in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These monotheistic religions place him, each in their own way, in a linear frame. In modern times cultural anthropologists and other scholars in the humanities have extended the use of the terms 'Messiah' and 'Messianism' to figures and phenomena in cyclical contexts. They do not hesitate to speak about 'the Hindu Messiah' and 'Buddhist Messianism'. The present article explores the nature of both the cyclical and linear views of time and history, investigates the birth and growth of Messianism in these specific settings, with special reference to modern developments, and compares the linear concepts of the Messiah and Messianism with the cyclical ones. At the end the article questions whether the cyclical and linear views of the Messiah and Messianism can be harmonized by the use of the spiral as bridge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authenticity of the Kitab al-dīn wa-al-dawla by the Nestorian convert to Islam, Abu al-[image omitted] asan ʿAlī b. Sahl Rabban al-[image omitted] abarī (d. ca. 251/865), has been discussed since the publication of the text by A. Mingana in 1922/23. A comparison between the chapter of the Twelver Shīʿī Sadīd al-Dīn Ma[image omitted] mud b. ʿAlī al-[image omitted] imma[image omitted] ī al-Razī's (d. after 600/1204) Munqidh min al-taqlīd discussing the biblical predictions of the Prophet Mu[image omitted] ammad and the corresponding sections of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Razī's (d. 606/1209) Mafati[image omitted] al-ghayb reveals a substantial degree of verbal and structural agreement. It becomes evident that Fakhr al-Dīn, like al-[image omitted] imma[image omitted] ī, are using material from Ibn Rabban's Al-dīn wa-al-dawla, although they were both relying on an intermediate source, Abu al-[image omitted] usayn al-Ba[image omitted] rī's (d. 436/1045) Kitab ghurar al-adilla. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1298/1881, the Iraqi scholar Nu'mān al-Alūsī published his Jalā' al-'aynayn fī muhākamat al-Ahmadayn, one of the most astute tracts to be written in defense of the fourteenth-century Hanbalī scholar, Ibn Taymiyya. This article attempts to read into the significance of Jalā' al-'aynayn by studying the life and educational environment of its author, the subject matter of the book, the format in which it appeared, and the circumstances of its publishing. There is little doubt that Jalā' al-'aynayn is a founding text in the emergence of modern Salafiyya in major Arab urban centers. Considering the contribution of the Wahhābī movement to the revival of Salafī Islam, one of the aims of this article is to look into the variant expressions of modern Salafiyya. An important aspect of the impact of Nu'mān al-Alūsī's work is related to the way he treated his subject matter, reconstituting the legacy of Ibn Taymiyya in the Muslims' imagination of their traditions. The other, was the publishing of Jalā' al-'aynayn in print. In the following decades, the ecology of Islamic culture would be transformed at a dramatic pace. But two things would not lose their value for the Salafī circles of modern Islam, the referential position of Ibn Taymiyya and the power of the printing-press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: From an international comparative perspective, the stability of autocratic regimes in the countries of the Gulf region is striking. This paper presents historical–cultural as well as economic explanations and proposes that the interaction of both factors constitutes a cultural-economic syndrome accounting for the persistence of authoritarianism. Macro-quantitative analyses demonstrate the significant influence of this syndrome, which operates through a mechanism of mutual reinforcement and substitution. Departing from this diagnosis, potential remedies are discussed: political and economic reform measures pursued in the 1990s are explored, and the Gulf monarchies are classified according to four ideal-typical combinations of reform strategies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the Ottoman source material related to the Janissary Corps and the spread of Islam in the Ottoman Balkans. It examines the Janissaries Islamisation correlation in a broader concept of social conversion introduced by R. W. Bulliet. It explores the historical development of the Janissary Corps from its compulsion to its abolition or gradual abandonment. It also highlights the discovery of peasant Janissaries in two regions of the Ottoman Balkans. It investigates whether the peasant Janissaries were not recruited under the Devsirme levy based on the detailed Ottoman registers from the second half of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century.