Washington Irving and Islam contributes to understanding the relationship between the United States and the Islamic world, valuable not only for studies of Washington Irving, American Literature, or Islam, but also for thinking through the role Islam and the “Orient” have played in American literature and history, a critical field receiving ever-increasing attention. The global context of Irving’s work ties these essays together as does an understanding that his writings challenge easy classification of the Muslim other, and, indeed, challenge easy classification of Irving’s own responses to that other. Washington Irving bestrides opposing positions as well as distant worlds.

Uncovering Islam's formative impact on U.S. literary origins, this book traces the influence of Arabic and Persian literature in America, from the Revolution beginnings to Reconstruction. Focusing on informal engagements and intimate exchanges, Jeffrey Einboden excavates fresh witnesses to early American engagement with the Muslim world.

In his quest for the historical Muhammad, Zeitlin's chief aim is to catch glimpses of the birth of Islam and the role played by its extraordinary founder. Islam, as its Prophet came to conceive it, was a strict and absolute monotheism. How Muhammad had arrived at this view is not a problem for Muslims, who believe that the Prophet received a revelation from Allah or God, mediated by the Angel Gabriel. For scholars, however, interested in placing Muhammad in the historical context of the seventh-century Arabian Peninsula, the source of the Prophets inspiration is a significant question. It is apparent that the two earlier monotheisms, Judaism and Christianity, constituted an influential presence in the Hijaz, the region comprising Mecca and Medina. Indeed, Jewish communities were salient here, especially in Medina and other not-too-distant oases. Moreover, in addition to the presence of Jews and Christians, there existed a third category of individuals, the Hanifs, who, dissatisfied with their polytheistic beliefs, had developed monotheistic ideas. Zeitlin assesses the extent to which these various influences shaped the emergence of Islam and the development of the Prophets beliefs. He also seeks to understand how the process set in motion by Muhammad led, not long after his death, to the establishment of a world empire.

A man who sleeps for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains wakes to a much-changed world.

A monograph that discusses the impact of Washington Irving's presence in Spain and the effect of his writings on Spanish topics by Spain's critics and general readership. It locates Irving's literary and historical researches in the chaotic post-Napoleonic Spain of Ferdinand V11 and discusses the earliest Iberian reaction to Irving's books.

This pamphlet is the 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, delivered at the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., on March 7, 2007. The 2007 Kristol Award was presented to Bernard Lewis, the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University, and long the free world's preeminent student and interpreter of Islam, the Ottoman Empire, and the modern Middle East. The Irving Kristol Award, named for the eminent author and intellectual and longtime AEI senior fellow, is the Institute's highest honor, bestowed annually by its Council of Academic Advisers.