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Sunnī Rulers and their Cadis

Yaacov Lev

in The Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt: From the 7th to the 12th Century

The chapter examines the history of the cadi institution in Egypt between 868 and 969. During that period, the cadis came to the forefront of political life under the Tulunids (868-905) and the ... More

The chapter examines the history of the cadi institution in Egypt between 868 and 969. During that period, the cadis came to the forefront of political life under the Tulunids (868-905) and the Ikhshidids (935-969). The chapter also follows the spread of the cadi institution to Egypt’s provincial towns and the cadis’ involvement in the application of the law.Less

Adab and Political Morality The Story of Three Lives

Mushirul Hasan

in From Pluralism to Separatism: Qasbas in Colonial Awadh

Adab refers to the manners and ‘professional’ etiquette that Muslims should follow. Used as a greeting, adab signifies a sense of complete respect and deference. In both Lucknow ... More

Adab refers to the manners and ‘professional’ etiquette that Muslims should follow. Used as a greeting, adab signifies a sense of complete respect and deference. In both Lucknow and Awadh, caste- and community-neutral categorizations remained the social identifiers. Three individuals—Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Hakim Ajmal Khan, and Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari—exemplified the family code of right conduct. Without being formal interpreters of the Sharia, all three were wrapped in the folds of the banner of tradition, religion, and traditional morality. They argued that religion helped shape man’s conduct and ideas, but also believed in the political ideal consistent with the spirit of Islam. As exponents of the ‘liberal-humanitarian ideology’, they evolved an inclusive concept of adab without confining and twisting its application to a single national community.Less

Communists vs. the Military Government, Collaborators vs. Communists

Hillel Cohen

in Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967

Letters informing on compatriots were not unusual in Israel's Arab villages in the 1950s and 1960s. Some reported on people who provided safe houses for infiltrators, and others turned in Arabs who ... More

Letters informing on compatriots were not unusual in Israel's Arab villages in the 1950s and 1960s. Some reported on people who provided safe houses for infiltrators, and others turned in Arabs who owned weapons. On occasion, such letters were sent by known collaborators who sought to prove their efficacy or by Arabs who wanted to ingratiate themselves with the authorities. The security or political charges the letters contained were intended to prompt police action. The Communists' overt opposition to the military government and its laws, their fundamental position that Israel should withdraw to the 1947 partition borders, and the systematic way they recruited supporters all made them the major rival of Mapai (and the security agencies, which were in the hands of Mapai) in the Arab public. The Israeli establishment thus viewed them as a clear and present danger to the Jewish state. Clashes between Communist activists and the police and military government became routine. Two Arab personages who enjoyed the support of the Israeli establishment in their contention with the Communists were Mutran Hakim and Muhammad Nimer al-Hawwari.Less

The Religious Other

Christina Phillips

in Religion in the Egyptian Novel

This chapter identifies religion as a key problematic in early examples of the Arabic novel in Egypt before embarking on an in-depth discussion of the religious/secular opposition in seminal words by ... More

This chapter identifies religion as a key problematic in early examples of the Arabic novel in Egypt before embarking on an in-depth discussion of the religious/secular opposition in seminal words by Haykal, Taha Husayn and Tawfiq al-Hakim. It examines how texts like Zaynab (1914), Al-Ayyam (vols 1 and 2; 1929, 1933), ‘Awdat al-Ruh (1933) and ‘Usfur min al-Sharq (1938) promote national and secular values on the level of story and character yet undermine these same values through self-contradiction and slippage, and how religious patterns remain deeply embedded in characters’ thought and behaviour even as formal religion is subjected to harsh critique on the surface of the plot and theocentrism is displaced as ideology.Less

Intertextual Dialogues

Christina Phillips

in Religion in the Egyptian Novel

This chapter explores religious intertextuality in works by Jamal al-Ghitani, Najib Mahfuz and ‘Abd al-Hakim Qasim. It examines how al-Ghitani reworks elements of Ibn ‘Iyas’ Badaʿiʾ al-Zuhur ... More

This chapter explores religious intertextuality in works by Jamal al-Ghitani, Najib Mahfuz and ‘Abd al-Hakim Qasim. It examines how al-Ghitani reworks elements of Ibn ‘Iyas’ Badaʿiʾ al-Zuhur fi’l-Waqaʿiʾ al-Duhur to bring out themes relating to the collusion of religion and power in Al-Zayni Barakat (1971) and how messianic thought and prophetic myth are deconstructed in Mahfuz’s Malhamat al-Harafish (1977). It analyses the reimagining of Christ’s crucifixion in ‘Abd al-Hakim Qasim’s short novel Al-Mahdi (1984) as a comment on modern-day religious violence and the practice of scapegoating, and discusses religious conflict in the text as an example of René Girard’s mimetic rivalry leading to communal self-purification through sacrifice. It also explores the dialogue with Islamic eschatology and dream narrative in Qasim’s Turaf min Khabar al-Akhira (1984), examining how the scene of the interrogating angels and pattern of judgement in the afterlife are transformed to communicate social and religious themes.Less

