Islamicate Civilization, from the Beginning to European Colonialism
Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17First version: 13 May 2021
I take the word "Islamicate" from Hodgson's terrific Venture of Islam; he draws a subtle but I think valid distinction between "Islamic" (referring purely to the religion) and "Islamicate" (which is broader).
I am particularly interested in the history of science during this period, but all of it is interesting.
- See also:
- Afghanistan
- Central Asia
- Islam
- Islamic Law
- ibn Khaldun
- Mu'tazila and Mu'tazilites
- Persiante Culture
- Reception and Appropriations of Classical Culture
- ibn Rushd/Averroes
- Sufism
- Recommended, big picture:
- Tamim Ansary, Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
- Richard W. Bulliet [Disclaimer: my wife's thesis adviser.]
- Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization
- Recommended, close ups:
- J. L. Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam
- Richard W. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History
- Jim Al-Khalili, The House of Wisdom
- George Malagaris, Biruni
- George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance [Author's self-presentation]
- Howard R. Turner, Science in Medieval Islam [Light, in places superficial --- I don't think Turner really understands algebra --- but excellently illustrated and it is, after all, a glorified exhibition catalogue]
- To read, primary sources:
- Seyyed H. Badakhchani (ed.), Nasir al-Din Tusi: Contemplation and Action: The Spiritual Autobiography of a Muslim Scholar [Tusi being one of the great astronomers and mathematicians of medieval times, inventor of an early form of Fourier decomposition...]
- Ronald Paul Buckley, The Book of the Islamic Market Inspector
- al-Farabi, Harmony of the Philosophies of Plato and Aristotle
- Francesco Gabrielli, Arab Historians of the Crusades
- Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers = Tahafut al-falasifah
- To read, secondary sources;
- Said Amir Arjomand, Messianism and Sociopolitical Revolution in Medieval Islam
- Robert Casagrande-Kim, Samuel Thrope and Raquel Ukeles, Romance and Reason: Islamic Transformations of the Classical Past
- Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis
- Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204--1760
- Frank Griffel, The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam
- Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arab Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd-4th and 8th-10th C.)
- Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance
- Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra (eds.), The Enterprise of Science in Islam
- Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion
- Tarif Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period
- David Levering Lewis, God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215
- Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300--1600
- Tim MacKintosh-Smith, Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah
- Wilferd Madelung, The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate
- Muhsin Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy
- Julie Meisami, Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Lyric Poetry
- Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society
- Sachiko Murata, william C. Chittick and Tu Weiming, The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam
- Eric Linn Ormsby, Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute Over Al-Ghazali's Best of All Possible Worlds
- Marcello Pelillo, "Alhazen and the nearest neighbor rule", Pattern Recognition Letters 38 (2014): 34--37
- Recep Senturk, Narrative Social Structure: Anatomy of the Hadith Transmission Network, 610--1505
- Adam J. Silverstein, Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World
- Justin K. Stearns, Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean
- Zoltan Szombathy, Mujun: Libertinism in Medieval Muslim Society and Literature
- Paul Wheatley, The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seventh through the Tenth Centuries
- M. J. L. Young et al., Religion, Learning and Science in the 'Abbasid Period
