Alexander Knysh

Islamic mysticism : a short history

This is a general survey of the rise and development of Islamic mysticism (Sufism) up to the modern period, which takes into account the latest achievements of scholarship on the subject. Sufism is examined from a variety of perspectives: as a vibrant social institution, a specific form of artistic expression, an ascetic and contemplative practice, and a distinctive intellectual tradition. Islamic Mysticism by Knysh is a comprehensive survey of the interesting and fascinating world of Islamic Mysticism.

SUFISM AS AN EXPLANATORY PARADIGM: THE ISSUE OF THE MOTIVATIONS OF SUFI RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS IN WESTERN AND RUSSIAN SCHOLARSHIP

Over the past four decades Western experts on the Middle East and Islam have spilled much ink in accounting for the political role of those Islamic “revivalist,” “resistance” and “opposition” movements of the 18th and 19th centuries that seemed to derive their vitality from “reformed” Sufi ideologies and institutions.1 According to many Western scholars, these ideologies and institutions arose in response to the new political and economic realities of the modern epoch that was characterized, first and foremost, by the growing ascendancy of Europe and the perceived decline of the Muslim world.2 Many

Islam and Arabic as the Rhetoric of Insurgency: The Case of the Caucasus Emirate

Interpretations and uses of Islam are legion today. Some call for improving or preserving the morals and dignity of a certain local Muslim community or of the global Muslim community (umma) in its entirety. Others are eager to demonstrate that Islam is fully compatible and, in fact, conducive to modernity, democratic governance, and technological advancement of humankind. Still others posit Islam as a powerful means of liberation from occupation and domination/exploitation of Muslims around the world by non-Muslim powers. 1 This article addresses one concrete example of how some Muslim insurgents of the Northern Caucasus use Islam to unite the diverse and occasionally mutually hostile ethnic groups of the area in the face of Russian domination with the goal of establishing an independent Islamic state based on the Muslim Divine Law (Sharia). After providing a general overview of the history and ideology of this Islamic/Islamist movement, the article focuses on the ways in which its leadership uses the Internet to disseminate its understanding of Islam and to rally young Muslims round the idea of the trans-ethnic Sharia state that they promise to institute after defeating and expelling “the Russian occupiers” and their local backers. Special attention will be given to the role of Islamic concepts and taxonomies as well as the Arabic language in framing the political grammar of the insurgency movement known as “The Caucasus Emirate.” 2

Arabic manuscript author verification using deep convolutional networks

In this paper, we propose an automatic method for manuscript author verification based on an analysis of consecutive patches extracted from an image. The classification algorithm uses a deep convolutional network with two types of patch extraction: one based on connected components and the other based on usage of a fixed-size sliding window. We apply this method to verify the authorship of the Arabic manuscript entitled al-Khitat attributed to the hand of the renowned medieval Arab historian al-Maqrizi. Using appropriately collected ground-truth labeled data for convolutional network training purpose, our method has demonstrated promising results when applied to previously unseen manuscripts.