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Kamila Shamsie, author of Broken Verses, is interviewed by Helen Brown for The Telegraph in April 2005. She speaks about her novels and about the some of the characters and other aspects of Broken Verses.

Hisham Matar, author of In the Country of Men, was interviewed in 2007 by Nouri Gana of the University of California, Los Angeles about his childhood, contemporary literature, and his first novel. The interview is posted on Words Without Borders, a…

As Anthony Shadid (1968-2012) was renovating and restoring his ancestral home in Marjayoun, Lebanon, he arranged to record the construction and his reflections on the process. Ten videos were filmed by Katia Jarjoura and produced by Houghton Mifflin…

Anthony Shadid, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of House of Stone, was born September 26, 1968, in Oklahoma City, and died February 16, 2012 in Damascus, Syria of an asthma attack while covering events in Syria. The interview with his…

The Cairo Genizah, mostly discovered late in the nineteenth century but still resurfacing in our own day, is a collection of over 200,000 fragmentary Jewish texts (which may well equal three times that number of folios). Many of these were stored in…

Gordon Stewart’s When Asia Was the World includes accounts of various travelers on land and sea. Among the travelers mentioned in the book, Xuanzang, Ibn Fadlan, Abraham bin Yiju, Ibn Battuta, Ma Huan, and Tomé Pires all traversed Indian…

Of the region of Sous. Now comes the region of Sus to be considered of, being situated beyond [the] Atlas, over against the territorie of Hea, that is to say, in the extreme part of Africa. Westward it beginneth from the Ocean sea, and southward from…

Muslim writers argue that the international and diplomatic realms are incorporated in the very comprehensiveness of Islam, and analogues to the concepts of international relations exist in Islamic history. The Prophet's compacts with the Medinans…

In 1550, a remarkable book about Africa, La Descrittione dell’Africa, came off the Giunta press in Venice, as the first volume of Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s celebrated series of Voyages. It had been written by an African, Ramusio assured…

According to the Qur'an, a mosque is God's “sacred house,” a setting for Muslims to perform rituals, and a “meeting place for the people.” The term mosque derives from the Arab word masjid, meaning a “place for (ritual)…

Calling themselves Osmanlis, after tribal chieftain Osman I, the Ottomans were Turks from Central Asia. They created a vast empire that encompassed southeastern Europe to northern Hungary, the Middle East to Iran, and most of the North African coast.…

The Five Pillars of Islam (arkan al-Islam), which are presented systematically for the first time in the Hadith of Gabriel, are relatively simple to carry out and can easily be learned by the person who wishes to convert to Islam. The first pillar of…

The Arabic term sunnah since pre-Islamic times has signified established custom, precedent, the conduct of life, and cumulative tradition. In a general sense, such tradition encompasses knowledge and practices believed to have been passed down from…

Although there are no reliable statistics on the number of Muslims currently living in the West, a 1986 estimate placed about twenty-three million Muslims in Europe. The majority lived in the Balkans and southeastern Europe; they were Slavic converts…

There are today more than fifty Muslim states, extending from the Atlas Mountains in the West to the Malay Archipelago in the East, and from Sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Central Asia. They include some of the most populous countries in the…

In its most common usage, the term harem refers to the section of a house where a Muslim leader's wives live. More broadly, a harem serves as the quarters restricted to female members of a family. The term also refers to the women themselves. The…

Narratives of the modern age often divide the world into a “modern West” and a “traditional Orient,” or between Islam and the West, with the suggestion that the two are incompatible. However, this narrative is countered by the…

When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the "Riches of the East" Were you surprised to find that When Asia Was the World—a recommended for a reading liston the history of Islam—actually…

Communication has been an instrumental and integral part of Islam since its inception as a religio-political movement. Over the centuries, Islamic culture and civilization have been influential in the development of three major pillars of human…

Communication patterns in the Islamic world have undergone considerable change since the advent of broadcasting in the twentieth century. When broadcasting systems were introduced to many parts of the world between 1910 and 1930, only a few Islamic…

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Islāmī Jumhūrīya-e Pākistān), with a population of 164 million (2006 estimate), is the second largest Muslim state in the world, after Indonesia. Although they belong to five distinct ethnic…

Iranians have always called their country Iran (Land of the Aryans, “noble people”), but outsiders long used “Persia” (Parsa; Gk., Persis), referring to Pars, now Fars, a southern province. “Persia” remained in use…

[Calligraphy is] The art of fine writing with pen or brush and ink, frequently used as a means of artistic expression and decoration as well as written communication.The calligrapher and his art were central to Islamic culture. The Koran, the word of…

The Alhambra is the name given to the Red Castle (al-Qasr al-Hamrāʿ) built by fourteenth-century rulers of the Nasrid dynasty atop the Sabikah hill overlooking Granada, in southern Spain. The architectural complex consists today of three parts: the…

In Lebanon 's remarkably diverse society, eighteen separate sects or confessional groups are recognized within the political system. In addition to a variety of Christian sects, which account for no more than 35 percent of the country 's…

Faith: What do Muslims do on the pilgrimage to Mecca? Those who participate in the pilgrimage wear simple garments. Men wear two seamless white cloths, and women wear an outfit that entirely covers the body, except the face and hands. These…

Most often translated as “Islamic law,” the term sharia describes both Muslim practices that relate to law in Western understanding and others that do not. It is better understood as the Muslim conception of a life in conformity with…

This brief video describes the Islamic arts of the book and book illustration in the form of miniature painting. Related primary resource: Ibn al-Nadim on the Transmission and Authorization of Books, The Qur'an on Paradise (image).

This brief video expores the effect of geometric lines and curves on ornamental design in Islamic art, and illlustrates how they also characterize the timeless, breathtaking architecture of the Muslim world. Related primary resources: Al-Wansharisi…

This brief video describes the arts of weaving, knotting, and dyeing fabrics, including patterned carpets, woven calligraphy and their uses in Muslim cultures at all levels of society. Related primary resource: A Geniza Letter Regarding Trade and…