Ira M. Lapidus

The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society

Islamic studies progress. In recent years a great deal of work has been done on the Umayyad period, on the early history of Sh i‘ism, and on the origins of the Muslim schools of law. A broader current of research has yielded numerous studies of the ‘ ulamâ’ and their place in Muslim religious and communal life. New historical information and new points of view are gradually modifying received perspectives on Muslim religious movements and on the nature of Muslim religious elites.

The Golden Age: The Political Concepts of Islam:

The present role of Islam in Middle Eastern politics is not a continuation but a reconstruction of the historical paradigms. In the premodern era, there were two Islamic paradigms. One was of an integral state and society unified under the political and moral leadership of a charismatic religious teacher; the other, of a society divided between state and religious institutions and differentiated political and religious elites, the latter being the custodians of the true Islam. The second tradition made room for purely secular monarchical concepts and a secular political culture. In the modern era, the historical Islamic paradigms have little influence on state formation. Even the avowedly Islamic states do not really hark back to the past but represent, for the most part, contemporary national states appealing to a new concept of national-state Islam.

Between universalism and particularism: the historical bases of Muslim communal, national, and global identities

In recent decades there has been an extraordinary flourishing of transnational and global Islamic movements. Most of these are religious reform and missionary movements; some are political networks working to form Islamic states. Yet on closer examination we find that universalistic Islamic movements are almost always embedded in national state and parochial settings. Muslim, and national, ethnic, tribal and local identities blend together. This blending of universalistic and particularistic affiliations has deep-rooted precedents in Islamic history. The original Muslim community of Medina represented a monotheistic vision encadred in a community of clans. The universal empire of the Caliphate gave rise to schools, brotherhoods, and sectarian communities. Sufi reform teachings of the late seventeenth to the twentieth century defined Islamo-tribal movements. In the twentieth century universalistic Islamic reformism inspired nationalism and anti-colonialism. The paper concludes with some comments on the mechanisms by which historical and cultural precedents are carried into modern times.

The Evolution of Muslim Urban

Islamic society is ever intriguing. Across broad territories and over millenia of time, it maintains a constant identity; yet it is always elusive, varied, and changing. The study of Islamic urbanism, like so many Islamic topics, oscillates between attempts to define what is fundamental and universal in Islamic city life, and what is ineffably individual about each locality; the contradictory perspectives seem equally valid. While topography, culture, and history have given each locality a unique identity, by the middle ages, Middle Eastern towns between the Nile and the Jaxartes—the core area of Islamic society—shared common features of social organization. Small communities, such as families, neighborhood quarters, and fraternities were the fundamental units of society. Town populations were gathered into loosely organized religious bodies, such as schools of law, Shirite sects, and Sufi brotherhoods, who were dominated by ethnically alien elites organized into slave armies and slave-maintained governments, and who garrisoned and extracted revenues from the towns while remaining separate from local community life. Characteristically, then, Middle Eastern Muslim cities operated on three levels-parochial groups, religious communities, and imperial regimes. Organized urban life depended on the relationships between person and groups within this three-tiered institutional pattern.

Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society

The Description for this book, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, will be forthcoming.

Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages.

1. A history of cities in the Mamluk empire 2. The Mamluck regime in the life of the cities 3. The urban society 4. The political system: the Mamluck state and the urban notables 5. The political system: the common people between violence and impotence.

ReviewMichael Mitterauer,Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of its Special Path., trans., Gerald Chapple. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Pp. xxiv, 406.

one chapter could take days to digest, to weigh the translations, to test Mengozzi’s interpretations. (Even so, Mengozzi still needs to refer readers to his articles for aspects of his ideas.) His argument, which no doubt some will regard as heretical, truly needs the booklength treatment that he provides. It is the very weight of the evidence that makes the case compelling and helps to challenge beliefs too readily accepted and too little examined.

49. ISBN: 9780226532530.

Under the enlightened rule of the Buyid dynasty (945-1055 AD), the Islamic world witnessed an unequalled cultural renaissance. The main expression of this renaissance was a philosophical humanism that embraced the scientific and philosophical heritage of Classical Antiquity as a cultural and educational ideal. Along with this philosophical humanism, a literary humanism was cultivated by litterateurs, poets and government secretaries. This renaissance was marked by a powerful assertion of individualism in the domains of literary creativity and political action. It thrived in a remarkably cosmopolitan atmosphere. Baghdad, the centre of the Abbasid Empire and of Buyid rule, was the rendezvous for scholars from far and wide, of diverse cultural backgrounds. Philosophers belonged to a class of their own, transcending particular loyalties, united by the pursuit of the truth and the love of reason. This work is an investigation into the nature of the environment in which the cultural transformation took place and into the cultural elite who were its bearers. After an extensive introductory section setting the stage, it deals with the main schools and circles and with the outstanding individual representatives of this renaissance.

Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age

Preface A note on conventions Part I. Introduction: 1. Historiographical introduction 2. The nature of the Arab conquest Part II. The Evolution of the Conquest Society: 3. The Sufyanid pattern, 661-84 [41-64] 4. Syria of 684 [64] 5. The Marwanid evolution, 684-744 [64-126] 6. The Marwanid faction 7. Syria of 744 [126] 8. Umayyad clientage Part III. The Failure of the Islamic Empire: 9. The abortive service aristocracy 10. The emergence of the slave soldiers 11. The emergence of the medieval polity Appendices Notes Bibliography General index Prosopographical index.