Historians have long lamented the lack of contemporary documentary sources for the Islamic middle ages and the inhibiting effect this has had on our understanding of this critically important period. Although the field is richly served by surviving evidence, much of it is hard to locate, difficult to access, and philologically intractable. Presenting a mixture of historical studies and new edit…
The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin offers an in-depth ethnographic account of Muslim youth's religious identity formation and their engagement with Islam in everyday life. Focusing on Muslim women in the organisation MJD in Germany, it provides a deeper understanding of processes related to immigration, transnationalism, the transformation of identifications and the reconstr…
Judaism, Christianity and Islam have coexisted in Europe for over 1300 years. The three monotheistic faiths differ in demography, in the moment of their arrival on the continent and in the unequal relations they maintain with power: Christianity was chosen by a large number of inhabitants and became — in spite of important differences according to place and time —a religion of state. The or…
This volume shows through the use of legal sources that law was used to try to erect boundaries between communities in order to regulate or restrict interaction between the faithful and the non-faithful; and at the same time shows how these boundaries were repeatedly transgressed and negotiated. Muslim law developed a clear legal cadre for dhimmīs, inferior but protected non-Muslim communities…
Sacrifice seems to belong to a religious context of the past. In Sacrifice in Modernity: Community, Ritual, Identity it is demonstrated how sacrificial themes remain an essential element in our post-modern society. The shaping of community, performing rituals and the search for identity, three main characteristics of traditional sacrifice, are dynamics of our modern times as well which cannot b…
The name of Bernhard Blumenkranz is well known to all those who study the history of European Jews in the Middle Ages and in particular the history of Jewish-Christian relations. Blumenkranz was born in Vienna in 1913; he left for Switzerland during the war and obtained a doctorate at the University of Basel on the portrayal of Jews in the works of Augustine. He subsequently moved to France whe…
This transdisciplinary volume investigates the ways in which people and organisations deal with the overflow of information, goods or choices. It explores two main themes: the emergence of overflows and the management of overflows, in the sense of either controlling or coping with them. Individual chapters show the management of overflows taking place in various social settings, periods and pol…
This book illuminates the personal experience of being at the centre of a media scandal. The existential level of that experience is highlighted by means of the application of ethnological and phenomenological perspectives to extensive empirical material drawn from a Swedish context. The questions raised and answered in this book include the following: How does the experience of being the prota…
Provides an introduction to "Ancrene Wisse", one of the most important works in English of the thirteenth century. This book offers a fresh contextualisation which engages with the history of lay piety and vernacular spirituality in the Middle Ages. This book is innovative in that it provides an introduction to "Ancrene Wisse", one of the most important works in English of the thirteenth centur…