Re-imagining the Rural: The Mystical and the Mythical

Yasmine Ramadan

in Space in Modern Egyptian Fiction

Chapter Three centers around works by Abd al-Hakim Qasim, Yahya Taher Abdullah, and Yusuf al-Qaid. Here we move to the villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt, the latter appearing in Egyptian novels ... More

Chapter Three centers around works by Abd al-Hakim Qasim, Yahya Taher Abdullah, and Yusuf al-Qaid. Here we move to the villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt, the latter appearing in Egyptian novels for the first time. These novels are read in opposition to the social realist works of the previous generation, with their concentration upon the countryside as the space of revolutionary struggle and political mobilization. The rural here is transformed into a space of suffering and degradation, in which the villagers struggle to contend with the difficulties of their daily life. The village is thus represented as mystical and mythical space, with the writers employing literary techniques from fantastic literature and magical realism, in order to represent the ongoing marginalization of the Egyptian village and its separation from the rest of the nation. These works of fiction are situated within the broader socio-economic context of the period, particularly Abdel Nasser’s agricultural reforms begun in the 1950s. The failure of the policies is reflected in the literary output of the generation, who grappled to come to terms with the continued marginalization and exclusion of the Egyptian village.Less

Writing the Biography of an Enigma

Paul E. Walker

in Caliph of Cairo: Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, 9961021

Al-Hakim mounts his favorite riding animal, a grey donkey named Qamar (the moon), and departs the comfort and safety of his royal abode for the silent darkness of the night; none of his staff would ... More

Al-Hakim mounts his favorite riding animal, a grey donkey named Qamar (the moon), and departs the comfort and safety of his royal abode for the silent darkness of the night; none of his staff would have thought much of it. Riding into the blackness of the evening was for him almost an obsession. He accepted others' demand and consented to pay them whether it was robbery or extortion by threat of harm or not. He had become well known for most generously rewarding such requests, much to the alarm of those responsible for the maintenance of his finances. One of the most powerful men in the world simply wandered out to circulate occasion to the area of the southern Qarafa cemetery, riding nearly alone among graves and the stars, the monuments and the sands.Less

The Institutions of His Rule

Paul E. Walker

in Caliph of Cairo: Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, 9961021

Later dynasties detested the Fatimids. Al-Hakim's government administration depended on a series of subordinate ranks, a true bureaucracy, ranging from offices at the top. Given that the empire in ... More

Later dynasties detested the Fatimids. Al-Hakim's government administration depended on a series of subordinate ranks, a true bureaucracy, ranging from offices at the top. Given that the empire in his time stretched over vast territories, only part of which was Egypt, a description of government operations in the capital does not reliably indicate the situation elsewhere. Those reports tend to deal in more detail with the highest ranks—wazir and qadi, for example—and pay less and less attention to the lower. The choosing of the men appointed to high office was, in general, carefully managed; and those chosen were constantly supervised afterward by the imam. The primary exception to such a policy occurred when al-'Aziz raised one of his aides, Ya'qub Ibn Killis, to the position of wazir in 978. Al-Hakim continued this latter policy of his father; he himself appointed no wazirs.Less

Afterlife and Epilogue

Paul E. Walker

in Caliph of Cairo: Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, 9961021

Al-Hakim rode off on his last known excursion barely months beyond the 400th anniversary of the Prophet's death. Even though the Fatimid dynastic establishment, led by Sitt al-Mulk, had determined to ... More

Al-Hakim rode off on his last known excursion barely months beyond the 400th anniversary of the Prophet's death. Even though the Fatimid dynastic establishment, led by Sitt al-Mulk, had determined to carry on by elevating al-Zahir to the caliphate and vigorously suppressing all sentiment to the contrary, there are in the record too many reports, first of individuals who refused to acknowledge the succession pending final news of al-Hakim, and then later of claims of his actually having reappeared. More significant was the year 400 of the Islamic era, which came ten lunar years later. The turn of a century raised hopes among the Muslims of the coming of a renewer, a person who could and would reform religious doctrine and observance, bringing it back once again to what it had been in the days of the Prophet.Less

