His articles on classical and modern Arabic literature have appeared in Spanish, English, Arabic, and Ukrainian.ContentsIntroduction: Reclaiming Arabian MythThe Textual PuzzleThe Thamudic Backdrop to the PuzzleThe First Answer to the Puzzle: The Raid on TabukThe Totem and the TabooPoeticizing the ThamudDemythologizing the ThamudThe ScreamThe Arabian Golden Bough and Kindred Branches: Frazer, Vergil, Homer, and GilgameshConclusion

The book dissects the intriguing Arab-Islamic myth built around Muhammad's unearthing of a "golden bough" from the grave of the last survivor of an ancient Arab people, the Thamud, who, according to the myth, were destroyed by a divine scourge for their iniquity. In the myth the episode of the slaying of the she-camel of the prophet Salih, which precipitates the downfall of the Thamud, is symbolically linked with Muhammad, the discoverer of the golden bough.

Introduction -- Part I: Late Antique Fantasies: 1. Qur'ānic Others -- 2. Producing Islam through the Production of Religious Others -- 3. Past Perfect: Opening the Jāhiliyya's Complex Present -- Part II: Subsequent Constructions: 4. Good Jew, Bad Jew -- 5. Making Christians -- 6. Shīʻa: The Other Within -- 7. The Amorphous Zindīq -- Conclusions -- Bibliography.

This volume, dedicated to Jaroslav Stetkevych, includes a number of original contributions that signify a rhetorical shift in the social sciences and Arabic studies. The articles and essays deal with Orientalism, classical Arabic tradition, Andalusian poetry, Francophone literature, translation, architecture and poetry, comparative studies, and Sufism. Literary production is studied in its own terms to situate these literary concerns in the mainstream of cultural studies. The outcome is a solid and highly sophisticated scholarship that makes this book one of the most needed among scholars and students of comparative literature, Arabic poetics and politics, Orientalism, Afro-Asian studies, East/West encounters and translation.

Uses textual analysis and various types of material evidence to gain insight into the role of animal sacrifice in Islam.

How did Islam come to be considered a Christian heresy? In this book, Peter Schadler outlines the intellectual background of the Christian Near East that led John, a Christian serving in the court of the caliph in Damascus, to categorize Islam as a heresy. Schadler shows that different uses of the term heresy persisted among Christians, and then demonstrates that John’s assessment of the beliefs and practices of Muslims has been mistakenly dismissed on assumptions he was highly biased. The practices and beliefs John ascribes to Islam have analogues in the Islamic tradition, proving that John may well represent an accurate picture of Islam as he knew it in the seventh and eighth centuries in Syria and Palestine.

This volume studies how the literary elements in the Qur'an function in conveying its religious message effectively. It is divided into three parts. Part one includes studies of the whole Qur'an or large segments of it belonging to one historical period of its revelation; these studies concentrate on the analysis of its language, its style, its structural composition, its aesthetic characteristics, its rhetorical devices, its imagery, and the impact of these elements and their significance. Part two includes studies on individual suras of the Qur'an, each of which focuses on the sura's literary elements and how they produce meaning; each also explores the structure of this meaning and the coherence of its effect. Part three includes studies on Muslim appreciations of the literary aspects of the Qur'an in past generations and shows how modern linguistic, semantic, semiotic, and literary scholarship can add to their contributions.

This book explores how the figure of the Prophet Muhammad was misrepresented in English and wider Christian culture between 1480 and 1735. By tracing the ways in which 'Mahomet' was written and rewritten, contested and celebrated, this study explores notions of identity and religion, and the resonances of this history today.

A collection of essays by some of the most accomplished scholars in the field exploring the life and legacy of the Prophet.