The Muslim World in Modern South Asia: Power, Authority, and Knowledge, by Francis Robinson, draws together a decade’s worth of the author’s articles, lectures, and reviews. The book covers temporally and geographically broad trends within Muslim responses to the rise of European colonial power and Western capitalist influence, particularly but not only within South Asia. Read more
Continue ReadingMarina Rustow’s deeply absorbing book, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue states its main objective from the outset; namely, to lay to rest the persistent and erroneous notion that the medieval Islamic states of the Middle East were deficient in the art of statecraft. This false notion has been underpinned by an all-pervasive Read more
Continue ReadingWriting political history in the twenty-first century is challenging. A monograph consisting of unfamiliar names, tied to convoluted political events spanning over a century would be a hard sell to a publisher, let alone appeal to a broad audience. Thus, it is no wonder that political history has become an unpopular subfield in history, and Read more
Continue ReadingIn Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, Judith Surkis enters the debate about the construction of the Algerian legal system under French colonization and argues that fantastical depictions and orientalist views inspired jurists as they developed the legal code in French Algeria. Significantly, she argues that sexual fantasies about Arab women did far more Read more
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