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Successfully completing the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Any Muslim whose circumstances permit is required to make hajj at least once in a lifetime. In earlier centuries, it was a dangerous and lengthy journey,…

The hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, during Dhu’l Hijjah, the twelfth lunar month in the Islamic calendar, takes place at locations in and around Mecca, including the circumambulation of the Kaaba, the running between Safa and Marwa hills, and…

Khulays has a spring of abundant waters to which are joined underground conduits whence water is drawn... At these men renew their supplies of water, for there is little of it upon the way on account of the continuous drought. May God send rains in…

Leila Aboulela, Sudanese-born author of Minaret, was interviewed by Anita Sethl for the Guardian newspaper in London, June 2005. She discusses the relative importance of national and religious identity.

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…

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…

The map of the volume and direction of the transatlantic slave trade pinpoints the place in the Gulf of Mexico where Abdurrahman ibn Sori, the subject of Prince Among Slaves, disembarked as one individual in the flow of slaves from all regions of…

Note: A WPA field worker, Everal J. McKinnon, interviewed Mike Abdullah in his home in Ross, North Dakota. I was born in Rufage, Rushia, Syria. I don't remember the date, nor the month[,] but I believe that it was in 1886. (People in the Old Country…

Note: A WPA field worker, Everal J. McKinnon, interviewed Mary Juma in her home in Ross, North Dakota. Because she could not speak English, her son, Charles Juma, interpreted. I was born in Byria, Rushia, Syria. I don't know my exact age, but…

Portrait of African-American freed slave Yarrow Mamout painted in 1819 by Charles Wilson Peale, in the Philadelphia Museum

Omar ibn Said, (b. 1770?), a freed slave living in North Carolina, is the author of this page written in Arabic script. A note in English on the back states, “The Lord's Prayer written in Arabic by Uncle Moreau (Omar) a native African, now…

In this memoir, Eboo Patel relates his journey to faith-based activism with American youth. Patel, a native of the Chicago area who was born of Indian immigrants and raised in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, recounts the challenges he faced straddling multiple…

From Nobel Prize–winning author Orhan Pamuk, the novel Snow paints a fantastic picture of daily life in Kars, a dreamlike town in the mountains of far eastern Turkey. Following an exiled poet who becomes stranded in Kars during a weeklong…

Pakistan was created as an independent nation in 1947, carved from predominantly Muslim regions in the east and west of India after British colonial rule ended on the Indian subcontinent. Ever since, Pakistan has struggled to be Islamic yet secular,…

From the late New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid comes a chronicle of his quixotic efforts to restore his family’s ancestral home in Lebanon. While House of Stone is a memorable tale of the ups and downs of house renovation, it is also a…

This book tells the little-known story of Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, a Fulbe Muslim of elite ancestry who was captured in an ambush, sold to English slavers, and enslaved in the United States in 1788. After forty years in America, most of them spent in…

Leila Aboulela’s novel Minaret follows the spiritual journey of a young woman exiled from her home in Sudan and forced to invent a new life in London, far from the comforts of her privileged childhood and secular education. She supports herself…