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Frederick M. Denny offers an annotated bibliography of further resources for the Pathways of Faith theme.

Frederick M. Denny created this viewing guide for the documentary film Koran By Heart: One Chance To Remember (2011), directed by Greg Barker, produced by HBO Documentaries.

The classical Islamic religious tradition and civilization emerged in the Arabian Peninsula and the surrounding regions, eventually extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the west, across the northern half of Africa, to Central Asia and on to South and…

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…

The Kaaba is seen as the most sacred space in the Muslim world, the site to which hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the world turn each day when they pray. Located inside the compound of the Grand Mosque at Mecca, the Kaaba (literally,…

The "Qur'an Verse Lookup" provides side-by-side translations by A. J. Arberry and M. A. S. Abdel Haleem for comparison, searchable by numbered Qur'anic chapter and verse. It is a feature of the Oxford Islamic Studies Onlinethat requires access to the…

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…

[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…

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…

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…

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,…

Muslims participate in many types of travel that combine spiritual and mundane goals. For pious Muslims, nearly every journey has a religious dimension. Historically and currently, the most popular forms of religiously inspired travel include the…

Abraham, one of the many Old Testament figures that appear in the Qurʿān as a prophet of the Biblical tradition, assumes an outstanding role in Islam because of his association with (proto-)Islam, an uncorrupted form of Biblical monotheism that…

Unique among the world's great pilgrimages, the hajj is in many ways also the most important. Even compared to the ancient and highly developed international pilgrimage systems of Christianity and Hinduism, the hajj is remarkable in its doctrinal…

adhan Muslim call to prayer. ahl al-bayt literally, “people of the house,” referring to members of the household of the prophet Muḥammad. ahl al-kitāb literally, “people of the…

Raised on a site sacred to three great faiths, the Dome of the Rock is an elaborate, architecturally significant domed shrine built over a large rock believed to be the site from which Muhammad ascended to heaven during the Night Journey, ca. 621 CE.…

Rivaling the Hagia Sophia for architectural splendor, the Süleymaniye Mosque was built in the sixteenth century CE for the sultan known as Süleyman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566. The mosque, in Istanbul, is…

“There is a passage in the Qur’an that says if you memorize the Qur’an and teach it to others, you will be successful in this life and the next life.” In Koran by Heart, the young scholar who says this has already committed…