The centuries-long economic and military decline of the Byznatine Empire, which culminated in its political disappearance as a state in 1459, was, paradoxically, accompanied by high levels of...

An authoritative account of how and why the Islamic Republic has survived to become a critical player in the Middle East and the worldWhen Iranians overthrew their pro-Western monarchy in favor of an...

Turkish republicanism is commonly thought to have originated with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the founding of modern Turkey in 1923, and understood exclusively in terms of Kemalist ideals,...

"In 1799, a French officer was clearing debris from a military installation when he discovered a stele bearing three scripts: ancient Greek, hieroglyphic, and a third that could not be definitively...

Unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian...

"With ʻĪsá ibn Hisham Told Us, the Library of Arabic Literature brings readers an acknowledged masterpiece of early 20th-century Arabic prose. Penned by the Egyptian journalist Muhammad al-Muwaylihi,...

Readers of Arabic literature are likely to be familiar with Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī's acknowledged masterpiece of late-nineteenth-century prose and sajʿ (rhymed prose), What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us...

This prescient and timely book documents Noam Chomsky's visit to Lebanon, in May 2006, to lecture on U.S. imperialism and the imminent crises facing the Middle East—two months before Israel...

This lively volume collects poems by Hmedan al-Shwe'ir, who lived in Najd in the Arabian Peninsula shortly before the hegemony of the Wahhabi movement in the early eighteenth century.A master of...

A robust defense of a poetic geniusAbū Tammām (d. 231 or 232/845 or 846) is one of the most celebrated poets in the Arabic language. Born in Syria to Greek Christian parents, he converted to Islam...

Finalist for the 2016 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators' AssociationThe life, birth, and early years of 'the Fariyaq'—the alter ego of the Arab intellectual Ahmad...

Poems of love and battle by Arabia’s legendary warriorFrom the sixth-century highlands of Najd in the Arabian peninsula, on the eve of the advent of Islam, come the strident cries of a legendary...