Islamic Research Papers

The views in these research papers May not be My views or We only agree with them in part;

Turban And Crown: An Essay In Islamic Civilization

In this essay I draw together material from textual and visual sources bearing on the significance of headgear — the turban in particular — from early Islamic times up to and including the Ottoman period, with one or two sallies into the present. First, I survey the significance of crown and turban in early Islam, drawing mainly on textual materials and bringing in visual materials as these become abundant in the thirteenth and following centuries. Second, I develop the idea that, since the presence of headgear — predominantly the turban as the token of male dignity — is the norm in Islamic painting, its absence always cries out for an explanation. The survey of bareheadedness resolves itself into twenty-two categories, which are illustrated here. Third, I focus on the Ottomans, where a wealth of iconographic materials is juxtaposed to rich textual sources. With regard to headgear, as in many other respects, the Ottomans may be considered the culmination of trends that can be traced back to the beginnings of Islamic civilization.

The Ottomans and the Mamluks through the Eyes of Arab Travelers (in16th–17th Centuries)

Traveling across boundaries was not unfamiliar to inhabitants of either side of the lines that separated Mamluk Bilad al-Sham from Anatolia.1 At the White Bridge (Ak-Köprü), they crossed the Ceyhan/Pyramos River, which served as the border of the Mamluk Sultanate (jarakisa; Çerkezler). Yet, prior to the Ottoman conquest the traffic over the Ceyhan River was mainly southwards to the religious and cultural centers of the pre-modern Abode of Islam. Muslims from Anatolia (al-Ru¯m) traversed Bilad al-Sham on their way to fulfill the duty of the hajj, or stayed in al-Sham visiting Jerusalem and other holy shrines.

The Importance of Sufism in Chinese Islam

Cemalnur Sargut Hocam asked us to say something about the significance of the Kenan Rifai Chair of Islamic Studies at Peking University, which we inaugurated in the Spring of 2012. As many of you know, the Kenan Rifai Chair is housed in Te Institute of Advanced Humanistic Studies. Te Institute was founded by Professor Tu Weiming in 2010, shortly after he retired after thirty years at Harvard. During our time in China we taught one course at Peking University, another at Minzu University, and we participated in several conferences and workshops. We met many of the foremost Chinese scholars of Islam and we had a number of talented students. From the outset it was our understanding that the first task of the Kenan Rifai Chair would be to help Chinese Muslims re-establish links with their own intellectual tradition. It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that the twentieth century was disastrous for Islam in China. Muslims had lived in China for fifteen hundred years and had founded flourishing communities in many parts of the country. Today there are at least thirty million Chinese Muslims. Many belong to ethnic minorities, but many more are indistinguishable from non-Muslim Chinese. After the communist revolution of 1949, all forms of religion and tradition were treated as the enemy, in practice if not in theory. Islam was singled out for special persecution, not least because it had always been considered a foreign import. Still today many Muslims hide their Islamic identity because of the prejudice against them. One of the results of persecution was that a generation of scholars was lost and the intellectual links with the past were broken.

A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of Al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun (1310-1341)

A Turning Point in Mamluk History deals with the process of decline of the Mamluk state (1250-1517). Its main thesis is that the origins of this process are to be found in the third reign of al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun, more specifically in the changes he effected in the Mamluk system. The Mamluk army was the first to be confronted with these changes, whose impact on the social and political life of the Mamluk elite was already felt during al-Nasir’s own lifetime. The author follows their course of development to the end of autonomous Mamluk rule and reveals the transformation they wrought in the Mamluk code of values and political concepts. A final chapter deals with the overall economic decline of the Mamluk state and establishes the link of its various causes – demographic decline, monetary crises, the collapse of agriculture and industry – with Mamluk government misrule. Here it is al-Nasir’s expenditure policy and its repercussions on the economy which reveal his reign as a point of no return.