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This brief video describes the forms, functions, features, and significance of the garden in Islamic societies, and the motif of gardens in various artistic genres. Related primary resources: The Qur'an on Paradise, Babur on the Construction of the…

The obligation to make the pilgrimage (known as the hajj) to Mecca, combined with the tradition of global trade in Muslim societies, makes international travel important in the lives of many Muslims. This brief video highlights the arts associated…

This brief video describes the structure, architecture and decoration of mosques and other religious buildings and discusses theirvariations in Muslim societies across geography and time. Related primary sources: The Qur'an on the Qibla,…

This brief video describes the arts of Islamic calligraphy, the artistic practice of handwriting based on the Arabic script. Related primary sources: The Qur'an on Paradise,Ibn al-Nadim on the Transmission and Authorization of Books.

The Moors were the Muslim inhabitants of Islamic Spain, or al-Andalus. The term Moor is a late-antique and medieval Western European usage to indicate dark-skinned North Africans of Arab and/or Berber origin who were responsible for the invasion of…

The name “Andalusia,” for Muslim Spain, is derived from “al-Andalus,” the name used in Arabic sources to indicate those parts of the Iberian peninsula under Muslim control between the initial invasion of 711 C.E. and the fall…

The religious movement known as the Wahhābīyah, sometimes anglicized as “Wahhabism,” is founded on the teachings of Muḥammad Ibn ῾Abd al‐Wahhāb (1703–1791), who wrote on a variety of Islamic subjects such as theology,…

From the 1970s onward, a number of Sunnī groups emerged, claiming to adhere to Salafī doctrines and to be engaged in purifying Muslim society in accordance with these. The designation Salafī is prestigious among Muslims, because it denotes an…

A prevalent institution of the Islamic world throughout its history,slavery (ʿubūdīyah, riqq) had a crucial influence on societies and cultures of Islam. Slavery was common in pre-Islamic and contemporary societies in the Mediterranean basin,…

This entry contains three subentries: ROLE AND STATUS OF WOMEN WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES WOMEN LIVING UNDER MUSLIM LAWS Role and Status of Women The Qurʿān, Islam's holy book, changed women's status considerably from that of the…

In 914 (1508-09), I had constructed a charbagh garden called the Bagh i-Wafa on a rise to the south of the Adinapur fortress. [A charbagh garden is a rectangular garden divided into four parts by paths or waterways.] It overlooks the river, which…

This noble dome, this magnificent college, and blessed hospital was ordered by our Lord and Master, the August Sultan al-Malik al-Mansur, the Wise, Just, God-assisted, Victorious, Champion of the Faith, Conqueror, Sword of the World and True…

The Chinese pottery (porcelain) is manufactured only in the towns of Zaytun and Sin-kalan. It is made of the soil of some mountains in that district, which takes fire like charcoal, as we shall relate subsequently. They mix this with some stones…

I am writing to you, my lord and master—may God prolong your life and grant you permanent well-being and happiness—to inform you that I arrived on Friday, after an eight days’ journey, and unloaded my cargo on Sunday, the day I am…

He began dictation of this book, Kitab al-yaqut (The Book of the Gem) on Thursday, 29 Muharram in the year 326 (December 6, 937) in the principal mosque of Abu Ja’far’s city (Baghdad), from memory, without any books or notes, and he…

The foolish will now ask and say: “What has made the faithful turn away from the Qiblah towards which they used to pray?” Say: “To God belong the East and the West. He guides who so wills to the path that is…

Announce to those who believe and have done good deeds, glad tidings of gardens under which rivers flow, and where, when they eat the fruits that grow they will say, “Indeed they are the same as we were given before,” so alike in…

Libya is an oil-rich country that shares borders with Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan, Chad, and Niger. Its population of more than 5 million is of mixed Arab-Berber ancestry, and an overwhelming majority of Libyans are Sunni Muslims. Historically,…

A holy site since the beginning of Arab memory of the place,Mecca (Makkah) is the goal of the annual pilgrimage that the Qurʿān (2:196–198) requires every Muslim to perform once in a lifetime. Whatever the surmises regarding the origin of its…

The name for the Islamic revealed scripture, al‐Qur'ān, means “the recitation,” in both informative and performative senses. With respect to the first, the Qur'ān is a “message” (risālah) that has been communicated to…

From Islam's inception, it has had a varied and profound relationship with Judaism. In scripture and thought, in society and politics, in culture and intellectual life, the two religious civilizations have exemplified their relations. In modern…

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the perception of Islam by Christians and non-Christians alike has been profoundly influenced by a number of terrorist events that have marked the beginning of the new millennium. There were, within a few…

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 1273), known as Rūmī, was born in the city of Balkh in the greater Persian cultural sphere of Khorāsān, under the rule of Khwārizm shahs, in what is now Tajikistan. A year prior to the Mongol invasion, in…

This entry contains four subentries: SūFī THOUGHT AND PRACTICE SūFī ORDERS SūFī SHRINE CULTURE SUFISM AND POLITICS ṢūfĪ Thought and Practice Sufism can be described broadly as the intensification of Islamic faith and practice, or…

In Islam ḥadīth is the term applied to specific reports of the prophet Muḥammad's words and deeds as well as those of many of the early Muslims; the word is used both in a collective and in a singular sense. After the Prophet 's death,…

One of the successor states created from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Turkey became the first secular state in the Muslim world. The new state was declared a republic in October 1923 after the defeat of the Greek army and of…

A North African country about the size of California, Morocco has existed as an Islamic region since the 700s. Its local name, al-Maghrib, means “sunset,” after the ancient Arabic name for North Africa, Bilad al-Maghrib (Lands of Sunset).…

Persian Literature until 1990 Persian literature is a body of poetic and other literary works created principally in Iran. Afghanistan, the Indian Subcontinent, Central Asia, and Turkey also have been home to a rich literature written in…

Overview From pre-Islamic poems to the contemporary novel, literature written in Arabic spans over fourteen centuries, several continents, and myriad local cultures and contexts. Although Arabic literature began during the Jāhilīyah (pre-Islamic…

Bilād al-Sūdān means “lands of the Blacks” in Arabic. It is a generic term for sub-Saharan Islamic Africa (also known as the Sahel) and has been the name of the modern nation since 1898. Islam entered Sudan in the sixteenth century…