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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A hugely ambitious, “delightfully readable, genuinely informative” portrait (The New York Times) of the two-centuries-long entwined histories of Iran and America—two powers who were once allies and now adversaries—by an admired historian and former journalist. In this rich, fascinating history, John Ghazvinian traces the complex story of the relations between these two nations back to the Persian Empire of the eighteenth century—the subject of great admiration by Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams—and an America seen by Iranians as an ideal to emulate for their own government. Drawing on years of archival research both in the Unit...
Prescriptive law writings rarely mirror the ways a society practices law, a fact that raises special problems for the social and legal historian. Through close analysis of the laws of bailment (i.e., temporary safekeeping) in Exodus 22, Yael Landman probes the relationship of law in the biblical law collections and law-in-practice in ancient Israel and exposes a vision of divine justice at the heart of pentateuchal law. Landman further demonstrates that ancient Near Eastern bailment laws continue to influence postbiblical Jewish law. This book advances an approach to the study of biblical law that connects pentateuchal and ancient Near Eastern law collections, biblical narrative and prophecy, and Mesopotamian legal documents and joins philological and comparative analysis with humanistic legal approaches, in order to access how people thought about and practiced law in ancient Israel.
Written in straight-forward language by leading Islamic scholars, 14 essays cover the basics of Islamic faith and practice, the foundations of state and society, the early Muslim empires, Islamic universalism in the later Middle Ages, and the later Muslim empires.
There are many Centers of Excellence (COE) in community colleges and universities in the United States. Presently, a number of these provide approximately an extra year beyond various existing degrees. Most of these COEs deal with a variety of training and educational needs and work directly with the appropriate business communities. They provide students with additional training and expertise beyond the normal degree programs. This gives graduates specific educational training on the latest developments in their area of expertise, which makes them more employable and sought out for by businesses. Centers of Excellence: Niche Methods to Improve Higher Education in the 21st Century informs institutions of higher education about COEs that currently exist so interested administrators may initiate Centers of Excellence that are needed in their service areas. Furthermore, the information in this book will assist community colleges and universities in learning how a Center is activated, funded, and supported. The Centers are valuable to students, higher education institutions, and the business community.
The field of Middle East studies is undergoing a generational change in academia, government, and the corporate community. The men and women who trained the present generation of scholars and who shaped government and corporate policies toward the Middle East after World War II have begun to retire, and unfortunately some have recently died. To preserve their insights into the past and their visions of the future, Thomas Naff asked a number of major Islamic and Middle East scholars to provide their perspectives and views in a short, personal summation of their careers. This book is a compilation of their responses. It provides a unique evaluation of the last 30 or 40 years by ten of the most...
Focuses on subjects such as family life, marriage, law, human rights, and Muslim extremism before turning to 14 regional surveys on manifestations of Islam in every corner of the globe.
Explores Western and Muslim scholarship on multiple aspects of the Twelver Shi’ite tradition.