Elite Treatment of Honour Crimes in Modern Egypt

Pierre Cachia

in Exploring Arab Folk Literature

This chapter discusses the elite treatment of honour crimes in modern Egypt. It focuses on the ways and mechanisms in which elite literature has departed or distanced itself from the traditions and ... More

This chapter discusses the elite treatment of honour crimes in modern Egypt. It focuses on the ways and mechanisms in which elite literature has departed or distanced itself from the traditions and practices of honour crimes that prevailed in folk literature. It takes a look at Tāhā Husayn's Du al-Karawān; Tawfīq al-Hakīm's Uxniyat al-Mawt; and Najīb Surūr's Minēn ajīb Nā. Even leading modernists like Tāhā Husayn looked upon colloquial forms of Arabic as debased. Most Arab writers of the twentieth century saw themselves not only as artists but also as agents of cultural and social reform, and shied away from themes that struck them as trivial or reactionary.Less

Families and Communities of Common Descent

Margrit Pernau

in Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-century Delhi

Membership in a family and an extended network of relatives was one of the key factors determining an individual’s social and economic status in Delhi in the first half of the nineteenth century. The ... More

Membership in a family and an extended network of relatives was one of the key factors determining an individual’s social and economic status in Delhi in the first half of the nineteenth century. The first section of this chapter uses an early nineteenth-century Persian text to trace the indigenous representation of social groups, to investigate the roots of this representation, and to ask how it differed from the later colonial ethnography of Muslim castes. The second section examines how the economic situation of the social elite and their family structures was influenced by the bureaucratization of the revenue administration and pension system by the British, a process that began in Delhi and its environs in the Chishti Sufi order in the second decade of the nineteenth century. This development is traced in the third section by taking a closer look at three families.Less

Pharaonism and Its Challengers in the 1930s and 1940s

Donald Malcolm Reid

in Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums, and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hassan al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood grew into a mass movement, but the retreat of pharaonism before Islam and Arabism was not the rout that is sometimes assumed. Some ... More

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hassan al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood grew into a mass movement, but the retreat of pharaonism before Islam and Arabism was not the rout that is sometimes assumed. Some deplored the pitting of pharaonism against Islam and Arabism as a false dichotomy and embraced the entire Egyptian past. Saad Zaghlul's mausoleum and his statues in Cairo and Alexandria were steeped in pharaonism. Even those with little interest in ancient Egypt took pride in Selim Hassan's and Sami Gabra's discoveries and advancing careers. Journalist Salama Musa, who had named his own son Khufu for the builder of the Great Pyramid, stood by his earlier pharaonist nationalism. Among the younger generation, Ahmad Husayn confessed to “pharaonic mania” even as his Young Egypt movement took on a more Islamic tone, King Faruq avidly collected pharaonic antiquities, schoolboy Gamal Abdel Nasser thrilled to Tawfiq al-Hakim's pharaonist Return of the Spirit, and Naguib Mahfouz set his first three novels in ancient Egypt.Less

Explanations of occupational sex segregation

Jude Browne

in Sex segregation and inequality in the modern labour market

This chapter provides a critical analysis of causal explanations of vertical occupational sex segregation (VOSS). It evaluates the representative theories from three major ‘explanatory camps’: ... More

This chapter provides a critical analysis of causal explanations of vertical occupational sex segregation (VOSS). It evaluates the representative theories from three major ‘explanatory camps’: psychological and psycho-physiological theories, theories of patriarchy, and human capital-based theories. The chapter explores the work both of more ‘traditional’ advocates of each camp, and of some theorists who have attempted to develop their fields. It specifically looks at Steven Goldberg's Male Dominance Theory, Simon Baron-Cohen's Empathising/Systemising Theory, and Carol Gilligan's Different Voice thesis. Moreover, Sylvia Walby and Valerie Bryson's Patriarchy Theory is elaborated. Then, Rational Choice Theory by Gary Becker, and Preference Theory by Catherine Hakim, are highlighted. The limitations of each of the theoretical approaches, and the ways in which each camp tends to assume a false homogeneity among women, irrespective of various claims to the contrary, are noted.Less

VOSS in the BBC

Jude Browne

in Sex segregation and inequality in the modern labour market

This chapter illustrates the major quantitative findings of a large and detailed empirical investigation of occupational sex segregation in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It first ... More

