Tarif Khalidi

The premise of the conference was to exploit the immense riches of Arabic poetry in the reconstruction of Arab history. The history considered includes both 'event history' and the history of culture in its widest sense. Poetry included in this examination includes "the value of poetry for historical writing...[and also] the historical relationship between the two autonomous fields, i.e., poetry and history." -- Introduction.

This book, a milestone of Islamic scholarship, calls attention to those aspects of Arab Islamic culture that excite modern controversy. Professor Khalidi examines the classical period, when the basic cultural patterns of Islamic civilization were established, the various branches of religious and nonreligious scholarship defined, and the religious life-styles had become embedded in the subconscious of an ancient society. The topics covered are: The Foundations God and His Community Islamic Paideia Attitudes Towards the past The Mystic Quest The Place of Reason The World of Nature The Governance of the Umma Ibn Khaldun--The Great Synthesist Past and Present in Contemporary Arabic Thought.

From one of today's leading Muslim scholars, this compelling look at how the Prophet Muhammad has been portrayed throughout the centuries offers a fascinating history of the diversity of Islamic cultures and beliefs.The Prophet Muhammad has been revered for more than fifteen centuries. Today, one in five people throughout the world calls for daily praises and blessings upon him and holds him up as a model of virtue. In IMAGES OF MUHAMMAD, Tarif Khalidi examines the ways Muhammad has been depicted and revered from the immediate aftermath of his death to the present day. With scholarly authority, Khalidi explores how the "biography" of Muhammad has been constructed, reconstructed, and utilized in various Islamic cultures, and traces the influences that have shaped his image, including the profound effect of negative perceptions promulgated by the West. As he describes the great variety of Islamic beliefs and practices, Khalidi illuminates the values and ideas shared by the Sunni, Shia, and Sufi sects, as well as the differences among them, providing Western readers with a clear, objective perspective on the current conflicts within the Muslim world as well as their global repercussions.From the Hardcover edition.

Thinking and writing about the past has always been of critical importance to the way that any culture or civilization views itself and its role in the world. In a work which surveys an entire tradition of historical thought and writing across a span of eight hundred years, Tarif Khalidi examines how Arabic-Islamic culture of the pre-modern period viewed the past, how it recorded it, and how it sought to answer the many complex questions associated with the discipline of history. The author combines a chronological with a topical approach to place the tradition within its wider intellectual context and socio-political environment, while quotations from historians across the period introduce the English-speaking reader to some of the principal intellectual texts of Arabic Islamic culture.

"This work presents in English translation the sayings and stories of Jesus in Arabic Islamic literature. In doing so, it traces a tradition of love and reverence for Jesus that has characterized Islamic though for more than a thousand years. A resource for the history of religions, the collection documents how one culture, that of Islam, assimilated the towering religious figure of another, that of Christianity.". "Tarif Khalidi's introduction and commentaries place the sayings and stories in their historical context, showing how and why this "gospel" arose and the function it served within Muslim devotion. The Jesus that emerges here is a compelling figure of deep and life-giving spirituality. The sayings and stories, some 300 in number and arranged in chronological order, show us how the image of this Jesus evolved throughout a millennium of Islamic history."--BOOK JACKET.