- In a recent episode of New Books in Islamic Studies, Shehnaz Haqqani (Mercer University) and Edith Szanto (University of Alabama) “explore specific Muharram practices, including self-flagellation, the wedding of Qasim, and other ritualized forms of mourning, as well as gendered dynamics in who participates and why. [They] discuss what these practices looked like on the ground—what Muharram in Sayyida Zaynab felt like, how different communities understood and debated these rituals, and what purposes they served for those who participated in them. [They] talk about the Zaynabiyya seminary and how changes in its physical and institutional structure reshaped how knowledge was taught and who held authority.”
- In Between Rebels and Rulers in the Early Islamicate World: Power, Contention and Identity (Edinburgh University Press), editors Hannah-Lena Hagemann (University of Hamburg) and Alasdair C. Grant (University of Hamburg) offer “the first dedicated examination of the phenomenon of rebellion across the early Islamicate world. [The book] combines discourse analysis with a return to long-neglected social-historical analysis in its study of contention and the ways in which it was narrated and enacted. These approaches are pursued through 14 case studies, ranging geographically from North Africa to Central Asia and chronologically from the sixth to tenth centuries CE. These diverse examples reveal several patterns. First, rebellion operated as a normative means of negotiating power and obtaining justice. Secondly, the main constituencies of rebellion were local elites, both Muslims and non-Muslims, Arabs and members of pre-conquest societies, separately or together.”