The Pre-Islamic Middle East

The Pre-Islamic Middle East PDF Author: Martin Sicker
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Examines the political history of the Middle East from antiquity to the Arab conquest.

The Pre-Islamic Middle East

The Pre-Islamic Middle East PDF Author: Martin Sicker
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines the political history of the Middle East from antiquity to the Arab conquest.

Arabia and the Arabs

Arabia and the Arabs PDF Author: Robert G. Hoyland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134646348
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Long before Muhammed preached the religion of Islam, the inhabitants of his native Arabia had played an important role in world history as both merchants and warriors Arabia and the Arabs provides the only up-to-date, one-volume survey of the region and its peoples, from prehistory to the coming of Islam Using a wide range of sources - inscriptions, poetry, histories, and archaeological evidence - Robert Hoyland explores the main cultural areas of Arabia, from ancient Sheba in the south, to the deserts and oases of the north. He then examines the major themes of *the economy *society *religion *art, architecture and artefacts *language and literature *Arabhood and Arabisation The volume is illustrated with more than 50 photographs, drawings and maps.

The Pre-Islamic Middle East

The Pre-Islamic Middle East PDF Author: Martin Sicker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313000832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Sicker explores the political history of the Middle East from antiquity to the Arab conquest from a geopolitical perspective. He argues that there are a number of relatively constant environmental factors that have helped condition-not determine-the course of Middle Eastern political history from ancient times to the present. These factors, primarily, but not exclusively geography and topography, contributed heavily to establishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Middle East that have remained remarkably consistent throughout the troubled history of the region. In addition to geography and topography, the implications of which are explored in depth, religion has also played a major political role in conditioning the pattern of Middle Eastern history. The Greeks first introduced the politicization of religious belief into the region in the form of pan-Hellenism, which essentially sought to impose Greek forms of popular religion and culture on the indigenous peoples of the region as a means of solidifying Greek political control. This ultimately led to religious persecution as a state policy. Subsequently, the Persian Sassanid Empire adopted Zoroastrianism as the state religion for the same purpose and with the same result. Later, when Armenia adopted Christianity as the state religion, followed soon after by the Roman Empire, religion and the intolerance it tended to breed became fundamental ingredients, in regional politics and have remained such ever since. Sicker shows that the political history of the pre-Islamic Middle East provides ample evidence that the geopolitical and religious factors conditioning political decision-making tended to promote military solutions to political problems, making conflict resolution through war the norm, with the peaceful settlement of disputes quite rare. A sweeping synthesis that will be of considerable interest to scholars, students, and others concerned with Middle East history and politics as well as international relations and ancient history.

Arabs and Empires Before Islam

Arabs and Empires Before Islam PDF Author: Greg Fisher
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199654522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
Arabs and Empires before Islam collates nearly 250 translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources which, from a variety of different perspectives, illuminate the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam.

Literacy and Identity in Pre-Islamic Arabia

Literacy and Identity in Pre-Islamic Arabia PDF Author: M.C.A. Macdonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000585107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
In these studies Michael Macdonald examines the extraordinary flowering of literacy in both the settled and nomadic populations of western Arabia in the 1500 years before the birth of Islam, when a larger proportion of the population could read and write than in any other part of the ancient Near East, and possibly any other part of the ancient world. Even among the nomads there seems to have been almost universal literacy in some regions. The scores of thousands of inscriptions and graffiti they left paint a vivid picture of the way-of-life, social systems, and personal emotions of their authors, information which is not available for any other non-élite population in the ancient Near East outside Egypt. This abundance of inscriptions has enabled Michael Macdonald to explore in detail some of the - often surprising - ways in which reading and writing were used in the literate and non-literate communities of ancient Arabia. He describes the many different languages and the distinct family of alphabets used in ancient Arabia, and discusses the connections between the use of particular languages or scripts and expressions of personal and communal identity. The problem of how ancient perceptions of ethnicity in this region can be identified in the sources is another theme of these papers; more specifically, they deal from several different perspectives with the question of what ancient writers meant when they applied the term 'Arab' to a wide variety of peoples throughout the ancient Near East.

Arabia and the Arabs

Arabia and the Arabs PDF Author: Robert G. Hoyland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134646356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Using a wide range of sources – inscriptions, poetry, histories, and archaeological evidence – Robert G. Hoyland explores the main cultural areas of Arabia, from ancient Sheba in the South, to the deserts and oases of the north.

Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia

Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia PDF Author: Michael Lecker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Most of the articles in this volume belong to what can be described as the preparatory work which is prerequisite to the study of pre- and early Islamic history. Lecker's interests include tribal Arabia (including tribes in the Yemen and Hadramawt), the history of the Arabian Jews, the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, and early Islamic literature in general. While the studies are based on a wide range of sources, they often focus on illuminating small accounts which are analyzed and placed in their historical context. The comprehensive index renders the articles easily accessible.

Arabs and Empires before Islam

Arabs and Empires before Islam PDF Author: Greg Fisher
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191056995
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
Arabs and Empires before Islam illuminates the history of the Arabs before the emergence of Islam, collating nearly 250 translated extracts from an extensive array of ancient sources. Drawn from a broad period between the eighth century BC and the Middle Ages, the sources include texts originally written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, inscriptions in a variety of languages and alphabets, and discussions of archaeological sites from across the Near East. More than twenty international experts from the fields of archaeology, classics and ancient history, linguistics and philology, epigraphy, and art history provide detailed commentary on and analysis of this diverse selection of material. Richly illustrated with sixteen colour plates, fifteen maps, and over seventy in-text images, the volume provides a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date examination of what ancient sources had to say about the politics, culture, and religion of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period. It offers a full consideration of the traces which the Arabs have left in the epigraphic, literary, and archaeological records, and sheds light on their relationship with their often more-powerful neighbours: the states and empires of the ancient Near East. Arabs and Empires before Islam gathers together a host of material never before collected into a single volume - some of which appears in English translation for the very first time - and provides a single point of reference for a vibrant and dynamic area of research.

The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia

The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia PDF Author: Ahmad Al-Jallad
Publisher: Ancient Languages and Civiliza
ISBN: 9789004504264
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
1. Introduction -- 2. Rites -- 3. Divinities and Their Roles in the Lives of Humans -- 4. Fate -- 5. Afterlife -- 6. Visual Representation of Deities and the Divine World -- 7. Amplification and Why Write -- 8. Worldview: A Reconstruction -- Appendix 1: Glossary of Divinities -- Appendix 2: Previously Unpublished Inscriptions -- Bibliography -- Index.

The Qurʾān in Context

The Qurʾān in Context PDF Author: Angelika Neuwirth
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047430328
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 872

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Book Description
Although recent scholarship has increasingly situated the Qur'ān in the historical context of Late Antiquity, such a perspective is only rarely accompanied by the kind of microstructural literary analysis routinely applied to the Bible. The present volume seeks to redress this lack of contact between literary and historical studies. Contributions to the first part of the volume address various general aspects of the Qur’an’s political, economic, linguistic, and cultural context, while the second part contains a number of close readings of specific Qur’ānic passages in the light of Judeo-Christian tradition and ancient Arabic poetry, as well as discussions of the Qur’ān’s internal chronology and transmission history. Throughout, special emphasis is given to methodological questions.