Light upon Light: Essays in Islamic Thought and History in Honor of Gerhard Bowering brings together studies that explore the richness of Islamic intellectual life in the pre-modern period. Leading scholars around the world present nineteen studies that explore diverse areas of Islamic Studies, in honor of a renowned scholar and teacher: Professor Dr. Gerhard Bowering (Yale University). The volume includes contributions in four main areas: (1) Quran and Early Islam; (2) Sufism, Shiʿism, and Esotericism; (3) Philosophy; (4) Literature and Culture. These areas reflect the enormous breadth of Professor Bowering’s contributions to the field over a lifetime of scholarship, teaching, and mentoring. Contributors: Hussein Ali Abdulsater, Mushegh Asatryan, Shahzad Bashir, Jonathan Brockopp, Yousef Casewit, Jamal Elias, Janis Esots, Li Guo, Matthew Ingalls, Tariq Jaffer, Mareike Koertner, Joseph Lumbard, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Mahan Mirza, Bilal Orfali, Gabriel Reynolds, Nada Saab, Amina Steinfels & Alexander Treiger.

The Studies in the History and Culture of the Islamic Orient (STIO) is the series of “Supplements” to the journal Der Islam. Both are published by the Section for the History and Culture of the Near East in the Asian-African Institute of the University of Hamburg. The Section was established in 1908, before the foundation of the University of Hamburg. Under its first Director, C.H. Becker, it was the first academic centre in Germany in which teaching and research concentrated on the historical and cultural aspects of the Islamic world, and not just on philological issues. Many of Germany’s leading authorities in Islamic Studies have studied and/or taught here. The “Supplements” have maintained the same high quality and met the same high demands as the journal Der Islam and have published numerous studies on the history and culture of the Islamic world which have represented milestones in their relevant fields. The “New Series” of Supplements appearing since 2004 carries this tradition forward and provides a platform for publishing studies on the history and culture of the Islamic world from the beginnings of Islam up to the present day.

In Revelation in the Qur’an Simon P. Loynes presents a semantic study of the Arabic roots n-z-l and w-ḥ-y, which sheds new light on the modalities of revelation in the Qur’an.

A study of the writings of Ibn Barrajān, an influential pioneer of intellectual mysticism in the Muslim West.

The Next Thing: Art in the Twenty-first Century is an illustrated collection of commissioned essays that attempt to anticipate, through current artistic productions, the aesthetic sensibility that will define our times.

The Safavid World brings together thirty chapters on many aspects of the complex Safavid state, 1501–1722. With the latest insights and arguments, some offer overviews of the period or topic at hand, and others present new interpretations of old questions based on newly found sources. In addition to political history and religious life, the chapters in this volume cover economic conditions, commercial links and activities, social relations, and artistic expressions. They do so in ways that stretch both the temporal and geographical perimeters of the subject, and contributors also examine Safavid Iran with an eye to both its Mongol and Timurid antecedents and its long afterlife following the fall of the dynasty. Unlike traditional scholarship which tended to view the country as unique, sui generis, and barely affected by the outside world, The Safavid World situates Iran in a wider, regional or global context. Examining the Safavids from their foundations in the fourteenth century to their relations with the rest of the world in the eighteenth century, this study is essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of the Safavid world and the history and culture of Iran and the Middle East.

Focusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic intellectual tradition – this book embarks on a study of doubt (shakk) and certainty (yaqīn) in his epistemology. The book looks at Ghazālī’s attitude to philosophical demonstration and Sufism as a means to certainty. In early scholarship surrounding Ghazālī, he has often been blamed as the one who single-handedly offered the death-blow to philosophy in the Muslim world. In much of contemporary scholarship, Ghazālī is understood to prefer philosophy as the ultimate means to certainty, granting Sufism a secondary status. Hence, much of previous scholarship has either focused on Ghazālī as a Sufi or as a philosopher; this book takes a parallel approach, and acknowledges each discipline in its right place. It analyses Ghazālī’s approach to acquiring certainty, his methodological scepticism, his foundationalism, his attitude to authoritative instruction (taʿlim), and the place of philosophical demonstration and Sufism in his epistemology. Offering a systematic and comprehensive approach to Ghazālī’s epistemology, this book is a valuable resource for scholars of Islamic philosophy and Sufism in particular, and for educated readers of Islamic studies in general.

Doing Justice to a Wronged Literature, a Festschrift for the Arabist and Islamicist Thomas Bauer, includes 17 essays by established academics on various themes and aspects of Arabic literature and rhetoric of the Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods (12th-18th centuries).