The Islamic Scholarly Tradition ─ Studies in History, Law, and Thought in Honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook

Students of the influential historian Michael Cook (Near Eastern studies, Princeton U.), many of them now senior scholars, are the contributors to this collection of 14 essays. Reflecting Cook's main areas of scholarship, the essays consider events, texts, and historiography of early Islamic history; Ottoman history; and legal and religious texts and doctrines in the early modern Islamic world. A sampling of topics includes Maghribi fatwas as evidence of the legal status of science, the rhetoric behind historical accounts, the duties and architectural patronage of the first chief harem eunuch in 16th-century Istanbul, and the rhetoric and lessons behind the adaptation of the so-called battle of the ditch of Cordoban caliph Abd al-Rahman III. The volume includes a full bibliography and thoughtful assessment of Cook's scholarship, by R. Stephen Humphreys (U. of California, Santa Barbara), and an introduction by Michael Bonner (U. of Michigan). Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Asad Q. Ahmed, Ph.D., Princeton (2007), is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He has published on early Islamic social history and Islamic intellectual history, including the forthcoming The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic ?ijaz (P&G, University of Oxford, 2010) and The Deliverance: Logic (Oxford University Press, 2011). His awards include fellowships and grants from the National Humanities Center, the NEH, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Mellon Sawyer Seminars, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.Behnam Sadeghi, Ph.D., Princeton (2006), is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is the author of “The Chronology of the Qur’an: A Stylometric Research Program,” Arabica; “The Traveling Tradition Test: A Method for Dating Muslim Traditions,” Der Islam, 85/1 (2010): 203-242; “The Codex of a Companion and the Qur’an of the Prophet,” Arabica, 57/4-5 (2010); ““The Authenticity of Two 2nd/8th-Century Legal Texts: the Kitab al-Athar and al-Muwa??a’ of Mu?ammad b. al-?asan al-Shaybani,” Islamic Law and Society, 17/3 (November 2010); and Women and Prayer in the Islamic Legal Tradition: The Logic of Law Making (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).Michael Bonner, Ph.D., Princeton (1987), is Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. His recent publications include Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practices (Princeton University Press, 2006), and Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts, co-edited with Amy Singer and Mine Ener (SUNY Press, 2003). He was Director of the University of Michigan Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies in 1997-2000 and 2001-2003, and Acting Chair of theDepartment of Near Eastern Studies in 2007-08.Contributors include: Asad Q. Ahmed, Karen Bauer, Michael Bonner, Maribel Fierro, Najam Haider, Leor Halevi, Jane Hathaway, R. Stephen Humphreys, Nimrod Hurvitz, Nancy Khalek, Adam Sabra, Petra Sijpesteijn, Justin Stearns, Samer Traboulsi, Nurit Tsafrir