This chapter illustrates the major quantitative findings of a large and detailed empirical investigation of occupational sex segregation in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It first briefly looks at the sex ratios in the BBC that provide optimal data from which to make comparisons of male and female workers across all sectors of the organisation. There is no straightforward correlation between high levels of male concentration and higher pay grades. According to human-capital-based theories, VOSS is caused by women's relatively average lower human-capital and productivity levels. Gary Becker's failure to recognise heterogeneity among women (and among men), irrespective of their marital or parental status, is rightly criticised. This leads to Preference Theory. Admittedly, the results of this chapter might appear rather promising for supporters of Catherine Hakim's Preference Theory.Less

Tough at the top: women's career progression – an example in the local government sector

Cinnamon Bennett and Ning Tang

in Policy for a change: Local labour market analysis and gender equality

This chapter examines the issues facing women with the skills and qualifications to progress to the most senior levels in the labour market. The experiences of qualified women in the local-authority ... More

This chapter examines the issues facing women with the skills and qualifications to progress to the most senior levels in the labour market. The experiences of qualified women in the local-authority sector are also described. It is shown that the local-government sector has been very successful in attracting and retaining women employees. The majority of women in senior roles had dependent children and emphasised the equal importance they attached to their family life. The chapter then illustrates why women's preferences and choices arising from real experiences in the local-government sector call for modifications to Hakim's theory. Government, employers, trade unions, and academics must continue to challenge the views of employers and managers, arguing that a sexual division of management roles is no longer morally or economically acceptable.Less

Projections and Receptions of Religious Authority: Grand Ayatollahs and Pakistan’s Shiʿi “Periphery”

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs

in In a Pure Muslim Land: Shi'ism between Pakistan and the Middle East

This chapter investigates the arguments exchanged about a lay believer’s obligation to emulate a high-ranking scholar (marji‘) in his daily conduct (taqlid). The findings question the view of ... More

This chapter investigates the arguments exchanged about a lay believer’s obligation to emulate a high-ranking scholar (marji‘) in his daily conduct (taqlid). The findings question the view of Pakistan as a mere Shi‘i “backwater.” Instead, the chapter argues that the country should be understood as a veritable center of religious vitality in its own right. Local Shi‘i ‘ulama in the “periphery” displayed remarkable creativity when arguing about the “centers”, using a variety of strategies to bolster their own authority. This chapter explores how the leading grand ayatollahs, residing mostly in Najaf and Qum, attempted to influence the debate about who should be recognized in Pakistan as the preeminent global scholar and how these claims to authority were received and reinterpreted. The discussion illuminates the crucial moments of succession after the death of one widely accepted and revered marji‘, the Iraqi scholar Sayyid Muhsin al-Hakim (d. 1970). His demise played into the hands of the decidedly internationally minded Iranian jurist Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Shari‘atmadari (d. 1986) who had acquired the largest following of any marji‘ in Pakistan by the mid-1970s.Less

The Transformation of Arabic Writing: Part 2, the Public Text¹

Yasser Tabbaa

in The Production of Meaning in Islamic Architecture and Ornament

Examines the transformation of public texts (both Qur’anic and historical) from Kufic, in particular floriated Kufic, to cursive in the 11th and 12th centuries. As mandated by Nur al-Din in the ... More

Examines the transformation of public texts (both Qur’anic and historical) from Kufic, in particular floriated Kufic, to cursive in the 11th and 12th centuries. As mandated by Nur al-Din in the middle of the twelfth century, legible cursive scripts would completely replace the ambiguous floriated Kufic script, reflecting and embodying the exoteric and inclusive doctrines of the Sunni revival.Less

On Ecalle-Hakim 's theorems in holomorphic dynamics

Marco Arizzi and Jasmin Raissy

Araceli Bonifant, Mikhail Lyubich, and Scott Sutherland (eds)

in Frontiers in Complex Dynamics: In Celebration of John Milnor's 80th Birthday

This chapter provides detailed proofs for the results by M. Hakim regarding the dynamics of germs of biholomorphisms tangent to the identity of order k + 1 ≥ 2 and fixing the origin. One of the main ... More

This chapter provides detailed proofs for the results by M. Hakim regarding the dynamics of germs of biholomorphisms tangent to the identity of order k + 1 ≥ 2 and fixing the origin. One of the main questions in the study of local discrete holomorphic dynamics, i.e., in the study of the iterates of a germ of a holomorphic map of ℂᵖ at a fixed point, which can be assumed to be the origin, is when it is possible to holomorphically conjugate it to a “simple” form, possibly its linear term. It turns out that the answer to this question strongly depends on the arithmetical properties of the eigenvalues of the linear term of the germ.Less